24 Weeks!

Okay. So forget about the countertops for a bit.

Today I am 24 weeks. I went to the doctor today and ran into a friend from church who is apparently also expecting a baby. :) Her youngest is about 9 or 10 like mine. She has two kids. She's now 12 weeks pregnant. We're also about the same age. We talked about being older, "going back" to babies, and just lots of stuff. It will be fun to have someone who is exactly where I am to talk to.

For the stats: I've gained 9 lbs so far. The baby's heart rate was 158. She ran from the doppler again, but didn't have as far to go this time. :) I could feel her shifting, but she obviously doesn't have as much space as she did before.

And here's the 24 week picture. It's so funny to see this picture. I feel really big! But most people still don't notice that I'm pregnant unless they already know. I guess I'm comparing myself to the pregnancy with the boys and I'm pretty sure I'm bigger with this one. And I know I definitely weigh more. Ahhh.... to be 22 again. 5 more pounds and I will be at the weight I was when I delivered Reid. :)

More Countertops!

Yesterday Mike worked really hard on getting the countertops that will fit into the corner measured and "scribed" (the process of getting them to be flush to the wall). He got most of the measuring and cutting done, but left the big piece of countertop a little too long. He was lamenting this because it meant carrying the mammoth beast back out into the garage again for cutting and sanding. But, the scribing effort was fairly simple and straight forward and the countertops are pretty close to flush against the wall. We're not worrying too much about that since I'm going to be tiling the backsplash once the counters are in.

So. Here are a few pictures:

This shows the smaller corner piece waiting for it's "mate" in order to get installed.

Here's Mike working diligently on the big, big counter which will house the sink.

And if you didn't notice all the sawdust on the floor in the previous picture, this is what our entire garage looks like!


This is our new sink (the one facing up) and our old one (facing down). The new one is about two inches deeper, which should be nice. It also is free of all the rust that you can't really see on the old sink. And if you're wondering what the white gunk is on the bottom of the old sink, it's a sound reducing material. (NOW YOU KNOW! - Bill Nye's Narrator) The new sink also came with a fancy little cutting board that is custom fit to the smaller side of the sink. Very fancy!

And when we're all done with the countertops, they will look something like the one we got installed last week:

Looks pretty nice, I think. And look how Mormon we are. :) Grinding our own wheat flour and everything.

If all goes to plan, I will be posting the final pictures tonight. This project just can't go on until tomorrow. No way. After a week without the kitchen due to tiling, we're weary of having it out of commission. And there's no rest for the weary, right? So we'll be up til dawn finishing this if we have to tonight!

My Little Jumping Bean

I don't know what's gotten into this little one over the past couple of days, but she has been kicking and turning and jumping almost non-stop all day yesterday and today. My stomach just bounces all over the place with her shenanigans. :)

It's been very cute, though. It has always been something I've missed when I'm not pregnant anymore. I love the movement inside me. Of course, later on, when it becomes semi-painful, it's not as difficult to have it gone. But during this stage, it's just so sweet.

And as Mike pointed out, it's just so amazing to think that this little life inside me is already living her life. We're still waiting, but she's busy doing her own thing, figuring out her world. We can't wait til we're a bigger part of that world. :)

Lasagna!!!

This is the week I've had planned for many moons to make the lasagnas for the beach trip. One month in advance was my plan. I was a little overwhelmed this morning by it all, but decided that there was nothing to do but to do it, so I dove in...


Two big pots of sauce. Want to know how much stuff goes into 8 pans of lasagna? Well...
This was empty yesterday. Except for the milk, orange juice, and kefir, it's all from the lasagna. A #10 can of crushed tomatoes, 8 cans of tomato soup, and some cans of diced tomatoes. That's a lot of stuff! And that's just the sauce! The 3 lb tub of cottage cheese, the 6lb of ground beef, the 5 lb bag of mozzarella, the 4 lbs of noodles... yikes!

So this is what I needed for four of the lasagnas. (The pepper was leftover from yesterday... don't worry, I'm not "taking liberties" with the recipe.) And I did remember to sprinkle Parmesan at each layer... it just didn't make it in the picture.

