April: Conference, Easter, and Spring!

April turned out to be a much more eventful month than March, which is probably usually the case because of holidays and the weather starting to get warmer. Although, speaking of weather, I swear it always snows right around the time we have General Conference. This year, it snowed about 4 days before, but luckily it all melted by that afternoon. That same day it snowed, we had our beautiful dark wood stained mantle installed on our fireplace! Yay progress!

Then, that weekend, I had the chance to attend the Saturday morning session of LDS General Conference with my brother! We had gotten him two tickets so he could go with his girlfriend. Sadly for him, but luckily for me, they broke up about a week before he came down for conference and I got to take her place! It had been a few years since I'd attended in person, and even though we were all the way up on the very right edge, we still had a great view and it was nice to be able to sit and focus and feel the Spirit while I listened. So glad I went (even if we did walk in about 3 minutes late... oops!!). I watched the rest of that weekend's sessions at home with my sweet family. Charlie's favorite part has always been when the choir sings!

The next week, Charlie and I took a fun trip to Ikea with our friends Brittnee and Aunika. The littles enjoyed playing with the toys in the kid area, riding around in the carts, eating lunch, and watching Tom&Jerry on TV from the upper level. Us adults enjoyed our shopping... and I tried not to spend TOO much! ;)
We also went over to Charlie's cousins' house to celebrate Scarlett's birthday and Grandma Jill's birthday. Charlie is always in heaven when he's surrounded by that many fun kids to play with! And I always like when he has lots of extra sets of eyes watching him and I can relax just a little bit, not having to be sole entertainer. :)

Here's a picture I took of me when I was 32 weeks pregnant! And a picture of Charlie enjoying our newly fenced-in back yard. Although, there's not too much to do out there right now... but he does thoroughly enjoy playing with all of our bushes.

The Wednesday before Easter, we had a little neighborhood egg hunt at our local playground/park. We got there just a couple minutes early, and it was all I could do to keep Charlie from running around picking up eggs before it began. He was NOT happy to have to wait... but had SO much fun running around and picking up eggs once we were given the go-ahead!

Also the week leading up to Easter, we had the painter at our house sanding, caulking, taping, preparing, and finally painting all the woodwork in our living room. It was a disaster zone... and the worst part was having our living room sealed off for a little over a day. In order to get to the kitchen, we had to walk out the front door and back in through the garage. Yes, even in the middle of the night, which meant getting dressed in order to get a midnight snack or drink of water. Good thing that's over and the results were WELL worth it!

We dyed Easter eggs during all the construction, which gave us something fun to focus on. This is the first time we've done this tradition as a family, and I think Charlie enjoyed watching the eggs change color. We let him drop the eggs in the cups, and even though they were hard-boiled (to perfection, I might add!), we were still worried they would crack with the way he dropped them from so high up. So we'd assist him with the task. ;)

I think his favorite part, overall, was just playing with the little metal dipper stick. Haha... but I think we ended up with a beautiful display of bright and colorful eggs! They sure do stink, though, and after a couple days, I couldn't take the smell of hard-boiled eggs overtaking my fridge anymore and had to throw them out. Oh well!

Here's a peek at our living room after the big paint job was done. He still needed to come back and touch up some of the grey on the walls around the fireplace, but I was SO excited with the results! Loving our new board and batten!

Easter week, I also got around to planting some spring flowers on our porch (something I look forward to every year!). And then, finally, on Easter morning the Easter bunny came and left some happy goodies for our family! Charlie ALWAYS looks forward to seeing his basket with eggs full of treats. In fact, I kept catching him getting into the treats all week and had to hide them from him to control his treat consumption... ;)

Here's a picture we took (using the timer and tripod) on Easter right after church. I was 33 weeks pregnant, and feeling pretty good! :) I love that we were slightly color-coordinated, and that we were all looking at the camera and kind of smiling! Victory!

That evening, Trevor came down with some sort of stomach bug and we spent the next 3 days pretty low-key, with Trev recovering and me hoping not to catch whatever he had. Luckily... or maybe we were just insanely blessed... Charlie and I never got sick. Whew! What a fun month!

