Birthday Fun

I turned 29 on Friday. I think in and of itself, 29 wouldn't be so bad. It's that my husband is only 25 that suddenly makes 29 feel ancient. (Yes, I was a cradle robber, but I'm ok with that). Anyways, thanks to Preston I had a great birthday and I just wanted to post a few pictures. We got to eat breakfast together, he came home for lunch, and later he had beautiful flowers delivered to me at the house. I forgot to take pictures of the flowers but they were really pretty. That night he took me to dinner at PF Changs. I guess he really was listening all those times that I casually mentioned I was craving it. :) As mentioned before we are trying not to spend a lot of money on unnecessary things with the baby coming so soon, so I wasn't really sure what he would get me for my birthday. To my surprise at dinner he handed me a box from a jewelry store. Inside was a beautiful diamond pendant necklace. I don't actually own any nice jewelry so it was a pleasant surprise. When we were dating Preston got me a heart-shaped cubic zirconium necklace from walmart. I actually really hate heart-shaped stuff but I wore it every day for almost 3 years because I love him and it was the thought that counted. ;) It was super sweet of him to get me a new one, especially right now, and I love it.
I probably could have gotten a better shot if I had taken it off first, but freckles add such a nice touch, right?

Physically I'm not good for much these days so we didn't do anything super exciting after dinner. We went to Barnes & Noble to buy some books for our coming little one and then we went home and watched a movie. It was a perfect day and I love just getting to spend time with my husband. I think I cherish it more lately because I know that soon we won't get that opportunity quite as often. Thanks for a great birthday, babe!

This one is just because I realized we hadn't taken a picture together in a long time.

I am at 37 weeks now! It is so crazy to think that this kid could literally come at any time. I'm still nervous and terrified but slowly starting to feel more ready. It's funny how when it's you, it is such a huge deal. People go through this every day and you see them a few days later and all you see is a cute baby and smiling parents like it was nothing. It almost makes me feel dumb for making such a huge deal about it but it's such a huge life-changing event! I went in for my first weekly checkup last week (which by the way, is one of the most uncomfortable things I've ever experienced.) As of last Thursday I was dilated 1.5 cm and 50% effaced and he is head down. He hasn't dropped yet though. Hopefully when I go back in a couple of days there will have been some progress. Here are a couple of pictures of me at 37 weeks.

Until next time...

Summer Fun

Well, I'm almost 37 weeks now and I've kind of gotten to that point where I can't do a whole lot, but we are trying to have at least a little bit of fun before this baby comes. I love camping. LOVE it. I start getting itchy every year around February for summer to come just so I can go camping. We knew I would be super pregnant this summer but decided we wanted to try to go at least once anyway. An entire summer without camping just wouldn't be right. So we planned a two-day camping trip, packed up the tent, the food, and of course the dog, and headed up into the mountains. We went to a place called Tinney Flat, not even an hour away from our house, and it was beautiful. To me, camping is best when there are pine trees, aspen trees, and some water...and this had it all. The sad truth is that I am huge and uncomfortable, I can't walk for more than 10 minutes without getting horrible pains in my belly, my feet are swollen like crazy, and I get tired super fast. This means hiking, and well, pretty much every other typical camping activity were out of the question for me. So we mostly just sat around the fire looking at stars, eating roasted marshmallows, and breathing that beautifully fresh mountain air. It was so relaxing and refreshing just being up in the mountains! We live 2 minutes away from the mountains but for some reason we don't make it up there very often. Two deer even walked right into our campsite and got pretty close to us. Then Tank realized they were there and that was the end of that.

So anyways, I felt fine all night, no sickness, no nausea, nothing...then we went to bed. I laid down and literally 2 minutes later I randomly felt like I was going to hurl. Which I did. Repeatedly-for the next couple of hours. Normally this would not be so terrible but when you feel it coming you are kind of in a hurry-so trying to get out of my sleeping bag, finding my flip flops, rolling off the air mattress, unzipping the tent door, trying to squeeze my hugeness out of it, and getting far enough away from the tent in the pitch black before losing it-became quite the ordeal. At about 1am my wonderful, amazing husband decided I shouldn't have to do that anymore so he struck camp and took me home. I was so sad about it because I really REALLY wanted to be camping, but I was secretly grateful to be home because I ended up being really sick all night and it would have been pretty miserable if we had stayed. I know he wasn't thrilled about it either but it's just one more thing that shows how much he loves me and I really appreciated it.

Later the next day I felt better so we took Tank back up to the lake so we could teach him how to swim and be a real mountain dog. At first Preston would go in the water and gently pull his leash but Tank would grab the leash in his mouth and try to pull Preston back to shore instead. it was kind of cute.

The first time we got him to actually go in, he was so scared he clawed the heck out of Preston.
But finally we got him to do it. I think he even enjoyed it a little. This picture made me laugh.
In other exciting news...drum roll please....I FINALLY finished the nursery. I don't know why but it took forever for the "nesting" thing to kick in for me, and then when it did I went crazy. I'm not really the cutesy, theme type person so the nursery isn't super cute and exciting but it's done. Mostly. It still needs some stuff on the walls so it's not so boring. We had extra furniture in the garage that I decided I would refinish, rather than spending a million dollars buying matching stuff. Unfortunately, I never quite got ambitious enough to do it, so the furniture doesn't match. Oh well, it still works and the kid will never know, right? So even though it's not perfect yet, here are some pics of the nursery.

P.S. I made the stencils for this myself. We didn't want to spend money ordering vinyl lettering, or buying 4 different types of stencils from the store (to get all the different fonts and sizes I wanted) so I made them myself. It took me a couple of days but I'm pretty proud of how it turned out!

This side of the room isn't as exciting or pretty but it works.

It is such a relief to finally have things organized and know that we have all of the basic stuff we will need. I feel so much more at ease now. I'm probably jinxing us by saying this but both Preston and I kind of feel like this little guy might just come a little early. I guess we will see. Now I just need to pack a hospital bag and we will be set!