Green Thumb

Nathan and I attempt to keep a nice looking yard, however, in my opinion, we fail miserably. Of course I'm comparing my yard to my mother's yard, which isn't a fair comparison because she is a Master Gardener and spends hours working in her garden. Nathan and I are very good at growing one thing... weeds! Lots of them! All kinds! All sizes! They're taking over the grass, the flower beds, the vegetable garden, the front walkway, the dog run, you name it, we've got a weed growing there! We have one weed by our woodpile that is now over 2 ft. tall and draping over the lawn. Nathan walks over to the weed on Sunday and comments on how it looks a lot like a tomato plant. Then we notice, the weed is growing small green tomatoes. Yup, that's right! I may not have a green thumb, but I'll have you know that my weeds are capable of growing tomatoes! HA, beat that, Mom!

The sad thing is, I planted 2 tomato plants in the vegetable garden 2 months ago, and they aren't producing a darn thing.

Long Time Friends

Some people claim facebook is detrimental to human socialization and contact. If you're truly "friends" with a person, then you wouldn't need facebook to keep in touch, that you'd just pick up the phone and call them every once in awhile. I am going to argue the opposite. While I do not think wall posts and picture comments are enough to cultivate a true friendship, I do think facebook is amazing at allowing people who have lost contact over the years get back in touch and renew their friendship, which otherwise would have been lost and unrecoverable.

Exhibit A: Jamie, my best friend from 5th-8th grade, and I lost contact when we went to separate High Schools. It's difficult to stay in touch when neither of us had our license and we lived across town from each other. Plus, we made new friends in High School and our lives moved on. I found Jamie on facebook last winter. It was awesome to see pictures of her family and her 2 kids. One day Jamie posted a facebook status update about her husband making it to the International Tree Climbing Competition which is being held in Rhode Island this year. (Who knew we had big enough trees for an international competition???) Knowing everything in RI is within a 45 minute drive, I was excited about the possibility of seeing her again after 12 years apart. This past weekend, thanks to facebook, Jamie, her husband Dave, myself, and Nathan met up for lunch in downtown Providence and had a great time catching up on the past 12 years. Had it not been for that single status update, Jamie would have come and gone from RI without me ever knowing! It was wonderful just picking up and chatting as if we'd been friends for years. I think some people are meant to be friends, no matter how many years they've spent apart.

Myself, Jamie, and Tarryn at 8th grade graduation, June 1997:

Jamie and me in Rhode Island, July 2009:

I don't think we've changed all that much. :)

Tummy Update

26 weeks 2 days... 96 days to go!


A lazy, hot, Sunday afternoon in the Backman household

Camping Adventures

Nathan and I LOVE to go camping. If it were up to me, I'd head for the hills every single weekend. My love of camping started when I was little. The summer after my sophomore year of college I spent 10 weeks as a counselor at a Girl Scout Camp where I slept under the stars (rain or shine!). I love being outside in the woods, taking hikes during the day, sitting around a campfire, cooking over a camp stove, and stargazing at night. When I met Nathan and learned he was an Eagle Scout who also loved to camp (and has many more outdoor survival skills than I ever will) I could not wait to take off with him for a weekend camping trip. Being past their camping days, my mom sent me all of our old family camping gear when I graduated from college and moved into my own house. In the fall of 2005, Nathan and I went on our first camping trip to a campground outside of Sandpoint, ID. I think that's when the tradition started... RAIN, RAIN, RAIN! It's a joke now that when we go camping, even if the forecast says it will be clear, there will be rain at some point over the weekend. Let me take you on a walk through our rainy camping adventures:

September 2005: Our first camping trip together & Taylor's first camping trip at 16 weeks old. It rained for 3 days straight and everything was a big mud pit (which Taylor thought was awesome!). It was my first experience with hanging a tarp from the trees to keep us dry (no tent is waterproof no matter what the manufacturers claim!). Luckily Nathan is an expert at all those Boy Scout knots so the tarp was hung in no time. We had an awesome site that you had to hike down a hill to access. The only downside... the rain water ran down the hill and right under our tent.




