I am Pregnant.

Did you know this? I am thinking that since I have announced it for all the world to see on Facebook, that you did know this. We are obviously very excited!!

Did you know, however, that it often causes me to wake up in the middle of the night? At least I'm blaming it on being pregnant. (I blame a lot of things on being pregnant, but I'm pretty sure most of them are justified.) Really, almost every night lately, sometime between three and five in the morning I am just-- awake. Usually I lay there, and think about work, and then try really hard to think about something that isn't work, and then I'm thinking about work again. This makes waking up for work a couple hours later especially unexciting.

So here I am, trying something different. Maybe blogging will make me sleepy?

Some other thoughts on my pregnancy... Did you know that I am loving what it's done for my body so far?! My first trimester, I pretty much just felt blah the whole time. Luckily I never threw up... but it was just that general nausea feeling all day long, and pure exhaustion. Most of the time food sounded absolutely disgusting, except for random cravings that would pop into my head from out of nowhere. (One day while at work I realized that I NEEDED tuna. ASAP. I even left work a little early so I could come home, and apparently on the way home I said to Sean--"If we don't have tuna, I'm going to FREAK OUT!!" And then, full confession, I ate it straight out of the can, with some pickles on the side, like a crazed homeless person seeing food for the first time in weeks. And it was amazing.)

Ya... we kind of gave up on trying to plan ahead for any sort of meals, because while something would randomly sound so good one day (examples: chocolate frosted mini wheats, pink grapefruit cups, string cheese, chocolate teddy grahams), it seemed as soon as I ate them, I wanted nothing to do with them again. We still have plenty of the above-mentioned items in fact.

Good news though is that as of this last week, I can eat again! Without getting sick! Which is probably the worst symptom I've had so far. Every time that I would eat, I would almost always get crazy stomach pains after. Like, sometimes as bad as food poisoning cramps. Apparently not a super common symptom, but common enough that the doctor wasn't too worried. They said it would probably start to go away soon at my last visit, and it has! Oh thank heavens, it has. And I am loving food again!

This is an especially good fact, seeing how I lost seven pounds during my first trimester. Seven! And that is not an "ooh, I'm excited I've lost weight!" exclamation mark. It is a shocked exclamation mark. Just to make that clear. At the risk of horrifying my readers, I will now tell you that I, Tiffany Greene, was back into double digits for a while there. Something that has not happened since probably ninth grade. Okay, don't get too worried, not a whole lot into the double digits-- okay, I'll just tell you, I went from my normal 105 down to 98. And it stayed there for quite some time. But my doctor wasn't too alarmed, so you shouldn't be either. And more good news- as of the last couple weeks, it's coming back. I just weighed myself and I was at 103! Yay!

But remember that part where I said I am loving what it's done for my body? Well, during this time of not eating, my body has still been growing. I am getting a nice little baby bump, and there are also a couple of other areas that have grown quite significantly... (dot dot dot... if you don't know what I'm referring to than I'm not going to tell you...) Anyway, it's been pretty great. This was a perk (ha, no pun intended) I was not expecting quite so early on.

Well my poor body, in an attempt to grow these other areas, has resorted to pulling from certain other areas of my body with ample fat storage, namely my thighs and buttocks. No longer will people be able to call me Tiffany "has a big butt" Thomas! (Believe me, plenty of people call me this.) Man, if I could develop some sort of pill that recreated this transformation, I would be so rich. (Well, minus the baby bump part of course.)

How long will I be loving what it's doing for my body? Mmm, not sure. I'm guessing sometime between my little baby blossoming from a navel orange into a watermelon the novelty might wear off a little. And here's hoping that I don't start retaining water or something crazy like that... I guess only time will tell.

Well, I have to get up for work in less than two hours, and I am pretty depressed about that, so I am going to go try this whole sleeping thing again. Wish us luck! (Get it? Cuz I'm pregnant... so I'm talking about me & the baby...  Yep, I'm pretty tired again.)

Oh, and Happy 16 Weeks to us! We're getting so close to knowing if this is a little guy or girl!

Cadbury Chocolate Strawberries

So I've realized that to become a legit blogger, I need to A) Post Recipes, B) Post Cutesy Tutorials, and C)Post more than once every three months.

Well, I'm not making any promises about B & C, but I do have a recipe that I love that I would like to share. I call it:

CADBURY CHOCOLATE STRAWBERRIES!

