Progress and Set Backs

I guess I will give the good news and progress first, both Art and I ended up with a 3 day weekend! WOO-HOO! That basically never happens, but some of the mowers are down on the farm and since the mechanic took off for the holiday weekend, there was not enough equipment to mow, and long story short Art didn't have to work. That doesn't mean I didn't put him to work at home. :) We got so much done - we organized the storage room and then moved about 16 rubbermaid containers of stuff in there, emptying out the closet in the nursery in the process. Then all the small piles of stuff placed around the house were found homes, instead of temporary resting places. We did more work outside, finished all the laundry, organized the bedroom and bathrooms, and even started the dusting and vacuuming. It was a lot of work, and I could barely move each morning from being sore, but I am so glad the organization is about done. There are still small projects here and there, but those do not have to be done before the baby arrives. The only thing left to do before the baby is clean all the wood work, walls, baseboard heaters, and windows. And let me tell you, in an old house that is not a small task! We will split it up by room and do the smaller rooms on weeknights and the larger rooms on Sundays. We took a break one day to run some errands and head to Lowes for the blinds. Well, turns out Home Depot had a better sale so we decided to go with them for the blinds. The guy is supposed to call today to set up an appointment to come and measure the windows in the house (we are having them install them). We also decided to bite the bullet and do the whole house. Good bye tax refund, it was nice knowin' ya! All in all, I am VERY happy with what we accomplished this weekend.

Now the set backs...we went to breakfast yesterday morning (the special was PECAN PANCAKES, I got them with fresh banana on top and thought I was eating at Uncle Bill's in OC, it was FANTASTIC!) so neither one of us was hungry for lunch and when we went into the fridge in the evening, Art noticed his milk was not that cold. The thermostat was set at 37, but the thermometer I put in there was reading 50. The freezer is set at 0, but is reading about 15. So, we have no clue when it happened since neither of us were in the fridge since the night before. I turned down the temp and let it sit overnight, this morning...still 50! So all of our food is spoiled. :( We just got the fridge in August 2006, it is not even 3 years old and it wasn't cheap! Luckily, since we did get a higher-end fridge, we also got the service plan. So, Sears will be out to my house on Thursday to look at it. In the meantime, we have to leave our food in it and let it continue to spoil so the repair man can vouch for the food in there. Sears said they only refund you up to $250 for food, but I had a lot of meat from Sam's in there and I still have the receipts for everything, so I will be fighting.

Life is never boring around here!

Waste of Time!

Well our trip to Blinds To Go was a bust! We got there and talked to the salesman about the cordless cellular shades. We were thinking of going with the blackout ones for the nursery, but I do not want the baby to only be able to sleep if it is super dark, so we instead opted for the double cellular shades. The man took our measurements we brought and came back with a price...it was HIGH! It actually didn't sound right to me, because I had priced Levolor blinds at Lowe's and it seemed to be about the same. Luckily, there was a Lowe's 2 miles down the road, so we took a ride over there to get an exact price. Wouldn't you know it brand name Levolor is actually going to be cheaper than no-name Blinds To Go?! The blinds are actually within a couple dollars of each other at the 2 places, but Lowe's is having a sale this month for 15% off all custom order blinds. I'm sorry, but how can a place advertise that they are the cheapest because they manufacture them and don't put a brand on them, then end up being more expensive?? Also, we decided to save Art the aggravation of installation. Lowe's will come out and measure every window in our house for $35, then they will install all the blinds we buy for another $83. The real reason we will have them do this is because they guarantee their measurements, and if we are laying out that much for the blinds I want to be sure they fit. (We measured a window to replace a vinyl blind, and when we got home it did not fit. I swear the lady cut it wrong because both Art and I measured. Luckily it was only a $15 shade, so we did not lose that much money over it, but with that experience fresh in our minds, let them take responsibility!)

So anyway, we will be heading to Lowe's to schedule the guys to measure and order our shades. We decided to go ahead and do 4 more windows, so we will have 7 done in all this time around.

Single Digits!

We are down to 8 Sundays! BUT...in all honesty it may really be just 6. YIKES! I say 6 because my baby shower is on a Sunday, so there will be no work done on that day, and I am eliminating Sunday, July 12th because the doc seems to think I may need to go early. If, by chance, I have not had AJ but the 12th, I would imagine I will be in no condition to be doing housework. As mentioned in the last post, I am supposedly growing a monster baby. The doctor had the full results of my ultrasound at my appointment this past Monday, and after all measurements are averaged, AJ is in the 80th percentile for size. The doc said that while we are not looking at anything abnormal, he is large so we will monitor his size and there is a chance that I could be induced early. This will make for an interesting baby pool!

I hope to have the nursery done by the end of the first week in June. The only things we have so far are the furniture, bedding, stroller, and diaper bag. There is still a TON of stuff we need, but we are waiting until after the shower to buy anything. Tonight we are going to Blinds To Go to buy new blinds for the nursery. We currently have those flat, vinyl shades throughout the house, and we would like to replace them with a cordless Levolor type shade, we decided to do a couple rooms at a time and break it up so we don't have that huge expense all at once.

I'll end with a picture of Stoli - the warm weather is right around the corner and he is getting very anxious to go swimming!

Keeping 1/2 the promise!

Well, I did not deliver on the kitchen pictures, but they will be up by the end of the week. I am, however, giving the promised pictures of AJ. The ultrasound today went very well, everything looks great. My boy is HUGE! He is weighing in at 4 pounds 5 ounces, and if he continues to grow at the expected rate of 1/2 pound per week, we are looking at a 9 pound baby...OUCH! His feet are already measuring at 2 1/2 inches long, we were told to kiss newborn booties goodbye because big foot will not be fitting into them. He also has big hands with long fingers. AJ is head down and he was not interested in showing us his face, he kept it buried or covered with his hands pretty much the whole time.

Here he is hiding his face, you can see his big hand and he is kinda smirking


Here is the measurement of his foot, the bottom right shows you it is 6.62 cm or appx 2 1/2 in!

Here is the 4D pic of big foot

This are his long fingers holding his forearm and his leg bent below

A close up of his long leg, the measurement showed us he is going to be tall!

A half peek of AJ's cute little face


So I may not have posted the kitchen pictures yet, but I think the pictures of AJ are more fun anyway! Check back later this week for the kitchen update.

Where does the time go???

Has it really been 2 1/2 weeks since my last post??? Wow, time is really flying and progress is not keeping up! I still need to take some kitchen pictures and hopefully I will get them this weekend. I spent the last 5 days sick in bed, and it totally wiped me out. The whole coughing while pregnant thing is so not fun. Not to mention being sick took away a weekend from me, so I got a big old NOTHING accomplished. On the bright side, Art scrubbed the bathrooms, mopped the kitchen floor and did a bunch of laundry on his Sunday off work. AND...he made me homemade asparagus soup, from scratch, using his mom's recipe and asparagus from our garden. I couldn't really taste it 100% with all the congestion, but it was awesome and I thanked him everyday! So we are down to 10 Sundays until AJ, but....1 is the baby shower, so really we are down to 9. And there is no telling if he will decide to make an early appearance. He is due on a Thursday, so I think we will get that last Sunday (or at least my fingers are crossed that we will). Speaking of AJ, we have a growth ultrasound on Tuesday, so lots of pictures are going to be appearing in the next week. :)