So here are four of the beauties. There are three more like these. I made one pan for my family for dinner. I think 7 pans should do us. Plus the one special one for John. They're all nestled away safely in my freezer now. And as I was wrapping these up, I though, "Wow. And I kept the kitchen clean, too." Then I turned around:


Okay... maybe not clean, clean. :)

So. Now it's on to mega list making for the beach.

More on the Pool

So today I took Reid, Jacob and Cole to the pool. Zach insisted on staying home. We got to the pool a few minutes after 10am and there wasn't anyone there! :) We had the whole pool to ourselves. Cole asked me to throw him up. I agreed to throw him up a few times, but told him that he should try jumping off the diving board so he could have that same fun over and over again. He decided he would try and within a few minutes, he was jumping off the regular board, the high board (about three feet off the water), and was having a great time! He went down the slide they have at the pool and everything. It was great. He was having a blast. And it wasn't until around 11:30 that other people showed up to swim, too. Nice to have some unexpected family time at the pool.

Chocolat - The book

I just finished reading Chocolat. I love, love the movie, so I thought I'd try the book. I am amazed at how different the two are. Not that the characters and much of the story isn't similar, but much of the time, I felt like I was reading a different story than the one I saw on screen.

One of the things I really liked was getting to know the characters so much better. I appreciated having background and more time with the characters. I liked Armande's character much more in the book. She was more real, I suppose.

I didn't like a couple of parts. Namely, the ending. :) While it wasn't disappointing, it was a bit confusing and I felt it was somewhat inconclusive. I know there is a sequel that came out recently, so I guess I'll have to seek that out. But my understanding of that, from an interview I heard with the author, is it's more of Anouk's story than Vianne's. I guess I'll have to read it to find out.

But, overall, I really enjoyed it. I appreciate the screen writers for adapting it into a wonderful, yet different story. Perhaps more "Hollywood" and thus maybe why I like it a tad more than the book... at least the ending.

Yummy Dinner - To Me, Anyway

Harris Teeter has London Broil roasts on sale for $1.99/lb this week. I went and bought four 2 lb roasts yesterday. I wanted to cook one while we were at church today, but I've been a little disappointed in the past at how dry they turn out (no fat... I know). So, I found a recipe that said to add a couple of cans of tomatoes in with the roast and cook it that way. So, I put the meat in the dish, seasoned it well, added the carrots and potatoes and then find that I don't have any cans of diced tomatoes. Only tomato sauce. So, I added two cans of Rotel tomatoes. :) The kids weren't too thrilled. But the meat was really, really tender, so I'll try again next time with plain tomatoes and see how that goes over. I cooked it at 325 for 3 hours. I thought the spiciness was really good, but like Mike said, "I don't like it enough to cook it when I know the kids won't eat it." Agreed.

And speaking of spicy recipes... I came across this yummy looking recipe on a blog that looks really good. I think I'm going to try it soon. I'll let you know how it goes.

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2008/05/not-your-grannys-mac-cheese/

And if you try it, definitely let me know how it goes!

Countertops and Baby

So, the countertops have proven to be beasts. Poor Mike. He's been fighting with the endcaps for about a day or so. I think he feels like he has the technique down now. But we didn't attempt to install any other countertops today. We will install the one we've been working on for a few days tonight and call it a day. I don't know when we will attempt the sink counter with the corner. Maybe not until next weekend.

And in baby news, I got a great package from my dad and Darlene today. There were pink shoes, hand protectors, outfits, spoons, plates. Everything pink! :) It was fun to go through that package. She's getting bigger and stronger all the time. I was driving the other day and she kicked a rib! She was really active last night while we were watching "Enchanted". I'll post my 24 week tummy shot in just over a week. I think I've grown a lot since 20 weeks.

You know... there's nothing better to do...

