The Sandholm's: 25 Weeks Pregnant

Well, here we are -- the Sandholm's at 25 weeks pregnant. Although, with the size of my stomach, you would think that I would be ready to deliver any day now, but no. There are still 15 weeks or approximately three months left to go before Junior makes his way into the world. Yikes.

And, no -- Gabe isn't with child. He's just being very nice and agreeing to have his profile photo taken as well so I don't have to do it alone.

We'll see if we can handle making this a regular update now as I'm only going to get bigger from here on out! Everyone can enjoy a good laugh at the pregnant lady's expense, and I hate to keep that opportunity away from you all. :)

Sandholm Vacation

On Sunday, Gabe and I leave for a week-long vacation in a cabin on the Deschutes River near Bend, Oregon. This is our first vacation on our own since our honeymoon almost four years ago, and we're really looking forward to having a mellow week checking out the central Oregon area with Sun River, Bend, Mt. Bachelor and whatever else there is to see. We're also going to see if we can try our hand at some fishing, golfing, and maybe some canoeing. As you can tell, we don't have a hard and fast itinerary set -- we're going to play it more by ear and see what we find to do while we're there. And, the good news is, if we really like it and didn't get to do all the things we wanted to do, we live close enough where we can try again at another time!

I leave tomorrow morning for another two days in Portland. This time I'm driving rather than flying, but I did still have to go to the airport tonight to pick up the rental car that I'm going to drive down tomorrow morning and back on Friday night. I'm not looking forward to the three-hour trip each way, but still is better than having to check my one bag for an overnight trip and deal with the lines and hassles at the airport! Should be a quick trip -- going down for a team offsite tomorrow and then to hang out with some colleagues on Friday in the Portland office. And then, vacation! WOO!

Gabe is currently working on a 18-20 page paper for his Compensation class at the kitchen table. I'm so glad I don't have to write papers, take mid-terms or do finals anymore! Maybe if that was ALL I had to do, it wouldn't be so bad, but I'm entirely too lazy to go to work, study, take tests and write papers at the same time. There are magazines to be read, TV to be watched and people to be talked to every now and again! I guess I wasted all of my academic drive and motivation during my 16 years of school. Gabe, on the other hand, has gotten three different human resources certifications and is -- what did he say...5/16 maybe? -- finished with his MBA. He's been quite busy since he got his bachelor's degree!

Speaking of TV and magazines, I think I might go check out what's on. The Yankees are in town playing the Mariners, so I'm sure I could check that game out. I can't wait for fall TV to start again, and -- of course -- football season! The Hennessey's came over on Sunday night for dinner and to watch the Seahawks pre-season game. Although the Seahawks didn't win, I still love football in general, and Gabe bestowed Alistair with the "Super Fan Award" as he came fully decked out in a Seahawks onesie and Seahawks bib. If it were a Miami Dolphins game, I'm sure Gabe would put up a mean competition for the "Super Fan" billing with all of the Miami Dolphins jerseys, t-shirts and sweathshirts he owns. Although he doesn't have a Miami Dolphins onesie. Now, that would be a sight to see -- Gabe in a Miami Dolphins onesie. Nice.

The Churchies

When turning on our two-block long, dead-end street, drivers are greeted on their left side with a sizeable, sturdy, one-story, windowless brick building that is surrounded by a parking lot and a driveway blocked off by a waist-high chain link fence. There are no signs or markers as to what this building may be. When we first moved to the street, I thought that maybe it was a minimum-security halfway house, or maybe a really depressing community center. However, there weren’t any police cars, vans or other vehicles around to help identify what might be going on at this building.

So, I began doing what any nosy neighbor would do – I started quizzing our neighbors about what the story was behind that building. Our neighbors let us know that it’s actually a church, but the only way one can attend that church is to be born into it or married into the family who attends. Also, the houses all around the church belong to church members, and apparently some members of the church had gone up and down our street some years back offering to buy up everyone’s house so that all of the church members could live together. Nobody really took them up on that offer, so they apparently have had to make do with the three or so houses they own around their brick fortress.