Ingredients:

-Strawberries

-Cadbury Mini Eggs

Step 1) Take a bite of a strawberry.

Step 2) Eat a chocolate mini egg.

Step 3) Take a bite of a strawberry.

Step 4) Eat a chocolate mini egg.

* Repeat until strawberries &/or chocolate mini eggs are gone.

Bon Appetit!

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I also call this Lazy Man's Chocolate-Covered Strawberries. But seriously-- you don't have to worry about burning your chocolate, making a mess with the chocolate, waiting for the chocolate to cool, you can control your chocolate-to-strawberry ratios perfectly -- it's a win win!

What's that you say? You don't have any cadbury chocolate mini eggs? Well, maybe you should have stocked up during Easter like I did... I hope you've learned your lesson. But lucky for you, (and me), Christmas Candy is coming soon!

 (and yes, I am fully aware of my mini egg problem.)

This Summer; An Update

So, this summer has been way busy! It started out the good kind of busy, full of fun and activities and trips and things... and then turned into work busy for the past like two months. Eesh. But nevertheless, it has been a great summer! And while I'm sad to speak of it in the past tense, I am getting very excited for the months to come. I love fall!

But anyway, since I haven't blogged at all about summer, here's a "quick" photo update. (I'm using the term "quick" loosely... this could get long...)

First, to kick off summer right, we went to the Happiest Place on Earth for 10 days! And stayed with Alysse and Chasten. And it was magical. There are a ton of pictures, but they've already been transferred off of this computer and onto the external hard drive, and honestly I am just way too lazy to go get it, and besides, they're already posted on facebook so... you can go look here if you want. There are a few that are still on this computer though, so I'll just post this one...

Amour.

Besides that trip, this summer has been made up of a lot of hiking...

Hiking to Battlecreek falls with Sean's sister Rebecca and kids. Here Sean and Dash are setting the pace.

At the falls...

Rebecca and Miley.

Such cute kids!

And we also did a lot of rock climbing!

Sean is very excited about rock climbing. Actually, excited is a huge understatement.

Starting to climb. This boulder in AF canyon was pretty tough...

... and pretty tall. Did you know bouldering means you don't have a rope? You just have a crash pad and a spotter and the routes aren't as tall. Except I still feel like this is pretty tall...

Me and my new rock climbing shoes. I like them quite a bit. I am smiling on the outside but am terrified on the inside because I have never just bouldered before (well, outside) and this one does not look easy. Turns out, it was not, and I made it maybe, um, five feet?

...But I am actually glad I didn't make it to the top, because once you do, your reward is to jump from the top onto this tree/log situation and shimmy your way down. This is like a good 30-40 feet up at this point. Um, call me a sissy pants, but no thanks. Sean of course made it to the top though, and managed to make it down in true non-sissy form.

This is at Maple Canyon, which we went to quite a bit this summer because we LOVE it! I just didn't bring my camera when it was just us two because, well, it's not a great idea to take pictures when you're belaying... We also went to Rock Canyon, but again, no pictures from that either.

There was the annual Thomas Family Reunion, complete with golf, shooting, duck races and rocket launching... Again, same situation as the Florida pictures, so click above to get to facebook if you so desire.

There were Fourth of July festivities! And again, a lot of fun with glow sticks (and my camera) this year.

Then there was a trip to Saint George/Vegas/Zion's with my fam:

I think this was called the Weeping Wall...

Little Mermaid at Tuacahn-- so cute!

Your family doesn't sacrifice a family member each vacation? Huh. Weird.

My family. :)

Some family rock climbing at Maple Canyon on the way home.

I'm pretty good at belaying.

Oh, there was a weekend camping/geode-hunting trip out by Dugway in the deserts west of Utah lake with David & Tami and nieces and nephews...

And also a road trip out to Colorado to see my good friend Sierra's wedding. Sadly, I don't have like any pictures of that though...


Well, those are some highlights of our summer anyway, me and blogger are fighting so I'm going to quit before I freak out. But one last thing to add...  there's a new member of our family! And his name is Ron Burgundy. Behold...

(Not our actual bike, but it pretty much looks like this. Only we have the extra seat on the back instead of the trunk right now and we ended up taking the windshield off.)

