Hammock and Birthing Ball

Our baby's hammock. Here are the promised pictures of our Amby Baby Hammock.


I am so excited. I already talked about how I have been practicing with George, well I am not the only one. The other day I caught Randy practicing. It was so cute. Too bad I didn't have the camera on me. Randy is going to be such a wonderful father. I was thinking that we had some time to get started on prepping for the big day, but not my sweet hubby. He was too excited, so he went and got Dreft (just in case baby's skin is sensitive like it's father) and he washed and folded all of the baby's clothes while I was at work. He was still working on getting them put away when I got home and he had that "I'm going to be a Daddy" glow to him. Randy is already so head-over-heels for this baby.



Many people have been asking me how we are decorating the baby's room. Answer: we are not. Baby Swann isn't going to get a room, Baby will get a corner. The baby's corner...

Don't worry, we are not that naive. We know that as soon as the baby comes, baby's corner will turn into baby's room (that we just happen to be sleeping in too) which will turn into baby's house.

In other cute Randy and baby related news, Anita (my friend and dula) suggested that I get a birthing ball. The very next day, Randy ran to the store and purchased a birthing ball for me and to keep himself in the game, one for him.

Randy using our balls to exercise.

What we've been up to

Because it is late (hey I get up between 4 and 4:30am), this will be quick. I will post again soon with pictures okay:). Last weekend was our baby shower and it was a blast! One of the biggest and bestest surprises was my mom and sister driving down from Utah to surprise me and spend the day with me. I nearly cried I was so happy. I love my family!
Lately Randy and I have been spending a lot of time on Ebay buying cloth diapers. A surprisingly large group of people make all in one (meaning no cover or pins needed) diapers and sell them on Ebay. I have already purchased about 38 diapers (roughly 3-5 days worth). I am getting more used to and okay with the idea of cloth knowing that we will be using the all in ones rather than having to figure out how to fit a squirming baby into a folded diaper, secure the diaper and get a cover on.
In other baby news, the Amby Baby Hammock arrived today! It is what we are using for the baby to sleep for the first 9 months to year. Here is a link to the Amby Baby site if you don't know what it is.. http://www.ambybaby.com/. I put it together as soon as it got here. It only took me 15 minutes including the time to find the stupid wrench. Randy really needs to organize his shed (well it is partially my fault because I more or less threw all his tools out of the house because they were EVERYWHERE, okay so it is all my fault. Definately playing the hormonal because of pregnancy card to get out of that one). I love this hammock. I even practiced putting a baby in and getting a baby out of the hammock with George (my baby doll from when I was a two-year-old). Pictures to come.
Randy has been up to school school school. He only has 2 weeks left of this semester, whoo-hoo! Today he got the last of his homework, etc. done. All he has left to do is keep studying for and then take his finals.
Okay, I'm off to bed. Maybe Randy will get pictures up tomorrow.

My Cousin Susan

Last December, my cousin Susan entered into the next life after battling with cancer at just 25 years old. In Susan's memory, a fund was set up to help cancer patients to afford treatment that they otherwise would be unable to received. Another of my cousin's, Anna, has decided to run marathons to help raise money for the Susan Mortensen Turley Fouondation. She plans to run a marathon in all 50 states. She has a blog set up all about her marathons http://anna-marathon50.blogspot.com/ . She is looking for a sponsor for each mile that she runs. Kudos to Anna and the great example that she is.

-Sarah

New Windshield

On our way home Thursday we got chips in the windshield from tinee tiny rocks flying off of a semi or being flipped up by a semi. Two of those chips quickly turned into chips larger than a dollar bill. Did you know that if your cracks are smaller than a dollar bill you do not have to get your windshield replaced. I find it odd that the smallest rocks caused such great damage when the windshield has been hit many times by larger rocks that did nothing to it. Anyhow the cheapest place I found out of the ten businesses that I called and were opened on a Saturday and did same day replacements was Tony's Auto Glass. The experience was great and I recommend them. They were about 40-75 dollars cheaper than the other places.

It is interesting that the smallest things in our life can often cause so much trouble. Especially when we are often hit with much larger adversities that we can bare easier than the smallest. The gospel of our Savior is a wonderful thing. We are given the tools necessary to bare these small burdens that we might make it thru this life. We are even given the opportunity to repent and become clean once again. This gospel is true and I love it. I can not imagine myself anywhere else in the world and remain as happy as I am.

-Randy-

Spring Break

Because all of my classes are in Flowing Wells buildings, we have absorbed their schedule, thus, this week was spring break for me. YIPPY!! It so happened that Sarah had three days off in a row as well. We decided to take this opportunity to go visit family in Phoenix/Mesa area, also referred to as "the valley." We stayed with Sarah's Grandmother Tuesday night. Being the week before Easter we went to the Easter Pageant on the Temple grounds.

Sarah and her Grandmother at the pageant

It finished at about 9:30 so we got home late. We went to bed at about 10:30. We had promised Grandma to show her our blog and save it in her favorites so that she could access it whenever she wanted. The next morning after returning from breakfast, we showed her how to do it. We had to help her figure out what was wrong with her Internet, turns out you have to push a button on the laptop in order to sign on to the internet.

