getting some oregon sunshine

On Saturday, we ventured out to the Oregon Ag Fest with Andrew's family. Emerson loved seeing all the animals, although he liked touching the bars on their pens even more.

He also went on his first pony ride! He enjoyed it, which is good, because the line for pony rides took almost an hour.

Patiently waiting his turn.

Not as patient anymore. Excuse my I'm-not-ready-for-a-picture face.

I held him in the saddle the whole time, and he was so focused that he couldn't even look up for a picture.

Then yesterday was Andrew's dad's birthday, so to celebrate, we all went on a hike/walk at the Baskett Slough. It was a beautiful day, albeit a little windy on our walk, and now I can cross off #13 on the 52 Things list (go on a family hike).

Starting out the walk.

Emerson got a little sleepy halfway through.

Then we switched him to Andrew's back, and he got excited again.

Windy hair.

He was excited to catch up with Grandma when we got back to our cars.

We're loving this sunshine (and Andrew's break from school)!

one year down, two to go

Andrew is officially done with his first year of law school! I couldn't be more proud of him. He did really well last semester, and I'm sure he'll do well this semester too.

Emerson is excited for Daddy to come home.

In law school, final exams make up your entire grade for each class; there are no other graded assignments, tests, or quizzes throughout the whole semester. Needless to say, that makes finals time quite stressful, so we're very glad that the past two weeks have now come to a close.

He'll be taking a couple classes over the summer as well (there really is no rest for the weary), but at least we'll have some sunshine to make it more bearable!

Blue skies and a high of 78 (!!) today. We love you, Oregon.

For now, we'll be taking a few days to celebrate finishing a whole year of law school!! Go Andrew!

I just have to add that even during the stress of finals (and the stress of every day of law school), Andrew is seriously the best husband and dad I could ask for. He is always patient and understanding, and he loves spending time with his family whenever he gets the chance. He's the greatest!

emerson lately

Emerson is growing up quickly, but I still feel like he's my squishy little baby, so I don't feel too bad about it yet. It helps that he doesn't even crawl yet, so he kind of still is my squishy baby.

He's as cute as ever, and he loves flailing his arms and legs. It's hard to get a good picture of him, because he's always moving.

At nine and a half months, he has way more hair than I ever expected him to (I'm pretty sure I was bald until I was two), and it's super cute.

He now has four teeth (just barely), and he loves to bite everything, especially our clothes.

Mmm, jeans.

At his nine-month appointment, he measured 28.5 inches (45th percentile) and weighed 19 pounds (35th percentile). He's already slimming down!

He's getting to be quite vocal and loves calling out mama! whenever he's lonely or hungry and dada! when he's excited. Hmm.

We went out for lunch the other day when Andrew didn't have class, and it was cold in the restaurant, so I let Emerson borrow my cardigan. He loved it.

He's still a great sleeper, and he's starting to eat a lot more food, which is fun (and time consuming). He loves playing with socks, shoes, cords, and paper.

And he still makes some great faces.

He's a great baby, and we love him to pieces!

three-day juice fast

Another goal from my 52 Things in 52 Weeks challenge is to do a three-day juice fast. Not a cranberry-juice-with-cayenne-pepper kind of juice fast. A raw-fruits-and-vegetables-juice kind of juice fast.

If you've ever seen the movie Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead, you may be familiar with juicing and juice fasting. By consuming the juice of only raw fruits and vegetables (preferably heavy on the vegetables), you give your body plenty of the nutrients it needs without any crappy filler. Joe Cross, the man from the movie, lost over 80 pounds by juice fasting for two months.

Since I'm not that crazy, I figured three days would be a good length for my fast. And after a great spring break (i.e., lots of eating and zero exercise), I decided now was as good of a time as any. That's logical, right?

We bought our fancy juicer a few years ago, and since then, Andrew has done several juice fasts here and there. He's found that his chronic congestion (and, ahem, snoring) completely go away when he does juice fasts.

The Omega VRT350HD.

I would drink one or two juices with him, but I never really considered doing a fast myself. I'll be honest; I'm not a vegetable lover. And vegetable juices taste like vegetables. I know it's childish, but there you have it.

But with this new goal in mind, I knew I could do it! Even if the juices tasted nasty (and some did) and even if I really, really wanted a steak or a cheeseburger or even a salad (and I did). It was only three days, after all.

So here's how it went.

#36: Do a three-day juice fast.

We started on a fateful Wednesday. I felt pretty hungry all day, but I wasn't seriously tempted to quit.

My go-to juice: kale, apple, and grapes.

On Thursday, I tried to combat the hunger by putting lots of kale in my lunch juice.

The ingredients.

That's seven cups of kale, folks. (And way more fruit/sugar than you're supposed to have in one juice. But whatever.) Back to the kale--it has more iron than beef does, and it also has tons of vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin K, and calcium. I was still pretty hungry on Thursday, but it wasn't as bad. I drank more water, and that helped too.

And then Andrew quit on me and had chili for dinner. No worries; I stayed strong. On Friday morning, I was still feeling pretty good and had a great juice for breakfast.

Ingredients for Friday morning's juice.

I started getting a headache mid-day on Friday (a common side effect of juice fasts), but I drank lots of water and powered through. Then I made a big juice, drank some for lunch, and saved the rest for dinner.

Mmm greens!

The Results

Overall, the main change I've noticed is that I feel less bloated. Too much information? Oh well. I also lost five pounds, so let's hope I can keep them off by being more healthy and juicing more often!

our glorious new mattress

Andrew and I have been sleeping on a 25-year-old full-size mattress since we got married. That's four years and nine months of sharing a mattress that's 54" wide with a husband who is six feet tall and...not a petite man.

Our old ghetto setup.

Don't get me wrong. We are grateful to Andrew's parents for gifting that lovely mattress to him 12 years ago when he was a sophomore in high school. And we're grateful that we haven't needed to buy a mattress before now, because they're really expensive.

But boy, are we so grateful for our new one!

The new mattress before bedding.

I've been saving up money for a while now so we could go all out and buy a king-sized mattress.
A KING-SIZED MATTRESS.

The wonderful new bed, complete with new comforter.

And we certainly feel like kings. We've slept on it for just one night so far, and it felt great!

Just in case you already forgot, let's do a direct comparison.

Our bedroom now looks like adults live in it. Hooray!

We're also in the process of redecorating our bedroom (actually, decorating it for the first time). More pictures to come of the finished product.