Holy Moly

I know, I know, it’s been forever since I last posted….again, but it’s been a VERY busy year!

January through March, not only was I working full time Monday-Friday, but I also spent my time after work (5:15-7 p.m.) split between two different local high schools where I was choreographing their high school musicals (“Damn Yankees” and “Anything Goes”).  Then from 7:30 until 10:30-11 each night I had my own rehearsal for the French Farce “Boeing Boeing” at the Lucille Ball Little Theatre here in Jamestown.  The link above takes you to the full Facebook photo album for the show, which was an absolutely BLAST to be apart of!  I hadn’t done a straight play since middle school, with the exception of scene work in my college Acting classes.  This was the first "challenge" that peeked my interest in auditioning for the show (after the fact that the show is a RIOT).  Next came the fact that I was cast as Gretchen, the German stewardess.  I spent 6 weeks working tirelessly to master the best German accent possible.  I still love throwing it around every now and then ;-)  And the final “challenge” that I overcame during the rehearsal and performance process during Boeing was announced to our friends as follows:

A few thought we were getting another dog, but we did not!  This October, we are expecting our first baby!!  I realized I was pregnant about 3 weeks into rehearsals and was 10 weeks pregnant by the time the show closed.  Other than our parents, no one knew until the end of March about the baby’s arrival.  I had to tell my director, and good friend, a few days before Tech Sunday because my flight attendant dress could not be worn w/o the jacket without my belly starting to show (more of a carb baby that actual baby pump at that point LOL)! My counterpart in the show also figured it out one night and was great about keeping my secret until I told the reminder of the cast closing weekend.

I enjoyed every second of all the theatre work I did this spring.  I was EXHAUSTED 90% of the time and had to drag my nauseous self to every step of rehearsals that I had on a particular night, but once I was there I felt just fine 99% of the time.  I think if I’d just gone home every night after work I would have done nothing but sit on the couch like a blob feeling horribly sorry for myself!

Plus, we found out the end of May that

Our summer has been very busy.  In addition to slowly trying to get ourselves ready for the baby’s arrival, Jonathan and I are both busy running our family business, Panama Rocks Scenic Park for our 2^nd year and the 130^th year since it was founded in 1885.  We have been having a great summer so far and have seen a wonderful increase in the business over last year.  I am, of course, still working Monday-Friday outside of the Park so that we have a steady income and health insurance, and have still kept very active with marketing and choreography at the theatre.  There’s no slowing me down just yet – in fact I’m getting ready to start rehearsals next week as Choreographer for “The Addams Family”, our annual fall musical.

In June, Jonathan and I were fortunate enough to be able to get coverage for the Park’s office, and took a week off and went down to the beach.

My in-laws currently own a condo on Estero Island, Ft. Myers Beach, FL and we hadn’t been down since June of 2012.  They have decided to sell the condo for multiple reasons so this was a combination last trip before the condo sells, and Babymoon.  It was a wonderful, relaxing week on the beach filled with lovely memories of our first vacation together, honeymoon and now babymoon (plus a few other vacations in between).  We will certainly still vacation in Ft. Myers Beach in the future, but it’ll never be quite the same.

There was crocheting from my favorite spot in the world (the condo's lanai), virgin Mojitos at Doc Ford's, amazing sunsets, a growing belly, sunset selfies, LOTS of ice cream, the most incredible rental car in all the land (2015 Mustang Convertible) and a tan & growing baby bump!

Oh August 6th, Jonathan and I celebrated our 4th Wedding Anniversary.  Still hard for me to believe that we've been married for 4 years already, and yet only 4 years.  Here's a very detailed collage of pictures from us from the past 11 years that I posted to Facebook back on the 6th - you should be able to click on it to see more detail if you're interested in seeing how we've both aged over the past decade ;-)

And here are me, and the "girlfriend", as I've been calling her, at our Anniversary dinner last Saturday night:

As far as crocheting, I didn’t really do any during my first trimester.  I was too busy, too tired and too nauseous to  really have any desire to do so.  My nausea went away around week 14 and I’ve continued to putter and play with multiple different projects since then.

From July until December I have 7 babies, including my own coming into our lives (6 girls by the way and only 1 boy – GIRL POWER!!) so I have some little projects that I’ve been working on since June on that front, but nothing is actually finished.

Then, a co-worker of mine returned to work last week so I whipped this up real quick over the weekend for her baby-girl (another girl!!) to wear this fall:

This caused me to be bitten by bit of a "fall crocheting" bug that still hasn’t let up this week!

Over the weekend, Jonathan and I were fortunate enough to get a day off from the Park (first one since June 28th when we returned from the beach) and went to Chautauqua Institution for the day.  We set ourselves up for a picnic in the shade by the lake and I started crocheting this scarf:

I'm not exactly sure what this stitch is called, but after you chain your width you do a sc ch1 then skip the next stitch.  Starting on Row 2 you continue the same sc ch1 pattern with each sc going into the ch1 space of the previous row.  I half thought this was called the Moss Stitch, but the quick Google search that I just did proved me wrong.  Anyone wanna help me out so I know for future reference??

The past couple of nights I’ve been pulling out half finished Owl Hats from last fall, and some additional colors to stock pile on these for gifts & orders, and spent the past two lunch hours this week crocheting the whites for the eyes on as many hats as I can get made.

Two days progress - if you’re curious it does take me about 5 minutes per eye J

I also have the most AMAZING blanket for myself that I’ve been working on since early June.  I’m obsessed with it but don’t actually have any photographs of it to share right now – will have to be sure and take a few soon.

Last, but certainly not least, I did finally pick a pattern and yarn selection for my baby girl’s baby blanket.  I was ridiculously picky in this process but have an inspiration photo that I love, that Jonathan instantly loved, and all of the yarn just arrived earlier this week.  It’s a new to me pattern that has been making it’s rounds on some of my favorite crochet Facebook pages for some time now – hopefully I pick it up quickly!  I also have purchased multiple photo prop patterns for our newborn photoshoot with the little one in October.  I haven’t started on these yet either as I’m waiting on some clothing that was also purchased to arrived to make sure that my yarn matches accordingly.

So, as you can see, we have been VERY busy up here in our little corner of Western New York!  Sorry it’s taken me so long to post anything.  I’ll try and be better as I finish up some projects and have exciting news to share!  I still read all of your blogs, almost daily, and Pin and print loads of patterns and recipes to try!