Groens...soon to be a party of four!

Eric and I have some very exciting news....we're expecting twins!! I'm officially 12 weeks pregnant tomorrow. I had my 12 week doctor's appointment yesterday and since everything looked good, I'm spilling the beans! The official due date for our bundles of joy is July 1st, 2009. We've learned that the average gestation for twins is 35 weeks, so they will most likely arrive in early to mid June.
The first trimester has been pretty rough. I've been incredibly sick and can't wait until the "morning" sickness wears off. That terms still gets me. There's nothing "morning" related to it! I can tell it's getting a bit better, though. It really takes a strong smell now to throw me over the edge. Just a few weeks ago, I would throw up in the morning as soon as I woke up and then usually whenever I would eat anything or drink too much of something. I've been so grateful to have taken the last few months of work. I have no idea how I would have been able to work feeling like this. But now that the nausea is beginning to wear off, fatigue has set it. I get so tired just by doing normal everyday things. Just by taking a shower and getting ready for the day I get so worn out!
At our doctor's appointment yesterday, we got to see the babies again with the ultrasound, but the printer wasn't working to take home a picture. Baby A (the baby closest to the cervix) always does flips whenever we see her (I have a feeling she's a girl, so until I'm told otherwise, I'm calling her a "she"). I think she has a personality like me: very type A and energetic. She's always moving around!
Baby B (who we think might be a boy) seems to have a personality more like Eric's. Whenever we see him, he's just hanging out and only seems to move around when he has to. At our 10 week ultrasound, there was a really good shot of Baby B's butt. The tech was looking at it for awhile and said that although it was really early to tell, she thought she could tell the sex. I thought what I was looking at was the umbilical cord, but she said that if it was it would turn colors when she brought up a red square on the screen. That was so exciting.
We just love our doctor. Eric got a chance to meet him yesterday and when I told Dr. McKernan that Eric was a medical student, he introduced himself as Paul McKernan (yep, they're on a first name basis!) and would use real medical terms when we were looking at the babies. Eric really appreciated that. Dr. McKernan tells us every time I see him we have the best type of twins you can have. They are fraternal twins (so separate egg, separate sperm) and have separate membranes and are in excellent positions in the womb (sounds weird calling my uterus a womb, but I guess it is!).
We feel so blessed to already have these two in our lives. We can't wait to meet them!

Chloe's 4th Birthday Party

Last weekend, Eric and I joined the family to celebrate Chloe's 4th birthday. Chloe is the daughter of my cousin, Maria. She and her husband, John, had the birthday party at Enchanted Island at Encanto Park. What a perfect idea for a bunch of little kids!
They have amusement park rides for children and a train that goes around the park that adults can ride on, too. It was fun to watch the little kids on the rides and we were delighted to celebrate the birthday girl's day with her.

Chloe's brother, Jackson

Chloe riding one the rides

Jackson on the train

Chloe opening up presents

Chloe blowing out her birthday candles

Maria, John, and the birthday girl!

Congratulations, Aisha and Atif!!

My dear friend, Aisha, got engaged! In her Pakistani culture, there is a special ceremony where the couple gets engaged. Aisha's family, as well as that of her fiance, Atif, joined the couple when he gave her her ring. A definite date for the wedding has not be set yet, but it will most likely be in June of 2009.
Below are a few pics that I've "borrowed" from Aisha from the ceremony. She looked absolutely beautiful! Aisha, we are so happy for you and Atif! Congratulations!!

Second rotation...check!!

Last week, Eric started his general surgery rotation. That means he's already done with his OBGYN and family practice rotations. Family practice was again all the way out in Chandler, AZ, so Eric had another long commute. The practice he was at wasn't very busy, but it was a good experience. Eric was able to see some rare cases and since the practice wasn't very busy, Eric was able to learn alot from the doctor and be able to perform OMM (osteopathic manipulative medicine) on the patients.
Eric also can scratch family practice off the list of medical areas. He thought it was aggravating that the doctor had to know so much, but really couldn't do much. He just had to know what specialist the patient needed to be referred to. So Eric knows that he wants to specialize so he can be really good in one area.
Generaly surgery is going well. He's at Del Webb Hospital in Sun City, AZ. The doctor he is working with is great and was nominated as one of the best docotors in the US in 2007. Everyone is working with so nice and although he's not too thrilled with holding retractors for four hours on end during surgeries, he's been able to see some really cool cases. He saw one where the patient had gall bladder disease and the gall bladder was stuck to all the surrounding organs and tissues. He said it was a pain for the doctors to detach everything (and even bigger pain for him to hold the retractor for 4 hours) and remove the organ, but definitely cool to see!

