Day 3 of Sun Room

Check out the pictures below. The sheathing has been put up and now we can really get a feel for the way the room will feel!

We also had our centering class today. Our group now has 5 couples in it and today we felt like we actually are starting to get to know some of the couples. After today's class we'll increase our meetings to every two weeks. It's also pretty cool to see other women who are due within two weeks of me... we all look about the same size and it's nice to hear of their questions/comments. Today's topic... post pregnancy contraceptives.  

Baby update: She is moving around like crazy! I even asked if there is such a thing as moving around too much... the response was "no!" Recently her moves feel "tighter" on my belly. It's crazy to imagine that she is actually growing (I know... that's the normal thing to happen)! The biggest challenge right now that I am dealing with is the heat and the swelling. I can feel my feet swelling due to the heat and the circulation which is harder to deal with when it's so dang hot! I'm doing my best to stay indoors during the hottest time of the day and running errands early in the morning or later in the evening. It's not always easy. I'm definitely gaining weight! The typical amount to gain now is about a pound per week. Although this past month I gained 6 pounds! Yikes! I'm blaming it on the two week road trip that we took. Let's be honest... we weren't exactly eating like we normally do! BUT... most of it was totally worth it! The CNM (certified nurse midwife) wasn't too concerned! 

Day 2 of Sun Room

Day 2 started at 6:30 AM (these early mornings are definitely a good thing when you are going against the heat)!

From the pictures you'll see that they had to cut back some of the aluminum siding in order to be able to frame the third wall. The framing was put up for the 3rd wall and you can see the opening for a small window. The wall that Ben is peaking out of will be the biggest wall with the biggest window. That's where the desk will be located. 

We've fallen into a nice routine. Get up early and end early!  Lunch time is "quitting time" and then we have the rest of the afternoon to run errands (more wood/supplies) and anything else we need to get done So this afternoon we made a trip down to Vail so Ben could drop some stuff off at school, went to Home Depot to get some more supplies (the boys joined us for the drive to school and to HD) and then had dinner with some friends. All in all, a very productive day!

First Day of Framing the Sun Room

Early this morning the framing began! Since yesterday's high was 112 degrees, Ben and Stephen (wonderful neighbor we hired on as our contractor/consultant) decided to start working at 6:30 in the morning!

Around 7:45 AM I left to get my glucose screening completed to screen for gestational diabetes. I had to drink this very sweet orange flavored drink and wait a hour before they could take my blood. Keep your fingers crossed that my results come out negative and that all is well!

When I returned about two hours later this is what I saw when I peeked out the kitchen door window!

At about the 4 1/2 hour mark this is where they were at... quitting time was around 11:30 and it is so amazing to see how much progress has been made already! 

WOW! So cool!

Nursery Inspiration

We've been talking a lot about our sun room renovation since that seems to be the priority right now. While we've been focused on that I've also been taking some time to think about the nursery. Packing up books, trying to organize what's in the room currently, buying items that we will need for little Blue and trying my hardest to make decisions about the actual nursery. Since we can't really move things around or go buck wild and buy all new furniture, I'm trying to visualize and make do with what we currently have.

If you've noticed any of the boffice pics on the blog you'll see that the room is a light blue and has one accent wall that is a deeper blue. Since we don't have a ton of time to finish the sun room, re-paint the nursery and then set up, we have decided to keep it the light blue that it is (plus I'm not that crazy about tons of pink). While keeping the current color we are going to add in other colors of pinks and greens (Ben insisted that we need to not shun pink from our daughter's life). Still not sure how everything will come together but that is what we're going with right now.

After hours and hours of searching for complimenting fabrics (Ben the "color guy" helped me with this) and not finding fabrics that complimented each other to make my own blanket, I resorted to searching etsy.com. I found a blanket that I liked and when I was getting ready to purchase it, I came across this blanket.

From the same blanket maker but the colors were a little brighter. When I tried to order this one, it was sold out! I was so bummed! So I sent a "conversation" to the seller and she was so kind to make a special order for me since she was able to get a hold of the fabric! Yippee!

Hopefully this blanket will help us bring the room together with some sort of cohesiveness (I know... it's a lot of pressure for one small blanket). BUT we need to start somewhere!

Let the Demo Begin!

The day after Ben's birthday, he took on the task of taking down the "walls" and windows of our sun room. Here are some before, during and after pictures. The most wonderful thing to come out of this... it only took a day to do! Not even a full day... we took a few hours in the afternoon to check out windows and doors at two different stores... not bad! 

