Finished!!!!

The biggest project that I took on for this little one is creating my very own diaper bag.  Crazy you say?  Well, so does my husband, mom, sisters, brain, etc.  However, I'm done and I'm rather proud of my achievement.  Wanna see a picture?  Well?  Do ya?

This is what I saw and decided to create:

Now I know this is a little extreme, so I did leave out things like the insulated side pockets...

But, from a pattern created by my imagination and Mom's skill set I put together this:

And since I don't want to carry around my purse at the same time, I made this:

Just big enough for all the necessities. :)

Talk about one BIG sigh of relief.  For around $15 (the hardware cost the most) I made a bag that retails at just over $100.  Awesome.

It's Official

I waddle.

And this time I'm okay with it!  Granted I'd still prefer people not pointing out that fact to me, but it is painfully obvious.  I figured once I hit the 30 week mark I would be okay with waddling.  At least you're far enough along by that point to be counting down and not up!  However, it is not from size that I waddle.  I still get pretty frequent comments from doctors/other pregnant women/people that have a clue about how women grow during pregnancy that I'm pretty tiny for how far along I am.  The rest...... yeah I get that in the past 2 weeks I must have grown maybe...... 2 inches or so.  Definitely huge. (slightly sarcastic tone)  The waddling instead comes from the fact that my back and hip muscles have decided to go on strike.  Gee thanks guys, leave it to me to figure out how to swing one leg in front of the other without your help.  :P  I hate to admit it, but besides being super excited to meet my absolutely gorgeous little one, I can't wait to have my body back!!!  But anyway, enough of the moanings and groanings (other than when I try moving off this couch) and on to a picture!  I know it's been a while, but here goes.

33 weeks

 and no, I can't see my feet anymore

By the way, the nursery is coming along quite nicely!  However I failed to take before pictures, so you'll just get hit with the After's once it's all done.

Busy Busy Busy

I have been extremely slack with this blog lately, so to catch everyone up and share a few pictures (some day I'll share more), here is 'Jess & Blake in a minute':

July 7-23rd, Jess was in the US!!!
Had a great time with family and friends, but missed Blake a lot.  While I was gone, he kept busy with work, but had time for a few house chores as well.  Since he was such a good husband, I had to bring him presents.

Charli and me at Grandma's

Blake replacing front screen door!

Blake's presents (he was VERY happy)

While at home I had a great time with almost my whole family (sorry we missed you Jen & fam!!!) up in Idaho, then an all too short time in Logan with friends (pictures will come eventually), a fun lunch with some ol' work buddies, a baby shower with the high school girls, and lots of fabric shopping with Mom.  Not enough time or pictures to do the trip justice, but it was Great!

August's Fun and Games:

New dishwasher and a Babymoon!  You don't need pictures of our dishwasher, but anyone have any ideas for the box?  The little kid (not Charli) inside of me is going nuts with trying to come up with a fun way to use it...  As for the Babymoon, it was a much needed break!  Blake hasn't had a good break since we got married, so it was fun to have that as a good getaway before this baby comes.  Plus having him work for a hotel promotions company makes the monetary issue much less painful (and we got VIP treatment...)!

The room and view

Definitely buying a tub like this some day!

It was a bit on the rainy side, but we still had fun out playin.

The beach.....

Yup, all to ourselves!

It was an almost perfect trip!  Other than the rain and chilly weather, we had some great meals, fun shopping, lots of relaxing, and even got lost on our way back home.  A trip just isn't a trip unless you get lost at least once!  Now back to work and nesting till the little one comes...

More pictures are on the picture tab or on Facebook if'n you're interested. :)

Jump In

Have you ever looked at the sky and seen its depth.  I'll admit to having a very vivid imagination, but I'm sure I'm not alone out there.  On a peaceful day, laying out on the lawn staring up at the sky, have you ever wanted to jump in?  Too often life gets so busy that taking a few minutes to do something as simple as laying down on the lawn doesn't happen.  I get that craving pretty frequently now days, but we don't exactly have a patch of grass to  relax on.  Last night I was reminded of the beauty above us all the time and how much I used to want to "jump in" as a kid.  I took a few pictures to try and catch it, so you'll have to make do with some imagination and patience with my photography. :)

The cloud cover had the coolest patterns and waves that it reminded me of the ocean.  What do you think?  Want to jump in with me?

BUTTONS!!!!

I decided on a theme for the "nursery" part of our bedroom!  And if you didn't guess, it's buttons. :)  Yup, no Winnie the Pooh, no Mickey or Minnie Mouse; in fact, NO trademarked characters if I can help it.  If my child at some point begins to have an affinity towards a specific character, okay, but I'm not going to start them out with a ...pre-conceived?... obsession toward a certain one.  I have also always wanted a sophisticated/chic look, so I am going with buttons.  They are colorful, cute, simple, streamline, and I personally think lots of fun.  You can buy a bag of buttons at the craft stores here, and I found a collection that has classy colors without being dull or neon bright. :)

Dumped out of the bag

Organized by color

I have fallen in love with these colors!  No baby pastels or bright primary colors, but a fun mix.  Raspberry-a little more pink than the picture looks, Sage, Peach, Yellow, and Grey Blue.  It's called the Shabby Chic collection.  Now, I'm not a fan of lots of....stuff.  Especially when I know that the baby will have plenty of it anyway.  Shabby Chic tends to use a fair bit of stuff to create the right look, so although I love the colors, I think I'll go my own way with it.

