Little Bit of Everything

Where do I even begin? Last week I had a whole week off of work where I had planned on painting the bedrooms and getting everything put back in its place. Then the basement flooded and set back those plans for a few days. We did get the living room done and all that furniture put back, back I was really hoping to get our bedroom done too. We spent our entire Saturday trying to install our new ceiling fan for the bedroom. Don't ask me why it took all day, but it did.

Sunday was a pretty good day. We had dinner with Stephen's parents and then had a few friends over for a game night. I made some yummy soft caramel corn for a snack, and ended the night playing games and laughing my head off til midnight. We have some awesome friends.

I was not looking forward to starting work again after having a week and a half off. I looked at the calendar only to find that I had three more weeks of work instead of the two I thought I had due to the fact that July has five weeks instead of the normal four. Awesome. But at least these are my last three weeks of work ever! Horray!

This little boy has been becoming extremely active in my tummy. I mean to the point that it actually annoys me--especially when he's kicking me late at night when I'm trying to sleep or he kicks me in the bladder over and over as if saying "I need more room in here!" I love this little guy already and I love to feel him kick, but I can only take so much of it before I can't take it anymore. I get more and more uncomfortable with the passing weeks as he seems to be sitting up in my ribs so I can't even sit down comfortably. Sleep is already out of the question for me too; I toss and turn every 10 minutes because I just can't get comfortable enought to stay asleep. I guess it's good practice for when baby comes in a few months?

Toby is such a good kitty and lately he has been a bird-killing machine. We have been finding dead birds or parts of birds all over our yard. One morning Stephen and I went outside to turn the water on the garden when I heard a rustling in a nearby bush. I looked under it to find Toby with a poor little bird in his mouth. He only seemed to be playing with this one though. It had a broken wing and Toby wouldn't touch it unless it moved to try and get away. It wasn't long until Toby decided to drag it to his lair....our basement. I didn't realize I had left the basement door wide open, haha. So we now had a live bird in the house who was trying to escape his captive by fluttering all over the place while Toby chased him relentlessly. I ended up having to catch it with a net and putting it outside where the cat continued to taunt and abuse it. Sadly the bird met its end; I only wish Toby would catch and kill the annoying magpies instead of the smaller birds.

Now the bad news..... The saying "when it rains, it pours" is a very real reality in our lives because that's exactly what happens every time something goes wrong. When one bad thing happens another one, and another one, and another one happens until we either explode or laugh our heads off because it is SO not funny, but can't help but laugh because we are helpless. First we had the flood last week, then after we just had our ceiling retextured the new texture and paint we just put on is already cracking and peeling in several spots again without any rhyme or reason, Stephen went to the dentist because of a painful toothache last week only to learn he has an abscess so bad that its has literally eaten away at his jaw bone. He went back to the dentist yesterday to get the tooth pulled and get a jaw bone graft put in. Then he gets an implant in a few months. To top it all off my car broke down on me this morning on my way to work. Luckily I had just pulled off on my exit so I wasn't a sitting duck on the freeway. But after taking it into the shop I later learned I have a blown out clutch and alternator. Boo! I cannot believe all this had to happen at once. I'm not a money tree!!!

Amidst all this darkness there have been little windows of sunshine here and there. I know we are being watched over, and these things are supposed to be teaching moments for the both of us. As frustrating as it is, we are truly blessed at the same time; I know it and I can physically feel the love our father in heaven has for us.

Other than that life is peachy. Because I was unable to go to work today due to the car I have to work on Friday, yet again setting back my plans of getting my bedroom all painted. Sigh........someday...

Seriously?!

