day 25 - houses and squeezes

Do you remember the drink, Squeeze-Its? Well, I've given contractions a new name, and that's it. Today I had about 30 contractions, plus or minus a few. Perhaps it was all the driving around on bumpy-hilly roads, or it may have just been one of those days. Not painful or anything, but more like a numbing, squeezing feeling. Hence the rename, "squeeze-it!" Whoa. There's one! 

Let's begin. After a run to the post office (Aubrey, your little birthday something is in the mail now!), we drove to University Place to look at houses. The houses were nice, but we really loved the forest-y feel around the neighborhoods. 

Then we drove down to the Proctor District in Tacoma like we did yesterday. Mark and I had to see the houses again. I wanted to start the pictures off with my FAVORITE house of the day. It has a bit of a Snow-White feel, doesn't it?? I just want to move right in and start cleaning (but I peered into the window on the bottom left {from the car, of course!}, and there was no needed cleaning or decorating in this home. It was perfect! Wood-paned walls around fireplaces... so dreamlike). Look at the stained glass on the bottom right. AH! The front door... the stone...

Here was my second favorite. A little bigger, and still very charming! All of these homes, by the way, are about $500,000+ of any budget we'll probably ever have (b/c of location and views)! But a girl can dream! 

Such a quaint little sea-side house. I really liked it:

This home seemed a little colonial, and pretty roomy:

I liked this house a lot (about half of it is missing on the left side... we were doing a drive-by shoot). It reminded me a lot of my Gma & Gpa Barrett's house in Bellevue. If it were painted white, it would be a match:

This was Mark's favorite of the day. He even gave it a fancy little Chateau-like nickname:

After our Proctor-District drive, we came home to a delicious BBQ prepared by my pops. I don't know how they've actually lost weight since being here... they've certainly helped me gain a couple pounds!

The french bread Mark and I picked up in the Proctor District:

Salmon filet from Tacoma Boys:

Petit Filets from Tacoma Boys... making your mouth water?! They were so perfect:

After brownies and lots of ice water (I've been so thirsty!), Mark and I took the "5 Mile Drive" through Point Defiance Park. So beautiful:

We are leaving to go back home to Alaska tomorrow. We're sure glad it will be green when we get there! Alaska in the summertime is Heaven...  Ah! Another squeeze-it! 

day 24 - ikea run

We hadn't expected to go back to this place, but we thought that we might as well! I checked availability on the queen bed we were eyeing for our guest furniture and it was in stock this week. Unfortunately, there is no friend with a trailer here this week, dang it! We're crossing our fingers Mark has a trip to McChord so he can throw it on his jet. That would be ideal. 

So anyhow, here are some of the things I liked. I am looking for some shelves with a heavy weight bearing capacity for scrapbook paper and other crafts I can organize on downstairs. I saw these! They don't quite match with what we have downstairs, but I was happy to know that there are things like this out there:

Check out this huge mirror! I like it:

We are considering a rug to put under our kitchen table and possibly under our coffee table to stop the wear on our house's carpet. We'll see if and from where we get one.. the price tag is in the picture to help me remember:

I have a table top from Ikea that Mark uses, but it has no drawers. If I could take that table top desk downstairs and use it for sewing or something, then Mark could get something like this with drawers and shelves. This desk also comes in black-brown:

The color of the baby's room is a warm, calm, muted forest green. I think I'll be able to put lots of different colors in there with that green. I saw these lights and thought "how fun!":

But here is a safer color... just in case. I don't know what sorts of lights I'll get for the baby's room. I know I'll need some soft, quiet lights that I can turn on for night-time visits, so we'll just have to see what I find:

And the reason for the visit to this museum-of-a-store. We now have the complete bedroom set that I had been hoping for a while back on my house blog. Hurray! I'm so, SO excited to have it all set up and finished. Once the basement is completed... hopefully soon: 

Last night in the wind storm, my dad's two huge hanging plant pots fell off, so I helped him find these huge hooks in the children's section of Ikea. We had needed these honkers for kid swings at our first visit. How are they working out, Steph and Lisa?! I think they'll work well for these plant pots:

My dad doesn't have maple trees, but there were twigs and leaves, and flowers from every other house on the street all mixed together in everyone's yard. It was sure windy last night:

For dinner we went to JoSeppi's Ristorante. We had to order this cake again! It seemed even BIGGER than last time. I didn't know that was possible. Between all of us, we still couldn't finish it:

Lindz, I thought of you when I saw this textured art painted to resemble somewhere in Italy. 

