And now we wait...

Three more days. Three more days until the three of us are four. Three more days until our little K becomes our big K and is no longer our only child. Three more days...

I've been trying to fill the time until Little Sis comes with craft projects, shopping, and lots and LOTS of doctors appointments. K and I made these cute snowflake sun-catchers that were really easy to do and not too messy. They definitely took more prep work than the actual craft but they look pretty hanging in the window and K seemed to like picking up handfuls of the cut little pieces of tissue paper and smashing them down on the contact paper.

She put pieces of double sided tape on the back and stuck them to the window wherever she wanted.

Next I made these little matching T-shirts for the girls. The shirts are from Wal-Mart (can you believe Target and Kohl's don't sell plain 5T long-sleeve t-shirts?) I bought Ultra-Hold Heat and Bond from Jo-Ann Fabrics and used some fabric quarters I bought long ago that I was going to use to make bunting out of but never did. I traced the letters in reverse on the paper of the Heat and Bond from stencils I had from my teaching days and ironed them to the six pre-washed and ironed colors that K picked out. I've never done an applique before and this was so easy and fun! I'm concerned about the letters fraying when I wash them which is why I got the Ultra-Hold versus just regular hold but so long as I get a few good pictures of the girls in them before I have to wash the shirts then I'll be a happy Mommy.

Wow, looking at these two shirts now in the picture, the little one looks so tiny compared to K's.

Lastly, we made a cute Welcome Home card for Little Sis that I'll post a picture of once the babe is born, IN THREE DAYS!!! So weird and crazy and cool and scary all at the same time.

Snowy Fun!

A week and a half ago when my parents were here visiting we had just a bit of snow cover, but any snow is fun for K. We all headed outside to play in the snow right before my parents my left.

I love this one of K following Daddy.

Daddy made the snowballs and K threw them. Sometimes at him...

But mostly at the poor innocent tree.

I love this one! Such a cute smile :)  I made her hat from this tutorial. I really
like how it turned out. It's made from very soft white and polka dot fleece.
I also made her a scarf and mittens that match and another set for my niece.

Yesterday we had a fairly decent snowfall (not quite enough to cover all the grass) but enough to make snowballs and a teeny tiny snowman. The weather was a bit chillier today though so we had to bundle up more.

I saw this idea of putting food coloring in a squirt bottle from this blog.
K really seemed to like it but our snow was so light and fluffy that it only
worked on the places that had been trampled by our footprints.

If you look closely right between K and Daddy you'll see the tiny snowman
the two of them built. Daddy did the snow part and K did the decorations.

And for those of you saying that there are never any
pictures of me in my blogs, here you go  :)

We wrapped up the afternoon warming up in front of the fireplace playing
on her MobiGo and sipping hot chocolate.  Ahhh, this is the life!

A Few More from Christmas (and some BONUS photos)

The weekend after Christmas my parents came down to visit. It was a really great weekend and K was SO excited to see them! She definitely played her share of games on Nana's iPad and gave lots of snuggles to Papa. Plus, they brought a whole car-load of presents with them and K opened every single last one of them (whether they were for her or not. Lol!)  We loved having them here and were very sad to see them go. Here are two cute pictures from that weekend:

Listening to the recorded Christmas book from Great Grammie and Grampie.

Hugs and snuggles for Papa.

And for a bonus, my Dad has been scanning his old slides of our family and happened to send over a few of me when I was K's age because he figured we would all get a kick out of them. I haven't had the chance to show K yet because she's asleep but I think she will find it wild to see Mommy at her age. Plus it's kind of fun to see some similarities between us. I still think she is a good mix of A and I but there are definitely some of my genes in that little girl. So here are three of me from 1979 (I'm giving away my age - yikes! Lol ;) )

I have a picture of K sitting on our stairs surrounded by all of her Build-A-Bears. I wonder where she gets that from? ;)

My brother was in this picture too looking super cute but I wasn't sure if he'd want that out there for everyone to see.

This picture was a beast to clean up. Those black dots were EVERYWHERE on my face and arms. Yay Photoshop!

