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Sweetest sound

The sweetest sound a pregnant mama could hear is the sound of her little ones heart beating.

Today at our appointment we heard our little ones heart beating. He or she tried to hide again but we found it and it really was a sweet sound.

We love you little one and cannot wait to meet you in 20 weeks.

Another year of phone calls from the nurse

For the last half of the school year last year, I don't know that we went through a week without getting a phone call about one of the boys getting hurt. Mind you, there are only two of them.

This year has been slightly uneventful as far as phone calls. I think I've received a handful of them-all for minor things like bumps and bruises-no need for me to drive to the school to pick a child up.

Today, I was grabbing the laundry basket from the living room when the phone rang. Now I was going to ignore it because...well I had to use the bathroom but then I looked at the caller ID and there it was the school's phone number, ugh. I answered and like I guessed it was the school nurse. Apparently, my oldest son doesn't know how to walk out of the bathroom without injuring himself.  He hit his eye area on the door of the bathroom. Thankfully it just left a mark but seriously kid???  Lol.

I love my kids and I love the things they do. Now the nurse phone calls I don't like them so much, lol.

Our exciting news

Back in February I wrote a blog titled Finding Peace about finding peace after a miscarriage and when approaching the anniversary of the miscarriage. If you would ask me then if I thought we'd ever be pregnant again, I would have said no.

On July 16, 2011-the day before our anniversary after being almost a week late, I decided to take a test and lo and behold it was POSITIVE!!!! Because it was our anniversary, I decided to slip the test into my husband's card. He took it out and looked at it for no less than 30 seconds before finally looking at me and saying, really?

We were ecstatic but because of our loss from last March being so fresh in our minds, we did not want to tell the boys or anyone else for that matter until we were sure this one was sticking. Do you know how hard it is to deal with early pregnancy symptoms and not be able to tell anyone? It's not easy that's for sure.

On August 12, we were able to go to the doctor and see our bean. He/she was very active and had a great heartbeat.

We decided to take the boys out to eat and tell them. I have to admit, I was a little nervous. I know they love their baby cousin but both have been it known that they were not interested in having a baby in our house. Once we told them they were both happy and even started thinking of names for the baby-boy names of course, lol.

We saw the doctor last Thursday and were able to hear the heartbeat-150s and were very relieved to know that things are going well. I am now into my 14th week of pregnancy. We are excited to see whether this little one will be a boy or a girl.

Here is a pic of our little one at 8 weeks, 6 days.

Pintrest

I have no idea what pintrest is, do you? Apparently it's a website but I'm not sure I get it (course I should probably look at it longer than a few minutes).

I did find this on one of the blogs that I follow, Thrifty Decor Chick.

This is ingenious.

An open snack container. I have a habit of buying fresh produce, throwing it in a drawer and forgetting about it and a few weeks later, throwing it away. This is my goal to do prior to the beginning of the school year.  It would be great for me during the day and then after school when the boys get home. I can do one in the fridge and one in the cupboard (once I get those, lol).

I also love this idea.

The boys like to 'use' all their bubbles (read dump them) and what a great way for them to be easily refilled. I have a cute plastic drink container like this that will work perfectly. Maybe I'll dig it out tomorrow and fill it with a bubble mixture (putting it up out of the boys reach of course).

Have you ever found anything you'd try on pintrest?  I'm going over there right now to find some interesting things. Who knows maybe I'll get addicted and join and submit my own things.

Updates

So how is the kitchen coming? Slow, lol. Seriously, it is very slow. Here we are about 2 1/2 months since we demoed it all and we still don't have cupboards, let alone walls. We do have studs. Matter of fact, we have three walls of studs which is a huge improvement.

Next week, we'll hopefully have drywall on the walls. After drywall comes priming, then painting.  After that is cupboards and floors and countertops.  Yay!!! I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I never made it to the second hand stores last week. It had been a very hot, very humid week and I didn't care to go anywhere.  Even the pool was warm.

We did get to have a campfire and light sparklers though. The boys enjoyed that.

At the end of the week, we made it to our local, free admission amusement park.

Although it was a hot and humid week, we did enjoy our days as a family.

Dreaming...

Tomorrow at 4 PM, I start vacation. I cannot wait. Although it won't be much of a vacation for us. We need to work on our kitchen desperately and make some decisions, such as flooring, paint color, definite on cabinets, etc.

I am hoping to take one day without kids and go second hand shopping. It's something I don't get to do much of anymore but I love doing. I love to see what I can find cheap and use or re-purpose.

I'm also hoping to hit up a few yard sales too this weekend. Ya never know what I may find :-)

Facing your fears

Several weeks ago my husband was mowing in front our house when I heard the mower stop. I didn't really think much of it since the mower had a habit of stalling out anyway, especially in higher grass. Something made me go outside though, so I went out and he says I mowed over a snake. WHAT?????

I'm not a fan of snakes, unless they are those cute boa constrictors that zoos and animal places have that they let you pet. Those I can handle. The slithering kinds in my yard, not so much, even if they're not poisonous.

My front flower bed needed to be weeded bad. I had all kinds of weeds growing in it and it was looking really bad but I was so afraid I'd come across a snake that I kept putting it off.

I faced that fear last night and weeded my flower bed and found my poor rose that had been buried under the bind weed. I must say once I got going on the weeding, it seemed like I had no fear anymore.

Now I have a flower bed mostly freed of weeds (is it possible to get all of them?) and my fear has disappeared. Maybe next time I will actually mow too.

Here are a few photos I took last night.

Yes, that is my flower bed that needed weeded and above is one of the beautiful flowers that is in it.

Flowers

Last month, I took advantage of some free photo book offers to create some photo books. One of which was one of all my flower photos that I've taken over the years. Many of which were flowers from our first house. Flowers that I didn't realize just how much I missed until I was looking through them. 

It reminded me how much I love to take photos of my flowers and reminded me how much I love to garden. My goal is to refurbish a few of our flower beds next year and purchase some plants that I loved so much.

Here are a few photos of some current flowers that I have.

Kitchen remodel

Ugh, why did I think we'd be able to get this kitchen done in a reasonable amount of time? I must have been delusional, lol.

Two months ago we started out with a kitchen that looked like this

After some demo it looked like this

Today it has studs along two of the walls and the electric is going in as I type. Next week D and I are both on vacation and plan on working on this kitchen as much as we can. We would like to get it done some time before Christmas.

Photos

For Christmas this past year, I got a Cannon Rebel camera. Its a beauty and boy does it take great pictures. I haven't really played with it too much until just recently and wow what it can do is amazing.

I took it with us to church Sunday and got some pretty nice photos of the boys and some of the boys with daddy and a few family shots. I should have taken the tripod with me but I didn't think about it until after we got home.

Here are a few that I've edited so far.

Here are some pics of Benjamin from his first game

I think there will be more photo blogs to come :-)