We then drove to the Proctor District in Tacoma so we could look through a couple of boutiques. We found a baby-blessing outfit and saw lots of other fun things. I'd have pictures, but I only had my little purse-camera. People are always more hesitant to let you take pictures when they think you're just trying to copy merchandise. When I have my bigger camera, they say, "take all the pictures you want!" OH well... But here is an old theatre they still use. They only play 1 movie/weekend, and it's only $5. What a fun place:

One of the couple pictures I took while in one of the boutiques. Look at this chocolate! Here is where I found "flipper slippers" for the little guy. They are little green frog-foot slippers and are so soft! They are for 3-6 months, so it will be before he walks, dang it, but they will be so funny! 

Tonight Mom and I watched Monster-in-Law and laughed our heads off. My mom and I love girl-movies and girl-shows. We tried to find old episodes of Gilmore Girls, but found none. I'll have to watch it when I get home! Along with the last season of Alias where she's pregnant herself. Oh goodness this pregnancy is coming to an end so quickly. 

Mom told me to pace myself when I get home and set aside one small project a day. This way I do one thing every day to get ready for the baby. Whether it's buying one packet of onesies, of diapers, organizing, or choosing out fabric for the crib. I'm getting excited. It's all becoming more real; especially after being given so many cute things. 

week 30

*please excuse the hair! It was very windy. Other pictures were even crazier.

Really it's 30.5, but who's counting? I mean to take my "belly pictures" in the morning, but today it didn't happen. This huge belly got even larger after an entree salad for lunch(finished in its entirety), and a 2 entree plate at Panda Express for dinner(finished in its entirety). So. Perhaps the 32 week picture I'll look even smaller. Here's to hoping.

things to note: 

Mr. Reeder, Jr. can be ferocious when moving. Today I thought he was tearing apart something important in there because I kept holding my stomach (being able to feel his foot straight up) saying, "ooww! owww!! owwww!!!" Mark was a little concerned. But then it stopped, and I think I might have an internal bruise. Seriously. Oh 9 more weeks. hurray! 

When I asked my nurse practitioner about contractions (this was 3 weeks ago at my last appointment), she said a full bladder can bring those on. That made perfect sense. Even now, if the little guy jumps (yes, I'm an indoor trampoline) on my little balloon in there, I will get a contraction because it simulated a full bladder! How weird is that?! All these funny things I'm learning. 

I'm sure there's many more, but I'm getting a little sleepy.. tootles!

day 23 - collage day

Today's photo collage began here:

Where we met Brian, Melanie, and little Matthew for lunch:

(Aubrey, I'm loving these clothes!)

Then we drove back home through Tacoma, saw some neat old buildings:

Then found the house my parents almost bought:

This afternoon was another sweltering one, but mom and I still walked Buckwheat down to the park. Who else loves how ivy looks?

Though Buckwheat can't be taken off the leash anymore, he could still conquer the tires, thanks to a little help from my mom:

It's a pretty old park, but nice and clean, with an old neighborhood charm:

My mom has always loved to place flowers on things... including little boy dogs named Buckwheat:

Why do potentially great pictures turn out blurry?? Probably didn't help that I was behind a window... but still!

Some inspiration for my Uncle:

Sunset, through a window (made it look even darker):

It got so windy tonight!! After years of hating, and despising the wind, tonight I decided I like it when it is blowing in a storm in the evening. I love stormy evenings!

day 22 - dog day of summer

Buckwheat got a lot of fun in today. After 5 bowls of cereal (is THAT how you gain baby weight? yes. oops.), we headed here to Owen Beach:

My mom 'saddled him up' and I walked him down to meet and greet the water. 

He won't get in a bath tub, but he'll get in big bodies of water. Here he's sniffing around.

•this is one of the cute shirts Aubrey gave me. I love it!

I'm so sad these pictures turned out blurry. We tossed stones 

into the water so he'd think there's something he could catch:

Although you can't see it, he has the cutest swimming face. 

He looks like a little sea-otter:

We'll have to try this over to get some better shots:

When we got home, my mom gave him the dreaded bath. 

He escaped when I opened the laundry room door, and we had

to coax him out from under my parents bed

with a ring of the doorbell. The oldest trick in our book! 

We went to Anthony's for lunch. This time I ordered Cod Fish and Chips.

My WTE emails say Cod, Trout and certain other fish 

have high levels of DHA, which is important for 

brain development this last trimester.

Apparently. 

Lucky for me they were delicious! 

Anthony's has some fun lights (a jellyfish!):

After lunch at Anthony's, we drove around town:

across from the gas pump:

Then crossed the bridge into Gig Harbor. We drove around looking at all sorts of fun houses both in Gig Harbor and in Tacoma and Ruston. I'm hoping to go back to get some pictures. We were going just barely too fast to get any:

Then tonight, while I watched Sailboats:

Buckwheat watched for the neighbor's grey cat:

Mark took some pictures:

And we watched the sunset with my parents:

It was one hot day here!! But it was beautiful, and fun, and filled with family. We still miss having Tessa here with us. But we got to talk to her today and laugh at her funny stories. Happy June 3rd!