So, we decided to put in new countertops in the kitchen. I guess we don't feel normal without some big project going on. We decided to start with the counter over by the fridge. It's just a straight cabinet with no corners or anything. So, we got it cut last night and today I installed boards to raise the countertop so it would clear the drawers. Then Mike started the task of getting it flush to the wall. We have this major dip in our wall behind that counter that is about a quarter inch deep. It's amazing how bowed in the wall is there. But, we followed the online instructions and Mike used our new belt sander and the countertop is now snugly fit up against the wall and looks great. He did an a amazing job of it. All without my help, too. I think throwing Cole around in the pool yesterday was a bit much for me. (Big surprise.)

So, tomorrow, we will get the ends on the counter and get it screwed into place. Then we will take a deep breath and try the corner counter with the sink. Yikes!

We are going to put a wood/butcher block countertop on the island. IKEA sells one that we like. I'm not 100% sure which color I want to use. It's between the birch and the beech. I wish I could test them out to see which one I think looks better. Oh well. I'll just have to do the best I can. We're going to wait, though, for the island countertop swap since the mixer is installed there. We're not sure what we'll do with the mixer. Mike had talked about building a wooden box for it to sit in so we wouldn't have to reinstall it anywhere else. I've considered getting a little cart, installing it in that, then we could store it's parts inside... We'll see what we end up doing.

And I'll post pictures once the non-island countertops are all in.

Fun at the Pool

We've spent a few hours each day this week at the pool. I've been keeping Sophia some each day this week and so she went with us Monday and Tuesday. Today her mom was picking her up a little early, so we waited to go to the pool until after lunch, when Sophia would be gone.

I sat in the shade for the first two hours keeping an eye on another family's kids while the mom took the youngest one home for a nap. This was good since Jacob and Cole's best friends are in that family. :) But once the mom came back to get them, I got in the pool to play with Cole. He didn't have a friend and had expressed a little frustration earlier at the lack of friends at the pool. He was really happy when I came over and started playing with him. After a while, he asked me if I could throw him into the air so he could splash into the water. Hmmmm.... good question. He's pretty scrawny, so I figured I could give it a shot. :)

Well... he had a blast. I was careful in my lifting so I wouldn't pull any muscles (we'll see how sore I am tomorrow), but he was just in heaven. He even started twisting his body so he was doing tricks in the air. And once he flung himself forward right at the height of my throw so he did a flip in the water. It was so great to watch this kid who didn't want to get his face in the water last year having a blast in the water. He even told me, "You were right that it's funner when you don't hold your nose. I can swim faster." Made my little heart sing. Those swimming lessons last summer paid off.

And Jacob has been spending his time perfecting his can opener off the diving board. :) He gets some amazingly high splashes. He looks to me for a thumbs up or down to see how he did.

Zach spent most of Monday and Tuesday carrying Sophia around the pool. She adores him. Her mom was trying to get her dressed on Tuesday to come over and she was refusing. So she said, "Do you want to go see Aunt Joyce?" No good... didn't help. "Want to go see Zach-y?" Boom. Instant cooperation. :) Pretty sweet. I hope Zach likes his sister as much as he likes Sophia. And today Zach played with some younger kids that live in the neighborhood. Carrying them around on his shoulders and helping them swim.

And Reid came a little later since he stopped to see if a friend wanted to come to the pool. He walks in with two of his friends and I just have to pause for a moment to take in my huge child. He comes over and I spray him with sunscreen and am just shaking my head at his broad shoulders, narrow waist, and muscles. Sheesh. When did he get so big? A friend was sitting near where we were and when Reid left, she said, "When did he get so old?" :) Exactly. And from time to time, I'd see Reid leave his friends and go over to play with Cole for a few minutes.

And while I was out there today with all my boys, I just felt so blessed. They're really good kids. I am so lucky to have them and to have Mike working so hard to support us so that we can spend the day at the pool having a good time. And then to feel this little one jump inside me to remind me of my further blessings. It has been a really good day.

New Header - Goodbye Toads

Last Saturday, during the middle of the kitchen tiling project, I put the toads on craigslist. It tool only a few hours for someone to show up at my door to take the toads away. We'd had the toads for three years. It was a little sad to see them go, but with everything that's going on around here and the fact that the kids don't notice them anymore, I decided I was done taking care of them. I will admit that Y-Gal, Chubby, and Shrimpy (and Jerry, rest his soul) were good toads. They were very fun to look at and made a nice chirping noise from time to time. They were easy to care for, but when the kids don't care anymore, the motivation is just not there.

