Steals and Deals

Everyone knows I love a good deal. I had kind of a mixed day out shopping today. After I dropped Weston off at school I took Davin and we headed to Xpedx (a paper store) in search of some cute thank you cards and a big box of blank notecards. I was completely out of stationery and I have a long list of thank you's to start writing. I was pretty disappointed in their selection. Plus they didn't seem to be very good deals. The box of 100 notecards with envelopes was $26.99 and the box of 50 cute thank you's with envelopes was $21.99. I bought them, but since I've been home I looked up stationery on Target's website and they have a cuter, bigger selection, so I will most likely be heading back to Xpedx to return my purchases.

I did a LOT better at Babies R Us. Seriously, you must get yourself there. They had 4-5 circular racks full of clearance clothes in all sizes that were ALL on extra clearance for $4.99 no matter what their tag said. Some of the onesies and shirts weren't that great of a deal at $4.99, but I scored a Carter's velour track suit outfit with matching onesie, an adorable Carter's corduroy jumper with long sleeve shirt outfit, and a Koala Baby bunting that goes over baby's regular outfit and has a hole so you can still strap them in the carseat for only $4.99 each! Had I paid original prices those 3 outfits would have cost $89.99. Had I paid the clearance prices marked on the tags the outfits would have cost $53.90. Instead I paid just $14.97! If you need winter clothes for a baby or baby gifts go check out Babies R Us stat!

I also bought the pink hamper for the nursery. It was $21.99, plus I used a 20% off coupon and my $10 gift card from registering and only paid $7.59 for it. I call that some shopping success. It was a fun high. :)

After a quick visit with my friend from BYU who just moved back up to Utah, I picked up Weston from school and dropped both boys off at my neighbor's house so I could go to the eye doctor. I have a few sets of contacts left so I was going to wait to go in until later, but then last night I had a weird loss of peripheral vision so I called and made an appointment. The doctor said my eyes are fine, but my vision "thing" was a textbook description of an optical migraine. I'm guessing it's hormone/pregnancy related since I have never gotten migraines in the past. I was glad to hear that it was not a permanent problem or something. My contact prescription did change a little which was a bummer since it's been constant for several years. Oh well.

By the time we all got home I was tired. I really haven't done much else this afternoon except put away the baby stuff and set up the hamper. I love watching the nursery slowly come together. It makes me smile and get even more excited/anxious for baby to come. I am making lots of plans in hopes of either inducing labor through Murphy's Law (if I am not ready for baby/have important plans she will come) or just staying busy until next week's doctor's appointment.

Baby It's Cold Outside

Literally. It snowed ALL day yesterday. It was windy and stormy and cold. The roads are horrible. I still haven't seen the plows go by yet. If I hadn't had a doctor's appointment to go to this morning I would have said forget about preschool and we would have stayed home. Luckily Ian is a trooper and went out early to dig out our cars/driveway. I really need to get that man a snowblower. Poor guy. Shoveling is hard work! I seriously have never seen this much snow in our yard before. It's not even Christmas yet! I think we may be in for a long, miserable winter.

The doctor's appointment didn't improve my morning much. I was really hoping for a report of progress or at least an admission from my doc that I was ready to be induced in the next week. Instead he had a hard time finding the heartbeat and thought the baby might be breech. At least that meant I got to have a quick ultrasound. Turns out baby is head down. She is just really high still. This means she's doing nothing to help me. Stinker. The only comforting thing my doctor could tell me was that only 10% of babies (after your first) actually drop before you go into labor, and a couple good contractions should push her down no problem. He basically looked at me sympathetically and said he was pretty sure she wasn't going anywhere for another week. I did secure a promise that we would talk more seriously about induction at next week's appointment.

I guess I better make some big plans for this week so I don't sit around feeling wronged and irritated that I'm still pregnant. The trouble is that it's just a lot of work to do outings in the snow while huge. We'll see what the week holds for us. I think we have a couple days before the next storm hits, so I will try to get the kids out of the house.

Things I Want to Do This Week (if I feel up to it/the weather cooperates):
-Go to Babies R Us and get a pink hamper for the nursery
-Buy some Dreft and wash the newborn clothes
-Take the boys to the aquarium or dinosaur museum
-Clean the tub/shower and hang the new shower curtain
-Mop the kitchen, entry, and bathroom floors (they need it badly!)
-Go on a date with Ian (even if it's just to Babies R Us) :)
-Cook dinner at least a couple nights this week
-Read Key Lime Pie
-Go through Weston and Davin's drawers and pull out all the summer clothes and add Davin's winter clothes.
-Start wrapping Christmas presents while listening to John Denver & the Muppets.

