33 Weeks Pic

A busy and successful Saturday.

My dearest husband has been working in the yard all day. We've decided to tear everything out of the front beds and just completely start over.

 

Here's the before pictures I took a couple of months ago.








As you can clearly see, all the bushes are trying to take over the house. (And in case you're curious, those things on our roof are solar panels made to help heat our water.... not currently in use.)

It's allllllll coming out. And here's a quick shot I took with my phone a few hours ago.



 

Love his heart, he's going to be sore tomorrow. No more bushes.. except the two rose bushes at the stairs. The monkey grass is still there for now. I think we'll be transplanting that to edge some of our trees. There's a ton of monkey grass.

 

While Cory has been doing all that, I've been reclaiming the front porch from spiderwebs and trash. I also started reclaiming the sunporch in the back by taking down the christmas trees I had in there and sweeping it out. We've got an old mattress set in there we need to get rid of before we can completely reclaim that.

 

Annnnd I took a couple of bump pictures last night before our date night. (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2.. and, yes, we were the only people without kids in the theatre. )

Enjoy!







 

Look! I can still get my feet off the ground! :) And, in the event that you didn't notice... I've become to lazy to write on the chalkboard. Photoshop from here on out. I don't know why I didn't think about doing that before.

Nesting

According to good ole Wikipedia:

Nesting: In human females, the nesting instinct often occurs around the fifth month of pregnancy, but can occur as late as the eighth, or not at all. It may be strongest just before the onset of labor.

It is commonly characterized by a strong urge to clean and organize one's home and is one reason why couples who are expecting a baby often reorganize, arrange, and clean the house and surroundings.

The first signs of things on the "cons" list of pregnancy have arrived. {Mildly}. I believe the nesting instinct has come on full force in the last week which has been accompanied by stress to get things done and thereby inducing stress-related mood swings. It hasn't been terrible, I just feel like I'm in a race with myself to finish projects.

Here's a list of things I did over the past week:

• Made two hospital gowns


• Made a maternity sash (I actually ordered one from a lady on Etsy {with good reviews} a few weeks ago and that turned into a fiasco ending with a PayPal and Etsy dispute and me getting my money back and deciding to make it myself)


• Cleaned for 8 hours straight on Friday


• Shopped for 5 hours on Saturday morning for guest room #1 decor, organizational things, and cleaning supplies


• Spent the rest of Saturday putting together the guest room (with the help of Mrs. Branum THANK YOU!), making a wedding present for a friend (no detail here, I haven't sent it yet!) and setting up my DIY baby photography backdrop holder.


• Sunday was the day for meal planning, another trip to Lowe's for ceiling mount curtain rod holders, Target for cheap curtains, and grocery shopping.... And taking down closet doors and putting up a curtain instead. The good news is I don't have any issues opening the closet doors anymore. The bad news is that it's not terribly attractive.

All that, plus the usual house upkeep, dinner making, and my actual job, it was a very tiring week. And I can assure you I won't be doing that much walking for a while as it was very unpleasant to move about halfway through the cleaning spree on Friday and into the shopping event on Saturday. My pelvis, right hip and right knee where NOT HAPPY.

I'm very glad we're back to Monday. Monday means actual job and lots of sitting. It was a very productive day at work as well. Lots of things to get done before I take maternity leave.

I also spent a little time in the nursery last week, basically just moving things around and thinking about all the things we still have to get.. which is just about everything that isn't clothes. (Diapers, car seat, stroller, diaper bag, more diapers, wipes, pack'n'play, and possibly some socks.)

I think Cory and I will need to get the car seat/stroller and pack'n'play in the next week or so. I like to be ready for the unexpected and since "full term" is a measly 6 weeks away, I'd just like to go ahead and have those two things ready. I'd like to pack my hospital bag too. I've already made the list of things I need to pack and plan to print it out and put it on the fridge in the event I don't get to pack it myself.

So now we're down to just 2 or 3 hundred more things to do before baby Colette arrives in the next 0-9 weeks.

A nap is needed.

Oh and here's a couple more maternity photos from Brittany Mauldin! If you've landed here via Facebook, you've already seen them :)

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Checking things off the list.

Ahhh. So nice. It was definitely a busy holiday weekend. With so much on the to-do list, my family (Mom, Brother, Sister-in-law) called Friday night and asked if we needed help. They made the 2 hour trek down to the house for the weekend. I cannot express how thankful Cory and I are for all the help they gave us this weekend. We were able to check off all but one thing from the weekend's to do list, but got a whole lot of other things accomplished as well.

The garage is clean. WHOA. Definitely not something I could really help with, but I tried to do as much as I could. We got a 20yd dumpster and it's almost completely filled with junk. When the rest of the furniture is moved out it'll be so nice. You can ACTUALLY fit 2 cars in here now.

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The burn pile is GONE.

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During the reclaiming of the grounds there were a number of wonderful things discovered. Those things include a PEACH TREE, BLUEBERRIES, and a PEAR TREE! I'm so excited about all of these things. I'm not sure we'll really get anything out of them this year, but now that I know they're there I can take much better care of them later.

Other things that were accomplished:

• Laundry

• The new couches were organizes and the big TV was moved to the 'new' living space.

• Swept out the sun porch

• Called our power company to come out and place a new internet line in the living room where the offices will be.

• Trash was all picked up and thrown out

The only thing we didn't get to that was on the list for the weekend was moving everything out of the current office/nursery. However, it would be pointless to do this before we have our internet cable moved because its current location doesn't provide very good access in the other room across the house. Not to mention my new desk won't be in until later this week as well.

Outside of all the work, we were able to spend a little downtime too. Sunday morning we went to the local farmers market (BBQ Fest this week!) and got lots of goodies (new plants for the garden, boiled peanuts, donuts, local soda, fresh salsa, delicious BBQ... just to name a few), and we had an excellent lasagne dinner Sunday evening.  After the crew left, Cory and I rested a little then headed over to his mom's house for some burgers and hot dogs. I may or may not have eaten two burgers.

This will probably be the most successful weekend we have for a while. Cory and I have another weekend at home this week, so hopefully the nursery will be cleaned out and ready for paint by next week.

We're now accepting applications for landscaping around the front (Lori Ann....) and furniture movers for what's left over in the garage.