Once A Coug... Always A Coug!

Here's to hoping that we get a little Cougar pride into McKenzie while she's young and impressionable! This weekend was the 101st Apple Cup game between the Washington State Cougars and the University of Washington Huskies. And despite being tied with the Huskies for one of the lowest positions in college football on the way in, the Cougars managed to pull it off in OT and win the game! Go Cougars! We can hold our heads high at Thanksgiving this year!

Here's McKenzie around half time looking a little bummed because the Cougs were behind... little does she know to never give up hope on our Cougs!



Here she is with a classic 'Touch Down Cougars' at the end of the game!!!


Washington State University is one of those places in the world that you just can't explain to someone who hasn't been there. You share a universal bond with anyone who's attending school there. Matt and I both loved our time there and we have so many good memories of Pullman and the watching the games there in Martin Stadium.

Go Cougs!

Hitting The Hard Stuff...

I have to admit I have been hitting the hard stuff lately... shocking I know for someone who is pregnant. To me the hard stuff of the moment is eggnog. I have a terrible sweet tooth - thank goodness I don't like chocolate but can focus mainly on the pure sugar variations of candy or else I'd weigh a ton. I eat candy year round but there are two times of year when I have special indulgences. I allow myself to have candy corn only in the month of October and then in November and December I have eggnog. I also have strict standards on what candy corn I will eat - only Brach's, no other brand and if I can at all help it I avoid the 'Harvest Mix' bag which includes the candy corn pumpkins and the ones with brown on them. I think the brown taints the whole lot. With eggnog I'm not as picky on my brand.

I actually started this post last week when I bought my first half gallon of eggnog for the season. I had already been having steamed eggnog if I went to Starbucks but having it at home was really agreeing with me. Unfortunately, I ran into an issue with drinking my beloved eggnog last week when the results from my glucose screening came back - my sugar levels were very high and so I had to go back in for a three hour glucose test last Friday which involves not eating anything for 12 hours before the test, then drinking a drink made of pure sugar and food coloring and then have your blood drawn once an hour for three hours. Nothing like that to make a pregnant lady feel great! I was very worried that I would have to watch my sugar intake for the remainder of my pregnancy and in my mind that equated to not enjoying the holidays to their fullest. Luckily my second test came back great with no elevated sugars so I'm in the clear to enjoy the holidays and their sweets! I guess when they said eat normally before coming in for the first test they probably thought I wouldn't be chugging down a glass of eggnog with lunch. I was very careful with what I ate prior to the fasting period for the second test.

Knowing my own sweet tooth as I do, I have been trying to keep McKenzie off the sweets. Luckily she doesn't know much about candy or what it looks like in stores yet so she only wants something if I'm having it. I made it almost all through October without giving her candy corn. It's sad to admit but I was hiding it from her and sneaking it sometimes when she wasn't looking. I can remember my friend Carrie telling me that she did that with her little boy Kaden and I thought that was crazy but now I understand. I also have given her a drink of eggnog and the verdict is in - she likes it! Or should I say loves from the way she held the cup up trying to get the last few drops.

Here's a couple of recent pictures of McKenzie. The first is playing video games with Daddy in the game room and the second is with Grandma Z who came over today to watch McKenzie for the morning while Aunt Kacey went on a field trip.

Time to Give Thanks...

This is the time to reflect back on all the things that I have to be thankful for. This year more than ever the thing that I am most thankful for are my friends. I am also lucky enough that I can be thankful for good health in my family, my job, my house among many things. Not all my friends are so lucky this year. We've had some tough times this year but through it all our group of friends sticks together and helps where we can. Each of us has something different, something special and something critical to offer.

I know I've posted in the past about my best friend Carrie and my hopes that McKenzie someday will find a 'forever friend' like her but I also hope that McKenzie is blessed with a whole group of long term friends who can stick together through thick and thin. It's not often that I meet people who are still close friends with people from high school, let alone from preschool. I have been very lucky to have people in my life who are friends and not just acquaintances - here today but gone tomorrow.

Here's a little photo tribute to my friends and all the memories we've shared and the ones we have yet to make. Hang in there - things have to get better!

Happy Halloween!

