Mmm-hmm...

"Tess, if I had to put a patient on a broad spectrum antibiotic, but they were allergic to Penecillins, I would put them on a broad spectrum cephalosporin, such as Cefepime.  Particularly if I suspected Pseudomonas infection."
--Gio

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck had an old t-shirt?

I'm pretty sure I'm in the "nesting" phase of my pregnancy.  I have constant cravings for DIY projects and crafts...especially when I can do them for free or with things I already have laying around.  We are in St. Louis right now staying with Giovanni's family during his break between semesters, but did I leave my crafting supplies at home?  Heck no!  I dragged a box and two bags full of random things and tools so I could craft my little heart out while we're here.  I even brought along my friend's sewing machine in case I got the urge. (Thanks Sarah!)  


Well, I've been especially drawn to the idea of upcycling or repurposing old things to make something useful, fun, and new.  My latest target has been repurposing old t-shirts using online tutorials to make all kinds of cool things.  On Sunday I decieved my brother-in-law, Justin, into giving me one of his old t-shirts.  I'm pretty sure he thought I wanted it because my t-shirts are not very accomodating of my ever-growing belly.  Nope.  I wanted to cut it up, rip it into pieces, stretch it out and make this....

Pretty cute, right?  And totally FREEEE!  :)  I still had a bunch of t-shirt material left over, so yesterday I made this...

Still having even MORE material left over from the headband project, I came up with a BRILLIANT idea late last night.  I mean, we're talkin' after midnight here.  That should have been my first clue.  I had heard the term "rag rollers" before and sort of thought I got the idea.  Maybe I should have looked it up online to see if there's some sort of trick to it...but I didn't.  So after I got out of the shower, I started cutting up strips of the t-shirt...rolling my hair around it...and tying it off.  When I was done, it looked like this...

I slept on it all night long.  It wasn't too comfortable, but I think it was better than foam rollers.  I almost couldn't get to sleep because I was so excited to see how my curls would turn out!  (I've ALWAYS wanted legit curly hair.)  I was convinced that I had figured out a cheap, easy way for me to get beautiful curls whenever I wanted without having to use a curling iron.  It didn't exactly work out as I'd imagined...

I thought maybe I could fix it by shaking out the curls a little bit.  I was wrong...

After several more attempts to tame the beast, I finally decided to embrace the mess...

I was alone in the house, laughing hysterically at myself.  I can't decide if I wish someone would have been here to share the hilarity or if I'm glad no one had to witness this tragedy in person.  With the help of some mousse and a little time for the curls to settle a bit, I was finally able to look like a normal person again...

They are pretty goofy, skeewompus curls, but at least they are curls!!!  I may need to practice a bit more with this rag roller thing.  Or maybe I should just stay away.  Far away.

Art Therapy

Last night Giovanni was on campus until midnight studying for finals (which as of right now are officially over!).  I could tell he was nervous for this set of tests because he normally doesn't stay on campus that long.  I was busy until midnight as well, only I wasn't being quite as productive.  I started tinkering around with some crafty-type things I've been working on and got totally sidetracked making this...

Wall art for Baby's room!  I love books, birds, and trees...hence the birds and tree made of book pages.  I felt like I was a kid again because I wasn't trying to make anything perfect.  I didn't even know what I was making when I started.  I was just having fun, cutting out shapes and watercoloring them.  I should really do stuff like this more often...it was almost therapeutic!

What do you want me to do with this information?

Last night Giovanni was studying for an exam while I was indulging in my latest obsession.  He looks up at me and sounds kind of excited when he says, "Hey, Tess..."

I tear my eyes away from the computer screen thinking he had something cool to tell me...like that we'd just won the lottery.

Nope.

"There are four types of acute respiratory failure.  Type one is failure to oxygenate.  Type two is failure to ventilate.  Type three is perioperative.  Type four is shock."  


Good to know, Gio.  Good to know.

