There, we fixed it.

For a second, I thought we were idiots.


Our a/c has been struggling lately - side note: You know what? When I mention that our a/c isn't working well, how about you don't say, "Yeah, nobody's is" or anything to that effect. It's not that I don't have empathy for other people in this stupid-hot weather (I do! everyone is hot and I get that), it's that I'm 8 months pregnant, I'm sweaty, I'm hungry, and I'm in a bad mood about it. Okay, being hungry only sort of matters in this particular situation, nonetheless it's a state of being that I am constantly in these days and it can be unpleasant.


For the record, our a/c isn't "broken" "yet". It cools to a pleasant 74 at night, it's during the hot part of the day (111 yesterday! wtf?) that it won't get below 80, which isn't SO bad if you're just sitting. It's when you have to move around or use the stove/oven (this is where being constantly hungry can be unpleasant) that it gets stupid-hot.


Anyway, so I thought we were idiots. For just a second. Then I started sweating and decided that we aren't. Here's what happened: We went to the store to buy a fan so that Bryan and I can each have one blowing on us constantly. The fans are on the same aisle as the air filters. You may see where this is going. 


Me: "How long has it been since we changed our air filter?"
Bryan: "I dunno. How often are you supposed to change them?"
Me: "I dunno. Do you think that makes a difference in the temperature?"
Bryan: "I dunno. Let's get one just in case."
Since having this conversation though, I've googled how often you're supposed to change your air filter and I got results ranging from every 30 days to every 6 months. So I still don't know.


We elected to purchase a new air filter on the off-chance that it had been too long. How do you know it's been too long? When the dirt and lint build up on your current filter is so thick that it can speak to you. It had been too long. We changed the filter, and Bryan did some more research about increasing a/c efficiency. It turns out that if you open all the vents, it circulates the air better. Seems obvious. Not to us! So we opened the vents. We thought our problems were solved and we devised a plan to tell our friends and family that we had a repair man come out and fix it rather than admit that we're just dumb. 


Well, as it turns out, we never got the chance to lie to our friends and family. It's still 80 degrees and I'm sticking to my chair. Only because I already sat down and forgot to bring the fan with me. At least we have a clean filter though! And, if you stand right under a vent it feels real nice. And now we each have a fan. And 80 degrees can actually be quite pleasant with the fan blowing in addition to the vents and ceiling fans, in fact it can even be a little chilly if you're just sitting, so I'm not complaining at all. We also have discovered the positive effect of taking a cold shower, which is a double bonus because it forces me to take a shower at least once per day. Don't judge me.


Cost of DIY repair: $30 for the fan and air filter
What the repair man quoted us: $69 for the service call, then who knows what it would cost for the actual "repair"


I think it's safe to say:
Team Hoskins - 1
A/C Repair Man - 0


We're gonna have to get another fan for Mylo. 


I'm kidding, if it's still this hot when he gets here, we will definitely have a professional come out. I don't want anyone thinking I'm a bad mama right off the bat. I'm sure there will be plenty of "oops his diaper is on backwards" and "don't eat that!" and "I don't know how he got that bruise, but there's a chunk missing from our coffee table and I think it may be related" in the future to prove that. 


Oh, and we have super nice neighbors. They offered suggestions on how to fix the a/c - Drew is what some may call "handy", while we are definitely not. AND they offered us a place to stay for the night if it got too hot. Thank you to Drew and Jennifer! :)

Quarter of a Century

Can I just say that I've never looked forward to Winter in my life? I'm perfectly happy if I never see snow again. That is, until I experienced being 7 1/2 months pregnant in the second hottest Summer North Texas has ever seen. And we haven't even finished August yet! Our home a/c just can't keep up - we asked it nicely to go down to a comfortable 75 degrees and it can't seem to get any lower than 81. FAN-tastic. Literally, I have to take a fan with me wherever I go in the house. 

Anyway, so I've never looked forward to Winter until now. Especially because yesterday was my birthday and Bryan got me this sweet new hat! 

I Went with funny face because none of the smiley pictures I took were satisfactory. 

Also I'm wearing my Mario t-shirt standing in my Mario themed room. I should take this opportunity to remind you that I am a 25 year old female. 

What?

It was pretty much the best birthday ever. Brit-the-Bestie came down for a surprise visit to come to the baby shower and take me out for birthday cheesecake. She and Bryan coordinated this behind my back, and although there was a brief scare that I may have found out the plan (I didn't), it all worked out in the end.