We had a great Halloween - not as many Trick or Treaters as we would have liked but maybe next year now that the word might be out that we gave out full sized candy bars! McKenzie was feeling a little under the weather but she rallied for the end of the day and seemed to enjoy going out after dark all bundled up.

Here's our pumpkins in the day time as well as at night. Matt did the really intricate one with the witch stepping out of the cave and I did the two face ones. I think I make basically the same pumpkin every year but that's okay by me.



McKenzie wore her dog costume for Halloween and we had Matt's family over so she got to show off for Grandma and Grandpa Z and Aunt Jennifer, Uncle Chris and best of all cousin Claire. First we have McKenzie getting ready to go out doing a little last minute clean up with her lint roller and then we have our little doggie trick or treating at the neighbors. She just kept taking more and more candy... Matt finally had to pull her away.




McKenzie really enjoys spending time with all her cousins - Nathan and Kayla get their fair share of 'loving' from McKenzie but at least they are bigger and can love back if they want to. Baby Claire has to just put up with it. There is no doubt that there is a big kiss in Claire's future!




Here's another picture from last year - with McKenzie and one of our pumpkins.

Party and the Ghosts of Halloween Past...

Last Saturday night McKenzie and I attended her second Halloween party. Last year Matt and I took her along with us to a party we attended. She was really well behaved and just fell asleep shortly after arriving. It was a much different story this year! There were other babies, some three-year-old girls and best of all dogs in costume. There couldn't be a much better party than that!

Here's McKenzie dressed as Piglet. She is going to be a dog on Halloween but that costume fits a bit weird so she dressed for comfort on Saturday. She is loving her dog friend Muki who has appeared in other blog entries with her.


The other girls that were there were a bit older than her and they were running all around and had taken their shoes off. McKenzie saw this as her opportunity to help out. Here she is doing one of her favorite things - bringing people their shoes. The girls just yelled 'that baby is stealing our shoes...'.


Here's some pictures from past Halloweens. First McKenzie and me last year all dressed up as a monkey and a banana. Who would have thought I'd get to wear the monkey costume twice!


Then Matt and me as King Kong and the Empire States Building!


And probably the greatest couples Halloween costume ever - the Teletubbies!


Followed by the classic double couple costume from Dad's weekend in college. Sprout and the Jolly Green Giant along with some bags of frozen Green Beans and Sweet Peas.
And my all time favorite... Little Bird.


And a classic from Matt's childhood... Little Red Riding Hood and Dracula!


And who could forget the 'Bud Girls'... was there not sun in Pullman???


I could actually include more but I'll restrain myself before anyone gets too scared!

What's In A Name?

So we've had a lot of people asking what we are naming Baby Z and while we are no closer to a name for our baby boy we have had quite a few laughs over things we won't be naming him.

Matt's cousin Cassandra loaned us a baby naming book that has lists of names including everything from Reality TV Stars to Truck Drivers - lots of winners there.

Have you ever read the 'L' or 'M' boy sections of a baby naming book? Half the names in these sections are combo names such as two of my favorites... Leeron, a clever combo of Lee and Ron, wow I never would have guessed that. Marshawn, a combo of Mark and Shawn.

Or there's the long name that is shortened such as William Joseph or James Robert by calling him Willy Joe or Jim Bob.

In today's world you have to think of things such a email addresses, account logins and things when naming a child. Do you want them to always be explaining to people why their corporate email is different than the name they want to be called? Or worst having all the good email addresses always taken because they are the tenth person with the same name so they are stuck with being john.zaremba8272@gmail.com

Another new trend in baby naming is to give the child a unique spelling of a basic name such as Jayson (Jason) or Baley (Bailey).

Today I saw a posting on a baby board that I read that topped them all. It opened a whole new realm of of naming possibilities up to us. The name was 'Le-a' so in your head you say okay that's pronounced 'Lee-ahhh' but no... try again. 'Ladasha' and then this one requires the babies mom to step in and add and I quote 'that dash don't be silent'.

