New Rules & A Hat

We have a new rule around our house where Maddox can only have his pacifier in his crib. He's great about spitting it out in the morning and after nap when he's ready to get out of his crib. Every once in a while, though, he needs a "fix", so he asks to be put in his crib. He'll hang out in there for anywhere from 5-10 minutes chilling with his stuffed animals. When he's done, he hollers and he spits out his pacifier and I get him out. It's amazing how much they understand at this age.


On another note. I just finished another hat. I've switched to crocheting because I can make them much quicker and I like the stitches a little better. This one I made for Maddox's little friend Corban. This is his first time seeing it :-) (So, yeah, Molly, I need to get this to you before winter hits and I hope you like it!)

The Latest

The home inspection was completed yesterday and everything passed fabulously. We were hoping to hear from the buyer by yesterday afternoon to hear if she had an offer addendum to write up possibly asking us for some money to fix the driveway. Apparently, there are some surface cracks in the garage floor that are really bothering her that she wants to have looked at. We won't hear from her until Tuesday to find out what her addendum is going to be. Which means for us, that we still don't know if the house is sold for sure. Our close date is Sept. 10, less than 2 weeks away. Please keep praying!

We did go look at the townhouse we're hoping to rent and we love it. It has really high ceilings downstairs and vaulted in all of the bedrooms upstairs. It has a very different floor plan from any townhouse I've ever seen and love it.

Still waiting and praying.

Life

I feel out of control. Being so sick with this pregnancy has made it so difficult for me to do even simple things like cleaning up around the house. I'm still throwing up at least once a day and have general nausea all day long. Laying on the couch is my favorite place to be. I'm trying to accomplish little tasks when I can, like running a load of laundry and stuff, but it's tough.

We're still waiting to hear if we've sold the house. They were supposed to let our realtor know by tonight, but they didn't. Hopefully, tomorrow we'll have an answer. We're praying so hard that the answer is yes, but my heart feels like it's most likely going to be a no. Which, is discouraging because we haven't had a looker at the house in over 3 weeks. I'm trying to remind myself that God is in control, and he's going to take care of us, but I'm scared that we're not going to meet our financial goals we've dreamed so much about the last few weeks.

I'm discouraged in so many ways and want to just curl up in a ball and not come out for 6 months. Of course, I wouldn't actually want to do that because that would mean that I would miss out on 6 months of Maddox's life and my marriage and that would stink. I'm going to be okay, just frustrated right now.

Oops...

I officially did it, I locked myself out of the house today!

My day didn't start off great, Maddox woke up at 6:45am. Don't know why, he usually wakes up around 8 or so. Then, after taking a shower and stuff, I didn't feel good at all. I spent most of my morning vegging on the couch. Kyle called me at around 10am to tell me that he forgot some information at the church he needed me to go get (he's doing a youth event today) for him. I left through the front door and lock it with the knob behind me. I haven't had a house key on my key chain since we put our house on the market because it's in the lock box and I haven't found a spare key yet or made myself a new one. Typically, if I leave the house I go in and out of the door to the garage. I ran to the church and back, got home and opened the garage door. I had hands full of 25# child and a laptop, I go to open the door into the house and it's locked. We don't have a door or window into our garage from the outside, so we usually keep it unlocked. Here's where the exception came, Kyle wasn't home last night because he spent the night at the church with the kids, and in my paranoid state I locked the door.

Retard.

Oh, and I didn't have my cell phone, it's in the house charging.

So, I ran next door and borrowed their phone and got a hold of my real estate office and a nice man came over and opened the lock box for me so I could get my key. Of course, our Realtor had to be camping this weekend! Yeah, for living in a small town with nice people!

Our Big Monkey

Maddox had his 18 month doctors appointment today and boy is he growing like a weed! He weighs 25 1/2 lbs (just under 50th percentile)and has jumped from the 60th percentile in height to the 75th percentile in just 3 months! I knew he had a growth spurt not that long ago, but I had no idea that much!

I just switched Doctors for Maddox to save ourselves a 40 min. drive each way. The new one is just on the other side of town (1.5 miles away) and she's just as down to earth and I was really impressed by her. Yeah, for good doctors!

While the Dr. was examining him he didn't budge on the table, his arms were down and he was just frozen staring straight at the Dr. like "I don't know why you're pushing on my tummy like that but I'm sure you mean business, so I won't even try to mess with you." He looks fabulous, though, clear ears, straight legs and an all around healthy growing boy.

No Home Inspection Yet

It's been rescheduled to next week. Keep praying, please!

Yesterday Stunk...

bad.

My mom flew in for a short visit on her way home from her Alaskan cruise with my dad on Sunday. Yesterday, I woke up with the flu. Yes, I somehow caught the flu in August! I'm so thankful she was here, she was able to totally take care of Maddox and me all day so that Kyle could still work.

I seriously don't remember the last time I was that sick, though. I woke up at 4am with full body aches and a fever. I laid on the couch all day long and was in and out of sleep and threw up 8 times. Blah.

