Matt turns the big three oh! (And we get new floors!)

I had wanted to throw a party for Matt but he was against celebrating him turning 30. Not so much he doesn't want to turn 30... but rather he thinks it's not that big of a deal and definitely doesn't want to draw attention to himself. (oh, how differently we feel about birthdays!) So following his wishes I didn't plan anything. Looking back now, I'm so glad we didn't -- Matt's birthday weekend ended up being a bit of a mess. First neither of us were feeling well -- Matt was sick last week and then I was sick over the weekend. It was a headache / sinus pressure / congestion type of sick and we pretty much both just felt miserable.

But the other reason why it was a mess is because my birthday present was finally set to be installed on Matt's birthday. That's right - the year long hunt for new floors is finally over! I had been slowly working on clearing out the office to make way for the nursery, but last weekend (9th-10th) we really focused on emptying it out. Then during the week and throughout the weekend, we cleared EVERYTHING out of the main floor and moved it to the lower level or garage. Saturday night we had almost everything moved and went out to Flying Mango to celebrate Matt's bday with his parents, my parents and the siblings. (Just thinking about Flying Mango now makes my mouth water - so good!)

  

Happy 30th Birthday Matt!



On Sunday my parents came over and helped. Matt and my dad ripped up all the carpet (family room, hallway, 2 bedrooms) and pulled up 2 layers of linoleum in the kitchen. Apparently best practice says that you should pull up linoleum before placing down a new layer, but the last homeowners bucked the trend. So unfortunately for the boys they had an extra layer to scrap off, but fortunately for me, it was fun to see what the original floors looked like!



Original floors

I tried to capture a few pictures of all the craziness that was going on, but the pictures don't really seem to caputre how chaotic or messy it really felt. Maybe being 7 months pregnant just made it feel more chaotic and messy in the moment.


Garage -- plywood to go under the new floors, the pile of old carpet, temporary storage for our furniture



 

our "master" bedroom



empty nursery



A glimpse at the chaos in the basement



Oh - I forgot to mention... we decided to paint all the doors and door frames white. Matt took all the doors off their frames and applied 2 coats of primer to them and to the door frames. Then when my dad was there on Sunday he helped apply the glossy white top coat. In case you're curious, in the hallway we have 2 closet doors, a bathroom door and 2 bedroom doors and then there is an accordian door in each bedroom --- so 7 doors in total.



Dad applying the glossy white coat

Despite the craziness, we were able to get everything done prior to Matt's 30th birthday when the installation guys showed up! Matt spent his birthday supervising the crew, putting his feet up and keeping Gable calm. We found out from the install crew that the bedrooms aren't level and would either require a contractor to come in and level them before they could put in the pergo floors, or we could put in carpet instead. So when I got home from work, we went out to dinner in Ames at Old Main Brewery and then picked out new carpet. It's amazing to me what a deadline can do - It took us a LOOOONG time to pick laminate flooring that we liked, but because we HAD to make a decision right away about the carpet, we were able to pick one in an hour. haha!

Here's what we selected -- Very curious as to how it will look when we see more than 3 inches

It's still feels chaotic in the house since the bedrooms are awaiting carpet and we're sleeping in the basement. It's also super dusty because the bedrooms just have floor boards and every morning I track dirt/dust from that room (need to get to the closet) into the hallway which spreads throughout. Plus they made some of the flooring cuts in the house so there's pergo sawdust still lingering. Matt still needs to install the base boards but without futher ado... here are the new floors!!!  

Siblings

A couple weeks a go we finally had a warm(er) day and Gable got to meet his half-sister Emma! Gable and Emma are from the same breeder and share the same dad but they are about 18 months apart in age. We met Emma back in December, a couple weeks after Cody and Ashley brought Emma home, but it was after Julie and Mike's ugly sweater party, so Gable hadn't met her yet.

It was so fun to see them interact together. Can't wait for the next family get-together!

Valentine's Day

The words 'romantic' and 'husband' will never be paired together when describing Matt. There are times that I think it would be nice to have Matt 'sweep me off my feet', but when he knows me so well, I really can't complain.

Oh Gable...

Such a silly dog!

Nursery Mood Board

After weeks months of consideration, we decided to go to go for a grey / yellow / teal theme for the nursery. (And when I say "we" I really mean, I decided and then told Matt and he didn't have any objections.) It's fun but still neutral enough (hopefully) that we won't have to repaint the room when we decide to sell. Here's my current mood board.

 

I have gone around and around on this... but I finally made my first purchase today so now I'm somewhat committed. I bought the yellow zig-zag (chevron) fabric to make curtain panels and also a crib skirt. Thankfully my mother-in-law can (and likes) to sew, so she's going to make those for us. And depending on prices I might ask her to also make some teal crib sheets, a pouf/ottoman, a changing pad cover and also pillows. More to come!

Nursery Design Brainstorming

You know how some girls have been planning their wedding since they were little -- that most definitely was not me. But I have been thinking about babies for a long time. One of my favorite girl names was "discovered" back when I was in high school because it was the name of a baby at the YMCA nursery where I worked. While I'm not willing to share the names we're considering for our little bundle of joy - I will share some of the ideas I've been mulling over in regards to the nursery.

