Hi there! I woke up this morning feeling like I had the flu – feverish, nauseous, dizzy, but by mid-morning I was feeling much better – who knows. I had my 18 week baby appointment this morning. She was finally able to find the heartbeat for the first time – it was 150 BPM. (HMMM slower than with the boys, but I’m still not holding my breath for a girl… We’ll have to see what it averages out at later, that was only the first reading we have gotten – he/she might have just been relaxed and sleeping.) I won’t have the next ultrasound until 28 weeks, so much later than with the boys. Guess I’ll have to hold out on the sex for awhile – 10 more weeks. She said because we had the early ultrasound she wants to put it off a bit to hopefully make it so we only have to have two, as insurance companies start to comlain after two I guess. (which by the way, we did get approved for the supplemental insurance we applied for – what a releif!) Then she did the typical feel of my uterus and said “oh my, that’s a big baby!” Apparently I am already measuring about 4 weeks too big… UGH Well, yes, we do seem to grow them big. She said to expect to be induced a couple weeks early if that keeps up as she wants to prevent an 11 pound baby. Um yeah… that would be good. However, that would put this one’s birthday right about the same time as Dane’s. I guess only time will tell – maybe the growth will even out. I am kind of short-waisted, and if I remember right, I measured a bit ahead with Dane as well. I really don’t want to go through the whole induction thing again if I can help it, but I also don’t want a giant baby and since Dane was 9 lb. 10 oz. that does concern me a bit. I have gained 7.5 pounds so far, which she is happy with, so that is all good.

On a sad note, please keep my friend Heather in your prayers. They just lost their baby 3 weeks before he was due. You can read her story here, but be prepared to sob with lots of kleenex on hand… I am amazed by her openess about the entire situation along with her faith. I seem to have been coming into contact with a lot of stories about baby losses lately, and this is three friends in a year who have lost their babies far into pregnancy. I just can’t imagine.

I’m off to put the boys to bed and to watch the 2 hour Grey’s Anatomy finale. (once Matt gets home from his meeting so we can watch together.) I don’t really want it to end for the season… I feel like it just started up again after the writer’s strike, but such is life! Hopefully next year’s season will be longer. I guess soon I won’t have much to watch as American Idol ends next week too.

C-

Hi there! I hope all the mommies had a wonderful Mother’s Day! Mine was very nice. The boys came in first thing to wish me a Happy Mother’s Day – which was sweet. Then Christian gave me a nicely wrapped (homemade colored wrapping paper) gift he made me at school. It was a placemat he made for me. I gave him a big hug and thanked him, and Dane burst into tears. What’s wrong I ask? “I didn’t make you anything…” Well, I said “You have all day to make me something, how about you go color me a picture?” “But I wanted to give it to you now – first thing in the morning…” Awww, it was so cute yet so sad. I tried to console him for about 15 min. but he didn’t stop crying for about 20-25 min. when Ryan and Christian FINALLY convinced him to come make cards with them. So eventually he gave me a card and was happy.

At church all the kids sang for the moms and then handed out carnations to all the moms. Then moms of the Sunday School kids got framed pictures with the kids handprints and a verse – they are really nice! I’ll have to find a place to hang them now. Then we came home and had lunch. I told Matt he had to cook, so he made hot dogs. I’ll take what I can get. After that I dinked around on the computer a bit, then attempted to take a nap. I say attempted because every time I would fall asleep a child would come in. I counted 11 times I got woke up before I gave up. LOL

Matt made spaghetti for dinner and even did the dishes! Then around 7:00 p.m. we went to Dairy Queen for treats. It was a nice day. (Well, the weather was terrible – rainy, cold, and windy – but the events of the day were nice.) My best raspberry plant completely broke off in the 40 mph wind yesterday.

Thursday I spent all day at my friend Holly’s house setting up for our garage sale, then I spent another hour on Friday there. Saturday we had the sale. The turn out wasn’t quite as good as she was expecting from past sales, but we did pretty good – made about $145. We did better than any of the other three ladies who were also there, so no complaints. I left several items to be donated, and brought lots more home to save for the next garage sale. Once we figure out if we are having a boy or girl, it will be easier to know what to save or sale. I’m thinking we’ll need to have another one in early fall. We were all worn out, but it was fun.

Ryan got his glasses picked up on Friday afternoon – he looks pretty handsome. He likes them. Now, if he can just not lose them… On Saturday he left them on the cement ground and they almost got stepped on – when they were one day old. UGH! Hopefully he will just keep them on and all will be well.