Showing Grandma how to do something, I think we were in her email at this time.

We both did not want our pictures taken again, thus I stuck my tongue out hoping to deter her from taking it. Plan backfired, Sarah liked this picture.

We had lunch with one of her Aunts and Uncles and then proceeded to Goodyear to visit my brother. Sarah watched our nephews at "Little Gym" with my sister in-law while my brother and I walked around and talked.

Tyler

Turner

Tristan

Oh no, looks like we have another Adam in the family. (Adam does not like his picture taken.)

We love our nephews and enjoy the time we get to spend with them. They never seem to think that it is enough time, but we do what we can do. After "Little Gym" we took everyone out to eat at Olive Garden. The boys were so exhausted by the end of the night that the two oldest fell asleep or started to fall asleep before we left the restaurant.

While waiting Sarah pulled the I'm pregnant card and got us all bread sticks. Tristan enjoyed them.

Before we returned Home Thursday afternoon, just in time for our appointment at the Birth Center, we played around on the teeter-totter.

I hope you enjoyed the videos, I did not know that Sarah did these, I thought she was taking pictures, which she did. I weigh so much more than my brother that we put two of his boys on the teeter totter and it was a lot closer. I still weighed more. It was a very fun trip and we enjoyed ourselves immensely.

How to get your Garden to grow!!

Are gardens like a watched pot? Otherwise, if you are constantly watching your garden does it never grow? It certainly seems like it. Our garden has been growing for about three weeks and as of Tuesday morning they were only two inches tall. Because we were leaving fro a few days we saturated our garden with water the night before. When I say saturated I mean it, we ran the soaker hose for about an hour and then we ran a sprinkler on it for about another hour. We did not want it to get dry and burned while we were gone. Upon our return we found that our garden had grown several inches while we were gone. Thus, to get your garden to grow, saturate it with water. Then leave town for a few days. :)

Looking for Ideas

I don't know what we will have our baby call it's grandparents. Although grandma and grandpa or grandmother and grandfather are fine, I kinda want something different. Any great ideas or names for the soon to be grands?

How to fit a garden in a Kia?

VERY CAREFULLY!

It also requires multiple trips. Our first trip was to the brick yard to pick up some cement blocks to help us build up the garden. Then we headed to Lowes and bought about 50 cubic feet of dirt and some cedar chips and Randy stuffed all of that into the back of our Kia. The tires were an inch from the wheel well. We literally couldn't have fit one more bag of dirt into the car, talking about good guessing on what our car could fit on my part. I did get a little nervous that we wouldn't be able to get everything in as the car started to fill up. Upon arriving home, Randy put the bricks up and we started to fill our new above ground garden. After getting the dirt and such ready for planting, we took another trip to Lowes and bought seeds, tomato plants, a strawberry plant, and a rhubarb plant. We excitedly scurried home and started to plant our hopefully new area of plenty. So far the seeds are coming up great, we have even had to do some thinning recently. We have bush beans, zucchini, snap peas, watermelon, carrots, lettuce and spinach growing, along with the plants. Chonkiri has already gotten himself in heaps of trouble over the garden. All he wants to do is get into it and dig up the plants and eat the dirt, so we had to build a fence as well. It was my idea to plant flowers in the cement blocks around the garden.

More on the big belly brigade

To start with, I better show everyone what they really want to see. Here is the baby at 27 weeks. Click on the picture for a bigger view. I wrote in explanations for you because it is kinda hard to tell what everything is. And no, we still don't know if it is a boy or a girl. The ultrasound tech stayed away from the nether regions for us. Only 9 more weeks until the due date, so you onlyl have to wait a little longer :)

Here is me and the belly at 28 weeks.

The belly and me at 31 weeks (aka today)

How to get out of bathing the dog

I decided that the best answer to this question would be to finally get some updates rolling on the blog, thus making Randy happy (since he likes me to be the blogger), but more importantly getting me out of having to bathe the dog :). Muhahaha.

Since we are on the topic of the dog, here is a cute picture of Chonkiri from last month. Poor Chon was lying on the couch and he looked cold and kinda pathetic with his cute puppy eyes. So I wrapped him in a blanket and he curled up and slept all cozy-like. Such a cute puppy.

I so got the better end of the deal doing this blogging. I just heard Randy yelling, "no, no." I am a little scared to see what sort of trouble Chon is causing. Yea for blogging!

Continuing on... Chon has decided that he doesn't like all of the pricey toys that we buy him, his favorite toy is...

Yes, that his a bucket that one of our vines came in. He will play with the bucket for hours. He wears it on his head and runs around the back yard with it. He pins it down and growls at it. He also will throw it in the air and chase it. Our neighbor came over a while back and watched him play and said "so that is what he keeps doing." I guess the neighbor was very confused with all of the banging and growling. Yep that is our goofy dog.

Baby Shower

Randy has been getting after me forever for not posting. I have a good excuse and all I have to do is look down to remember that excuse. I will try to post a bunch later, but for now I wanted to extend the open invite to my baby shower. Samantha Licurse is throwing a shower for our little bundle of joy on Saturday, April 18th at 10am. She is so wonderful! I am so blessed to have such a creative/talented/loving cousin/friend. Thanks again Samantha! She made the CUTEST invite...