Gender Neutral
As I've previously mentioned, I always thought I would wait to find out (again something I probably decided in my mind way before getting pregnant) so throughout the years I've gravitated towards gender-neutral nursery themes. And when I say themes, I really mean concepts instead. I don't want a bunny theme or carnvial theme, etc. I want it to be more eclectic (mostly because I don't think I could commit to a theme and it will end up eclectic anyway). The soft, calm, quiet, neutral nurseries are so stunning but because I don't think I could keep that vibe going, colorful is more my thing. Thanks to Pinterest there is lots of colorful nursery eye candy. Here are a few that I pinned...

Source: goo.gl via Christine on Pinterest

Source: ohdeedoh.com via Christine on Pinterest

Source: chiccheapnursery.com via Christine on Pinterest

Source: embellishmentsstudio.com via Christine on Pinterest

Source: babyletto.com via Christine on Pinterest

You are my Sunshine
Back in February 2011 I did this quick post on art that I want in my baby's nursery someday. While I love the bright colors above -- I do like the vintage / muted / restful vibe that this picture invokes so I'm going to do some compromising to make the nursery work. I've already got Jackie thinking about creating something similar to this for me. She just needs to see the rest of the nursery to know how to make it fit in.

Rocking Chair
My Grandpa refinished lots of wood objects and rocking chairs were one of the most popular. I'm not sure if it was on purpose or by accident, but they accumulated so many rocking chairs at my grandparent's house that each of us grandkids gets one (plus they have more to spare). Here is the rocking chair that I received and want to incorporate into the nursery. (It had a home in the downstairs den for awhile so ignore the background.) Just add a few pillows and I think it will be comfy enough (and if we decide later that we wish we had a glider in the nursery - no big deal. We can just buy one then and use this in other rooms where we won't be rocking in it for hours on end.

Giraffe

At the end of December Matt introduced this giraffe into the mix. In all honesty it has kind of thrown me for a loop. His grandpa made it for him and then it was in his sister's room and then got sent off to his cousins in Cali. Given the sentimental value, we're obviously including it and we can't really change it (like painting it white). When he showed it to me, I started wondering if maybe the nursery should have a giraffe or animal theme. I've seen some cute fabrics that have giraffes on them - and elephant ones too. But as I said I'm not really into it being too much of a theme. So I guess we'll just throw this in to the eclectic category and call it good.

 

So that's where my head has been at... there's just so many decisions to make and I keep going around and around so I haven't actually made any decisions yet. Hopefully soon...

Vacation day!

I used my first vacation day since starting the new job in October on Jan 4th! (Even though I have PTO time to take, it's weird to take it now knowing that it's "stealing" time from baby later this year.)

We started off the morning with a doctor's appointment. Around 20 weeks they do the ultrasound where they check the baby to make sure they are developing properly and if you want, they can typically tell you the gender. Because of Christmas, I was actually at 21 weeks + 2 days for my appointment. After lots of discussion we decided not to find out the gender. It was a split decision - Matt wanted to know and isn't into surprises at all and I kept going back and forth about finding out. I've always thought I would wait, but the temptation to find out is pretty strong but I really want the surprise - for me and for telling our family and friends. I knew if we did find out we wouldn't be able to keep it a surprise from family and friends so that helped encourage me to convince Matt we should wait.

The ultrasound was really neat. It was a huge relief to finally see the little one growing inside of me. Everything they check for medically at this appointment was just as it should be. The baby had its hand up near its face so it was a little more difficult for the ultrasound tech to get the profile and face pics but we got a couple to bring home with us.I did find out that I have an anterior placenta which means the "thick" side of the placenta is near my belly button rather than my spine. It's not a big deal, but it does mean that we won't be able to feel the baby's kicks as well as we would have with a regular placenta. While it's kinda a bummer, finding out was mostly a relief. People told me - oh you'll know when you feel the baby. But I've been feeling movement since Christmas but wasn't sure if it really was Baby (which made me nervous). Doctor said that my questioning is typical - whew.

After the doctor's appointment we did some window shopping for floors (nothing purchased yet) and then drove over to Iowa City. We got to hang out with Stacy and Maya before heading to an Iowa Wrestling meet. I never thought I'd be someone to get pumped about wrestling, but weirdly it's actually a really fun sport to watch (maybe because Iowa is/has always been good makes it more fun). Plus trips to the Carver Hawkeye Arena mean ICE CREAM CONES. Such a delicious tradition. After we watched Iowa win the meet we went over to our new favorite IC hangout - BackPocket Brewery.

We stayed the night in IC (actually we got "upgraded" to a room with a jacuzzi tub because the tv in our original room didn't work) and before heading back to Huxley we stopped at Wendy and Kyle's new home. It was fun to compare pregnancy notes with Wendy and I was totally jealous of their custom built home. Love their floorplan - especially their master suite!

Hello Maya!

OT - Hawks get the win!

Love BackPocket's stone-fired pizza!

Checking out the fire pit at BP

Seriously... smiling for the camera isn't so bad Matt.