I wrote my first computer program.

And this is what it does. A button appears, like so:

Then you push the button and a new window opens that says this:

The name of my program is "Immaturity" and I am ridiculously proud of my achievement.

My husband, however, scoffs and says "There are no images, amateur." Which leads me to break out into a stylized rendition of "Just you wait, Henry, Higgins" which goes something like:

"Just you wait, Silas Snider, just you wait!
You'll make me brownies but you pleas will be too late!
You'll be broke and I'll have money
because MY programming's funny!"

Anyways. I'm proud of me.

The Honeymoon Mustard is Gone!

This title probably requires a little bit of explanation, but not much. This is no metaphor. I mean, quite simply, the bottle of mustard that we bought on our honeymoon is gone. Today I went to make the amazing better-than-subway sandwich I've been making every day for the past week (it's my newest craving) and I used the very last bit of the honeymoon mustard. And it made me sad. Let me tell you why.

When Silas and I got married we had no money. I don't mean we had a little money. I mean we had no money. Silas had just finished his last month of Ameri-corp and didn't have a job yet.  He had his last Ameri-corp check mailed to Oregon, but none of the banks would cash it since he didn't belong to any west coast banks so we had no source of money until we got back to Pittsburgh. We paid for the rental truck but had no money for gas or hotels or food.  The morning of the wedding we had about 20 dollars to our collective names. But God provided for us.

Through the generosity for friends and family all of our needs were met and without us even having to ask. The morning after the wedding we went to the store and bought a Styrofoam cooler and all the makings for sandwiches. And that's what we ate everyday for lunch, and a couple times for dinner, for our entire 10 day road trip. I never got sick of it and every time I ate a sandwich I was was thankful that God had so wonderfully provided for Silas and I.

It's been over 5 months since then. Silas got a marvelous job two weeks after we arrived in Pittsburgh he now has lots of opportunities ahead of him. God has blessed us with innumerable blessings and I was reminded of that as I threw away the empty bottle of honeymoon mustard. I was a little sad because I really enjoyed the adventure that was our honeymoon and I'm sad that it's over.

But then I was also encouraged, because I know that our road trip was just the beginning of our adventure. We'll have more over the years and we'll continue to see God's goodness in our lives as we watch him provide for us. I'm so glad I get to have this adventure and I'm so glad I'm sharing it with Silas.

To Whom It May Concern (Namely, everyone I've talked to in the last two months.)

To full appreciate this you must imagine this letter being read with a very British accent i.e. Emma Thompson.

Dear World,

My recent gravidity has caused me to behave in ways I am less than proud of. My Mother, however, always taught me to take responsibility for my actions, whatever the cause. So I write this as an apology to my husband, my friends, random strangers on the street, and to the lovely people who read my blog and who have had the misfortune of experiencing my grumpy and generally horrible manners over the past few months.

I am now feeling much, much better and am ready to take on the world with my former patience and cheerfulness. To my husband: I would like to promise lots of tasty treats to make up for the endless weeks of craziness from me. I realize that's A LOT of cookies, but I shall endeavor to do so, regardless.  To my friends: I am ready to leave my house once more and look forward to seeing you out, about and at parties at my house.  To random people on the street: Your fly is unzipped. To my blog readers: I  promise that I shall again be capable of blog posts that do not include complaining about the injustices perpetrated toward me by the child in my womb.

With love and cupcakes,
Elisabeth

My Husband is Cute

Me: You left something important at home today.
Silas: I did?
Me: Yes.
Silas: What?
Me: Look down at your hands.
Silas: I left that at home?
Me: Yes, yes you did.
Silas: Yay!!!
Me: What?
Silas: I was afraid I lost it on the bus.

The Snider Family at 10 Weeks

What's going on with Baby Snider:
Right now Baby Snider is about the size of a strawberry. In scientific terms, Baby Snider is no longer an "embryo" but a "fetus"and now looks much less like an alien and much more like the tiny person that Mama and Daddy Snider will get to meet in 7 months. Baby Snider has little teeth forming in his or her mouth and there are precious little finger prints on Baby Snider's tiny hands. Right now Baby Snider looks something like this:

What's going on with Mama Snider:
Right now Mama Snider continues to feel not so great. She's been feeling a little less tired but much sicker. She can't wait to get to the second trimester, only 4 more weeks till the morning sickness and exhaustion fade into a distant memory. Time seems to be going fast. Ten weeks gone already! A full 1/4 done with the baby baking. Mama Snider's body is happy to be pregnant, though, and has already blossomed a very, very large baby bump. Right now Mama Snider looks like this:

What's going on with Daddy Snider:
Right now Daddy Snider continues his usual routine of working at Showclix with the addition of spending a little extra time rubbing Mama Snider's back and telling her not to be so grumpy. He recently bought the family an xbox and is thoroughly enjoying his purchase. On Friday he's flying to New York to interview at Google and he's very excited about seeing the Googleplex there. He's also enjoying his last few months of having long hair since he's shaving his head this Spring and donating it Locks of Love. Right now Daddy Snider looks something like this:

Confessions of a Headband Hater

You know when you say that you hate something and your sister-in-law tells you you're just jealous? Sometimes your sister-in-law is right.