After living on the street, we started to see the type of people that actually attend this church. They are an interesting group of people who all show up to church during random days of the week (I still haven’t figured out a pattern to their arrival – they aren’t even there every Sunday) in their Audis, Volkswagens, Volvos and vans full of people. All of the women where skirts, have long hair and head kerchiefs; all of the men are wearing dress pants or khakis, white button-down shirts, are clean shaven, and typically carrying around Bibles. Gabe and I play guessing games as to what their faith might be. Are they some sort of Mennonite? A Mormon cult? After watching Big Love and reading Under the Banner of Heaven, I have to say I lean toward them being part of a splinter sect of the Mormon faith, but – although there are lots of women and children running around – there are also quite a few men, and I can’t yet tell if the man-to-woman ratio is greatly skewed to provide one man many wives or not. That will require some additional observation.

Anyways, all of that background is to say that Gabe and I almost ran us over a TON of Churchies this morning. There was a Starline tour bus parked at the end of our street, and there was – I don’t know, maybe 100? – Churchies carrying their suitcases and looking excited to be going on some sort of pilgrimage to somewhere. And, these people are COMPLETELY OBLIVIOUS that we are coming down the street – or, they really didn’t care – and they are all lining up in the middle of the street in their church clothes, happy as clams, excited and not at all aware that anyone else lives on this street who may need to be driving down it to get to work. Thank goodness for the bus driver (a non-Churchie) – he shut his bus door so that no one could board with the hopes that the people would get out of the way so we could drive through. However, those damn Churchies stayed standing in the middle of the street, just chatting and not even making an effort to move. Gabe and I were about ten feet away from them at a dead stop in the Jeep, just staring at them incredulously. Realizing they were making absolutely no effort to get out of the way, we inched forward. Slowly running them over or gently ramming them out of the way seemed more polite than honking at this point – plus it was 7:30 AM, so no need to honk and wake up the non-Churchie neighbors – and they finally parted and got out of our way. Maybe they were really working for the whole “Moses and the Red Sea” effect on purpose? Regardless, it was annoying, and I didn’t feel we needed to be a part of the bon voyage scene for whatever little trip they were about to take.

And, that’s one look at the life on our street with the Churchies. I’m sure they are nice people, but until they learn to get out of the middle of the road, they definitely get a top spot on my “annoying neighbors” list. And weird neighbors list, too.

Update: Gabe, Chicago and a Hot Dog Guy

Gabe just got a text message from Saupe. FHM Magazine got back to him and said that Gabe's photo with Hot Dog Guy will be in the magazine if they can figure out how to increase the photo resolution. The one downfall of camera phones -- they don't always produce high-resolution photos appropriate for print publications. We'll keep you all updated as to how things progress! Freaking hilarous to think that the Gabe and Hot Dog Guy photo may be in a national men's magazine.

Birthday Parties, Mid-Terms, Work (Work?!) & BBQs

This past weekend was a fun and relaxing one for one Sandholm (Ranae), and a busy one for the other (Gabe). We had a great time on Saturday in Mill Creek celebrating our friend Mara-Lisa’s birthday at her sister and brother-in-law’s (Jeff & Meghan’s) house. We managed to eat ourselves silly with grilled chicken, salmon, salad, s’mores and birthday cake. There was a rousing game of croquet played on Jeff & Meghan’s beautiful green backyard (Green grass is an anomaly in Seattle in the summer…every yard here is brown and dead-looking unless people are REALLY good about watering it. The cheap bastards like Gabe and me just put up with having a dead, brown yard until the fall rains green it all up again.). After the croquet and eating ourselves silly portions of the evening, we then partook in a Texas Hold ‘Em tournament where seven of us paid our $10 to have Jeff ultimately win the tournament in a very exciting last hand of the night where he beat Gabe with the LAST CARD put on the table (the “River” card). So, Gabe won $20, which was great in that it sent us home without losing anything!

On Sunday, Gabe had a 10 AM mid-term to take for his current MBA class, and then he went into work until 5 PM. It’s always hard to catch up with work when you have to travel for a week, and Gabe is feeling the pain, for sure. Combine that with colleague vacations and whatnot, it means he’s pretty busy right now. I managed to do some laundry, clean the bathroom and get in a nap (very busy Sunday for me :)), and when Gabe came home we went over to Mike and Sarah Popelka’s to help them “Eat the Beef.” As Sarah said, it’s similar to college when you have a kegger and then need to call people over the next day to help you kill the keg…in this case, it was to eat the leftover food from their barbecue the previous day. So, Gabe, Kevin, Laura and I all went over and helped to eat up the hamburgers, brats, chips and potato salad that were left. Gabe invented a new sandwich that he dubbed the “Barnyard Special”; it consists of a hamburger, topped with cheese, topped with a bratwurst sliced down the middle and capped off with ketchup and mustard. Kevin was quite impressed by this invention and made one of his own. Apparently it was pretty good – feel free to try one at home if you are feeling iron, fat and protein deficient!