24 Weeks

So far, pregnancy has meant:

* Nausea like I've never known nausea before

* Giovanni making me do squats every 2 two hours on our road trip to Utah (to prevent bloodclots)

* Only wanting to eat hard boiled eggs for a week...and then never wanting to eat hard boiled eggs again

* Being sure it was a boy...until we found out it is a girl

* Shopping for baby girl things with my mom

* Having a meltdown in the middle of Target because there are just too many strollers/cribs/baby accessories/etc for any sane person to wrap their head around

* Loving waking up at 6 o'clock every morning because I just wasn't tired anymore

* Realizing that waking up at 6 o'clock every morning was just a phase

* Trying not to be horrified that there is a person growing inside my body (Alien, anyone??)

* Finally having an excuse to be tired and moody most of the time

* Being awestruck when I felt her kick for the first time

* Watching Giovanni be awestruck when he felt her kick for the first time

* Getting over the awe and just being really annoyed when she decides to practice soccer drills the second I lay down to sleep at night

* Praying that I don't develop stretch marks in the night

* Wondering why the only place I have developed stretch marks is on the front of my left thigh

* Cleaning out the closet in baby's room to make space for all the clothes, toys, blankets, and other gifts she has been given

* Being so excited when I woke up one morning and realized that I finally look pregnant, and not just fat

* Bringing home a stroller and car seat, then pushing it around the house with a stuffed animal inside because it's just so fun

* Loving listening to Giovanni talk about how excited he is to teach her how to ride BMX/pack a backpack for a 50 mile hike/do a cartwheel/kick a soccer ball/etc/etc/etc 

* Trying not to gain too much weight

* Watching her hiccup on the ultrasound

* Trying to figure out if I can handle birth without an epidural

* Experiencing chronic back pain for the first time ever

* Experiencing heartburn for the first time ever

* Forgetting to take my vitamin and hoping she's not screwed up because of it

* Being so excited to welcome her into the world sometime around December 12! (hopefully)

Dang, we could have had a baby by now...

I realized that it has been almost 9 months since I've posted anything on here, so I thought I'd dust off the old blog.  I usually have a hard time doing anything unless I know I really HAVE to get it done, and since I felt no obligation to feed the internet's greed for trivial familial news, it didn't get done.  

But, here's a little truffle from our younger days for any of you still out there hoping this blog hasn't died a tragic blog death.

Announcing: January's Sculpture Project

So, now that it's halfway through January, I've finally decided what I want to do for my January sculpture project, my first official project of the year not including finishing projects started in 2009.  I'm making a jewelry tree.  Currently most of my jewelry is in a plastic bag, so I thought I would give it a good home.  I don't have any "real" jewelry (i.e. diamonds, gold, silver, etc.), just "costume" type jewelry, but I still want a cool place to keep it other than a bag where everything gets tangled and broken.  In fact, if I didn't have a hot glue gun, one of my favorite pairs of earrings would be in the trash can right now because of that stupid bag!  So, tonight I made the armature, or skeleton, for the tree so it would be strong and sturdy enough to hold the weight of the jewelry.  Here's a picture:

As soon as I can get my hands on another block of clay, I will mold it around the branches to give it a realistic look.  I'm going to add some leaves and puncture small holes along the edges of the leaves to hang my earrings on.  It should turn out pretty cool.  I'll post a picture of the final project when I'm finished.  I'm excited to be making something creative AND practical!  Oh, and the base is just an old circular saw blade that my cousin donated to me for some other project I never got around to doing.  :)  I'm going to leave the blade showing to add some interest. It also adds a touch of irony and perhaps a bit of an environmental statement that the "tree" will be growing through the hole of a saw blade.  Deep.  You can call me a tree-hugger now.

Tamarindo: Nature's Sour Patch Kids

Giovanni served his mission in Puerto Rico, where they would pick and eat fruit from the trees as they walked and avocados grew to the size of your head.  At times he reminisces about the wonderful fruits he would eat and how delicious they tasted ripe off the trees.  Of course I am jealous every time he talks about it.  One fruit in particular that he loved is called a tamarindo.  It looks like this:

They are basically seeds covered with a sweet tangy fruit that almost has the consistency of gummy candy--like fruit snacks.  Well, to Gio's great delight we actually found this wonderful creation at the grocery store last week!  They tasted a bit different than Gio remembers them in Puerto Rico (as we suspected, since they have to travel so far).  Apparently in Puerto Rico, they are sweet, tangy and delectable...but when we popped them in our mouths we got a surprise.  They were so sour!!!  It was pretty funny to watch our faces contort, but all in all, they were delicious.  Gio called them "Nature's Sour Patch Kids."

