Here he is!

We told Ruth last night that little Brother would be coming from the sky soon. She wanted to meet him half way:



He was born on May 15th, 2010 around 9:00 am. 20 inches long, 6.3 ounces. No name yet...

The Doc Says...

I'm 50% effaced and it's likely I could "go" in the next two weeks. Brian joked (he's here helping get the house painted etc.) that he'd be watching Ruth while Brad and I were at the hospital. I officially have 30 days left. He's also dropped down into my pelvis which has turned me into a very large duck...I don't like waddling. Also, I did not gain a single pound in the last month while we were away...hahaha!

This cartoon just reminds me of my current predicament with not being able to work on the house...which is why I'm blogging while Ruth naps instead of running errands, hehe.

The End of Our Trip

Two highlights from the last week or so were going shopping with grandma and going to the park with Tia and the kids. This was such a fun playground, the kids call it the "Castle Park." Brad got to come too, which meant fun photos with Ruth...

Ben was really cute about sharing this cool swing with Ruth. He put his arms around her to help keep her in and they swung all snuggled in together for at least 10 minutes.

Ruth loved to climb up onto this chair (which belonged to great grandpa Larz Nelson), I was surprised she could do it by herself

Ruth giving grandma's bunny hugs

Can you guess who took the next two pictures?

Can you tell what this is a picture of?

Cravings

For the last week I have craved sprouts so badly. I can literally taste and smell them throughout my day. Luckily I've been able to eat a turkey sandwich, piled high with sprouts and covered in bell peppers all on sourdough bread, at least once a day, everyday this last week. yum. Right before Ruth was born I craved canned soup with all the veggies and beef chunks in it...I was eating that at least twice a day for several weeks! Other cravings this pregnancy have included broccoli, potatoes, and peanut butter.

Updates

Since being in Santa Fe, we've been staying with Brad's parents, Paula and Asa. It has been so nice to "move" into their house for the past couple of weeks, especially seeing that the other option would be living in a hotel, yuck.


Ruth has had a bit of a hard time getting used to their house and having other people around all day...and learning how to interact with other kids, especially older kids. We've discovered that she is certainly not a wilting flower, if other kids try to tell her "no" or take stuff from her or push her around she pushes right back! She also does this other thing, I think she's trying to be intimidating, she claps her hands and kinda growl/shouts. It was pretty funny the first couple times, but now I just want her to be nice and to get along with others.



We've spent a good amount of time with Brian and Tia and their kids Lydia and Ben while we've been here because they live about a mile from Paula and Asa. That has been great fun, but has also been a lot of the reason Ruth has learned the growl-shout-clap your hands routine.


Luckily she's also learned some other cool tricks from Lydia and Ben. The first being how to make her car go, as seen above. She's also become much more of a climber.


She likes to climb up on their benches and chairs and can even climb onto grandma's couches. The same day she learned to scoot on the car she learned that other things scoot too.



We very much have enjoyed our time with our family here and appreciate their generosity. We're also very anxious to get back to Idaho and get settled into our house. We only have six weeks until our baby boy comes and we only have until the last day of April to get moved out of our apartment...and get it cleaned. I'm obviously feeling anxious about all that because last night I was having all these crazy dreams about cleaning apartments, except all my old roommates where there, not Brad, and I was back in Provo...it's funny how your brain interprets things when you're sleeping.

Easter/Family Reunion/My B-day

Here are pictures from our little family reunion in Santa Fe over Easter weekend. The pictures are in no particular order. We were all able to miraculously come together for the weekend, including grandma and grandpa Nelson. It was really fun to see everybody again and just hang out over conference weekend. Funny side note, pretty much everyone got way sick either at the end of the reunion or the following few days...which reminded us of a line from Nacho Libre, "I've had diarrhea since Easters."

The guys minus Asa and Nate


Grandpa Nelson dying eggs with Morgan, Lydia and Joey
Asa and I blowing out our candles Monday night for our b-days (we were both born April 5th)

The family pic...stay tuned for the Laws family rendition of "The Wise Man and the Foolish Man."

Morgan and Lydia in their adorable Easter dresses

Ladies' Night Out, we went to La Casa Sena where all the waiters are singers. I hadn't been there since Brad and I were engaged...4 years ago and it was way fun. I requested them to sing "There is Nothing Like a Dame," aside from just being a great song it seemed fitting since it was our night out! They weren't going to do it because only 2 guys were working that night...but then randomly another waiter came in on his night off so they did it for us!!!! What luck.

All the ladies again, minus the small ones.

Ashley with Ruth and Aubrey. Ruth was really great with her and liked to touch her little hands and point to her nose. Yay!

Ruth prancing around in her tutu sent from grandma Lents!