The lady that came to pick them up already had two toads and her kids were all excited to get more. She showed up with her four kids, ages 11 - 2, and they were all excited about the toads. The kids learned the toads names and were really happy. That made me feel really good about it.

And the only kid that knew we gave the toads away was Reid. The others haven't even noticed that the toads are gone... that's how much they ignored them.

So. We are down to one kitty for a pet. That's a good feeling. And it's a kitty who goes potty outside. :) Not much easier than that!

Kitchen Photos!

We finished the kitchen yesterday!!!! Well... the counters are still in the process of getting cleaned off, but the kitchen is functioning the way it's intended and the fridge and table are out of the living room! Yippee!

So here are the pictures:

Mike took this picture of me because he thought it looked like I didn't really have a plan. :) He knew I did have a plan... even if it was a funny one. (I like seeing the nice straight edges. I worked hard for those.)

I don't know if professionals reach in through windows to tile corners, but it worked well for me. :)


So here is the nice, expansive kitchen floor with nicely painted baseboards. Just beautiful!

And here's our kitchen in it's fully functioning state. We're using this smaller table for now. We have our fancy expanding table that we can use when we want to seat the whole family. And this table will technically seat us all if don't put all the food out on the table. Anyway. It's a nice little table and it's nice to have the extra floor space open to more easily admire our hard work.


So this is a nice view of the floor in front of the sink/dishwasher/stove. How pretty!

And this is the view on the other side of the island in front of the fridge. We managed to get some grout haze on the island... I'll have to work on that. :)

And last, but not least, today is Father's Day. I went to Texas for 10 days in May to spend time with my dad and really feel blessed to have such a great man for my dad. He has taught me many important lessons over the years in quiet, subtle ways. I've appreciated his guidance in my life.

Which leads me to talk about the father of my children. At church today a lady gave a talk about the important role fathers play in raising their children. I can't imagine having a better father in our home. He's giving our boys a wonderful example of what it means to be a husband, provider, and father. I can't imagine trying to raise these children without him. And now that we look forward to having a daughter, I know that he will provide for her a wonderful example of how a man should treat his wife. And he will love her in a way that no one else ever can or will.

And I love that the guy I first saw riding his bike in the snow in February in bare feet; who caused me to shrug my shoulders and shake my head, is the man who makes my heart go pitter patter after 14 years of marriage.

Mostly about Reid

This week has been a crazy, crazy week. I'm really ready to have the kitchen back to normal tomorrow. We're still working on the grout haze. Stupid haze. I'm going to go over the tile a few more times today with some cleaner to try to get it all off. We're getting closer, but the grout is all dried now, so the haze is more stubborn. Tomorrow I may just seal the grout under the fridge and stove and wait a little while longer for the other part of the kitchen. We'll see how it goes today.

Reid got hired by our neighbor to clean out some overgrown brush/bushes/poison ivy by his house. Reid worked for four hours yesterday and then another hour today. He was drenched in sweat yesterday. :) I was so happy to see him take on hard work like that. Of course, the $50 payment was good motivation! :) But, still seeing him out there sweating like crazy and working really hard made me really happy. I guess it's good to know that your kids can handle hard physical labor. But I'm also glad that he doesn't have to do that kind of work all the time.

So today I'm taking Reid to a scout campout. They're doing a 50 mile bike ride tomorrow in Virginia. He's really looking forward to it. They've been doing practice rides for the last month or two. I don't know if Reid went to any of them except for the 25 mile ride a couple of weeks ago. He did well on that, so I'm hoping he doesn't keel over tomorrow. But, he's 13... he can handle it. :) I'd be dead the next day, but he'll do great.

Grouting

The grout is in. Once again, I chose a grout that looks really good while it's wet. We'll see how it looks when it dries too many shades lighter than I had in mind. Maybe if I tiled a lot more I would understand the ludicrous color charts, but since I don't plan on making tiling my profession, I'll just deal with grout that's too light for now. I'm sure it will look fine.

