32 weeks

Work it! Work it!

Taken on Sunday by my "snappy husband." 
32 weeks! 

knock-knock

I was just watching this belly of mine, and I saw a 'double-punch.' It seemed like the little guy was knocking. Knocking for what? maybe some salad? some french fries? some freedom? 

I'm not sure, but I get excited thinking about what this little boy will have in store for Mark and myself. While sitting in church on Sunday, Mark told me how he's excited to teach him that "Buckwheat loves funny, short stories." I think Mark is just thinking of ways to set this boy up so Mark is laughing all day. 

That is fine with me. Laughing in the homes means a happy home! If this little boy is half as funny as Mark and his brothers were as little boys, then we will have the strongest abs on the block. That's fine with me, too. 

Another thing I'm looking forward to is getting back into shape; toned and healthy. And small again. I liked feeling small in stature next to Mark. Now I'm not so sure I am! At least my shoulders haven't swelled, and he can still put his arm around me in church! ha

Feeling this boy jump and cart-wheel around makes me hurt and sore, but as I told my Grandmother yesterday, it's pretty funny when I push back on his little feet or knees. Mark pushed back on his little foot yesterday and the baby pushed back even harder! It was so sweet seeing Mark's eyes get all small and squinty from his smile. 

...I love these boys.

six mile chalet

Friday night was the squadron's "Captain Promotion Party." There were quite a few 1st Lt.'s pinning on Captain around the same time. Mark and I drove two cars so I could drive home and get to bed early while he stayed to help with clean up. He told me to follow him closely, not get lost, and what I should do if I did get lost. I thought he was teasing!

But this place took a lot of windy driving to get to. It was nestled so far from anything I've been to on base. It took about half an hour to get to, so I thought we'd hit ocean soon! There were all sorts of sea planes and lakes around the 'chalet.' I'm already thinking of when I can go back to get pictures. It was beautiful!

I'm glad I followed Mark; this map is not very detailed (for the wives, at least):

jewels ... almost?

Here's a piece of jewelry I made for my friend Aubrey. It doesn't seem like nearly enough compared to what she did for Mark and myself and what she gave me when we met up. But I loved it so much that I made a 'replica' for myself. 

a new look

I just changed the banner, and colors on my "mjsheavenlyhome" blog. I love the fresh, light look! The banner is one of the pictures Mark took of the broken coral on the beaches of Diego Garcia... you know, the other name for a heavenly paradise! So here's smiling at a new look for the "M & J's Heavenly Home" blog. 

house quilt

Here is my square-design for the latest quilt project. We are all supposed to design a square and make 16 of them. Then we all swap and have a house of everyone's. As you can see, I chose to do a cabin to remember Alaska by. It's not done, but here it is so far. 

I think I'll add some swirly smoke coming from the chimney and a window. Some of the other quilt squares I've heard of/seen have been: 

- a bird house

- a gold fish bowl

- an igloo with little penguins

- a beach hut with palm tree

- a mushroom (this square may have changed...)

So while I'm hand-quilting my middle-eastern-themed quilt, I will be working on this quilt as well before the little guy joins us in the next couple of months.

good medicine

This morning I woke up at 7:52 after a dream about having a migraine, canceling my brain surgery because of the migraine, then being chased by the crazy surgeon, then being unconscious for 8 hours, then waking up walking down a road being met by a worried woman in a car. She was nice and helped me get home. That was my dream. 

The morning proceeded with a strong headache during breakfast, then at 10:00 when Mark left for work (he had a check ride today so he got to go in later) I fell asleep for 2.5 hours. 

I had lunch with potato chips and cherries for dessert. 

Then my vision started to get a bright fuzzy spot to just the right of where I was trying to focus. 

Here it comes! 

When the blurry spot faded to a ring around my vision, my head began to ache!! And ache it did. 

I willed myself to sleep until 4:00, then woke up and stood up slowly. 

Mark called at 7:00 on his way home and told me he passed!! Hurray for good check rides! I told him about my hurtful day, and he brought me home a drumstick. 

Thank you, honey, for the good medicine. I feel good! 

should I blog this?

Remember on "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" where she creeps him out by showing him pictures of their future kids?? 

Well....... 

We took this picture of me: 

And this picture of Mark:
And this is the result. HOW CREEEEPY, right? It's a pretty good mix, we think. But so weird!!
Kinda looks like a cousin of mine mixed with a Lipnicki. "Ain't life like a bowl full of cherries?"

Mark says I have to add this to this post:

"I loook heeedieous"

home again

Last night we flew in at 8:30, found Buckwheat in baggage claim, didn't find one of our bags in baggage claim (guess it wanted to see Ketchikan instead of Anchorage), got picked up by some fabulous friends, squinted into the sunlight and drove on home. 

When Mark checked the mail as I crashed on the couch, he brought me back a surprise from this place: 

My diploma!! I wasn't expecting to feel any different, but I do!! I'm sorta proud of myself:

This morning, Mark gave me a reason to be proud of him. He drove off to work as a captain. I snapped this as he was getting ready. Nice hat, eh?

After waiting until noon for some basement workers (never came), I decided to start my day off with some serious grocery shopping. Buckwheat is sad, I think he got attached to my parents a bit, so I brought him along to cheer him up. We don't know why, but he loves car rides (even in his boo-box!):

Driving home I saw some of Alaska's outdoorsy types:

Noticed how green it is:

Saw the Alaskan pine-trees that remind me so much of Dr. Seuss trees. What do you think?

Then I went outside to our backyard. Besides the Amazon-grass, I noticed the green-belt has turned green!! And there are some beautiful wild flowers back there too:

Buckwheat must have felt like a panther in our jungle:

Sadly, for Buckwheat, Mark cut the grass tonight so our house looks lived-in:

Before:

After:

Can't you just smell the fresh cut grass??

So summery!

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!