getting ready

Well we are just three weeks away from the due date and I feel like we get more and more ready every day. We finally got the vinyl dots on the wall in the baby's room, and in a satisfactory arrangement (which was more difficult than you can imagine, I am hard to please). I love the way the room has turned out and can't wait until there's a little baby to sleep in there.
We also got the blinds hung (thanks to my mom for helping me find the right brackets) and the curtains up (also courtesy of my mom, she made those for us) which help it feel way more cozy.

I also had all of my baby showers within the last week. They were all so much fun and I am so grateful to those who threw them for me and to everyone who came and was so generous! Last week some very sweet girls from my ward threw my first shower. They had a quiz about me for everyone to try to answer. It was pretty tricky, even I missed one! My sister missed one or two as well, and my mom missed three! See, tricky. The food was yummy and the company was great. So many people have such neat talents. It kind of made me ashamed. I got the most adorable homemade bibs, a hand stitched onesie, and a homemade changing pad, just to name a few. They were seriously impressive.
Then last night my mom threw two showers in one for me. First just a few friends from high school came over and we played a little baby shower game and decorated cloth diapers/burp cloths together. A couple of people couldn't make it so there were just a few of us, but it was so nice to have some time with just us as a smaller group. If we had just done the bigger shower I feel like I hardly would have been able to talk to them or spend any time with them. The game was hilarious and the burp cloths will be fun to have. Then my friends stayed and more people came and we had some delicious Cafe Rio/Costa Vida pork salads. My mom had ten bags with white powdery substances in them and we had to try to guess what each one was. And we played a game of matching different types of candy to things about a baby or a mother's life. It was a blast. Crystal also had everyone write down what they thought we should name our baby (since we have yet to decide). It was pretty entertaining. It was a blast. Again so grateful to my mom for all of her planning and to everyone who came and their generosity. We are very blessed to have such kind people in our lives.

Decorating burp cloths:

The crazy girls who helped me out by handing me the presents so I didn't have to bend over so much. :)
So the countdown is on. We are so excited. A little nervous, a little scared of the unknown, but mostly excited. And feeling loads better now that we are feeling a bit more prepared.

a long time coming

Almost a year and a half ago I bought this wood craft to do. It was just wood letters spelling "home" to use to decorate. Not hard right? Oh...and there were 13 different o's, one for each month and then a cupcake for when it is someone's birthday. Yeah. I don't know what I was thinking. It is a miracle that it finally got done. I finished the h, m, and e probably about a year ago. But it was a lot of work to get all the monthly pieces done. I owe a HUGE shout-out to my mom for helping (also to Brennan for being a good sport about sanding for me). She came up with all the cute little embellishments. It would have been so plain without her. Anyway, I am so excited to be done with it that I just had to do a blog post.

The finished product with this month's o. (Turkey face courtesy of Brennan. He says the eyes are huge because he's scared he's going to get eaten.:))
The rest of the o's...minus December and February...they are awaiting some finishing touches.

Stacy, I am a whole lot slower than you but I hope you're proud. :)

me, a mom?

As D-day approaches I find myself thinking more and more about the fact that I am going to be a mom. A real life mom. I think for the majority of the pregnancy, I have just pictured being a mom to a little, cute as a button, baby. Maybe even envisioned the act all the way up to the baby's first birthday. But lately, as reality sets in and I realize that this is happening, and it's happening soon, I have started to think about how this baby is going to turn into a seven year old, and then an awkward pre-teen/early teen, and then a dramatic teenager and on and on. If I'm going to be honest I will have to admit that sometimes I panic a little. Or a lot. It is much harder to imagine myself capable of being a mom to older children than to little babies. This is not to say I'm not excited or that I am having regrets. Not at all! Sometimes it's just a little bit of an intimidating task.

I was really thinking about this one day on my long drive home from work. I was thinking about my mom (and my dad for that matter) and how they are just as much parents today as they were 36 years ago when they were just starting their family. I mean, I expect them to know everything. I always have and it looks as though I always will. It was just a few weeks ago that I called my mom, expecting her to be able to explain my medical insurance and billing to me. I mean she works at a doctor's office, plus she has had 5 kids, so certainly she must know. Haha. Even just today, I called both my mom and my dad because Brennan called to tell me he saw a mouse in our kitchen. Surely they must be able to tell me how the mouse got in and if he came alone and what I need to do about it. Why? Well...because they are mom and dad. See folks, this is what I'm talking about (because I am positive you have not been able to make sense of my random ramblings) I don't know anything. Really, I don't. And this little baby is going to grow up to be a child, a teenager, and an adult who will ask me questions!! How on earth am I supposed to handle that? I'll probably just end up telling her to call her Grandma or Papa. :) Or better yet, I will get the answers from them and then tell her so I look smart. Really I just rely on my parents a lot. And I am lucky enough to be able to do that. But now it's my turn to be the parent and this little one is going to rely on me. A lot. For everything, in fact. EEEk.