FYI... Tuesday we will start the actual framing! Stay tuned for updates!

Happy Birthday!

Since we have been going non-stop on house projects since returning from our road trip, we decided to put everything on hold to celebrate Benny's birthday. Not having much of a "plan" we decided to take the day minute by minute. This is what happened on the impromptu celebration...

We started the day having a nice breakfast with our good friend Mike (the food took a while so we got our drinks on the house!). After breakfast the three of us headed to Breakers water park in Tucson (it was set to be a high of 105 degrees that day). This was a new experience for all three of us. We hung out in the wave pool and then Mike and Ben took a spin on the water slides. Two water slides later they were ready to head back into the wave pool! We spent a couple of hours relaxing in the water, eating nachos and trying to stay under the shade as much as possible.

After Breakers, Ben and I visited Frost which is an authentic Italian gelato spot. MAN... this definitely hit the spot!

On our way home we saw this sign and thought... maybe we should check it out (after all, this is an impromptu day). We have seen this sign many a time since it's near our house, but we have never stopped. 

It's a good thing we stopped because we got a ton of local/fresh meat and are excited to try it out. Not to mention we learned a lot from one of the faculty members about meat. We also got the boys some beef liver slivers... they have been enjoying them!

Once we got home we were wiped out and just enjoyed being able to relax in the wonderful air conditioning! As dinner time approached we realized that we should probably make dinner plans so we decided to try a new restaurant that we heard great things about. Zinburger was definitely a fun experience and everything was outstanding. Ben got the Kobe burger which was suggested to be cooked medium rare to allow for the full flavors to shine through. The truffle fries were all the rave on yelp.com; however, we loved the zucchini fries even more. For dessert we got the creme brulee milkshake. It was yummy but I started to taste something that didn't seem right. Alcohol! Yes... that's right... I could taste the alcohol based vanilla extract! Crazy! The server and management felt so bad that they immediately made me another milk shake and didn't charge us for the milk shakes! 

We were stuffed, content and full of memories. This was a much needed day of "rest" and of course celebration!

Our Road Trip (warning... this will be the longest blog entry ever!)

We spent our second and third week of summer break on a road trip to Wisconsin. Ben's sister (MacKenzie) graduated from high school and we were set to be in Wisconsin for her big graduation party shin dig. SO... we decided to make the trek out there in our trusty Matrix (on our way to WI we broke 100,000 miles) and of course... we brought the boys with us. SO... brace yourself... I will attempt to include in this one entry our two week journey. 

The boys are in good spirits on the first day of driving!

Even in Albuquerque we were seeing and smelling the impact of the Arizona fires. 

The first day of driving landed us in Santa Fe, NM. Once finding a decent place to lay our heads for the night we headed out to Pantry Restaurant which got amazing reviews on Yelp. MAN... the chile relleno was amazing!!!!!!!!! The vegetarian green chile was so yummy... still thinking about it two weeks later!

As we were basking in the glorious after glow of an amazing meal, we returned to our car to find that for some reason our headlights were not working. The great staff at Pantry Restaurant tried to help us figure out what the problem was but instead we ended up at the local Checker Auto Parts. After failed attempts to figure out what the problem was we headed back to our hotel with our high beams on! Luckily we didn't get stopped by the Santa Fe Police. The next morning we hemmed and hawed about taking the car in to a recommended mechanic but decided we would go on without working headlights and not drive in the dark!

The 2nd day of driving we were determined to get through all of Colorado but without working headlights we were forced to stop in Sterling which was in the northeast corner of Colorado. Trying to find a hotel not near the correctional facility we found a local motel that definitely had character!

The 3rd day of driving was spent driving through Nebraska and Iowa. FYI... Nebraska has the BEST rest stops! Iowa isn't bad either. Half way through the day our headlights started working! So... we decided to make the big push and get to Bangor, WI no matter how late we got there. At last, we arrived!

The next morning it was drizzling but of course the boys needed to run around the yard and around all the buildings. This was Moon Doggie's first trip out to Wisconsin and he had such a ball running around. Lorenzo has been to Wisconsin quite a few times and he settled in just like it was home. I wish I had some pictures of them running around but we were in the moment and didn't think of taking pics. 

