35 weeks!

Here is the belly at 35 weeks! Excuse the dirty mirror. Apparently, I need the nesting to kick in still.

And in a dress that I think makes the belly look huge. After using this dress for a witch costume for Halloween, I'm taking the sleeves in because the flowing-ness just isn't working for me.

At my most recent appointment, it was discovered that I gained 5 lbs. in 2.5 weeks. I should have only gained 2.5 lbs. I think it was the oreo creme pie followed by the cherry cheesecake that did me in. Oh and because I decided to be tricky last time and take my jeans off when I was weighing myself, which I failed to do this time. So that could be 2 lbs right?
I'm still totally fine on my weight though. I've gained about 20 lbs so far and should gain about 1 lb. per week in the last 5 weeks, which puts me at the 25 recommended lbs.
I may just need to spend some time hula hooping on the wii fit. :)

The exercising/activity is actually somewhat hard since I have this lovely thing called SPD (symphysis pubis dysfunction) going on. Essentially is pelvic pain. Walking, anything involving standing on one leg (stairs, getting dressed, getting in and out of the car, putting my feet up) is painful. It's awesome.

As for the baby, I am measuring behind, so my midwife thinks she's going to be a small baby. At 32 weeks I was measuring 31 and now at 35 weeks I'm measuring 32.5. Apparently the 5 lbs. went everywhere but the baby. I swear the midwife made a mistake in measuring because I feel like my belly is quite large! Certainly larger than and 32.5 week measurement!
Anyway, I will definitely take a smaller baby than Alex was (8#5oz), but I'm not expecting it.

Blood pressure and heart beat were all fantastic.
Hooray for being 35 weeks and being in my LAST month!!!

Brr!

We've had a cold few days here.
(No worries... it's supposed to be in the 80's again this week)

This morning Alex came in our room and instead of having his usual blankies in hand to climb into bed with us, he hands me a jacket, sweats, and slippers and tells me, "put these on me so I can get warm".

It was totally adorable that he rounded all the right pieces up that he knew would warm him up.
So I put his jacket and slippers on and he ran and got his blankies and binky and climbed into bed with us where it was nice and warm.
Cold weather is definitely good for cuddling in bed!

Long day

I dragged Alex around today and he missed his nap. So he should have been ready to go to bed by 7:30.
But we were out getting plants to plant out front to replace our crazy mish-mash of bushes that are now finally all removed (lol... which was a project that was started I think a year and a half ago...).

We got some cool tall bushes to go in front of each of the columns. They grow up and only get 12-15" wide, so they will be perfect.
We got hibiscus bushes to go between the columns to give some color, and then some varigated grass to go in front of everything to give some variety in leaf color and texture.
I am really excited to get them all in on Saturday! Look forward to a picture!

So poor Alex at Home Depot... 7:45 rolls around and he's dragging his feet after running around (he loves to run around displays in stores. It's lovely.) and comes up to me and says one of my favorite things to hear him say: "I'm not feeling very well Mama".
He picked this up quite a few months ago and I don't know where he got it. Jon and I say nothing like that so we think it's hilarious.
Ten minutes later he was telling me that he was really tired.

When I asked if he wanted to go home and read and story and go to bed he readily agreed, which is something that hasn't happened for a long time. He was very cute and held my hand while walking in the store and again when we walked into the house. The hand holding on anywhere but the street NEVER happens.

I bet he was asleep within 10 minutes of his head hitting the pillow. Poor guy had a long day! I'm glad that he was at least pleasant all day without taking a nap!

Since you haven't heard enough from me today...

I'm just catching up after not blogging for a long time!
Oh shoot- this is Carrie again. Jon has commandeered the use of my laptop while his was sent with another coworker. We have to take turns and it's just a pain to sign out of his account and into mine.

Anyway, I just thought I would show off my new appliances that my awesome dad put in while he was here.
I'm totally feeling the love for them because it's the first time *I'VE* actually used and turned them on since my parents left.


Here is my beautiful dishwasher.

I am in love with my dishwasher. I didn't have to turn the TV up when I ran it last week. The prongs on the top rack are actually made to fit bowls. And, the top rack actually gets clean since there is a sprayer up there. Oh and the tall tub (thus having more height allowance on the racks) and the little fold down shelves to stack stuff (small cups/large utensils) is wonderful as well. I actually enjoy loading and running my dishwasher now! Although, I am still bugged about unloading it. :)


These are my new fancy schmancy laundry machines.