So we recommend trying them, but preferably straight from the tree!

Paoli Breakfast and The Real Reason I Wanted Sharpies for Christmas

Gio made granola this week with oats, walnuts, banana chips, and dried cherries. So good!

I asked Gio to get me a pack of different colored Sharpies for Christmas. Why did I want Sharpies for Christmas? The possibilities are endless...

Fun with clay...

I took several art classes in high school. I loved drawing, painting, and print work, but my favorite was 3D art, or in other works, sculpting. I'm no prodigy or anything, but I get a lot of satisfaction out of it...the kind of thing where you can get lost for hours and not even notice. I've dabbled it in a little since high school...I carved a plaster sculpture of Mt. Rushmore with the heads of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles instead of the presidents for my brother, Mike, for Christmas in 2005 or 2006 (can't remember which). I wish I had a picture of it, but I never took one. I'm not sure if he even still has the sculpture. Then, last year in January I bought a hunk of clay so I could start a new project: a chess set for my brother-in-law, Justin. It was quite an undertaking to begin with, in fact, Gio didn't think I was serious when I was explaining to him what I wanted to make. Here's the idea: a physics themed set with a bust of Einstein for the King, the equation E=MC2 for the queen, rockets for the bishops, microscopes for the knights, mushroom clouds for the rooks, and apples (symbolizing gravity) for the pawns. I figured I would make one of each out of clay, then make a mold to duplicate the figures exactly. Well, I got farther than Gio expected me to, but I ran into some hiccups with the molding process, and some general laziness, but a year later I'm back in the game! Because of a bad molding technique last year, the rocket broke, and the apple stem fell off. I haven't finished the microscope yet, but here are the pieces I have so far:

In order to complete this project, I will need to invest some substantial dollars into it. The proper molding technique uses supplies which are sort of pricy. Also, I'll need to make a new rocket (which won't be hard). I just need to find a place to buy the goods, and work up the motivation to finish it. Hopefully in the next couple months I'll find both of them. This is one reason that one of my goals for the year is to FINISH one sculpture every month.

Another reason I have that goal is my other unfinished clay project of 2009. Last September or so I pulled out what was left of that hunk of clay to release some steam and find my "happy place." :) I worked on it for a couple of nights, but I ended up getting frustrated with the proportions on the piece I was making. It's a girl standing on a cliff with the wind blowing her hair and her dress. To me it symbolizes that moment right before you make a bad decision...the moment where you realize you haven't jumped yet, and you can still turn around and come down.

The proportions are off because I didn't look at any pictures while I was sculpting. It was just for fun, so I didn't really care if it was perfect, and I didn't want to be bound by an image. I just wanted to see what would come out. I don't have fancy clay tools, so I used a plastic spoon, one of the tongs of a plastic fork, the little wire part of a twist-tie, and my hands. Even though I tried to keep it moist for a while so I could finish it, I waited too long. It's dried out now, so I can't fix the proportion problems, I can only fine sand it a bit and clear coat it for protection. It is what it is.

So, one sculpture a month in 2010 is my goal, and I haven't really thought about January's project yet. I've worked with clay and plaster the most...a little bit with wire, so I'm not even sure which medium to use. I'd like to try something new, but I also want to improve my clay technique. We'll see.

We eat our vegetables...

In keeping with my goal of trying a new recipe every week (so that I can broaden my food horizons and practice my cooking), I decided to try eggplant lasagna. I have made regular lasagna and it turned out really good, so I thought I would try it with eggplant slices instead of noodles. It actually tasted pretty good. To be honest, I was hesitant, but I really liked it! Here's the process and the finished product (the pictures probably don't do it justice, especially if you don't like eggplant):

So that's that...week one: a success. Why eggplant lasagna? I'm not sure. It seems like lately I've had a fascination with vegetables. It amazes me that you can put a seed in the ground and several months later have this perfectly packaged beautiful piece of FOOD! It really is so complex and yet nature does all the work...we just pick it up at the grocery store (or if you're really cool, grow it in your backyard). With so many thousands of processed food products available to us, it's sometimes easy to forget about the vegetables. But how wonderful is nature that the very same things that are good for our bodies grow right out of the ground?? What are we doing spending time and money fabricating what nature already got right? C'mon, people, vegetables are where it's at.