I also bought myself a Cricut - which is pretty much the bomb dot com when it comes to crafting supplies. And you know how I love a good deal - it's a $250 thingy that I got on Ebay for $60! And as a special bonus, there were 4 coupon inserts in the Sunday paper this week. Ebay and the Dallas Morning News must have known it was my birthday. 

The rest of my birthday included Star Wars, Super Mario, the biggest Half Price Books ever, cupcakes, crafts, office supplies, and Harry Potter all thanks to Bryan! So yeah, it was pretty awesome.

And now that it's over I'm just a 25 year old sweaty pregnant lady. Sweatin' for two, like a boss.

Baby Shower #1

We had Mylo-party #1 this last weekend and it was such a good time! Since both of our families are huge, we split the showers into one for my side and one for Bryan's side. Big shout out thank you to Barbara, Terri, Lindsay, Jenny, and Becka for helping put it all together :) 


We invited men come to the shower too because Mylo's a boy and I didn't want him to feel lonely. Also, it was more of a party than a "shower", so that was super fun. Beer and margaritas FTW! Well, not for me, but for everyone else.

And now for pictures!

Errbody getting food ready! Barbara is just testing out the margaritas. You know, just to make sure they're safe. She can always be counted on to take one for the team ;)

Onesie clothes line!

It's hard to see, buy my fave is the pink one on the end that says "don't judge me". That was Jenny's. Well, not Jenny's onesie, but one that Jenny made. 

This might be my favorite bit:

It's from a bakery, so no judging my family! At one point it said "Mylo", but then Texas Summer happened and the icing melted into a blobby swirly mess. If you look real hard you can kinda see it. Maybe we can get it on Cakewrecks and Mylo's party #1 can be etched in internet history forever! Or maybe it already is...

Holy balls look at all them presents!

Mylo is gonna be all stocked up!

I love that my friends embrace how geeky I am, and what a fun little geekling I will most certainly produce.

I opened a couple of gifts, but Bryan was way more fun to watch. 

Bryan: "Hey look, bottle toppers!" 

Me: "Um, those are nipples." 

Bryan: "Hey look, nipples!"

This, of course, has nothing to do with nipples. It's a car seat base which is equally as important as nipples.

Nipples.

And one last picture:

Robin, Brit, Andrew, me, and my big ol' belleh! 

I wasn't great about taking pictures the whole night, so this is really the only posed one, but I like it. 

Thanks to everyone who came and for all the awesome gifts. Mylo's gonna be one well dressed lil dude rollin' in style in his sweet new stroller! We have one more shower coming up soon and then we can finish putting his room together!

Bear-Cut Round 2

Since we have a baby on the way (omg 2 months!), we have been looking for ways to save money lately because, as it turns out, babies are quite the money pit. One of those ways is to avoid the $60 professional groom for Bear. You may remember the last time we tried home-grooming, though...


This time I used scissors instead of an electric razor. He was a good boy, as per usual, and let me cut away as he just sat there in my lap. So without further ado:

Before:

He wouldn't come out from under our glider...I think he suspected it wouldn't end well if he did. Just look at all that hair though! Poor guy, that's no way to go through a Texas Summer.

After:

Okay, so it's not the greatest job. He got fidgety when I got up to his face, so that's why it's all uneven. His fault.

...

My poor dog.

In actuality, he likes it. He is more energetic outside and doesn't get overheated as easily - a vast improvement from his last DIY haircut that resulted in him hiding under our bed and not eating for 2 days.

From September Til Now

Well, it's been nearly a year since I updated the blog-o-rama. I suppose I just got busy and kinda forgot about it...So much has happened though! Let's do a quick recap of the past 9 months:


Last fall I painted 4 new murals: 

Fairies! 

Tree House! It's an under-the-stairs crawl space converted into a kids play area. Love it!

Ariel! 

Flowers! This isn't as much of a mural as it is accents painted around the room.

I am currently working on a new website, meghanhoskins.com, so stay tuned for more pics of all the murals I've done - maybe one day I can be a successful artist!

Last fall Bryan went to Nashua/Boston to visit his best friend, Daniel, who moved up there a couple of years ago. 

He was really excited to see all the different colors of leaves. There aren't any pictures of him and Daniel together because "men don't do that".

And then it was Christmas! 

Bryan Claus

Bear-a-Claus

Christmas plywood character cut-out overload! But since Wall-E and Up are in my top five favorite movies, I forgive them. Because I know they care about my forgiveness and approval.