August 2007: I unfortunately do not have any pictures of our campsite, but for our 1st anniversary we went camping in MA. We arrived at the campsite as the thunder was rolling in the distance. In a mad panic we assembled the tent and as we started to hang our trusty tarp the thunder became louder and the rain began to fall. By the time the tarp was fully hung it was pouring. We spent the rest of the night holed up in the tent with Taylor. The rest of the weekend was gorgeous and we spent all day Saturday hiking the Friends Trail. Even though the weather was gorgeous, Taylor did all he could to get as dirty as possible.




September 2007: I found Otter River State Park online and it got such great reviews I wanted to go check it out. This time we forgot to check the weather forecast, although I'm not sure the forecast could have predicted what we experienced. All day Saturday was horribly hot and humid - the perfect set-up for a massive thunderstorm. Around 3pm the thunder began rolling in the distance and the wind picked up. We hadn't bothered to hang a tarp over our tent this time as we were not expecting rain. When the rain began to fall we headed into the tent. All of a sudden the thunder and lightening became so intense the flashes were blinding and we had to yell to hear each other over the roar. The winds became so strong Nathan had to hold the top of the tent steady. Tree branches began to fall all around us. One hit the top of the tent and ripped a hole in our rain cover. At that moment we opened the window to the front door to see the branches and twigs flying past, but instead about 30 feet in front of the tent we watched a large tree snap in half. It was at that point we decided our camping trip was over and it was time to pack up and get out, especially since the hole in the tent roof left a puddle inside the tent. Just as we finished packing up the campsite, the rain and winds subsided. It was at that point we realized the road out of the campground was blocked by tree. We also saw that our neighbors were trapped in their car between 4 huge tree trunks, 2 that fell behind them, 2 that fell directly in front of the car. The next campsite down was not as lucky. A large tree fell through the middle of the campsite, hitting their tent and smashing the hood of their car. I believe a lady in the tent broke her leg when the tree landed on her. They couldn't go anywhere since the tree was on their car and it took 10-15 min. for the paramedics to make it into the campground as there were power lines down across the campground entrance. Since we weren't headed anywhere fast, we took a walk around the campground to survey the damage. The firemen believe it was a small tornado that took out the trees as all the trees that fell were in a straight line starting at our campsite going through the two sites next to us, then it jumped over the lake and the destruction continued on the other side. We were very glad to have made it home in one piece. Taylor was such a trooper through the whole thing and was as calm as we could hope through the entire storm.

Our campsite:

The site next to us:

Two sites away:

July 2009: The past weekend Nathan and I, along with our friends Dan & Sherry and Anna, went camping in CT. We did check the forecast and it said to expect showers from 1am-8am with 1/4" of rain accumulation. We've survived more than a 1/4" of rain (obviously!), except we still have that hole in the top of our tent from the above camping trip, so to be on the safe side we decided to once again pull out our trusty tarp. At 11pm the thunder starting. Within 10 minutes the rain was falling in sheets. The water running off the tarp could have been mistaken for a waterfall. We went to bed listening to the rain, thunder and flashes of lightening. Around 1am the rain fell so hard it sounded like constant thunder. That's also the time we heard the tarp hit the top of the tent and slide off to the side. Even though the tarp was tilted to allow run-off, the amount of rain falling was too heavy for the twine holding up the tarp and it snapped. Our tent began leaking through the window seams so we just pulled our bed away from the side and went back to sleep. Not much else you can do at 1am! We woke up at 8am and got out of the tent to survey the damage. Everything that was carefully placed under the tarp was now soaking wet. Anna lucked out in that when the tarp came down it landed directly on top of her tent. She stayed nice and dry and slept wonderfully through the night. Dan and Sherry would have stayed a little more dry had their air mattress not sprung a leak and left them laying on the wet tent floor. Lucky for us, the rest of the weekend was dry (well, as dry as can be with the high humidity!) and we all slept wonderfully on Saturday night.

