Oh Christmas Tree!

If you know me, you know that I am a country girl, not a red-neck, OH NO, that is something entirely different, just a country girl. So when I grew up and moved to the "city" it would probably come as no surprise to you, that I was SHOCKED to learn that people BUY Christmas trees. BUY them?! Where?! Clearly, my family went way the heck out in the woods to get a tree. I'm pretty sure there are no good Christmas trees until you have driven way too far up a scary logging road covered in snow. Now that I have grown up, I will admit that I have purchased two trees in my life, one when I was in college from some cute little Boy Scouts and one when I first moved to Spokane and clearly couldn't get to my mom's for a hiking through the snow adventure! I also learned that not only do people BUY trees, but some people BUY FAKE trees. Whoa. That is some crazy stuff people. So although my husband grew up with a fake tree, due mainly to his sister's allergies (can't Bekah go live with Grandma and Grandpa?) he indulges me with the hunt for the perfect REAL tree.

Dietrich thought it was pretty awesome...

Warming up in the truck
That is a lot of trees people!
So as always, we hiked through the snow, separated from Mom and Steve, waited for them by the road, found trees for 5 families, drove on a slippery mountain road, drove over TWO trees to get off of slippery mountain road, and in the end lost one tree. But our massive tree survived the trip and made it home to take up our entire living room (thanks mom). She had to have some pretty serious trimming along the backside to fit up against the window but she is looking pretty good. And as always smells delicious. It only took two days to decorate this year, which is pretty good considering my 5 month pregnant body is a little slower and not as balanced to be going up and down the ladder to decorate our 12 foot tree. But it's done, now to finish the rest of the decorating and maybe you'll get to see some finished product pictures!

Montana Visit

The first weekend in November we loaded up and headed to Helena for a quick visit. We hadn't seen Shawna and Bob and little Abigail since September and since the roads get pretty nasty between here and there during the winter we usually don't do any winter visits, November is about as late as it gets. We haven't road tripped with Dietrich since last March so I was a little worried about how the 5 hour drive would go. He slept about an hour both ways and did AWESOME! Only one little fit on the way home because he didn't want back in the car seat, but other than that he did great!

Reading some bedtime stories with Shawna and Abigail, too bad Dietrich refused to sleep unless we were in the bed with him, which means he didn't sleep much while we were there!
Naked babies! Shawna and Bob have a wood stove in the living room, so the kiddos were plenty warm enough to play in their diapers. Dietrich really wanted Abigail to do some more serious playing, but she is just crawling so she's not quite ready for the running and climbing that Dietrich likes so much.


It was a great although quick trip to see everyone. We probably won't get to see them again until May since Shawna is busy finishing up her RN schooling, so these babies will have grown a lot by then! And Abigail will be ONE by then, and Dietrich TWO, and we will have another baby! Holy cow time flies!

Half way to Baby

Last time around I posted pictures of my pregnant belly on facebook for my faraway friends to see. Everyone was always so kind, "you look great" "so cute" you know the usual nice things you would say when forced to view someone's growing belly. Then at the very end when I was enormous and decided I could no longer post pictures of myself because, well, I was enormous, this super skinny also pregnant girl I knew from high school wrote to me and said "you need to post another picture of your belly!" In a previous week she commented on my picture with a "do you know how big the baby is?" Yes I wanted to slap her. It is not fair that you do not look pregnant when you are 6 months along, pregnancy is for eating. I should also mention that she had a 6 lb baby, not a 9 lb 2 ouncer like I did. So the point of this long story is that I will post my pictures here for my sweet friends who are not using my pictures to make themselves feel good about the fact that they don't eat.

8 weeks

13 weeks

16 weeks

19 weeks

Today marks half way to baby! I am 20 weeks along and feeling baby moving all the time. I can't believe how fast time is flying with this little one!

Random happenings

Here are a few random photos from whats been happening around our house. Bryce got on the roof over the weekend to get the Christmas lights up. Last year we did it over Thanksgiving weekend in the middle of a snowstorm. It was very scary and Bryce is not a huge fan of putting up the lights anyway, so this year he got it done early (along with many of our neighbors I have noticed). Don't worry, we won't turn them on until after Thanksgiving :)

A few weeks ago I finished making this bag, it was a fun and quick project, I think I will be making more in the future!
This is the beginning of the kids play room in the basement. We got the beds moved around a few weeks ago, Dietrich is down there playing right now, it's kind of nice to have a space to keep the bigger toys that used to be stored in the basement living room.
And this is terribly exciting, I bought a new rug! The one that was here before was pretty disgusting so I threw it out a few months ago, recently with the wet and mud there have been a lot of wet, muddy footprints running through the basement so I finally picked out a new rug (at Ross for $9.99!) to hopefully keep the dirt in one place (mostly).
So there is my random posting for Monday, now off to do some laundry!

Baby Ring

A few weeks ago I was reading an article in Real Simple about objects. Several different writers wrote about some "thing" that was especially important to them and why. Of course every item was sentimental and had some meaning behind it, although few had any real monetary value. I knew right then exactly what my object would be if I was asked to write about something like that. Then today I read this blog about a woman's special post-marriage engagement ring and what it meant to her. How it is a symbol of the very difficult times her and her husband have been through, again I thought about my special object, also a piece of jewelry, and decided that I would like to write about it too.

I have a baby ring, when I was little I remember that my mom kept it in a ring box in her dresser drawer. I used to wear it on special occasions, like Christmas or for pictures, until of course it stopped fitting. I loved when I got to wear it because I knew it was really special. Somewhere around high school my mom let me have it and I put it on a chain...

I remember her telling me the story of the ring, how when I was born my Dad ran out to the store to buy me a ring so that he could be the "first man to buy me a diamond." I wore the ring around my neck all the time. During college my friends and I went to an event called Search, it's a spiritual/religious event. Everyone was asked to bring an object that was special to them to talk about. I brought my ring and when I told the story of how my Dad wanted to be the first man to buy me a diamond I made half the girls in the room cry. When I wear it people always ask me about it. I remember as a little girl thinking it was so special that I had this diamond, and it must be worth a lot of money! The diamond is so tiny you can hardly see it, mom said it probably cost around $100. I check it all the time to make sure the diamond is still there but sometimes I think it could have fallen out and I would never know.

When my Dad died in an accident 6 years ago I was afraid to ever take it off. I wore it all the time, and then the chain broke. It took a while to find a new chain that I liked, and that was strong enough I could wear it all the time again. On my wedding day I wore a little pearl bracelet with the ring on it, it was the most important piece of jewelry that I wore that day. I of course would be devastated if I ever lost my beautiful engagement and wedding ring, which are also so special to me, but I know I could replace them. I could never replace the ring my Dad bought me when I was just a baby.

Trick-or-Treat!

Thursday was the Halloween party at mommy and me, Dietrich agreed to wear his costume for a few minutes at home, but then cried when I asked if I could take his picture:

Once we got to mommy and me there was a major meltdown over being asked to wear the costume for the photographer and even after I told him he didn't have to he continued to throw a fit. So we left early and he took a 4 hour nap! Guess he was too tired to be an alligator. So I really had no expectations that he would wear his costume for Halloween, and really at this age he doesn't care...but we asked him if he wanted to go for a walk last night and as we headed out the door I put the costume on him. He totally went for it! These pictures are all on the go, I didn't want to ruin it by asking him to stop for a nice picture:


We went to the neighbors house where he got a piece of candy and then they invited us in. Dietrich got to play with a super fun ball table that belongs to their grandkids which was way better than candy anyway, so I think for him Halloween was a success!