I would also like to thank all of my friends and family who ordered holiday cookies from me last Christmas! I was cookie-making in almost all of my spare time, but it was totally worth it and you guys are awesome.

After Christmas we had snowpocalypse 2011. Four days straight of not driving anywhere because Texans just don't know what to do when it snows/ices. I'm not making fun, I'm one of them. You actually may remember this from the news, it was Superbowl weekend.

This car is actually parked in the road (note the mailbox). I'm assuming that they couldn't get enough traction to get up the small curb to get in the driveway. 

The ice - at least 3" thick here- hiding secretly under the 8" of snow. 

Our backyard on the 3rd or 4th day after we were done playing. We are adults without children...what?

So that was all fun and games until...

My office flooded...

From the ceiling. Twas a burst pipe due to the cold weather I'm told. This took 100% of my time and energy to deal with, so I suppose this could be a contributing factor to the lack of blog updating. 

Oh, that and I'm pregnant. They aren't lying when they say it's exhausting! 

This was taken about 2 months ago. I'm a lot bigger now - just in time for Texas Summer! I've already lost count of the number of days it's gotten over 100 degrees, thank goodness for air conditioning!

When we found out I was pregnant we booked a baby-cation/baby-moon trip of awesomeness as one last big trip for just the two of us. We went on a Southern Caribbean cruise that left out of San Juan, PR. It was the best! Lemme tell you, a cruise is the BEST value vacation to go on when you're pregnant - ALL you can eat, ALL the time! Here are a few highlights, we took a zillion pictures but I won't bore you with all of 'em.

We are happily riding the bus in Barbados!

Big ol' belly.

It seems like everywhere we went the beer was buy one get one free, so Bryan lucked out and got to have both :)

We would highly recommend this cruise to anyone! It was the Carnival Victory out of San Juan visiting St. Thomas, Barbados, St. Kitts, St. Maarten, and St. Lucia. The only thing I would say is don't bother with Puerto Rico. We stayed an extra couple of nights in San Juan after our cruise and it was disappointing. Or, if you're really interested in San Juan, go a day early and do it at the beginning of the trip, that way you end on the high note of the cruise. 

I also just got back from visiting my bestie in Kansas. That was super fun, but we don't have any pictures because "women don't do that" either, apparently. She painted my toenails, which was nice because I can't reach them in my current state. I got a tour of Ft. Riley and went to my very first Commissary and PX! It was a fun, relaxing trip. 

So that brings us up to now-ish. I'm due September 17 and it's a boy! Mylo Robert Hoskins is the name we've settled on and we're both super excited! 

Bryan is currently looking for a full time teaching job (as opposed to the substitute teaching he's been doing) and he's had a couple of interviews so far, so wish him luck! It's a tough time for teachers here in Texas, but there are a handful of positions open and I just KNOW one of them is for Bryan!

Thanks for reading, I'll be more consistent about updating now. Promise. 

GAH, I'm such a cliche.

I had a friend a while ago that said she wasn't sure if she wanted to be my friend because I have blonde hair and I wear and like the color pink. For someone who seemed to be very open-minded, she seemed pretty particular on the color of her friends hair - I thought that was weird and it became kind of a joke between us. We were pretty good friends for a while until life took us in different directions and we drifted apart. Well, it has come to my attention recently that she was right, I am a cliche, just not the one she was so adverse to. This realization came after the first yoga class I took - I am an artist, I try to be "green" (despite my penchant for "pink", heyo!), I do yoga, and my Toms are so worn out that I might as well be barefoot. I feel like I should just jump on board and be a vegan at this point (Although I don't think I will, I just can't wrap my head around veganism (veganism? I think I just made that up), sorry PETA). At least I recognize and accept this, right? So, without further ado, some cake and art I've done recently:

Minnie!

This cake is egg free, so that's a bonus! It has been different to work with egg-free cake mixes (I've done 2 cakes without eggs so far) because it comes out super dense and heavy.


Also, a while ago I mentioned that I painted our guest bedroom with a Mario mural. What? I just really like Mario. Call me a gamer, call me a n00b, I don't care, Mario's fun.

This is the first wall to the left when you open the door:

I think my favorite part of the whole mural is the mushroom.

Mario and Bob-omb are on the wall opposite the door, so they are the first thing you see when you walk in.

Wall 3 had a built in shelf that I painted like a ledge for my Goomba.

