My recent projects

Since I became a stay-at-home-mom I have taken up a new hobby...learning how to sew. Rich got me a sewing machine for my birthday and I'm starting to figure it out. I had several projects in mind that I wanted to do and have actually tackled quite a few of them. Here's a few pictures of what I've been up to (aside from growing a baby, taking care of a needy toddler and moving, of course)

My new friend

I ordered these reverence book kits to make for the kids in Rich's family for Christmas. They were very tedious and time consuming. But they turned out pretty cute. I managed to get 3 made before Christmas and haven't even started making Skyler's yet :(

The first 2 done were both being sent to Louisiana. The pink one was for Caitlyn and the blue one is for our friends little boy, Ethan.

This one was for Noah and Hannah

These are the finished pages.......
The first page has cards you lace up and the second one has a velcro armor that you put on the man

Velcro numbers with the 7 days of creation

Velcro fruit and vegetables

Velcro animal heads you can mix up and put on the different bodies

more velcro pieces and little finger puppet animals

I also did some wood letters for Dylan to hang in the boys' room. Since Skyler has some Dylan needed them too :)

My first attempt at blanket making was this blanket for Dylan. It turned out pretty good. It looks great from far away but is full of character (a.k.a imperfections)

On one of my many trips to JoAnn's, Rich found this CARS blanket binding and wanted me to make a blanket for Skyler.

Just finished this one tonight :)

As you can see I've been staying busy with all of my craft projects. I don't think I'll get anymore done for a while since I'll have a new baby to take care of very soon :)

The ULTIMATE form of nesting........

What do pregnant women in their 3rd trimester typically do? Nesting, of course! I, however, never do things the typical way. Nope, not me! I like to be difficult! So how do I nest, you might wonder? Well, by moving, of course. Yes, that's right, 3 weeks away from my scheduled c-section we decided to move. We have been trying to decide what to do with our condo for about 2 years now. At the time we bought it we were thinking that it was wise to start small and not buy something too expensive that would stretch us too thin. We didn't want to waste money on renting anymore either. So, we bought it with the intention of only staying there a few years, building a little equity and then selling it and getting into the house of our dreams. (This all happened right before the housing market crash...of course!) We thought a condo would be a good purchase for our first home since if things go wrong and need up-keep the Home Owners Association would pay for the necessary repairs, right? WRONG!! Little did we know that the developer that went through and remodeled all of them basically just made everything look pretty so he could sell them and he pocketed all of the money that everyone paid into the association when buying their condo's leaving the HOA penniless. AWESWOME! Fast forward 4 years to now, we find ourselves in quite the predicament. Our growing family is getting rather cramped in our small condo but no biggie, at least we have a roof over our head. We can stick it out until we can sell it, right? Well, no, not really. We looked into selling it over the summer, however since the market crashed we currently would have to list it for $25,000 LESS than we owe. Oh, and by the way, come to find out, our condos are not FHA approved either so nobody can get a loan to buy it even if they wanted to because lenders aren't really being as free with home loans anymore. GREAT! Oh, even better, several of the units need some very costly repairs such as, new septic tanks & new siding. Those repairs will cost about $250,000, divide that by 26 units and we're looking at owing almost $10,000 more. Perfect, now we're $35,000 in the hole. Oh and that's not all of the repairs that need to be done either, those are just the pressing ones needing to be done right away, there are several more in the near future. What to do , what to do? We have quite the money pit on our hands! If we stay we're just getting in deeper and deeper. So, we finally decided to talk to an attorney and our best option is to foreclose on it. It's the only way we can get out without getting into serious amounts of debt over something that's not our dream house. It will screw up our perfect credit for a few years but we don't really have another option right now. So, last week we went and found an apartment that we liked. It's conveniently located almost right across the street from where we were living and they had a 3 bedroom available right now. We decided it would be easier to move now instead of waiting and having to move with a 2 year old and an infant. So we started moving in on Christmas weekend and we're pretty well settled now. Here are some pictures of our new place...

