Sane?

We have a new piece of lawn decor...

Yep, our house is on the market...again...  This will be the third time we've attempted to sell a house.  The first time we were hugely successful.  The 2nd... not so much. We're hoping and praying that this time goes smoother.


So yes, we're moving.  No overseas aspirations this time.  Nothing Earth shattering.  Nothing my mom will be distraught over the thought of. (love you Mom!)  Several months ago we purchased a plot of land from Jonathan's grandma.  The land is part of the property where Jonathan's dad grew up.  His grandma and Uncle's family live right there as well.  They will be our only real close neighbors.  Luckily, we all like each other (so far, right? :-D)  Ohlen is super excited and is insisting that our new house is going to be blue.  Noah has no clue, but I have a feeling that living next to his great Uncle that will give into his requests for "Brrm Brrm Ride (brrm brrm = tractor) will be fine with him.

How do I feel about it all?  I'm excited.  I love my house, the land, and our neighbors.  But change like this doesn't scare me anymore.  God is with me where ever on this planet we live.  And as long as my family is coming along - that's home to me.  I'm excited about having more trees around, and building a tree house with the kids.  I'm excited about picking out colors and things for the new place.  I'm excited about saving more money, because we are downsizing.  I have to admit, when Jonathan first mentioned putting in a manufactured home, I was very skeptical.  But, the more we researched, the more we really fell in love with the idea.  The one we are looking at will have about the same square footage as our house now.  The outside walls will actually be thicker.  AND they include a new appliance package with the house, and can I just tell you how exciting that is.  (such a nerd)  Plus - Jonathan will be closer to work.  We will be closer to church.  And we will be closer to family.  We'll have to learn the balance there, you know? But I think we'll get it.  There is so much I can learn from the women that will be living steps from my front door, about life and about other things like canning, gardening, and other various things of that nature.  And I hope I will be able to bless them in return as well.  And hope that my children don't drive them all insane.

Ok, so this is getting long, feel free to skim right over. :)

As for the question of sanity.  As most of you very well know, I am currently 32 weeks pregnant.  If we sell tomorrow, we would be moving into our new place in about a month and a half (there abouts)  That's about two weeks before I am due...  Allow me to remind you that  Noah came 3 weeks early.   If the house sells in a month...  that will be terribly interesting.  We sell in 2 - 3 months, we'll be trying to pick new house things with a newborn.  Sell in 3+ months we will be showing the house with a newborn, attempting to keep the house all cleaned up with a newborn, toddler, and preschooler.  Pray for us - pray hard. :-D  But really, we've been here before.  We moved into this house when Ohlen was about a month old.  We had to paint all the walls and stain all the woodwork.  None of that this time (THANK goodness)  I am wiser in the ways of babies this time, and in the ways of keeping myself sane and healthy, so I know my limits.  I am well prepared for months of box living if we have to.  I'm prepared to allow others to come in and help and put my things away, even if they might go places that I wouldn't first choice.  I'm prepared to allow Jonathan to organize the kitchen if I am too busy dealing with a newborn.  I will have plenty of time to reorganize things later.

This insanity also is what had me up at 6am Monday morning finishing the touch up painting. And then cleaning  and staging the entire house for pictures.  It was quite the morning.  Needless to say, I did not do much the rest of the day, and decided to take today off, for the most part, too.  I did some wonderful outside reading while the kids played outside.  It was pretty glorious.

So that is the excitement of our house at the moment.  We would appreciate prayers as we forge ahead.  And if you know anyone in the market for a house..... :-D

A conversation with Noah

Noah - sitting at the table after his nap - eating a banana: Ohl? ... Ohl?
Me: Ohlen? He's outside.
Noah: Side?  pause  Bike?
Me: Yep

I love how my boys care about each other.  They keep track of each other.

And Noah's vocabulary is starting to sky rocket - much like Ohlen's right around this time.

:)

Spring!

First - today is so much better than yesterday.  Thanks to an amazing partner and my little boys I got some encouragement, laughter, and just a lift up out the hole I was starting to dig myself.  The sunshine today helps too. :)

Just a little evidence that spring is here - and there will be wonderful colors showing up around here soon.  And the grass is starting to turn that wonderful shade of green.

 

 

Milestones of sorts

Two milestones of sorts this week.