This is the corner between wall 3 and 4, see the ledge?

And this is a close up of the Koopa Troopa on wall 4.

For the most part, this mural is finished. Since it's at my house and not a client's, I might go back in some day and add little touches because sometimes I get bored looking at the same thing all day. :) For instance, don't you think it would be neat to paint the inside of the closet like the world Mario goes in when he goes down a warp pipe? Since the warp pipe is right by the closet door I think it is especially fitting.

More of my cake and art pictures are here: http://www.artifolio.com/meg

Next time I'll post a Bryan update!

WARNING: Super long and nerdy account of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

Oh my goodness. If you haven't been to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter yet, you need to go right now. Srsly. I don't even know where to start. This park was so completely and utterly cool that I almost exploded. First, our attire:


Here I am enjoying our free breakfast at the Three Broomsticks in my "Meggle" shirt (get it?)! (Side note: That is pumpkin juice I have. So. Cool. They also had butterbeer that you could have, which was a butterscotchy-sweet drink. I got it just cold, but you could also have it frozen. It was too sweet to drink the whole cup though.) Also, we both had prescription glasses made before our trip, so I believe our souvenir Harry Potter glasses are infinitely cooler than other peoples. And the shirts we wore were homemade too, I used a bleach pen and copied the font from the internet...but the best part is Bryan's shirt:

See how much crisper (is crisper a word?) "Muggle" came out on his shirt? I think it must have something to do with the dye in the shirt because we bought his new and we got mine at a thrift store. Oh well. That's not even the best part though. Check out the back:

"Jesus was in Gryffindor"! It was Bryan's idea, I just drew it for him. Let me tell you what, he is in SO many people's vacation memories and lots of people asked where we bought our shirts, which made me feel good :) Okay enough about my bleach pen skillz, let's get on with it.

Frickin' Hogsmeade! It was also exceptionally cloudy our first day there which added to the snowy ambiance. Look at how the chimneys are all caddywhompus! Love it! All of the stores were there too, some were just a storefront, which I hope in the future they change and make it so that you can go in each one. Can you believe that there were lines just to get in to them? The stores you could go in were Zonko's Joke Shop, Honeydukes, and Dervish and Banges. We only had to stand in the line for Dervish and Banges because we did all of our souvenir shopping late in the evening, about an hour before the park closed, so a lot of people had left. But it was worth it because I finally found my Gryffindor pin! (Did I tell you that I collect pins? Well, I do.)

Here is the owl post, which was just a store front. Even so, look at all the detail they put into it! Oh, and in the bathrooms? Moaning Myrtle. On a speaker. So. Cool!

Once you walk through Hogsmeade, you see Hogwarts, which is where the Forbidden Journey ride is:

The line to get on the ride is almost as cool as the ride itself (which was omgsoawesome, but we'll get to that later) because it snakes through Hogwarts, so you get to walk through all of the parts of the castle. We stood in line one time (for 25 minutes right when the park opened) so that we could see everything. After that, we capitalized on a little known secret called the "single riders line" for people who don't mind being split up to fill in spaces on the ride. This little gem allowed us to ride this ride 3 times in 30 minutes when there was a 75 minute wait for the regular line. The funny thing is, that 2 out of the 3 times we wound up riding together! I love efficiency! Or would that be inefficiency? I don't care, I love it! Anyway, I was saying that I'm glad we stood in the regular line once so that we could see Hogwarts:

First, the line started in the greenhouse. I was so excited I couldn't even contain myself. Like a kid in a candy store times a billion. Then, once you get inside you see this:

Love it. Do you see that Gryffindor house is in the lead? Sometimes I feel like the other houses don't get the respect they deserve. I mean, what's so bad about Hufflepuff? But I digress.

The entrance to Dumbledore's office! My pictures from inside his office didn't come out, but he had all of his trinkets and tools, and he was even there at his desk! They used that super cool advanced technology that makes the person look like they are standing there. I don't know what it's called, but he wasn't on a screen or anything, he was projected, but in 3D. They also did that for Harry, Hermione, and Ron in a classroom that you got to walk through. And:

The pictures move! They have a texture over what I assume is a tv screen to make it look like an oil painting, but they move! Very well done.

This might be one of my favorite pictures of us from the trip. We're on the Forbidden Journey ride, about to go through the floo network, and Bryan snaps this pic.