They are a very lovely shade of dark blue (called "Twillight") and I like the sounds that the buttons make. :)
As you can see, they are a bit of a tight fit in my "laundry room". I hate that "room" with a passion. My next house will NOT have a laundry hallway!

Today Alex's shorts were all wet from playing outside and he got a kick out of turning the light on in the dryer (there is a button to turn the light on!) and watching his clothes go around and around. He thought it was awesome!
One of my favorite comments was from my dad - he was surprised there wasn't more water and was astounded that clothes could get clean with so little water.
Yes, it does seem a little weird, but we haven't noticed any difference in the clean-ness level.
I love the capacity, the efficiency, and just other weird little things (like that they have a damp dry signal so it beeps when the clothes are damp... helpful when doing mixed loads of towels and clothes...so you can take clothes or whatever out when they are damp so that they don't get overdried since there are towels or jeans in there that take longer to dry).
Yesterday I told Jon that he should throw his pants in there every morning before work with a little steam refresh so they wouldn't be stinky. He doesn't own enough shorts and I don't do laundry often enough for him to wear a fresh pair every day. Sorry if that's embarrassing Jon- everyone's pants get smelly! I'll probably throw mine in for a little refreshing too!

Anyway, I love them and I am sure I will love them even more when I am doing cloth diapers in a couple of months since they have a sanitary cycle which internally heats the water super hot to kill bacteria. This means that I don't have to go out and turn up my water heaters (I don't know which one does the laundry room) to a super hot temp. and then turn them back down again.



Hopefully soon to come - more pictures! We have some from the state fair! I also have a video from the rain storm outside of Moab that I had a picture of in my other post that would be fun to share.

So that's why we have those!

So this is actually Carrie... I'm just too lazy to sign out of Jon's account to post this.
And I did make Jon take the pictures, so he is slightly involved...

It's been raining fairly hard here for most of the day.
The sandbox is a mini lake.
And we have rivers running down the sides of our house. Seriously, you can see the water flowing.

So this is why we have drainage areas down the sides of every house!

Obsessed

I'm not sure how I feel about my child being obsessed with these:

Actually, if we were being more accurate, he's really just after these:

Alex will usually eat a good amount in the morning for breakfast and then about an hour after breakfast he requests a snack consisting of "marshmallow cereal in a bowl with no milk". He then proceeds to eat all of the mashmallows.
Then he requests more.
I make him eat all of the cereal before he can have more. Such a mean mommy.

It looks like we need to go back to our standard "mama cereal" (usually some kind of flakes) and "daddy cereal" (frosted mini wheats) so that our child isn't hooked on sugar cereal.
Although I must admit, I got the marshmallow cereal because I was wanting it. :)

Been a while!

We've been having a lot of fun the past couple of weeks.

We drove to Utah for my best friend's wedding. About 2 hours into the drive I realized that I forgot to pick up my dress at the tailor's shop where they were adding sleeves.
Thanks to my amazing friend Tamma, I was able to get it in time for the wedding. And still have time to fix the sleeves.
They were a LITTLE weird!
I should have taken a before picture and I know I'll have some better pictures of me actually in the dress eventually, but this is what I have from after the wedding.

We had a lot of fun in Utah, even though it was a short trip. Even though we were there for a week, it's still hard to squeeze everyone and everything in.

Here are some pictures!

Chapter 1. Driving and Random Provo.

The CRAZY storm we drove through outside of Moab. This was before we hit it... the clouds and lightning were really cool! And the pouring rain was equivilent to a good Texas storm, which we haven't seen in awhile.

This absolutely cracked me up. I had to drop a breadmaker off to a friend at the Provo Library (got some great looks from people there!) and when I came out after the rain storm, I saw this car. A rather unfortunate parking spot if you ask me.

It should also be noted that the gutter is really deep there- that was a LOT of water.
Luckily for the driver, when I picked Jon up and drove by it 20 minutes later, all of the water had drained off of the street.

Chapter 2. Leatherby's.

Alex had his first taste of Leatherby's ice cream... at 11 in the morning. Nothing like a good dose of ice cream before lunch! We got him "playdough" because he wanted pink and then blue ice cream. Perfect... playdough ice cream fits both of those requirements!

