30 days left!

Arthur and I have a  little countdown clock that tells us how many days are remaining in our countdown to our "guess date" of July 11.  Today, it says 30 days left!

 

Mostly I'm feeling really good, and trying to stay as positive as I can.  There are some moments where I feel overwhelmed, or sad, or tired... but for the most part, I try to remember how badly I wanted this and how ready I am to be a mom. 

I'm really excited for my baby shower this coming Friday, it's the last one before Baby Finn arrives.  Arthur and I are hosting it at our house, mainly because we want people to see our nursery since we've worked so hard to get it ready. 

Arthur was working on a baby shower game yesterday called The Price is Right.  He wants people to guess the prices for some of the items on our baby registry.  I thought it was cute that he was getting a game ready to go for the shower.  :)

I requested sugar cookies for one of the treat options at the shower because Arthur's mom makes the most delicious sugar cookies and frosting.  I can't wait to eat one!  Yum!

Arthur and I have continued to make sure we're practicing our Hypnobirthing techniques every night before bed.  Sometimes it's really difficult to get myself into a state of relaxation, but Arthur is really good at reminding me what to focus on and what to relax with.  I am really going to rely on him to keep me focused when I feel like I'm not able to stay relaxed.  I am so lucky to have someone who is as dedicated to the type of birth I want to have for my first baby. 

My next Midwife appointment is on Friday, I will be having them weekly now.  I will be tested for GBS (Group B Strep), and that will determine whether or not I need an IV antibiotic before I push my baby out.  I have been drinking a ton of water, and eating yogurt every day.  I'm not sure if that will help, but I know that I've been feeling good, with no problems so far... so I hope that I get a negative result. 

How far along:  35 Weeks, 5 Days
How much time left:  4 Weeks, 2 Days

Top two symptoms:  When I'm at work, it's a backache from sitting in my work chair.  When I'm at home, it's usually exhaustion or backache.  Today I've been pretty tired, but that might just be because I haven't had my nap today.  :)

Favorite thing I ate today:  An ice cream bar from Skinny Cow.  It's chocolate with salted caramel and pretzel chunks with vanilla ice cream.  So good!

Mood:  I felt a bit down last night, and tonight I'm feeling much more balanced.  Every day is different.  As I get past the last few milestones at work before I move to my new role/prepare for maternity leave, it takes stress away. 

Worried about:  I'm starting to worry about whether or not I will be ready when he gets here.  There are still a few things I want to do before he arrives, such as making some playlists for my Hypnobirthing, and packing my bag for the hospital.  I know I can't do a lot of packing this far in advance, because I need most of the stuff I'll be packing... I just need to be patient and attack the things that are most important right now. 

Excited for:  Friday's baby shower.  I'm excited for everyone to see Finn's nursery and I'm looking forward to seeing all of Arthur's family.  We made some cute invitations and paper mailed them to a few people who didn't respond on Facebook.  I really hope everyone who we invited can come.  :)  If you weren't invited, and you'd like to come, let me know by sending me a Facebook message and I'll add you to the baby shower group.  :)

Boise Baby Shower

May seems to be Baby Shower month!  I have had 3 so far, and I was really excited for the one up in Boise with my family on my mom's side.  I decided I wanted to have the shower over Memorial Day weekend up in Boise so we could also go visit my Grandpa's grave since he is buried up there.

My sister made a really cute invitation for the Boise shower, and I loved the colors and the fish on it:

 

I had to work on Friday, and I was able to get off a little bit early on May 24.  Arthur came and picked me up and we headed up to Boise.  The drive takes about 6 hours, so I was hoping to do ok seeing that I was 33 weeks pregnant (just over 8 months) at the time.  We stopped a few times and I was able to have enough bathroom breaks, so I did ok.  :)  It was nice to get a nap in on the way up.

Arthur and I arrived at the hotel called The Harrison in Boise around 6PM.  We got checked in and our room was on the 4th (top) floor.  It was the Executive Suite!  I think the executive part was that it had a nice view of the roof.  Arthur and I joked that it was like the Ray Charles suite, because the only person who would enjoy that view would be someone who couldn't see.  :) 

We went to dinner that night at the Cracker Barrel.  It was nice and relaxing, and I felt like I was on vacation.  I realized that this would probably be the last time that Arthur and I get to travel together before we have a baby. 

