oh my

last weekend we went to iowa city for dylan's 1st birthday (pictures posted soon). butler and molly decided to stay home and go to daycare/boarding at their favorite place. they had a great time, even if molly did need a bath when she came home!

well, friday night michael and i woke up to molly hacking something fierce. after some quick internet research, i figured she probaby had kennel cough. ick. even more importantly, it's like the puppy verison of the flu or a cold and there's nothing we can do about it. turns out, the kennel cough vaccine is about as effective as the flu shot in humans...

i went to dubuque this weekend and michael stayed home with the pups. molly seemed to be improving, but was now occasionally hacking up some white foamy stuff (which i hear is normal for kennel cough). sunday night, however, i woke up to butler hacking! we were up for a good while with him, as it's very hard to fall asleep when you have two dogs coughing.

i called the vet this morning to see where we should go from here. she said to just watch them to make sure they don't get worse. i asked her if there was anything we could do to reduce the coughing. she said to let them cough, it helps clear up the infection. and then she said this should resolve in 4-5 weeks!

apparently this little situation is the universe's way of getting michael and i ready for the baby....

Growing Up....

come january 22nd (plus or minus a few days), michael and i will be having a baby! well, i suspect i'll be actually "having" the baby, but you get the idea. i will be 14 weeks along tomorrow and i'm feeling much better. weeks 7-12 were not great, but it gets better everyday. i eat a full 3 meals almost everyday now. i actually ended up losing 10 lbs during the 1st trimester!

we've been busy getting ready for our addition. over the 4th of july our friend greg and his friend mike came to town and helped us move furniture (can't move furniture when you're pregnant, schucks!). we moved the office into the sunroom, the guest bedroom into the office, and the guest bedroom is now empty, more or less. we have our bedding, our stroller, a car seat base, a front carrier, a diaper bag, a quilt from michael's grandma, and tons of very cute little clothes! everyone has been so supportive and excited. we will find out in september whether it will be a baby boy or a baby girl. and michael and i have a bet on how big the baby will be. i say over 8 lbs, michael says 7.5 lbs or less. the weight between 7.5 and 8 is still open for bets! it's been a great trip so far. and baby mac has its own website.

we planned awhile ago to take a vacation as soon as we found out we were pregnant. so, we booked a vacation to key west from august 30th to september 4th. we have a great hotel lined up and are looking forward to our last vacation for awhile.

one of the major things we had to get was a new car. turns out the jeep liberty was getting a little old (119,000 miles will do that to a car!) and there was no way that michael and i were going to fit in the car with a baby, butler, molly, and enough stuff for the weekend. i got a new job with a very big pay increase, so we went car shopping. after trying just about every SUV/crossover out there (no minivans!), i finally found the honda pilot. michael had suggested it several times, but i thought it looked boring. turns out it's the perfect car for us! we ended up with a 2005 blue honda pilot EXL. it has a sunroof, sunglasses holder, and DVD player! there are 3 rows of seats and so i think we will all fit just fine. so far i love it! too bad michael will be driving it most of the time since i'm commuting farther and we have a lot of miles to burn on his lease!

things are definitely changing, but we're excited to meet our baby. i can't believe we have another 6 months to wait!

spring time!

wow, owning a house is a lot of work. i know, i know, everyone said it would be, and michael and i knew that one one level or another, but come on! we've been outside from after dinner until dark most nights trying to get our lawn to look less like the desert (not the pretty kind like in arizona, the barren kind...) and more like an actual wisconsin lawn! tonight we tilled up dirt. with this claw looking thing. i don't even know its name.... but it felt like some sort of arm/core machine at the gym!
we bought some broccoli, strawberries, pumpkins, sunflowers and corn to plant in the back. and a lilac tree. i started growing the sunflowers and pumpkin in these cute little mock-greenhouse pellet things, and they're actually growing! so now we just have to figure out how to arrange things in the backyard.
and we got a lawn service. it looks all cheap when they send you the flier...not true when they do the estimate! but we figure we need a little help this summer as our lawn seriously sucks!
yes, it is a lot of work. especially on top of all of our major projects we're in the middle of. like stripping all the woodwork in the living room. and there's a lot of woodwork in the living room.
and we've started discussing new floors in the kitchen....
and a landscaping project....
it never ends.....