Probably the last family photo before the little guy arrives. Wow this mama is BIG.

The Easter Bunny I created from grandma Nelson's cheese dip.
Me with the Easter Bunny. The kids were kinda confused about eating the Easter Bunny.

The Last Two Days

Things have quickly fallen in to place. After all the waiting around the last two days have felt like a whirlwind. We finally closed on our house yesterday afternoon!

Before the real insanity began yesterday, Ruth and I spent time goofing around...and it turned into a fun photo shoot.





Once we closed on the house our amazing Realtor gave us our key and we went immediately to the house to begin the wall-paper demolition...and trash pick up and deep cleaning.

Somehow in three hours yesterday we were able to get all of this stuff including a disgusting range and vending machine full of pistachios moved out to the garage!


And not only that; we began tearing down wall paper (imagine navy blue plaid on the lower half of the wall topped by a border with ducks...it was ugly) AND we were able to clean the kitchen floor so that it was sanitary for Ruth to play on (imagine a giant kitty litter box that used to sit in the middle of the kitchen/dining room that was so full that the cat started using the floor instead of the box). Obviously, me being pregnant, Brad took care of the kitchen while I started preparing that hideola wall paper.

Today we spent 7 hours at the house working away. We continued to work on that stubborn wall paper and we got the carpet torn out!!!


I felt bad for the guy who came to do it, he was at least 60 years old. And with the amount of stains and nastiness that was in that carpet it had to have weighed a ton as he hefted it up the stairs from the basement and from the back of the house. Poor guy. I was able to clean up the walls, doors, counters and window frames in the kitchen and living room...which took a ton of scrubbing. I couldn't figure out how they had gotten brown streaky stains on the top of their doors. Brad changed the locks to the house and scrubbed the heck out of that wall paper. And Ruth even took a nap in one of the bedrooms in her pack-n-play!

We are all completely worn out. Tomorrow we hope to finish up the wall-paper removal, apply KILZ to the floors, and maybe paint the three upstairs bedrooms. But Brad has to do work at the office tomorrow and we have errands we have to run before we leave town on Saturday. We're going to Santa Fe so Brad can help run the hotel his company has down there after the current employees leave. Luckily, Ruth and I get to come along and hang out with the fam while we're there. We're expecting to be there for a month and it would have been really rough on us if we didn't all get to go. We'll be back the last week of April to finish up the work on our house and get moved in before we have to be out of our apartment. I'll also still have about 4 weeks left of pregnancy when we get back so everything should work out perfectly.

Updates

We may be closing on our house tomorrow. We may be going to Santa Fe for a month. We may have the wall-paper removed before we leave town.

Things we know for sure:
Today the doctor said that little man is not coming early, May 26th is still "the day."
Little man is in the 40th percentile for being nearly 31 weeks in-utero.
I gained no weight in the last 2 weeks!
Brad makes a very attractive Mickey Mouse.

We like Samoas better than Thin Mints.
Ruth can do all the actions to "Popcorn Popping."
Ruth can build ridiculously huge towers with her blocks.


My short hair cut is a million times better than long, stringy hair.
We are a happy family despite the anxiety waiting around to close on our house has created.
And finally, typing with one hand is no fun...but I've gotten pretty fast, as necessitated by Ruth's love for the computer...especially our blog!

Cutie Pie

Thanks Jennefer for all the great clothes, they are so adorable!!! I'm not going to have to buy Ruth any pants for years! She was super excited to look through the boxes and see all the new clothes too.

Pregnancy

So I was reading up on being 30 weeks pregnant. Some symptoms that are normal are being tired because of the lack of sleep: check. I'm waking up 2 times a night to pee now (except last night - I slept wonderfully last night). The other major thing going on is a return of hormonal changes which usually causes a swing in emotions: check. I'm not gonna lie, this last week while Brad was gone I had one REALLY horrible, awful, no-good, very bad day. Serious downer thoughts about pregnancy, myself, being a mommy, and even being married. It was rough. Luckily the next day Brad came home and since then I've gotten some more rest. The funny thing about this too is that it's not like I'm just facing pregnancy hormones that are making me emotionally insane...have I mentioned that we're moving soon?! So yeah, I'm dealing with 3 of the most stressful things people deal with at the same time: buying a house, moving and having a baby. Ha.

I love this picture because you can see the space between Ruth's two front teeth!

A Week Apart

This week I had a training in New Jersey. On the last night I decided that being 30 minutes away from New York left me with no excuse not to visit. So I checked out early and hit the town.

The downside was that I had to take my luggage everywhere I went. This limited my mobility and options a bit. I was on the phone with Katie nearly the whole time trying to feel like she was there with me. I have decided that I will get her there someday.

