Getting Ready for Baby

This past week has been my first one off since school ended. Rather than sit around watching TV all week, I really went crazy starting to clean and prep our place for Baby Girl. My dad came over Tuesday through Thursday morning, and his whirlwind of energy allowed us to get TONS accomplished!

The first thing to tackle was the garage. The first picture shows me after we're almost completely done. Do not be fooled; it was a wreck!!

This pile of boxes shows just a little bit of what we took out. Add in an old water heater, some bedding parts that needed to be tossed and tons of disorganization. That's what our garage looked like.

Now, it's pristine! There are shelves with nicely organized bins and boxes, a shoe rack in the corner, and the laundry area is clean and orderly. Is it weird that I'm excited for this stuff? Haha

The next set of pictures shows later Tuesday afternoon as we my dad made fresh-from-scratch giant cinnamon raisin rolls.

The dough rose for a few hours before he rolled it out and added the goodies for the middle. 

The second step was to roll it up and cut it! Did you know using floss to cut the roll stops it from being squished? I love learning new little culinary facts like that! The rolls then went in the fridge overnight to be baked in the morning!

Good morning! This is what I woke up to Tuesday.

This is the final product before we frosted them. Of course with homemade frosting as well!

The batch was halved and still made 16 giant rolls! We took a pan of 6 up to my high school to visit administration, check out my new classroom for next year, and spread some of the love! Let me tell you, everyone was drooling over these rolls! It was a great way to get caught up on changes for next year and make sure my room is starting to get up to an acceptable level. 

In a nutshell, I'm being moved to a room a hallway over b/c I'm teaching different classes next year. This aligns with my goal of teaching ESE self-contained classes eventually. Basically, I'll have more special needs kids and classes specifically for them, and I'm taking over for another teacher who taught that last year in her old room.

Unfortunately the room is a disaster. There's one small stained white board and a blank, dirty wall where another white board should be. The entire place was filthy- stained floors, dirty counters, broken filing cabinets. The room is half the size of my former room. To top it off, there were books, papers, and supplies left haphazardly for me to have. The teacher emailed me saying she hoped I used the materials she left. Yeah okay.

Either way, I know I want the room in working order this summer before everyone comes back for fall because I will be too large at that point to really do much to fix it up. Who wants to learn in a dirty, hopeless little room? 

Back on topic though! It's still Tuesday, and my dad and I are heading out to grab paint, knobs, planting materials, and more shelving to finish off the garage and do other odds and ends projects I wanted to get done!

Here is the new and improved garden area! My dad has a HUGE garden at his house so he brought me quite a few plants to get ours really started. David and I had a habanero pepper plant, some basil, and an aloe plant to start, but my dad added more basil, a jalapeno plant, 2 tomato plants, 3 zucchini plants, one squash plant (which may not survive), and 2 "pretty" plants. We re-potted a few that needed more room and added the plant cart to arrange them. I'm so excited for these to start producing!!!

The next things were more crafty. We re-painted the white filing cabinet below and added some new knobs. This was an older piece that David had been using to store video games, and I think it will be great as a psuedo night stand for Baby Girl's nursery.

 Cost of re-finishing vs. buying a new one?  

$4 brushes

$8 knobs

$0 paint- already had

$0 cabinet- already had

= $12 total  Love it!!

The next crafty project that I pulled out was completed Tuesday evening. I gave my dad the night off and sat and painted while he read. 

This was an old cork board that didn't quite match anything and that I would have tossed if I hadn't re-purposed it. First it was painted white, then the border was added. Next those three flowers on the bottom are mounted on old wooden spools that I painted to match the border. The gold flowers on the left are push pins with those glued on top for decoration, and the ribbon w/ large flower at the top is just there to look cute. I thought this would be good to put up her pictures and maybe eventually little pictures she draws or work to display. 

After all that nonsense, we decided the best way to end my dad's visit was to wake up at the crack of dawn to watch the sunrise at the House of Refuge Beach. 

This beach is my absolute favorite because of the beautiful rocks and relative seclusion. Only a few fishermen here and there joined us.


Baby Bump Update!

Only a few things to add since last time so I won't go through the whole list!

I am now...

-32 weeks 3 days

- WELL into the 3rd trimester...Only 1.5 month to go!

- Craving sweets. Trying to keep that in check so I maintain a healthy weight gain!

- Fun fact: My fingers and toes now looks like little sausages in the morning or late evening, and my finger joints even ache from the swelling. Trying to counteract that with lots of water/less sodium. My ring will still go on though!

- Dr visits are now every 2 weeks for the next month and then every week after that. We're getting down to the wire!!

Lastly, here is the *surprise* 4D ultrasound that David and I got to see Thursday afternoon! We went in for a routine check, and the nurse was sweet enough to pull up the 4D (without us asking or paying extra) to show us our baby!

The nurse said it's amazing the shot was so clear especially this far along. I'm just amazed that you can already see her features so clearly! Crazy to think this little girl will be joining us so soon!! This will be our last ultrasound before she's here. Time flies!
With that, I'm off to start to enjoy my break with some weekend fun. Adieu!