Idahohnoyoudint.

I'm not sure of the exact date, but around this time give or take a couple of days, we were pulling off of the i-15 and into the city of nothing, our new home, Idaho Falls.

Immediately, I was unimpressed, but I wasn't anticipating anything more so it didn't surprise me. I was, however, a little surprised at how quickly the feeling of dread and despair had overwhelmed me, since I had about a week to try and convince myself it would be ok. I had that heavy almost painful feeling in the pit of my stomach as we passed the wal-mart, the forlorn looking pancake house, and other buildings that looked just as sad to be in this town as I was.

                             

As we pulled up to the light located right next to "The Falls" I stared at the water, not knowing at the time that I was seeing absolutely all there was to see in this city. I looked to my right, a car was stopped next to us at the light, an older, beat up and rusted, white sedan with the windows down that contained a lone driver; a woman, possibly in her mid thirties, looking like the midway point of the faces of meth photo series--not completely overcome with meth face, but well on her way. She was wearing a spaghetti strap pink tank top, her hair pulled up with a scrunchie, smoking a cigarette. That's when my emotions surfaced, the flood gates opened, and the tears came. That woman, her cigarette, and her scrunchie were a symbol of all that I lost leaving beautiful Savannah, GA for Idaho Falls, ID, a town where people still wore scrunchies.

I still remember that day like it was yesterday. It's been a hard pill to swallow knowing that this place is my home, the place Taylor and I have been in the longest, and the place where my first baby was born. AND, Although there are terrible things about this place that still keep me from loving it (and knowing that I definitely will not miss it when we finally get to leave), there are good things that help me cope with being trapped here. Target, D.I., a few good people and friends I've made, the extremely low cost of living, the proximity to other places I'd rather be (I.E. Bear Lake, Yellowstone, Salt Lake City) my cute house, and my cute family. When I get asked the question "How do you like living in Idaho Falls?" I can now say, "It's ok, in the summertime." which is an upgrade from "No comment" or "I don't." or "This is what hell will be like."

Here's to hoping that I can survive the next couple of years here unscathed.

sometimes you give birth to a kid.

I love my baby. I love him so much i can hardly comprehend it. It actually terrifies me how much I love him because it makes me feel incredibly vulnerable. However, what I loved less was the process of giving birth to  him. That's not to say I HATED giving birth because things were relatively easy and we both made it out healthy and alive but... let me explain.

I hate that I have to even say that. That I didn't *like* to give birth. I did so much research about childbirth. I would almost say that I knew too much for my own good. I knew that my body knew exactly what it needed to do and the pain was just my body doing the work of getting my baby out. I knew that I wanted to have a natural labor with a midwife at a birth center. To my dismay though, that wasn't how it was going to work for me. When I got pregnant I discovered that my insurance would cover EVERYTHING in a hospital and NOTHING with anything else. Some women would say, "it's worth the 5 grand +!" but that wasn't really in the cards for us. SO I made the best with what I had. I created a birth plan and told my doctors that I wanted to have a natural birth and they were on board. I wasn't delusional by any means, I knew that sometimes things happen when you have a baby and things don't go the way you want. 

BUT, things were going well for me. I had a very healthy pregnancy. My blood pressure was perfect, my pee was clean, my glucose levels were fine, Emerson's heart rate was perfect and his head was down, I was gaining the exact right amount of weight etc etc. So I figured, having the birth I want, should be no problem. I even chose to deliver at a hospital that was totally cool with women having natural deliveries. Everything was fine.

Then, my due date came and went. My OB asked me if I wanted to be induced. I said no. He'd come when he was ready.  So I waited and kept going in for my check ups. To my dismay, my blood pressure started creeping up at each subsequent visit. When I went in at 41 week 5 days, my BP was too high for my OB to be comfortable with so he said we needed to induce. My heart sank. So, we discussed the ways to get labor started and we came to an agreement that I was most comfortable with. I was grateful to have a doctor that listened to my concerns, discussed things through with me, and didn't bully me into things I didn't want. 

So we went home to get all my stuff I had packed. After that, we said a prayer in the car and stopped for lunch and went to the hospital. I wasn't even nervous. Why wasn't I nervous? I have no idea. I was about to experience something completely insane and then my life would be changed forever afterwards and there was no turning back. But at 12:45 PM on 11/11 I was like, no big deal, Let me put on this hospital gown that someone probably died in at some point and watch Honey Boo Boo while my cervix ripens. So for the first few hours, that's what I did.

