Petunia Pickle Bottom?

So, I'm not a luxury items girls, really. I like my jewelry, and I like my Dooney, but other than that I don't need the high end shoes, etc. So I really didn't expect to be that way with anything baby.....then I discovered Petunia Pickle Bottom. An odd name, I know. I'm not sure what it means, but it is a brand of high end diaper bags. I looked them up online http://www.petunia.com/ and fell in love.

I sweetly asked my loving husband if I could have a $200 diaper bag....you can imagine his response...so ok, no NEW Petunia for me. But that doesn't mean I can't have one!! Off to ebay! Ok, ebay is still a little priced....off to craigslist! Ahh, perfect. I found TWO Petunia's I loved. Both for VERY reasonable prices. I emailed them both, fully expecting the to both be gone. Lo and behold, they were both still available. What to do now? Well, one was reasonable priced at $50. The other? A STEAL for $25! So what is any saavy shopper to do, but get both!! To be fair, the second one is much smaller, great for quick trips and the like, while the first one is much larger, with a changing pad, etc. Great for longer trips and overnight.

Now, photos of the goods:


Here is the first bag, my FAVORITE!! A discontinued pattern, but close to what they offer now, and regardless, black, white, red...helloooo!!!


And here is the smaller bag. Year of the Dragon! I'm not crazy about the pom poms, so I might cut those off....opinions?

So, there ya go. And so Kevin doesn't feel left out, I just bought him a Diaper Dude bag:


because he refuses to wear my AWESOME PPB. Silly boy.

Anyway, that's all for now!!

So far, the worst thing is...

So I've had a pretty easy go of things. Nothing I can really complain about. But on Tuesday, I encountered what could possibly be the worst thing ever about my pregnancy....


Thin Mints gave me heartburn.


Like, immediately.


Now, I've been chewing tums since about week 5 with this baby, so heartburn is nothing new, but this was devastating. I usually can't pinpoint exactly what caused the said heartburn, so I just go along with tums in every place possible (bedroom, bathroom, work...). But this was clear. A food I can directly avoid to reduce the uncomfortable burning....which is only going to get worse as baby grows. To make matters even more tragic, I have an order of Thin Mints coming to me!! Do I dare eat and suffer the consequences? Would you?

In other news, we had our 18 week checkup this week. My doc found the heartbeat immediately (I guess its good she's better at it than I am). She says everything looks good, baby is growing and is located right where baby is supposed to be in my belly. She also said "Well, by 24-26 weeks, you'll really start showing." Ummm...excuse me!!! Please reference the previous post where I linked to a photo of my ever expanding belly....if that isn't showing, what is 8 more weeks going to look like!!!

Anyway, enough about me. Kevin's birthday is this coming Monday, and we're celebrating Saturday with friends and family. If you would like to come and either didn't get my email, or changed your mind, just let me know! A big Happy Birthday to my hubby!!!

Baby Update - 17w3d

Ok, so now it's time to fill everyone in on Baby. Things are going along very smoothly, so I have absolutely nothing to complain about. First trimester I had some nausea and food aversions, but I know it could have been MUCH worse than it was, so I'm not complaining about that. Once I hit 11 and a half weeks, all of that went away. Since then, things have been so easy it is kinda scary.

At 12weeks and 5 days, I found the heartbeat for the first time. I have a home doppler that I got from another preggie friend so I could find baby's heartbeat at home.
Click here, and ignore the video, just listen.

So that was very cool, because I couldn't feel the baby, nor was I showing, so this whole "being pregnant" idea was kinda abstract at the time.

Around 14 weeks, I finally felt like I was showing. I didn't notice, but one of my co workers mentioned something, so I decided to compare photos. I have been taking weekly ones since about 12 weeks.


So this is up to last week. You can definitely see the difference.

Starting this week I'm finally feeling like I'm pregnant. Some things are getting uncomfortable, and normal things I do at work I have started to have t think about. No more laying on my stomach, or putting any pressure there. I was demonstrating an exercise yesterday and had to stop because it was putting direct pressure on my belly, and that isn't so comfortable.

I also THINK I'm feeling the baby. It is really infrequent, so sometimes I think I'm imagining it, but sometimes I swear I'm feeling things. I'm sure this will get more and more frequent as time goes on and baby continues to grow.

Doctor appointment next Tuesday, and anatomy scan March 9th where we will find out sex, and make sure everything else looks good. I'm excited for that appointment, it is going to be a big one. We're doing the 4d scan, so we should get a good shot of baby.

Well, that's it for now, I'll let everyone know how things are progressing!!

Beer Weekend 2012

So as our first post here, I figured I would share the WAY fun weekend Kevin and I just had. As many of you know, Kevin is quite the beer connoisseur (aka snob). He has recently gotten into home brewing, and has a great respect for good beers. Well, one of his top beers is called Pliny the Elder. It is made by Russian River Brewing in Santa Rosa, CA. This brewery also makes the relative of Elder, called Pliny the Younger. Now, this is apparently a difficult beer to make, so they only have it available for two weeks a year at their brewery, they do not bottle it, and their distributors only get a few kegs each. So I was chatting with Mike about what to do for Kevin for his birthday, and decided to look up when Younger would be on tap. Turns out, it was about a week later. What good timing!! So I made the hotel reservations, told Kev we would be out of town for a weekend, but didn't tell him where we were going. I picked him up from work last Friday, and sprung the surprise on him. I think he was quite shocked, as Santa Rosa is about 6-7 hours away. Off we went.