Less than 10 weeks to go until this little girl comes.  (I can say that pretty confidently as they usually say they won't let me go past my due date.)  It always seems like a big deal when the week count goes down to a single digit.  (Today is actually 9 weeks and 5 days, counts right?)  If she is like Noah, though, I could only have about 6 and 1/2 weeks.  At this moment that sounds a whole lot better than 10.  I'm starting to feel really off balance and clumsy, not to mention all the weight gain and dwelling on the task of losing it.  I have good days and bad days about that whole issue.  Let's just say today is not a good day.  One of those days when you want to just go to bed to get the day over with.  The frustrating part is that it has nothing to do with anyone else, it's all self inflicted craziness.  BUT - even as I sit here I can feel this little girl moving all around and it does give me a sense of confidence and determination to be a good role model for her. (and the boys too)  Plus, I want to be able to be active with them.  I want to live a long and healthy life with my amazing husband.  I just know I have a long road ahead - and one that I'm going to have to be going down my whole life.  I'm not one that will be able to lose it all, and then slack off - because it will all come back. It is going to take a complete life style makeover that will have to stick - and that is daunting, and days like this it seems to come crashing down on me.  I know I need to lean on God for this.  I sometimes forget, He cares about this stuff too.  And I think He wants me to be all healthy too.

Ok, on to something more fun.  Another milestone here at our house.

Ohlen has ditched the training wheels!!!

I try very hard to not be the boastful, bragging parent.  But I have to tell this story.  And know that he does not get his balance, determination, fearlessness from me.  He is about 95% his daddy.  :)

So, Saturday afternoon Ohlen decides he wants to try to take his training wheels off.  I thought this was more of a daddy job - especially when mommy is 30 weeks pregnant - but Ohlen was pretty determined.  So out we went.  I took the training wheels off and headed to the grass.  It was a little mushy from some rain, so it wasn't going too well.  I was trying to hold onto the back, but it was hard for him to pedal on the grass - and I was having a bit of trouble with the whole bending and running.  So I told Ohlen we should wait until daddy gets home.  He again insisted that he try on the gravel drive.  So we go over and I try one time to hold on to the bike, definitely not working.  So Ohlen says he will do it by himself.  So he takes his bike to the very end of the drive - and rides it to the garage!  I couldn't help myself -I was just laughing.  Have you ever just had to laugh out of pure joy?  The happiness is so great it just bubbles out?  He was too - laughing the whole way.  And that was the end of my intervention.  From there on, he was riding.  Sure he has taken some falls and spills - but, yeah, so proud of my little boy.

Now the pictures - I hadn't even thought to take my camera out right away - but this was just a little later.  I so should have forced him to do a posed big smile picture.  Maybe I can get one of him swinging a hammer at his training wheels - or throwing them in the trash. :)  He would probably like that.

Had to throw in a random Noah picture.  He can't reach the pedals on his tricycle yet, poor guy, he just needs to shoot up a little more. :)

Cousins!

My brother's family (I love saying that!) was up to visit last weekend.  The cousins got to meet for the first time.  It was so much fun!!

This being the last day of March

I totally wasn't expecting to take pictures like this today:

Finished Project

First off, third trimester is finally here!  Only about 11 1/2 weeks to go.  (Yikes)  And, actually, if she decides to be like big brother Noah - she would be here in about 8 1/2 weeks...  That's only 2 months.  I'm still feeling pretty good.  Heart burn is horrible and nasty.  Getting off the floor is not easy.  I've limited my shoe choices to those that do not include bending over to put on.  :)  Other than that - it's been great.  My energy level is still pretty high most days.  I can get around fairly well.  Sleep, when not interrupted by heart burn (yes, that is the WORST way to wake up) has been really good.  I'm enjoying seeing and feeling all her movements.  I think she is head down - at least that would be my guess, but we'll see what the Dr says.  I have an appointment next week - and then I think I will be on to the every two week appointments.  OH - ha - I guess I did forget the one little snag in this whole process.  I did fail my one hour glucose screening test (Again! - I did with Noah too) so I have to go in Saturday for a 3 hour test to see if I have gestational diabetes.  I passed the 3 hour with Noah, so I'm hoping for the same results.  We shall see.  And according to the, let's compare your growing baby to a food guide, baby is as big as an eggplant.

Now on to the crafty side of things. I finally finished one of my "secret" projects.  A baby quilt for my sweet nephew, who will be 2 months old tomorrow.  I started it before he was born, shortly after they showed off their nursery.  I don't have many pictures for it, and I don't have a finished picture. Lame I know....  This is a result of putting the final stitch in the binding a few hours before taking it to give them while they were in town visiting paired with my horribly addled pregnancy brain forgetting to get my camera out and take a picture of it.

I found the pattern at the Moda Bake Shop.  However, instead of using a precut pack, I bought yardage.  So there is a bit less variety in the fabrics.  The middle row I had accidentally got things turned around and had put the sides and tops/bottoms on the wrong place.  So the middle squares would have been off, if I had lined up the borders correctly, and lining up the middle squares correctly would have made the borders opposite of the rest of the quilt.  So I decided to try to have the middle squares correct, and just let the border be off....  I didn't think it would make a difference... boy did it ever.  It was pretty horrible.  The corners were so far off...  So it was off for some seam ripping time.  What quilt/ blanket of mine would be complete without a little seam ripping time loss....   So I got that taken care of.