PS-Congrats to Ian on his 5 years (today!) of dedicated hard work at Verite Inc.! It's amazing to think of how our lives have changed in those 5 years.

Happy Turkey Day!

We had a very nice, low key Thanksgiving. I am so grateful for the blessings in my life. My family, my friends, the gospel, my home, Ian's job/my job, my talents, freedom, and all the myriad of things and/or conveniences I can't seem to live without.

We started the morning watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. This was never a big deal at my house growing up, but it was on and we were just having a slow morning, so I decided it would be fun to watch. The kids, Davin especially, love the giant balloons and got really excited to see Spiderman and Buzz in the sky. Weston enjoyed getting dressed and running to Smith's for donuts with Dad. Luckily Ian beat the Thanksgiving morning rush at the grocery store. I looked through the newspaper ads while I watched the parade. At first I thought I better not even look, but since we were on the hunt for a good deal on a TV I decided I would go through the ads.

I handed all the ones with TVs I thought we would be interested in to Ian and he researched the models online. There were 2 different models at Smith's Marketplace near his work that were the same price and mostly the same specs. Since the store was going to be open most of Thanksgiving Day he decided to run over there and check out the two TVs before we left for our Thanksgiving dinner. Wouldn't you know it, he came home with a Samsung 40 inch LCD HDTV! I kind of felt guilty that we bought it on Thanksgiving Day, but at least we didn't have to get up at 3am this morning and camp out in front of Best Buy or Target to get a deal on a TV.

Anyway, we spent the rest of the day up in Ogden at my Auntie B's house with family. It was wonderful. She even let me off the hook and didn't ask me to bring any food. It was all delicious and I didn't have to do any of the work. Thanks for always hosting us Auntie B! It was also nice that the boys are a little older and were pretty independent the whole time. They didn't eat much, but they had great fun playing with their older cousins. It was a successful, lovely Thanksgiving.

When we got home Ian set up the new TV, of course. It looks ginormous compared to the little 20 inch one we have had since we got married. It also looks really nice. Ian decided to look into signing up for cable so he could watch the BYU v. Utah game on Saturday in HD on his new TV. It ended up being a little bit of a hassle, but 6 phone calls and 2 trips to the Comcast office later we think we've got it worked out. Sheesh!

This is where Ian has been for a good part of the day either enjoying watching the new TV, playing around with settings on the new TV, or on the phone with Comcast about the new TV. :)
I spent the day decorating the house for Christmas. We also went and got our Christmas tree this afternoon. If you're planning on getting a tree this weekend . . . check out your local Lowe's. Our 5-6 foot noble fir tree was on special for only $19.97! I think we paid $40ish last year. Anyway, I think it's a pretty cute tree. Sorry my picture turned out blurry, but you get the idea. The tree and the new TV. It seems like Christmas is coming early at our house. It kind of is.
Tomorrow I have a couple stores I want to go to just so I can use my really great coupons. Then we will watch the big BYU v. Utah game in the afternoon, and hopefully get the Christmas boxes and other stuff that has been displaced put away before we start a new week of waiting for baby. Speaking of baby . . . I am SO done being pregnant. My back was killing me today. My cough is still lingering and I think I sprained my toe. It's really annoying. Any time baby wants to join us would be good with me!

Whew!

What a weekend! We were busy busy. Playing, working, church stuff. It was mostly fun, but also kind of tiring. I am looking forward to a slow couple of days before Thanksgiving. Friday night Ian and I ran out the door and just barely made it to our tour of the hospital that I will be delivering at. It was pretty standard. I just wanted to see the delivery and recovery rooms to get an idea of what it would be like. They are nice and bigger than at St. Mark's, so that was good. It was funny doing the tour with all these 1st time parents and hearing their paranoid sounding questions. :)

After our tour we grabbed some dinner and went to the mall. I got a new nursing bra (oh the joy), did a little Christmas shopping, and hit up See's for dessert. Then we went to the airport to pick up Ian's mom! Hooray! It was so great having her around this weekend. She was a huge help and we got to do some fun shopping. Seriously, do not let us loose in Joanne's.

Saturday was our errand day. We got a little bit of a late start since Ian had some yard work to get done before we could leave, but it worked out. We shopped for curtain fabric, among other things, at Joanne's first. Then we went out to lunch. Last we went to Walmart. That was about my shopping limit. Denny got some sewing done that afternoon and even made the boys some bean bags. They were super excited about them (FYI if you make bean bags, rice makes a much better filler than unpopped popcorn). It started snowing at about 5pm and didn't stop all night. We watched a chick flick, Leap Year (it was only ok), and wrapped all the books for the Christmas book advent.