Our stopover Friday night was in Los Banos.

Here is Kevin in our Economy Inn room...despite what hotels.com told us, no continental breakfast. Sad.

We had dinner at a CUTE diner in town, I love old timey places like that. Had an early night, since we were to be off early the next morning to get to Russian River by 10am.

Off we went the following morning for our last 2.5 hours of the trip. We crossed a bridge, paid the bridge troll ($5!!!), drove through some pretty country, and arrived at Russian River at 9:30am. Perfect.

The brewpub opens at 11, so we had time to get in line...


This is what was in front of us...

What is all the fuss about anyway?

No growlers. This means only people who were actually there can get the beer. No filling to-go cups and selling on ebay. More beer for Kevin, yay!!

Around 10:50 they started handing out wristbands.

and this was the line behind us by that time.

They started letting people in, it was all very orderly and controlled. No rushing the entrance. By about 11:20 we had a table.

Here is Kev with his first Pliny the Younger!!!


and me with my Root Beer.

We were seated at a 5 top table, so we expected some company. Boy did we luck out!!

Here was one of our tablemates.

Him, his wife, and buddy joined us. His buddy flew out from Texas for this event!! And we thought we came a long way! They were hilarious people, kept us in stitches the whole time we were there. The husband/wife were fairly local from San Jose, and seem to frequent many brewpubs in the area. They told us about Lagunitas, Drakes, Bear Republic...many other places we will visit someday. These people were professional drinkers too, they came prepared with waterproof Uno cards, and we played several rounds of the game, with much cheating from our friend in the gun shirt. We had a blast with these people, and I'm not sure we would have enjoyed ourselves so much without their input. So nameless tablemates, thanks!!


This was the menu board at Russian River.

We were seated in a section of the restaurant where we couldn't see the board, so Kevin frequently referred to this photo for items on the menu.


Kevin wanted to do a side by side tasting of Elder and Younger. Elder on the left, Younger on the right. His review? Younger has more malt backbone which makes it a much more balanced beer, where Elder has a little more hop bite, which is odd because Younger has SO many more hops than Elder.

Safe to say, Pliny the Younger busted through the ranks to become one of Kevin's top 5 beers. Thank goodness, because I was terrified we would have driven 7 hours each way for him to not like it!!


Kev with his Elder and Younger, and his Growler of Elder we brought home.


A growler is essentially a to-go bottle of on tap beer. It needs to be refrigerated, is only good for a month unopened, and once opened needs to be consumed in 2-4 days. They are a half gallon in size.

We stayed at Russian River until about 3:30 in the afternoon. All said and done, Kevin consumed 4-10 oz Youngers, one Tiny Pliny (10 oz pour of Elder), a tulip of Damnation 23 (Belgian Strong Ale, they do a special batch every 23rd brew, and this was the last keg available of that batch). About 66oz of beer...all over 10%ABV except Tiny Pliny. We did eat some food while we were there too, they have something called Beer Bites, which are essentially pizza dough and cheese, cooked, cut into bite sized pieces, served with marinara. SO GOOD!!! We also each had a pizza. Both were mediocre I think.

After all that, we made our way to the hotel and hung out for a few hours, then went to dinner at a place called Flavor. We both had burgers, they were yum. Kev didn't have any beer with dinner ;)

I had planned to go wine tasting Sunday, but Kevin was in total beer mode. With all of the beer places we learned about the previous day we had some choices to make. So the next morning we made our way to BevMo to check out their selection, since we were clearly in beer country. We found some good stuff there, but the best find was courtesy of a worker there (noticing a trend?) Kevin was wearing his Deschutes Brewery sweatshirt, with The Abyss on the back, another favorite beer of his. The nice guy told us that the Whole Foods tap room has Abyss on tap for SF Beer Week. First off...Whole Foods tap room? Yes folks, the Whole Foods in Santa Rosa has a tap room. It is a bar inside of a grocery store. Awesome. So we made our way there, and were greeting warmly by the beertender. Apparently this was all his doing, and Santa Rosa is a test market to see if it is successful. He also had some home brew stuff available, including Simcoe hops, a very hard to find type of hop that is what makes all of Kevin's favorite IPAs what they are. So, of course he had to buy some for his next brew at home.


Abyss on tap, Kev says much better than the bottle. (cell phone photo)

After our Whole Foods adventure, we headed out of town and down to Petaluma to visit Lagunitas Brewery. This was an AWESOME place. Total kick back atmosphere, essentially one large patio with a smaller inside bar. Patio was completely covered, dirt flooring, heaters if necessary, dogs welcome. Great place.


Kevin with his first beer at Lagunitas, SF Fusion, a special IPA just for SF Beer Week.

We ordered Pork Nachos there, which were delicious, as well as beer brats, which were ok (trend..apps wonderful, entrees mediocre).


Kev got a sampler here, left to right: Hop Stoopid, Gnarly Wine, Imperial Stout, Cappuccino Stout.
Favorites were the Gnarly and Imperial. I has a tiny taste of the Cappuccino, and I really enjoyed it. Maybe in 5 months ;)


Growlers at Lagunitas were really 64oz Ball mason jars. Apparently they are working on custom ones but didn't have any at the time.


He decided to bring home the Gnarly Wine growler.

After our adventure at Lagunitas it was time to head some. So sad. Off we went, back to the real world. We had SO much fun, I don't think it is too hard to imagine we will be back there someday in the not too distant future.