Sunday, May 16, 2010

Oh yeah, 3d Trimester!

I have now officially hit my 6 month mark! Baby Owen's anticipated arrival is 3 months away. We'll see how fast that time can fly.

Little Owen is around 2 pounds now and just over 14 inches long. He can open and close his eyes and is finally starting to put on weight so he doesn't look like a wrinkly alien. (Got that alien part from Baby Center. They said it first, not me!) At 27 weeks, he does not like it when I rest my arms or elbows on him. He gives me a swift kick to tell me that he is already squished enough!

I have been doing wonderful, considering all the things that could be not fun for me right now. Only little things here and there that aren't that fun. Already having poor circulation makes my feet even puffier at the end of the day with the extra weight I now have. I get these nasty cramps in my lower abdomen, not Braxton Hicks, that make me feel faint. Don't really like those. Acid reflux is my constant friend sometimes. Trying not to live off of Tums. But I seem to be carrying Owen really high, so that might have something to do with it. But really, that's it! I have been extremely blessed and have never thrown up. Sometimes I don't even feel prego until I look in the mirror. Reality check.

Besides the baby, the other huge thing on my mind is that SCHOOL IS ALMOST OUT! Since I am not on here too often, it will probably already be over when I write again. I love my students to death and I ADORE being a teacher, but I am so much more excited for motherhood. Eight and half more teaching, or should I say babysitting days left. My students gave up on me weeks ago when testing was over. It's a good thing that we are almost done with my office to so I can have a place to put all of my teaching stuff when it's moved out of my classroom. I'll put pictures of my office area when it's done.

One last thing, Tootsie is a goober. Love her to death, but she is a goober. Here is a picture that captures it all. This was taken not even 24 hours AFTER she had a bath. NOT before.

Goo. Needless to say, I was not a happy camper. And I guess she didn't learn her lesson the first time because she decided to go romping in the tree dirty water again today. She didn't like her kennel too much after that. She grew from a 2 year old to a teenager way too quickly.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Our Recent Remodel

We planed on knocking down the wall from the garage to one of the small rooms in the back when we first bought the house, we just didn't expect it to happen so soon. But thanks to a little push from a future member of our family things are moving along. We decided to do the remodel because Bryan's office was in one of the bedrooms down the hall but we wanted to change that into a baby's room for Owen while still keeping the guest room. So we tore down a few walls to make some smaller rooms into a bigger and better one and that's where the project began. Here is the before and after (and a few in betweens) of our remodel that we've been working on for the past two months.

We had to rip out a beat up old bench tear off the sheet-rock and pull out the insulation.

Kara was having too much fun being destructive and managed to get a few good blows into the wall to help it come down.

Bryan and Dean cutting and ripping down the stucco wall from the inside of the small room. That was a mess!

Kara's grandpa came over to help with the pipe that ran right through the room, it wasn't long before that problem was overcome, then spur of the moment we decided to go to home depot and get a door for the side of the house. I think Home Depot is Bryan's new favorite store, not by choice though. Cutting the hole for the door.

Bryan overcame a major obstacle with putting in the electrical all by his self. With a few phone calls, research on the internet, and a couple of visits from people that have done it before he got it all done only shocked himself once and everything works... no fires yet :)

Bryan ran more than 350 feet of electrical wire through the new room, garage, shed and attic.

Digging a trench to run power to the shed in the back of our house. It now has plugs and a lightso we can see in it at night finally.

The easiest part was probably the insulation the only tools needed were scissors and staples.

This is our new door going outside from Bryan's office.

And sore for a week after putting up the sheet-rock and sanding the whole room.

The new look of the garage, rather than a work space we're going to put in a work banch with cabinets and a place for tools and other stuff like that... you know garage stuff! That's why it's indented a little and the plugs are so high on the wall.

Kara said it best when she sketched this out in the sheet-rock dust. A little over a week after sanding and it was all finished. We were both happy to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Kara is cleaning and prepping the floor for the special cement stuff we got for floating the floor out to make the two sides more even.

Dean came over to help float it out, We appreciate his help I couldn't have done it a lone it was definitely a two man job.

He also sprayed the texture on the walls well Bryan went around and pulled the bumps down.

This is Bryan after a long day of working on the room and finishing with the texture. Ready to hit the shower and then the sheets.

Tadaa! The after portion of our project. Bryan's starting to move his computer and equipment over to his new office. Next on the list paint and decorate Owen's room. Bryan's not too excited about the work but both of us are excited to have a cute baby room ready for the day we bring owen home from the hospital.

We put edging around the door and the window. We both thought that it looked really nice so we're going to do it to all the windows in our house. No big deal right?

Knocking down the wall and adding the extension put another 100 square feet onto the living space of our home. We hope that the remodel will serve us well while we are there and in the future when we decide to sell it. It was a lot of work but we learned a ton and it was worth it in the end.