This week is pretty quiet until later in the week. Tonight I have Bible Study, then Wed. night we have pre-marital counseling to do as the appointment got changed from last Friday. Thursday I have a baby appointment in the morning. Then Friday I am going with Christian’s class all day on their field trip to Exploration Station – it is like a Children’s Museum type place. I’ll probably take Dane with too – shoud be fun. Ryan’s class field trip is the same day to a different Children’s Museum and he is pretty disappointed in the fact that I am not driving for his class… but they had lots of moms sign-up in his class and Christian’s class needed drivers… Oh well… He’ll just have to survive – I can’t be two places at once.

It looks like it is going to be nice the next couple days, so Dane is working on getting dressed so he can go outside with daddy. It’s a little muddy from all the rain we’ve had the last couple days, so we’ll see what he looks like when he gets back in.

C-

Well, it was bright and sunny… now the storms are rolling in. It was 84 here today – so nice! We were outside a lot of the day, although, I finally had to come in about 1:30 – I was getting hot in my black sweat pants! We had to enjoy it as it is supposed to be cooler now for the next week or so. Matt is nice and sunburned (I warned him but he didn’t care to listen and of course now is whining about it) Dane got a good dose of sunscreen, but I missed his neck, so he got a bit of sun there. Ryan and Christian are still out there playing and Dane is in the bath, but he was pretty mad I made him come in first. Matt planted all his peppers outside in the garden and when we got in I pulled out my seed packets from last year and they said 5/6, so that was pretty funny – we planted on the exact same day as last year. We’re a bit further behind this year as I still haven’t bought all the seeds, I guess I better get online and do that tonight. We’ll see how the plants I bought at the nursery perform. They got fertilized yesterday and should get a good rain the next couple days, so those that were a little droopy will hopefully perk up.

Yesterday we went to Jewel-Osco (the big grocery store – about an hour away) because they were having a big sale. The had General Mills cereal for $1 a box (if you bought 10) and then in the cereal aisle they had coupons for $.75 off two boxes… So they ended up being $.67 a box! They had a similar deal on Fiber One Bars, Nature Made Granola Bars, Betty Crocker Fruit Snacks, and Pop Secret Microwave Popcorn. They had some other good sales too, plus I got a few essentials. At the check-out we had 106 items for $115! The bottom of our receipt said we saved $198. HMMM, I would say that was worth the trip! (That and we will have enough cereal and fruit snacks, and granola bars, and popcorn to last… well who knows how long! LOL) It’s so nice to have a big pantry area to store all that stuff! What’s even crazier is that our 4 freezers are completely full to the max between sales and the 1/2 cow and whole pig we bought. We’re set for quite awhile I think!

Matt just took off down the road in his lawnmower LOL I wonder where he is going…

It was progress report day on Friday and both boys had pretty good grades, but both of them said “too much talking in class.” So we had a little chat and I asked them to try really hard to not talk too much when they aren’t supposed to. So after school Monday I asked them how it went and here were their responses… Ryan “I didn’t feel like trying not to talk, so I didn’t try.” UM… hello, it’s not a choice – STOP YOUR TALKING! LOL (He is starting to really develop an attiude lately that we need to work on…) and Christian “I did great, I didn’t raise my hand once. ” LOL that totally cracked me up. So we had a conversation about the difference between talking when you are supposed to and when you are not supposed to… I guess I’ll have to check with their teachers to see how it’s going.

So tomorrow I help with hot lunch at school and have an evening meeting with the Parish Education Committee at church. Thursday we are setting up for our garage sale (at my friend Holly’s house). Friday I have computers at school in the afternoon (only 2 more times – yea!) and we have pre-marital counseling in the evening. Saturday we are having the garage sale. So that is the plan for the rest of the week. Then the boys will only have 3 weeks left of school! EEK! Although, I am kind of looking forward to having them home for the summer. Then I’ll have a 1st and 3rd grader – Wow! Dane is very ready for pre-school as well, I’m pretty sure he will have a great time! He’s growing up so fast!

Well, I better finish up the bedtime process and get some dishes and laundry done (the never ending chores.)