The next morning, we got ready and I headed over to my Grandma's house.  My sister Adrienne and my sister-in-law Whitney had decorated the house so cute!  They also had amazing fish themed foods!  Adrienne had made blue Jell-O with little fish candies in it.  She also cut out fish shaped fruits and made kabobs out of them.  She also chocolate dipped strawberries and Swedish Fish and put fish faces on them.  The food was delicious! 

Here is the main table decorated with my amazing diaper cake.  We saved a lot of the decorations so we can use them for our shower with Arthur's family in 2 weeks:

Here is a picture of the food and some more of the decorations.  My sister-in-law made an amazing wreath for Baby Finn.  I am going to put it on my hospital door like they do in Texas!  Check out the blue Mambo drinks my sister got!

Here is a picture of Arthur, my grandma and me with the swing she got us.  She was so excited to give it to us!

Some of the kids got bored and went downstairs to play in "The Pit".  The Pit is a big set of couches in the basement where all of the cousins have grown up watching movies and playing. 

Here is the shower crew hanging out on the couch.  It was such a fun day!

After the shower, we hung out and enjoyed the afternoon.  Around 5, we went to the cemetery to visit my grandpa's grave.  It was really nice to see it in person.  It was beautiful! 

Arthur and I didn't stay super long because I was really tired and my feet were starting to swell up.  I needed to put them up for a bit.

That night, Arthur and I went out to dinner and relaxed the rest of the evening.  It was a great time away and I was so grateful for the amazing gifts and time with my family.  I loved seeing all of my fun cousins and spending time at my Grandma's house.
 

Bountiful Baby Shower

My first baby shower was with my team at work.  I had my second baby shower on Saturday, May 18.  I have some lady friends who live in Bountiful by my parent's house who wanted to throw me a shower.  I've known many of them since I was 8 when I moved into the Bountiful house. 

My sister made an amazing invitation for the shower and she and my mom sent them out.  The invitation was really cute. 

The day of the shower, I was super excited.  I got up early and wore a new maternity shirt that I had gotten earlier in the week with a gift card from Arthur.  It was the first bright colors I've worn in awhile, since I have mostly white, black and grey maternity shirts.  I really liked the shading of the colors, and it made me feel happy. 

I drove up to Bountiful and got there a few minutes before it started at 11:00 AM.  It was at the house of a woman who I used to work for when I was a teenager.  I cleaned her house and took care of her elderly mother who had Alzheimer's.  I spent a lot of time there, so I was happy to be back.  There were already a lot of great decorations set up, including an amazing sheet cake made by someone in the neighborhood. 

The dining room table had some cute treats and balloons put up for the party.  I loved it!

A lot of people showed up and I was happy to be able to see so many people from my past.  They were all so generous and I got a bunch of really great stuff!

Here are some more pictures from the shower:

This is Thuryle, Brielle and me.  Thuryle is the woman who hosted the shower.  She is like my second mom!

 



Brielle, Me and my giant "It's a Boy!" cake!

 

My mom and me and my cake:

Here are so more ladies from the neighborhood:

This is a girl I grew up with, she was a year younger than me in school.  Her name is Ashley.  Look how cute her baby girl is!  She is sitting with her mom:

Here is my sweet Aunt Margaret, Aunt Joni and another lady from the neighborhood:

Some more ladies, including my Aunt Kathi and cousin Nikki:

More ladies!

This is the baby shower crew.  Deb is on the bottom left hand side.  She did a lot of the prep work with my mom and sister.  My sister is next to her, then Thuryle.  Then there's me and my sweet Brielle.  My mom and Rene are at the top.  What a great looking group! 

 

Overall, the shower was really fun.  There was a lot of rain and people still showed up!  I also was pretty proud of myself for writing thank you cards as soon as I got home.  Arthur was a big help and he made sure I was able to get through the whole list of gifts and cards before we went to bed that night.  It was so fun going through all of the gifts and showing them to Arthur.  Baby Finn is so spoiled already!  :) 



Nursery Progress

On both my side and Arthur's side, our families are both really excited for Baby Finn to get here.  We have been gathering gifts since we found out we were pregnant.  We've had Christmas, Easter, and both of our birthdays happen since we found out.  So, there have been ample opportunities for our family and friends to get us stuff.

