Hi Friends and Family,

Ok, so I know this looks like a long blog... and it is. Hopefully you'll find it interesting and worth the read!

Well, I just have to say, I'm sure grateful for tax returns!!! I went to Baby's R Us and picked up the rest of the necessities off my registry. Necessities are expensive! So I think we may just have everything we need. Well, I'm sure we'll find out soon enough if I did enough shopping. So here's a pic of everything arranged in our "nursery" aka the corner of our bedroom. It makes us really excited for baby time! I'm into my 8th month, so ... hopefully we won't have to wait too much longer for little Maddy.


So other stuff going on... I was grocery shopping the other day. And I just went to the closest one to me as I was out and about. It wasn't in the nicest part of town or so nice on the outside, but it was an Albertson's, how bad could it be!!?? Well, as I was in there I noticed that they let all sorts of "other" customers in the store. I was a little nervous going do that aisle, you can image why. Let's just say, I haven't been back to that store.

This Sunday was Easter. The Reddings were totally awesome and invited us over for a wonderful dinner. Here's Robert with his fabulous turkey and potatoes. Yummy! Meat and potatoes, my fav. He read on the internet that if you brined (sp?) the turkey it would be moist, and it worked. So next Thanksgiving everyone Brine your turkeys!

So remember a couple of weeks ago Ethan went to DC to lobby for Chiropractic. Here are some of his pics. So here's the Jefferson Memorial at night, a view of the Lincoln Memorial from the top of the Washington Memorial, and lastly the Capitol building. It was a crazy week!

Lastly, after Eth's DC trip he then went straight into studying for Boards. It was rough, but he made it through. So to celebrate being done he went lobster fishing with his study buddies. They didn't catch any lobsters, but they got 2 crabs and 3 octopus. Is that the plural form? Anyway, it was a good end to a rough 2 weeks of studying and 3 days of testing!


Ethan's good luck has continued... after his DC trip he got a $400 ticket for a carpool lane violation. It was ridiculous, it was the first time he was on that highway, and to be in the carpool lane at that time of day you had to have 3 people in the car! Sigh. So we were so mad about it that he actually went to court to contest it. Fortunately the cop didn't show up, so we got reimbursed! Yea!!!

I did take my kids on a really cool field trip. We went to Body Worlds at the California Science Center. Ethan came as a chaperone. We got to look at dissected human bodies. As creepy at that sounds, it was amazing. Here's a pic of one of the displays I downloaded. I didn't take any pics myself, because it wasn't allowed. If you have the chance to see it, I highly suggest it!


Lastly, house hunting continues. Here are two of the houses we are looking into. We are pretty excited. Ethan is flying out to Iowa in 3 weeks to check out homes and maybe start some paper work! Scary!!!

This week is spring break for me so I'm heading down to San Diego to visit my sister Kathy and my friend Erika. So that will be fun.

We love you all!

Well, we're at 31 weeks! Can you believe it!? Time is just flying by, now that I'm not puking! Well, some updates. I am experiencing the fun symptoms of pregnancy of swelling, loose joints, and clumsiness. With all of these combined this caused my to fall twice in one day and twist my ankle. No worries, everything is fine, I just need to be more careful. I am dropping stuff all the time now and picking that stuff up is getting pretty hard. When I drop things at school my students get up to pick it up for me. Another classic symptom I have is I'm hot all the time. At night I sleep with the window open and the fan on, while Ethan sleeps under a down comforter!

On Monday I had a baby shower. It was really fun. We played games, the guests made really cute personalized onsies for Maddy, and delicious treats. I got to see friends I hadn't seen in a while and see my sisters, which was really the best part. Thank you to everyone who came! What was also great, of course were the gifts, but they were gifts that I could use, thank goodness! Diaper pails, tubs, gift cards, hats, a teddy bear womb sound simulator, etc. Funny things... my friend Heather Redding got me 6 foam books. What's funny about it is that every time I went to her house I would say I love those books where can I find them!? And she would never tell me. Well now I know why, she was buying them for me! As promised, I've posted pictures. Oh, and by the way, I haven't taken a picture of myself in a while, and I'm huge! I have edited out some of the extremely non flattering ones (like the one butt shot my sister got!) I've got the 3 big B's, big belly, big butt, and big boobs! I don't really think I'm one of those cute prego's... of course Ethan disagrees and says I look great. Apparently I'm fertile beautiful!!! So enjoy the pics.

