Baby Bump - Week 18

Week 18
Outside the Shedd Aquarium

Here's the first official baby bump picture of our little Baby H. It may look tiny, but there's definitely something goin' on down there! From my perspective, looking down, I can barely see my toes anymore. My clothes don't fit and I'm hungry...ALL the time! Ben was a real sweetie and surprised me with some cute maternity clothes last night. He's the best! This week I'm loving naps, my one pair of comfy pants, and Comcast OnDemand prenatal yoga. All in all, I've been feeling great - so great that it scares me sometimes!

See ya at Week 19!

Meat and Metal

Did you ever see the customers in health-food stores? They are pale, skinny people who look half dead. In a steak house, you see robust, ruddy people. They're dying, of course, but they look great.

-Bill Cosby

Ola, Katy, myself and Wade at Gene and Georgetti's after taking in the subtle arthouse flick, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The men settled on the bone-in ribeyes, Ola hedged her bets on the petite filet and the red meat aversive pregnant wife went with a big ass slice of lasagna. G&G was your typical old boys Chicago steakhouse...all the waiters were old dudes named Al and Sully, Sinatra on the jukebox and side dishes big enought to offend even the late Andre Roussimoff (aka, The Giant). Good company, good meat and good wine, capped off with desert and coffee at the Rock N' Roll McDonalds. Ah, to live like a tourist, if only for a night!

I actually clubbed a drifer to death with a ribeye similar to this back in 68'.

Break Out the Roman Candles, The Handfelts Are Coming!

Fourth of July weekend this year was spent visiting my dad and Chris, along with my step-brother Bart, up at Lake Okoboji. I hadn't been to "the Boj" since Ace of Bass topped the charts (US, not Swedish) and Katy had never been to Okoboji before, making her the last recorded Iowan to make the trek.

We arrived on a drizzly Friday in time for me to get my tenderloin fix at the creatively named "Family Diner". The loin was appropriately large (they must be at least twice the size of the bun...thems the rules), the bun was grilled and the mashed potatoes and gravy were artery clogging. All in all a great success. Bernie ordered a slice of 'sour cream and raisin' pie, which sounds about as appetizing as an old coffee filter, but tasted like God's will. After that we drank some beer on Dad's deck and got our asses kicked by The Smartest Man in the World at Scrabble. I'd be lying if I said that I had any words containing more than 4 letters.

Saturday was spent bumming around town, checking out some shops and going for a walk along the lake. That evening, I busted out the skill set that won me 8th Grade Football MVP and played football with Bart and his buddy Matt on the golf course (aka, Dad's back yard), running routes and showing my age in a matter of no time. My M.O. as a passer has always been accuracy, and once again I showed off the most pinpoint passing by an Iowan since Kurtis Eugene Warner.

For dinner, Chris made honey mustard green beans, grilled chicken and rosemary potatoes, of which I went on record as saying were some of the 'best potatoes ever', and I actually have my Masters in Potato Evaluation, so that's saying something. After dinner we headed down to Arnold's Park to watch the fireworks (along with around 120,000 other revelers). Normally I think fireworks are pretty overrated, but these had some pop to them, so to speak. Very impressive, kind of like my passing display earlier in the day.

Sunday was the nicest day of the weekend and we spent the day going on walk through Arnold's Park, a bike ride down the main drag (that is, until I got a flat and had to stop for a Margarita to get my energy levels back up) and more time napping and lounging on the deck. We went to the Okoboji hotspot The Barefoot Bar for a couple of drinks before ordering some pizza and calling it a night.

On Monday we bid our gracious guests adieu and after a quick breakfast at greasy spoon Kegler's, headed back to Chicago via Minnesota and Wisconsin, which proved to be much more scenic than our normal Iowa/Illinois route. 9+ hours later we arrived back at the Handfelt Hacienda, tired and happy to be home, and a little less sunburned that I would have liked, but grateful for our time spent at that wily Iowa beach town with good company and good (tender) loins.

Chris and Katy at the fireworks.

Me and Bart. Bart is no longer the 5-year old kid I remeber who had an affinity for basketball cards and Pokemon. Well, maybe he still likes Pokemon.

Grilled chipolte chicken, rosemary potatoes and honey mustard green beans. Sweet Lord in heaven.

The tenderloin sandwich will simeltaneously enchance and wreck your life.

Ben and Bern, post-Scrabble butt whoopin'.

Oh Baby!

Katy's Grocery List:

Tortilla chips and salsa
Cereal
Strawberries, bananas, and cantaloupe
Frozen waffles and strawberry jam
English muffins and peanut butter
Sour Patch Kids candies
Another jar of salsa (make that two)

For the last three months, while I've inexplicably gone missing from the blog, this is what I've been subsiding on. While I used to love to cook and try new recipes, poor Ben has been left to fend for himself on the dinner front. We've had way too many "DIY" dinner nights.

"Why", you ask?

"This doesn't seem like the kind of diet a mature young lady would have," you say?