It's an oldie but a goodie that is supposed to run forever.  (It's a 1983 Honda GL650 Silverwing, so it's older than both me and Sean, kinda funny.) We were thinking about just getting a scooter but... for the same price, we're getting a lot more bang for our buck here. And it doesn't hurt that motorcycles are just a tad bit cooler than scooters...

So everyone, watch out for motorcycles out there!

Free Writing

I was just going through one of my old email accounts and stumbled upon a draft of an email from 2004. I'd forgotten that sometimes I would write emails to myself when I was needing to vent and didn't want the material to make it into my actual journal (you know, don't want my great-grandkids knowing my deepest darkest secrets), so a lot of this stuff is pretty melodramatic. Emphasis on dramatic, I mean, gee whiz 19-year-old Tiffany!

But... I did find one fun little gem.

See, also around this period in life, I was practicing "Free Writing" pretty regularly. It was something I'd heard about in a film class, I tried it, and I LOVED it. Basically, you sit down and without thinking, just start writing as fast as you possibly can, ideally faster than you can even think. It's supposed to free up your subconscious, and there were a few times that it actually helped me solve some problems by knowing how I really felt about things.

Other times though? It would result in absolute jibberish.

Back story: This came from a time when I was in a very confusing boy situation. (I do not miss those.) So here is my free writing from 3:30 a.m. on December 12th, 2004. (pardon the mis-types, I was trying to type as fast as I could.)

I am so mad at myself. I wish that I could just get away 

and visit somewhjere like Japan. I think it'd be cool 

cuz that where I am the best dancer In japans they walk 

around like this, and it l;ooks really funny. Als, who 

knows about drunk people these days. Do you think they're 

always drunk. Like maybe they're just h=aving some 

fireworks because of the shooting star. I domn't know 

if this willl even work on a computer, but maybe it will. 

I can type pretty fast, even thought I'm pretty much 

falling asleep, this girl will help us out. Wait== 

she doesn't exist. Odd... but probly she just didn't 

like Yoshi.

....????

Do I really think Japanese people walk funny?? Why would I type "they walk around like this" and not explain it better, what do I mean?!

What's stranger, is that did my subconsious already know that I would audition to dance at Tokyo Disney three years later? Cuz I'm pretty sure that thought had not crossed my mind until at least a couple years later...

And I didn't really see a girl, did I? What is that?? I'm pretty sure that I would remember something like that.


But seriously. Free Writing. You should try it.

http://www.ehow.com/how_2092165_tap-subconscious-through-free-writing.html

p.s. Here's a funny image of a free write I found... poor poetry-hating high schooler...

Things That Scare Me: A List

------------------------------------------------


Drowning.

Icy Stairs.

Failure.

Needles.

And...


These things.

Not kidding, I am losing years of my life people! My heart literally starts to race every time I start to pull on that cursed "Peel here!" tab. And no matter what I do-- I've tried going slow, going fast, pulling it part way and then banging it on the counter to open it the rest of the way -- it ALWAYS pops open when I least expect it, and holy flaky biscuits, it is the WORST!

I have the prettiest spreadsheets around.



See? I told you so.

Who said spreadsheets had to be all black and white and boring??

Ok, just felt like I needed to share that to the world*. (*The seven of you who read this.)

Back to work.

16 Million Records Take a Long Time to Copy.

I'm a little bit stuck at the moment. I'm working on this fairly large project (UK Incoming Passengers Lists from 1878-1960, in case you were curious) and because it is so huge, this query to transfer everything to the right database is taking its sweet time. I've worked on every other non-SQL-related thing that I could, but now...

Stuck.

Normally I would bask in the glory of being forced to take a break, but here's the thing-- I have two rather complex projects due tomorrow. And I need every second I can get! Isn't that awful? That I care that much?

And then I got to thinking... and this not an unfamiliar feeling. This is a somewhat unhealthy trait that I've had for as long as I can remember.

*I want to be perfect, and I do NOT want to get in trouble.* (This being unhealthy, seeing how sometimes I completely stress myself out about it.)

I vividly remember the first time I got in trouble in school. Place: Herbert Mills Elementary School, Reynoldsburg, Ohio. Year: 1991 (First grade). Activity: Drawing a picture of what we had done the previous day.

My fellow classmates and I were quietly concentrating on the task at hand. I was focused on my beautiful drawing of my brothers playing with me in the rain, complete with umbrella and rain boots. I finished myself and my brothers, our house, the trees, the grass... all that was left was the rain. I picked up a light blue colored pencil and started dotting the paper with little dashes to make the rain.

