35 Weeks

Liam snapped this photo of me this morning for my 35 week belly shot. (hence the reason I sort of look like the Leaning Tower of Pisa).
He did a pretty good job, don't ya think?

Anyway, I can't believe I'm 35 weeks! It's pretty crazy to think that our little girl could be here in 5 weeks or less (or more, but let's go with less). We've been busy, busy with our preparations for her arrival. The room is painted, the crib and cradle are up, the car seat and swing and bouncy are all washed and put back together, etc, clothes are washed, folded, and ready to go. :D I also have sort of started to make a pile for our hospital bags. Next week our midwife wants to do an ultrasound to make sure little girl is head down and we'll also be going over our birth plan again. We're all registered at the hospital, so it's nice to have that done as well. It's pretty surreal to me because it feels like this pregnancy has gone so fast!

I'm almost to the point where I feel ready to be done being pregnant, due to the aches and pains and pregnancy insomnia, but I still really enjoy feeling her kick and move and hiccup. She seems to be active 90% of the day and has hiccups at least twice a day. :D Wes loves to watch her alien-like movements in the evenings when we are reading or watching TV. She's got some pretty powerful kicks! I'm still not sure, though, that I'm ready to have two kids, so I'll take the next 5 weeks to adjust to that idea. ;) However, I'm sure that even though an adjustment period will be required, she'll fit in just perfectly to our family.

Liam is super excited to meet his baby sister. He talks to her and sings to her and blows bubbles on my belly. I also feel like he might be a tad apprehensive to the changes coming our way, so we're doing our best to prepare him and give him a little extra love and be a little more understanding with his behavior. However, overall, he's very, very excited to meet our baby. :) He LOVED hearing her heartbeat at the midwife last week and enjoyed telling everyone what it sounded like.

So, that's our update. Hopefully, I'll post some photos of Addy's nursery soon, once all of the finishing touches are complete. It's coming together beautifully. We're getting more and more excited to snuggle our little girl and see her sweet face.

PS- This is probably the first time in the last nine months that I'm 100% caught up with blogging! Hooray! So, be sure to check out all the new posts below this one.

Liam's Got Mail!

G.G. and Grandpa-Great have been in Wisconsin visiting family and Liam has been missing them. However, he was ECSTATIC when he received his first e-mail from G.G. He carefully read it and composed his own message to respond to G.G.
It's a pretty exciting day when you get your first e-mail as a four-year-old isn't it? ;) He's excited to read and write back to the one he received today as well. Lucky boy!

Dishes

I really, really hope Liam's enthusiasm for doing dishes lasts the next 15 or so years. ;) A mother can dream right?

My Little Swimmer

Liam has been doing GREAT at his swimming lessons. I hadn't taken any photos at swim school, so I attempted to take some from the parents' viewing area during his lessons today.

Here he is sitting up waiting his turn (he is wearing green goggles, sitting next to the blue crate).
Here he is floating on his back with his teacher (the blonde teacher out in the middle), Miss Jessica.
And here he is swimming with Ms. Jessica showing of his front breath skills! This is his newest skill he's learning and when he's proficient at it, he'll be moving to the next level!
I've been so proud of him at his lessons. He's a great listener and really enjoys each and every lesson. He's also becoming quite the swimmer! Good job, Liam!

Pears, Pears, and More Pears!

Sometime in August, a sign up sheet went around our Relief Society for boxes of pears that were grown in the church orchard. The boxes were 42 lbs and were a stellar deal, so I thought I'd go for it and can them when they came in. They came in the beginning of September and I had every intention of making pear butter with some and canning the others in sliced form. However, when I got them, they were very green still, so I waited. My mom is becoming a canning pro (right, mom?) so I enlisted her help for the next weekend. However, sometime during the week, the pears were all of the sudden 100% ripe and had to be dealt with immediately. lol. So, I attempted my first batch of pear butter.

These were some of the pears before. I didn't get a before shot of all 42 lbs because I was anxious to get them cooking!
We did a slow cooker recipe for the pear butter. It was pretty easy and I think it turned out pretty well.
My mom made it in that weekend to help me and I decided to try pear honey with the rest of the pears. It turned out to be a LOT more work than the butter. We did them in a pot and tried our best to cook it evenly without burning. Needless to say, my kitchen was covered in sugar by the end of the honey cooking. :D However, the honey is delicious. Liam was anxious to help us with our canning. :D
And here is our finished product:
We got about 30 jars total, which I was pretty happy with, however, next time I'll know a little better when I'm getting myself into when I sign up for a 42 lbs box of pears. Thanks for all the help, mom!

32 weeks

Recent Silliness

Our Big Boy has been filling our home with lots of silliness lately. He's very, very excited to meet his baby sister soon and has been helping us prepare for her arrival. One day I was going through all the baby stuff from his room and sorting, etc, and he found his lederhosen that Uncle Beannie sent to him from his mission. Of course he had to put them right on and run around the house crazy!
We've also discovered that he apparently really loves Wheat Thins and Cheez-its. A few times, we've found that he has simply helped himself to a snack for his cartoon time (contrary to our rules, although really he could have made a worse choice than crackers. lol). This particular time, it appears as though he was REALLY hungry for Cheez-its. The entire plate was overflowing.
And lastly, here is our big boy on his first real day of Pre-School in Ms. Jilladay's class. :) He loves her class and is having so much fun. Hard to believe that he'll be a kindergartner in a year!

