Sometimes It's the Little Things . . .

HOME!!! After a tough week in Grand Junction we are finally back home. Tim's beautiful mother passed away on Sunday the 23rd and we had a lovely funeral service and burial for her last Wednesday. We are so sad to see her go and Tim misses her greatly, but we are glad that her long struggle and battle with cancer (for 11 years!) are over. As sad as it is that we should both have experienced the death of a parent this early in life and so close together (only about 6 weeks between), we consider ourselves fortunate that we are able to understand and relate with each other so well over the grief. God has really blessed us through this in that He has given us each other to lean on and new life (in the form of a beautiful baby girl) to look forward to. Here we are experiencing firsthand life and death within the period of a couple months, and all we can do is praise the Lord for it.

Very shortly after getting home we paid a visit to one of our own OB doctors. I do not have to take the medication to stop contractions anymore, as there really is no point. If I should go into labor at any point from now on they will just let me go and the baby should be fine. Hurry up and wait, right? That's what Tim keeps saying. It's a little frustrating to have contractions so often and know that they're not being very productive. They're not really painful still, but they are uncomfortable and wear me out. Ah well, I am praying for patience and doing my best to trust in the Lord's timing. Just over 3 weeks now until the actual due date!

We have to admit, it's been kind of nice to be back at work. There's definitely something to be said for routine, especially for people like us. But it was also nice to have a three day weekend right after getting home, so we had lots of time to catch up. We spent the majority of Memorial Weekend at home and boy were we productive! I'll attach some pictures of the progress we made. Tim finished and hung the shelves that he was making for the nursery, and they look very nice. My husband has some talent, that's for sure. And he makes it all seem so easy! We went shopping for plants for our garden and flowers for my flower pots (always fun to shop for) and planted those on Memorial Day. I love having pretty flowers to look at and am excited to watch our garden grow. I'm so glad we were able to finish those things before Baby comes. Tim got a lot of work done in the yard, too, so the weeds are now under control. Our landscaping came back really well from last year and we are pleased. I spent some time cleaning inside, too, and doing a little of what they might call "nesting". We feel much more prepared at this point.

The weather was beautiful all weekend. I think it may be the nicest Memorial Day weekend I've ever seen. That probably only happened because we didn't try to go anywhere. It seems like every time we go camping or something on that weekend the weather is crappy. Like last year. We've been reminiscing a bit about our camping trip with Chrisann and Clint last Memorial Day. The weather was pretty bad but we had a lot of fun and are glad we were able to do that with them in their camper at least once.

On Monday evening we had a little barbecue with our small group and that was a lot of fun as well. What an amazing group of friends we have. We are so thankful for the support group that we have here, especially now during these hard times. We barbecued at our friends Evan and Kristen's house and they even had a new little outdoor fire pit that we used for making smores. There's just something so great about sitting around a fire with friends and talking. AND it helps keep the mosquitoes away! :)

So we've been back for a week now with no trips in sight other than a short trip to the hospital at some point (we've got a bag somewhat packed and have considered what we will need to throw in). We are thankful that we were able to make the trips that we did and spend time with our families through all this, but now we are just looking forward to being home for the next couple of months.

Here are some recent pictures:

First four pictures: Our vegetable garden with it's wee little plants, tomatoes!, my flower pot on the front porch and then my barrel on the back patio

Next three pictures: The shelves are up in the nursery!

Wasn't it nice of me to make them such a cozy place to sleep? Brats.

One of the best parts about the weekend was that we got to see some good friends from out of town: our friends Joe and Liz Messer from Omaha and my friend Erin Reese from St. Louis. Erin brought baby gifts, including this cute little John Deere onesie that her friend made! Check out the little ruffles on the bum. :)

Finally, there's me at 36 weeks. Look at that tummy! It's definitely lower now.

That's about all that I can think of to post for now. Soon enough I'll be posting baby news and pictures, and that will be much more exciting. :)

. . . and Gone Again

So I'm blogging from Grand Junction now. We've had an interesting few days, including a trip to the hospital in Glenwood Springs on our way over the mountain due to some preterm labor. Tim very nearly panicked when we started timing my contractions in Glenwood Canyon and they were only two minutes apart! We called our doctor's office back home and were directed to the nearest hospital. The doctor even called ahead to let them know we were coming. About four hours later they released me after giving me some drugs to slow down the contractions. Looks like baby is trying to force her way out a little early, though, as I was about a fingertip dilated, 50-75% effaced and baby was at station 0 as of Wed. night. Hopefully we can convince her to stay in there for at least a couple more weeks, but I don't know if I'm going to make it to my due date in 5 weeks.
We've spent the last couple days hanging out at the hospice center with Chrisann, Tim's mom, and the family. Unfortunately I have to report that Chrisann's health is declining and the end should be fairly near. She was awake and alert when we were with her Thursday afternoon, but since then has been mostly unresponsive. I'm glad we made it in time to have that afternoon with her, though. We are unsure of how long we will be here; there's really nothing we can do now but wait and pray. God has a plan and a timing for all of this. It may not be all that convenient for us and we may not understand it, but there's nothing we can do but trust in him. He is a good and gracious God.