Here's the truth. I love headbands. LOVE THEM. I love headbands with bows. I love headbands with flowers. I love headbands with feathers. I even love headbands with with shiny blingy stuff on them!  Deep inside me there is a Blair Waldorf just begging to claw her way to the surface and satisfy her need for headbands in every size, shape, color and design!

Here is more of the truth. I cannot wear headbands. Put one on my head for more than 2 minutes and I have a splitting headache that will not go away and if left untended will quickly turn into a raging beast capable of sacking Carthage single handedly!  Yes, I have what is commonly referred to as a sensitive head. Which makes no sense because I can wear scarves (which sometimes are almost as cute as headbands.) with no problem. But pop a headband on me and I'm destined to cry.

Here is even more more truth, if you can handle it. I am ridiculously jealous whenever I see someone wearing a cute headband. Yes, yes that does mean you, Natalie. And you, Elizabeth. And especially you, Remy and Christina! You all disgust me with your cuteness that I am unable to attain! Oh yes, guilty of one of the deadly sins, right here.

Here is even more more more truth. I want boys. From my body, I mean, I want to have seven sons. I like boys. I think they're pretty easy going. They break things - yes. They hurt themselves and others - yes. They run around screaming and pretending to be Indians/monsters/soldiers/zombies - yes. But they will (hopefully) be relatively drama and emotion free. Oh yes. I like boys. But I want just three girls so I can live vicariously through them and turn them into little headband wearing Blairs.

The end.

The Evening and the Morning

Disclosure: This blog post is full of complaining. Not I-hate-my-life complaining. Not even I-wish-this-would-change complaining. Just I-feel-better-when-I-laugh-about-things-that-happen-to-me complaining. It's all about finding the humor. Carry on.

I was tired and ready to go to bed at 9:30 last night. I didn't go to bed until 2:30 this morning.

Last night I climbed the stairs to my bed fully intending to fall asleep within the next 30 minutes. I usually talk to Silas while I fall asleep - but he was out with friends so I brought a couple pregnancy books up with me so I could read myself to sleep. I got really absorbed in this one book and I soon realized I had been reading it for over an hour and I was falling asleep. Perfect, I thought, just what I had intended. And I got up to turn off the light.

No sooner had  I crawled back into bed and swathed myself in my big soft comforter than I realized Oh crap! I have to pee. If this is TMI for you I highly suggest you not read my blog over the next nine months, as I really do think that this phenomenon of me-having-to-pee-and-then-telling-you-about-it is going to stop any time in the near future.

Now, there are four stages of having-to-pee-in-the-middle-of-the-night. The first is realization. It is usually accompanied by expletives and a profound desire to either kill yourself or wet the bed.  The second is denial. This is when you tell yourself you're just paranoid and you definitely do NOT have to pee. You are a human! You can control your urges! You can wait until the morning! Sadly, the third stage usually doesn't take place until about 20 minutes after the first stage. This is acceptance. And it usually happens when you finally come to the conclusion that you simply cannot go to sleep while containing lake Erie inside your body and that raging storm inside you must be quieted. The fourth stage is hate. Hate yourself for not getting up 20 minutes sooner. Hate the air for being so cold. Hate the stairs for trying to kill you. Hate the light in the bathroom. Hate the toilet seat for being so freaking cold. Hate the neighbors, who seem to be having a good time downstairs, for not being as tired/miserable as you are. Hate the stairs again.

Anyway, all that happened at 11:00. Start to finish that takes about 30 minutes. So by 11:30 I was tucked away in my bed again. It took awhile to get back in sleep mode but it finally happened and I began to slip out of conciseness... and then my husband got home. Our stairs are really loud. I don't think I realized till last night just how loud they were! Don't listen, I told myself, stay asleep... slip back into happy oblivion! I knew I could do this. Just stay asleep until Silas comes up. Ok. Hmmm. Ladadadada. I wonder how long it will take him. NOOOOOO! GO BACK TO SLEEP SELF! I ORDER YOU! Crap, I'm waking up. No, no, I'm awake.