It's been so cold that the waterfall outside the clubhouse is frozen

This is our building, right by the front gate

Dining room and kitchen

Ginormous pantry

Kitchen and living room

Living room

Back porch

Our back porch overlooks the basketball court and playground

Our guest bathroom a.k.a Skyler's bathroom, I love that the counter is big enough for his changing table pad

Don't you love all of the monkeys!!

Master bedroom...we have a HUGE walk in closet and a bathroom in our bedroom

Rich's office is still a work in progress

Skyler and Dylan's room....Skyler loves standing on his train table and watching the kids play basketball out his window

We took the side rail off his crib yesterday because I realized that in 2 weeks after having a c-section I'm not going be able to lift 30 pound Skyler in and out of his crib for a few weeks

He likes that he can climb in on his own now, the trick is keeping him in there

We have lots of nice amenities here. The hot tub is open year round and we are right by the clubhouse so it's quite conveniently located to us.

We have a pool to swim in this summer :)

A gym that's open 24 hours

And we can reserve the cabana for free, so we can have birthday parties and baby showers and whatever else we want. Pretty sweet!

We are really liking not having stairs inside our house anymore and are enjoying our new living situation. Well now you're all up to date. Come by and see our new apartment sometime :)

Mark January 12th on your Calendar!!

That's right people, we have a date scheduled for our c-section. I got a call from my doctors office yesterday and found out that they have me scheduled to have an amniocentesis on January 11th and assuming that Dylan's lungs are mature they will deliver him on January 12th. That's 1 month from tomorrow. HOORAY!!!!! We are scheduled to go to the hospital at 5:30am and have the c-section at 7:30am. He'll be a little more than 3 weeks early which is earlier than my doctor wanted to deliver him but she's not available later in the week so we're just hoping that everything works out ok.

Here's Dylan at our 32 week ultrasound. Just look at that cute face :)

Here's a profile shot with his little hand up by his head

And here I am at 32 weeks...the bump is growing!

We finally bought Dylan a couple of newborn outfits today. I figure he'll probably be in the 6-7 pound range and not 9 pounds like Skyler was so we might actually need newborn clothes this time. :) I now have 1 month to get everything done before he's here and my life gets way more hectic so wish me luck!!!

My Birthday

Well, I'm another year older and I'm kind of late in posting this since my birthday was back in the middle of November but my sweet hubby did such nice things for me I just had to devote a blog post to it. So, better late than never!! My actual birthday wasn't the greatest day, let's just say things didn't work out too well that day and we'll just leave it at that. However, Rich took my not so subtle hints about me wanting to learn how to sew and he took me shopping on Black Friday and got me this sweet new sewing machine as my birthday present. It's a great, basic sewing machine, perfect for beginners...that's me! The last time I used a sewing machine I was in 8th grade and that was well, um....16 years ago. Crazy!! Anyway, after fighting with it a bunch the first day and contemplating giving up and taking it back I finally got everything adjusted right and now we're getting along pretty well. I even completed 1 of my projects already. I can't post pictures yet because it's a Christmas present for someone but I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. And I have a few more projects up my sleeve that I'm hoping to complete before Christmas and Dylan's arrival. I'll post pictures of all of my projects soon.

The other thing Rich did for me was order my FAVORITE cake from Wagner's bakery. What a way to make a pregnant gal happy!! Here it is, pink champagne cake with strawberry mousse filling that had fresh strawberries in it and whip cream frosting. SOOOOO YUMMY!!!!!! Words cannot express how much I love that delicious cake!

Of course, Rich wasn't the only one who did nice things for my birthday. Rich's parents went along with the sewing theme and got me some fun sewing goodies that are making my projects much easier. And my awesome little sister sent me a care package too, complete with my favorite See's chocolates. Boy does she know what I like!!!
Thanks to everyone who wished me a Happy Birthday and made me feel special!

Weekends in Seattle

Rich has been working on a big project in Seattle for the past 3 months, so whenever he has to go up and do work on the weekend Skyler and I tag along. Skyler loves hanging out in "Papa's office" (that's what he calls Grandpa) Here he is sitting at Grandpa's desk....
This is the view from the conference room. The office is on the 30th floor so there's quite a view from up there.

