May Days

Here's a look at what we did during the month of May! We started off the month with our 6th wedding anniversary! We celebrated by going on a date to Temple Square in Salt Lake City where we ate dinner outside at Blue Lemon and then went to see the Joseph Smith movie. It was fun to get to spend time with my sweetheart, and we owe it all to Jill and Russ for babysitting Charlie that night!

May is all about blooming trees and blue skies. I really do love spring! I also started doing a little sprucing up in the nursery with this cute new crib sheet! I've been trying to find an appropriate place for chevron in my house, and I think I've found it!

Excitingly, almost 3 months after it was started, the fireplace was FINISHED! I took a while deciding on which stone I wanted, but I finally made a decision and I'm extremely happy with it! We are truly enjoying the look of our fireplace, and eventually the function of it when it starts to get cold again, haha!

I took this cute picture of my sweet 2 and 1/2 year old boy's profile, so I can always remember. Even though he is getting ready to be a big brother, he's still my sweet baby. :) Also, for Mother's Day, my boys treated me to a massage at Sage Leaf Spa at Thanksgiving Point. It was truly wonderful, as I was about 35 weeks pregnant and feeling sore, tired, heavy, and stiff. 

Happy Mother's Day to me! I had to take a picture with the sweet, crazy boy who made me a mom. And then here's the official 36 week pregnancy picture. Getting close!

Houses have been going up like crazy on the street behind my house. It's really fun to watch the progress out my back windows. I think at the time I took this picture, there were at least 11 under construction on that street, and a couple more in other areas of the neighborhood!

We watched our neighbor's little boy Kellen, who is Charlie's age, for a couple hours one day. They had so much fun playing together! They played cars and trains and pretended to talk on the phone and made a general mess of Charlie's room. It was fun to sit there and watch. :) And, here's about how I looked at the time... 37.5 weeks pregnant! Whew! Full term!

Near the middle of the month, Trevor started getting on one of his healthy-eating-and-exercising kicks. He's an all-in or all-out kind of guy, so when he wants to eat healthily, he really means it. I benefited from this health kick, too, because he started cooking a lot! One night he made me this delicious salmon dinner complete with spinach, tomato, and cucumber salad. It was delicious. I kept joking with him that I wanted to eat at "Cafe Trevor" every night! But I'm not really joking... he definitely can cook when he wants to!
We also spent a few days of May at the pool, because I figured out that I had a swimsuit that could stretch over my pregnant belly! It was a nice break from the monotonous waiting and waiting I was doing for our baby girl to come. Charlie rather enjoyed it as well. He progressed from not really liking the water and sitting on the first step to wanting to jump off the first step toward me in the water and kicking and swimming around the pool with my help. We're still working on blowing bubbles in the water, but at least he's not swallowing mouthfuls of pool water every time his mouth submerges below water. Haha.

I also took an opportunity toward the end of May to go out shopping for a couple hours. It was really tiring with how huge I was getting, but it was also fun because I knew that it would be hard to go shopping once the baby came. I found a couple new shirts for both Charlie and Trevor. No shopping for myself, though, because who wants to try on clothes when you're the size of a whale? Not me. 

Our friends Cole and Meghan Ballard have lived in Texas for the last 4 years and just recently moved back to Utah, so we had them over to see our house and to catch up! It was a lot of fun to see them and the boys thoroughly enjoyed playing ping pong on the table we got in February. 

I was also busy with meetings and activities for my new church calling during May. In late April, I got a call from a member of the Stake asking to meet with me. I was a little surprised because I couldn't think of why they'd want to meet other than to extend a calling... and that seemed odd since I was 8 weeks away from having a baby! But, I met with Brother Maxwell in our kitchen while the living room was being painted (we were all crammed around the table with all our stuff sitting on it, too, haha). He asked me if I would accept the calling of 2nd Counselor in the Stake Young Women's Presidency. I was still really surprised and definitely nervous, but when it comes to receiving church callings, I have faith that the calling came from the Lord, and that He knows I am capable of such a task, even at this time. Even though I was hesitant, I prayed and told the Lord that I was trusting Him, and that I would need His help and support to be successful at accomplishing this calling. So far, things have been busy, but great, and the other women in the presidency are very understanding of my limitations. 

Finally, here's a fun little comparison photo I did on Instagram. There's Trevor as a toddler and Charlie. It seems they look more alike than everyone seems to think! Charlie, of course, still has my eyes, but he definitely looks like his Daddy, too!

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