By the way, Tillamook ice cream is also where it's at. Check it out....dessert at the Paoli's: Cookies and Creeeeeeeeeeeeam!

Split Pea Soup

When I got home from work today, my wonderful husband had a surprise for me. Delicious split pea soup simmering away in the crock-pot! It turned out great and I was once again impressed with his cooking skills! I'm a lucky lucky lady! :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Giovanni and I are so excited for 2010! Already it's shaping up to be a great year. Gio's good friend Tyler from high school and his wife Amy came up to Utah from California and spent New Years with us. It was a blast! They brought some fireworks and HUGE sparkler-like things so we set them off at midnight to ring in the new year.

Today Giovanni and I were talking about the upcoming year and our hopes, expectations, and desires. We both had a hard year in 2009, so the beginning of a new year is exciting and hopeful for us! As we were talking about all the things we wanted to achieve this year, we decided to write them down and put them on the fridge to remind us what we are working towards this year. You could call them New Year's Resolutions, I guess, but we prefer to just call them goals. New Year's Resolution has a bad connotation because they are kept so rarely! We decided to each pick eleven goals and call them our 11 before 2011. We jointly decided to work on some main spiritual goals--following the counsel of Alma 34: to counsel with the Lord always, gaining more understanding of principles like faith, repentance, the Atonement, and the love of God. Then we each chose a few personal goals that we wanted to reach by the end of the year. Here's a few of them. Some of them we will both be working on even though it is in our personal goals.

Giovanni's Goals:

Get outside or take a walk each morning to bring peace for the day

Complete P90X (a really hard workout DVD series) by April

Go snowboarding as often as possible

Read one scientific journal article per week

Read one book each month

Tessa's Goals:

Learn to make one new recipe each week

Get down to 150 pounds (finally)

Try to go one month consecutively without watching TV or movies

Get better at Spanish

Compete in a sprint triathlon

Work on my hobby of sculpting by finishing one sculpture each month

Pay off all our debts

Keep a clean and organized home

Keep a log of 2010--written, photograph and video

So as you can see, neither of us have come up with 11 yet, but we're off to a good start. This year is going to bring some great new adventures, milestones, and big changes to our life together, but I think that the hardships of 2009 prepared us and strengthened us. This year Gio will be starting medical school in Kirksville, Missouri, so we will be making our first cross-country move and settling in to a new life in a new town (a tiny town at that!). We're ready for the new year and as always we're excited to spend it together!

Here's a picture for your viewing pleasure....we both look like weirdos, but I had to post it because I laughed so hard when I saw it! Celebrating the New Year...

Stewart Falls

One day in July we decided to take an evening hike up to stewart falls, which is just a mile up from the Timpanogos trail head. It was a wonderful little hike though it got a little cold.

summer fun!

I have wanted to go backpacking all summer with Tess and finally just last month we got to go up into the high Uintas, well actually, we were all prepared to go hike 10 miles but things came up and we left a lot later then planned so we went to the nearest lake we could find that seemed solitary enough, it was just of the the road, it's called Teapot lake. We had a blast and it was a much needed get away where Tess and I could be alone and where she could also unwind a bit before school started. These are just pictures of Tea pot lake. We got up to Tea pot Lake which is just of the Mirror Lake road, at about 6 or so and since all the camp grounds were full we just hiked off into the woods by the lake and spent the evening and the next day fishing.

More summer fun!

This is officially my first time posting on our blog. There is so much that went on this summer I felt it would be a shame not to mention it on our blog. Tess and I kind of got into fishing this summer, we had both done it a little bit when we were young but I had never caught anything before. We went fishing during our Moab trip but it wasn't until we went just up Provo canyon a bit later that we actually caught fish on the Provo river.

