The Dancing Pregnant Lady

This Thursday and Friday we're performing our 3rd grade musical at school- "Living on a Rock." A very exciting musical ;-) all about rocks and minerals. Kevin is very excited for it to be done since he says I always find the most annoying song and get it stuck in my head and sing it over and over again at home.

Today I got dubbed "the dancing pregnant lady" by our director. Since I am the only 3rd grade teacher who has learned most of the dances and songs, I now get to stand in front of the entire 3rd grade every day this week and lead them for all 7 or 8 dance numbers. I think the rest of the teachers purposely "forgot" the dances since I missed all the practices last week and still know them better than they do.

My favorite song involves me acting like a rocker and jamming on my air guitar while shaking my head and hair and jumping up and down... I am sure I am keeping all 90 third graders entertained with my big bump bouncing up and down in front of them. Hopefully all the dancing doesn't make Baby Buskirk get excited and decide to drop by earlier than planned!

Update

Dear friends,

After battling with cancer for the last 17 months, my father passed away at about 2:30 yesterday afternoon. I am happy to report that he was comfortable, peaceful, and surrounded by his family at the time of his passing. Although obviously saddened by the loss, my family and I are doing well and are happy that he is no longer suffering from the ill effects of this disease.

Thank you all for the kindness and support you've shown during this trying time.

Best regards,
Kevin

Last Day In London

Yes, I realize that I am going out of order, but the last day we were in London (New Years Eve Day) was one of my favorites. Here are a few pictures of our adventures. Our first stop was Abbey Road.

After that we headed to St. Paul's Cathedral. It was incredible. We sang "Feed the Birds" from Mary Poppins as we walked by all the pigeons in the front.

We decided to take the challenge and climb to the top...over 450 stair up to the dome and roof.

These are the windy stairs. They said pregnant people shouldn't go up... I was hoping Baby Buskirk wasn't going to be born on the stairs. Fortunately we moved so slowly that we barely broke a sweat.


Kevin had to be really careful so that he didn't hit his head. They had really bright signs that said "Mind your head" that were helpful.

Mom and I at the top.

Kev and I on our way down! Our knees were hurting from all the pounding on the steps.


Here we are on the Millennium Bridge with St. Paul's in the background.
Mom and Dad on the bridge with us. Notice that Kevin captured my dad smiling with his eyes open. Quite an accomplishment!

Me at my favorite spot by the Tower Bridge. It is so cute! We walked several miles to get there.


On our long walks we occasionally stopped for some treats- mostly because I had to use the bathroom a lot and you couldn't use them sometimes unless you were a paying customer. We ate a lot of snacks! The waffles were Kevin's favorites. I loved the hot cocoa and triple chocolate chip cookies at Caffe Nero.


Lastly, we headed to the Google office in London. We went on a tour, ate some snacks, and played with some of the fun toys that were around.


Here we are with our Google badges.



After spending the day walking for at least 5-6 hours, it was time for a break. The Google Love sac was the perfect spot to rest before the New Years festivities began.

To ring in the New Year we headed down to Big Ben and tried to get as close as we could. It reminded me of being in NYC trying to get close to Times Square. Fortunately, we could see Big Ben pretty well from our spot. Kevin kept me protected so that the crazy hoards of people wouldn't run into my tummy and somehow hurt our little guy (for some reason I was feeling very worried about that all night)... and Kev also tried to shield me from all the smoke. I think our baby got the most high he'll ever get on marijuana smoke or cigarette smoke over with in just one night. :-) After we counted down and celebrated the New Year, we raced over so we could see the fireworks being shot off by the London Eye... and then we headed back to the tube as quickly as possible. I'd have to say that the tube ride back to our house and the yummy ice cream I had once we got there was the highlight of my New Years Eve. I was so glad to be safely back inside and with my family. I probably enjoyed the best sleep of the entire trip that night because I was so exhausted! It was an awesome vacation. I'll post a few more pics of our trip later when I attempt to blog about the other days sometime soon. Happy New Year!

Presents for Baby Buskirk

Our little guy got some awesome presents from his grandparents and parents this Christmas.


To help brainwash him into becoming a Red Soxs fan... the Buskirks gave us these great gifts.
Shari even made the burp cloths and baby receiving blanket. They are beautiful! I'm hoping she can teach me how to sew one of these days.


