My mom watched West so Paul and I could get some time alone together this last Thursday afternoon. She's got all kinds of fun things to do over there, but my silly little cutie had a blast washing his car and watering every plant in their yard!

Yes, that is a Little Mermaid watering can :) Hey, what he doesn't know can't hurt him!

They ended the night with a cupcake! I think, loosely translated, this means "Give the cupcake to ME grandma!"

First things first tho!

He's such a cupcake-happy goofball :) I'm glad he had so much fun, and slept so well that night! Thanks Mom for some quality hubby time, Paul and I had a great time together on our date. I love getting one-on-one time with my best friend :)

Catch up

We are getting closer and closer to baby girl's arrival- less than 3 weeks!!! This past week has been a frantic race to get essentials done (allergy safe food for West, washing necessities for baby, packing) because little girl seems a bit more ready to make her appearance than West was at this point. With him, there were zero early contractions and he did the big drop only just before his due date. I saw Dr. Morgan this past Wednesday and baby has dropped and is in position for birth, and I'm having quite a few contractions daily. We are praying she stays put until the scheduled surgery date, but if not we are a lot closer to being ready for her arrival and West's 4 day stay with my parents than we were a week ago.

But I'm a bit behind on posting current events! July 16th our small group had a baby shower for us, planned and directed by my wonderful buddies Elle and Lauren. Everything was sooo beautiful- they matched our "nursery" colors in all the decorations. I loved it!!

I'm sorry about this picture Carrie, but it makes me laugh every time I see it!!!

Thanks friends for such a great shower and fun girly gifts! And thanks 'Manders for taking the pics for me :)

The next day we "ran away" for a few days of much needed family time. We spent 3 days and 2 nights in Bend, staying at the Shilo Inn on the river. This would be the first real trip we've taken since our honeymoon. Wow it was wonderful :) The room was great- much bigger than we expected and the hotel had a big hot breakfast for it's guests every morning!

 The view from our room- there was a family of geese and a couple of swans that swam around right under us. West quacked at them whenever we went out on the balcony :)

Snuggling after his first swim in a pool, while Daddy watched the World Cup (we don't have actual channels on our TV, so this was pretty cool!)

High Desert Museum

We met a very friendly little chipmunk :)

Bald eagles- they are big birds!

Fun playground

Chasing Daddy in the rain- it was actually a warm, nice rain!

Our super cool ride :) We rented this bad boy in the old mill district and spent an hour riding beside the river- sooo relaxing. I love biking and miss it a lot in my current balance-challenged state!

(I feel a little like Jabba the Hut in these pictures- too bad I didn't realize how unflattering the shirt was before-hand!)

We did a lot more (swimming pool, fish hatchery, West's first time getting to eat a restaurant dinner), but were too busy playing to take pictures most of the time! I loved having a few days of relaxing fun, getting to do whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted together as a family.

Briella's bedding!

(We still don't have an official spelling, I just thought I'd try that one today :)

Yay!!! We have a computer now, and it actually works!!!!! I'm a little excited. 

Alright, here are the promised pics of baby girl's bedding (I am a little ashamed of the photo quality involved here, I'm still not used to our "new" camera).

Here is the "before" of our pottery barn bumper.

And the "after"! 

A close up of the quilt

I am very pleased with the final product, it looks nice with our lovely new brown coverlet :) I got that addition a little early- it was supposed to be our anniversary present to ourselves (as the one we were given as a wedding gift was not doing so well), but my awesome friend Elle called me when she found the one I was waiting for on sale! Yay for great friends and nice husbands :)

Now a little survey- we have the middle name for our daughter narrowed down to the top three.

Joëlle 

(We may spell it Joël to simplify)

Belle

Rose

Both Paul and I like all three, but after months of consideration we are no closer to an actual decision and are wanting some feedback from other people. Which is your favorite?

Unexpected Blessing

Well, the bedding is done, the crib is set up, I’m very pleased, but I can’t share it! The reason is a mix of trial and unexpected blessing that I wanted to share-

Paul is super close to finishing school, 3 weeks or so until his actuall classes are over. During the last year and a half that Paul has been in this super-accelerated online program  we have lost 3 laptops. One was a “lemon” and spent more time getting fixed than at home during its final year. The warranty eventually replaced it. One was my macbook, which was an awesome computer that gave us no problems. But even in it’s low-maintenance loveliness it could not stand up to a glass of water poured on the keyboard by our 14 month old. The third and final laptop was the replacement for Paul’s original. It was never the best of computers, but recently it stopped turning on and we were in danger of losing all of Paul's work and his means of finishing the program. Phil Shultz was able to salvage what we needed (thanks Lord), but we were still out a computer and this one wasn’t going to be fixed or replaced for free. Poor luck with computers. Needless to say, we will soon be purchasing an external hard drive.

