34 Weeks

Mom got a new lens for her camera this past week. So, when we went to Roanoke for a visit, we decided to get a few more preggo shots. To be honest, it is a little awkward for me to pose for pictures. But, I am happy to have them when they are done. It will be neat to look back on this time in life. It won't last forever. I wish I had more pictures of my mom when she was pregnant. I think I have only seen one and I believe she was actually pregnant with my brother.

We only have (maybe) 6 weeks left until this little guy gets here. Time is truly flying by.


Andrew asked Madeline what she wanted to call baby brother when he gets here. She said she could call him on the phone. Not quite what we were looking for. But, still funny.



Baby brother should weigh about 5 pounds right now. I am feeling all of those 5 pounds. For the most part I feel pretty good. But, I certainly get tired more quickly now, have a hard time getting comfortable at night and I find it hard to breath sometimes. Especially when I have Braxton Hicks contractions, which I seem to be getting a lot of. I don't remember this many with Madeline. But, I am certainly enjoying all the kicks and movement from this little guy. And he seems to get the hiccups a lot. I forgot how much newborns have the hiccups.



It would have been fun to get pictures of Madeline with baby brother. But, she will have nothing to do with a camera or a photo shoot. Hopefully she will cooperate a little after baby brother gets here so we can at least get a Christmas card picture. I have my doubts though.

Apple Picking

Last weekend, we went apple picking with some good friends, The Pulls. They have 3 beautiful little girls whom Madeline loves to hang out with.

In fact, Theia was the first friend Madeline talked about. She always talked about "Feia".


The girls had a good time picking the rotten apples off the ground to put in their bags.

It was fairly difficult to get the apples off the trees since most of the low ones were taken. Thankfully, Andrew is a good climber though.

We may have taste tested a few of the apples. But, we had to know what we were getting into before we commited to picking and buying more.

Joe had his lap full with all the girls wanting to take a break on him.

Aliyah didn't get to eat any apples. But, she seemed pretty content with just gnawing on the bag.

It was a beautiful day to just wander through rows and rows of trees. Fall has got to be my favorite time of year.

Theia

Xandra is way cool with her glasses!

Trisha with baby Aliyah.

Trisha and I before we headed to a late lunch at Chick-Fil-A where the fun continued, but the pictures stopped!

We ended up with a bunch of Golden Delicious apples that were so yummy. Madeline and I ate them all week long. And the beautiful fall day inspired me to make a festive Pumpkin Ring/cake when I got home, which Madeline called, "pumpkin happy cake." Like I said, it's my favorite time of year!

First Church Craft

We had our first MOPS meeting last Wednesday. Madeline did great in the MOPPETs program downstairs while all the mommies got to meet upstairs. She learned that God made the sun and clouds and made her first "churchy" craft. I'm not sure if she glued on the cotton balls and sun or not. I'm sure she helped in some way. But, I think it is safe to say that she added her own little touch with the yellow marker.

It is now proudly displayed on our refrigerator!

Friends

A few weekends ago, some dear friends from college came up for a quick visit. Krisha was my freshman roomate and I lived with her for the rest of my time at JMU. And Brian was Andrew's sophmore roommate and they lived together for the rest of their time at JMU as well. So, they are very special to us.

We enjoyed their fellowship very much. And Chase and Madeline had a great time playing together as well. Madeline gave Chase some piano lessons on her little piano.




Sometimes it is just easier to do it yourself.


Chase had fun playing with other things around the house. (I just noticed the blue car caught in mid air. I think he was having a great time, despite the scared look on his face.)


Animals and letters are fun too. And it doesn't hurt to start practicing to be a plumber at an early age :)

They even enjoyed a little time outside at the water table together.

Madeline was very concerned about Chase's hydration.

We are so glad the Whited's decided to visit us while they were up here. We definitely stayed up way to late. But, we enjoyed hanging out, talking, playing Wii, and just being around old friends. We hope we can do it again soon!

Kitchen Update

We have finally finished installing all of the cabinets. And we have the handles on all of them. We only had one casualty when drilling the holes for the hardware. It was my fault. I mismeasured and therefore we have a hole where there shouldn't be one. We are going to try and repair it. But, we will probably end up just replacing the drawerfront. But, it is certainly functioning for now.





I am loving all of my extra storage.


And it is very organized storage. Before, all of my utensils were thrown into two drawers that barely shut. Now, I have so many drawers and I can find everything so easily.




My pots and pans have room to breath now.

And I love the pull out feature of my other corner cabinet. It makes it so easy to reach everything in the back. (For now, it is much easier to just reach through the top where there is currently no countertop.)

And, although they aren't alphabatized, my spices are extremely organized compared to how they used to be. My spice cabinet before was so small that I used to have to take out every spice to find the one that I needed. Now, they are neatly stacked on risers for good visability. It's the small things that make me excited.

And of course, Madeline has been a great helper. She loves to measure and use the screwdriver. I have now covered our outlets with covers because I have seen her walking towards the outlets with screwdrivers. (It couldn't possibly be because we let her help daddy with the outlets).

She has also loved all the old cabinets. They make great ovens for cooking her "foods" in. For now, they are stacked in baby brother's room. Habitat for Humanity was supposed to take them today. But, they didn't want them. So, they are going to the dump. And hopefully soon.

Andrew has done most of the hard work. Unfortunately, we did have to make a trip to the Urgent Care place. On Labor Day, we were removing our old countertops and one half of it fell down, sending the other half up and he smashed his hand between the countertop and a small overhang above it. So, we spent the next 2 1/2 hours at Urgent Care getting stitches. It was not the most productive way to spend our Labor Day. But, we still got everything we needed to get done that day, done.

Andrew got 4 stitches. I took them out last night and the cut is actually still pretty deep. So, hopefully it was not a mistake to take them out. We waited more than a week. I think it will heal on up now though. At least, we're hoping.

So, inspite of a few setbacks, the kitchen remodeling is going pretty smoothly. We got a new stove installed today. We had someone measure for new countertops yesterday. And we still need to pick out tile for the floors and backsplash. And get a new refrigerator. Then we are mostly done. I think we will have all the major stuff done before baby brother (that's what we call him since we can't decide on a name) gets here. So, there you have it folks.

31 Weeks!

Only 9 weeks to go! My parents came up for the weekend, so mom took a few pictures of the growing belly. We are certainly not nearly as ready for this little guy at this point as we were with Madeline. If you want to see me at 30 weeks with Madeline, you can click here. We already had her room painted with furniture in it. Poor baby boy still has old kitchen cabinets in his room. But, like I said, we still have 9 weeks to go. Plenty of time! :)