Friends and Fun

I think I bore this kid to death. He is such a social little guy and when we spend our whole day at home he just gets cranky and so do I...like today. He wants to play outside but it's cold and rainy and I'm tired and boring.

Good thing he has lots of friends so we don't have too many days of just the two of us! Plus there are not that many days left until he will be sharing every moment with someone else...I don't think he will enjoy that as much though! Here he is with buddy Corbin, couldn't let Corbin take a bath alone!
Having popcorn with Cousin Nathan.
Matching jammies and matching trouble makers!
Playing with Arlo who comes over every Monday while his momma gets some work done.
We sure are thankful for our friends who make our days more fun. Too bad today is not one of those days. I think we will be heading off for an early nap here shortly.

Valentine's Day

I have no problem with this Holiday that people either seem to LOVE or HATE with a passion. I have never sat in a bar throwing garbage at the couple next to me who are making out, I mean, seriously, who would DO that? Pretty much the holiday is fine, as long as you don't have high expectations. One time in high school I thought that perhaps my stoner boyfriend would remember he had a girlfriend on Valentine's Day and get me a little something. By product of being high all the time, you sometimes forget you have a girlfriend, by product of being VERY naive, I didn't realize he was high all the time until much later in life. Anyway...I get to school rip open my locker and NOTHING. But after first period I opened that locker and do you KNOW what was in it!? A dozen beautiful roses. I thought my boyfriend had a lobotomy or something. Then I read the card: "From the One guy you can always count on. Love DAD." I still have that little note tucked away. And so to my wonderful husband who shows me everyday he loves me by still cuddling with my gigantic body wearing a super HOT maternity support belt and probably yesterday's sweatpants, don't worry, you can NEVER top that Valentine's Day.

But just in case you wanted to give it a try, I would totally love a double oven. I know they tell you not to buy appliances and such for your wife/girlfriend for Valentine's Day, but you know I'm not that kind of girl, I want one of those oven's in a bad, bad way. I could be in the shower by now rather than waiting to put more cookies in the oven because I have to bake them one tray at a time. If you come home with one of those I will totally take off the HOT maternity belt, and put on fresh sweatpants, just for you ;).

Growing Belly

I haven't posted pictures of my growing belly in over 10 weeks so I figured it was about time to share a few more pictures. Here it is just before Christmas, at 24 weeks:

25 weeks, in my new clothes from my new favorite second hand maternity store:

28 weeks

30 weeks, the countdown is on!

And this week, 32 weeks!

I can't believe there are only 8 weeks left until this little one joins us. To be fair, I'm totally hoping for a couple weeks early this time around, Dietrich waited right up until is due date the little stinker! And I'm in a lot more pain this time so a few weeks early would be nice, but not too early because then I won't be ready! Don't worry, I'm not getting my hopes up, I'm sure this little one will take it's sweet time getting all fat and happy before he/she decides to join us!

Mom, don't read this at work.

Over the weekend we headed to the "Valley" to visit my Aunt's and Cousin's and Grandma. First we went to Yakima where we visited my Aunt Dianne. This is Dietrich playing with my cousin's son Rory. Rory is the youngest in his family and has never had to learn what it's like to have a little sibling taking everything you have, copying every move you make, and playing with everything you try to play with. Rory did a pretty good job dealing with the nearly two year old all evening.

Aunt Dianne has my horse Brandy. She was one of the first horses my Dad bought when we moved to Ione onto property where we could have horses. I was 7 when we moved. My Granddad had died and I remember my Dad asking me "do you want to have a horse?" And what 7 year old girl wouldn't answer with a huge "HELL YES!" Well, we had to move to Ione...whatever show me the horse. And Brandy was that horse.
I started showing Brandy around the 5th grade, and continued to show her through junior high. We even made it to the State Fair in Puyallup. She was a great friend. I had to ride her twice a day and work my little butt off to get her to do what I wanted her to do, but she taught me a lot. She was never a "push button" horse, you had to know what you were doing to get her to cooperate.
I posted these pictures on facebook and a bunch of women I know posted "she looks great," "Oh Brandy, she's still around!" "Where does she live now?" And I realized that all of these women fell in love with horses after they learned to ride on Brandy. My Dad LOVED to make a little girl fall in love with a horse.
At first Dietrich didn't want to sit on her but I'm so glad he finally agreed! If his Grandpa Allan were here he would have been on a horse a hundred times by now. But after I had Dietrich I became so afraid, my mom gave away the last of the horses to an awesome Equine Therapy program. I always believed that horses would ALWAYS be a part of my life, that I would never ever not have a horse. But here I am, horseless, it's amazing what happens in life and how what we thought would always be can change so quickly. Horses used to be the center of my life, I would get up at 6:00 in the morning all summer long to ride Brandy before I went to babysit, and then I would ride her again in the evening. We would come down from camping so that I could ride, and then go back up. It was so important to me, so important to my parents that I did what I wanted to do (and was fairly good at). It's hard for me to imagine my children growing up without horses because it was such a huge part of my growing up. But it also scares me to think of them on horses because even the really good ones are so unpredictable.

Bryce tells me all the time that we will have horses someday, that we will move onto property and he will make sure that it is part of my life again. And I want that, but it also makes me so sad, because the person that I shared my horse passion with is no longer here to share it with me. I wanted to ride from Mexico to Canada with him after he retired. But we never got too.

I want to take Bryce to Salmo Basin and Salmo Lookout, some of our favorite trail rides, but that may never happen either. It sucks how something you love so much can die right along with someone you love so much.