The boys wanted to dress up and show Grandma their Halloween costumes in person.
Around midnight we lost power and it was still off when we all woke up around 6:30am to over a foot of snow. It made for a cold morning, but I was kind of secretly hoping the power would stay off so I could stay home and snuggle in a blanket instead of having to teach YW and do our Evening of Excellence program. Go ahead, judge me. It wasn't to be though. The power came back on before 8, so I still got to have a full day of Ward Council, church, teaching YW, baking dessert for the Evening of Excellence, writing my talk for the program, then putting it on. It went pretty well for being fairly last minute. I am just glad it is done and I can kind of check out of YW for the next month and focus on baby.

Building block towers and castles Sunday morning.
Ian digging out our cars Sunday morning so we could go to our meetings. I really need to get this man a snowblower. Poor guy.
Yesterday was Ian and my 7 year anniversary! Can you believe we have been married that long? Crazy. We weren't going to be able to sneak away for an overnight getaway, but we planned an all day date and it was fabulous. We TV shopped, ate lunch at Kneader's, got massages, saw the new Harry Potter movie in IMAX (it was fantastic!), and went to a nice dinner downtown at Faustina. It was a good day.
Denny is such a fun grandma. She spent the day with the boys and helped them build a snowman and make cute turkeys out of apples and cookies and candy. She also worked more on the baby's room curtains. They aren't finished, but they are going to be so cute! Both boys just loved having Grandma here to play with and are probably going to be super bored with just me home for the next couple days. Thanks for coming and playing and helping Den!

The boys playing lightsabers and swords. They are such goofs.
All decked out in their winter gear (we had to get Weston snow boots and Davin mittens) to play in the snow.
Working on their snowman with Grandma.
The finished little snowman. Didn't he turn out cute?
We are supposed to be having some pretty miserable winter weather the rest of this week. Highs in the teens and more snow, so it should be a pretty mellow, stay inside and decorate for Christmas kind of Thanksgiving. I'm excited to enjoy dinner with family and have Ian home for a long weekend.

No Change

That is pretty much the worst thing you can hear at an OB appointment when you're 37 weeks and so over being pregnant, but that's what I heard today. Sigh. I have been having a really rough week. It has been busy, but I have been sick and all I want to do is lay on the couch all day and read my book and have my food brought to me on a tray. :) Ian has been really great taking over when he gets home. I came home to fed, bathed, sleeping kids, rinsed dishes, and a tidy house last night after my YW training meeting. I am definitely thankful for my wonderful husband.

The other issue we have been having, besides me being sick and too busy to get better, is that Davin is not sleeping well. Grr. It seems like I can only remember brief pockets of time in his life that he has consistently slept through the night. Right now is NOT one of them. Yesterday he didn't nap, went to bed at 8pm, then was up 3 times between 1 and 2am. Which meant I was up. Then I couldn't get back to sleep because I was hungry, so I got up and ate a bowl of cereal and finally got back to sleep around 3:30. That makes for a very tired (and still sick) mommy and a tired, crabby 2 year old. I have declared today a "sick" day. Meaning I am only leaving the house to go to my OB appointment and to drop off/pick up Weston from school. Also I am staying in my sweats all day and not feeling guilty if I do nothing from my to-do list.

Today is Weston's last day of school until after Thanksgiving. It's a week from today! Crazy! Tomorrow night Ian and I are touring the hospital I'm planning on delivering at and picking up his mom from the airport for the weekend. I'm excited. I hope that I feel decent enough to enjoy the weekend.

Sickies

We are all sickies at our house. It's no fun. Ian and I are feeling it the most. Davin doesn't even really have the cold. Weston has it, but seems to feel mostly fine. Just sniffly. He has chosen to go to school every day this week so far. I don't feel too guilty about sending him since I know it's just a stuffy nose cold and nothing worse. I would be a happier camper if I could be nyquil/dayquil medicated around the clock, but since I can't, I'm kind of cranky about being sick. I just hope I get all the way better before the baby is born.

Sickies vegging. I love it when Davin lays on the couch like this. It's so adorable!
Anyway, we had a nice, productive Saturday. I had a lovely brunch at Kneader's with my Aunt Pam and Williamson cousins. We chatted and laughed and ate and they gave me fun presents for baby girl. After brunch I did a little shopping alone, which is always kind of nice. That afternoon Ian worked on the garage and I helped get the linen cupboards organized inside. It felt good to be working on getting things cleaned out and put away. We had never really put everything back after emptying the den.

