He's Here!

It's been a long week...

I was going to try really hard to NOT be a whiner. It's not working very well. It's been a long week. Here I am 9 months pregnant and trying to be patient and get through the last few weeks. I'm preeclamptic however, and so they've been watching me a lot more closely at the doctor's over the last few weeks. I came in to my appointment on Monday with a major migraine, my blood pressure was up and my reflexes were way off, so they sent me to the hospital to do some testing. They monitored the baby, did some blood tests, and checked my blood pressure a million times. They gave me a shot in the butt of Morphine and Fenegrin to get rid of my headache and sent me home. The shot made me pretty out of it, and I spent the rest of the day puking every time I got up to do anything. Ryan took off work the next day to let me recover and I literally spent the next day sleeping and trying to get better. By Wednesday I was back to normal, and I had my appointment today. The morphine lowered my blood pressure and got rid of my headache, and my tests looked good today. My doc asked if I could handle a few more days, and I agreed I probably could, so we're scheduled to induce on Monday night, so baby should be here on Tuesday! I'm excited and nervous all at the same time. Wish me luck!

I'm an Aunt!

She's here, she's here, she's here!!! I'm officially an aunt on my side of the family now. Yippee!!

My sister had her baby girl! And she was a big girl!!! 9 lbs. 4 oz! The largest any of MY babies has been was 2 whole pounds smaller! So I'm officially dubbing my sis superwoman!

Getting closer!!!

So my sister Cora came for a little visit yesterday. She's getting so big! I can't believe she's due so soon. Crazyness! She's 38 weeks. So she has 2 more weeks, and I have about 5 and a half! Crazy we're gonna have 2 little babies soon. Can't wait. We were being a little silly. Wanna see?


I can't wait to see my new little neice! And of course my own little guy... Getting Closer!

Yummy!

I recently decided to pull out an old recipe that my mom used to make all the time when I was little. My kids love it and so do I. So easy, and yummy, I had to share. They're called "Volcano Pancakes" or "Puffy Pancakes". I remember when I was little and every time my mom made these we couldn't wait to see how they turned out. They're different every time. And they only stay "poofy volcanoes" for a little while. Mmmmm, mmmm, mmm..... Yummy. Wanna see?


Here's the recipe if you want to try it!

Volcano Pancakes
1 cup milk
1 cup flour
6 tbsp butter (real butter tastes best!)
1/4 tsp salt
6 eggs
(you can half this recipe for a smaller batch)

Mix all the ingredients. You can nuke the butter in the microwave for 30 seconds and then mix it in--works great! Grease (I use cake release--doesn't stick AT ALL!) a 9x13 pan and pour it in. Bake at 375 degrees for 18 minutes. Cut and serve with your favorite pancake topping. Yum yum!

Love my little boy

I've been trying to figure out just what it is that my youngest son loves to do. Since he's still pretty young, I'm not sure if I can pinpoint one thing in particular that he is fixated on, besides the color orange. But there are so many little things that he just LOVES. He loves animals.

He loves people. He loves to be silly.


He loves preschool.

He loves to dance. He loves to sing.
He loves to just love.


He has to figure things out.

He's a thinker. He's a lovey-dovey, little, snuggly sweatheart. Oh yeah, and he can scream really loud and makes it known when he doesn't get his way. Yep.
Love my little boy!

My daughter the artist

My daughter is a dreamer. She's a free spirit. She loves to imagine, draw, and dream.

She really wants to be artistic one day.

She wants to be an artist and a ballerina. And she's very talented. She has been drawing since she could pick up a crayon. She's drawn on pretty much everything. Including many places she knew she shouldn't. Like when she drew pink "tiger stripes" on her legs with marker. Or spelled out her name in marker on each individual couch cushion. And of course all over my walls. So we've attempted to give her outlets for her passion.

Her favorite toys have been drawing related. She has Doodle boards, a GlowDoodle, drawing pads, sketch books.

She's been going through reams of my printer paper for years now. We just budget it in. She loves it. She's so creative.

And she's good at it. Even from an early age she has been expressing herself through her pictures and "creations". It's her outlet, and she loves it.