It made a light "tap! tap! tap! tap!" sound on the desk.

It was only a few moments later that I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Miss Johnston, my nice, young, sweet, pretty teacher. "Tiffany," she said in a gentle whisper, "can you try not to be so loud sweetie?"

I. Was. Mortified.

I don't remember if I actually sobbed or if I was just painfully on the verge of tears. I just remember it was the worst feeling in the world.

It's kind of funny, because I feel like I'm pretty laid back about so many other things in life. For example, I don't get bugged that Sean never ever changes the toilet paper.  Not kidding, he will without fail get a new roll out and place it on top of the empty cardboard tube, instead of throwing the empty one away and switching it out. No no, instead of being bugged, I am secretly keeping a tally of how many times in a row he has done this. And when he gets to 100, I plan on giving him some sort of prize.

So why is it that there are certain situations that I just completely and utterly over-stress? 

You know what I think it is... besides my difficulty in accepting that I am not instantly perfect at everything (which I'm getting better at it, thanks in large part to my decision to learn to play tennis)---- I have this fear of authority. Getting scolded by a boss/professor/dance teacher... terrifying! (But then again, I'm pretty sure anyone would be terrified of Colleen when she's upset, especially when you know your battements [*baht-ma's] weren't as high as they should have been...)

A fear of authority. It made me a wonderful little kid, but as an adult... I think it's time I loosened up a bit.

So I'm going to do everything I possibly can-- I can still at least try to be perfect, right?--but come end of day tomorrow, what's done is done. And what isn't, will count as delayed, and-- oh well.

As Modest Mouse so aptly reminded me by just popping onto my Pandora-- We will all float on alright.


p.s. I couldn't find a good picture on google, hence my re-creation of the mentioned work of art. I'm pretty sure I drew houses like that when I was seven.

Mandatory 2010 Recap

Sean was kind of laughing at me last night because as we were driving to our friends' house, I was asking him what his favorite parts of 2010 were. "I'm pretty sure you asked me this exact same thing last New Year's Eve..." he said.

And I thought about it... and ya, I'm pretty sure that I did. And I'm pretty sure that I will every year. Because hello, doesn't everyone do that?? The year comes to a close and you recap, that's just what you do! "You don't know where you're going if you don't know where you've been".

I feel like that's a saying, but maybe I just made that up.

Anyway, for the anals of history, and because I have a faulty memory sometimes, I thought it would be good to record some of the momentous occasions of 2010 right here on this blog. So here we go...

***Warning: The following is very long. Don't say that I didn't warn you.***

THE YEAR 2010

January-

• Living in our cozy apartment in south Provo. We've only been married a little over 2 months.
  
• Sean starts his busiest semester to date.
• I get promoted to a Content Reviewer at work (I'm still at Ancestry.com).
• Sean is still at Home Depot. He still doesn't like it much, but they pay him pretty well and work with his school schedule, and since it's only part-time, it doesn't drive him crazy.
  
• Alysse moves to Florida. Again. Sad for me, but happy for her as she gets to dance in the Lion King show! She takes Chasten along, of course.
  

February-

• We go snowboarding for the first and last time of the season. Nightboarding at Brighton. For like 3 hours. I know, pathetic.
• First Valentine's Day of the marriage! We go on a small shopping spree at the Gateway and eat at Biaggi's for the first time. The butternut squash pasta is amazing.

March-

• Um, I'm sure stuff happened... but nothing comes to mind. Oh! I started this blog last March. Kind of sad that I only have 12 entries for having started it so long ago, but could be worse I suppose.
  

April-

• We decide to make the move to Orem and start our apartment hunt. After a few weeks, we are inspired to turn down a street and we find the For Rent sign we were looking for. We talk to the renters, are able to sell our old contract, pay the deposit, and we are in!
• Sean finishes his crazy semester with a 4.0!
  

May-

• We make the move to our much more spacious basement apartment in Orem. We love it. The Rogers, the couple living upstairs, are so nice. The ward is so nice. The neighborhood is so nice. Having two bedrooms and a laundry room is so nice. Only thing is, our last place was furnished... so now the furniture collecting phase begins.
• I turn 25. Twenty-fiiiive. That's like, not early twenties anymore. As I can rent a car now at regular rates, I am officially grown-up. We celebrate by making banana boats up the canyon with friends and play some games at our new place.
  