Apparently contractions were coming but I couldn't feel them other than a little tightening. I would occasionally get up, walk around, pee, snack, whatever. Then I would have to get back in bed to check my blood pressure and the baby's heart rate. Fortunately, as I relaxed my blood pressure started to go down, but it wasn't down very much. And then I had to get Antibiotics in an IV because I was GBS positive and that burned my veins. It was really uncomfortable. At about 5:45 my OB came in to see how I was doing. He decided it would be best if he broke my water. I wasn't super stoked about that. But my BP was betraying me. So he did. And once he did, things really got going. I started to feel the contractions and within three hours they got really intense. At that point I had switched nurses and the new nurse was someone who had delivered her babies naturally, so she showed Taylor how to push my legs and knees into my hips to help relieve of some the pain during contractions. It did help a lot. What I really wanted was to get up and walk around but I had to get another round of antibiotics and my blood pressure was creeping up again. So I was stuck in the bed in pain. I did my best to work through them with the help of my wonderful husband but by 10:45 PM I was exhausted and at my wits end and my blood pressure was insanely high. Like I was about to have a stroke. It was like 200/110 or something. The last time I was checked I was at 5cm, and about an hour later I started having urges to push and my contractions were out of control. At one point I had 3 contractions that overlapped each other and the peak of the pain lasted about 5 minutes straight and the baby was squirmy so they had me on my side to get his heart rate which for some reason intensified the pain of the contractions and all I could do was lay on the bed and writhe and scream in pain.  So the nurse checked me again and I was at 8cm. I was so relieved to know that the pain was actually moving things along. I thought, Okay, I can definitely do this! I'm almost there! So I asked how much longer, and she told me 3-4 hours at the most. At that point I wanted to cry. I looked that nurse right in the eyes and told her I wanted the epidural. It was strange because I had always feared getting to that point in hospital, where I broke down and decided I wanted drugs and I would get it because it was available even though I probably could have done it without it. But in that moment, I was so exhausted, I would try to close my eyes and rest and then a contraction would hit and rest was not an option and so when I decided to get the epidural, I felt no guilt, I felt no fear, I was in survival mode.

when the anesthesiologist came in I felt like there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Apparently I wasn't breathing very well so they put an oxygen mask on me. Looking back, I'm not sure if I should have been more scared about that mask but I didn't care. contractions were still coming every minute or so. When he told me I had to hold perfectly still while he jabbed me with that sweet sweet poison I was genuinely scared of being paralyzed or something. But I did it. I had a super intense contraction during that moment but I squeezed Tayl's hand as hard as I could and then it was over. 11:45 PM Within minutes I started to feel relief. For the first time in hours, I was able to smile. I wanted to kiss that anesthesiologist on the mouth. I was back to being excited about my baby coming. The strangest part of the epi was that I could move my legs, and I could still feel when I was having a contraction, but I just didn't feel any pain. I thought I would basically be useless from the waist down.

So I was finally able to just rest, I actually slept. Not well, because I could still feel the contractions (not pain). But, it was the rest I needed. I'm not sure I would have been able to push the baby out of me otherwise. Also, my blood pressure dropped dramatically. I was back in normal ranges. Around 4 AM, I started to push and blah blah blah I'll spare you the gory details but at 5:10 AM my little perfect goopy bundle of joy came out of my womb and into this crazy world at 8 pounds 5 oz and 21 inches long.

Looking back, as time has passed, I am totally okay with how things went down. BUT, the first few days I felt a little internal guilt for getting drugged up while I was giving birth to my baby. It made me upset to even think about it. I was ashamed. I didn't think I would ever be able to tell people my birth story let alone put it on my blog. But in the end, I did what was best for both of us in my situation. As we approach Emerson's one month mark, the most valuable thing I have learned is that the worst thing I can do is go online and read what other mom's are doing or have done. Mom world is a scary world. I'm not an expert... yet. But my baby is healthy and growing and happy and so am I, and so that means I'm doing okay. And everyone else in mom world who judges, can suck it.

sweatpants and frozen lakes.

On Friday night we headed over to Bear Lake to visit my Grandma for the weekend. If you don't know anything about Bear Lake, you should get to know it, because it's probably the only beautiful thing in southeast Idaho, and the most beautiful thing in Utah. (the two states share the lake). ANYWAY in spite of being beautiful, the towns surrounding the lake are tiny and in the winter, there is next to nothing. So sometimes when we go visit her, she'll have me stop and pick up a few things for her before we leave civilization. On this particular visit, she asked if I could stop and pick up cat AND dog food for her.