I remember going to a teacher conference at her preschool and her teacher showed us some drawings she'd done at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year. So impressive. One of the pictures had a picture of her family, complete with the baby in mama's belly. So cute.


Love my budding artist!

Yes, my son is addicted to Sportscenter.

Yep, it's true. My 6 year old son is addicted to sportscenter.

It was inevitable though you see. I should have known when the first words out of his little baby mouth were "ball". I have to expand on this, he was absolutely fixated on anything round because to him, it was a ball. Target was his favorite store because everywhere you look there are big red balls. He'd point and say "ball!!" at anything round, and we would look to see what he was pointing at. It was kind of fun to see that he saw a ball in all kinds of round items. And so it began. You see, sports are in his blood.

They are what make him tick. They are totally and completely him. He's a natural athlete.

So that's good. He could hit a t-ball at 18 months, and on his 2nd birthday we got him a soft bat and he carried it around everywhere, he wouldn't put it down even to eat his cake.

He loves sports, and anything that is sports related. He got into the NFL bigtime this year, and when my husband introduced him to March Madness and brackets... well let's just say march will never be the same again for him. And he has his favorite teams that he picked on his own. He loves the SeaHawks and Duke. His grandma is convinced that he's gonna be a famous athlete someday. She's probably right:)

And Blake's top 3 profession picks involve being an athlete in some capacity.

And so we have decided to embrace his althleticism. He has played soccer for the last 3 years in a row, and since he was old enough this year, we put him in basketball too. He spends hours on end out in the back yard shooting hoops in his two basketball hoops and his favorite Wii games are Madden and Deca Sports. Are we seeing a theme yet? Yep. So yes, my son discovered Sportscenter and can't get enough of it. I'll apoligize now to his future spouse. But just know, it's him.

Love my little athlete!

January/February in pictures

Just some fun pics from the last month or so. We had a FHE lesson on the washing of the feet and let the kiddos do a foot soak. They thought that was fun.


Emmalee all dressed up as usual.


Ryan all covered in drywall dust.


Our poor trampoline. Claimed by the wind...


My sister Cora and I. Both getting bigger!

Basketball

Blake's basketball season through the rec center is in full swing. There are 6 kids on his team. I'm pretty sure he's the smallest player on his team, but he holds his own. He's fast and can shoot pretty good. He's getting the hang of it. His first game he made 2 baskets! Our little athlete:) He loves it.

Demo day!

We decided to let the kiddos help us knock out the closets in the guest room. They had WAY too much fun:)
We got the closets all knocked out, the carpet out, the false ceiling out, and the wood paneling off the walls. We repaired the drywall, and are now set to get the ceiling framed out and drywalled. We just need to go get materials, frame, and sheetrock! Then we'll get started on the walk-in closet/pantry framing. Fun, fun, fun...

In our neck of the woods...

I knew things were going way too terribly smoothly:) Piece of humble pie anyone? I'm pretty sure my dryer and refrigerator collaborated--since they both decided to go ca-put all at once. So I have a new washer/dryer and a brand spankin' new refrigerator. It was time for an upgrade anyway. But hey! We got our truck back this week! And we got our tax return! New appliances, deductible, hmmm... Well, we sort of got a tax return:). At least we're not all sick now. Yippee! In other news, only 11 weeks to go! Yippee~! I'm already SOOO over being pregnant. We're in the middle of our reno on the guest room downstairs now. Blake's basketball season is in full swing, and Emmalee is in the last week of swim lessons for this session. We're spending a lot of time at the rec center right now:) I'm really tired. Yep. I need a vacation. Oh well. We're all good. We're surviving. Staying busy. Keeps me out of trouble :) Now I'm craving pie.