The next couple of days consisted of: Ben celebrating his brother Nick's upcoming wedding with a bachelor party in LaCrosse. I drove to Wisconsin Rapids to see two wonderful friends from UNC (they both had wonderful gifts waiting to give to Blue... thank you!). All day Saturday was dedicated to getting ready for the graduation party (the list created by Wally definitely kept us on track). A trip to Linda's Bakery (yummy doughnuts) and of course... the graduation shin dig. Lots of brats, meatballs, family and friends! Of course... we were in the moment and forgot to take pictures! 

The day after the party, Ben and I made the drive back to Wisconsin Rapids to see Steph and Pam. Of course what would a trip to Wisconsin be without stopping at a cheese factory. We learned a bit about how cheese is made and of course enjoyed some cheese curds (except for me... I can't seem to like the texture and squeakiness) and local ice cream! YUMMMMM!!!!! Carson and Tyler definitely enjoyed their superman ice cream (every kid we saw had it). 

The day continued with catching up, T-ball and baseball practice, enjoying a great dinner together and creating more memories to store up in our memory bank (I even got to see Bren in his deputy's uniform... he looked good!). The next day Pam headed off to the airport and Ben & I headed back to Bangor. 

Our final day in Wisconsin was dubbed "MacKenzie" day. In honor of her graduation and knowing that soon she will be off to college, we decided to spend the day with MacKenzie. We started off the rainy/cold day at Marge's a local spot in LaCrosse. Our breakfast was so yummy and the portions were humongous (the guy behind us got the biggest burrito we've ever seen). 

After our breakfast we walked down to a bike store so MacKenzie could get an idea of what type of bike she might want to get for college. There we met "Dexter" who was loving her shoelaces. 

Off to Target where we got MacKenzie her college bedding. Pillows, pillow cases, extra long sheets, comforter, mattress pad... everything she would need for college. It felt like we were getting our own daughter ready for college! Sniff Sniff... she's all grown up! After an afternoon of shopping we headed to Barnes and Noble and of course the mall! Ben was thankful he had Angry Birds to play with as we shopped! All in all, MacKenzie day was memorable and we are thankful we were able to spend time with her as she gets ready for this new journey!

BACK TO TUCSON!

We decided to leave earlier than we had originally planned since we were hoping to take another day to travel. As we were getting ready to map out our trip back, Ben had a yearning to stop in Madison where he went to college. SO, we headed to Mad Town and enjoyed a wonderful lunch from New Orleans Take Out. We picked a spot in front of the capitol and got to witness people protesting Governor Walker. So interesting! 

After lunch in Madison we headed on our way and half way through our day we noticed that our headlights stopped working (again). So we were forced to stop in Nebraska. Day two of driving landed us in Colorado Springs since our lights were still not working. Day three of driving we landed in Santa Fe, NM (our headlights started working once we drove into the city) which is where we wanted to spend a little more time exploring. The next day was Father's Day and we took the boys to the Arts and Crafts festival downtown. Here we are enjoying some yummy "festival" food. The lemonade was perfect and the ribbon fries... just look at them!

Since we had working headlights on day four, we pushed through and arrived in Tucson around 10 PM. Whew! We did it! 

And finally... a picture post road trip... the boys look like they are going through withdrawal!

UPDATE on the headlights: After taking the Matrix into the mechanic, they couldn't re-create the problem. While driving it today, the headlights stopped working so we took it back in. Well, they found the problem... the relay (an electrical part) needs to be replaced... a teeny tiny part for $240!!!!! Yikes!

First Week of Summer Break

Whew! The first week of summer break was a very productive one for us! Typically every summer starts with rearranging the living room furniture but this year... we decided to get down and dirty with cleaning out our filing system and getting rid of a ton of stuff in the garage. Not to mention selling stuff on craigslist. We didn't take any photos of cleaning out the garage but here are some great photos!

The photo above made us look like we are becoming hoarders! Notice the lovely futon couch in the back (that will go in our finished sun room... when it gets done). The big box on the right is our crib... we won't assemble it until we have room (once the sun room gets finished). The brown chair on the left is our new glider chair... so comfy.

This was definitely a task that had been waiting for us!

For some comic relief we created a baby bjorn out of Moon Doggie's harness... he looks thrilled!

Once we finished organizing our files, we started working on the garage. We did manage to have some fun during that first week... enjoying the company of friends. I also started searching for color inspiration for the nursery. This consisted of me going to the fabric store and checking out etsy.com. I think I have found the color palette that I have been looking for... now we just need to decide on what baby blanket to order! So many decisions! I'll fill you in later!