Brandy is the only horse from the "original" horses that is still around and she is the only horse of ours that family still has. I'm so thankful that she has a nice home where we can come and visit her. She is such a good old girl, and she doesn't scare me one bit.
After our horse visit me went to Sunnyside to see my Aunt Deena and my Grandma Bernice. We also got to see my cousin's and their children, Dietrich and Grant had fun playing together. They even share a very special middle name, Allan.

We spent the day there looking at really old family albums, especially looking for baby name ideas. It was fun to have Grandma tell me about the people in the albums and have a better understanding of who everybody is. And I think we got a few good ideas for a baby name :)
It is so wonderful to get to visit Dad's family, but it makes me sad too, because I know how much we all miss him. He was everybody's favorite, especially mine.

Kids' Closet

I can't believe I am writing kids' as in plural, more than one, TWO. I've probably mentioned before that the kids' will be sharing a room (at some point, when they are capable of both sleeping) so I guess mostly they will be sharing the space where all their stuff goes for now. The start of that required a closet organizer, or at least I decided it required one. It took Bryce literally two evenings to put this together, it was so fast. I didn't even get annoyed with everything from the closet being piled all around the room and it was done!

Dietrich was a big helper, wanting to use his drill everywhere that Daddy had used it.

And the finished product! I am in love, there is still so much space to put stuff. Now I can start going through the baby items and getting them in here and ready for use. And soon, when Dietrich wants to try and dress himself, he will be able to reach his clothes. When I was a kid I always wanted a closet like this, where I could reach my clothes (not that it took long for me to grow tall enough to reach everybody's clothes, but still). I think Dietrich likes it too!

New Year Resolutions

Last year I wrote out our New Year's Resolutions for the house. And we accomplished almost all of them! The only thing we didn't do was repaint the house, and that is because we discovered the siding is full of water and falling apart all around us. The fireplace isn't finished, but it does look far better than it did black with gray tile, the pantry seems like it's always been there, and the new front steps have made our house far more inviting!

It's New Year's resolution time again and I'm really struggling with what projects to try and accomplish around the house this year. With a new baby on the way there won't be as much time and certainly not as much money! So I think our projects may be smaller than we had originally hoped. We did have grand plans to replace the siding on the house, but with $10,000 estimates and/or the likelihood of Bryce spending the entire summer re-siding the house himself I am thinking that project is going to have to wait.

So on a much smaller scale:

1. Make a built-in dresser for the kid's room.

2. Closet organizer in kid's closet.

3. Fence around my garden so that a certain little dog can not lift his leg on my fruits and vegetables.

4. Sprinkler system in the backyard (new/replaced/fix existing, not sure what direction this will go yet).

5. Cuddle a sweet new baby and play with an awesome little toddler.

Those seem like some pretty manageable projects, and if we get lucky maybe we can add something super fun like new siding or a new roof (or a new kitchen!!!) but if not I'm sure we will still have a great year of little projects around here!

Christmas in the ER

This year for the first time, we did Christmas Eve present opening at my mom's house. It was a very nice morning with the family and after several days of Cranky Dietrich, Happy Dietrich woke up to join us!

He loved the goldfish he found in his stocking! MMMM...goldfish for breakfast!
We got my brother Paul this awesome hat and beard that my talented friend Sara made. It is pretty funny, but also warm and practical...haha!
Uncle Paul got Dietrich a big truck he thinks it is so fun. He runs the cars around saying "wee,wee,wee!!!"
Then we came back to Spokane and got ready for Christmas Eve church service.

Here we are having Christmas dinner with the cousins at Bryce's parent's house. Grandma Jane bought the table and chairs that made a perfect kids table!
Then we had a little accident. Dietrich sort of kind of fell off the couch and tripped on Bryce's feet...or something. We aren't really sure what he did but afterward he really cried. I thought it was because it was so late and he was just really tired. So we cuddled for the rest of the evening. I tried to put him down a few times and he would just cry, but again, I figured he was just tired and cranky. When we woke up at home on Christmas morning however, he got out of bed excited for breakfast, limped/tripped to the door and then leaned on it crying. This is when I realized he had actually hurt himself somehow. So we ate our yummy cinnamon rolls, opened a few quick presents and then headed to Sacred Heart Emergency Room.
We spent 2.5 hours there, which really seemed pretty good for the ER. Fortunately, they have a pediatric emergency room so we were only in with the kids, not everyone who comes into the ER. We had a nice room where Dietrich and I snuggled on the bed and watched a Christmas Story while we waited. Dietrich had to have x-rays of his leg, which was the most difficult part since I couldn't stay with him due to baby number 2. So I stood in the hall and listened to him scream because he wanted his MAMA!! The results came back and the Dr. said "when you see an x-ray, you do NOT want to see a little circle on it. What do you see on this x-ray?" "A circle." That's right, our little boy has a small fracture in his ankle area. So they splinted him up:

And we were finally on our way. This is Dietrich's second small fracture in less than 6 months. The Dr. said that his bone density looks good and that sometimes these things just happen. I am hoping that when we see the orthopedic specialist this week we can rule out any other bone issues that could be causing his little bones to fracture. Hopefully it is just bad luck and this will be it! I do not want to spend any more Christmas's in the ER! A few hours later we finally made it to Bryce's parent's to open presents and celebrate the day.

Bryce received these "special" gloves for his upcoming diaper changes:
Thought I should share a picture of Bryce in his beautiful "smoking jacket." It used to be my Dad's, I sort of love it, even though it looks like he is a homeless man...

New tools for Dietrich! It was a strange Christmas, spending so much of it at the Dr. and then spending the rest of the day worrying about Dietrich. But we got to spend it with all of our family and that is always wonderful! Currently, Dietrich is practicing his crawling skills again, and hopefully he will be healed up and running around again before no time!