Oh, and Christian and Claire were at the Popelka’s, too, but they stuck to drinking from their bottles. Although, Gabe did feed Christian and then have Christian proceed to projectile vomit all over him pretty much everything he had eaten. That was pretty funny. Always good times with the wee ones – never know if and when you will be puked or pooped on. Or smiled at, for that matter. I much prefer the smiling.

Monday has been a bit of a zoo for both Gabe and me at work today, but my day has wound down a bit sooner than Gabe’s. Looking forward to going home, having dinner and just relaxing a bit. There is TiVo’d Miami Dolphins pre-season football to watch! It’s very exciting that football season is almost here. I can’t wait until the Hawkeyes start – three more weeks until the Iowans will begin their tailgating and get to enjoy the newly remodeled Kinnick Stadium. Wish we could go to a game, but we’ll just have to take comfort in watching them at home. Thank goodness for the ESPN College GamePlan.

Monday, Monday

Gabe made it safely home last night from his week-long tour of the Midwest visiting friends and his various work offices in Chicago, Detroit and Minneapolis. I picked him up from the airport, and when we got home, Gabe got out of the car and said, "I hear something hissing." I said, "Maybe it's the air conditioner winding down." He said, "It sounds more like a tire losing air. Oh, well -- we'll check it in the morning." That sounded good to me, and we left it at that.

So, this morning rolls around, and boy, was it hard to get up. We amble our way out of the house around 7:45 AM or so (approximately 30 - 45 minutes later than when we really SHOULD leave), get in the Jeep, start it up, and then realize that the Jeep is tilting quite dramatically toward the front passenger side. At that point, we remember there was potential for a flat tire this morning, and -- sure enough! -- that's what we had. Our poor little Jeep has its entire weight resting on the rim of the front passenger side wheel. Thank goodness the Jeep has a full-sized spare (which we've never had to use until today), and I graciously offered to call AAA to come and change the tire (aren't I helpful? :) ), but Gabe noted that he knows how to change a tire and can handle it just fine.

After taking out the REALLY crappy jack from the Jeep, finding the lock nut remover piece to get the spare tire off of the back, figuring out how to put the jack together, loosening the lug nuts on the flat tire, putting a block beneath the jack, beginning to wind the jack up, realize it is tilting quite a bit and not looking super sturdy, getting the flat tire up off the ground, taking it off, putting the spare in front of the hub, realizing that the Jeep isn't high enough to get the spare tire on but the jack won't GO any higher, putting the flat tire back on, lowering the jack and Jeep, putting ANOTHER block under the jack to get the Jeep higher, RE-winding the jack up (this time high enough to get the new tire on), taking the flat tire off AGAIN, lining up the spare tire, putting the spare tire on, lowering the jack, tightening the lug nuts, and putting the flat tire on the back of the Jeep -- we were done. Well, I should say Gabe was done. I just did a lot of standing around for moral support. And to watch the jack should it look any more precarious or wobbly than it did. Very important.

At this point, Gabe was sweating buckets, so a re-shower and change of clothes were in order. Oh, and I did I mention that the spare tire was only at 16 psi, when it should be at 33 psi? We didn't really think our bike pump had the oompf to make up the deficit, so we ran to the Safeway gas station where Gabe filled the tire up with air and I ran into the grocery store and got Gabe a Nesquik strawberry milkshake and myself a latte from the Starbucks. All in all, we still made it to work around 9:30 AM -- only an hour to 90 minutes later than we really should have been there. And, we got some yummy beverages out of the deal. So, not a super bad situation. Oh, and Gabe took the flat tire to Discount Tire to be repaired, and they fixed it for free! Again, not such a bad deal. Just a little bit later start to our Monday. Thank god neither of us had meetings that we needed to get to first thing today!