Wow. I had a good laugh over that one. Now I have seen the names with the addition of a 'La' or a 'De' on the front of a different name or in the case of someone getting fancy just a D' or putting two names together with a '-' but never the use of the '-' to give the sound of 'dash'. Now we're getting crazy - that opens up a whole realm of names I don't even want to think about. There are so many symbols on the keyboard with so many different sounds associated with them. Though I do like to joke that D'Matthew has a nice ring to it... D'Matt for short.

So the answer to what are we naming our baby boy is nothing yet... but we are still searching! Let us know if you think of anything good or anything too funny not to share - we're open to hearing both!

Crush 2008!

This past weekend was the fourth annual Crush Festival over in Chelan, which I celebrated with some of the members of my wine club. We had a fantastic time as usual - this year we had Rachel, Misty, Kate, Lindley, McKenzie and me! It was a great group and a good time was had by all. The Crush Festival is really the first two weekends of October but after last year when we had some scheduling issues that kept us from going during the official time we decided we much preferred to be on our own rather than have to deal with crowds.

This year we skipped the limo since we only had five girls and I wasn't doing any tasting... just a lot of smelling of wine. We started our day with a personal yoga class in the park - thanks to Yoga Chelan! It was so beautiful and relaxing to be out in the sunshine and to have the leaves falling all around us.


After yoga we headed back to my parents to get cleaned up and then we headed out on our wine tour. We made it to six wineries this year - not our personal best which was seven but still a good showing. We went to three new ones and three old favorites. Here's the ones we visited:

Rio Vista Wines: Just opened this year, located 10 minutes east of the town of Chelan. It has a beautiful tasting room overlooking the river with great atmosphere and really down to earth owners who were serving the wine. We're looking forward to seeing what's new there next year. Here's a picture of us on their back deck.



Four Lakes Wines: Another new winery since our visit last year. They are also a family affair complete with a set of dogs - one boxer and the biggest friendliest rottweiler any of us had ever seen. Their current tasting room was designed for production only and they are working on building out a tasting room at a new location for next year. They will have a view of all four lakes in the area from their tasting room. In the meantime our group always enjoys seeing the process of wine making so we love a tasting room / production facility. Here we are at at Four Lakes.


Karma Vineyard: Our next stop was one we discovered last year, Karma Vineyard - one of our favorite for their great atmosphere, fun owners and great wine and cheese! We did the tour again with owner Julie because it's always a good show and we learned a little more than last year. They have released their champagne this year which was quite impressive to those who tried it! Here are the girls at Karma with a picture of an old lady with a cat - I'm not a cat lady so I got to take the picture!


Chelan Estates: The fact that I didn't find an actual website for this winery and had to put a link to a Washington State wine guide sums up this winery. The girls said their wine was fine but they lacked the things we love - great atmosphere and people to share their wine story with us. We will mark this off our list for a revisit.

Vin du Luc: Another old favorite, this is the only winery we have visited all four years. It almost didn't make the cut year two after our first year experience left something to be desired. We felt the staff on the first year was rude and the appetizer plates we ordered were lacking - not in taste or quality but in actual food. We only returned the second year for the wines and great labels - that's another of our weaknesses - we love good labels on the bottles. Our second year experience and the two years since have been great and will keep us heading back year after year.

Lake Chelan Winery: Another favorite that we have been to the past three years, they boast not only great wine, great staff but a fantastic gift shop and a fantastic BBQ! This year they have added Hard Cider to their list of beverages so bottles of that were purchased to take home to the boys. No report yet on how they liked it!

The last two years we have done the BBQ but this year we opted to try the new Thai restaurant in town and we weren't disappointed. Nothing is better than family style thai food after a long day!

As usual on Sunday morning we did a photo shoot with our bottles of wine here are a couple of shots from that.






You're probably wondering what the star of this blog - McKenzie - was doing this whole time that we were running around from winery to winery. She was entertaining Grandma and Grandpa C. They had a great time together and wore each other out going for walks, looking at bunnies and climbing up and down the stairs. Grandma and Grandpa had fun strolling McKenzie around downtown showing her off to their friends.



Here's McKenzie at lunch on Sunday - this just proves that she eats most anything. I'm not sure pickles are on the list of foods typically enjoyed by babies but that doesn't stop McKenzie!



And here she is jumping in that pile of fall leaves as promised in an earlier post.