Our living room is finished!

With our painting for our living room being finished now and hung up, it's really motived me to finish painting the living room and the kitchen. I've been wanting to paint the big wall in the living room red and make that our "accent" wall (haven't I been watching my HGTV??!!). I never had the guts to do it (must be that conservative side of me), but my mom came over and said she had a surprise for me. She came over with a gallon of red paint that was given to her. It was a tomato red color and I thought, "Well, that's not going to work." The red that we needed was a deep, purplier red. Mom said all we have to do is pick out the color we want it and take it to Dunn Edwards and they would recolor it for us. Isn't that cool? I didn't even know they could, let alone would, do that! Mom just thought, we've got this Dunn Edwards paint, it's not the right color, there's no reason they couldn't change it for us. I would have never thought of it!


So mom and I got out my many different paint samples and picked out the perfect one: Ralph Lauren's Venetian Red. We took our paint, our color sample, and went to Dunn Edwards. When we got there, an older man help us. He explained that they could try to match our color, but because of the colors already in the tomato red, it wouldn't be exact. Mom just explained that we weren't asking for miracles, just a color close to the one we wanted. He came back and we were so thrilled with the color. He probably thought we were such lunatics since we were so excited about a paint color. But to us, it was taking a gallon of paint that was just on hand and probably wasn't going to be used and changing to a color to finish our living room-all for FREE!


My wonderful mother who hath no fear of paint nor color thought of this. I just can't believe how perfect it turned out. It really pulls the room together and makes the painting and furniture pop against the wall. We just love it. Thanks, Mom!!!!!

So...we have a bug problem.

About a month ago, I finally called the bugman out to the house. We'd been seeing more and more bugs since it's been getting warmer and when we got back from vacation, it was out of control. I would find spiders, crickets, silverfish and earwicks everyday! And by my standards, anything more than one is way too many! We were told that we needed to keep having it sprayed during the winter even though there were no bugs because it would help keep them down when it was bug season (and especially because we live right next to a wash), but who really wants to spend money to have bugs killed? Even more, who wants to spend the money when the bugs aren't even there?

Well, boy, did we learn our lesson! The bugman came and and sprayed, but it hardly made a dent. Every night, we would still hear crickets and our cats would sit staring at the dishwasher (the bugs would come in through the plumbing). And in the morning, our precious cats would leave us presents all over the house. For whatever reason, I thought that cats would eat crickets. But nooo, our precious kitties would just play with them and pull off their legs off, leaving dismembered cricket bodies and legs all over. If I would walk around the house without shoes on, I risked stepping on a cricket leg! Ugh...!

Well, I ended up having the bugman out again last week. The owner showed up and did a really great job and our problem seems to be under control. So learn from us, trust the bugman, he knows what he's talking about!

A dismembered cricket-notice the missing back, right leg...

The missing leg...found across the kitchen. Gross!

One up...one down!

Eric finished his OBGYN rotation last week. He's already done! It was definitely a tough one, though. Eric is glad, however, that he had his first rotation in a hospital setting. He will now be prepared for his surgical rotation next month. Just knowing what he's supposed to do in the hospital, how to work the computer systems and how to get through an on-call night will be a big help for this future rotations.
This month, Eric is doing his family practice rotation. It's so cool that Eric knows what he likes about each rotation and what he doesn't like. With OBGYN, he didn't like the on-call nights. He liked delivering babies, but knew that it wasn't for him. Now with family practice, he can tell already that it's too slow paced for him. Also, he can tell that he wants to specialize in an area. Instead of having to know about everything but not really be able to do much, he'd rather be the expert in a certain area.
This rotation is going to be much easier than the last as well. It's still about the same commute, but there is no on-call nights and if there are no patients, Eric gets to go home! Oh, and there is no shelf exam at the end (the standardized exam the students take after each rotation). So he should have one easy month!