My Second shower

I'm sorry it's been so long since I've updated. I've been a bad blogger! Things have been busy around here sorting through stuff and working on the great closet switch. We haven't made much progress in the nursery but this weekend we will hopefully be moving Dan's stuff and other random crap out of the closet so we can reorganize it for the baby. Since I still haven't discussed it, here's my review of my shower from August 15th!

My mother-in-law and sister-in-law came down and threw me a shower here in Wichita and it was AMAZING! They did a rubber ducky theme which was perfect for us since our sunday school class mascot is a rubber duck (it's a long story) and so we are already a big fan of those. Here are some pics of the decorations:

There was great food, great family and friends and it was just perfect! Even though I had like nothing to do with the planning, I still threw my own touches in with a slideshow of my belly and nursery progress as well as putting the DVD of the baby waves session on in the background. We got a lot of great stuff and I have 2 showers worth of thank you notes to get to work on. Here's a cute picture of Bonnie in the car seat/stroller frame:

She is going to have such an adjustment to make when the baby comes - she is so our baby right now!

Hopefully, I'll have some new nursery progress pictures after this weekend. For now I will leave you with my 30 week Belly pic!

3D ultrasound today!

I had my 3D ultrasound today and it was pretty good! The little stinker was a bit stubborn with putting his face against my uterus so it was difficult to get some good shots. By the way the u/s tech was talking, I guess the scans usually turn out better but we did get to see our baby and I think he's going to be really cute (not that I'm biased or anything). They estimated his weight at just over 3lbs. He's got a lot of growing to do but he's doing pretty good so far!

8/2: Baby Shower/BBQ

On Sunday, August 2nd, my parents threw a BBQ and baby shower for me. They had a ton of good food and a bunch of people there. My grandpa and Carol as well as my Uncle Lloyd and Aunt Maryann and their daughter Lilly came, then there was a whole bunch of my parents friends, most of which I've met before. It was a good time, I could tell my parents enjoyed themselves and it was nice to see some of my family and chat with the nice people my parents are friends with. I got some really cute clothes and thing and people were good at knowing we had to bring gifts home on the plane with us and we were able to fit everything into our suitcases so it was all good. My mom has the pictures so as soon as I get them I will add them to this entry.

Finally got pictures!!

I was pretty worn out by the end of the day but I got a bunch of cute things!

8/1 - Picnic with my high school friends

I've been really busy lately so I'm going to have to make up for lost posts now! On August 1st I had a reunion with some of my high school friends and their families. It was good seeing people again. This year was our 10 year reunion but I couldn't make it for the actual one and neither could a couple of them so we decided to just have our own. I would bet it was more fun than the actual one...especially since I can't drink and that seemed to be the thing to do there (based on people's pictures on Facebook anyway)!

so here we are, Mary Beth (who is about 3 weeks further along than me), Heather, me, and Rebekah:

the dueling bellies: I was carrying kind of high that weekend and Mary Beth is carrying pretty low. We're both having boys though so so much for the old wives tale about being able to tell what you're having based on how you're carrying!

We had a good time playing lawn games and generally catching up.

Mary Beth snapped a cute picture of me and Dan before we left:

I got pretty sunburned but it was my own fault for not wearing sunscreen and avoiding the sun all summer. Hopefully we can all get together again in a year or so with our new babies!

The Tree is done!

And as an added bonus, I am in the pic for my latest belly pic...enjoy!

This stuff isn't easy! Part 2: The Tree

Ok, here was my big project - which was a bigger headache than I would have thought.

First, an overview of how it's done:
1. Tape together the two peices the mural comes in:

2. Tape carbon paper to the back - of course, there was only enough for one side at a time...we wouldn't want this to be over quickly now, would we?

3. Decide where you want the tree to go and tape it to the wall (this is where I thought I wanted the tree to go - see how I lined the bottom of the tree up with the floor - it seemed like a good idea at the time...)

4. Trace the tree pattern with a ball-point pen so the design copies onto the wall

Can you see it? Well, trust me, there's the outline of a tree there. I untapped everything and put it all back in the shipping tube to store for another day. It was at this point I said to myself...."huh, that looks low...." Then I got out the dimentions of the crib and saw that the top of the crib would be about halfway up the branches - this is NOT what I wanted!!! Oh S#$%! I just spent nearly 2 hours tracing the tree TOO LOW. After literally beating myself up (if you've ever been a witness to an official Kathy breakdown, it's not pretty). I got out the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and thankfully was able to pretty easily erase the lines. Of course, if you've ever worked with one of those things you know they take off a good layer of paint with them. So after scrubbing the wall I had to give it another coat of paint.

While the paint dried I finished putting the grass up and touching up the baseboard paint - so the afternoon wasn't a total loss. I'll put pics up of all that fun at the end (that project actually went really well). Anyway, the tree - take 2! This time we put the mural up at the TOP of the wall - you may notice that small piece of tape indicating where the crib will be to make sure I didn't screw it up again :P

I made sure to keep the original bottom of the tree unerased so I could just match up the trunks - you know to avoid the "tree floating in mid-air" look. So I did all that other crap I did the first time and was able to be all traced and done by the end of Saturday - whew!

On Sunday I painted in the trunk of the tree and branches with a lovely chocolate brown:

I started work on the leaves, which will be a more artistically challenging job, but nice none the less - here's a sneak peek:

Since I'm having trouble adding the grass pics to this entry (probably too many pics already) I'll add them to the picket fence one.

This stuff isn't easy! - Part 1: The Picket Fence

Hi all! We had a very productive weekend. First of all, let's show you Dan's project: The Picket Fence!

Doesn't it look great?! He's happy I let him buy the nail gun - I told him it was an early birthday gift. It sure made faster work nailing all those individual peices to the wall! It was quite noisey though and the times I was in there with him, it kind of made the baby jump a few times, which was cool. Since it's a pain to put pics up in these blogs, I'm making a separate entry for the tree project.
But before I leave, here is a look at the grass:

Bonnie got herself in this one. She was looking at the camera all nice but just as I was taking the picture she moves faster than the speed of light to scratch her back - why do dogs always do that?