Baby Girl's Nursery.

A little glimpse into Baby Girl's nursery...

We're pretty happy with how it turned out and it was a fun project to work on together!  We definitely wish we could've painted the walls (one downside to renting), but otherwise, we're excited to bring Baby Girl home to her room!

We have the room- now we just need the baby!

39 weeks {big, happy, and scrambling to get things done}

1 week left (give or take a few days).

I still can't believe how fast this pregnancy has gone!  We're suddenly a week away from having a baby and I have no idea where the past 39 weeks went!  Whoever says that the last few of weeks go by slow, that definitely hasn't happened for us!  They seem to be speeding by even faster.  Whew!  Hopefully we slow down a little bit to just enjoy ourselves for the next week or so.

We finally crossed off the last few things on our baby "To Do" checklist!  The carseat is installed (thanks to T!), last of the baby essentials bought, the final nursery decorations are up on the wall, freezer meals are made, and the hospital bag stuff just needs to get put IN the bag...

A few quick calls still need to be made to the insurance concerning odds and ends we're not sure of, but other than that, we're good to go!  Or so we think...

Baby Girl is crammed inside this belly of mine and is packing on the pounds.  My legs are starting to retain some water and I've got a little chunkiness going on in my face.  Nothing too terrible (especially compared to many of the other pregnant women out there!).  I'm just hoping that delivery will go just as smoothly.

Still no labor signs as of late besides a few Braxton Hicks here and there.  Our doctor has been out of town for the past week, but is back from her vacation, so we can heave a huge sigh of relief that she'll be there (knock on wood?) for Baby Girl's delivery!

{ready to lose some water weight!}

My last day of work is Friday.  I have mixed emotions about it.  It's certainly best for my students-they deserve to enjoy their last 2 weeks with a sub doing fun activities rather than having a big bloated teacher waddling around doing Field Day with them!

I'll certainly miss teaching, it's something I'm good at and passionate about, but I think the Lord has been preparing me for accepting motherhood a little more by making it so I don't enjoy going to school as much.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE teaching, but I'm exhausted at the end of every day.  This week I've put in long hours attempting to get all of my standards reports, grades, end-of-year gifts/treats, class placements, and testing done.  And don't forget the teacher-evaluation-observation-I-was-kinda-sorta-hoping-my-principal-would-forget-about-until-it-was-too-late.  No such luck.  

Blech.

My students are darling this year and I'm going to miss them dearly!  They're like my own kids- I'm with them more than they're with their own mothers for goodness sake!  It will be hard to say goodbye on Friday.

Beginning at 3:30pm on Friday, Baby Girl can do whatever she wants and send me into labor. T thinks she'll come a couple of days early.  I think she'll either be on time or late.  She just doesn't seem to be in any major hurry to be on her way out yet.  Even with me being on my feet all day and walking up a storm, she seems pretty content to be where she is.

T is loving work and has been a great help with last minute preparations for Baby Girl's arrival.  I couldn't have done any of this without him.  He's a gem of a husband (and soon to be father!).  

We meet our DAUGHTER in the near future!  Hopefully we'll figure the whole parenting thing out and attempt to raise this kiddo to the best of our ability.

We love you, Baby Girl!  

All pregnancy post update ideas via Rachel at herthreadedneedle.blogspot.com

32 weeks. registered and getting Baby Girl's nursery underway.

We're down to 2 months, people.  2 months!  8 weeks left until we meet Baby Girl for the first time.

This whole becoming parents thing is starting to become more real these days.  Especially since Tyler's brother and his cute wife had their baby girl over the weekend.  Who is the cutest little thing you ever did see.  We're so excited that they had a smooth delivery and finally have little Dylin Rachel here!  We might be a little jealous...

T is a little antsy to have Baby Girl get here now.  Me?  I'm kinda okay with her staying put for a little while longer.  I'm in no way prepared for her yet!

Though we have finally started setting up the nursery.  For realsies.  T finished spray painting Baby Girl's dresser, made her a blanket ladder and painted it, AND modified the armchair we bought at IKEA into the rocker I really wanted (I really didn't want a squeaky glider or a wooden rocker.  If we have to get up in the middle of the night, it better mean that my tush sits on something soft and I get to be comfy).  And the armchair we bought was actually pretty cheap and so was the base we used to convert it into a rocker.  Pretty much the same price that we would've spent on a nice glider/rocker at another store.   

I mean, really though, T is amazing.  And pretty darn attractive with a tape measure and sawdust all over him.  Nothing quite catches my fancy as a man who smells like wood.  That might be the only thing I miss from when T worked at Home Depot when we were dating and first married.  That incredible woodsman smell.

T did some fabulous work.  Baby Girl is lucky to have such a talented Daddy.

I may have worked him a little too hard seeing how he went to bed and was asleep within minutes of his head hitting the pillow.  Sometimes I don't think wives quite give their husbands enough credit.  He never complained when I kept bringing up more and more projects.  Especially since many of the projects I wasn't much of a help with... we didn't want to get Baby Girl high on paint fumes or sawdust! 

{and this mama got a haircut last weekend.  Oh sweet relief.  My long hair was fun when I'd actually get up and do it... but shorter length hair is so much better for my super fine and thin hair.  So much better.}

We got everything moved into the nursery (thanks to Brain and the Toad!) and set up the crib (!!!).  The room is looking goooood.  We just need to find a rug and we'll be set with furniture and baby room basics.  Then it's onto the fun part of decorating and putting the finishing touches on it.

