Entering the world of blogging again...

Wow, I can't believe it's been a month since my last post! Shame on me. :) But in my defense, I'm hugely pregnant and exhausted. And I spend all day at work on a computer, so it's kind of the last thing I want to do when I get home. But alas, I am here with an update!

A lot has gone on in the last month, so I will try my best to catch everyone up. On Feb. 13th Dane turned 33 years old. Yikes! :) We headed to Leavenworth with friends for the weekend and had a WONDERFUL time. There were four couples that went and we all have one kid, so the little ones had their friends to play with all weekend. Anna was talking about her little buddies for days after we got home! We stayed in townhouses which worked out great. Full kitchens, living rooms and bedrooms...perfect for families. We each only had to cook one time during the weekend and then got to enjoy the other's cooking the rest of the time. Perfect! In the evenings, we put the kids to bed upstairs together and all eight adults got to enjoy game nights and drinks and laughter...and a lot of food! :) We were hoping for snow to enjoy some sledding but ended up with a gorgeous weekend with even sunshine one day! We spent hours walking around town and enjoying brauts, ice cream cones, and horse drawn carriage rides (Anna loved that part!). The boys surprised us girls with a 1/2 hr massage on Valentine's Day at a local spa. It was heaven on earth! I had a gal that specialized in prenatal massages, and I came very close to asking her to come home with me for the next month! She focused on my back the entire time, and at one point I caught myself almost asleep and drooling. Thank you boys! (I forgot my camera that weekend, of course, so if I ever get pictures from the others, I will share them!).

My nesting instincts have kicked in big time, and a couple weekends ago, you would have found me up on a chair cleaning ceiling fans, on my hands and knees cleaning base boards and convincing my husband that we MUST switch the furniture around between our family/living rooms because it only made sense. So we did. :) And I'll tell you what, I love it! Our downstairs family room/TV room (where we use to spend most of our time) is now the designated play room. It's great to have more room for Anna's toys and to get them all in one area. It makes the room feel larger, and Anna loves it! Our living room on the main level, is now our tv room/hang out room, with our comfy sectional couch and some additional furniture from upstairs. We brought down our office desk and book shelf and they now live in our living room/dining room. It flows really well and I'm happy. :) We're trying to clean out our office/spare room which will be Anna's new bedroom eventually (hopefully sooner than later). I have lots of fun stuff for Dane to help me with before the baby comes, and he's been a trooper about it for hte most part. I think he might be afraid that I'll either cry or scream at him if he tries to fight me on any of it. :) Gotta love the last month of pregnancy. :)

Anna's new room. I am super excited about it all coming together, but first, we must tackle the MOUNDS or crap in that room. It's been our "dump all" room for the last five years. That's five years of crap that we haven't touched. The closet is one of those, where when you open it, 10 things come tumbling out and land on your toes, while your cursing the person that last put that away (which by the way, was probably me). I have until next weekend to get that room cleaned out and to find new homes for the stuff coming out of it. My mom is coming next weekend to help us paint the room, and then that next week, we are having new carpet installed in all the rooms and hallway upstairs!! Whoo hoo!! New carpet finally! I have lived with the nasty, dreaded, old, ugly blue carpet up there for too long. Goodbye old, hello new! So her new room will have a fresh coat of soft yellow paint, new carpet, and yet to be found bedroom furniture. Anyone looking to get rid of an adorable, white twin bed? Maybe with a matching dresser perhaps? Anyone?

In between all of my organizing and obsessive cleaning, we snuck away the other weekend to my parent's house for a visit. Anna has a new best friend and that person would be grandpa. Anytime he left the room, Anna would instantly notice and say "Where'd Gampa go?" She is smitten. :) Don't get me wrong, Grandma is way up on the list too, and is definitely a favorite, but this last weekend it was very much all about Grandpa. I think it melted his heart when she woke up from her nap and over the monitor we heard "Gampa!" "Where'd Gampa go?". He was in there in a flash to pick her up! :) My mom made Anna a BEAUTIFUL quilt for her new bed and bought her matching sheets and pillow case. Needless to say, Anna LOVED it. Here's a picture of her pretending to go night night on her new blankie with daddy:

And this is just a picture of us girls after we woke up from a nap at my parent's house...she was a little cranky, but so snuggly; I loved it!

We had a wonderful weekend visiting and Anna was just beside herself. My parent's took her outside to play (while I napped, of course) and once she got out there, all the neighbor kids came out to play with her! They brought out basketball hoops, cars to ride, balls and bats...you name it, they had it! She was out there close to 2 hours playing! Once I woke up, I went out and joined them in the gorgeous weather we had all weekend. She was in heaven! On Sunday, my parents offered to take Anna to a park in town so Dane and I could do a little shopping we wanted to get in. My mom said she wasn't sure who had more fun, Anna or Grandpa. :) They went down slides, went on the swings, talked on the two way phone, and climbed their way all over that playground! I seriously think that Anna would live at a park if we let her. The girl can't get enough of them. :) Thank you Mom and Dad for a great weekend! As we were pulling out of the driveway to head home, my mom said, "just think...the next time you come to visit, you will be a family of four." Holy cow, where has time gone?!

So, I must give the little guy some airtime too. I feel a bit guity at how unprepared I am for his arrival. His clothes that were lent to us from friends are all still in boxes stored away, and until last weekend, I didn't have one lick of blue or boy touches for the nursery. I know they don't need a lot at first, but I should at least get some clothes washed for the kid. This time in my pregnancy wiht Anna I think I had her whole wardrobe hung up and ready. To my defense though, things are kind of at a standstill until I get Anna and her clothes out of the nursery and I can start to "boy it up" a bit. Even though I'm not very prepared at the moment, doesn't mean we aren't about to pee our pants because we are so excited to meet him! I can't wait. Seriously, I know it's going to be hard, blah blah blah, but I can't wait to see his little face and body, and to especially see Anna as a big sister. She is going to rock as a big sister. Just the other day she was practicing putting her baby dolls to bed...take a look for yourself:

Okay, so we may need to monitor her for fear of smothering the poor baby when he arrives, but her intentions are good. :) She came with us this week to our dr. appt. for the first time and she LOVED it. When she heard the heartbeat she smiled and exclaimed "WHAT DAT?" The doctor told her that was her baby brother in mommy's belly and she smiled big and said "O-tay...I see?" We tried to explain she couldn't see him yet, but soon enough!

I am 35 weeks along now, and ready to be D-O-N-E. I'm exhausted, uncomfortable, irritable, constipated, and I have cankles and sausage fingers. Does that paint a pretty enough picture for you? Oh, and this baby inside me never stops moving. Seriously. And as he's running out of room, it looks like a martian is trying to escape through my belly, and it's not comfortable in the slightest! I'm going to get a pedicure this Sunday though, so at least I'll have pretty toes. :) Yes Sara, even my ugly toenail will feel pretty.

Hopefully I haven't lost you all in this terribly long post...I guess that's what I get for waiting a month in between updates!