"You're home sooner than I expected." I wonder if he can hear me downstairs. "Yep." Contact established. "Are you coming up soon?" I'm fully awake now and want to unload everything I learned from the book I was reading that has been in the back for my mind this whole time. "Yep." Good, good, this won't be so bad. Twenty minutes later "Are you coming up?" "Yep." Ten minutes later I go down stairs "Why did you get up! You look like you just woke up! You should have stayed asleep. I'll be right up!" I laugh "Oh, honey, I have NOT gone to sleep yet." Ten more minutes down stairs while Silas finishes a project.

Finally about 12:30 we head up to bed. I'm all excited to talk - Silas clearly wants to go straight to sleep. Bickering over whether we should talk or whether we should sleep ensues. Silas wins and goes to sleep.  It is now well past 1 AM.

I realize I'm thirsty. Really thirsty. Begin the four steps of I'm-thirsty-in-the-middle-of-the-night which are pretty much the same as the four steps of having-to-pee-in-the-middle-of-the-night. Except for some reason I never made it back to bed. I got side tracked and spent an hour on the couch checking facebook, blogs, and generally wasting time. I finally feel sleepy and head up to bed. Again.

I would like to say that at this point I finally went to sleep and proceeded to get a good 9 hours of sleep. But something horrible happened. As soon as I started to fall asleep my tummy grumbled. AHHHHH! NOOOO!!!! THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING TO ME! I completely skip step 3 of being-starving-in-the-middle-of-the-night because there is absolutely no denying that my stomach just yelled at me. And if I force myself to go back to sleep (I've done it before.) I am going to be violently ill in the morning from letting my blood sugar drop too low.

(See, I have this baby inside me that sucks all the nutrients from my body so I have to eat more often to keep my blood sugar up so I don't puke, pass out, or pass out in my puke.)

So, I resist the urge to wake my poor, exhausted husband up and make him bring me food and I drag my butt out of bed for the umteenth time in 4 hours. I want a banana. Of course I ate the last banana the previous afternoon. I look in the fridge. I just want something light. Penne and chicken in vodka sauce. Nice. Not light. Rice and poppyseed chicken. Nice. Not light. Bowl of homemade frosting. Nice. Definitely not light. Cup of yogurt. Perfect.

I curl up on the couch to eat my yogurt. I wrap myself in a blanket and proceed to open up my laptop. Stalk my friends... and my friend's friends on facebook. Complain to the Internets that I'm not asleep. Finish my yogurt. GO TO BED. Yes. Really. I honestly went to bed. Finally.

Only to be woken by my husband at some ridiculously early hour. He overslept and was late for work because I had kept him up arguing last night and now he needed me to drive him to work then return the zipcar. No time for shower. No time for eating. Just time for driving. I did however, avail myself of the opportunity of having him trapped in a car with me for fifteen minutes and unloaded everything about the book I wanted to tell him last night

I'm home now. I'm tired. I need to do laundry because Silas has no more clean clothes. But I'm going to bed instead because I simply cannot do laundry in this state. That is all. Goodnight/morning/afternoon/Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa, Martin Luther King Jr. Day/ect...

At 8 Weeks

 The Cons

•  I am tired, ridiculously tired, all the time. I go to bed exhausted. I wake up in the morning wanting to take a nap on the couch, an urge which I frequently yield to.  Even going up the stairs makes me want to haul out a sleeping bag and collapse on the floor!
• I've learned that I need to restrict myself to one outing a day or face reality of being an overly tired pregnant person who lacks mood stability.
• This child is sapping me of all energy and it's not even born yet!
  
•  I feel sick unless I'm shoving food down my throat. Best cure for morning sickness I ever heard of.  In addition to the bagels and cream cheese cravings I am now also desiring red popsicles with a passion that can only be described as single-minded. 
• Last week it was fudgesicles. I ate the whole box, pretty much by myself. I even resorted to eating them when Silas wasn't around so he wouldn't ask me for one so there would be more for me!
• I'm not particularly proud of that fact.
  
• My back hurts, my neck hurts, my head hurts.
• Last week Silas rolled over at 7 AM to rub my back because I was complaining about it.
• SEVEN AM! I think he loves me.
  
• I'm itching. All over my body and it's horrible. I have to take my clothes off and apply lotion twice a day.
• And there aren't even mosquitoes involved.
  