Moab or Bust!!

Girl's Camp in my ward was scheduled for the first week in June this year, and as the days grew nearer, some very wise Camp leaders determined that the 5 FEET OF SNOW that was covering even the very roads up to the camp would not melt in only 4 days, so it was postponed. However, seeing as how I had already requested that week off at work, Gio and I decided that this would be the perfect time for our first impromptu road trip/camping trip of the summer! And what better place than warm, sunny, beautiful Moab?! I had never been, so we were pretty excited. This was actually the first time that we tried the MREs. We also used our last gift card from our wedding to buy a new camping stove called the JetBoil system. When we first used the new stove, I was pretty frustrated because we could not get the thing to work! It has a feature where you just press a button and it sparks and ignites the gas. It's really cool and handy when it actually does work! But the first morning we were there it was so cold that it wouldn't spark. And of course, we forgot to bring matches! :) That's a bit of a joke for us now because everytime we've gone camping together we've forgotten to bring matches, one of the most important things. And Gio's an Eagle Scout! But by the time it warmed up a bit, the stove was great and it has worked wonderfully ever since.


We left Provo pretty late, so when we got down to Moab, ate dinner, and found a campsite it was already pitch dark. We just put up our tent and crashed. The next morning, like I was saying, was freezing, so I woke up early (around 5:30) and couldn't get warm enough to go back to sleep. Instead of fighting it, I went outside and to my surprise we had pitched our tent not 15 feet from the Colorado River! It was so beautiful! I let Gio sleep a little longer while I took pictures.



We went fishing that day at Ken's Lake and caught NOTHING, so we decided to pack up and go for a hike close to the lake that takes you up to some waterfalls. We saw some gorgeous plants and flowers along the way.



The next day we drove up to Arches National Park to check out the delicate arch. I was really excited to hike up and see this, and since we didn't get up there til almost sundown, we had to book it up the trail so we wouldn't have to walk back in the dark! It was well worth it, though. When we got to the top, it was so windy that I felt like I would get blown off the side if I wasn't careful. There was one lady who kept screaming things in German and wouldn't take a step for fear she would fall off. Her husband kept screaming back and pushing her because she was blocking everyone's way. I felt so bad for her!





We headed home early the next morning after having a lovely oatmeal breakfast, cooked on our lovely stove which sparked on the first try! Lovely!

All in all, it was a GREAT trip and we had a lot of fun!

Giovanni's Graduation--April 24th and 25th

I'm trying to play catch-up a little since some cool things happened before we started this blog, so I'll start with Gio's graduation. He graduated from Brigham Young University with a BS in Molecular Biology and I couldn't be more proud of him! Way to go Gio! Many thanks to Patricia, Gio's mom, for encouraging him (with love and money!) all along the way.

These are all the 2008 graduates at Commencement on April 24th. I had never been to a BYU graduation ceremony before and one of my friends took advantage of my innocence by remarking, "Man, it's gonna take so long to read all their names!" I flipped out. Then she explained she was joking and that all of the different collages have their own ceremony the next day where they read the names. Whew, close one!

Elder Bendar spoke at Commencement about Learning to Love Learning and how that was the most important thing that the graduates would take with them from their time at BYU. It was a very moving speech.

After Commencement, we ran into Gio's good friend Chris Morales. He grew up with Chris in Glendale, California and their families were very close. It was fun to see him. I think he was there taking pictures for his job. He writes for the newspaper in Salt Lake.

We also ran into our friends Brent and Cassie Rowse. Cassie is actually the one that graduated, but for some reason we only have a picture with Brent. That picture is below.

We had a bit of a photoshoot after that, so I'll just post a few of those pictures next.

The next day was when Gio actually walked across the stage and got his "diploma." It's actually a fake and they send the real one to you in the mail after final exam scores are in to make sure you actually did graduate! Here's a few pictures of that day.

Here's Dave, Katuska, Ethan, Heidi, and Gavin with Gio.

Here's Servio, Lissy, and Aileen with Gio.

Milena and Jonathan with Gio.

I think this is the cutest picture!!

Gio and me

Good Job Giovanni!! We're proud of you!