We got home from Twin Sunday afternoon just in time to go inside, change, and head to our sacrament meeting. Since we are redoing three rooms upstairs right now all of our stuff is crammed in the basement. This is where we have been sleeping for past two weeks too. We had someone feed Toby for us while we were gone so we left his cat food and dishes outside for him in the basement stairwell. Apparently Midvale had, had one heck of a thunderstorm over the weekend while we were gone because we came home to a flooded basement. Yeah, I mean floooood. ed. we couldn't do anything about it right away because we had to get to church and we didn't have any means of getting the water out without some sort of vacuum anyway. I went to church really grumpy not only because of the water in the basement, but I trusted someone to watch and take care of our kitty for us and we found his bag of food soaked, his water dish was really dirty and debris filled, and his food was sopping wet and filled with maggots. Stephen cleaned it all out and got him some fresh water and food. When I went back into his room his water dish was almost empty and all his food was gone. Poor kitty acted like he hadn't eaten in days......hmmm I wonder why.......

Anyway, so after church a couple in our ward came to help us clean up the basement. They brought a shop vac and I ran to Bountiful to borrow a shampooer and fan from Loren. They helped us suck up and unclog the drain at the bottom of the stairs and soak up as much water as they could while Stephen and I ate dinner. We were so grateful for their help! We moved all the furniture as best we could to flip the carpet up to dry, and when we were getting ready to go to bed Stephen noticed that we have black mold growing on the underside of the carpet. Awe man, can it get any worse?! The mold really isn't too bad, but we do have to replace the carpet at some point. I would say now, but because we have already committed to redoing the upstairs we have no more money to put into the house right now. So I sprayed the mold spots with chlorine water to hopefully kill it and stop it from growing. We need to get the living room and our bedroom painted and carpet out ASAP so we can get all our furniture and stuff out the basement to treat and dry the floor as fast as we can. Good thing I don't have to work this week! I spent the whole morning weeding our garden that somehow had become overrun with thousands of weeds while we were gone too. I have a ton of work to do this week! So far we are off to a bad start, but we'll get it all done....hopefully. At least we have a camp out to look forward to this weekend.

Oh Boy!

Stephen and I took a weekend trip to visit my family in Twin Falls over the 4th of July. I mainly went up there to see and hang out with Becky since it could be my last time seeing her for a while before they move to Washington. What a bummer! I didn't really have any ideas of what we would do all weekend, but somehow I got put in charge of putting together a family BBQ. I was glad to do it so it would kinda give Stephen something to do since I knew he would be bored all weekend if I was hanging out with my mom and sisters the whole time. I did make a car seat baby blanket for my half-baked bun in the oven. It took a lot longer to put together than I thought it would, but I think it turned out really cute.

We had the BBQ at Joseph and Trish's house so all the kids could play on their big slip and slide and sprinklers. I was going to make some pies for dessert along with Joseph's homemade ice cream, but Joseph insisted that I make a cake instead, so that's what I did. I had my ultrasound last week and Stephen and I got to see our little one for the first time and find out the gender. It went by super fast; we were in and out of there within 15 minutes! I had heard from lots of other people that their ultrasounds would go for an hour or more. Our technician just flew through everything taking all the measurements and making a comment or two about what we were looking at. The baby looks really healthy and is growing super fast, so I can't complain.

I didn't tell any of my family what we were having until the BBQ on Thursday. They knew the cake would reveal what the gender was so they were all anxious to get to dessert. I took everyone's guess on what they thought it was and everyone said it was a girl (including myself). I had dad cut the cake and.........

  It's a BOY!!!!

 Here he is in all his glory

Stephen and I are very excited and couldn't be happier. I have to admit, even though I didn't want to find out the gender, it is a huge relief knowing what we're having; especially it being our first one. This little guy is already making me uncomfortable. It's hard to bend over and put on my shoes and its hard to breathe in certain positions. I can't even imagine what I'll be feeling like in another 4 months!

We ended up going to Brad and Heather's house instead of watching the fireworks. We got to see their petting zoo, lit our own fireworks with the kids in the driveway, and played games the rest of the night.

Stephen loved the hedgehog 

 My favorite was the little turtle even though it peed all over in my hand

To sum up our trip, we went with mom and dad to Elba for an afternoon to roast a weenie and go for a ride on the fourwheeler.

 Stephen loved riding the razor. this was his and my first time riding it