We are trying to de-haze the tiles right now. A process that takes way too long. Mike is working on wiping down part of the kitchen now. But, the tile looks really great. I'm excited to put pictures up here soon. I'm thinking of waiting until the very end when we get the baseboards and everything back up. We should be completely done Saturday evening.

In kid news: Yesterday was the last day of school. The kids are very excited to be out for the summer. They're already tan from spending time at the pool (which has been open for a couple of weeks). Next week when the kitchen is done, we'll start our summer ritual of spending our mornings at the pool.

And today Reid asked me what we were doing this month. "Are we going anywhere?" I asked him what he meant and he said, "Like King's Dominion." I explained that we were using our summer funds to do the week at the beach. I said, "I know it's kind of hard not to do much else, but it's a week with the whole family." And he responded, "Yeah. I'd rather do that."

He's a good kid.

I'm not tiling again for a LONG time!

Good grief! Did I happen to mention that our kitchen is huge?

We started yesterday around 6pm. I had things laid out in the basic lines that I wanted to follow. Mike had the wet saw set up in the garage and the tile splitter ready. We got the first bag of mortar mixed up and started. 11 hours later, at 5am, we finished. Wow. That was rough. The room is just so big. I have a nice blister on my hand from the trowel.

Of course, after you're done and you're wondering why on earth you decided to take on a project like this, you look out across the kitchen floor and your little heart starts melting at the beauty of the tile. So, I guess it's like one of your children.

So then I showered and got in bed. And then my little cutie started kicking up a storm. She was probably wondering what the heck was going on. I was glad to have the reassurance that she was fine even though her mother wasn't. But. I got about 5 hours of sleep and aside from a pretty bad headache, am doing well. It will take me a couple of days to recover, but we can't put the grout down until tomorrow morning, so I'm going to sit on my bum all day and recover. :) (And the floor really does look awesome.)

No More Sideline Cheering

So, today we got the backerboard down. This ended my "sit back and watch Mike work too hard" streak. I'm the official mortar spreader, so I got to spread mortar for all the boards. It might not seem like it, but we have a big kitchen. :) And I now know each square inch intimately.

So here are some photos with captions:


We had to move the kitchen out into the living room... so here's our table. This is a bit stressful for me because we've had a "no food or drink out of the kitchen" rule for about 6 years now... oh well... the carpet will be replaced in a few weeks, so it doesn't really matter so much.

Here's the temporary fridge home... the kids love it, I'm sure. :)

And our hall closet has been transformed into our pantry with non-cook food items and paper/plastic products for easy clean up.


These three are just showing the floor with nothing on it...

This is Mike pre-laying out and cutting the backerboard. He really likes how his bald spot is accentuated in this picture. :)


And these three are showing the backerboard all in place. How fun! Tomorrow evening we tile. I need to spend time during the day working on the layout, marking lines and purchasing a few more bags of mortar since we used way more than I thought we would with the backerboard.

Did I mention that the kitchen is huge?

Spectator/Supplemental Support

So... what a difference a few weeks makes. I find myself fairly unable to handle the heavy lifting required to do a lot of the prep work to tiling the floor. So. Sadly, Mike is doing the bulk of the work while I either watch, provide overall direction (I'm sure this thrills him), or keep myself busy on the "sidelines" trying to do helpful things. So right now I'm doing laundry to clear the hallway out to the garage so when he starts going out there to cut tile, it will be clear. Not a bad thing to do, but not nearly as helpful as it would be if I were in there cutting the backerboard with him.

So, the demolition is done. Mike is making the dry run of the backerboard right now. Then we'll mix mortar and lay the backerboard. I will help with that process. If nothing else, I can certainly hammer many of the 400 or so nails we'll have to hammer down through the backerboard. Yippee.

Tomorrow we tile.

One Final Tile Job

Mike decided we should tile the kitchen right away. I'm not sure it's been long enough since the last tiling job for us to forget how tired we are. :) But, I'm only going to get bigger, so he's right... sooner is better.