This is his cold face. It makes us laugh every time he does it.

and this is my face (enjoying my Traci's peanut butter cup sundae. YUM!)

Jon's comment after he took that picture was that it was one of the more unflattering pictures of me. Perfect for posting on the blog!
It's not like me and unflattering pictures are a new thing.

How cute is he?

Chapter 2. The Haircut.

We took Alex to Cookie Cutters to get a haircut. A real haircut. The only haircuts he has had have been buzz cuts. Because that is all that his mama can do in the time he gives me to do it.

He absolutely refused to wear the cape, but he let this girl put her hand on his head and held still and didn't give much of a second thought to the clippers she was using. I guess when you have a sucker and are watching Cars in a cool place, you really don't care that much.

I don't have a final picture, so you'll have to see the haircut in the next photos. We ended up having to finish the sucker early since it had hair on it. His face was also covered in hair since he kept touching it and his hands were sticky magnets for hair.

Chapter 3. Playing with MaNa and PaDa's.

I LOVE this picture... it just needs to be photoshopped (with all of the spare time I have)...

Here's the boy jumping on the trampoline at Grandma's house. Gotta love that eyebrow! (I so can't do that... it's all Jon).

a love for Grandma

Playing with Grandpa

and tickling Grandpa

Going for a ride on Grandpa's tractor

he thought scooping the rocks was pretty cool

After the scooping he was done... He wanted to get down and play in the rocks and dirt. So Grandpa drove the tractor back to the garage and we walked through the field back to the garage.


There were a lot of deer around in my parent's neighborhood. We saw some almost every day. When my mom first showed Alex some deer in the backyard, Alex stated that Grandma's backyard was "Damma's Zoo".

Here are 3 deer under the trampoline.

My parent's had a neighborhood breakfast that my dad helped plan. They had a bounce house there that, I think, got moved to my parent's house after the event. Aubrey, Alex, Austin, and Grandma all had a great time playing in it. There were tears from Alex when it had to be taken down.

Chapter 4. Wedding.

Here are a couple more of me after the wedding.
We didn't have a camera at the wedding, so these were taken when I got home so that I could get a belly shot and get some pictures of me in my "matron of honor" dress.
Oh and I am almost 32 weeks.

So that was our trip!
For fun, we brought my parents back with us since we drove. They stayed for a week and we had a lot of fun with them! They flew back to Utah on Tuesday which made Alex very sad. He was in the car crying, "wait! Damma! Don't weave me!" Tears all around (as usual). We're just glad that they have an excuse to come back in about 6 weeks.

30 weeks and my ironing board installed!

Here we have my 30 week belly picture for your viewing entertainment/enjoyment… whatever it may be.

And Jon got my new “built-in” (we just mounted it to the wall) ironing board up yesterday. It’s FABULOUS!

And in other FABULOUS laundry news, we scored a 4.0 cu. ft. front load steam washer at Sears for $140. It was their floor model. We actually went in to get an Electrolux one that they had for $240 on their outlet site, which they didn’t have. But the wonderful sales person directed us toward the even better deal. AWESOME.
It’s blue and oh so pretty. Pictures will come later once we get the dryer (at the outlet down in San Antonio tomorrow) and pedestals (found those for a sweet price on ebay) and get it all set up.

I’m super excited that I’ll have a sanitize setting on my washer as it will help immensely with washing cloth diapers. Yay for amazing deals on things!

Success!

I am so excited! Today, I decided to give Alex some chocolate milk so that he's actually drink some milk for once and he actually drank it!!!
And requested more when he woke up from his nap.

I'm so happy that he's actually drinking milk! That hasn't happened since we switched him off of soy milk quite a few months ago.
Yay for milk!

The Latest Addition to the Crafty Room

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For those wondering what that is, it is a built in ironing board!!!

Sorry about the weird pictures… it got set down upside down, so the last 2 photos are  turned upside down to give you a better idea about what it was.

My favorite thing about this ironing board is that it didn’t cost me over a hundred dollars or $300 dollars or whatever (I used to sell these and they were a LOT of $$$). This beauty cost me a whopping $35 dollars!

My love for craigs list is once again proclaimed!

