(Crossposted to Facebook and my blog as an experiment. I think.)

We had a very nice time in Virginia. The cabin was sort of nestled into a small hollow, so there were some stairs to deal with when loading/unloading the car, but it was also right on the trailhead to one of the lake trails, so the location was really quite good.

We had occasional sun….

…but mostly clouds, and one 24-hour period of rain, rain and more rain.

We dealt with the lousy weather just fine. We were still able to hike on the overcast days (although long walks make me feel like my uterus is about to fall out, these days. Sorry for the TMI, but what a weird feeling!)

We had brought along a ton of books, games (Jag beat me in our Settlers of Catan tournament, boohoo), knitting, crossword puzzles, etc, and the fires in the evening were very cozy. I also had a chance to play with my totally unexpected wedding gift from Jag, a Golding drop spindle. I loved it so much, my poor spinning wheel never made it out of its backpack! (For you non-spinners, Golding makes the Cadillacs of drop spindles, wheels and looms. Check out their web site and drool.)

Miranda was about as good as a cranky kitty stuffed into a carrier and then driven for 3 hours to an unfamiliar location can be. She was only really annoying the first two nights, and then she seemed to settle down for the rest of the trip and slept through the night, more or less. She was very sociable and enjoyed looking out the cabin windows.

And that’s it! We’re settling back into the house now and trying to get used to this whole “husband” and “wife” thingy. 🙂

We’re about to dash off on the honeymoon, but thanks to Robin having taken some pictures with my camera (THANK YOU!!!) here are a few informal shots of our wedding.

Things could not have gone more perfectly. The folks at Eno…the florist…the minister…the photographer….the dinner…the cake!…everything was completely, unbelievably snag-free. Having just the immediate family and grandmas made it so nice and intimate, I can’t imagine having done it any other way. Everyone looked great, and it was a wonderful time.

I didn’t mean to wear my shawl DURING the ceremony, but the minister got stuck in the (@*#&$(*&$(&@(*$@ Duke St construction traffic and got there just in the nick of time, and I forgot to take it off, so…

Before

During

After

Pretty much everything on our color-coded wedding checklist has gone from red to green by now. Supposedly, we have a minister, a place to get married, a florist delivering flowers to said site, a photographer to take pictures of it all, and a bakery delivering a cake to the restaurant where we’re having dinner, where a room is said to be reserved for us. We still have to pack for the honeymoon and clean the house so I don’t die of embarrassment when the families arrive, but we’re definitely getting there.

I haven’t posted any dorky self-timer photos of me in newly completed knitwear lately, so here’s one. It’s my handspun Carol’s Clever Little Shawl, finished 4 days before the wedding, blocked and ready to go.

It’s also my Something Blue!

For my Something Old and Something Borrowed, I have my grandma’s strand of pearls, and I’m borrowing my mom’s pearl earrings that happen to be a really good match.

And I have lots of Something News…my dress…my shoes…even new undies! However, I’ll spare you the excitement of my wedding skivvies and show you the awesome hair comb I’ll be wearing. I bought it from an Etsy store. The seller lives in Melbourne, Australia, and I wasn’t sure it would get here in time, but it did, with over a week to spare. I adore it.

Time to go over the list one more time…I’m sure there’s something I’m forgetting…

I have choked down almost a liter of Pedialyte so far today, in addition to a full glass of diluted Gatorade (and a couple small glasses of flat ginger ale and a glass of water). Please GO AWAY NOW.

Yesterday afternoon I was planning to blog about this past weekend, about how Jag and I went to the state fair on Saturday and met the Barrel Monster, about the great brunch at my parents’ yesterday with my Grandma and “Greg” and Nate in attendance, and the fact that we were supposed to finally get our marriage license this morning. Then “IT” showed up. After talking to everyone who was at brunch, I’m pretty sure “IT” is a case of gastroenteritis/rotovirus rather than food poisoning, since me and Jag have eaten identical food for pretty much the entire weekend and neither he nor anyone else is sick.

I have not thrown up this much in…I can NEVER remember ever throwing up this much. Maybe when I was a little kid. I’m a person who will fight nausea for hours rather than just go barf and get it over with, but this was uncontrollable. Things eased off by around 3am, and since then I’ve been dozing and waking myself up every 20-30 mins to take a tiny sip of watered down Gatorade. I am so thirsty I could cry. I am fantasizing about popsicles and lemon Italian ices. I just don’t want to drink too much at once and then start the cycle again.