It was very convenient because when Roscoe barfed in the car (like I knew he eventually would) we were driving through Soda Springs so we stopped to clean it up in the parking lot of a grocery store, and I decided to run in and grab cat and dog food. Now, mind you, when we left Idaho Falls, I decided to put on sweats because who wants to wear real clothes while riding in the car for 3 hours? NOT ME. So I go into the store and as I'm lugging the box of cat food and the giant bag of dog food I think to myself, "WOW I look like a loser right now. Wearing sweats in public, in a small Idaho town, buying pet food on a Friday night. And this is my life." When I get up to  the cash register the first thing the cashier girl says to me, [very enthusiastically in an Idaho accent] is, "DOIN ANYTHNG FUN TONIGHT!?!" and I was so caught off guard for several reasons. So I just said, "no." But what I wanted to say was, "I'M IN SODA SPRINGS BUYING CAT FOOD IN MY SWEAT PANTS, WHILE MY HUSBAND CLEANS DOG BARF OUT OF THE CAR, WHAT DO YOU THINK IS GOING ON IN MY LIFE RIGHT NOW?!"

Idahoans are so dumb. They say things like supposably. And I'm not saying this because I'm bias, I really saw on the news (which wow, you should see the local news here, it is comedy gold, it's like it's produced by elementary school kids from 1996) that Idaho is ranked SECOND TO LAST in Education and also, only 1 in 10 Idaho students will get a degree. Now yes, I am a college dropout, but if you pulled me and 10 of my friends from high school I would be like only one of two that didn't get a degree.

But that's just a side rant. So our weekend with Grandma went well. We helped her drive her 20 year old dog (that she inherited from her twin brother when he died in 2006) to the vet to get put to sleep. Nobody was really sad about it because it was a really big relief, dealing with a dog that old is no bueno.

Then as we always do when someone dies in our family, we went and bought pie.

my cute grandma

Then Taylor gave my Grandma's OTHER dog a hair cut, and then decided to give Roscoe a haircut too.

"all that remains of my old life" -Roscoe Dash

And the lake up there was still frozen so Tayl took a thousand trillion billion photos because snow is still more a novelty than a nuisance to him. But I wasn't as annoyed cause it's Bear Lake.

Then we went home:

Also this:

Lately in our mediocre lives.

Recently I was going through my old instagram photos from last year and it made me sad. I've always said that our life was mediocre, but really until we got to Idaho, it wasn't. I mean we lived in England for 3 months, then we lived in Savannah for a year and there was always something fun to do. The beach, good eatin', historical landmarks, events at the park, going crabbing, St. Patricks day festival, New Years Eve, 4th of July, road tripping to Charleston, kayaking, fishing etc.

It's not to say that I'm miserable here, it's just you never realize how good you have it until afterwards, and perhaps, I hope I will feel that way about Idaho when we leave. (Cross your fingers that one day we leave!)

And now, the purpose of this blog was to update with the actual mediocre things that we've been up to. Which most of you, I will warn you, it is boring, but it's for my personal records. Since Taylor is always printing our blog at the end of the year, our book from 2012 was much smaller than our book from 2011 (and it had four months less!) So I am going to make a better effort, maybe.

I'll start from where I can remember in February
I started a new job! Nothing fancy, but I definitely don't hate it, and that's important. I am a full-time receptionist at a car dealership here in Idaho Falls. I've been here for about a month now and it's going well. But it's given me a reason to hate Mondays again, so that's fun.

My BFF!! came to visit me all the way from Vegas. Well technically she only came from Lehi, but still. It was a blasty. We love eachother and her baby is the COOLEST! and best dressed, even Joan Rivers herself couldn't deny it:

After that weekend Valentine's day was approaching, and to be honest, I don't really care about Valentine's. I think it's much more fun when you're a little kid or you have little kids. I don't HATE Valentine's it's just silly that it's a commercial holiday that gives women a sense of entitlement to expensive gifts. But still Tayl got me roses, which looked like regular roses so I didn't take a picture of them because nobody really cares, except me. And ON Valentine's I threw this little ditty together in like 30 minutes:





 Then the following weekend we headed up to SLC, because said BFF's parents were having their mission farewell. That was sad for me because they are literally like Chicken Nuggets to me. and Chicken Nuggets, is like my family. The trip up there was ridiculous because we learned that Roscoe gets car sick and so he barfed like 12 times. Twice on me.

