Cravings...

Just so I don't forget....
One of the symptoms I've been having since becoming pregnant has been food cravings. I get them and I get them bad. I think they are rather amusing, but are also a big pain as some of them aren't the most convenient. Lucky for me, I have the greatest husband who has never denied me my craving indulges and a family who has dropped everything to come pick me up and take me down to the ghetto to get my taco fix. Below are some of the items I've craved since being pregnant:

1. Pickles: This wasn't a normal craving for pickles. It happened the week after conception and I didn't even know I was pregnant yet. I ate almost an entire jar of pickle spears and was drinking the juice out of the jar when I realized it wasn't normal. People don't drink pickle juice!
2. Crispy beef from P.F. Chang's
3. Sizzling rice soup from Abbicus Inn
4. Corn on the cobb from Kentucky Fried Chicken: I have never once craved their corn on the cobb. In fact, I normally don't even like it all that much!
5. Barbeque
6. Spaghetti with meatballs
7. Tacos from the original Garcia's
8. Buffalo Wild Wings
9. Nachos from Taco Bell
10. Oranges
11. Bananas: I didn't get to see this one through to fruition. I bought them and when I went to put them on my cereal seeing and smelling them made me puke.
12. Yogurt
13. Cottage cheese with Lawry's season salt on saltine crackers
14. Mango gelatto
15. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches

Some of these cravings I think are so funny. I mean, corn on the cobb from KFC? Really? But I have thoroughly enjoyed each one of them...that is until I've puked them up and never want to see them again!

Week 10 Ultrasound Pics

Our doctor wanted us to have two ultrasounds during the first trimester since we having twins. Below are the pictures from that visit. If you look closely in the third picture, you can see why the ultrasound tech thought she tell the baby on the left is a boy.

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!!!!!