My parents graciously loaned us an old mac tower, and for now it allows Paul to continue turning in homework, but for numerous reasons (including being unable to upload photos) it is too old to work for the long haul.

So we ordered a new computer. Not something we wanted to spend the money we’ve been saving toward a house on, but God has already provided for this need and we’ll trust His timing on the house. We bought a mac desktop: the mini (for those of you who are curious, here’s more info). http://www.apple.com/macmini/
It’s small, which is nice, and a much better computer than what we’ve had.
Now the unexpected blessing: When we ordered the computer online we entered our card’s security code wrong. That, along with the fact that we don’t normally spend so much at once were reason enough for the card company to suspect our card was stolen and freeze all payments. Instead of a message that the computer had shipped, we were told the payment hadn’t gone through and the shipping was delayed.

But, that same day it should have shipped, Apple released a redesigned mac mini, and because ours hadn’t shipped they upgraded us to the new design (several hundred dollars more expensive) at no extra charge! A “God is funny” moment. If we had ordered a day later we would have spent several hundred dollars more. If we hadn’t made a typing error while paying, we would have received what we ordered and known no different. Completely out of our control, God decided to slip in a little extra :) Thanks Lord!

Home Projects

I really love our apartment. For all of the inconvenience of having only two bedrooms, very little storage, and no yard, I will really miss this place when we do move. Partially because we haven't let the fact that it's just an apartment prevent us from doing what we can to make it exactly the way we like it. Paul and I have been busily getting ready for baby girl's arrival in... can you guess? 5 weeks! That's like a month. Wow. Little panic attack just saying that :) Here are some of our recent projects:

Carpet Cleaning

While most people reading this are probably thinking "Um, great", I am super excited to have truly clean carpet. Weird end-of-pregnancy obsession. I love vacuuming right now too. Anyhoo, it needed to happen. What a blessing that Paul gets to bring home equipment from work (like a carpet cleaner!).

Oh so clean :)

All of our living room furniture was in the kitchen while Paul worked, and Westly had a blast doing the couch jungle-gym thing. It was a bit of a lengthy project, so I put a VeggieTales on the laptop to keep him busy. He's such a cute little bean :)

Bathroom

This is one of those little things I've been meaning to do forever. Over the past few months Paul and I have been memorizing the book of James together. I try to post a new set of verses every week or so in the kitchen and on the bathroom mirror.

                                                

Lovely, right? Now, it looks like this...

                                                

It's a little thing, but pretty makes me happy and now Paul and I aren't throwing elbows for mirror space :)

While we're in the bathroom, I also snapped a shot our new shower rod set up. The one that came with the apartment was dangerously loose (West pulled it down more than once) and drove me nuts because the curtain was constantly pooled around the floor. We decided to go for the curved, hotel-style rod. So much more space and light in the shower. I love it.

(Anna, I think we have the same shower curtain).                                             

Ok, enough of our powder room.

Bedroom

There will be a few more photos from here in about a week. The crib arrives tomorrow and will live in our room. A while back Paul and I found a solid wood (oak?) armoir on Craigslist for $85. I couldn't find anything new that was remotely comparable for under $200-$300. So wonderful deal, and perfect for storing baby girl dresses, clothes, and linen in our bedroom. But, sadly, it was... ugly. I wish I'd thought to take a pic of it when we brought it home. No handles or knobs on the doors and drawers, and the finish was too close to "poo brown" for comfort. But my awesome hubby and I teamed up with some paint (no worries, a mask was involved), a drill, and some hardware for a much nicer finished product.

                                               

I haven't decided whether or not to go the next step and distress it a little with some sandpaper. Any suggestions?

I am also quite proud of what you see on either side. Storage was really the biggest issue for having another little person live here. The dressers were $30 together at a garage sale, and the filing drawers are a hand-me-down from a friend. They had kind of an oakie-orange finish and black handles originally.

Ok, last one for tonight.

Living room

This, again, is kind of a little thing. Looking around our living room I began to feel oppressed by black. Black couches, black book shelf, black photo frames with black mats. Something needed to change but I like the contrast of the black shelves with the cube baskets and floral frames we have on them, and new couches are just not in the budget at the moment. We have what we have, and basically something needed to change for $0. I went to work on my picture frames. On one wall everything with a "real" frame got a coat of paint in the same color as the filing cabinet above to break up the monotony (you can't really see the color in the pics though). I added some color with scrap booking paper.

                                       

The whole "not level" thing would be a reflection on my photography talents, rather than frame-hanging abilities.

                                      

It's not a huge project, but I'm excited about it :)

Hoping to be able to reveal Breiella/ Briella's bedding set sometime next week.

(I'm thinking the spelling issues will be resolved when we finalize a middle name; whichever look best together. I'm also thinking the middle name may not be decided until we see her.)