Anyway, news on the baby front is still just "hurry up and wait" at this point. Most of you have heard that poor A is going to need back surgery. It was a rough day today hearing that news. As I was telling him, I felt so let down when I heard. I had been doing all I could to stay positive this whole time and trying not to worry and hoping that just Physical Therapy would take care of it so when I heard that the recommendation was surgery it was like all of the wind left my sails. Thankfully we had made dinner plans with some great friends of ours tonight and having them and their kids here really helped to take our minds off of it for a bit and just relax and enjoy some company. At this point all we can do is take it one day at a time so hopefully we can both remind each other of that because I know I'm going to need it and I'm guessing A will too. Thank God we have each other and such a great support system of family and friends. We are so truly blessed!

Christmas Pictures

Hey Everyone! I hope you are having a wonderful New Year so far. We're still dealing with A's back issues and between the two of us, we have some kind of doctor's appointment pretty much everyday except on Fri's. It's a bit annoying but at least no one can accuse us of not being monitored, checked, decompressed, and examined to the best of our abilities. However, even with all of that going on, we were still able to have a really great Christmas Eve at church and Christmas morning at our house. Here are a few pictures from our two days:

Daddy and K posing in their matching Christmas colors.

One of my all time favorite pictures of K.

Christmas morning. It was near impossible to get a picture of her before she started ripping into the presents.

Opening her green Fijit Friend, Sage. This is the gift she asked for from Santa so she was very happy to get it.

A very fun book she had wanted that she received from her Great Aunt and Uncle back in IL.

In other news... this past Wed. my doctor advised me that she'd like to induce me at 39 weeks (Jan. 20th). I asked her if it's because I'm measuring big or something but she said no, that it's because the baby will be full term and everything has gone smoothly so far and she just wants to ensure we have a healthy, safe delivery. And for that, I'm very grateful. However, that being said, when she did the exam to see how far along I am, she didn't seem to think I'd even make it to 39 weeks. When I got home from that appointment I decided I had better back the hospital bag now, just in case, and I installed the car seat. I still want to set up the Pack 'N Play (thanks Bro and Sis!) in our room and get the futon set up in case someone needs to stay over here with K while we're in the hospital but we have friends coming over Mon. so I'll wait to do that until Tuesday. I took down all of the Christmas decorations and today A and I will take out the tree. I know he's bummed about getting rid of it earlier than he'd like (he always jokes he would keep a tree up until March if he could) but we agreed that it will be nice to have the extra room back again before the baby comes. I have my next doctor's appointment on Mon so we'll see if I've made any additional progress since Wed. Hopefully I'll have the chance to make at least one more post from when my Mom and Dad were here to celebrate Christmas. In the meantime, here are a few ultrasound pictures. We've had another one done since these pictures but I haven't had the chance to ask A to scan them for me yet.

Christmas Paper Crafts

Merry Christmas, JAKS readers! I hope your day was merry and bright =D

I have so many super cute Christmas pictures that I'm going to break it up into several different blog posts. Plus I know when my parents come visit they will take a bunch more pictures so at least I'll have several posts to make in the next few days.

Today's post is about the various paper crafts I made to decorate for Christmas. First up is a large, 3-D six pointed paper snowflake. The tutorial I used to make it can be found here on Instructables. It's made from six pieces of standard copy/printer paper. In the original tutorial the author uses a stapler to connect the points but I used double sided tape instead since I was too lazy to get our stapler out of our craft box upstairs.

Hanging in the archway between our kitchen and our living room.

The next craft is a Christmas card holder. I used this tutorial from Kojo Designs based on her tea wreath. I'm not really happy with the ribbon I used but it was the only stuff I had around the house that matched. The original author used 24 clothespins but I only have 22 on mine to allow a little more room for each card. Last year I made this Christmas tree out of an old magazine and used it to hold our cards. They are both fun but I think I like the wreath a bit better since I can see the card faces easier.

I'm not sure how many years this will last but until it falls apart, I really like it.