Then I realized that I really wanted to add a border?/strip? (my quilting vocabulary is not very extensive) between the pieced together squares and the border.  I didn't really think much about how wide to make it, except to what I thought would look nice.  Well......  I realized after I added the white border that had I done a little math, I could have made it so that I just could have added an extra square or two to the border, when in reality, I was going to have smaller rectangles on the ends now.... because I didn't think that far ahead.  But I didn't think it really mattered all that much, and it really didn't.  I think it looks ok still. Then I realized that it went further than that.  Adding the white border also meant that my backing was no longer big enough.  D'oh. But that was a simple fix with a row of squares on the back.  I was actually glad for this mistake because I really like having it on the back like that.

So that was all the glitches I dealt with...  Other than that, it was a fairly easy quilt to piece.  As for the quilting, I hand quilted it.  It really didn't take all that long.  I just quilted in the ditches (I think (and hope) that's what it is called.)  Basically around all the piecing - except for in the border.  For the binding I didn't have enough of one fabric, so I just alternated the dark orange fabric and the blue branch fabric. I have been promised to be sent pictures of it - since it is now currently about 2 hours North of me - and soon will be heading its way to TX.  As soon as I get those pictures I'll post them as well.

Lucky Duck

So, about a month or so ago I won an excellent giveaway.

I won the giveaway over at JessicaNDesigns.  It was sponsored by Ahmelie.  Go check them out!!

I won this adorable swaddling blanket.  It is great!  It the perfect size - meaning nice and big.  My boys both loved being swaddled in those first few months and the receiving blankets just don't cut it.  I can't wait to try this one with our little girl.  I love the fabric too.  It's a flannel, so it's nice and soft.

Thanks so much to Jessica and Ahmelie for the wonderful gift!

Baby Update - 26 weeks

I have to say - this pregnancy has been great lately.  I haven't been feeling too bad.  My energy level is pretty good.  My two main complaints are the heart burn and the fact that walking fast/jogging on the treadmil becomes painful way too fast and I end up walking pretty slowly.  Keep reminding myself that it really is better than nothing.  But I know better than to "push through the pain" when exercising at this point.  Not a great idea.

So I'm 26 weeks along.  14 more to go - 96 days until my due date.  It seems far away - but the weeks are really going by fast.  I have the glucose tolerance test that I need to get done - but my Dr. told me that I need to wait until my cold symptoms are gone for a week....  Hopefully that will happen soon - I've had this cold for about 2 weeks now and it is still hanging in there.  I'm hoping I can go in next Saturday for the test.

Then the next "big" thing will be another ultrasound at 32 weeks - if they are going to go ahead with it.  I'm not really sure if they are going to or not.  So, that would be fun. :)

I'm starting to get clothes together.  For whatever reason there is still this (very small) nagging feeling that somehow they were wrong and it really is a boy.  Probably why I really want to have that extra ultrasound. lol.  As for a name - still not decided.  There is a short list of about 5 or 6 names, but we haven't really talked about it to narrow it down.

She is kicking/punching me like crazy these days.  Nothing painful - just highly amusing.

I realized today that I really have only taken 2 "belly shots" this time around.  At 18 weeks, and today.

What a difference 8 weeks makes.  She is definitely growing.  (Puh, me too...)

Bratwurst and Potatoes

One of our favorite meals lately has been a meal of Bratwurst and Potatoes.  Which actually seems a little odd, seeing as we haven't grilled them outside yet this year.

We all enjoy bratwurst - and not the prepackaged, precooked kind.  We like to get them from our local meat sellers. (Well, ok, we still like the prepackaged ones too - but like the others better.)  Usually I'm a little cautious when grilling these because I think it is always a trick to get the middle of the brat cooked through while not completely burning the outside.

I found a good tip on an episode of Kitchen Boss on TLC.  I don't watch it much - actually I think that is the only episode I've seen.  All the recipes can be found online.  The recipe I'll give you here actually is for an Italian sausage sandwich, but I use it for the brats.

Here is the recipe.

The tip I have used is to boil the brats first.  I boil them for about 10 minutes before grilling them.  It works really well, I think, and the end result is great.  The middles are cooked through - and you won't have to worry about burning the outside.

For our meals I also grill some onions and red peppers.  If I have some mushrooms I'll add those for myself too.

For the potatoes, I've been making some baked french fries.  I cut up some red skin potatoes into thin strips (french fry shape). I put oil on a pan, put the potatoes on the pan, sprinkle them with salt, pepper, a little garlic powder. Then I spray them all with an olive oil cooking spray and bake at 400 until they are soft.

Simple, easy, and enjoyable. :)