Only 4 months left!

My goodness time has sure flown! I was trying to figure out how far along I was in months, and I knew that I was 22 weeks and a few days, so I counted it out and as of yesterday I was 5 months along. (In case you're wondering, yes Brian I am admitting that you were right when everyone was having that huge debate on how long pregnancy was). I can't believe how fast it's gone by already! Only 4 months to go and we'll have our little girl with us! Yay!

(This shot makes my stomach look bigger because I'm not as angled.)

After figuring out that I was actually 5 months along, I ran in and told Jon to take a picture of my belly, so here are some updated belly pictures for you (and by "you" I mostly mean my relatives who I don't see all the time - ahem, Suzanne).

The other thing is that since Jon has been studying for his PCAT (just took it this morning, eek!), I've been basically doing the room downstairs by myself. Needless to say, it's taking a LOT longer than the last room! (I'm slow and fat, can you blame me?) :) Here's the progress we've made though:

Scraping wallpaper is just SOOOO fun. (cough cough)

Finally the wallpaper is done and I have everything taped up and ready for texturing and painting. Don't ask why the electical outlets have black paint on/around them - the people who lived here before us also spray painted a bullseye and some word that we can't make out under the wallpaper. Weird people.

Anyway, I told Jon that he could paint this room whatever color he wanted since I threw a fit about the last room's colors until we finally found that purpley-maroonish color that we both liked, so I think he's decided that this will be his....wait for it...his BYU room. (sigh) I just don't understand all you crazy BYU fans. But anyway, that's what we're going to do. I'll put up more pictures either tomorrow or sometime next week to show the finished result, then it will be a bunch of posts with the truck. Yay! :)

25 Reasons I Love Jon!

Okay, so I actually started this on our anniversary, but forgot about it, so I'm finishing it for Jon's birthday! Jon's birthday was on Monday (Aug 10), and to celebrate him, I wanted to say

25 reasons why I love him!

1. I love how when he's half asleep he won't let me get up in the morning - he just hugs me and won't let go until he's all the way awake and realizes that he's holding me hostage.
   


2. I love how he's so good with money and how that allowed us to buy a home and be able to support ourselves on our meager salaries while still enjoying big toys now and then without being stressed out al of the time or running up huge credit card debts.
   


3. I love how he talked me into getting a job at Convergys when I really didn't want to, only to find out that I really loved the job. I also love that he encouraged me to be a trainer when I wasn't sure if I would be able to do it, and he practically turned my resume in for me.
   


4. I love that he can fix cars so we don't have to buy really crappy used cars for cheap or spend a lot on a newer car off the lot - we get the best of both worlds!
   


5. I love that he had to take an interior design class in high school because he didn't have enough art credits and now he can help me pick colors and decorate.
   


6. I love the look he had on his face the day we got married when he first saw me in the temple and ran over to me.
   


7. I love how he laughed at me when I had to travel for work and was bawling my eyes out in the airport because he thought it was really sweet -
   


8. I also love that he cried a little too.
   


9. I love that I can't stand to be away from him for long periods of time, and how when we are apart he always gives me the biggest hug when we see eachother.
   


10. I love how he gets all excited when I bring him a plate of dinner after a long day
    


11. I love how he cuddles up with me at church when it's freezing (which is every week)
    


12. I love how when I'm sick he takes complete care of me
    


13. I love how he still gets excited over silly things with me as well as the big things
    


14. I love that he still get's all sentimental with me when we see stuff that reminds us of when we we met/dated/got engaged/got married etc.
    


15. I love that he tells me when I'm being ridiculous, and that I can tell him when he is
    


16. I love that he is always trying to jump out of a closet or from behind a door to scare me, even though I always see him hiding
    


17. I love that everytime we go fishing (and moreso when we catch a fish) it's like Christmas morning for him
    


18. I love that we can talk about anything
    


19. I love that he loves to snuggle so much - even when it's blazing hot he still wants to snuggle!
    


20. I love how he still holds my hand whenever possible - walking, driving, sitting in church, everywhere.
    


21. I love that he "dares" me to give him kisses at random times
    


22. I love that he always mows the lawn and cooks the steaks (you know, the "guy" stuff)
    


23. I love that Jon is such a romantic deep down and always does little things that take my breath away
    


24. I love how I wake up in the middle of the night and Jon will be rubbing my tummy trying to feel Baby Girl kicking
    


25. I love knowing that we'll be together forever!
    

I love you baby and I hope you had a wonderful birthday! (Oh, and in case you're wondering what he got, you'll have to look at the next post to see that!)

New Projects...

Okay, so I have a couple of new projects to undertake. First and foremost, we need to get our other basement room re-painted to look pretty instead of hideous. Here's what we're working with:

Yikes, right? Again, the carpet is already replaced, this is just an old picture, but the walls are just as bad. And, unlike the other room, this is not high quality wallpaper that comes off in single sheets - this is the kind that you can only tear little one-inch pieces off at a time, so it looks like we'll have some scrubbing to do. Luckily this is more at my height, so I can actually help this time. :)

The other project is Jon's birthday present, which is....

A BRAND NEW BROKEN TRUCK TO FIX!!!! YAY!!!!