Remodel update

So..... The baby's new room is DONE!!!!
Wanna see?
Yup. All painted, trim is in, even the crib is up. Hee hee hee... Isn't it fun? I LIKE IT! Especially that it's done. I've still got to put in a few more things. Like hang some art and shelves on the walls. And I think I'm going to put a vinyl saying up on the bulkhead, but that's not CONSTRUCTION! That's fun decorating and nesting stuff. So there. So this week we've been sorting through toys. We cleared out the playroom--yup, that took FOREVER! And today we started on DEMO for the guest room to turn it into our master bedroom! Yippee! I know, we're crazy! We're taking out the closets in there and putting in a new walk-in closet and pantry in the dead space at the back of the living room downstairs. It's pretty much the only room in our entire house that we haven't remodeled or done anything to yet. Basically we're making the unusable guest room a nice bedroom instead. Yep. So there you go. There's a lot more finished space in this project, but it's a bigger area. Our deadline for this project is to have it done by the time baby comes. Think we can do it? I sure hope so!!! We still have about 3 months. Wish us luck!

Room update

So to update how our amazingly slow progress on the new room is going... We are just about done with the mudding and taping!!! The whole room is sheetrocked and mudded and taped. Another coat of mud and sanding on the bulkhead and that part will be complete!

We have the door in, and I have bought all the primer and paint. We're hoping to texture, prime and paint this weekend! Yippee! Our new floor is in boxes upstairs just waiting to be put in after the paint. Then on to trim and switch covers, and putting in the light and we will be done! Yippee! Of course that will all take time as well, so wish us luck getting there quickly!

My first wreck

Since I have been driving for 16 years now, it was bound to happen at some point in time. I just really didn't expect it like that. I had my first wreck on Monday. I have been rear-ended before, 9 years ago--but it wasn't my fault. So this was my first "my fault" accident. Yikes. First off, let me tell you I was freaked out. I have never been so scared ever. EVER. We were driving to Billings to get some more supplies for our new room downstairs since Ryan and the kiddos had the day off. I was driving. Yup. When I'm pregnant, I tend to get carsick much more often and end up driving a lot. So I was driving, five months pregnant. We had just passed a bad wreck that had slowed traffic almost to a halt, and noticed the road was a lot more icy on that part of the trip. The flow of traffic opened up and everyone was back to the normal highway speed. I was stuck behind someone going 40 and when they slowed down again, I attempted to pass them because I didn't want to slam on my brakes on the icy road. As soon as I started to pass, I hit a patch of black ice and it caught the tire and just took it. I had no steering, no control. So I let off the gas entirely and rode it out. We slid completely off the freeway, through the fence that separated us from the frontage road and across the frontage road and into the ditch by it before I could completely stop. It took a minute to get my bearings, realize that we had finally stopped, that we were where we were and that we weren't dead or seriously hurt. After making sure that everyone was okay, Ryan and I got out of the truck to assess the damage. This is what the fence we went through looked like.


Crazy. Amazingly, the truck was still running and drivable. We were able to drive it out of the ditch and drove down the road to a gas station and called our insurance agent. We washed it today and took it into the body shop to get an estimate. It doesn't look so bad from far away, but we ended up with $10,000 in damage. It'll need a new windshield and a new driver's mirror, new paint on pretty much the whole thing, and there are a few dents and dings all over. So boo to a banged up truck, but gratefulness that it was not worse. It is a miracle that we didn't hit another car and that no one was hurt. On Tuesday I went in to my OB to just check up on the baby, make sure he wasn't too shook up, and he was all good. I'm a little sore from the seatbelt and tensing up muscles so I'll probably go into the chiropractor this week too. I'm gotten a couple more headaches than usual this week, which I'm chalking up to the stress of the wreck, but I think getting adjusted will help. Seriously just grateful that we didn't roll, that no one was hurt and that our insurance will cover a big chunk of the repairs.

And it's going to be.....

We had our ultrasound last week. Want to know what we're having? I'll give you a hint. When the technician told us what we were having, my daughter just started balling. She was devasted. Yup. We're having boy #3! Even though she was a little disappointed, we're still psyched for this baby to come. And she will love this new brother just the same. The boys are thrilled. Looks like we're destined to be outnumbered at my house... Oh well. It's a baby, and WE'LL TAKE IT! We still feel extremely blessed to be able to have another baby, so there you go! And besides, she's getting a a baby GIRL cousin at just about the same time, so I think she'll be okay. He was moving around like crazy in there. Just a bundle of energy, hint of things to come? Probably. He'll fit right in. Ta da!