The last little bit of February, the dogs were a real hassle. Roscoe kept losing his teef. And then one day I came home for Lunch and the dogs had gotten into some of Tayl's specialty dark chocolate I gave him for Valentine's SO, I was freaking out and had to rush them to the vet. Which was 0% fun and 100% expensive. But they are alive.

And other that near death experiences and visits from loved ones, nothing else new exciting.

Oh and I made this wreath on Saturday and BARELY took down the Christmas-y one. At first I thought it was too plain. Because I literally went to Michael's and randomly grabbed stuff. But it turned out pretty good. I like it much more now that I've gone in and out of my door a few times:

That's all the mediocrity for now, folks.

GET IN MY MOUTH: Low Country Boil

So lately, I've been missing Georgia. Sometimes it literally makes my heart hurt because I miss it so bad. Which luckily, is not because I am totally miserable in Idaho, because I'm surprisingly not (yet). But, ANYWAY, I decided that there was one thing that could help curb my Georgia yearning; some good old southern food.

So, I pulled out Aunt Martha's cookbook (which if you are ever going to buy a cookbook, let that be your next one because Martha is amahzing. She's used to help write Paula Deen's cookbooks. She basically a Savannah celebrity!) and after looking through it, decided to invite some of our peeps over for :

LOW COUNTRY BOIL
Adapted from "Savannah Celebrations" by Martha Nesbit

Thanks to Sassy YGBG for the photo

Here's what you need:

Serves 8

2 pounds kielbasa Polish sausage, sliced into 1 inch pieces.

20 red potatoes, halved or quartered, depending on size.

4 to 6 ears of corn broken into halves or thirds

3 pounds large shrimp 

1/4 cup Old Bay seasoning (this is optional but I HIGHLY recommend using it, and being generous with it!)

Allow 1 hour to heat water in a 20 gallon pot*, filled about one-third full. Add the Old Bay seasoning if using (which you better be). 45 minutes before serving, add sausage. 20 minutes before serving, add red potatoes. 15 minutes before serving, add corn. 5 minutes before serving, add shrimp. When shrimp are pink and cooked through (about 5 minutes or less - you can tell because they curl up like they're prepping for an earthquake drill.). Drain and serve hot.

*Alright so, if you're anything like me, you don't have a 20 gallon pot and when you saw that you were like, Whaaaaaaaaaaat? But don't worry, it's a little bit of work but it's still possible. What I have is just two 5.5 quart pots. So, to make the full recipe (which you can half it, or even quarter it if you're cooking for less people) I had to split it up into 4 different rounds (so two for each pot for me). So I did MATH (which I suck at, but I did it) and split the ingredients up into fours. And then you follow the recipe the same (except that you don't have to wait an hour for the water to heat up). 

The best way to serve this is to just lay out some news paper (or craft paper or a plastic table cloth) on your table and dump it right on to the paper (but if you wanna be civilized you can leave it in a bowl, sometimes that's a good idea too) and serve with: Soft Butter, Sour Cream, Cocktail Sauce, Slices of lemons, and Ice Cold Coca-Cola. 

you can just see the humidity in the air from all that boilin! felt just like the south!

my special juice is gonna help me bloooog.

i was really feeling like i was keeping up with blogging until i realized that it's been a WHOLE month since i last blogged.  so geez.

well, basically everyone already knows this but...

WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!

She's so cute right? I mean I would someday like to paint the house on the outside, but whatever.

In other news in Idaho; nothing.

Oh except that last week it snowed so I woke up to this:

but this week it has been in the 60s so I was like whaaaaat. is going on. But I'm totally not complaining. I'll take what I can get in this spud ridden frozen tundra. 

We are mostly moved in to our house except that my clothes are still in space bags and covering my bedroom floor. DONT JUDGE ME, I need a dresser. and I'm lazy. But anyway, this house is HUGE (to me) and I feel like I need to buy a bunch of crap to fill it up (aka hoarding). Luckily I'm basically obsessed with target clearance/the D.I. so that should be happening in no time at all. Look for me on A&E or TLC soon. 

Wednesday, as you know if you are a regular person, was Halloween. Our Mexican friend, Vickie had a little Halloween shindig giving us an excuse to dress up. So, I got Lux a dog-wig

She's a pink lady if you didn't catch that.

 and we dressed up as old people/Florida retirees. 

I'd like to inappropriately note that those are not my real breasts.