Ranae & Portland

I got back from Portland last night after a quick trip down there. I left on Thursday morning on an 8 AM flight (which, of course was delayed by about a half an hour), got into Portland, picked up my rental car and made it into the office about 30 minutes late for the client meeting I went down there for. The good news is that I wasn't an imperative participant to this meeting, but I always feel a little sheepish when I walk into a client meeting late. Oh, well. These clients are nice people and didn't seem to really mind one bit.

This is the first time I've ever gotten my own rental car when traveling for work; I try to avoid it whenever possible and just take cabs (or town cars if I'm hosting clients on the road) because I am VERY directionally challenged. One pleasant surprise I had when I got into the burgundy Ford Taurus that was to be my rental car in Portland was that it had a GPS navigation system sitting in it, ironically called "Hertz NeverLost." Hmm. Right. We'll see about this "NeverLost" business. I was still very excited to use it, though, because I thought what would be better than having both the written directions and the navigation system to help me get where I want to go? I got from the airport to the office fine, got from the office to my hotel fine (the hotel was literally across the street -- if I messed that one up I was in more trouble than I thought), but I struggled getting from the hotel to downtown Portland for the client dinner on Thursday night.

First, I missed the freeway exit by the hotel -- which really should be hard to miss, but I managed to do it; I then found a way to get on the freeway, traffic was VERY thick, I exited into downtown Portland and then found out that the road both my print directions and GPS wanted me to take was closed for construction. At this rate, I'm already 5 minutes late for the dinner at the Portland City Grill, and I still really have no idea if I'm anywhere near it or not. So, I went over a bridge across the Willamette River -- which is the exact opposite direction of where I needed to be -- made a U-turn, called my colleague who I was meeting with the clients at the dinner to assure her I was still coming but just lost, and then the GPS lady (it was a woman's voice that kept directing me from the GPS unit) worked on recalculating the route, and -- with some guessing and luck -- I found the place, but again about 20 to 30 minutes late. Oh, well. The views of Portland from the restaurant were great, the food was really good, and I got creme brulee for dessert. I LOVE creme brulee. Yum.

After dinner I got lost trying to meet up with some friends for First Thursday in Portland's Pearl District (the GPS was basically worthless to me in this adventure). But, I found them at the Tiger Bar and we went across the street to one of their boyfriend's gallery showings. He's a cartoonist, artist and the comic strip writer of Too Much Coffee Man, and I felt very hip and trendy to be in this tiny, one-room comic gallery with his sketches on the wall, dyed-hair and tatooed hipsters wearing black and piercings milling about, and two cats who just roamed the place amongst all the people. Good news was that all of this was a walking experience, so no reason for me to get lost this time.

Then -- later when I was trying to get back to the hotel -- I got going the exact opposite direction on the freeway from where I needed to go. But, I just exited at the first exit, turned around, and got going the right way again. So, the bad news is that it took me much longer to get places than it should have while I was in Portland (and when I was trying to get back to the hotel I was really tired at that rate); the good news is that at least I know I am really bad with directions and expect to get lost, so I don't lose my patience once it does happen. I just need to learn to pad my travel times a bit better so I stop being LATE to everything. Or, just take a cab.

Latest Dispatch: Gabe on the Road

So, Gabe just landed at the Minneapolis airport and gave me a call to report a sight that he had never seen before...he just saw an eleven- or twelve-year-old girl at the airport with TWO HEADS. No joke -- completely serious. One girl body, two heads. Two faces. Gabe and I were discussing -- do you think she's one girl with two heads, or two girls with one body? Do you think each head is a totally different person with a different personality, or do you think that it is one girl who is governed by one brain but just happens to have an extra head on her shoulders? Gabe said she was with people, looked happy and like any normal person being greeted at the airport and getting hugs from the people who picked her up. So, that's good news -- even with two heads, she's a happy pre-teen. More than one can say for most normal pre-teenagers, I'm sure.

We have no photo evidence of this as Gabe doesn't have a camera phone (and plus, that would just be super rude -- she's a girl, not a freakshow), but just wanted to share with you the latest unusual sightings that Gabe has encountered while on the road this week. First, Hot Dog Guy, now, Girl with Two Heads. Wow.