Sunday was pretty chill. Weston gave a talk and did a great job. That's pretty much the only reason I went to church since I wasn't feeling great. The boys sure looked cute in their coordinating red ties though. Davin was so excited to be part of the matching tie crew.
This week we have been sort of just running errands and getting a few things done around the house in the morning and then I have been taking it easy in the afternoons. I am getting anxious for baby to come. I can't sleep and I can't do anything productive without getting worn out or getting sore from this heavy belly. My mother in law is going to be here on Friday for the weekend and I'm looking forward to getting the nursery all finished up with her. She is going to help me with curtains and I think I will go and get the hamper and lamp to finish the main decor. Needless to say, I've hit my wall. I'm ready to not be pregnant. :)

Another Week

Now that I'm 36 weeks I'm finally nesting! It feels like I have mostly just been exhausted this whole pregnancy. The nursery felt too overwhelming to tackle, but now that the dresser is cleared out and I have fun girl clothes to put inside it I have been feeling like getting it ready is really urgent. Plus, Thanksgiving is right around the corner and that means "any day now." I went to the doctor on Wednesday morning and I was measuring between 37 and 38 centimeters, which surprised my doctor, but the baby hadn't dropped yet, so we still have a few weeks to go.
Wednesday night I had a combined YM/YW planning meeting that I was in charge of. I felt like it was a little chaotic, but we did get lots of ideas for each month's combined activity for next year. Right when I was getting to the last month or two I realized I hadn't planned anything else for the evening. When I was finished the YM president came in and said he had set up chairs in the cultural hall so the YW could go in there and pick the actual activities we wanted to do for our months of the year and the YM would stay in that room and figure out their months' activities then we would get the calendar nailed down. I was so grateful he had thought of doing that!

The YW filed into the cultural hall and I held the door for them to make sure they all made it in (they tend to disappear to the bathroom sometimes), then when I came in I saw all my friends and some family there for a surprise shower! I really had zero idea it was happening. I was so touched. It was great fun to see friends and my aunt and cousins who drove down from Ogden. There were ward members there too, and, of course, the young women. It was pretty low key. We ate the cute rattle cupcake cake, visited, and opened presents. I got so many adorable little girly clothes, a couple blankets, a couple packs of diapers and wipes, and a car seat cover. It was so fun of my friend, Janelle, to put the whole thing together and even make it a surprise! Thanks everyone who helped and came. It meant so much to me. :)

Me and my friend, Tara, who thankfully took some pictures and sent them to me.
Opening presents. My friend, Janelle, who threw the shower is the one taking pictures right behind me.
Yesterday after I picked up Weston from his short day at school we went to Babies R Us to register. I know that's kind of weird since I already had a shower and my baby is due in just a few short weeks, but I did it because they gave me a $10 gift card for registering. Why not, for a free $10? Anyway, it was good because it helped my organize in my head what things I still need to get. I went ahead a bought a couple things too. Then I went home and started getting my nursery organized!
The giant CD case I ordered from Amazon came yesterday too, so last night I stayed up and put our entire DVD collection into it. We had run out of room on our DVD shelf and had quite a few hidden in the cupboard. It was getting harder to know what we had to watch. It was kind of fun going through all our movies and seeing ones I hadn't watched in a long time. I also enjoyed organizing them into genres. I don't think I did the best job though. I didn't leave enough blanks spaces between sections, so we'll see how long they stay nicely organized. In the meantime Ian and I are still debating what to do with all the cases. Do we store them in the garage or just toss them?

Goodbye empty DVD shelf cluttering up my living room corner!
Can you believe all that got consolidated into the one case with plenty of pages leftover?
Yesterday morning while Weston was at school Davin decided to make his own little ball pit. He put all the balls into his fire truck and threw them around while he watched Cars. When I went in to sneak a picture he wanted me to take more and more. When I realized he was going to want me to take his picture with every single ball in there I said no. It was pretty funny how excited he was to have just HIS picture taken though. I sure love this adorable two year old!
Unfortunately Ian has been working late late nights this week and hadn't slept in 48 hours, so last night he mostly dozed on the couch while I talked at him until he officially had to go to bed. :) I am excited for our anniversary coming up and our fun date we have planned. Also the long Thanksgiving weekend will be nice. Hooray for November!