February

39 weeks today! Oh boy. February has been a good month. I've tried to plan fun things to keep me distracted from just sitting around thinking how much I want to have this baby! (It's sort of working). Jeremy and I have been able to go on a couple dates and we've been able to do some fun things as a family also. I want to get out and do things while we can before we're home-bound for awhile.

So the first weekend in February, Jeremy and I had a nice date night out to dinner. Jeremy got two gift cards from people at work, so we used one for a seafood place in Newport, Kentucky. Our server was awful, but my salmon was really good and it was nice to get out together.

Then last weekend we had a glorious 3.5-day weekend. Eli had a 4-day and Jeremy only works half days on Friday and then had Monday off, so it was a nice long weekend together. Saturday we cleaned the house really well and then took a big stock-up trip to Costco. Sunday was a great day at church and we had a nice Valentine's Dinner and dessert together as a family. When we got out of our meetings at church it was snowing like crazy! It wasn't snowing at all when we got to church, but by the time we were done, there was an inch or two on the ground and it was coming down hard. We were so excited! It was really the only good snowstorm we've had. When we got home it was so beautiful to look out our windows and see it coming down. We all just stared at it forever while making and eating dinner.

Then on Monday, the snow had stopped and we had a good 4 inches on the ground to play in! We had a yummy breakfast and then everyone got their snow gear on and we headed outside. We went sledding down the hill in our backyard and built a big snowman. It was perfect! I was so glad we finally had enough snow to play in and that it was a day where everyone could enjoy it.

 My phone doesn't take the best snow pictures, but oh well.

I took a few videos of our sledding fun. I even went down several times. It was so fun! Of course it didn't put me into labor (darn) but it was a lot of fun!

Jeremy on the first run. By the way, our sled was made out of a box covered in plastic - and it worked great! Good job Jeremy.

Eli:

Connor:

And Jeremy and Anna:

Then that night we used up another gift card Jeremy got and took the family out to dinner. It was a fun way to end the weekend.

Then on Thursday my parents came! They had been in Florida for 6 weeks and stopped in with us for 2 nights on their way back to Indiana. They thought about skipping out on us, but I'm glad they decided to come. :) The kids were so excited to spend some time with Grandma and Grandpa. Friday night, we got a babysitter and the four of us went out to dinner. We grabbed some Graeter's ice cream on the way home and ate it while watching a movie in our basement theater after the kids went to bed. It was a pretty great date!

And then yesterday, we had an AMAZING gorgeous day! It was 70 degrees and sunny! Hard to believe we could get that kind of weather in February, and just 5 days after we were sledding in the snow. We got our chores done quickly that morning and then we went on a looong walk through our neighborhood (trying to get baby coming) and then that afternoon we played outside and washed both the cars. It was so nice!

We had the music going and Anna busted out her sweet dance moves!

We took the kids to get some frozen yogurt afterwards at a newish place around the corner. It was a great day!

Baby on the Brain...and in the Belly

First off, I just published TEN posts! Wow. I decided Sunday was a good day to catch up on my blogging. I didn't want to be months behind when our baby girl arrives.

So....I am now 37 weeks and ready to pop! This pregnancy has felt a lot harder physically. Maybe because I'm out of shape? Old? Doing this for the fourth time? I don't know, but I am ready to be done. Somehow, this baby girl dropped already - a week and a half ago! Do any of you have experience with babies dropping really early like that? I am dying over here. I can't be on my feet for more than five minutes before I start feeling crazy pressure down there which quickly turns to pain if I'm on my feet longer than about 10 minutes. It's awesome! I'd like to think that means she'll come early, but I'm not really naive enough to get my hopes up. I just waddle around and walk really slowly through the grocery store. People have started giving me strange looks, probably because they think I'm in labor or about ready to explode. Hahaha.

Anyway, I just thought I should do an update since I haven't talked about this pregnancy much! We are all really excited for her to make her arrival. The kids talk about it all the time and I talk about it all the time. Everything is ready to go - we got her clothes out a few days ago, set up the swing, and got out the burp cloths and all that good stuff. We're going to do a tour of the hospital tomorrow since we've never been there and then we just need to get her to come out! I'm due February 28th, so send good vibes for her to come this month! That would be amazing. Anna's birthday is March 1st so we're thinking a week early would be perfect. ;) Rrrright.

We'll keep you posted! I hope the end is near...

Girls Room

One of my goals this year is to get all our bedrooms decorated. I know that's not a very noble or spiritual goal or anything, but it's something I like to do! Bedrooms are always the lowest priority for me, so I wanted to spend some time making each bedroom unique and fun. Since baby girl is coming soon I decided to focus on the girls' room. One of the first tasks was fixing our dresser situation. We have a changing table/dresser that was passed down to us from Jeremy's sister when we had Eli and it has been great! We've used it for every baby, but it was time to fix it up and get something else for Anna so we could use the space for the baby's clothes.

We also had an old dresser passed down from Jeremy's mom that Jeremy and I have been using for years as our ONLY dresser. I have no idea how we made that work. I guess with closet space, but we were ready to get something nicer for us and repurpose it for Anna. So we set to work figuring out what to do with the two dressers. I decided to paint them both a light gray and put new knobs on. The changing table didn't have any knobs, so Jeremy drilled some holes for those, and the dresser mostly had drawer pulls, so Jeremy filled some of those holes so we could just do knobs instead. I found some ADORABLE knobs for a great deal on Amazon and I love how cute and girly they are. All in all it cost me less than $40 to completely redo both dressers and wow, what a difference it makes!

Here are the before pictures:

 And after:

 The whole room! It has been lots of fun. The curtains came with the house, so I just kind of went with the pink theme. I already had the white pictures frames, so I decided to put their initial on there above each of their dressers, and then I got the little wall decals off of Amazon for $10. It was a pretty inexpensive bedroom decorating project and I love it! Anna loves it too. Still everytime she walks in her room, she says, "Ooooh! My pretty room!" It's hilarious. We're excited for this next little girl to come!

 We got rid of the nightstand that was in here and replaced it with the dresser, which makes it so we can fit everything nicely in here! The closet and door are on the wall opposite from the windows.

January Phone Pictures

Lookin' good for church. Way too cute.

Portrait of a dog. Courtesy of Connor.

I'm a bush-baby! On our way to get new tires in Jeremy's car. These two were troupers, we had to wait almost 3 hours! Luckily Costco is next to a bunch of other stores and it was a warm day, so we walked around a lot.

"Take a picture of my boo-boo" - Anna.

Anna playing her "violin" while Eli practices his piano. :)

Second to last day in January - GORGEOUS 60 degree weather! So bizarre. We went to the Nature Center and hiked and then ate lunch OUTSIDE. It was awesome.

Snuggling on Mommy's tummy after a busy day. It makes a good pillow. :)

Aaaaand here we go. This was 36 weeks. I figured I better take one for posterity, but it ain't pretty. Yikes, that's a big belly!