So, here are the before shots and one of the new tile semi laid out to check my main lines.








So now we demo. Yippee!

Mush for Brains and Dry Hair... Bad Combination

Earlier in this pregnancy, I was having some real problems with keeping my head together. At one point, I couldn't figure out why we seemed to be over budget on every single budget category. Then I realized that I had completely forgotten to enter one of Mike's paychecks. And even Mike was worried when we got a "Final Notice" bill from the gas company and the electric company. Okay... and the water company. But the past few weeks, I've felt like I was doing better... until today.

So, about the dry hair. One of the things that made me think that maybe I was having a girl is the fact that instead of getting thick and not falling out, my hair has been falling out in droves since I got pregnant. And it's really, really dry. I have to put a ton of conditioner on it just for it to feel normal.

So, today when I got up and saw that my hair looked really good, I thought, "I must have showered yesterday." See. I'm an every other day kind of shower person. And my hair usually looks much better on the second day and horrid on the third (thus the every other day shower pattern). So, I get dressed and head out to the van to pick Mike up so we can go buy kitchen tile. On the way there, I start thinking, "Wait... I didn't take a shower yesterday..." (This is the part where the mush for brains comes into play.) So when did I take a shower last? Wait... really? Ack! SUNDAY! Yikes! But my hair looks great! :) I guess I need to go out and buy a shower cap.

Sweet Baby Shoes!

So, the people at church have been just super about sharing in my excitement at having a girl! One lady was telling me that it was just about the best thing she had heard and she got a little teary. :) Our old bishop stopped me in the hall to congratulate me and I told him, "I'm really excited." His response was, "Of course you are!" :) And one lady in the ward gave me a sweet little gift. She said she just couldn't resist and I'm glad. :)

Aren't they adorable? What she'll wear them with, I have no earthly idea! Maybe I'll sew her a little blessing dress.

What sweetness. :)

20 weeks!

So here I am in all my glory! (Well, not ALL my glory... that would be inappropriate.) :) I took this picture this morning before getting ready for my 20 week doctor's appointment. The baby sounded great and was running away from the doppler machine, so that was really cute. She's kicking up a storm these days, but always seems to stop if I call Mike over to feel the movements. Either she's a tease, or she's a moma's girl. :) We think Mike may have felt a little kick yesterday, though, so maybe she's coming around.

I've gained 6 pounds. Her heart rate was 133 today. Cole came with me to the appointment and was excited to hear the heartbeat. Two little cuties. :)

Productive Saturday

Well... yesterday was productive. Mike finished up the front porch railing project that he started in January! :) It still needs a little sanding and a couple of coats of paint, but the major work is done. Then he replaced the deck rails. He also managed to cook a batch of cinnamon rolls before heading off with the missionaries. The missionaries didn't have any appointments, so Mike took the opportunity to take some cinnamon rolls to his home teaching families.

My day was spent painting the kid's bedroom. Mike and I moved the furniture out and I washed the trim. Then I took Reid to a 25 mile scout bike ride. Then I went to Lowe's for the odds and ends we would need for the day's projects, came home and caulked the baseboards and trim. Then I went back to pick Reid up from the bike ride. Then I painted the baseboards and trim. Then I painted the walls. We decided to keep the same blue that is there, so I just touched up the paint to freshen it up. Then I had Reid help me move furniture around to where it would be and then got the kids (and myself) in bed.

The porch and deck look good. They will look even better with some paint/stain. And the bedroom looks really good, too.

It's nice to have a good, productive day like that. But it does wear you out.

Baby Update: Tomorrow I am officially 20 weeks. Half way point. That's always a scary point in the pregnancy for me. I remember when I went in for my 20 week appointment with Reid. Still in my regular clothes, just "beep bopping" along and the nurse said, "You're half way there." I was like, "Whoa! Lady! Slow down, there!" And after yesterday's big day, I think, "How on earth will a baby fit into our lives?" :) And then I breathe, recenter and know that all will be well. But I'm still glad for the 20 weeks I have left.