We finally signed up for a birthing class at the hospital.  Which we'll finish 2 weeks before baby girl actually gets here... procrastinators?  Yep.  We really only signed up so we could know the procedural side of things when we're actually in labor at the hospital.  We've already pre-registered with the hospital, so check-in shouldn't be too bad when we go into labor.

Maybe.

We also got registered a couple of weeks ago at Target and Babies 'R Us and we're crossing our fingers that we get some of the stuff on our registry.  Or enough cash to buy some of it... The last big purchases we have are the stroller/carseat combo (which, hello!  Strollers and carseats are kinda fun these days!  We had so much fun cruisin' around the store and seeing if we could actually figure them out), the crib mattress, the Ergo baby carrier we kinda sorta really want, a rug for the nursery, and the changing pad for the dresser.  Oh!  And a diaper bag.  We can't forget the diaper bag.  And thanks to dear Jana, we may have found the perfect one that will actually last all of our kiddos AND that T won't mind packing around too if he need to.  

Other than that, the other things we'll need are smaller scale purchases if we don't get them from our showers (diapers, binkies, clothes, baby wash products, blankets, etc.).  

We've had a few gifts from generous people brought over in forms of hand me down clothes and some new baby clothes (most of which are brand-new!), new binkies, beautiful crocheted and handmade blankets, and Baby Girl's first toys and books.  

We're in no way completely ready for Baby Girl, but we're getting there!  And we're getting so excited (or maybe I should say even more excited?!). 

busy busy weekend.

Whoa.  This past weekend was packed and busy!  Saturday we'd planned to spend the majority of the morning on painting and building some things for the nursery at my parents house (props to my parents for trusting us and letting us use their garage and tools!).  Instead of "we," I should probably say that T ended up doing most of it... I had a hair appointment which ended up taking a little longer than expected, which meant T already had the blanket ladder built and put together and was ready to get started painting the dresser by the time I got there.

He works fast.  And he's kinda really attractive when he's scruffy and working big machinery.

We've gotten some adorable blankets for Baby Girl already and I wanted to have a special place that we could actually display them rather than have them hidden away in a drawer.  So T made a blanket ladder for Baby Girl's blankets.  It's kinda perfect.

We also snagged a dresser off of KSL a couple of weeks ago for a great price.  The guy had just finished redoing it.  It's a perfect Navajo White, the only thing we didn't like was the black on the top.  

Which T easily fixed by just spray-painting over the black and now we have a beautiful dresser and a well-built ladder for Baby Girl's room.

After those were done, we ran home and cleaned up so we could make the trip up to Ogden to see our new niece!  T's brother and his cute wife had their little girl that afternoon.  She's adorable.  They made one cute little gal.  We had a blast listening to them talk about the day and then meeting little Dylin.  She's got the cutest little fingers and toes and is so tiny- even for being an 8 lb. baby!  

It makes us look forward to giving Dylin a girl cousin to play with in a couple of months.  You could say we're pretty stoked.

Sunday was also busy and full of excitement.  Both T and I taught (he teaches Gospel Principles every week and I teach Relief Society every 4th sunday).  And I've gotta say, I felt like I had a spiritual Thanksgiving feast all day.  Sacrament meeting was fabulous- I was taking notes like a mad woman!  T's lesson was, as usual, fantastic.  Especially since we got to talk about Christ the entire lesson.  And my lesson?  I think it went pretty dang good.  Because for the first time, I wasn't nervous or anxious.  I wasn't afraid to be up in front of all of the sisters.  Which also meant I didn't cry from the get go.  That is a proud accomplishment for this gal.  Especially with pregnancy hormones raging!

It was also an awesome topic to teach on.  If you haven't read President Uchtdorf's talk from the last priesthood session, "You Can Do It Now!", then you better go read it now!  If I had only prepared that lesson for myself, it would've been worth it.  I needed to hear about how to get through our failures and how to get over them and not compare myself to others.  

It was a powerful talk with a powerful message.  It's one of those talks I'll be reading and listening to over and over again.  It can apply to so many different things!  It was a lesson that really hit my core and sparked a fire within me.  I've been a better person the past couple of days already because of it.  I've been a happier, more confident person.  Which, is difficult when you can be pretty sarcastic and pessimistic at times.

After church, T and I went home to finish prepping and making dinner for 11 family members who were coming over (it was our turn to make sunday dinner...).  And it was goood!  French Dip Sandwiches, fruit kebabs, and homemade french fries.  Not your usual sunday dinner, but definitely still delicious!  And that meat.  It fell apart the moment T picked it up out of the crockpot to shred.  He didn't even have to shred it!  Now THAT means it went well.

After our weekly ritual of visiting with the grandparents, we headed back home.  Where we saw the box with the crib and the unfinished rocker just screaming at us to put together and finish.  So what else could we do?  We spent the rest of the night putting them together!

T figured out how to cut off the fabric of our Jennylund chair from IKEA and attach plywood and 2 x 4's so we could put the rocker base on it.  It actually turned out easier than we thought!  And I loooove the rocker.  It's probably my favorite furniture piece in the nursery now.

Then we put the crib together and rearranged the room.  And celebrated getting all the big pieces done by making milkshakes.  We're so close to having the room ready.  And I'm super psyched for the crib bedding some of my colleagues and friends are working on.  Seriously.  I work with some awesome people!

T slept soundly last night.  Poor guy.  He was pretty tuckered out.

But we both agree.  It was a great weekend.