5 weeks or less...

My quiet books, still in progress, but I've been finishing up a few other things.  I've made flannel quilts for my other kids and really wanted to do another one for this little girl.  I make the ones that fray cause they're easy and they hide my many mistakes, but they are so snuggly warm, both of my kids still sleep with theirs every night.   So here it is:

Front

Back

And I, for the life of me cannot find the canopy/visor for our carseat, so I decided to make one since we'll be traveling right after she'll be born.  I still have to find some cute buttons for the straps but I love how it turned out.

And the beloved belly shots - I'm 34 weeks, but my doctor agreed to induce me at 39 weeks because I'm kind of stressing a little about traveling that soon after delivering,  this way she will be about 2 weeks old before we leave for DC.  Although, part of me is really hoping she'll come a little early like Handsome did - surprising us around 38 weeks.  Well that's about all for now. 

Objects in motion

I haven't posted any video for a while, so I thought I would share a couple moments with you.  I think my kids are hilarious, and just like all kids are constantly moving or at least keeping me moving.  They play pretty well together and now that Miss Peanut is a little older she has loved helping me with things.  Who knew that laundry and cleaning could be so exciting.  I know the day will come when I will hear something like...do I have to? But for now I'll take what I can get.  Miss Peanut loves to help dust, clean windows, do laundry, and anything helping me in the kitchen.  Handsome has also started to pick up on her helpfulness and has started doing a few simple things.  He loves to take his dishes to the sink after dinner, put his laundry away after bath-time, pick up shoes and toys.  I'm amazed at how well he understands and he's starting to talk so much more now as well.  I often hear help-pease, down-pease, up-pease, and keen-up.  Anyway - I'm really grateful for the help as its getting harder for me to do simple things like bend over :) to pick up whatever.  Here's a video of them in action (I do sort the laundry first, and so far we've avoided pink underwear :)

And this is one of my favorite things - the difference between girls and boys is hilarious to me.  Miss Peanut has her moments of all giggles and being a silly girl, as well as her moments of drama. Handsome, though,  has such a need to wrestle, tackle, growl, etc.  Every evening around bath-time he gets his sumo on when I strip him down to his diaper and then once he's dressed in jammies it continues a little something like this.

 

We all just love when Daddy gets to be home in the evening.    

I look forward to Tuesday

For most people, it's Friday or Saturday night, but for us it has been Tuesday.  Officers is still working weekend swings and for the longest time (pretty much since he started swings almost 2 years ago) finding a date night has just been pushed to the back burner a lot.  We've had lunch dates, get to the temple dates, and take all the kids with us dates, but an actual date night hasn't happened FOREVER!  I finally decided this past month or so that at least until baby comes we need that desperately. So I arranged for one of the young women in our ward to come over whatever time she could every Tuesday until this baby comes for a few hours so we could get away.  Its been just a few weeks in a row now and its wonderful!  Its not like we do anything super exciting - I mean really its Tuesday, but still he gets the door for me,  we hold hands without keeping track of two other little sets of hands, and just to converse without distractions and interruptions...it's been so nice.  I love getting to date my husband again.

Nesting...

I'm to that point,  I have this list of things I'd like to get done, cleaned, projects finished, etc before baby comes.  I'm pleased to say that I'm making progress.  One project I've been wanting to tackle for a long time was making quiet books for my kids at church. We had one growing up that was well loved and I have lots of memories of playing with it during church.  My kids have a hard time sitting still - like most I'm sure and with new baby arriving soon I'm somewhat terrified about how church with go. Right now officer is able to come with us, but for the most part of the last 2 1/2 years I've had to tackle the two monkeys on my own - his schedule changes every few months so who knows what it will bring.  I'm hoping that it will keep my kids busy for at least 10-15 minutes - and with 2 books I'm really hoping for more like 20-30 minutes.  I've bought stuff over the last couple - years - sadly it's taking me this long to get much done.  This week Officer has been gone a lot for work/court/scouts etc so in the evening I've been getting quite a few things done on them.  In the last week I setup and cut out everything for the 18 pages of the quiet books (9 pages in each) one for Miss Peanut and one for Handsome.  I found so many super cute ideas and template online so I can't take credit for some of the ideas, but I'm really excited about how they are turning out.  He're a quick look.

1. Apple tree
2. Shapes
3. Car/road
4. Tent w/ bear
5. Rocket
6. Noah's Ark
7. Treasure Chest
8. Tool Box

1. Girl with hair to braid
2. Vase w/ Flowers
3. Barn w animals
4. Crayons
5. Tic Tac Toe
6. Phone
7. Coo-coo Clock
8. Mailbox
9. Butterfly net

 Ultimately I want to finish them completely with covers. etc by Easter, but this week  I'm hoping to get at least 1/2 of the pages assembled.  I'll show you the finished product hopefully soon

Almost finished

I still need to decorate, but I think our project is just about finished.  I really like the look of the new fireplace and tile, we even got to snuggle up with the fire going the other day when it was snowing - yes it is still snowing here.  I like having the TV up where little hands can't reach,  now we just have to build or find somewhere to store all the toys we usually put in the entertainment center. 
BEFORE

AFTER