This is a 2004 Ford F-150, and it has really low miles (only like 45000 or so!). Yeah, we've been talking about getting a new truck (one with 4 doors so we can fit a carseat, and a little more engine power for the boat) for quite a while, and finally we saw a great deal in this one on WorldWide Auto's web site (www.getwwa.com) I love that place - it's where we found our car and now where we found our truck. They only have broken cars, but they sell them for pretty cheap (sometimes you have to fight a little, but they're fair) and then you get an amazing newer car for TONS cheaper than buying new - even after all of the repairs! Of course, this only works if you can do the work yourself, which Jon can and I love him oh so much for it. :)

So our only dilemma with this truck (other than now having to quickly sell our old truck so that we can afford everything okay!) is deciding which color to paint it. I personally am not a fan of yellow vehicles (remember Monty, aka: El Diablo?) as I am convinced that they are cursed demon cars. So, before this one is cursed and hates us, and since we have to replace almost every panel on it anyway, we're thinking of changing the color when we fix it. I picked the black with red pearl for the Mazda 3, so I told Jon he could paint the next car we get any color he wants to. Problem is, he's way too indecisive. So, we're going to ask you! Should we paint his truck:

Fire Engine Red

Blue

Forest Green

Black

Tangelo (kind of bright orange)

Pearl White

Leave it Yellow or

Other?

Tell us what you think! I'll put a poll on the side of the blog too, so you can vote, but we definitely like comments more! :) (And if you vote "Other" then you have to leave a comment to let us know what other color!) Thanks everyone!

Nursery!

First of all, thank you to all those who volunteered to help with the nursery! We definitely appreciate that. Sorry we didn't use you too! :) Because we work such odd hours, most of this work was done late at night or in the mornings before work, so really it just would have been too hard for people to help, but thank you for wanting to! Also we just wanted to get it done as fast as possible as we're actually going to be putting our house up for sale here very soon, so this may not even end up being a nursery, but hey. It's still more fun to think of it that way. :) Here's our finished result!

Okay, so this isn't the real picture of the nursery, this is our "before" picture from when we first bought our house. We changed out that wonderful (cough cough) pink carpet three years ago, but you can still see what we had to start with. Pink Tulip Wallpaper!


Here's a closeup so you can see better. As much as I really hated the wallpaper, luckily it was a really good quality, so we were actually able to rip down entire sheets at once, only leaving a few tiny scraps behing that we under baseboards or ceiling boards. That definitely saved a LOT of time (anyone who's ever had to destroy wallpaper before, you know).



So this is the room after we have the wallpaper down. There's still glue on the walls, but before the pink tulips there was just...well pink. It wasn't a terrible shade, but not what I wanted either.


First thing we had to do after scrubbing the walls free of all of that wallpaper glue was to fix any small holes from nails or what-not. Ricky wasn't very happy with this because he couldn't come in the room with us, so we let him peek in through the window. Even with the window open it got very dusty in there, so Jon was very careful to make sure I was wearing a dust mask at all times in the room. He's very sweet!



After fixing and sanding all of the little spots, we retexturized the walls, and to do this we had to tape off the whole window, which took out a lot of the ventilation. That wasn't too bad because, well there really wasn't anything I could do while Jon was spraying texture on the walls, but once we got to painting, I had to upgrade my mask...



And just in case you were wondering, no I do not put on makeup to paint. That's just silly. :)



And now, our first color! We decided to keep the 2-tone idea (less the wallpaper), so we used our Nimbus Cloud gray to put on the top (mostly because we still had 2 1/2 cans of this paint from when we painted the rest of our house. As you can see from the top picture, Jon is very detailed. We decided to go with a darker color on the bottom, and opted for a maroonish purpley color. I think this was called some kind of Plum color...


Yikes! When we got home and opened the paint up, we held our sample up next to it and saw that the paint we had was BRIGHT purple, not the maroonish purpley color we had hoped for. But, we decided to try it anyway, and luckily when it was dry it was the right color. :)


Jon was VERY VERY happy about that, as you can see. :) (This is why it's good to paint at 1AM - you get all slap happy and goofy!) This is right after we finished the purple and before we painted the trim.


This one just shows the trim painted and finished. The colors turned out wonderfully! I held up some light pink and light purple things next to the wall, and both look good with this color, so if we still have our house when Baby Girl arrives, then it will be a wonderful nursery! And if not, well then it's a cute room. :)

We are so excited to be done! Jon is trying to show this excitement by puffing his cheeks out, but I was making him laugh so it turned out like this! Ha ha, I sure love this guy! Anyway, we're tackling our other basement room next, but it might take longer to do because Jon is studying to take his PCAT a week from Saturday! (the 22nd) Fun times!

Anyway, that's our update. As for Baby Girl, she's still kicking up a storm and growing nice and big. :)

Kicks for Jon!

So for the last few days I've been trying to get Baby Girl to kick for Jon. Her kicks have been strong enough, but never at the right time. Last night she was going nuts, so I called Jon in and he ran up, put his hand on my belly and she had stopped. He waited a few minutes and then got back to his project (ridding one of our downstairs rooms of wallpaper). About 5 minutes later she started up again, and I could actually see the little kicks! It was fun for me, but Jon missed out.

This morning though, I was groggily thinking about getting up when she kicked my bladder - this was the hardest kick she's had yet. Then she did it again, and instead of rushing to the bathroom, I thought, "Hmm, I wonder if she'll kick for Jon now". So I woke him up, rolled on my back and within a minute he had felt her kick 3 times! The first two he felt with his palm, so it wasn't very clear that they were kicks, but then I figured out that she had moved up a little and he got a better feel of it. He was so excited! It was very cute.

I'm just glad that I can FINALLY share this with Jon! I love the kicks and wiggles, and now Jon can love them too! :)