Home for Now

So much has happened since our last post on Easter Sunday! I'm not really even sure where to begin. On April 13th my beloved dad passed away, ending his very short battle with cancer. On the 17th, instead of celebrating at his wedding, we attended his funeral in Billings, Montana. That whole trip to Montana was very challenging and I still find every day a little challenging as things so often remind me of him and how much I miss him. I suppose it will be that way for quite a while. Maybe forever. Tim has been to Grand Junction and back twice since then and has gotten to spend some good time with his mom. She's a fighter and we're praying that she can hang on long enough to meet our little baby girl, which is her #1 goal at this point. We also made another trip to Montana in there for a baby shower. While Baby and I were showered with love and gifts, Tim helped my step dad, Ernie, move all the furniture out of my dad's house. How fun for them.
Yesterday we attended our day-long birthing class. Although we were dreading it somewhat, we actually kind of enjoyed it. It's nice to have fewer unknowns as D-day (Tim's name for it) gets closer and closer. I'm 34 weeks now, so it shan't be too long. We feel pretty well prepared, though. The nursery is basically done, and we really have more than we need in order to be able to sustain a baby.
Today was a beautiful day and we got a little work done in the yard. It felt good to be out in the sunshine.
I'm posting a few pictures, but they're not really in order. Sorry they're not placed very well. I haven't quite figured out the best way to post pictures yet.

The crib is set up and ready to go! Now the cats think it should be their bed. :P We got really cute bedding from my sister.

More nursery pictures.
Here are a couple pictures from my baby shower in Fort Collins. The girls made very cute decorations and as one of the games all the attendees had to team up and design onesies for Little Miss. They were very cute.

My sister and I as we are heading in for my dad's vigil at St. Bernard's Cat

holic Church. Many jokes were made about our identical bellies.

(below) Uncle Tim with our nephew Cameron at the little birthday party we had for him in Montana. He turned three on the day of my dad's funeral. We had ice cream cake and watched him open some presents (he didn't care much for the clothes - just the cars and trucks). Cameron loves his Uncle Tim.

Happy Easter!

It's Easter Sunday and it has turned out to be a pretty nice day. Much better than last year, that's for sure. Last Easter my mom and Ernie were here for the weekend and the weather on Sunday was cold, dreary and wet. But today it's sunny and quite warm, although a little breezy. Mia and I even went out and sat on the back porch for a little bit this afternoon and soaked up some sun. They're starting to build on one of the empty lots behind our house. I'm actually pretty bummed about it because the house will be right in the middle of our view of the mountains. We have such a nice view; although I knew it couldn't last forever. At least, Tim says, more houses will block more of the train noise.

We've enjoyed a pretty quiet weekend at home. We went to the Easter service at our church this morning and it was very nice. They did a silhouette play sort-of-thing of Jesus' life, death and resurrection. I know it sounds a little cheesy, but it was really very well done. After that we just came home and had some lunch and have been hanging out here. I am cooking a little bit of an Easter dinner tonight, though, with ham, green bean casserole and glorified rice. Yum. It just wouldn't be Easter without ham. :)

Tim has been working more on the crib. He finished staining it this weekend and has re-painted the hardware. Everything just has to dry now and we should be able to put it together in a couple days. He's also been working to fix the sink hole that was created by the side of our house last summer when our neighbors put their fence in. He figured he might as well do it while there is free dirt close by from the basement they just dug behind us.

And that's about it for news around here. We're headed to Grand Junction Friday night for a quick visit. It'll be good to see everyone; I just wish we could go for a little longer. But with an upcoming wedding in Montana and a baby shower up there, there just isn't enough vacation time to go around.

Hope everyone has had a wonderful Easter! HE IS RISEN!!

It's a beautiful day in our neighborhood . . .