• Another one of my best friends decides to move thousands of miles away, and suddenly Sydney is living in Nashville.
• I get promoted again at work! This time to a Project Lead. I am very excited-- I really enjoy this new position.

June-

• Summer is upon us. I try to play tennis with Dana and/or Sean whenever possible. Sometimes I feel like I am really improving. Other times, not so much. But it's always fun.
• Sean has been playing on an indoor soccer team with Adam, my brother. I can't remember when this started, but I know it was going on around this time...

July-

• Boating with Brooke, Preston & Sierra. I can wakeboard!! (This was so momentous, I actually mentioned it in an earlier post.)
  
• Family vacation to Anaheim! Beach, H&M, Earl of Sandwich, Griffiths Observatory, Six Flags, and pool parties. The kind of pool parties where I am actually swimming in the pool! This also was so momentous that there is a post about this.
• Fourth of July, aka Fun with Glow Sticks, and Thomas Family Reunion. I guess I was on a roll in July, cuz these are already in the blog too.

August-

• Yet another one of my best friends, Dana, decides to move cross country when her husband gets a job offer to teach sound engineering in Maine. MAINE. Doesn't that just sound about as far away as a person could go? Alysse, in Florida, is a close second, but still-- doesn't Maine just sound so remote and inaccessible? How many people do you know that have ever even been there? This officially makes 2010 the year that my best friends have all moved away.
• Sean sells his jeep. :( It is really sad, but with us living so close to school, we decide it would be a good chance to save some money. I would have rather sold my sentra, but it has low miles and a lot better gas mileage. I really hate that it's gone, mostly because of sentimental reasons (it reminds me of when we were dating...) but the money it's freed up has been great. I just have to pretend that we still have it... it's just parked at someone else's house.
  

September-

• I get called to be a primary teacher! (Yet another occasion marked by a blog post.) I help out with the sunbeams for about a month before I get moved into the 8 - 9 year old class. They are such good kids, I'm gonna miss teaching them. This next year though? I am back in sunbeams. I am excited but a little anxious!
  

October-

• We did it! Happy one year anniversary to us on October 15th! We celebrate by staying up in Park City, because we love it there. It's such a beautiful fall weekend, and we eat far too much good food.
• Another huge first-time-in-my-life event: the dentist finds a cavity. I have never had a cavity before. Luckily, it is so little that I don't even get a shot when I get it filled. I like to think that that doesn't count as having a cavity.
• Halloween activities! Pirate murder mystery party, UP decorating at work, carving my best-ever pumpkin... see my Halloween blog post for details.

November-

• The month of sickness. I get a cold. Sean gets a cold. Sean's cold turns into bronchitis. My cold goes away, but I get a weird pain in my side. Go to instacare. They run tests. Good chance it could be appendicitis. Go to hospital, get CT scan. Not appendicitis, a cyst. I should be ok. This is good news, except that I was kind of hoping that an appendectomy would get me out of my Mexico border crossings project at work.
  
• Thanksgiving. Went to my grandparents' house in Nephi, then Sean's parents house. Then to see Tangled with Sean's family. Loved it!
• Sean has been researching TVs for months, and with Christmas coming Best Buy has a really good deal on the TV Sean really wants. So, we strike a deal... and we get a 50" HDTV. It's, like, really nice. The best feature is that the TV connects to the internet, so we can watch Netflix. We have seen a lot of random documentaries thanks to this feature.
  

December-

• It is the busiest December I think I can ever remember. For Sean's parents we decide to try and scan all of their old slides and pictures, and this eats up a LOT of time. Meanwhile, there are a million Christmas parties-- my company party at the Zermatt, just my team's party, party with my mom's side of the family, party with my dad's side of the family, party with Sean's family, parties with different groups of friends... don't get me wrong, it was fun all of this partying, but it was busy!!
• Christmas -- Christmas morning at my parents, Christmas afternoon at our apartment for our Christmas, then Christmas night with Sean's parents.
• New Year's Eve-- We went over to Aaron & Megan's and ate pizza/played games/watched the countdown/did fireworks, very fun and not freezing cold like first night would have been!

Okay, I just saw that the battery is almost dead and I think I would cry if I lost this post, so I'm going to call that good on the recap. 2010 was a good year, but here's to making 2011 even better!