Leap Day!

So my only goal for the next 24 hours is to have this baby!  Wish me luck!  Apparently he's decided it's pretty comfy in there as my due date is in 4 days now and there hasn't been so much as a peep in there!  BUT I have been telling him that Wednesday is his deadline for a while now, so we'll see if I can finally convince him to come on out!
In other exciting news,  we bought a van today!  We got a good deal after weeks of looking and JUST before we were going to get one at an auction tomorrow!  I was sort of excited about the "unknown" factor of the auction and having someone else just make that decision for us, but I am also really grateful that we found a van in the nick of time which is apparently perfect for us.  It really is everything we were looking for, and actually cost less than we were planning to spend, so that's always a huge bonus!  It's a lovely blue color (which I love) and a 2007 Kia Sedona.  The best feature so far: the doors open by themselves!  All I do is push a button on the keychain, and the doors pop right open for me!  I am excited to get it all cleaned up tonight (the owners had dogs and it's pretty gross in there!) and put all of the car seats in just in time to pop out this baby!  Just a couple more hours until Jeremy's home and I can take my supplies to the car wash... I've never been this excited to clean a car before!
Other exciting news, yesterday we also became property rental owners!  Or at least we hope!  Jeremy went halvsies with his older brother and they bought a condo for an incredible price (seriously, you can buy a 2 bedroom condo for $20K? In AZ, you can!) and it is actually pretty decent inside and doesn't need much work (we got lucky, it was a blind auction!).  So, if everything goes according to plan, they will have renters in there in a matter of weeks and have this investment property for when the market eventually turns around here (it has to eventually, right?  haha)
So, it has been an eventful, stressful, and exciting day or two around these parts lately!  The only thing we need to top off the excitement is a baby!  As if I can't say that enough!  Spending money isn't something we do very often when we can help it though, and I'm a little surprised that Jeremy hasn't had an aneurism or something with all of this happening so close, but I think he's actually handling it better than I am!  So, lots of unknowns and soon-to-be-knowns, and I'm excited for everything!  No pictures because I'm too tired to go out my front door and take a picture of our new van, but after I clean it, I will take pictures and show you!

Quick Update

I decided to do this in a blog, since I feel like I'm over using facebook lately!  haha so, I had a Dr. appointment today, but it turns out that in 2 weeks, she said I have only progressed maybe a centimeter if that, and she said I was 50% effaced, where two weeks ago I was apparently 75%... weird!  BUT the baby has dropped significantly in the last two weeks, so that's a good sign!  She said "see you next week!" though, so I'm going to stop hoping that every discomfort is a sign of labor and try and forget about it!  I am almost 39 weeks, so I can hold out for another week ... leap baby?  I think that would be awesome... if it wasn't a week away.. haha.  When I first told Jeremy I wanted a leap baby when we found out our due date, he was like "that's silly, I would hate to have a leap birthday" but now, he really wants to have a leap baby!  haha so, since it would be neat, I am aiming for next Wednesday... that's a better goal than every morning having the goal be today and then being disappointed!
In other news, I took the kids to Costco today just to walk around and get out of the house for a bit.  They like sitting side by side in the cart, and I like wandering around Costco!  We saw the cutest little kid pool chair thing with an umbrella... it was adorable, and both of the kids looked cute sitting in it.. if we had a pool!  Anyway, afterward we got some lunch from the food place.  I sat the kids down watching the lady through the window making the pizzas, and went and got in line.  When I got back, a cute elderly man approached me.  I thought he was going to say something about leaving my kids while I was in line, so I smiled and prepared, and do you know what he said to me?  He said "I just had to come tell you how beautiful you look.  I had to come over and let you know just how wonderful you look today".  I literally almost cried.  What a sweet man, and a sweet thing to say.  I am almost 9 months pregnant, and not feeling too pretty these days, and also my hair was in a pony tail I had done in the car since it was so static-y.  So.. in the end, I am so grateful for that man, and he may never know how much he made my day today!  I was so grateful I almost hugged him, but he was already walking away, just making the world brighter one compliment at a time!  So thank you to you sweet man!

Birthday Cakes!

Just a few quick pictures lest you think I didn't make Mason a cake.  It was a last minute thing thrown together with almost no planning, but I think the basketball turned out pretty cute... not so much the court... that's what it is incase you couldn't tell.  I had this grand idea of a backboard with the basketball going through the net, but I couldn't find a flat surface big enough to lay it all out, so this was plan B!  Anyway, we had a little family party for him Sunday evening with cousins and Aunts and Uncles and Grandma Cook.  Mason blew out his candles all by himself and loved every minute!

Grandma got him a soccer ball and a bubble blowing lawn mower for his birthday, and they have both been huge hits.  Mason LOVES balls!  She also got him a spiderman outfit.  Well, it's a Marvel heros outfit and I almost returned it since it has shorts, a t-shirt and then a tank top to go with it, and I never plan on putting him a tank top, but Jeremy said it was sweet and we had to keep it. Mason really likes Spiderman, who happens to be on the shirt, which is also orange, his favorite color, so I went to put it on him today.  Also on the shirt are the Hulk, Flash Gordon (I think) and a girl superhero, and those three are all making mean faces.  Mason was too afraid of the other heroes to wear the shirt!  He went around shirtless all morning!  Silly boy!

Birthday Boy

I was hoping to have two birthday boys by now!  But for now, Here is a recap of Mason's best birthday yet!  I think he had a really fun day today, and we had a fun time spoiling him a little bit!  I tried the streamers over the door thing, but Mason crawled under instead of busting through, but he didn't cry, which I thought he would!  

Birthday boy first thing in the morning... he was happy, his face just doesn't show it!