• I cry about anything and everything at the drop of a hat. My poor husband.  
• When I apologized about the mood craziness last night he said "It's ok. I love you. And I knew what I was getting into. *pause* Well, actually, I didn't. But it's still ok, honey." 
• Isn't he the sweetest! That pretty much makes me want to start bawling right now. 
• I love my husband.
  

The Pros

• In eight months I'm going to have a little Snider baby.

And all in all I'd say the Pros far outweigh the Cons.

Silliness With Jason

For New Year's Silas and I drove up to Iowa to visit my family there. It was a whirlwind of a trip; we left on Thursday and were back by Sunday. But it was really nice to see everyone, especially Jason, who I hadn't seen since his bone marrow transplant in the Fall. Here are some silly picture we took during our visit. I love the Photo Booth on my mac and I love this little boy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you want to take a few seconds to pray for Jason's continuing recovery that would be great, as his family received some confusing test results this week. The numbers could mean nothing or they could mean some not so nice things. Thanks :)

Peace out.

2009; A Year In Review

In January:
I had no idea my life was about to be turned on its head.
I went to a ball.
I found out my cousin, Jason, had cancer and flew to Iowa to be with him.
I miss my brother while I was gone.
I also began my relationship with Silas, but my blog wasn't allowed to know about that yet.

In February:
I continued to live in Iowa and spend my days at the hospital with my cousin.
I started to realize that 2009 was going to be a huge year for me.
I vlogged for the first time.
There wasn't really much blogging going on in February because I was really busy with my family.

In March:
I decorated my room and posted pictures. Also, if you look you'll see there's a picture of Si stuck to the chalk board, so I was starting to let hints of Silas appear on my blog...
I discovered Josh Ritter.
I posted about Katie on her birthday.
I had my first Reuben and got involved with RUF.
I made this cute hat.

In April:
I got a little more overt about Silas.
As I prepared to go home, my aunt and uncle took me out to eat as a going away present.
I flew home to Oregon.
I made Cake Pops.
I went to the beach with my family.

In May:
May was a super crazy month. That is all there is to it.
My brother was born.
I made my Mom a cheese cake for Mother's Day.
My brother Daniel turned 14 and I made him a Millennium Falcon cake.
My brother, Rainor, and I started exploring breakfast places in Florence.
Silas proposed to me and made his premiere on this blog.

In June:
Mostly I blogged about wedding plans...
The Shoes
I turned 20 and made trifle. Silas also sent me chocolates.
I went shopping for wedding dress fabric with my girls.
The Veil
Margaret came over and we put together my dress.
The Invitations

In July:
I made these amazing muffins.
I had this hysterical conversation with Silas's little sister, Hanni. 
I made a test wedding cake. 
I drew a comic of my life.

In August:
I did not blog very much. Whether this was because of business due to wedding plans or lack of non-wedding inspiration, I know not.
I went on my last vacation with my family. 
Walter turned 2.
And of course, I got married.
The my camera broke on our honeymoon :/

In September:
We arrived in Pittsburgh.
I posted the 4 pictures I had from our roadtrip.
I let you tour our home. Part 1 and Part 2.
I posted a bunch of silly pictures of Silas and I.
The G20 came to Pittsburgh and craziness ensued.
Also, I began posting wedding pictures:
The Wedding; Part 1

In October:
The Wedding; Part 2
The Wedding; Part 3
The Wedding; Part 4
I discovered the secret to perfect pie crust.
Mildly Amusing Musings got it's own domain name and I decided to participate in NaBloPoMo in November.

In November:
I posted alot of interesting things. I'm not sure if alot happened in November, or if it just seemed like it because I blogged every single day.
Silas taught me to use bullets.
I made Glazed Apples and Sausage.
I joined the Bone Marrow Registry  in honor of my cousin, Jason, and explained why.
I discovered Joanna Newsom.
I discovered the perfect bread recipe.
Silas, Britt, and I went to a Toby Mac and Relient K concert.
I discovered I was lactose intolerant.
MARGARET SENT US CHILI!
I posted pictures from the wedding booth.
I made dairy-free pizza.
I completed NaBloPoMo! Yay!

In December:
I butchered my hand.
We got Google Phones!
Silas and I found out we're going to have a baby.
I posted embarrassing pictures of Ellie, Margaret and I. 
Silas and I have an awesome Christmas. 
Then we packed it up and went to Iowa City to spend New Year's with my cousin, Jason, and the rest of my family.

This has been an incredible year for me. I hope that next year will be every bit as wonderful and I hope the same for you. Blessings!