Back to Business as Usual- well, as usual as it can be

I wish I could say that this week was just back to business as usual, but honestly, what is usual? We didn't have any family in town this week, and were able to focus on some of the things that we had been neglecting from spending a lot of time socializing. We did manage to enjoy ourselves, though.

Sunday was a pretty typical day. We went to church as normal, and spent the rest of the day watching the Olympics. I feel like I am just stuck to the television with the current set up of the coverage. Fortunately, we do have the DVR, so we can record everything and then start it a bit late so that meals and other things not conducive to being done in front of the TV can be done, and we can fast forward through some things. Eventually, we do catch up with "Now", though.

Keira and Ryan snuggling on the couch during our long TV sessions of the Olympics. This is not helping Keira's TV addiction, but at least it is short term.

Usually, I try to go in reverse order when I do my posts, but I need to put Friday's events prior to Saturday, otherwise it won't make a lot of sense.

Friday started out as a pretty normal day. Keira and I had plans to go meet up with Valerie, Katie, and Luke at the mall for some indoor playtime. Valerie is trying to limit Luke's time outside due to his young age, and we could stand to limit ours as well. Also, we need to come up with some decent indoor activities anyway since it gets cold here quick in the fall. We had spent the morning browsing and playing on the indoor playground.

Katie scaled the bear for the first time today. It was nearly impossible to get a decent shot of the two girls playing together.
Keira loves sliding down the popsicle. It is one of her favorite parts of the playarea. While we were at lunch in the food court, I received a call from Ryan. The Mazda would not start, or turn over, or anything. Dead. Great. I immediately packed up Keira and was on my way to sit with Ryan in Dearborn. He had just run into A&W to pick up some lunch to take back to the office on his way back from Windsor, ON. It was a good thing that Ryan was in the US when the car stopped working, because that would have added a whole new dimension to the problem. Fortunately, since we were at the mall, it was easy for me to just get on the road, because had we been at home, Keira probably would have been asleep and he would have just had to get a jump and go straight to the dealership/home. Mazda Roadside Assistance came and gave him a jump, and I followed Ryan back to his office to "guard" the car in his office parking lot. There have been a lot of thefts from his work area, including an F250, so there was no just leaving it run to recharge for a bit unattended. His current office doesn't have a garage area like mine did, where I could have probably just pulled it in there and bought a mechanic lunch to make sure nothing bad happened to it. Keira got to spend some time with Ryan at work, and eventually, we decided that I should leave the truck with Ryan (why we didn't do this immediately, I don't know), and drive the Mazda to the dealership to check it out. We bought the fancy smancy warranty, so maybe whatever was wrong might be covered. Sure enough, when I got there, it was not covered because it was a dead battery. They initially wanted $180 to change the battery- ROBBERY I TELL YOU! I managed to talk them down to around $110 (see- total robbery since I was able to talk them down $70, but I think I did score some pity points from being so pregnant and didn't want me personally to change it myself, which I wasn't going to do anyway), but that still seemed pretty steep to me, so they just jumped it for me and I took it home to fix. We figured we could get a battery from SEARS for much cheaper. So, with SEARS being open until 9, we went over to Maybury and both rode. I pulled Keira in my Stayput gear to get a shot for the annual photo contest.
Then, we went over to SEARS and learned that the battery they carried for the Mazda was a $100 battery! Had I known this, I probably would have let the dealership do it for the extra $10 and be done with it. We didn't get the battery on Friday, because we wanted to do some price comparisons, but as it turned out, it was probably one of the better deals.

Keira and Ryan at the mall playarea just outside Sears on Sat morning.

So, Saturday morning we all went up to Sears to get the battery and bring it home to change it. It was pretty simple to do. After that, Ryan went for a ride at Maybury and Keira and I napped. We met up with Kris and Linda for a late lunch at Red Robin to give her a late birthday present and also Keira for the afternoon so Ryan and I could go see the Dark Knight. It was a pretty cool movie. I am glad I didn't wait to see that one on the small screen. We picked up Keira, and there was a beautiful rainbow as we were getting ready to leave.

I was really trying to line up the end shots of the rainbow to make them look like one whole image, but this was about the best I could do. The rainbow was so huge, we couldn't fit it in the shot.


So this brings us back to Thursday. I started the day with a Dr's appt, and everything is looking well with the new baby. The weather was supposed to be bad most of the afternoon, so Ryan had scheduled a haircut for the evening and went to Planet Rock climbing gym afterwards. I took my chances and met up with a group of ladies from Team Stayput to work on group shots for the photo contest. Kristel's boyfriend, Mike, took the shots on her camera, so I don't have any to post at this time. It was fun to meet up with the other ladies from the team. Not everyone could attend, but getting everyone together for something optional was going to be a struggle anyway. We finished up right before a quick rainstorm. Keira really enjoyed running around in the wind right before the storm started, and it had stopped raining by the time we were home.

On Wednesday, I had a presidency meeting and that pretty much took up the whole morning. Keira napped all afternoon, and we headed over to Maybury to ride in the evening. Ryan's next race is approaching fast!

On Tuesday, Keira and I met up with Lisa and Dominic at Rainbow Recreation for some indoor fun. I just didn't feel like going to a sprinkler park or roasting in the sun today. Keira enjoys playing in the playhouses. Here she is peeking out of one of the larger playstructures with a house in the bottom of it.

Monday was pretty much all business. With our new health care for this year, we elected a plan that offers us a discount for being healthy. To prove that we are healthy individuals, we needed to have a form filled out by our primary care physician, which is really close to our home. I had attempted to have my OB fill out this form when we first learned this, but he didn't really seem comfortable with it since many of the things, like BMI and cholesterol, don't really apply to pregnant people, and he was unsure of how to mark those items. Ryan and I both had appts with our PCPs today. Due to the pregnancy, all of my bloodwork and tests were up to date and I was able to get my form completed. Ryan had to have some labwork done, and will have his completed shortly. The nice thing is that we were able to meet up with Ryan for lunch because of the time of his appt. That was one of the fun things that I enjoyed about our time in Ohio last year- lots of lunches during the workweek as a family. It was possible because the plant and the apartment were not nearly as far away from each other as our condo and his MI office.

That is pretty much our week. This next week is looking pretty busy too, with a decent combo of business and pleasure. Hopefully we will not go through this week (and next) as zombies from staying up late to watch live Olympic coverage. GO TEAM USA. We just watched the 4x100 and it was incredible to see the French go down at the last possible moment and for USA to win the GOLD. Amazing! Who's Talking Now?