Oh, and I have to finish with a funny story. So I brought home one of those really cute cupcakes home to Ethan. If you look really close, you may notice that the cupcake babies have plastic pacifiers, adorable right!? Well, Ethan decided to enjoy his cupcake as a midnight snack. Well, Ethan was not aware that those pacifiers were there. So when he first bit into the cupcake, he thought maybe it was a hard candy, then bit down on it and broke it. He finally realized that it was plastic and spit it out. I found the remains of the pacifier on the counter in the morning. I couldn't stop laughing as Ethan told me what happened and how edible and non edible things should not be mixed!

Love you guys. Hope this blog was better!

Ok, Ok, I know it's been a while . . . oops. There have been a lot of developments since my last blog from about 3 mons ago! So here we go...

Baby Stuff
Well, we are having a little girl, Madeline Rae Zmoos. She is healthy and strong. She is making my belly jump and move and Ethan is enjoying seeing/feeling our little kick boxer. I survived the nasty glucosa test, uh, drinking it literally gave me chills. I have finally stopped puking, it only took five and a half months. So, now I'm finally gaining weight! I'm feeling pretty good, just the usual back ache and trouble sleeping. What else... we are currently taking birthing classes and besides seeing a very "lovely" montage of like 15 births in a row we are feeling pretty good about the whole birthing process. So, with a little over 2 mons to go, we are gearing up for baby time. Part of that is my upcoming baby showers! On the 10th Kathy and Melissa are coming up and we are going to have a family/friend shower and on the 19th the school will be having a shower for me. It will be fun to see everyone and play games.

Christmas
So, Christmas was good, this year we went to Iowa. It was nice and laid back. We did have weather issues... we got stuck in Chicago and ended up renting a car and driving 4 hours to Cedar Rapids, with out our luggage! It took about 3 days, but we finally got our luggage and had clothes and presents to put under the tree. Ethan also took the opportunity to work with his Dad a couple days. He came home tired but enjoyed it.

New Years
For New Years we celebrated with our friends the Reddings and the Escalantes. It was a lot of fun, and I actually stayed awake!!!! We spent the night and got up the next morning for a big breakfast.

Other News...
Ethan is now in his last year of school and is working with a private practice doctor, at a clinic in Pasadena, and goes to school one day a week. It's a pretty confusing schedule, I can never figure out where he his. The past week, Ethan had the opportunity to go to DC and do some lobbying for Chiropractic. So he's been able to meet some interesting people, see some cool sites, and earn some service hour credits for school. Also, we are currently house hunting its been fun and difficult. In a couple of months, Ethan is going to head out to Cedar Rapids to look for home and hopefully finalize something.

As far as our friends and family news, my little sister Dianna is pregnant. Which we are very happy about, they have been trying for sometime. She is now dealing with the Archibald curse of extreme sickness, so good luck Dianna, it'll get better... eventually! Kathy came for a visit and adopted my kitties from me. She is enjoying playing and cuddling with them while Julius is away. My parents have been working on fixing up their house for when they sell it in a couple of years. Good thing they're making it so nice just to leave it and not enjoy it!!!! :) Ethan's mom worked real hard on Mitt Romney's campaign and even went to Florida to try to help. Sorry it didn't work out! Our friends son, Rex Redding is now walking! Crazy! And they got their adoption court date. So in just a couple of weeks their adoption will be final and they can finally bless him and be sealed together as a family! Yea!!! It seems like everyone is doing well so we are happy.

So you have it. My laundry list of things happening. Sorry it's not so entertaining and not even a picture, uh! I'll do better next time. I promise to update my blog next week after my baby shower, with pictures.

Love you all!