Next up are the paper ornaments hanging in our bedroom window. The tutorial came from I Am Momma, Hear Me Roar. It's a quick and easy craft and the result is very pretty. I didn't have too many sheets of scrapbook paper in Christmas colors lying around so unlike the original author I only have two side strips instead of three on the big ones and only one strip on the little ones. They are hung with fishing line.

Please ignore the rain on our window.

The paper snowflakes are my favorite craft. These remind me of my childhood and I haven't made them since, well, I was a child. I wanted to make them more advanced so I used two different tutorials for inspiration. The first tutorial came from Instructables and the second came from How About Orange. I even convinced the Hubs to make half of the big ones and he is so amazing that he just came up with his on his own. There are two more big snowflakes and two small snowflakes on another of our smaller windows but I couldn't get a good picture of them. K decided we needed the small ones to represent her and her soon-to-born baby sister since she decided the big ones were me and Daddy.

These are on our front laundry room window.

The last two paper crafts are for K to play with. The first one is a printable nativity scene I found on How About Orange. K loves it! She continually gives me Mary (since she's the Mom) and she keeps asking me if she can sleep with Baby Jesus. I'm going to leave these out until they break. Perhaps next year I'll get an actual set she can really play with.

I had to darken the image quite a bit to get the faces to show up so our kitchen floor isn't actually brown, it's gray. ;)

The last craft is a tutorial I found on Make It and Love It. A little while back I found this set of Melissa & Doug stickers at Meijer and one of the pages has these little sticker dress up dolls that K really enjoyed and actually did a super job at dressing them up. So, when I saw the magnetic version I knew K would like them. It was a very tedious project that A and I did on Christmas Eve night. It was one of those projects that seemed like it would be quick but took a lot longer than you expect. It was worth it though because right after she opened it she was playing with them. The only problem we've encountered so far is that the heads on these dolls are very large and their necks are super tiny so the magnet on one of the necks has already cracked but thankfully the adhesive held so the head hasn't come off. I'm not sure how to remedy this situation since K uses the head to pull the doll off the fridge. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know!

The paper doll book and roll of self adhesive magnet came from Hobby Lobby.

I promise I'll post photos of the family in the next entry. =D

Weekly Meal Plan - Week 7

Monday: Ham and Broccoli Quiche

Tuesday: Spaghetti Squash with french bread

Wednesday: Broccoli Cheese Soup in bread bowls

Thursday: Lasagna with sauteed spinach

Friday: Mushroom Bean Burgers on pretzel buns with wedge salad

Saturday: Veggie Garden Pizza (make it up as you go along)

Sunday: Leftover Lasagna

And just for fun: Rum Cake

Smashing a snowball on Daddy's head.

Chilly Papa (at Chili's). I love how K's foot is up-turned.

Tight squeeze hug for Daddy.

Building a tower out of puzzle pieces.

Snow much fun!

Last night when we got back from picking up Daddy from work, K decided she wanted to play in the "deep snow" (as she calls it). Daddy was all too happy to oblige her. There was a LOT of running:

Kisses for Daddy

Icicles

I couldn't help myself

Nom nom nom

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

This lovely guy was one of 5 cardinals right out our back door.

Here are two more. They are just such a
beautiful contrast to the bare branches and snow.

Our pretty outdoor permanent Christmas tree.

Our indoor Christmas tree looking out onto
our backyard. Yeah, we don't have many
ornaments on the tree.

A Christmas tree made out of an old magazine.
I saw this idea at:Just Like Martha

I decided to use it to store our Christmas cards.

Christmas lighthouse.
I don't know why there's a pig and goat with the set.

The Pooh train

Ornament display

The reindeer, mini tree and adorable handmade reindeer from Sis

The stockings are hung by the chimney with care.

And the kloche's are delicious!

K really likes her new Christmas present =D

While she doesn't look happy, she's actually giving a "big smile"

She was so excited to see Santa. She ran right up to him, told
him she wanted Buzz Lightyear and gave him a kiss.
We were very proud of her!