Gabbie teaching Will how to play Candyland...pretty sure they never made it to the castle!
Little Miss Helpful, when she is motivated! Gabbie is helping clean up her room prior to painting.
Ready to prime, which actually ended up being completed by my father-in-law and my mom. Thankfully :-)
She is always teaching him something. This day it was about decorating cookies.
Happy Valentine's Day!
Brice was busy pretty late on Valentine's Day, so the kids and I packed up and went to Hagge Park for a Night Hike hosted by the Sac County Conservation Board.
She liked the snake!
Time to get painting! Gabbie wanted a pink and purple room. We compromised...the walls you can see from outside the room are beige and purple. The wall you can see only if you are in the room is pink. It turned out surprisingly well. One of our friends who stopped one day said "well, for being 3 different colors its actually not bad looking".
Making progress. After what I estimate to be 15 hours of painting, Gabbie's room is done, I finished the trim on the upstairs bathroom, the kitchen is now all 1 color instead of 3, and the hallway trim is done. We can now say the whole house has been painted (inside and out even) since we've moved in. And for the first time in several years all of my "half finished" painting projects are complete
A view from inside the room. The closet is now filled and the bathroom cleaned up! All that is left to do is purchase a mattress, a rug (to compensate for a blemish in the wood floor), and get the electrician to finish wiring the outlets.
Brice is calling this progress "nesting". He is telling people my narsissistic tendencies are really on display right now as he can picture me "spreading out the straw". Could be. Or it could be having furniture in rooms where it doesn't belong annoys me because I can't vacuum or dust completely. And once I see the end of a project in sight I figure we may as well wrap it up and make the space functional. Also...our kids do a great job of sharing a room. So great that some nights they chit chat until later than they should, making the next morning a real bear to get them up. Not sure how the separation will go. We have a feeling Gabbie will still want to sleep in the bunk beds with her brother, but for everything else this will be "her room".
Otherwise its been a great winter here. I wouldn't mind a little more sledding time with the kids; seems its either too cold or too little snow. After the last round of snow I was home and was so excited to take them; then they both napped until 6 pm and it was getting dark. We have been blessed to have the kids super healthy this winter (knock on wood). A brief round of the 8 hour flu has been it. Gabbie is really interested in having an Ipad lately, likely the result of a friend of hers having one. We continue to hold to our policy of no tablets/computers for the kids...and she doesn't realize how much easier she is making that decision for us! She found my Nook reader and is convinced it is an Ipad and "played" on it the other day for a half hour. I'm reading the book Killing Jesus, and what she was "playing" was flipping through maps and pictures in the book-she'd run up to me and say "wow, look what I found on the IPad". Yes, an imagination, that's why you don't need us to spend several hundred dollars on something you'd likely break or take for granted (or even more likely, that your brother would break). I'm surprized she hasn't asked why the "IPad" only shows words in black and white and doesn't have any games like her friends IPad, but maybe that's coming yet. I feel like its a bit early for her to feel "peer pressure"; and I guess I thought when she did start wanting things her friends had it would be more like Barbies or American Girl dolls. Oh well. It is frustrating, but then there are moments like this past weekend when Brice sent me out to bottle feed a couple of goats-Gabbie joined me and had no hesitancy about getting in the pen and helping me feel the two little cuties. Moments like that I'm grateful we stick with our policy so she isn't wanting to stay in the house playing games.
Will continues his obsession with Thomas the Train and the skidloader. He was in tears one night as Brice took a load of hogs down the road without stopping to give Will a ride in the skidloader. At night when I announce bedtime he either gathers his Thomas trains or his skidloader. Its amazing how in the morning, within seconds of waking up, he remembers he slept with them and looks for them in his bed. We enjoy his little sentences..."wide in the woader (ride in the loader", "where's Gabbie?", "no I don't want that", "I want peanut butter". Gabbie rides the school bus home, so when I pick up Will at daycare its always "where's Gabbie?" When they are reunited at home they play for about 10 minutes, then they typically start fighting :-) I have a funny picture from my niece's baptism this past Sunday-Will colored his hands with blue marker on the drive home before he fell asleep. I'll have to upload the picture later-it looked almost like a tatoo (and there was blue spatter all over the bathtub when I cleaned him up!)
The new baby is following in the footsteps of its siblings. It doesn't appear it will make an early appearance, although we were close. I gained 8 pounds in 2 weeks, blood pressure up slightly, but no protein in the urine to give the doctor the final reason to get us started. But, the realization at that appointment that this could happen anyday got me in gear when I got home. We don't even have the car seat out of the box in the basement, so I at least got that out and cleaned part of it. Also washed a couple loads of baby clothes and packed a few things in a bag for the hospital. Tonight we did start the discussion on names. As usual, we have a few girl names we agree on, no boy names. Doesn't help we both fell asleep during the discussion! I'm not sure I realize how close this event is to happenening...I just turned in my paperwork to be off work yesterday-I'm pretty sure with Gabbie I did that at least a month ahead. I haven't thought much about maternity leave, and with the other two it was on my mind quite a bit! I was bound and determined to take 12 weeks with Gabbie, then with Will I took 12 but went back to 'PRN' work after 3 weeks or so, this time I'm thinking 6-8 weeks may be plenty! I can't tell if that's just because I enjoy when things are 'normal/routine', if its because I do really enjoy my job, or if its the fear of being home with 3 kids! I'm sure it will all fall into place after the baby is born. I have started my "to-do" list of things around the house that have been waiting to be done while not pregnant (cleaning the oven, cleaning and sealing grout, etc) so I'm sure time will fly and I'll want every day I can get. At this point I do enjoy being pregnant and am starting to feel sad that its almost done. Other than the whole being 30 pounds heavier thing, I enjoy the movement of the baby and the feeling of anticipation. But, I also have a new pair of running shoes that needs used and am looking forward to sleeping on my back again-and maybe not on the couch or in the recliner!
That's it from here for now. More pictures to post but will wait on that until next time~
