23 Weeks

Today I'm at 23 weeks. I'm still feeling pretty good-no complaints. I haven't worn maternity clothes yet, although I know it's coming soon-I'm having a problem with shirts being long enough now and my pants have been held up with the rubber band trick for awhile now. Most maternity stuff is still a little big on me, but in the next few weeks I'm sure I'll make the transition. I think I've popped again this week-I had a few patients at work finally say something so I know I must be showing now. It amazes me how people make comments just assuming you're pregnant. Instead of asking, they just say "so when are you due?" It makes me want to play along like I'm not pregnant just to see the reaction on their face! I just would never have the nerve to say something like that to someone just in case they really aren't pregnant. I'll never understand people I guess! Here are my pics from today:

Welcome Baby Connor!

My girlfriend, Jessica, gave birth to her first baby yesterday-it's a boy!! You may remember I went to her shower last month. Her due date was either 2/15 or 2/20-the ultrasound said one date, and based on her last cycle was the other date. She had emailed me over the weekend a few times telling me no progress but that she had a doctor's appt. scheduled for Monday. Well, Monday around 4pm I got a text message from her that she was in the hospital and baby was on his way. I didn't end up hearing from her again until Tuesday around 11am! Apparently she had a c-section around 3am. I still have to get the details, as she wasn't scheduled to have a c-section. But anyways, Connor Spencer was born around 3am weighing in at 7lbs 3oz and 20" long! Here is a pic that she sent out today:

Welcome to the world little guy and congrats to Jessica and Kevin! I can't wait to meet him-hopefully next weekend!!

We Have Walls!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm happy to announce that we have walls in our back room :) You may remember our demolition from last week which took things down to the bare bones. Well, last week they worked pretty much all week on the new drywall-ceiling, walls, and mudding and taping the seams. It took them all week to get it close to being done. Today (and tomorrow) they'll be finishing the mudding and sanding of the drywall, then they can put up the molding soon after that. Here are some pics of the progress:
Ceiling showing recessed light:Ceiling drywalled:Facing the driveway:Facing the backyard:
Mudding and taping of drywall:Jerri checking things out:Facing the neighbors (notice the one window is gone):Facing the front of the house:Ceiling:New electrical wiring:
Still a work in progress, but at least it's progress! Oh, and people have asked how it is living in this-we're not really. We moved as much out of that room as possible into our front living room. We brought down a TV from our bedroom and put that in our front room also. So, instead of living in this room, we're living up front, which we never do. It's very cramped because of the added furniture/clutter from the back, but we're getting along ok. I can't wait to clean the house though-it's a filty mess from them tracking stuff through the house. It'll be nice to be back to normal in a few weeks!

Baby Registry

Gabe and I went to register for the baby yesterday. We decided to register at Babies R Us and it went pretty well. I was partially excited about it and partially dreading it-mainly because I remember how long our wedding one took us to do. But I did save us some time and got some very helpful tips from a book called Baby Bargains. My sister-in-law, Molly, recommended it to me so I bought it a few months ago. Let me tell you, it's very helpful. They review every major purchase you'll make (mattresses, cribs, dressers, car seats, etc) and give you their recommendations, or the best bang for your buck. They get their reviews from parents who use the stuff every day-thousands of them email the book company and that's how they come up with their recommendations. Anyways, it definitely was a time saver-I book marked a few pages in the book and in the back they have a sample registry that basically gives their top choice for each product. We basically picked out most things based on what they said. And I have some wonderful friends and family who gave their input as well. We ended up being there about 2 hours-not too bad I guess. I've been adding a few things online here and there as well-but I'm finding their website to be very unuser-friendly. Seriously, do I need to click on 10 subcategories just to look at cups? There has to be an easier way! But I'm glad the chore is done, or mostly done at this point!!

7 Months!

Today we've been married 7 months! I normally would put a picture up to honor the day, but my CD of wedding photos is buried in our house rubble somewhere. And frankly, I'm too lazy to look for it and dig it out! We're creeping in on our one year anniversary-it's funny to think at this time last year I was counting the days until the wedding and now it seems to be going so fast-sometimes you just want life to slow down!

My Car is Back!

Gabe noticed at least 6months ago that the hood of my car was a little messed up-the paint was bubbling off of part of the hood-not good! When I went for an oil change at the dealership, I showed it to the guy. He said it looked suspicious, but of course the manager needed to look at it-and he wasn't there that day. I tried stopping by there 2 other times and the manager wasn't there either of those times either. So I went for my car inspection last week and made sure he was going to be there that day. He checked out the hood and said there was a definite problem with it-most likely rusting or something wrong when it was manufactured. The good news? It was covered by warranty. The better news? They were replacing the entire hood! Not just buffing it out and repainting it, but taking the whole thing off and giving me a new one. Apparently they've never seen anything like this so they were going to send my hood to Toyota to have it analyzed! I dropped my car off on Monday and have had a loaner car since-they just happened to give me another Prius-newer model but very basic. After a few days, I missed my car. They called today to say my car was done so I went and picked it up-looks brand spankin' new! And I'm glad to have my own car back :)

Holy Demolition Batman!

We recently had a new project started in our house. In the back of the house we had a family room (many, many years ago it used to be a garage) and it's been something Gabe has been wanting to change since he moved in almost 8 years ago. So, last Monday, the guy we found started the demolition of the room!

Here are some pics of the room before:

Facing our backyard: Facing the neighbors (moving counter-clockwise around the room from above):

Facing the front of the house:Facing the front of the house/driveway:Ceiling:

These pics are after day 1 of demolition. Above our drop ceiling was another ceiling that had some recessed lights in it. Here the insulation is still in as well. These pics mirror the above ones, starting facing the rear of the house and moving counter-clockwise.

Facing the backyard:

Facing the neighbors:Facing the front of the houseFacing the front of the house:Facing the driveway:

These next photos are what the house looked like after Friday (5 days of demolition). The second ceiling was removed, and all new insulation was put in both in the ceiling and walls. All of the old insulation was completely removed and replaced, new electrial wires were ran, and some recessed lights were put in.
Facing our backyard:Facing the neighbors:Facing the front of the house:What was a closet:Facing the driveway:Today, they started putting up the drywall in the ceiling and part of the walls-we didn't take any pictures of it yet. I'll keep posting as the project progresses-they said about 2-3 weeks of work time. One week down, maybe 2 more to go!