. . . so why are we both working inside? Well, you see, we've got projects to do. And Tim can't rest or play when there's a project for him to work on. The sanding on the crib is all finished, the basement has been cleaned and straightened and now the staining has begun. We've had a nice restful weekend at home with not a whole lot to do. Those weekends are rare for us and will become even more so soon, so it's a blessing to get to enjoy one. The weather is really beautiful today; I think it's about 63 degrees outside and it's very sunny. Yesterday was extremely windy and therefore quite chilly, but we got our grocery shopping done nonetheless. We actually had a pretty nasty storm this week that hit Tuesday afternoon and snowed heavily through Tuesday evening. I was fortunate enough to have a "Snow Day" on Wednesday as a result of it, but Tim had to trudge off to work early in the morning as always. The policy of my center is to follow the Poudre School District and close for severe weather if they are closed, which is nice because it really takes a lot of the blame and decision-making off of us. Well, like most school districts in the area, Poudre did decide on Tuesday night that all schools would be closed Wednesday. However, the weather did not continue through the night as was expected and Wednesday ended up being a pretty nice day, with lots of the snow already melting away. Whoops. I admit I felt a little guilty all day about being off, but it wasn't really my decision, was it? I was able to go to Fort Collins in the afternoon and get my hair cut just as planned. Not a bad day, all in all. We're really hoping that will be the end of our winter storms.

Tim and I--never really knowing when to stay and when to go--ventured out into that nasty storm on Tuesday night to pick up the changing table we had ordered at Walmart. We navigated the roads quite well, though, in our 4WD vehicle that has brand new tires. Our changing table is all set up in the nursery now and we rearranged just a little. This afternoon Tim hauled up from the basement one of our old dressers which we're putting in the closet of the nursery for storage.

We did have a bit of a bummer this week when the Envoy starting running very poorly and we had to take it in to the shop. It wasn't there that long; I dropped it off Thursday afternoon and picked it up Friday afternoon. But just to make life that much easier we went ahead and got a rental car for me to drive in the meantime. With Tim working in Longmont the one car thing just is too difficult. My rental car was a little yellow 2010 VW Bug. :) Kinda fun to drive for a day. And $1300 later the Envoy is fixed and running better than before.

We're looking forward to spending Easter weekend at home (I even get Friday off as my center is closed for Good Friday). Then the weekend after that we start our travels with a quick trip to Grand Junction. It'll be nice to see family there and in Montana at least one more time before the baby makes her debut.

Here are some more pictures for your viewing pleasure:

The crib parts are all sanded and ready to be stained! I love having such a handy husband, and am quite spoiled because of it.


The curtains are hung!
Have you ever noticed how in nearly every one of our pictures there is at least one cat? Can you find the cat in this picture?
Modeling my major contribution to the nursery. :)

Preparing a Place

Welcome to our blog! This is our first official post. We've been extremely busy lately and April is probably only going to get worse, so we'll do our best to update occasionally, especially once the baby is here because we all know that that's really who you care to hear about/see. :)

Spring is officially here and we've been busy busy bees trying to prepare a room for our Little Miss. The nursery is all painted and we've moved in the furniture that we have so far, but haven't hung anything on the walls yet. Yesterday I finished up the curtains I've been making for the room and Tim began sanding down the crib. Turns out the crib project might be a little bigger than we had anticipated, but it'll look really nice when it's done. We're starting to feel the pressure a little bit, since we're going to be busy traveling almost every weekend in April. But as long as Little Miss doesn't decide to come earlier than she is supposed to we should be just fine.

We were glad to have a weekend pretty much free this weekend. I didn't leave the house at all yesterday and Tim only went out to get some more sandpaper (and Peeps for me!).

In other news, Tim continually has more work to do than he has time to get it done. We're still grateful for the job he has, even if it is pretty stressful at times. My director is leaving on a missions trip to Albania on Monday and won't be back to work until Wednesday of the next week. So I will pretty much be the acting director for a week. The powers that be at my center have decided not to have an "Assistant Director" and so I have been promoted to a position that we are calling the "Administrative Assistant". The title describes what I do pretty well; I have been given a lot more responsibility and pretty much know how to do everything to run the center, but I don't have to make the hard decisions about hiring and firing and such. And that suits me just fine.

Tim is sanding like crazy as I type this. This afternoon we will be driving down to Denver to meet Chrisann, Clint and Toby for dinner, so we're looking forward to that. It's so nice to see the sun and we're excited to watch our landscaping come back to life (hopefully). Come on Spring! I'm posting some pictures of the ongoing nursery project. Hopefully you'll all get to see the room in person sometime soon. Enjoy!

The wainscot goes up!

Here's Tim putting the trim on top of the wainscot.
Tim the painter.



All painted! We moved in our futon and the glider we got from Susan and Ernie.

You can see our stroller on the right and the cradle that Tim's grandpa, Paul, made on the left.

Here's one of the curtains I made. We need to get curtain rods so we can hang them up!

Tim working hard in the basement while he watches Nascar. :)

One side of the crib all sanded and ready to be refinished.


Here's a picture of Jessica and I from our recent trip to Montana. She's about 3 and a half weeks behind me and just found out she's having another boy!