What did I do today? I did PCR!!!

50 days left...

According to my ticker thingy... 50 days left. wowo.... time flies!

Nursery Progress!

We found out about a neat little store about 15 minutes away that does all sorts of baby furniture and headed out there on Tuesday night-- we found the crib we'd been looking for and a changing table that would fit up the stairs! And, they were both on sale! Bonus!

Saturday at the crack of dawn, the delivery showed up (did I mention delivery was free... double bonus!) OH! And the lady at the store gave us a better price than what was posted on the items -- WOOHOO... did we luck out!!!

So Craig and the delivery guy hauled the crib box and the changing table upstairs and into the nursery. Then began the exciting day for the AMEX.... it had a heck of a workout yesterday. On top of the furniture, we needed a mattress for the crib (BabiesRus employees are useless by the way in helping to choose a mattress-- "umm... they have different numbers of coils" -- No crap lady, we are literate and thats on the sign, but can you tell us WHY they have different numbers and what that means and what some of the other features are that makes one mattress $60 and others $200?!?!?) So finally we picked a mattress (3 people walking through with their kiddos said they had that one and had liked it-- considered that reccomendation enough and went with it). After the mattress, we hit Michaels for some craft paint and baskets, then a carpet store where we lucked into a remnant of really nice plush carpet to plop down in the kiddos rooms, and then to Lowe's for some light-blocking/thermal curtains to cut down on drafts from the ancient windows in the house and some curtain rods to get all that hung-- and some wood and a closet bar to put in the closet in the Nursery. So it was quite the shopping day.

We got home and got to work on getting Tadpole's room all cleaned out and Craig's tools back to the garage and such. But we did have to hold on to a couple of the tools to assemble the crib. The store would have assembled it onsite for us for $15.... but it was WAY more fun for me to have Craig do it! So here are some pictures of the assembly process. All told it took us about an hour and half-- but that was with breaks to get the cat out of the way and to convince Murphy that laying on all those little screws was not helpful.

Starting out ripping open the box... Hope all those little pieces are in there!

Jesse in charge of Tiki guarding

Tiki insisting on inspecting ALL the instructions prior to assembly... that's the only reason Craig's looking at them... he swears, it was the cats fault.Some call them baby jails. here the nearly assembled crib is a husband jail. TADA! All finshed, no blood shed, few curses uttered and a sturdy new place for the kiddo to sleep!

And a picture of the changing table thing-- Craig spotted these baskets, which are just the right color and fit in there perfectly! Hooray for a little bit of storage in there!

Sunday morning, Craig got the second rod in the closet and all the curtains were finished too!

So once construction was done, it was on to decorating! Kim and Leah came over to help me paint some frogs and dragonflies on the wall. This design is copied off the bedding I got (yes, FOREVER ago) and then we used an overhead to project it on the wall. I have NO drawing skills, even tracing pushes my artistic limits... but I am pretty pleased with the way it turned out.

Over the crib, a whole frog pond scene.

Above the changing table, a few scattered dragonflies...And on the other large wall, some water plants and dragonflies.

Not too bad for an afternoon's work! (and you can see the curtains here -- yes, I need to iron them yet!)

A couple of random pictures and such.

Here are a couple of the pictures I took over Christmas with our brand new spiffy digital camera! (thanks mom, dad and grammam!!!!-- yes, I know we now owe you guys bazillions of photos of the Tadpole. )

First up, Mom and her new Steelers jersey.

And Grammam got some fuzzy froggie slippers!

Craig and I went to the PA farm show on Wednesday and ate... and ate.... and ate... fried mushrooms, fried cheese on a stick and some very rich milkshakes. I was too stuffed to make it to the potato donuts (they are DELICIOUS-- but the kiddo said no more food that night for me-- Craig is still crying over not getting any)

Then we wandered around, saw a variety of animals-- Craig got to see his much loved alpacas-- and got invited to go walk the alpacas at a nearby farm anytime he wanted. But we are still NOT getting a pet alpaca for the backyard. Just one more picture from the farm show this year-- the DEVIL bunny. Seriously, these things just look evil.

exciting news and prayer requests

John and Christina have finally been able to set a wedding date! So they are now just weeks away from actually getting married and having to deal with the joy of combining two people worth of crap into one home.... I wish them luck (and have offered any extra crap from our house they might want-- think I have ANY chance convincing them to take some? We'll even haul it down to Florida for them if we have to!)

Sadly, the Tadpole's semi-imminent arrival means that we won't be able to join them for the big day-- but we wish them all the best and expect a ton of pictures and some cake to be sent to us. (definitely send me cake!) If we have to miss it while I am house-bound, I think I definitely deserve pastry of some form-- and I am thinking I will not be up to any spectacular feats of baking in those few weeks anyway.

Anyway, send your best wishes to them and say a prayer for Christina's continuing improvement in health and that her ordered dress gets here in time for their big day! (I don't trust David's bridal... but it is a pretty dress!)

I don't expect we'll get to see them before the wedding and their settling into Florida, but we are planning to get down to Florida at the end of April for a wedding in Craig's family-- so everyone should get to meet the Tadpole then.

If you've got a few extra moments in your prayers tonight, add one for my SIL and her husband who are waiting for the final permission to go get their little girl in Vietnam and bring her home where she belongs. They've been patient so far, but its been months and she is over there without her family!

One quick update

Ultrasound this morning, placenta previa is GONE! yay! Tadpole is growing and is currently 3.5 lbs +/- .5 lbs! 8ish more weeks to go!