Here are a couple sites I've found that show some ideas of what I'd like to do with them...

Lamps

Picture Frames

Picture - I'd probably do a couple flowers or something instead of a wreath...

Peg Rack

Let me try to illustrate the nursery for you so you have an idea of what I get to work with.....

As you can see, I have about a 3'x8' gap next to my side of the bed in which to have the "nursery."  Therefore, very limited room in which to decorate.  I would like to hang the letters of her name above the bassinette, but any creative ideas are welcome.  Especially any simple/cute button usage ideas.  Ready.... GO!

The Lime Light

He's almost done!!!!  Wahoo!!!  My hard-working husband just finished his second to last semester of school!  The amazing thing is, he managed to do this while working full-time, working on a contract job after hours, and doing all the cooking/cleaning/shopping/laundry/etc. while I couldn't.  Can you say my own personal Superman?  Now he only has two classes left to finish and he'll have that lovely piece of paper that says he knows what he's been doing for the past....oh.... 7-8 years or so.  Let's just hope that having this baby a month before the end of the semester won't cause too many problems!
We're so excited as this opens quite a few more doors, especially in finding a good job back in the US.  Sometimes (and by this I mean most/all of the time) I think the corporate mumbo jumbo about hiring people with a degree but not those with actual experience and no degree is ridiculous.  If you have your degree, they complain you don't have the experience (how on earth are you supposed to get that if they won't give you a chance?!?!), but if you don't have the degree and have loads of experience, they turn you aside just as quickly.  Oh the power of that piece of paper.
Second reason I'm excited.... TIME WITH MY HUBS!  As you can probably imagine, Superman doesn't have much free time to spend with his wonderful, magnificent, marvellous, mad mad mad mad, *cough* wife.  Especially when her bedtime sneaks up mighty fast every night.  So, with me being able to do a lot more with maintaining our house life, and him not having to work on homework (and hopefully contract work as "typically" you can get a higher paying job with a degree), I might actually get to spend time with him after the standard work day!  Either that or take a nap and let him watch the baby..... ;)  Either works for me!
........................................And done bragging.
An unfortunate side tangent to the school semester just finishing, I'm taking a short vacation back home!  Okay, let me 'splain.  No no, let me sum up.  Blake has no school, aka some free time, and I'm leaving until the Friday before the next semester begins.  Say it with me..... Bad timing...  However, I am very excited to get some good family/friend social time!  It will have been just over a year since I've seen any of them (except Matt) and will be a nice break for me.  Let's just hope the energy levels don't drop off the face of the earth, eh? :)  So, for the next two weeks (where did that time go?!), quality time with the husband, making and freezing meatloaf (the only request he's had so far), creating patterns and figuring out fabric amounts (much cheaper in the US), and making sure Primary can run smoothly while I'm gone.  I'm so excited *dancing* and I just can't hide it.
And a sneak peak for all of you who will be seeing me in the not too distant future...... and everyone else who cares.....

This is what you're getting! Bwahahahahahaha

Oh, and this too.

Yay for 23 weeks gone!

*Btw, how many movies did you catch? :) *

Thorns or Flowers

As promised, here is a picture of our little one!  Isn't she cute? ;)

Not only did we get to celebrate knowing who our little one is, we also got to celebrate being married for our first year!  Wow time flies!  

One of my counsellors has been married for 21 years and she made an interesting comment that made me think.  Right now, most of us are dreaming of our future.  Where will we be?  What will our children be like?  What will we be doing?  What have we accomplished?  She and her husband were married here (Gold Coast) and then moved to the Cook Islands to where she was from.  They only recently moved back and she finds it interesting to be living in her "future."  Once we get to our future, will we be excited that we're there?  Will we have gone through life loving every minute, or always dreaming of the next step?  It is so easy to think, "Once we have a bigger place, we'll be happy."  "Once we have the perfect jobs, we'll be happy."  My guess is that happiness will continue to elude us until we figure out how to enjoy the little things around us.  I'm not going to lie and say that I enjoy my challenges in life, but I can at least hope that I've learned something that will make my life richer and deeper.  I also hope I learned enough that I won't have those particular challenges again!  

So, after a year of marriage, is it all I ever imagined?  No.  Was it as hard as I thought it would be?  Harder.  Have I enjoyed every minute of it?  No.  Who ever made marriage out to be a 'Happily Ever After' *cough Disney cough* must have been living in their own fairytale.  However, along this trail surrounded by thorns are the flowers that can be simply overlooked by all the scratches and dreariness, or they can be focused on to see the happiness surrounding us.  Flowers like spending an afternoon running in and out of the waves to collect rocks while trying (failing) to keep our pants from getting wet.  Coming home from an evening of meetings to find the dishes done and the house cleaned up.  Curling up together under a blanket to get warm and falling asleep.  Phone calls asking if it's okay to buy me something.  Almost giddy excitement whenever dinner happens to be meatloaf (I make one killer meatloaf).  Being told it's a girl (notice the flower on her head?).  No matter what we do, life will continue to be its trail through thorns with scratches here and there, but the great part of marriage is that now there is someone else to help point out the flowers if we might have missed one along the way.  Some day I hope it will be like a rose bush, where the thorns are forgotten, or at least completely disregarded, and the flowers be the complete focus.  Maybe that's why roses are such a symbol of love.  There are always the thorny parts, but the beauty makes it all worth it!

And for my very own reminder.......

 

Thank you, Love.  It has been a great year through it all.  Looking forward to a life full of roses!