I’d like to think that we were meant to be since it was listed clear back at the beginning of August and no one had snatched it up! I guess there isn’t much of a market for built in ironing board on the CL. I won’t complain… it worked out for me really well.

Many thanks to my awesome husband who drove clear out of his way to get it.
I figured that if he was willing to go that far for a scooba he should be willing to go that far for me. It’s just too bad I hadn’t found the listing before last weekend… he could have picked them both up at the same time. Love you honey!!!

One of those weird but cool things

One of my friends mentioned this on their blog a while ago and I've been thinking it would be handy ever since.
I'm specifically thinking about our LONG road trip to Utah and back that we will be taking in September and me in my 3rd trimester no room in my bladder pregnant state.

The more I think about it, the more I want it. OH! And since I'll be having a girl, how nice that she'll be able to "water the tires" just like her brother and we won't have to necessarily hunt down potty's or find bushes while I hold her up and try to avoid getting pee on her or me (can you tell I've been on a few long drives/camping trips when I was growing up?)

Hmm... I think I'll be getting one of these this week. How convenient that REI is next door to Joann's!

More sewing cuteness

I just posted some cute pictures of the 3 kids aprons I just finished sewing over on my business/crafty blog (Boo and Lou’s). Go check them out!

We’re getting inventory ready for the Country Carousel Boutique that is held at Provo High during BYU Education Week. If you happen to be going to Education Week, stop by the boutique and check out our booth and our adorable aprons.

The kid’s aprons I am making directly coordinate with(or match) the adult aprons I made when my mom was here.
We’ll also be doing more boutiques in September and November, but if you want an apron – don’t buy one at the boutiques! Just contact me through our website/blog or right here on my blog. Friends and family get a discount of course. :)

Sweet Sounds

Who knew that hearing ice made by your icemaker dropping into the bin could be such a happy sound?

The motor on our ice maker went out in May or June. The part we needed was $100 and that was just kind of crappy to have to spend that money, so we decided to make our ice the "old fashioned" way - in trays. But we weren't very good at consistently remembering to empty the ice trays and we use a lot of ice, so it wasn't a very happy time.

So we put more effort into looking for the needed part and found one on ebay for $40 instead of $100. SCORE!

The part came on Friday and Jon got it all put in on Saturday and every time we hear the ice drop into the bin, we can't help but be pleased that we have working ice maker and that we don't have to remember to empty and refill the ice trays anymore.

Everyone should have an auto ice maker. I don't know how people survive without them!

Irony

Alex isn't night potty trained yet.
As of almost 2 weeks ago, he was still waking up wet pretty much every morning. And we ran out of pull ups and I just don't feel like washing 3 diapers every 3 days.
So we went to the store for some diapers.
Figuring that it would be a while before Alex was even ready to keep a diaper dry all night, we got a BOX of diapers. I was excited that the box would get us through a couple of months.

So he's been wearing said diapers for the past couple of weeks. And wouldn't you know... he's woken up dry pretty much every morning from the first day we put one of the diapers on him.

Apparently, he just needed a change from the pull-ups and cloth diapers to figure out that he could stay dry all night.

And now we are the lucky owners of a nearly full box of size 5 diapers.

Nuffing

As in, "What are you doing Alex?"
"Nuffing".

Yesterday we got into the car after church and Jon asked Alex what he did in nursery and Alex said, "Oh nuffing. Jus payed an tuluhd (colored) an ate snacks."

I think my daily recounts to Jon are rubbing off on Alex because most days I tell Jon that we did nothing much - just x, y, z.

Favorite Blueberry Muffin Recipe

I found this recipe a while ago and it was SO delicious when we made it, so I'm highly recommending it to all of you.
I'm about to make up a double batch so that we can eat them all week long and just thought I would share the wonderfulness!

0 for 2

Alex is 0 for 2 on the dog tackles.
We got home from church today and our neighbor's playful dog was outside and excited to see Alex.
It wasn't a huge tackle like the last time, it was more the dog pushing against alex and knocking him over. Oh wait, maybe there was a bit of a jumping up on Alex and that's what knocked him over.
Good times.

We have a gender nailed down!

and another face shot (see our previous 3D shots here)

We are so excited! I think even more excited that we're not left wondering anymore. I'm going to have to put myself on a clothing budget... I've always said that it's better for me to have boys because there is SO much cute girl stuff that I would want to buy!