That ride is so cool too. You are facing sideways, so you can't really see the "enchanted bench" you're in, or anyone else's, so it really envelopes you. Some of the time you're in front of a huge screen flying on a broom, but then it will take you away from the screen and you'll be in the midst of dementors. Aragog makes an appearance, as well as the whomping willow, and something we missed the first time we rode it, a Basilisk skeleton. The ride was very, very well done. I'm glad I was able to ride it more than once!

The other rides in the Harry Potter section were neat too, one was a kiddie roller coaster, The Flight of the Hippogriff, which we only rode once, and the other was the Dragon Challenge, which was a super fun roller coaster. We were able to ride this one 4 times because in the morning and the evening when the park wasn't as busy, the people that were there wanted to do the Forbidden Journey. Well, since we already tackled that one 4 times over, we went to the other rides like this one.

The one thing we didn't do is the "Wand Chooses You" interactive experience at Ollivanders. The line was super long 100% of the time, and we figured it was probably geared more toward kids than adults, and even though Bryan and I consider ourselves big kids, we decided that we don't need a wand.

Another secret of Islands of Adventure, is that since everyone wants to see Harry Potter first, you can ride all the other rides in the park for little to no wait. This is true in the morning and the evening. Rather than wait 60 minutes for the Forbidden Journey at 9pm, we rode 4 other rides in that time with less than a 5 minute wait each. Our strategy (HP strat 2.0) was to knock out all we could in the morning, leave the park in the early afternoon when it's busiest to go see a movie (The Other Guys is hilarious. I thought it was gonna be SO dumb, but it was really funny) then have some dinner and go back to the park around 8pm when the crowds died down. Worked like a charm (hah!), the longest we stood in line for any ride was 25 minutes.

I can't say the same about Disney World. Since we were in Orlando, we went to the Magic Kingdom as well. First, our car was late, and even though our driver was the biggest character we met on the trip, he was also the most annoying. What's so bad about riding quietly? Everything to this guy, he talked non-stop. He told us about how he will bend over backwards for his guests, because "guests" are "VIP" and "ride in a town car". "Customers", however "shop at 7-11". "A cab will pick up any garbage off the street. VIP ride in town cars." "Welcome to Orlando, this is my home and you are my guest. Come on in, want a beer?" His words, not mine. Also, after he divulged that even though he worked at Universal, and was the best at his job no less, he quit and hasn't been back because he "never goes backwards in life" and "never dates the same girl twice". Not even kidding. Then, he came clean and apologized for being late. No, not in the morning, but in the evening when he was actually 10 minutes early, but considered that 5 minutes late because "15 minutes early is on time". Well, at this point we pointed out that, by that logic, he was actually 30 minutes late when he picked us up in the morning. Didn't even phase him. He just kept talking. Oh man, we won't forget Jimmy, if that's even his real name. And second of all (did you forget we were counting? Me too. Almost.) they lost our ticket reservation so we almost didn't get to go in. That was frustrating, but it worked out.

Here's a picture of a sign in the bathroom at Disney:
I feel like this sign was unnecessary. I like how at the bottom it says "Hand washing tips provided by Sparkle" like they're all proud of themselves for providing this breakthrough information that will ensure the cleanliness of your hands, when in reality there is no new information here. These aren't "tips", they're instructions.

Anyway, so Disney wasn't as cool as I remembered it being as a kid. The lines were long, the rides definitely weren't as fun and adult friendly as Universal, and the employees were less accommodating. I am glad we went one time for the memory bank though, and now we won't return until we have kids that will think it's as magical as we did. I did get my very own Ellie Badge to add to my collection, which made it worth going for sure. Here we are on Space Mountain! Which, by the way, hasn't changed one bit since 1999 when I was there last. Hey, if you look super close you can see my Ellie Badge! It's my new favorite pin.

Other things we encountered on the trip: Bumper Boats, Blue Delicious - a long island except with blue curacao instead of coke and at 2 for 1 no less!, this quote from "Pulp Fiction" (I don't know why it came up, but once it did we kept saying it), rain for 15 minutes and then humidity, Bob Marley bar - Bryan was stoked that they had his favorite drink from Jamaica, but other than that it wasn't as cool as it sounds, pinky toe blisters, c'you c'mears - inside joke that is not worth explaining because it's not funny, Bryan's inexplicably terrible smelling shirt, bad karaoke at a bar with equally bad drinks - compared to Blue Delicious that is, and pleasant evening weather even though it was super humid and hot all day - which is more than I can say for the weather in Texas.

Phew! That was a long one! I couldn't resist. :)