catapulted into the third trimester

A couple days ago Hosanna literally woke up one morning and said to me "ugh... I feel like it's the third trimester. I'm achy, I have acid reflux, I'm extra tired, I have a headache... in short, I feel like shit." We went and looked at the calendar, and it was the start of the third trimester almost to the day. This pregnancy has been like that.

Aria, on the other hand, remains as chipper and awesome as ever. Here she's being contemplative with me in the back yard:


We had big plans to go camping over Memorial Day weekend, but we were unfortunately caught up in a bunch of bad weather. The trip ended up being more of a scouting expedition for a future camping trip. We had originally thought we would go to Wright's Lake - which is just north of Pollock Pines, a little town on hwy 50 east of Placerville - but when we checked at the ranger station we found it was closed. The ranger directed us to a place called Gerle Creek instead.


After a total of about 4 hours of driving from our house, we finally got to the campground just as a heavy downpour had started. So much for the 20% chance of precipitation the weather report had promised. It continued to rain heavily all afternoon and most of the night.


We walked around and took some pictures of the lake, which is a really beautiful place, but ultimately had to abandon the camping idea and dejectedly climb back in the car.


One neat thing we saw was a new growth forest that has sprung up on the site of a huge fire that happened a few years ago. The pines in this picture are all just a few years old. It was the strangest looking forest I have ever seen.


So we ended up going back to Pollock Pines and getting a hotel. The funny thing was that Aria was totally content the whole time - she didn't have the faintest idea anything was wrong with the plan. Me, Hosanna and Kathy were bummed though. We ended up eating pizza at a kitschy family joint (complete with red white and blue "Unitd (sic) We Stand" banner), then watching the A's beat the Red Sox on the TV in the hotel.

There was a pretty cute moment as Aria & Kathy lay in bed together reading books. Aria has "Hop on Pop," which she has memorized a fair amount of now. She was turning the pages and saying the words. I know she wasn't actually reading it, but man, she almost had me fooled for a while.


One other Aria development is that her drawings are starting to become more complex. Lately she has been drawing pictures of boys and girls - example below. She's also obsessed with drawing Uncle Adamen's head everywhere; unfortunately I don't have a picture of that at the moment.