Excuses, Excuses

So, it's been three months since I last blogged. I've been taken on numerous guilt trips by friends and family, been put on notice, and composed many a blog in my head. But, this is the first I'm getting around to it. Here are a few reasons why:

• On October 2, the last time I posted, I was on the first of many business trips. Let's just say that between September 29, 2008 and January 19, 2009, I was only home for two complete weeks. During the month of December I think I spent three nights in my own bed. Sure, it's been fun to go to so many places (especially the last five weeks when I had Will along), but logging almost 70,000 flying miles in less than four months was a little time-consuming and exhausting.

• If it wouldn't have been exhausting on its own, I became a little disenchanted with flying when, starting mid-October, I started utilizing air-sickness bags or (when lucky) the airport lavatory on every flight. Prior to that, I had only thrown up once on an airplane. Don't worry, this lasted well into December. However, of my last five flights (in the last three weeks) I only tossed my cookies on one!!

• Oh yeah, the nausea wasn't limited to in-flight. On October 4th, two days after the last time I posted, I flew home from Eugene, OR, Will picked me up at the airport, we stopped at CVS, and came home and took a home pregnancy test. I took a couple more in the next couple of days to make sure it was real and it was. We are expecting a baby, due on June 12th. You can be expecting many more blog posts on that and my take on "morning" sickness.

• On that same week, two days after my last post, my camera died, unintentional homicide. I was cramming my very full carry-on into a very small overhead compartment and didn't realize until I took it out to take the above picture that I had somehow cracked the screen. I loved that camera. It's been all over with me and then us - Poland, Russia, Will and I's first outings, our wedding, our honeymoon, the White House, numerous road trips with friends... Basically it's lived in my purse for almost five years and it's taken some fabulous photos (it especially loved candid shots of friends). I was planned to pay a lot of money to get it fixed, but turns out Sony no longer makes that model and won't fix it. No photos = boring blog, right? So, that became a good excuse not to blog.

• Then, I bought a new camera on a whim, at Wal-Mart, on the way to Delaware in October. Nothing fancy, but it worked. We took a few photos with that - NYC with Curtis, Becca and Sam, some scout pictures (scouting deserves its own bullet here as well), etc. But, by the time I thought to use them to blog it was December and time was getting short... We were packing for our marathon December/January trip and we couldn't find the camera. We hope it's still at the church somewhere, but after six weeks, are starting to doubt it. Hopefully we'll find it.

• (Maybe this story should have been its own post, it is using far too may bullets.) Since we arrived in Seattle in December without a camera, we went to Best Buy and bought one. Okay, we bought two. A point-and-shoot and a DSLR, which I have (not-so-secretly) been lusting after for a while now. I guess the point of this story is that you can look forward to some good pictures being posted soon. Will took some great ones on our trip.

• (Back to the excuses.) After we found out we were pregnant, that was really thought-consuming. And, I'm really bad at keeping secrets. I had a hard time thinking of anything to blog about other than being pregnant, hearing the baby's heartbeat the first time (amazing), seeing the baby, etc. I'm glad we're through that phase and it's no longer a secret. (I wasn't nearly as good at keeping it secret as I thought I could be.)
  

• I thought about blogging over the holidays, when I did take some free time (even though I should have been working during a lot of it). But, the magnitude of starting blogging again when I haven't for so long was a little overwhelming. I thought about a New Years blogging resolution but couldn't do it. I'm sure in about five months the pressure will be on even more to post cute pictures of and stories about our child for family and friends who live far away so I can't pressure myself now.

All said, I am back and I am planning on posting more often. No promises because work is still busy for now (but I am cutting way back after the last few months of non-stop travel), but we do have a lot of fun things to write about that are going on in our lives and have been lately, so I'll do my best.