March Photos and Updates

We had a really low-key March since Trevor had lost his job and we had very little income. We spent a lot of time doing free things (like playing at home) and having playdates with friends.

Here's Charlie playing in his native habitat, his playroom! Gotta love that blue-eyed cutie. I also got adventurous with my baking and made my first ever pie from scratch! That's right... crust and all. It was a key lime pie (really just regular lime since you can't buy key limes around here) with graham cracker crust. The crust turned out tasty, but really crumbly. So I may buy pre-made graham cracker crusts from now on unless I can perfect a crust recipe! It was SO tasty and very sweet/rich! :)

Sometime during the middle of the month, my Mom came out to see us for a couple days! She accompanied a friend from NC to UT driving across the country and took the chance to stop in for a couple of days. We had a blast while she was here! We did quite a bit of fabric shopping for baby girl's quilt, went to the park, and to story time (which Charlie LOVED having his Kimma there)! This first picture is a comparison picture of Charlie on the same slide (left picture was taken one year prior to the right picture, taken this March). I can't believe how much he's grown, especially those legs!! The second picture was taken at story time during a bouncing/jumping activity that Charlie really likes.

Here's a picture of a typical Sunday afternoon after we get home from church. My boys are usually so exhausted that they'll fall asleep anywhere! A couple days later we had an early spring snow, so I turned on our new fireplace for warmth. It wasn't quite finished aesthetically, but it was functioning, so I turned it on! :)

Since we were getting less than 3 months out from having this baby girl, I decided to start transitioning Charlie to a big boy bed so I could free up the crib. I thought it might be a bad idea to switch him to a new room and a new bed at the same time he was getting a new baby sister. It might have been too many big changes at once. So, I went to Costco and bought a twin mattress and found a Cars brand sheet set from Walmart. We put the mattress on the floor, put about half of his toys in the closet, and tried out the big boy bed! It was a little iffy the first couple of nights with crying and confusion from Charlie, but he was really smart and, for the most part, always gets in his bed when he's feeling sleepy. It's been about 10 weeks and he's not perfect at napping every day (he probably doesn't nap 2 days a week, which isn't bad), but the main problem is that sometimes it would take him 2 hours of playing before he'd finally fall asleep for a nap around 3pm or so... which meant he didn't want to go to bed at 8 and wouldn't sleep at night until 9:30 or 10pm. Regardless of the irregularity, it's been a relatively easy experience. I have had to put ALL of his toys in his closet now at nap time to encourage sleeping, and that seems to work most days, but lately he's taken to getting behind the blinds and watching what's going on outside his windows. Haha. Oh well!

Pictured above is my man grilling us some amazing marinated pork loins and pineapple. We had a stint of warmer weather and we love to take the chance to grill when we can! MMMmmm! Below... Charlie found another comfy place to nap after church on the next Sunday. He loves to sleep with a pillow on top of him. It's so funny! And I also finally let him play with PlayDoh for the first time (a cheap, fun activity!!) despite my reservations about the mess it would make. It hasn't been too messy yet, so PlayDoh is not on my hate list anymore haha!

We were goofing around with a selfie photo session one day when I was being too pregnant and lazy on the couch. I just love his silly, sweet faces! "Say Cheeeeeese!"

And here's a picture of when I was pregnant at 28 weeks, getting ready to go to yoga. I have to say, doing yoga saves my LIFE when I'm pregnant. I can go in feeling like the Tin Man from Wizard of Oz and come out loose, relaxed, and happy again! Love love love! It was around this point where I was pretty uncomfortable quite often, as my belly was stretching exponentially and it was always really painful. Plus, little girl loves to roll around and poke me with her elbows, heels, knees, feet, etc... and that can get pretty uncomfortable after a while too! But I love her anyway :)

Pictured above, we had a blustery March storm roll through really quickly one evening, and when it passed, it left this gorgeous view out my back windows! LOVE these mountains! I'm so grateful for where I live! And below are just two more pictures of my boy. I couldn't help but snap a picture of him in his I<3NY tee while eating a slice of thin crust pizza. It was all too legit! Hahahaha... too bad we weren't actually IN New York City. That would have been fun! And last, his sassy face! Who can resist!?

