31.5 weeks, Updates and Pictures

It’s been a crazy busy few weeks.

Let's see...

I went home to Michigan for a few days and saw friends and family for the surprise baby shower Seth had planned!  Two families that I used to babysit for when I was a teenager were invited, but unfortunately, they weren’t able to make it to the shower. I still saw one family though and we hung out till almost 1 AM! It was awesome. We all cried when we said bye. I hate seeing their little broken hearts when I leave. It kills me. Each of the girls (13 and 8) picked out a gift for our new baby that would remind us of them whenever we used it. The older girl has had a little blue elephant since the day she was born that has a blanket attached to it (it looks more like a cape with an elephant head. That might sound weird and creepy, but it’s actually a really cute toy). Anyway, she has taken that thing with her everywhere since she was born and still sleeps with it now, even as a teenager. After not being able to find a replica for our baby, she settled on a little blue elephant teether toy! If our baby doesn’t automatically like it, I’m going to force it upon him until he loves it! I’m kidding. Sort of.  The younger girl LOVES soccer and picked out an orange soccer outfit. Seth also loves soccer so this was a perfect gift. Also, I learned while I was in MI that when Seth was younger, he would only wear orange colored clothes, so it was even more appropriate :) We got a lot of gift cards and I only had to mail back a few boxes of stuff. I went shopping and got the baby a lot of Detroit Tigers baseball clothes per Seth’s request. He’ll be decked out for the end of the season and hopefully the Tigers make it to the play offs this year!!!

I think the baby liked the plane rides; he was very active on the flights! He’s only 7 months old (in my uterus) and he’s already been on a plane to Michigan twice! He’s a little traveler already! Seth splurged on the seats with extended leg room, and they just so happened to be right in front of the bathroom, which was an added bonus. They were really good flights (minus the first flight where I was seated next to an off duty flight attendant who was on stand by. He was a jerk…I was texting Seth as we started pushing back from the terminal that we were getting ready to take off and the guy asked me if I knew I was committing a federal crime by continuing to text after they said phones needed to be turned off. I told him yes, and he shook his head no at me, and then continued to read my text over my shoulder. Then I silently cried because I was mad at him. Ironically the on duty flight attendant who was seated directly across from me didn’t seem to care at all and didn’t ask me to turn off my phone).

We started painting the nursery last weekend. We’re going with two colors – a dark bluish/turquoise color on the bottom and a light blue almost gray color on the top. The colors match the bedding and it’s going to be sooo cute once we get it done. We’re going to put chair railing in the middle to separate the colors (that's why it's all uneven right now). Hopefully we can finish up the painting this weekend. We just settled on which crib we’re getting, so we’ll be getting that this week or next weekend. I’m excited to get furniture in there and start washing his little clothes and making it look like a REAL nursery!

Since I have yet to post a picture of myself, here you go. This picture is from last week when I was 31 weeks and 2 days. I can’t believe in about 9ish weeks, he’ll be here. It’s CRAZY to think about.  

These two are crazy together. Patrick stands underneath Woody and pretends he's one of those little Russian stacking dolls, and Woody tries to move every which way to get him. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. We're working on training Woody right now; he's developed some not so great habits that need to stop immediately. They love each other though.

Seth planted gardens in our backyard the other weekend and they're doing really well! The dogs were getting into them and digging stuff up so we had to get the little fences to keep them out. We have a bunch of stuff: lettuce (a few varieties), spinach, carrots, red onions, celery, garlic, brussel sprouts, lots of different tomatoes, bell peppers, a few types of squash, carrots and jalapeno peppers (I think that's all of them!) We also have two blueberry plants and one thornless blackberry bush. They're in planters behind the gardens. We also have tons of blackberry bushes coming up along the bottom of our fence. Hopefully they produce lots of fruit this year and we'll be able to can some.
     

(ever since he was a puppy, he's loved "working" in the garden. and by "working," I mean "digging")

And because I'm obsessed with Mt. Rainier and take pictures of it ALL the time, here's a pretty picture from today. Ahhh, I love it so much. The last several weekends we've had great weather. I LOVE it. It makes me look forward to the summer, big time. I can't wait- it's definitely going to be the best summer yet  :)

On being homeowners

We're homeowners now. I've had better experiences. We bought this brand new house so it should be in tip top shape with no problems, right? Wrong.

Friday, Seth was over here doing stuff while I was at the old house working. He came home (to the old house) and told me he had some not so great news. He was putting an anchor in the wall to hang the blinds in our bedroom and the anchor came out slimy. He knew that meant wet insulation. Great. Wet insulation on the insides of our walls. Hello Holmes on Homes!!! So I've been dealing with that. Yesterday they were here for a good hour, today they've been back for pretty much the whole morning. It also annoys me big time that I was told they'd get here yesterday between 9:30 and 10:30 am. They come strolling up to my door at about 8:45ish. I was working, so I hadn't showered yet, no make up, no bra, teeth unbrushed. Great. As much as I want this fixed ASAP, I want them to give me accurate times of when they'll be here. Same thing today. A guy was going to come today to inspect the roof for leaks between 9:30 and 10:30 and the boss lady was going to be here between 10:30 and 11 to see what he found. She got here at about 8:30. I was in the bathroom, shower was on, I was naked and Patrick starts barking his little head off. Grrr. I threw on clothes, answered the door and she asked if it was OK if they looked at it now. Sure, why not. So...two ish hours later, bigger holes in the dry wall in our bedroom, she finds more soaking wet insulation, roofer checked out the roof and says nothing is wrong with it, he checks the attic and checks all the vents...all look fine and dandy. She was going to call a siding specialist to have him check the siding and said that would be done tomorrow. Seth had duty last night and was up 30+ hours and laid down in our room to sleep because she said the siding guy would be here tomorrow. About 30 minutes after he goes to bed, there's a knock on the door and it's her again with the siding guy. Seriously? Seth got up and went to the spare bedroom to sleep and there are no curtains in there yet and it's bright as hell in there. Poor guy. No leaks have been found (yet) and they're continuing to look for where the problem is coming from. I'll be damned if I have mold growing on the insides of our walls in a brand new house. Here's a picture of what our master bedroom window looked like this afternoon after they did their stuff. The wet insulation has been removed (and has been contained to this one area) and now the wood is drying out behind it.