We decided to give him his present in the morning so he could play with it all day long, and he was very excited for it too!  (ignore Brenna in her undies... she had 2, not 1, but 2 accidents last night... I don't want to talk about it!)

They made me set it up at once, and both Brenna and Mason were pretty accurate in their shots!  Well, better than I expected at least!  We've got some future ballers on our hands!

I took the kids to Burger King for lunch since I had a coupon for a free kids meal for Mason, and they had fun eating and playing there!

 King for a day!

In the evening we took the kids to Johnny Rockets for dinner for a special treat, and although it was hectic with all of the cousins and a longer than usual wait for food, it was a lot of fun, and they sang to Mason, he got some ice cream and his orange balloon.  (He LOVES orange!)

Happy boy with his balloon!

Cousins came to celebrate!

Jeremy has never been so happy to spoil a birthday boy before!  So cute!

 All in all a really good day, Mason was so happy and we all had fun making him king for a day!  Happy birthday to my little boy.  He brings so much joy into our lives.  My favorite things right now are his kisses, which he insists doing on both cheeks instead of one, and he talks so well it's really amazing.  He will repeat ANYTHING you say, he reads his verse of scripture each night and will now repeat groups of words instead of one at a time, and the big words always bring smiles to our faces.  He can count to 13, he knows all of his colors, and orange is his favorite.  He is good and kind and besides his sleeping issues, I wouldn't change a single thing about him!  I can't wait to see him as a big brother, and hope that the transition is ok for him, since he has been the baby for so long!

No Baby Yet!

Well, Still no baby, nearly a week after my 2cm news when I was sure it was a matter of days or hours!  Tomorrow morning I will get checked again and we will see what's taking him so long!  I am honestly feeling so ready to do this!  Especially on the nights when I get a decent sleep at night, it'd be nice to start labor right after a good night's rest!  I have been feeling a little weird lately, but it's probably as much mental as anything else.  My tummy seems to be upset a lot and I'm almost never hungry and I've had a faint nagging headache back in the back for a few days, so I am taking these all of signs that it's getting close.  I also haven't been taking it too easy in hopes that some of the work or bending/moving so much will help things along!
I did take this last week to whip up a few more last minute projects!  I finished the last two binky strings that I had cut out but didn't get around to last time, I made one more blanket (it's supposed to be just a pad to change diapers on so that we don't have messes in our bed or the babies bed while he's in the pack n' play, but it's pretty big and may be used for a blanket as well!) and a cover for my boppy.  I was going to splurge and get a new boppy, since I feel like mine is pretty deflated, but man they are hard to justify at $35+, so in the end I just made a new cover for mine (it still had a pink one from Brenna with holes in it) and I think it will do the job!

As you can sort of see, I made it a little small accidentally, so the buttons are literally squeezing it all together, but I think it makes my deflated boppy seem a bit more fluffy anyway, so it's a win-win!  

I went a little nuts wanting to use all of this great minky fabric I had, and I love love love the feel of it on the boppy!  A cover like this costs like $20 to buy or something!

I had a hard time not getting my huge belly in these pictures!  Again with the minky changing pad/blanket.

My other kids are doing well, incase you remembered about them!  haha I have been in such a baby-mode that I have sort of neglected the fact that Mason's birthday is on Friday!  He will be 2!  Can't believe it!  And he and his little brother may just have twin birthdays!  So I have switched my focus (at least partially) to life and planning for other things than baby and then we will see what happens!

Brenna has had some cute hair dos lately, a heart braid for v-day and cute pigtail braids today, but I of coarse have been negligent with my picture taking, so I have no proof!  

Here's a lame belly shot, but it's as good as I can do right now!

As I was going to take pictures of the crafts for this blog I went into our room and found the entire floor of our room, bathroom and closet flooded, so we are busy trying to take care of that now, and save our carpet!  So, I will write again later, either about Mason's birthday, or the birth of our second son, we shall see!  I have an appointment in the morning, so cross your fingers for good news of lots of progress!

Projects!

I think I am ready to post my baby projects.  There are one or two still in the makings with some of the scraps, but since I haven't fully decided what they will be, I will post these, all of the ones I originally had planned are done!  

The first one is bibs!  These I guess are more for Mason since it will be awhile until the baby can use them, but a good friend, Rachel Johnston, made some for Mason's shower when he was born, and they have been the greatest bibs!  So I made 4 more!  Thanks for the idea Rachel!

 I am going to try these new binkies this time around, and I'm excited about it, but the problem was, they won't fit all of the old clips I had made!  But luckily I found this great tutorial online for the perfect clips!  And I really like how these ones turned out!

This fabric I originally had planned to make a crib sheet, but the flannel wasn't QUITE big enough, so I just made it into a blanket instead *tutorial*.  Now I'm kicking myself for not making a pack n' play sheet instead, but what's done is done!  I love the dinosaur fabric!!

This one isn't totally done, but I am waiting for my new yarn to arrive since I ran out of the brown!  But you get the idea, I am crocheting this one, and I found this pattern here!  *thanks to pinterest for leading me to almost all of these tutorials!*

I made some more crib sheets, which will also probably go to Mason since they are a little bit more big boy-ish than the monkey ones that I made for Mason when he was a baby!

This was my pet project and I was really excited to make it!  It didn't come together perfectly, but it is sooooo soft!  So I love it!  I really want to make a flannel one like the one in the tutorial!

So that's what I've been up to, these last few days especially, and I'm feeling almost ready to have this baby!  Just a few more things to figure out and stuff and then, anytime!  I am 36 weeks (I almost included a picture, but I don't have one!) and I had Brenna at 39 weeks and Mason at 38 weeks, so if we are keeping true to form, next week I should have this baby!  But I'm trying not to get obsessed about it!  Can't wait to meet this little guy!