My little brother Mike has been living with Arthur and me since before I found out I was pregnant.  He's been in the guest room, which would be the nursery.  He just moved out this past week and so Arthur and I were excited to get started on Finn's room.  I've been saving every piece of clothing and toy in my office next to Mike's room, and so I was ready to start having somewhere to store Finn's stuff.  Is that what Nesting feels like?!  ;)

Mike moved out on Thursday, and Thursday after work Arthur and I went to Home Depot to pick out some paint colors.  We ended up choosing a really light blue and a light tan color. 

Finn's nursery theme is going to be Under the Sea, with ocean creatures like fish, whales, etc.

Arthur also got some white paint for the ceiling, baseboards and closet.  Arthur spent a good part of the night cleaning up the room by washing the walls and blinds.  We will still need to get the carpet clean, since we've never done that in there. 

Thursday night Arthur stayed up late and painted the ceiling first.  I went in there on Friday morning and got this picture of the ceiling painted and the current paint color on the walls:

Once he had the ceiling painted, he got started on the blue walls.  He was able to get 2 coats on Friday while I was at work.

Once that was dry, he painted the accent wall the light tan color and finished up the closet and painted that white.  I was so anxious to move some of Baby Finn's stuff in!  Thank goodness I have such a hard working talented husband to take care of the entire nursery in just 24 hours!

Here is the corner  where the blue wall and the accent wall meet.  You can see the start of Finn's toy collection.  I love the colors!

Here is the back side of the room by the closet.  You can see the start of our clothes collection.  Arthur did such an excellent job with the paint!

Here's the other side showing the other blue wall.

We have a lot of stuff to still move in.  Our next steps are to first get the carpets cleaned, next to move his crib in and buy a mattress, then to move his dresser and my rocker in.  I'm glad I still have 2 months left to get this stuff done!  :)  If you want to see pictures of my crib and dresser, click here to go to the blog entry about it. 

So far, here are the toys that are sitting on his window seat:

Here are his clothes in the closet!  The left side is entirely full, and the right side has some of the bigger sizes.  We are doing pretty good for only having had 1 baby shower so far!  I'm still excited to get some more great stuff though.  :)

Arthur has also collected a few things on his own for Baby Finn.  He did a bit of shopping on Disney.com and was able to get a few really cute Finding Nemo things.  He even got a cute towel with Finn's name stitched into it!

If you can't tell, we are extremely excited to get Finn here so he can enjoy his new room.  :)  I'm still really excited for my other 3 baby showers.  We're having 1 with my Bountiful friends and family in Mid May.  We're having another one in Boise with my cousins who live up there.  My grandma also lives up there and so I'd love to have her involved as well.  That will be over Memorial Day weekend.  My last shower will be with Arthur's family, which will probably happen in June.  A few people have asked about our registry.

We are registered at Target and Babies R Us. 

Click here to go to the Babies R Us Registry
Click here to go to the Target Registry
 

First Baby Shower

I love my job and the people I work with.  I have one of the most close-knit teams ever.  I have been working on the Quality Team since September of 2010, about 2 and a half years.  There are 6 girls and 1 guy on my team, plus my boss.  Since both my boss and I are pregnant at the same time, my team decided to throw us a joint baby shower at work.

One day I came back to my desk and there was a cute little envelope on my desk with a bubble gum cigar next to it.  I opened it up and it was the invitation!

The big day came this past Thursday, May 2.  My team scheduled a hour in a meeting room and we all gathered in there.  The decorations were so cute! 

 Here's the door to the meeting room and some of the decorations on the wall:

 

Here is the table with the party favors and the plates.  The party favors had little blue candy in it like suckers and butter mints.  For snacks, we had peanut butter Cheerios balls and Cinnamon Roll cake.  So delicious!  I'm glad I have someone on my team who knows how to bake so well!

 

Here is the banner and the white board where they wrote congratulations on it.

Here are some of the members of my team and some of the gifts at the end of the table. 

I got a lot of really great stuff.  My boss got me my diaper bag on my registry, which was pretty amazing.  I love my diaper bag!!  I know it looks a little boring in this picture, but really it's not.  I picked it because it's brown (my favorite color), and it has a million pockets for stuff.  It also has a long strap that I can wear over my shoulder so I can be hands free.  Arthur also won't feel weird carrying it.  :)

I also got this pretty sweet Baby Donald outfit.  I will have to explain the Baby Donald story in another blog entry. 

Overall, it was an awesome first baby shower.  I still have 3 more to go.  :)