Skyler loves looking down at all the cars driving around on the streets below.

There was a weekend that Rich finished up early so we decided to take Skyler to the Seattle Children's Museum to check out the Clifford exhibit while it was there. Here are Rich and Skyler in front of the Space Needle, on our way to the Children's Museum.

Skyler and Clifford (please excuse the poor picture quality, that's what happens when you don't check the batteries in the camera and have to resort to using the camera on your phone)

Skyler and T-Bone

Kisses for T-Bone

Hugs for T-Bone

Crawling through the big whale......

.....and the log

Skyler liked this exhibit, it was a room full of tubes and vacuums and things for ping pong balls to go through

Time to do some driving

Playing in the fire truck with daddy

Hanging out in front of the giant pumpkin (You know how much I've been in love with pumpkin this year, I couldn't pass up a picture in front of one that big......mmmmmm pumpkin!!)

We had a lot of fun playing with Skyler at the Children's Museum, one of these days we'll have to check out the Hands on Children's Museum here in Olympia, I've heard it's a lot of fun too!

Today was a good day!

Despite the fact that I'm getting a cold, today was a good day. Why, you might ask? Well, nothing big and exciting happened, just little stuff that all added up. First off, Skyler woke up in a good mood - always a plus! Second, I had a Dr. appointment today and got to hear baby Dylan's heartbeat again, that's one of the few things I love about being pregnant. Things seem to be going well with the baby and we get to have another ultrasound in 4 weeks. So, we'll get to see him again soon, yay!! Also, while we were at the Dr., Skyler was a perfect little angel, he was so well behaved and patient the whole time. I love going out in public and having my child actually behave, it makes me feel like I'm doing a good job! When we got home Skyler's good mood continued while he ate his lunch. Oh yes, he actually ate lunch, these days that's a big thing since he's decided to be a picky eater. Then he proceeded to help me pick up all of his toys and then we sat on the couch and looked at books together for a while. I love that he likes to sit on my lap again! He also took a good nap which enabled me to take a nap and it was glorious! Between getting sick and being pregnant I did not sleep well last night and I was exhausted all day. A nap was just what I needed! For some reason I did not feel like making dinner tonight which worked out well because Rich really wanted to go to Famous Dave's. He's been wanting to go there for a while and tonight was the night we finally decided to go. It was AMAZING! We got there and were told it would be a 30-40 minute wait, we weren't too excited about that but it was Friday night after all, well, it turned out to be only a 10 minute wait, yay! Our server was fabulous, she was friendly and on top of things. She even got Skyler's food out first which we didn't ask for but that always scores big points with me. Skyler continued to be a perfect little angel and ate his dinner like a champ. He even ate carrot sticks, I can almost NEVER get him to eat vegetables and he did it willingly tonight. I love days when I don't have to fight with him to get him to eat something! When we got home he was still being all happy and cute, wanting to sit on my lap and look at books and play and be tickled. It's so hard to put him to bed when he's being all funny and adorable. He seems to know that it's hard for us to put him to bed when he's being good, so right around 8:00 every night he gets all playful and cute. Yes, he has us wrapped around his little finger and he got to stay up until 10:00 tonight. The 3 of us were having so much fun wrestling around and playing together and hey, I figure I should cherish these last few weeks of having only one child. Very soon, like in only 10 weeks, we'll have another baby and I won't have so much time to devote to Skyler. Gotta spoil him while I can, right?! After all our fun he even went to bed without a struggle. And here's my adorable little boy, sound asleep in his crib as I type this.....

Does it get any better than that?..... I don't think so!

I figure that since we have been dealing with a cranky, whiny, teething toddler who has given us many challenging days lately, maybe we should try to focus on the good ones. Then when I'm having a hard day I can look back at the good days and remember what it's like to have fun being a mom. Well that about sums it up. Nothing too extraordinary, but a good day nonetheless!! Let's hope I get lucky and have another good day tomorrow!