Patrick LOVES the backyard though! He literally gets a huge smile (with his huge underbite) when he runs all around. There is a ton of mulch in the backyard and he tears it up back there. And since he's short, he kicks it up and he is covered in mulch in no time. And we have big gaps under the fence so he can easily sneak out (which he's done), so we can't leave him alone in the backyard yet. We bought chicken wire stuff to lay across the bottom of the fence, but he's a digger and has already sniffed out the neighbor dog and they both whine and stick their noses through the fence to smell each other. We were going to do railroad ties along the fence to block the holes, but they're expensive and we'd need quite a few. And it's been cold and very rainy and windy the last few days which make standing in the backyard while he runs around quite miserable. We need to do something with the amount of mulch too; it's on a steep slant that is a little too steep to grow grass (and mow it), so we want to put in terraces, but again, we're budgeting for this, along with all the baby stuff we need to buy.

We ordered blinds Friday night and I'm hoping they get here ASAP. My parents are coming up for spring break in early April. The blinds are supposed to get here on April 5th and my parents will be here April 4th. And they don't rush order blind orders. Perfect. Hello tacky sheets in the window until the real stuff gets here. Painting is done, but we still have touch ups to do (and the baby's room), and all of our stuff has been moved in. We still have to go back to the old house and clean it, which we're doing a few nights this week and this weekend.

So needless to say...being a home owner is time consuming and expensive. Welcome to adult hood, I guess.

House Hunters

We’ve recently decided to start searching for a house to buy in the area. Lots of things are impacting this idea of ours and we’ve been looking online at all sorts of houses in our price range. We applied to see what we could pre-approved for earlier this week and we’re still waiting to hear back. Last night, we drove by a house we saw online and realized the neighborhood was ghetto, run-down, dirty and just gross. There was trash on people’s lawns, lawns weren’t taken care of, the houses just looked dirty and old and we decided hell no.

We were close by another really nice house we had seen online and really liked but saw that there was a back up offer on it, but we decided to drive by anyways. It was in a gated community and we couldn’t remember the address, but we decided to drive around anyways and see if we could find it. Sure enough, we did find the community it was in! And the gate was open! We walked into the office right around 5 pm and it looked like the lady was closing up. Another guy who worked in the development was walking in at the same time and said we could come on in and we started looking at the community map and the plots of land. Seth pointed out the biggest lot and said it’d be an awesome one. We started talking to the lady and she said that they did have a few available houses that we had been looking at that we could tour. And one of them was even on the lot that Seth liked on the map! We hopped in our cars and followed her up the street to the house. It’s safe to say we fell in love with it pretty quickly (it’s a 4 bedroom + a den/home office, 2.5 bathroom, 2 car garage, large back yard, master bath with a walk in closet). It was pretty much everything we were looking for. We have an exceptionally large kitchen right now, with an island, that we love. The kitchen in the new house is a bit smaller, I think, but it might just be the layout. There isn’t an island, but I think we could easily make it work. We also currently have a pantry, and there’s a pantry (albeit not as big) in the new house.  We back to the office and the lady asked if we wanted to make an offer/write up a contract. We made an offer on it (which includes all of the closing costs include, a new refrigerator, a landscaped backyard (right now it’s just dirt) and a wooden fence to finish off the backyard.  I got an email last night at 10:30 from the lady (I’m not sure if she’s considered a realtor, she just works for the property development) that said our offer had been accepted!! We applied for the loan online to see if we could get pre-approved for the amount that we need. Even though she asked us if we wanted to write up a contract, to take it off the market to other lookers, I didn’t want to do that if we can’t get approved for the amount needed. I really don’t think we’ll have a problem, but I don’t want to tease myself. Ok, honestly I’m already in love with the house and it’s already a tease and I’m going to be very very sad if we don't get approved.

Right now, we’re anxiously awaiting a call back from the lender. We have an appointment tomorrow to go back and look at the house in the daylight and write up a contract, assuming we get approved. The lady also put early March as our possible closing date, assuming we get approved. The backyard would be perfect for Patrick too!! There is a little hill in it that he would love to tear up and down and roam free. There is a big flat spot by the back door that would allow for a hot tub too! It’s a house we can definitely grow into and we really want it.

Here’s to hoping it’s ours soon!

Oh, and P.S. Patrick was with us last night when we went on this adventure. The lady invited him into the office after we toured the house and she fell in love with him  (he’s a charmer, what can I say?!) When she emailed me, she addressed it to Seth, Stacy and Raymond!!! She called PATRICK Raymond!!! So today I’ve been calling him Raymond and he doesn’t seem to mind.

Here’s a picture of RAYMOND!!!! He also goes by Ray, for short.