C-

Hi there! We did return from vacation last week alive and well, I just haven’t had a chance to update. We had a great time. The hotel room was clean and beautiful, the waterpark had activites in various areas that all three boys enjoyed – there was the baby area for Dane, the kiddie area for Christian, and the big slides for Ryan. Ryan really wanted to go on the waterslide roller-coaster, but each car had to have a combined weight of 115 pounds and Christian and Ryan together are 110. Matt couldn’t go on it because of his nose, and I couldn’t because I’m pregnant (and because I hate roller coasters) so Ryan was kind of bummed. Finally on the last day he met a friend and they went on it 11 times straight. LOL The place was not crowded at all – it was great. The only downfall was A.) It was pouring out pretty much the entire time we were there – which was fine as everything was inside, but we were hoping to add on some extra activities that included outside places such as miniature golf, go-garts and a DUCK (those land to water car things) ride, but we weren’t able to do that because of the rain and B.) The Wisconsin Dells is pretty much a ghost town in the off-season. Most places that were indoors weren’t open. Oh well, we still had a great time and for sure we would go back. The only way we would do it is the all-inclusive plan – their food is expensive! We added up and we ate $460 in food and the trip was $500! So for sure the all-inclusive was worth it. Of course if we didn’t get that we would have eaten elsewhere and the room and waterpark would have been cheaper, but I think we still would have spent about the same and the food was really good and convenient, so we think we made the right choice. The resort is a bit out of town so we would have had to drive back and forth to town to visit other restaurants.

We have had our share of storms the last week – par for the course for spring in IL. I got my new strawberries planted, but need to head out this afternoon to get the new raspberries, lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower planted. I bought those a couple weeks ago, so I guess I better get on that. Matt is itching to get his peppers in the ground but he really needs to wait until it is at least 55 degrees or higher each night, so he has a bit longer to wait.

So let’s see – last week was a bit busy.

Tue. I got my hair cut – FINALLY! Looks and feels much better! (Well, Matt would debate that it looks better, but I think so… he likes it long.) I also worked all day on Monday and part of Tue. on the National Day of Prayer Service for Thursday that I was in charge of for church.

Wed. I cleaned a bit and made cookies for a school meeting Thursday (that I was also supposed to be in charge of, but I haven’t perfected the science of being in two places at once yet… so I handed that off to someone else.) We also worked in the garden Wed. evening.

Thursday, Matt had a nose follow-up appointment, and then after school Ryan had an eye appointment. He has been complaining for awhile that he can’t see things far away, so I finally took him in. Turns out he needs glasses – big time. His prescription is -1.25 in the left eye and -.75 in the right. So he should get those next week – $400+ later (that includes the exam) – UGH. He better not lose those! Then we dashed off to the grocery store for a few things, dashed home, scarfed down dinner and dashed to church for the prayer service.

Friday I got up early and made lunches for my friend Holly, her little boy Carter, Dane and me. Then I hauled the kids off to school (Oh guess I made them lunches too), and Holly, Carter, Dane and I went to a big community garage sale about 1/2 an hour away. The weather wasn’t all that great (one of those stormy days I mentioned) but it was so much fun to go do that. It reminded me of my days in MN when my friend Andrea and I used to do that almost every weekend. I got some clothes for the boys & baby, a couple xbox games for Matt, a free disposable razor for me (the kind I even use), and probably the best buy – a Hungry Hungry Hippos Game that the boys LOVE – that was the best $1 spent. They have had so much fun with that. The kids had a half day of school, so Matt picked up our boys and Holly’s older son so we could have a bit longer to shop. After we got home, I was tired, so we went out to dinner and did my deal finding shop at CVS. (which is like a little drug store – like say a small Rite Aid) They are generally more expensive, but through www.refundcents.com and www.thegrocerygame.com I find excellent deals there. Then another HUGE storm rollled through – the one that hit Alabama with all those tornados, so we dashed home and listened to the emergency weather radio.

Sat. – We went to a really fun auction. Auctions are pretty big out here, but I have only ever been to one other one – which was pretty boring – it was mainly tools and such. Anyway… this one was fun! It the liquidation of a Ben Franklin store that had gone out of business. We came home with a car load full – all for under $100. We got office supplies, a ton of birthday cards, a huge box of wrapping paper for $5, yarn/knitting kits, toys, toys, Matt got some tools, shoelaces, fans matt wanted for the garage and I’m sure more I am not thinking of. It was a lot of fun. The downside was we were there standing on the cement ground for almost 6 hours so my poor pregnant feet were quite sore when we got home. However, it was fun and the boys even behaved most of the time, which is pretty good, because it really was pretty boring for them.

So, I think that is a pretty good update of the happenings here. The boys have 4 weeks left of school and they are done for the summer! It will go fast I’m sure!

C-