michael vs kate at 4:36 am

my husband talks in his sleep. he sees things and very consistently wakes me up to tell me something or look for something, or any other number of things.
on several occasions, like five occasions, michael has woken me up to ask me whether i feel the bed moving. i respond that i do not and he says it is moving. i say no and we both go back to bed.
on thursday night, at about 4:36, butler woke up barking. which woke up molly who started barking. which woke up michael.
he shook me and asked me if i felt the bed moving. i don't like to be woken up under any circumstances. but especially at 4:36. it's too close to when i have to get up. i feel slighted.
no i said. no moving bed, you're just halucinating.
to which he insisted that not only was he not halucinating, but that the tv (which is in the biggest piece of furniture EVER) and for that matter, the entire house was shaking. and, as usual, he assured me that this was NOT something he would halicuinate about.
i heard a noise, but i assumed it was outside. i told him he was halicuinating and that he should go back to sleep.
i remember formulating in my head the perfect argument - what did he think was moving the entire house? an earthquake? but then i realized there's no sense arguing with someone who's already halucinating.
michael woke me up again at about 6:30 am. to tell me there had actually been an earthquake in illinois at 4:36 am and aftershocks were felt throughout the midwest.
who would blame me though? what's more likely - an earthquake in the midwest or mike hallucinating? i rest my case.

i love the spring

this weekend was the first one since February that i didn't have a committment on Saturday doing volunteer taxes. don't get me wrong, i like doing taxes, but tax season could drive just about anyone crazy! so we had the entire weekend to ourselves to do what we wanted.
on friday night we went to dinner with michael's dad, Sue, Erin, Nate, Cole, and Grant at Bravo. it was yummy. then we came home and chatted with dad and mom about the earthquake (see above).
on saturday morning, i slept as late as i wanted. michael went to lunch with his friend Creighton and i went to mayfair mall to wander around by myself, which is one of my favorite things to do. we saw forgetting sarah marshall, which was pretty funny. we went to lowes and bought a new lawnmower and did some research about redoing the kitchen floors and finished up the night with dinner at qdoba. we took the pups for a walk and watched some recorded tv.
sunday i slept as late as i wanted after sleeping with the window open partially. we called Erin and Nate and set a time to come play with the boys. we put our new bike rack together only to discover that it wouldn't fit with the spare tire on my jeep, and then realized if we took the tire off it was fine. we loaded up the bikes and were off to get lunch at noodles and get michael's glasses adjusted.
then we drove to new berlin to play with Cole and Grant while Erin and Nate worked on their yard a bit. we played in the water table and learned all about water displacement, played some soccer, played some T-ball, and took a walk to the park. then we hit the customary weekend trips to the grocery store and sam's club and filled the bike tires.
we came home and had some delicious hot dogs on the grill and cut up some fruit for the week.
now, just watching some tv, might take a bath, and then off to bed!
what a great weekend. tons of time outside. even a bit of color on our skin!

updates

wow, has it really been since December 16th since i posted last?
things have been the same around here. i started a new project last weekend at home - refinishing the woodwork in the living room. we have a TON of original woodwork, which is beautiful except that it is old and crusty. the varnish is alligatoring (no, i didn't make that up, some wood guy said it) and about 3 paint jobs back they decided not to tape before painting the walls and so the edges of the wood have 2 layers of white and 1 layer of red paint. which looks weird with my green walls....so that's taking forever, but it will be beautiful when it's done.
it's been snowing here like mad. and everywhere else. we got out of work today at 11:30 am, which rocks my socks. and gave me a little extra time for refinishing!
the pups both celebrated a birthday - molly is 2 and butler is 4. the both enjoyed some peanut butter flavored puppy ice cream on both birthdays.
i'm in the full swing of things volunteering at VITA on the weekends (volunteer tax prep) at Marquette. it's a lot of work, but i figure it balances my karma from the rest of the week. i'm also in the full swing at Susan G Komen Race for the Cure. we're all (me, michael, mom, dad, danielle, and eric) doing the madison race so we can do it together. it should be a blast.
michael loves his job. he has a ridiculous amount of things in common with his boss and he seems really happy. which makes me happy!
grant's 1st birthday was this past weekend. i can't believe he's been around for a year! that's crazy! and dylan is 8 months. it seems like about 2 weeks ago they were both born. grant is walking around and i'm sure dylan won't be far behind. alex just turned 10! i have a 10 year old nephew! meghan is 16, drew is 7, will is 4 and cole will be 4 in may. no more babies! very strange! i still think of them all as they were the day i met them - meghan was 12, alex was 5, drew was 2 or 3, and no one else was around yet.
we leave for arizona on april 3rd to go see scott and jess. that will be a welcome vacation! we're going to see a cave and relax! it will be our first real vacation since our honeymoon!
we got a new camera after christmas. i researched long and hard and decided on the canon powershot SD850IS. it absolutely rocks. i can get insane shots of moving objects, which was important with all the kids and pets around! and of course we now have a ton more pictures on the picture site at http://mckate.smugmug.com.

well, that's all the update i have for now!