Apples, spa night, and chocolate...

I'm going to start off with the bad news. Since I've been pregnant, my eczema has been REALLY bad. Mainly just around my mouth, on my right eyelid, and on my ring finger (mainly when I wear my wedding ring). Weird, I know. Anyway, so since about May or June I've been dealing with this. My eyelid and around my mouth are CONSTANTLY itchy (and often bright red) and my ring finger has been so bad it's been cracked at some points and I can't even think of wearing my wedding ring! Anyway, the good news is that I think I've figured out what is causing this. The bad news is that I'm pretty sure it's CHOCOLATE! How horrible is that? My eczema has always acted up if I have too much dairy. So, I tried to really watch what I was eating to see if I was having too much dairy, but I wasn't really (just normal amounts). But I finally when I realized that when I have too much chocolate (more than 2 fun size candy bars) I'm itchy and red for days! So, now I know what to stay away from. I was doing a great job at this until Halloween came! Now, I'm back to being itchy and not being able to wear my wedding ring. Hopefully just a couple days off chocolate and I'll be back to normal! (and hopefully once I have this baby, I will be able to go back to eating chocolate!)

On Saturday night I had a spa night/girls night for three of my friends, all of whom are having their SIXTH baby! Crazy huh? Two of them have actually just recently had their babies, but this was the only time we could get to work. I wanted to do something to celebrate this great time, but didn't think that a baby shower was the right way to go (this is their SIXTH, plus our ward has SO many pregnant people and the ward is made up in large part by students, so it gets a bit burdensome to have so many baby showers) I just asked everyone to bring a treat to share and any spa type of products they might have. I felt like the most pathetic excuse for a woman though when I was getting ready to leave. All I had was nail polish remover (I'm sure somewhere in my house I have nail polish, after all, just last week the kids found some and painted their noses with it! But I didn't feel like scurrying around for that) a hand scrub Steven bought me BEFORE we were married (so it's about 6 years old) and two packs of nail files (which I had to go buy, because I didn't have any). Pathetic, huh? Luckily, all of my other friends are much more feminine than I am, so we had plenty of pampering things. It was a lot of fun and of course I forgot to bring my camera. We had some yummy food, and great conversations, some pampering and even a dip in the hot tub (we had it at one of the expectant mother's house specifically because she had a hot tub). It was a VERY late night, but well worth it, and a ton of fun.

And lastly, Amanda and I recently came into about ten thousand more pounds of apples (luckily, so far we have gotten ALL of our apples for FREE! How great is that?) So, this week we'll be making some more applesauce (only this time using an apple saucer, which should save us a TON of time) some apple butter, and then I want to peel, core and slice some apples to freeze for apple pies and apple crisp. I'm going to TRY to remember to take some pictures during the process this time!