We really do love this boy who is learning all sorts of new things every day, especially words and sounds. He's definitely 2-years-old, though, and throws his fair share of tantrums, refuses to listen to anything I say unless there's some sort of reward/treat attached, does what he wants when he wants, and shouts "NOOOOO" on a relatively frequent basis. He has more pent-up energy than I know what to do with, and often tries to smash his head into the floor or my face, or kicks things rapidly with his little feet while sitting down (including ME and my poor belly, ouch!). Heaven help me when this baby comes. But despite all the tiring days I have, his sweet personality and cute mannerisms make me the proudest, happiest Mom of all time! <3

February and Valentine's Day Festivities

February started out like any other normal winter month... trying to figure out fun things to do inside while it was too cold outside to play! I've started making some routine adjustments with Charlie, preparing him for baby sister to come. One adjustment is having him eat in the adult chairs and use his utensils more often. He's actually getting pretty good at eating cereal with milk... with minimal milk spilling each time ;)

The week leading up to Valentine's Day, we had our new backsplash installed! Finally! It took me forever to decide what type of backsplash I wanted, but I'm happy with the way it turned out. Here's the before and after pictures (and I can't believe how different everything looks with the lights turned on and turned off... the wall colors, countertop colors, and cabinet colors all stayed the same, even though they look so different!):

The day after we got our backsplash installed, and two days before Valentine's Day, Trevor lost his job. It was completely sudden and unexpected since the FTC just busted in and shut down operations instantly. It's never fun to lose your job, but Trev took it extra hard because he put so much of his time and heart and soul into his work for the last two years. It was also scary thinking about having all of our regular expenses to pay, plus losing our health insurance with a baby coming, without having much income at all. I wished I could help out in some way... get a part-time job or something... but I was feeling pretty worthless being almost 6 months pregnant. Anyway, I'll update more about all of that later... but it definitely put a damper on our activities for the following weeks.

Valentine's Day still came, as planned! :) I helped Charlie make homemade cards for his Daddy and Grandparents, and I even went to a girl's night where we made cards for our husbands!

Here's the front of my card to Trev, and the envelope of the card from Charlie to his Daddy:

Here's Trev's stash of cards and goodies, my two dozen BEAUTIFUL roses from my sweet husband, and a little treat and stuffed animal for Charlie:

I even decided to try my hand at baking sugar cookies from scratch! I found an excellent recipe online and the cookies were soft and delicious! Charlie was excellent at helping me press out the cookies. He kept saying "hahts" for hearts and counting them! :) I did cop out and buy the frosting, colored it pink, and then decorated the cookies with some help from Chandler (my brother Mike's girlfriend at the time... they were in town visiting!).

As evidenced by the above collection of photos, Charlie's becoming my little copycat these days. Both in facial expression and with his words. Gotta start watching what I say even more carefully! ;) We also had a couple days where it was warm enough to visit the neighborhood park. Thank goodness for FREE activities that help run my kid ragged! :) We spent quite a bit of time watching the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Charlie even tried his hand at figure skating in our living room (aka spinning in a circle!). So cute, little mimic! :)

Here's a picture of my pregnancy progress at 25 weeks. I was feeling so big and always had pains from stretching. The second picture is pretty self-explanatory... Dads make pretty good horses! Haha :)

Despite the job loss, we decided to go forward with our plans to add a fireplace and wainscoting to our living room, since we had just sent in a check for half the cost of the fireplace about a day before his company was shut down. Plus, I had done so much planning and picking out features for the fireplace that we figured we might as well just get it done. (Thank goodness for having some savings!) At the end of February, the process got started as we had contractors route the gas line, move the electrical, and start building the fireplace!

The weather started warming up just enough that the neighbors have been coming out of their houses and spending time outside! It has been SO nice! One of the neighbor girls even took Charlie for a ride in her battery-powered police car. Honestly, I'm the type of Mom where I get a little nervous when Charlie does something new for the first time... and I just hoped that he wouldn't try to stand up and get out while the little car was moving. Fortunately, he didn't, and he really enjoyed his ride! :) Maybe I need to learn to relax. Haha

March updates coming soon!!!