NUMBERS

I am 29 weeks pregnant. Yesterday the doctor told me I was measuring big. Consequently, in 2 weeks I'll be going in for my 3rd ultrasound to see if my due date is going to be moved up a couple weeks! This would be great, it also means that I'm not crazy for thinking lately that my original due date of May 26th should really have been May 15th...we'll see. Also at the doctor's my blood pressure was 104/70, my iron number was 124, I drank that nasty melted Otter Pop glucose mess in less than 5 minutes and waited around for 30 minutes after seeing the doctor to get my blood drawn.

Ruth is now (almost) 16 months old. She can run really fast now, which is pretty funny. She wears size 4 shoes, 18 month dresses, 9-12 month pants (she fits into 18 month pants but these have to be leggings), and size 3 diapers. She has become very good at pointing out babies everywhere we go, we'll see how she does when ours arrives in about 2 months.

Brad left yesterday at 3:10 to go to a corporate training in New Jersey. All 3 of us were pretty sad about that, we don't like being apart. Luckily it is only for 4 nights, he'll be back Friday at noon.

Also, we are suppose to close on our house on March 15th, that is in 6 days. But we are still waiting for the bathroom fixer upper guy to get in there and fix the bathroom. Once that is done we have to wait for the appraiser to go to the house for the 2nd time to approve the finished work. And THEN we can close on the house. Basically, there is no way that will all get done in the next 4 business days, so we're kissing that closing date goodbye. (The bank has already asked for an extended closing date of the 29th for this situation, so it could end up being anywhere between the 15th (in our dreams) and the 29th (I sure hope it's before then!).)

Pictures

Here are some pictures of the fun we've had together as a family recently:

Ruth praying, she is very observant and has started to ask to say prayers all the time:

Me being bored after church (check out the baby bump!):

The result of getting ready to move and Brad cleaning out the closet:

Brad and Ruth being goofy after church:

Ruth avoiding bedtime or playing mummy in the ottoman:

The result of trying to watch a movie (Hot Rod) while the child is still awake:

The culmination of having "long" hair for too long, two bad hair days in a row, owning a pair of scissors and not wanting to sit on the floor while Ruth took a bath:

Momminess and why I blog

I love reading other women's blogs and their experiences as mommies. I too often feel like I don't compare well to their "achievements." I've been trying to stop comparing myself to others and just enjoy being a mom rather than worry about what other people may think about what I put on my blog or how my child looks when we arrive at church. Anyways, I found this on my friend Karli's blog and thought it was wonderful.

Super Mom	Abiding Mom
Does	Is (Psalm 46:10)
Tries to impress others	Pleases the Lord (Eph. 5:10, Proverbs 29:25)
Is controlled by an agenda (curriculum, schedule, etc)	Is controlled by the Holy Spirit: (Gal. 5:22-26) (Uses curriculum & schedules as tools for orderliness so she's more free to follow the spirit)
Her self worth is found in her accomplishments (clean house, perfect kids, the perfect bulletin boards, etc.)	Her self worth is found in an accurate view of who she is in Christ Jesus (Eph 2:10)
Her peace is found in the “perfect” environment	Her peace is found in Jesus in the midst of any storm (Is 26:3)
She is discouraged by failure	Failure reminds her that God's strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9-10)
She expects perfection from herself and others	She practices grace with herself and others (Eph 4:32)
She teaches her kids to be good	She teaches her kids to be Godly (Proverbs 22:6)
She is frustrated with her lack of spiritual fruit	She abides in Christ and bears much fruit (John 15:5)
She does things with her children	She builds a relationship with her children (Deut 6:6-7)
Her perspective is based on what is seen	Her perspective is based on what is unseen (Col 3:2)
She chooses quantity of activities	She chooses the most excellent Way (I Cor 13)

I especially like "Her self worth is found in an accurate view of who she is in Jesus Christ," and "Her perspective is based on what is unseen."

I am keeping this blog as a way to record and journal my life and the experiences I have as a wife and mother. I don't post things to brag or show off but to help me remember what went on in our daily life, how we endured trials and to show gratitude for the blessings we received.

The Past Few Days

So yesterday we bought our fridge! Hooray. We've been looking and looking and comparing online and at all the stores around town for a couple months. We finally bought our wonderful new Kenmore, 25 cubic foot, black refrigerator at a great sale at Sears.

Today we had friends over for a playdate which was super fun. Recently we've been trying to have friends over once a week and Ruth and I have really been enjoying the company.

This afternoon we heard from our realtor that the bank is going to pay for the fixes that must be done to our house prior to the closing day - YES! So basically that is $900 we don't have to spend to get our main floor bathroom in working condition. More blessings!

We also went shopping for Ruth the other day, and although it's no where near warm enough for shorts, doesn't she look cute!