Obviously my family wasn't going to sit by and watch as their grandson was turned into a Red Sox fan, so a large box arrived the day before Christmas with some great Yankee gear. They were going to get a big blow up doll for the nursery of Jeter or A-Rod but decided that might scare the baby too much and cause him to fear the Yankees... The "My first Yankees cap" is my favorite and I'm happy that I can use such a great educational tool (the cute Yankees ABC blocks) to help sway our son into becoming a lifelong Yankees fan. :-)


Lastly, Baby Buskirk's most important present arrived today. A beautiful new 50 inch flat screen TV. His old TV died on Thursday and since we figured he'd need a great place to watch his Baby Einstein videos... we thought we'd better move quickly to get him this present. We decided this was much more important than buying a changing table, dresser, or any other baby stuff. :-) Now the dilemma is which to buy first... a new TV stand for the HUGE TV or a mattress for the crib? Since the crib still isn't set up yet, I'm thinking the TV stand will win out.

Hopefully sometime in the next few weeks we'll actually get on the ball enough to get the baby nursery set up. If not, we at least have a car seat so that we can bring him home. :-)

London- Day 1 and 2

Here are a few pictures of our first two days in London. After two nice long flights on Christmas Day, we arrived in London on Wednesday morning. The highlight of the day was dragging our huge bags through the trains and onto the tubes (subways) and then attempting to find the house where we were staying. :-) I'm sure Kev had more fun than me since he lugged my huge suitcase and his up and down stairs at the stations. He is such a great husband!
Once we met up with my family, we headed off to Hard Rock Cafe London for some lunch and then we did a walking tour of some of the sights. We were exhausted from jet lag, but tried to stay awake as long as we could! In the above picture we're in front of Buckingham Palace. I loved walking through the gorgeous park that surrounds it. From there we walked to the houses of Parliament and Big Ben.

This is the British Airway's London Eye. It is like a huge indoor ferris wheel.


Scott, Jess, Dan, Elise, Kevin, and I went on a ride on the Eye right after the sunset (around 4pm!). After walking for about 4 hours we finally headed back to our house and went to sleep around 8pm. Kevin and I were given the best room since I'm about 32 weeks pregnant now and have a much harder time getting comfortable at night. We slept for about 11-12 hours and woke up feeling great! Baby Buskirk is very cooperative and lets me sleep all night long at this point. Hopefully that continues once he's born, but I doubt it will. :-) I spent the first morning doing what I'd dreamed about for several months- going running with my mom and sister through the streets of London. I was so happy that I could still keep up with them (mostly because it was wet and they were nice and jogged a little slower for me!).


After our jog we got ready and headed to the Tower of London. Here's a photo of all the girls. I think the Tower of London tour was among my favorite things we did. The Beefeater guide we had was hysterical! I loved relearning some British history and hearing some new stories. It all plays out like a soap opera and is very entertaining.


Next we headed to Westminster Abbey. By this point my favorite part of the day was the chairs that they had for you to sit on in the abbey. I felt like a zombie and was so exhausted!


Despite the jet lag, we kept walking and exploring all day- Trafalgar Square, Covent Gardens, Picadilly Circus, etc. When we arrived in the Covent Garden tube station we had the option of taking an elevator or walking up some stairs, so we chose the stairs.... after over 190 steps I was wishing we'd picked the elevator. I forget sometimes that I weigh about 20 lbs more than I used to!! Fortunately with all the walking we did we were able to work off all the Cadbury chocolate we ate :-)


The last thing we did on Thursday was head to the Apollo Victoria theater to watch the musical "Wicked." Dan and Scott had never seen it, so we thought it would be fun to go again. The music was incredible as always... but the jet lag/tiredness and pregnancy exhaustion made it incredibly hard for me to stay awake! I was glad that I was able to keep myself up through most of the musical. My favorite part was the intermission when I got to stand up! Baby Buskirk definitely loved the music and proceeded to kick me throughout the show... making the already uncomfortable theater seats even more uncomfortable. Overall, we had a fabulous first two days in London! We feel so grateful to my parents for organizing this fun trip. The weather was beautiful and I felt so blessed to feel so great and be able to have the energy to enjoy every minute of the trip! I'll post some more entries about the rest of the week later. It's time for me to head back to enjoying my last few days of vacation and vegging on the couch. Happy New Year!