In all seriousness I am beyond excited to be a mom. It is what I have wanted my entire life. Am I intimated by the task that lies ahead? Most definitely. But for now I think I'll just keep picturing my life with a beautiful little baby in it. Hopefully she won't ask questions that are too tricky before I am ready. :)

On a related note, a high school friend of mine convinced me that I would want pictures of my big fat pregnant belly and that I would think it was fun to see how it grew. So we have been taking pictures fairly regularly, despite my feeling silly and complaining each and every time. So here's my belly progress for your enjoyment. Go ahead and laugh at me.

22 weeks
24 weeks
31 weeks

33 weeks
And now I'm at 35. For the record, my friend was right. It is kind of fun to see. And when your body is changing so gradually it sort of begins to feel like you were always huge. So it's nice to look back and see that was actually smaller anyway.

The Duke

My parents took a trip out to Utah and Arizona for pretty much the entire month of October. That meant we got to have Duke live with us for 3 or 4 weeks. It was certainly an adventure. I tell you, he had no appreciation for the first class treatment we gave him here. He gets all weird and mopey when he first comes here and does this weird shaking/shivering thing all the time. It's kind of weird and Brennan was convinced that he really was cold and it was giving him the shivers. So what did we do? Started covering him up with a towel all the time.
Looks like quite a hard life doesn't it? And you might notice that that is one of our huge couch pillows underneath him. He just casually claimed one of those as his own during the first couple of days. Rather than fight that battle we just laid his bed towel over it and let him have it. But that's not all. No sir. We let him sleep in our room on said pillow and then we would move it out to the living room when we got home in the evening because he is lazy and sleeps a lot but likes to be wherever we are. And Brennan would literally get up in the night to re-cover him with the towel because he would accidentally shake it off when he changed positions. See what I mean, he was spoiled rotten!

One day we even took him for a ride in our car out to the Coralville Dam. We even rolled the window down for him, that's like dog heaven isn't it??
It was beautiful out by the dam, but we were regretting not making it out there a few weeks earlier when the leaves would have been even more full of color and beauty.
Anyway, despite the annoyance of the hacking in the middle of the night and having to clean up after him on our walks, it was fun to have Duke with us. But it was sort of disappointing to see his behavior when my parents came to pick him up last week. I really wouldn't have thought it mattered to him to come and stay with us after he gets used to his surroundings. But he absolutely lost it when they got to our house. He went berserk! I pretty much felt like chopped liver! And I kept thinking, "are you serious? I walked you and brushed you every day! Not to mention how we treated you like royalty, and this is the thanks we get! Sheesh!" I guess it's good practice for kids right? I better get used to feeling under appreciated. ;)

Halloween

Brennan and I are about as lame as they come when it comes to Halloween. This was our third Halloween together and we have never dressed up. Brennan is just busy and I have no creativity in my veins. Lucky for us we associate with people cooler than ourselves so we didn't completely miss out on Halloween fun.

The Fonuas were nice enough to invite us over to carve pumpkins a couple of weeks ago. Catherine had told me that they use stencils to which I guffawed and told her that was cheating! But once we saw the sweet stencils they had, we just had to use one. Considering it was our first time doing something besides the classic jack-o-lantern, we definitely chose a stencil that was way too complex. The poor Fonuas were stuck with us way longer than they could have feared because it took us so long to finish our pumpkin.

The boys getting started on the lids:
Young helping Brennan because he was so slow. :)
When Brennan and I went to the store to pick out our pumpkin it was a flat rate price, so of course we thought we should get the biggest pumpkin we could. Yeah...we probably weren't thinking very clearly. It never crossed our minds that the bigger the pumpkin, the more guts to clean out.
She may look it, but I'm pretty sure she isn't evil:
Catherine took her job of cleaning out their pumpkin very seriously. We started to worry she was going to put a hole right through the pumpkin. There is no chance that we got our giant pumpkin even close to as perfectly cleaned out as she got theirs. It was really quite impressive.
Working on the stencils:
Working hard:
The finished products:
We put the guys in charge of baking the pumpkin seeds for us to eat. I'm pretty sure they would have been pretty delicious. Yes, would have been. But unfortunately, they sort of overcooked them...a bit. Oh well, maybe next year.
Despite the overcooked seeds and our lack of carving abilities, it was a super fun night. Thanks Fonuas!

We also had a ward Halloween party where cool people like Larkin and Cody came up with sweet costumes.

See, they are way cooler than us. Maybe one day we will be able to be as cool as them and come up with sweet costumes.

Brennan was cool enough to participate in the donut eating contest though. He made me proud. :)
We had a great Halloween. Hope you did too! I can't believe it's November. Where did October go?! Only six weeks left until our little of bundle of joy comes to join us. Eeek!