I’m going to send Jag out later this morning for Pedialyte popsicles if he can find any, or just a bottle of regular Pedialyte and some popsicles and ices, and some BRAT diet components. I guess I’m grateful that this is happening THIS weekend instead of wedding weekend, but I’m too miserable to be very thankful. At least a regular stomach flu like this can’t hurt the Bean, according to the google, unless I have a fever (don’t) or am severely dehydrated (no leg cramps so far).

ugh.

It turns out that the types of OTC cold remedies you can take while pregnant are really really limited. So much for my usual strategy of hibernating for a day or two with a bottle of NyQuil. (Big “N”! Little “y”! etc) At least I can still have tea and honey.

Today’s ultrasound confirmed what we had suspected from the Week 12 ultrasound: it’s a boy Bean!

Ultrasounds are apparently the only time you can post naked pictures of your baby on the internet and not get arrested, so here’s the proof!

We also got a few 3D images of the face (which no longer resembles Strongbad) and the little crossed feet. I totally think he looks like Jag.

Let’s hope he doesn’t end up with his daddy’s size 15s!

The baby is still measuring about a week ahead of the “official” due date. The only anomaly found in the ultrasound was an enlarged left kidney. I’m fretting over this (probably far, far more than I have any reason to). We have a follow-up ultrasound scheduled in 10 weeks to check on things; it’s more than likely to resolve itself by then, but Google is most definitely not your friend in situations like this.

We met with the wedding minister this evening and she was completely wonderful. I’m confident that the ceremony will be wonderful and deeply meaningful to both us and to our families.

Now to feed the Miranda and get to bed.

Tomorrow starts Turnip Week (week 17) for the Bean, according to the babycenter.com How Big is Your Baby? slideshow. I think this is my favorite food item comparison, at least until Rutabega Week (week 25).

The Bean is the size of a turnip this week

Tomorrow is also when we’ll be having the level II ultrasound, which barring any excessive modesty on the Bean’s part should probably give us a definitive gender reading as well as detailed views of the brain and other organs and some hopefully less scary face shots. I’m looking forward to this one.

The wedding planning stuff is in full insanity, I mean, swing. I ordered some shoes (finally) and froofy girly wedding stockings this weekend, and we met with the florist yesterday and got the flower stuff settled. The silver tussy-mussy bouquet holder Jag’s mom bought me came in on Friday by some miracle, so we were able to take that with us and just leave it with the florist to make sure the bouquet will fit. Tomorrow after work, we meet with the wedding minister to discuss the ceremony. And Tuesday morning at 8am, we have a 30-minute appointment to do some tastings and make the cake arrangements at Mad Hatter. I think there are still some details to hash out with the restaurant, and I still need to buy some combs for my hair. And I’m still knitting on my “something blue” shawl, which I want to have available in case it’s chilly on the wedding day. I’m way more than halfway there now, but I really need to get this done so I’m not blocking and drying it at the last minute.

In the meantime, I bought a bunch of autumn leaf garlands and other decorations at Michael’s (50% off!) to spruce up the wedding site, and we’ve spent many hours cleaning up the study and its closets and moving stuff out of the craft room/future nursery into the study and other parts of the house. It’s slow going due to the sheer amount of old paperwork that has to be sorted and shredded, but we’ve moved all my fabric (which filled up fifteen 15″x15″ wire cube units and now lives in an almost equal number of big plastic bins) and one of the bookshelves out of the nursery. I’ll be working on the yarn next. At least yarn is relatively light.

Does anyone need a nice set of computer speakers (with subwoofer) or a black wooden double-drop-leaf table from IKEA (a little banged up, but could easily be repainted)? If you say yes, they’re yours.

In my excitement yesterday, I neglected to post a picture of Jag’s ring, which we picked up last night and which is also very nice. It was a semi-custom job; it needed to be made extra-wide for his big ole hands, and he chose to have an outer band of white gold, with the center braid in red, white, and yellow gold. I think it came out really great!

OK, yeah, we’ve already paid the minister and submitted the fee for the site, and the honeymoon reservations are made, and the photographer is lined up, and the dinner location is set, but having the engagement ring really just kinda made my day. 🙂 I can haz fiancé!

Yes, it was very romantic, on bended knee. 😀 😀