Well, after much thought and consideration, and after almost five years of marriage, I'm happy to announce that Ben and I are becoming parents and that my tummy is growing fast. After all these years of having to awkwardly dodge the question "When are you having kids?"...here we go! Usually we'd shrug the question off (Ben's cricket inducing response of "I'm sterile" was a one-time thing) or quickly change the subject ("Look! Is that a bald eagle?"), and happily go about our somewhat self-centered life in Chicago; going to movies on weeknights, ordering takeout food twice a week, spending late Saturday nights in bad karaoke bars and lazy Sundays lounging on the beach (if you're a regular reader you've read all about it with bated breath)...but after a lot of thought, it just felt "right". Cheesy, huh?

Here's the deets:

Our little person is set to arrive around December 27th, so we're lookin' at a Christmas baby or maybe a New Years baby. Either way, it will be something to celebrate in style. Here's to hoping that the kiddo will be the first New Years baby in Chicago on the morning of January 1st (aside from the tax benefit that I keep hearing about that we'd miss out on).

In mid-August we *hopefully* get to find out if it's a little chick or a crazy dude; that is, if it's behaving for the big ultrasound and showing us what's it's got. We thought about letting it be a surprise, but that notion lasted about a day until we both decided the suspense would kill us in the meantime! And, just so you know, we'll tell everyone what kind of little one it is (guy, girl or alien), but nope, we're keeping the name under lock and key until the big day comes.

This kid is going to be something else. Between Ben and I, we both have an odd mixture of a wacky sense humor and silliness, along with a quiet shyness, so I can only imagine how this little one will turn out. As I imagine all parents-to-be wish, I hope he/she has all of our good qualities and none of our bad. I'm already waking up at 5:30am each morning worrying about how I can do my best not to screw it up in any way.

Anyway, I'm very happy to be sharing the news with everyone. Please keep in touch with us as we go through this happy, exciting, and scary journey. Also, be sure to check back this fall, as Ben documents his experience growing a "dad beard". I'm sure it will be no less entertaining as the great "Mustache Month" experiment of January '08. As long as our baby doesn't come out with one.

Katy Coral

Benjamin John

Bonnie and Clyde '09*

Photo taken impromptu at some random gas station (let's go with The Flying J, a personal fave) on the way back from Iowa a couple of weeks ago. The shadows would lead you believe that we were almost badass, belying the fact that some white boy with an acoustic guitar was probably emanating from our stereo. We ended up not robbing the gas station, lucky for them.

And yes, in case you're wondering, Bonnie and Clyde did in fact always wear their seat belts.

*NOT the Jay Z and Beyonce version. Well, maybe.

Sunset on Lake Okoboji - July 4th

Movies to Try the Popcorn Trick At

While all of the unwashed masses and Twittering teens will surely head out to the Cineplex over the next couple of weekends to watch the metal-on-metal testosterone of Transformers (check out Ebert's hilarious 1 Star review here) and bask in the free air conditioning, I implore the more civilized of you to check out these HHH approved flicks that will both entertain and enlighten, some in ways you never knew possible. For instance, did you know that tigers love pepper? Some of these you may have to search out, but they're well worth it. Trailers linked for your viewing pleasure.

The Hangover - In theatres now - As if you didn't know. As predicted on this very site, it's the instantly quotable, 'OMG you have to see it' movie of the summer. Crude and raunchy like a Vegas stripper, now is the time to catch this one if you haven't already, as the crowds will have died down enough that you might actually catch all of the jokes instead of having some of them drowned out by the din of maniacal laughter.

Away We Go - In theatres now - John Krasinski (Jim from 'The Office') and Mya Rudolph (SNL) star in this meandering indie road trip dramedy about a thirty-something couple expecting their first child and trying to figure out what to do with their lives in the process. Based on a screenplay by Dave Eggers ('A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius') and his wife, Vendela Vida. I loved this movie for it's small charms, pitch perfect acting and great soundtrack.


Moon - In theatres now - The always underrated Sam Rockwell stars as Sam Bell, an astronaut nearing the end of a 3 year stint working on the moon, alone except for a talking computer named Gerty, voiced by Kevin Spacey. Or at least he thinks he's alone. Directed by David Bowie's kid, it's sort of a well intentioned, low budget homage to 2001: Space Odyssey that is a showcase for Rockwell's talents. The less you know about it going in the better. Some may find the pacing slow, but I found it to be oddly hypnotic and fascinating. If you saw Danny Boyle's pre-Slumdog film Sunshine and enjoyed the first 3/4 like I did, you'll probably like this one.

(500) Days of Summer - In theatres July 17 - This one is shaping up to be Fox Searchlight's annual indie sleeper hit (think Garden State/Little Miss Sunshine/Juno). Zooey Deschanel bats her eyelashes and plays a manic pixie dream girl and Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the shy good guy that every girl wishes they could find.* Add in a crackling indie soundtrack and a random but perfect Hall and Oates music montage and you've got enough irony and street cred to pacify all but the most jaded hipsters. This is the date movie for people that don't like date movies.

*Spot on analysis by fellow blogger Ken Haynes.