So that happened. The best part was when a girl showed up to the party we were at and thought she was at the wrong party because we were the first people she saw and she thought we were legitimate old people. So that made me feel good because I put minimal effort into these costumes. (the fact that my shirt and pants matched so dern good was an act of God, found them separately at the D.I.) 

This evening we had our friends over for LOW COUNTRY BOIL! which I will be blogging about TOMORROW, to give you pics AND the recipe. Cause seriously, you haven't lived until you've had a good old low country boil, says me. 

Also I made everyone try go-go juice, which if you live under a rock, is part red bull part mt. dew.

 In other words, I am super buzzin right now and maybe gonna die. If that's the case, I have to apologize for not giving you the Low Country Boil recipe sooner. 

But lets hope we make it through the night. 

livin on a prayer & a travel sized bottle of wrinkle releaser.

whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa.
okay. hi. remember us?

so we're in Idaho now. I don't necessarily want to say we LIVE in Idaho because it technically doesn't feel like we do yet.

let me rewind.


so we packed up all of our crap and drove across the country. the few and the proud who follow my instagram were tortured for 3 days straight by my constant road shots from the passenger seat (sorry about thaaat.) . let's relive a few of the highlights:

WHAT UP GUYYSSS?

St. Louie

Mom Jeans in Nebraska. I'm not a woman anymore, I'm a mom.

Ohhh I was so jealous of her.

That all seems so long ago...

So here's what's happened since we've arrived in Idaho Falls:

Taylor started his job. He likes it so far. Some really devastating news for me is that he has to wear a respirator mask AND SO HE CAN'T HAVE A BEARD!!! I mean, it makes my heart hurt just to type it. So he's keeping the mustache but it just isn't the same.

Our first week here, we stayed at the super 8 while we decided to look for rentals. That didn't go great. On Sunday at church we met a lady who is a mortgage officer person lender guy madam sir. Whatever they like to be called. We ended up getting pre-approved with her on Monday for a home loan and decided it would be a good time to buy, instead of throwing away money on a stupid rental again. The mortgage sir lady gave us the name of a realtor who we decided to go with and he is great.

So, we house hunt while staying in the Super 8 and house after house we don't have a ton of luck, until Friday when I find this adorable perfect little house. So we put an offer on it and our offer got accepted! Yay! But less yay! after the inspection happened.

By this time it's week two and we're staying in an even WORSE hotel hoping to be able to move in to this house early but it turns out, this little dream house was actually a wet dream and I don't mean that in a perverse way. The basement was wet and moldy and the only way to fix it would be to excavate from the outside and fix the foundation. This was a very stressful time for us because we did not want to keep living in hotels because IT'S EXPENSIVE! But then by the grace of God and the goodness of the people of Idaho, we got hooked up with an RV in an RV park. So yep. We're living in an RV. It's okay, you can call me trailer trash, I won't even be sad.

I know what you're dying to hear, WHAT HAPPENED WITH THAT ADORBS HOUSE? Well, they refused to fix the foundation before we bought and so today we were like SEE YA!! Which I'm not really sad about that either because I can't deal with wet basements. I really hate em.

This blog just got way too long, even for me. And Taylor is eating an apple way too loud so I'm in a bad mood right now.

But to sum things up, we are starting the house hunt over tomorrow, we are RV trash, we are doing okay, and we have some really cool friends near by. Also it's getting cold, which sucks. But, I love to be fat and wear sweatshirts, so BONUS.

land of spuds.

I haven't pre-approved this announcement with my husband but...
we are moving to Idaho Falls, IDAHO.

Next week.

For reals.

It kind of gave me anxiety just to type that. I haaaaaaate the cold and the snow and Idaho. but at least we will be closer to my family and friends I left behind two and a half years ago. I'm going to try and have a good attitude because *supposedly* that helps. Gandhi/Confucius/Marilyn Monroe said so. And plus, at least it's not China. or the midwest.

I'm excited for a new adventure with my husband but what I am most excited about is that I feel as though this job that Taylor got will be much more fulfilling for him. It really bummed me out thinking that he was wasting that genius brain of his at work everyday, so I am glad that he is excited about not only the company but also his position.

I will update you more later because I can't talk about how much I am going to miss the dirty souf without wanting to cry. But in the meantime, pray that we make it to the land of spuds in one piece.

(And it's okay to congratulate Taylor, because it is seriously a blessing that he got a job exactly one month after he got laid off.)