Photos

Back in August, we decided to have Eden Rose Photography do Liam's four year old photos, as well as some family photos and some maternity photos of my belly at 28 weeks. We're very happy with the results! Enjoy!

Lucky!

A few weeks ago both my mom and my sister told me about a scavenger hunt that a local children's shop was having. You see, I've been coveting my sister's BOB stroller since she gave birth to Isabelle, swearing that when I had another baby I, too, would somehow get one. The BOB stroller is one of THE best strollers out there. I think anyone who has one would agree with that. So, I decided to see what this scavenger hunt was about because even if you didn't win, you still got 20% off a purchase of one. The rules were easy. You had to take a photo of yourself or your family member around town or doing 8 different things. The contest wasn't based on how great the photos were, you just had to complete them, and then would be entered into a drawing to win. Here are our entry photos:

Photo of yourself with your little one making a splash at a local lake:
Riding the lions wearing a cape and mask at Idewild park: (see how badly I wanted to win to take this photo?)
Do your best impression of the Rock Man at the Nevada Museum of Art:
Purchase an item at Rockabboo (got Chester's first Christmas stocking item!)
Get in the cart at a local grocery store in the produce aisle. I love that we just happened to be next to a banana sign talking about monkeys.
Take a photo with an employee at Nothing Bundt Cake. Anyone who knows me, knows that it was definitely NOT a sacrifice going into that store. ;)
Blow a bubble bigger than your head.
Take a photo of your child on their first day of school. This was Liam's first 'official' day of Ms. Jilladay's pre-school class. How is he old enough to be one year before kindergarten?
So, I really thought there was NO chance we would win. After a particularly bad day, I got a phone call from the store saying we had won! No kidding! I was shocked. :D I kept asking her if she was kidding. Definitely turned my day around.

We got to choose our stroller and color and decided to go with the blue and chocolate Revolution. We love it!!
Liam thinks it's a pretty cool stroller for his baby sister. It's funny how BIG the stroller makes him look because the stroller itself is pretty big. He's growing up too fast!

I told Wes when I was driving home with our new stroller I felt like I was bringing a baby home from the hospital. ;) Welcome to our house, BOB! Hopefully Ms. Adelyn likes you. :D

More Fun and an Antelope

While in Yerington, we had a lot more fun in Nana and Papa's garden. Most of what we ate over the weekend came from their garden, which was pretty cool. We had delicious corn, zucchini bread, tomatoes and eggplant. They also have quite the watermelon selection! Unfortunately the watermelon we picked wasn't ready, but it's amazing how many they have growing.

This was a 'little' piece of our harvest one morning.
One of the fun things about taking kids to grandparents' houses is to see them play with your old toys. Probably when I was 6 years old or so I had asked Santa for a train set. I got this Mickey Mouse set and LOVED it. I played with it a lot. Knowing Liam's love for trains, my mom got it out for the kids. Unfortunately the battery part doesn't run quite like it used to, but it still worked. And the kids loved it.
I heard some giggling coming from where Peyton was napping. Guess who went in to wake up the little boy?
And, Daddy came home on Sunday night with an antelope! He got his antelope opening day which was a nice surprise! Liam was excited for him. Great job being the guide, Papa!

Fair and Rodeo

Opening weekend of Wes and Shaawn's antelope season landed on the same weekend as the Lyon County Fair and Rodeo. So Heather and I enjoyed the weekend with Nana and our kids at the good ole fair and rodeo in Yerington.

Liam was beyond excited for the weekend. He was, however, nervous about the loud sounds of the parade. He did not forget them from last year. However, we stole some of Papa's ear plugs and that solved out problem. Here are the cute cousins with their best cheeser faces waiting for the parade to begin.

We had to teach Liam and Izzy to be aggressive when running out to get the candy. The bigger kids (and parents, really) were snatching it up from them. Eventually they got the hang of it and got some candy. :) Liam learned how to work the floats and yell and wave for candy. :)


We spent the evening at the Fairgrounds selling raffle tickets for Operation Local Support and doing all the fun fair things. I was participating in a scavenger hunt where you had to blow a bubble bigger than your head. I think I accomplished that at the fair. :)
They even had a turtle for the kids to admire.
The highlight of everything had to be the rides. They waited so, ok well really not, patiently while we were selling raffle tickets to go on the rides. They were a huge success. This boat ride was a lot of fun for the kids. Izzy yelled, "Titi! We're having fun!"

And the train. Of course they had to ride the train. Lucky kiddos got to drive the train even.
At one point they all decided they wanted to climb into Peyton's stroller.
This was a very cute ride. When their little basket got to the top, Izzy looked down with big eyes and said, "Mom! This is not even scary!"
Can you find them?
Who wouldn't love this cute little ham bone?


We didn't want to walk the kids up to the top of this ride, so we enlisted the help of my old baby-sitting charge, Michaela Davis (crazy to think she's old enough!), to take our kids to the top of the slide. The kids loved it. And thankfully, Liam didn't choke Izzy on the way down. I guess he took his job of holding onto her very seriously.
We had a lot of fun and I'm sure I'll be hearing about it until next year. :D