Showered with Love

Joy, Mary, Shawna and Julie had a baby shower for me on Tuesday and it was so sweet! It was at Mary's house and on the invite Joy requested in lieu of cards people bring a children's book. What a great idea! We now have a pretty awesome library of children's books.

This shower was a lot of friends from work and Sunday school. My mom and Mamo came, too.
My mom kept saying over and over to me how blessed I was to have such sweet friends. I agreed! Speaking of Mamo, she reminded me that this is the 12th great grandchild for her. I think I mentioned that in my last post. She had a nice time!

All the gifts were so amazing and thoughtful, each with a specific and special purpose and we love them all. What a blessing showers are! Babies need so much stuff and it's overwhelming to look at the long suggested list of "MUST HAVES". Nathan and I are so thankful for each treasure baby Carmines received but we're even more thankful for the special people in our lives.

Here's the gift that got the most "Oooo's and Ahhhhh's".
It was from my friend Darlene from work......
Here's a picture of the loot in my car. Mistie, Mary's daughter, packed my car and I have to say the girl is talented! I couldn't believe she got it all in there!
Thanks to more sweet friends in my life I'm excited to say I do have more shower fun coming in the next few weeks. Stay tuned!

34 weeks

Nathan and Joy took some pics of for me the other day. Now that this pregnancy is almost over (boo!) I'm trying to capture and savor more precious moments. It's been so nice. I realize that there are two different categories for expectant moms....those who LOVE being pregnant and those that don't. I fall into the LOVE group. Is it true what I hear? Smooth pregnancy= not so smooth delivery and vice versa? If so, "oh no!" I guess worrying will accomplish nothing so I'm trying not to.

The baby has had the hiccups 3 times now. Maybe more. I'm not sure. The middle of the night bathroom trips haven't been as bad as I thought. In fact, on average I don't even get up every night. I've been waiting for the multiple trips for a while now but it hasn't happened yet. I'm probably not drinking enough water. Not a big surprise for me. On the subject of bladder, sometimes when I sneeze I have to be careful to make sure a little pee doesn't come out. TMI, I know! Sorry! I'm just really trying to journal my memories.

Well, I'm off to bed now! We have a doctor appt tomorrow morning. Not looking forward to the scale especially after our 9:30 pm Las Palapas dinner tonight. Good night, all!

baby room in progress...

Now that summer has finally begun for me (because VBS is over), Nathan and I have had time to get cracking on the baby room. Dad and Ludi bought us our crib and we added a few pieces of furniture to make the room complete. First things first, though. We have been talking about having hardwood floors installed and last Monday we had Lowe's come out. Here they are laying down the underlayment.
The entire time we've been planning to do this we've gone back and forth.
"Let's hire someone..."

"No, we can do it on our own"

"I know we can but it will be so nice to have it done fast and professionally. We can watch them do this one room and then later, down the road, we can do the rest of the house on our own."


Due to the fact the Aug. 16th is quickly approaching and also because I was so sick of having 2 HUGE boxes right in the entryway of our house we decided to go with having Lowe's do the installation. Geez, I'm SO glad we did! We opted to put down natural bamboo hardwood and it's a really stubborn floor. Bamboo is the hardest wood used for hardwood flooring and the pros from Lowe's had the toughest time installing it! They originally thought it would take about 2 hours max to complete the job. They arrived at 9am and didn't finish until 3pm. Nathan stood in the hallway the entire time and watched. The poor guys were so frustrated. At one point they thought they were going to have to stop and get different material. They called for reinforcement. We had not just the 2 installers in our house but 4 more Lowe's guys came out to offer guidance. Turns out that the flooring we bought isn't the most common and they just haven't had much experience with it. Once they got going the wood started to cooperate. I love it and wish we could afford to do the whole house right now!

So, floor is down. Whew! Now to opening the big boxes in the living room...







This is the chest of drawers. I love that there are five drawers and that it's tall and more narrow. Our house isn't big and neither are the rooms so we had to be intentional in our furniture selections.

Setting up the crib

Crib assembled and ready for baby Carmines....

We are having so much fun together getting ready for our baby! It's all overwhelming but we're trying to take it in stride. Who'd have thought that a little baby would need so much stuff!
More to come tomorrow.....

Another year of VBS has come and gone

What a great week we've had at Concordia! VBS is always the reason why I don't post much in June. I've been working, working, working! This was the easiest year I've had so far. It was my 9th VBS to lead and each year gets better and better. I'm so thankful for all the wonderful volunteers. We had over 600 volunteers and over 1300 kids registered. WOW!

Check out our highlight video!!!

28 weeks (Memorial Day weekend)

I've been so bad about taking belly shots but here's one recent one. I'm 28 weeks here and I'm in a bar. Nathan really is enjoying his resident designated driver!

Welcome to the neighborhood, Hamanns!

Today some of our best friends closed on a house right in our neighborhood! Joy and Brad live just around the corner. 2/10 of a mile, to be exact. Tonight Nathan and I walked over so we could take pictures of Brad carrying Joy over the threshold of their new home. First we had a little dinner and then moved on to a very important task. Selecting paint colors. It only took 1 repeat visit to Home Depot before Joy found the right color. Tomorrow we're watching Jayla for them while they paint the family room. It's so nice to have close friends so close by. We're excited for our baby to have a little friend just down the street to play with.


These pictures are from a Concordia birthday bash last weekend for a bunch of May birthdays. We had a great night out at Dolce.

Cars

Here's a post I'd like to dedicate to my brother in law, Daniel. He's the biggest car lover I know. Nathan's a close second. They both grew up with a solid education under the hood. They are both very talented in the mechanical department thanks to their dad, grandpa and uncle. You might have come across Daniel's blog a time or two while looking at mine. If this is the case, you already know he's quite the car buff. Well, here are a few car related experiences I've encountered lately...

Nathan and I are off on Mondays and we usually have lunch with Daniel and their mom and Larry. Monday before last it was just the 3 of us. Daniel was short on time so we decided to meet him for lunch. On our way we ran out of gas. Gosh- when's the last time that happened to me? College, maybe? I didn't even look at the gas warning but I had been out of town all weekend while Nathan had my car. I won't throw him under the bus though. He was working on my car while I was gone serving on the team for our Mother's Day STARS Women's retreat at church. I got back from the retreat on Mother's Day and we went to church and then headed straight over to my mom's for Mother's Day and her birthday. Gas was low but we had enough. Well we had enough until lunch time on Monday. We left the house and started sputtering right when we turned on to 281. We were able to coast into a shopping center where we called Daniel to our rescue. Thanks, Big B!

Here's something I enjoy while out shopping....

We saw this car in Fredericksburg. There were a TON of hot rods. They were all there for the hot rod convention. It's a '48 Chevy.

This car, also a Chevy, was in Fredericksburg at a dealership. It's brand new and made Nathan's head turn! He needs a new car desperately but I think he's got a peculiar extreme attachment to his '85 Fiero. It's a two seater. Hmmmm....2 seater plus new baby don't add up quite right in my head. He's been looking around but I think it will take a small miracle for him to part with it and get something that's more family friendly.