Hanging the tarp:

Trust me, if I knew how to tie the fancy knots I would be sitting on his head!

I would say we got 2" of rain over the course of the night. These chairs only began collecting water after the tarp fell.

The next morning. Anna is still asleep under that green tarp.

So... anyone want to go camping??? We know how to have a great time!

100 Days...

...until my due date!!! Some of you may think I'm a little too excited because 100 days is still a long time, but when the countdown started around 250 days, it's very exciting to finally be reaching the double digits tomorrow. Of course this also means I only have 100 days to finish getting everything ready. Not only is the nursery half-way painted, but the crib isn't assembled, all the crap that was in the junk room (now the nursery) is sitting in the hallway, we haven't registered for any baby items, and I definitely have WAY too much stuff to do at work before going on maternity leave. Unfortunately, with each day that passes I have less energy and the couch looks more and more comfortable when I get home from work. I think I need my mom to come visit for a weekend... things magically get done when she's around. I have no idea how she's so productive, but apparently I did not inherit that trait. Or maybe I'm just lazy... I think I'll go ponder that thought while I lay on the couch and watch Friends. :)

What's In a Name...

Sorry folks... I'm not talking about the baby's name. That will remain a secret. ;)

I thought people might be a little confused by the name of my blog, so I wanted to explain myself. Ever since I was young, I believe I have been a very easy, simple person to understand. When I was a baby and I got cranky, I hear that my parents just had to feed me and put me to bed and all was good. When I was in high school, my friends knew who I was - I didn't play games or pretend to be someone else to fit in. I was the logical one of the group who put my thoughts ahead of my emotions and made decisions easily. In college, being a computer science and math major, I loved that all problems could be broken down into a set of logical steps to find a solution. Many problems are only as complex as you make them. After college, while I spent day after day working a job that bored me out of my mind, I began to think about what defines me, what excites me, how would I describe myself to someone in the least amount of words. After listing out all the random things in my head that I felt reflected my personality, I realized many things I listed contained juxtapositions (ie: I'm a dumb nerd, I love a clean house but never spend time cleaning, I'm quiet but have a hard time not giving my input when I have an opinion). After reviewing my long list, the final thing I wrote was that I'm simply complex. What you see is what you get with me. However, under the surface there is so much more. Only a few people throughout my life have been given the opportunity to see the true complexity behind the simplicity. Perhaps this blog will allow the rest of you to get some small glimpses into my simply complex life.

And She's Off...

I have always been one to enjoy reading other people's blogs. In fact, with my Google Reader all set-up, I probably read way too many blogs than I should each day (mostly about puppy raising for Guide Dogs and CCI). After being asked by multiple people when I am going to start a blog my answer was always "when I have something to blog about, like a new puppy or a baby". Well, I guess I better live up to my promise because baby #1 is on its way. However, the fact that I'm pregnant really doesn't give me much to blog about either. The things going on in my life (and body) are probably not blog appropriate. I keep thinking that maybe I should wait until Baby Zo* is born to start this blog, but then I realize Baby Zo will basically be doing what I've done for the past 5 months... eat, sleep (and poop, but I really wasn't going to mention that after my previous sentence...). So, if my blog is going to be boring, I might as well start it now. I'm going to leave you with the same disclaimer everyone makes when they start a blog... I do not promise to update this blog religiously, but when I have something to say, I will try to find the time to jot it down. Happy reading! :)

*The baby in my belly is named Zo short for Zoe, thanks to Sarah and Chuck. Zoe means life in greek (I think). But "Zoe" was too feminine so it was shortened to Zo until we knew if it was a boy or girl. Even though she's a girl, Zo has kinda stuck. Her actual name will not be revealed to anyone until she is born.

PS - I was a math major for a reason... writing is NOT my speciality so no judging my grammar!