So, while everyone last week claimed to be an activist by supporting this whole Kony 2012 campaign (don't even get me started on that)....I was focused on why a white man hasn't been arrested for a hate crime in Florida. I posted the article on Facebook and NO ONE cared. This white man, who was the neighborhood watch captain, saw a black kid ( Read more... )

I've been in Moscow now over a week. It's been a pretty weird adjustment. The hardest part has been dealing with all this free time. I know that sounds really weird. I'm not used to this free time concept. For me, I am literally busy from the moment I wake up until the moment I tuck myself in at night. Here, I have this abundance of alone time. ( Read more... )

This is my second full day in Moscow. Saturday was rough, as I had expected it would be. Saying goodbye to the kids went okay. The older kids were pretty much tired of me saying goodbye a million times and just wanted to get back to playing their games. Colton was much too excited by the arrival of his grandparents at our house to really be fazed ( Read more... )

There is no turning back now. As I type this, my husband is dismantling my bike and loading boxes into the back of our car. Tomorrow morning is the beginning of a new adventure. As I write this, my heart aches. I can’t even begin to describe how much I will miss my family, even my rambunctious basset hounds. The thought of a quiet apartment and an ( Read more... )

I leave for Moscow this Saturday. As the time approaches, I get more and more nervous. I've never lived alone, without a car, in an unfamiliar city. Increasingly so, I get these spells of intense sadness. I worry about my first night there. My roommate is out of town until Sunday. My husband is basically driving me down there, helping me get ( Read more... )

My husband is seriously the most amazing man in the entire world. For Christmas, he bought me plane tickets to visit my best friend in Portland. He made sure that it would be on a long weekend (President's Day) so that I wouldn't have to miss school. He told me when I unwrapped the gift, "I thought you'd need a break after being a month and a half ( Read more... )

In two weeks, I'll be basically living in a different city for five months. To finish my degree, I have to spend two semesters in Moscow so that I can take upper division courses at the University of Idaho campus. I am SO close, I can almost taste that diploma. I finished the semester with straight A's, which was a miracle considering all the shit ( Read more... )

Last Monday, I started cramping. Like really cramping - labor contractions, knowing something is wrong cramping. I woke up in the middle of the night in so much pain that it took my breath away. The next day the cramping dulled, but didn’t disappear. I wasn’t bleeding and I was scheduled for an ultrasound Thursday so I decided to tough it out, ( Read more... )

is that i did NOT miss morning sickness. i was feeling fine up until about two days ago and now it's hit me full on like a ton of bricks. the wave of nausea is never ending. so much for spinning today.

I endured my first bout of wonderful morning sickness during spinning class this morning. It was awesome. I'm hoping baby bean can deal with one month of spinning because that is all I have left for this class, which is required for my degree. Since I was focused on losing weight before discovering that I was pregnant, I was eating a lot less than ( Read more... )