Thankfully, I woke up feeling awesome this morning and we were able to go out for a few errands. I found a twin bed for Maddox at a consignment furniture store (Kyle and I just need to go buy it and pick it up tomorrow)and dropped off a rocking chair to be consigned. Then, we went to JC Penny and had Maddox's 18 month pictures taken. He was really cooperative and the pictures turned out super cute.

Please be praying tomorrow, we have a home inspection at 1!

Funeral

For the last 2 weeks, the lead pastor at our church has been on vacation, putting Kyle as the only pastor in town. Kyle got put on funeral duty. Basically, if anybody in the church died, it was his responsibility to be there for the family and perform the funeral if they needed him. Kyle has never done a funeral before, so was a little stressed by the prospect. Last week, a 102 year old lady from our church died. We have never met her before, but before she went into a home she attended our church, so they asked Kyle if he would perform the ceremony. He graciously said yes, and is performing his first funeral today. He's very nervous, but I know he'll do great at it. It's just going to be a small funeral of about 40 people and a short grave-side service. Be praying for him at 11am our time today if you think to.

Of course, Kyle didn't own a suit or anything, so Tuesday we went suit shopping and found a great one at Macy's marked 50% off and it fits him WONDERFULLY! He looks stellar in it. He tried some other on at JC Penny's and they just didn't look as good, so we went with them one from Macy's. It's only a matter of time before he'll before performing his first wedding, too, so it will be good to have. The pants that came with the suit didnt' have a finished hem, so we dropped them off at a cleaners in town on Tuesday and she promised they would be back by 2 on Wednesday. Kyle stopped by and the pants are no where to be found. The lady at the desk was quick to blame everybody else for the mistake. Turns out the seamstress doesn't pick up on Tuesdays, so they weren't even picked up until Wednesday. Making it the lady who took the pants fault. We finally tracked down the pants this morning and I just got word that they are done (it's 9am.). Talk about a little bit of stress!!!

WooHoo! 10 Weeks!

So, I'm 10 weeks now! Yippee!!! Only a few more weeks until I should hopefully be feeling 100% again. Every day I'm feeling way better, though. I haven't thrown up in at least 4 days, maybe 5, I can't remember. Needless to say, not throwing up is accomplishing a feat in and of itself! It's funny, though, I didn't have 2 major pregnancy "symptoms" with Maddox that I have horribly this time around. I have to pee ALL the time and I can literally eat non-stop. I'm ALWAYS hungry. I didn't have either of those with Maddox. I haven't gained any weight yet, though! Yippee!

We've been watching lots of Olympics around here, at least the sports that we enjoy watching like beach Volleyball, the swimming finals and gymnastics (at least I enjoy it). The 150 mile long bike races, PALEAZE, waste of time.

Maddox is 18 months old tomorrow, I can hardly believe it. He's growing up in the quite the little boy. He really is quite a ham. Loves to play hide and go seek and loves to make us laugh. One of his favorite things is chasing me down with the hose outside. He doesn't talk yet, but I can tell he's storing it all up in his head and one of these days will start speaking in complete sentences. He babbles, but nothing is really coherent yet. He's also quite the little artist. He loves to sit in his high chair and scribble with crayons for hours on end. I have to keep pens and pencils up high or else who knows what he'll be coloring. In the car yesterday, it was his legs.

We were going to take a little trip down to the Bay Area, California (Kyle grew up there) to visit Kyle's dad, brother and family at the end of August. But, with the house being for sale and all we decided to hold off and rebook our tickets for November and we'll go down for Thanksgiving. Which, works out fabulously because Kyle's sister said she would come up from San Diego, too, so we can see her as well.

Alrighty, that's all for now. Nap time! For both Maddox and me!

Here's a picture of the sling I won! So cute!

This 'N That

My friend Cheryl had her 2nd baby boy yesterday! Congratulations!

Candice wrote about an interesting experiment she did last month with dish washing that I think you should check out.

And, my younger brother, Tyler, wrote a thought-provoking blog about caring for others.

Check them out!

I have my first OB appt. today with the nurse midwives at the hospital closest to us that I'm using this time around. The greatest thing ever is that I can go to my appts. in town rather than driving 15+ miles each way to see my other Doctor. Much more economical in my opinion. Plus, the hospital we'll be using is 8 miles away rather than 20+. Another nice thing about it is that it's called Women's Health Center of Oregon, so everything is designed especially for women and everything is so pretty inside. It's decorated all cutsie and is just so much more relaxing and inviting than a normal Doctor's office.

The Vehicular Mobile Dilemma

I don't like cars, nope, not one teeny tiny bit. They are a waste of money in my opinion and if America wasn't set up in such a way that you practically need to own one unless you're living in a very large city with awesome public transportation, I wouldn't.

Don't get me wrong, there are definitely things about them that are convenient. But, in most cases, they're just money pits.

We own a Jeep Liberty and have had it for just a little over 2 years. We've had terribly luck with cars in our 4 years of marriage and this is our 3rd main vehicle that we've own. We recently scaled back to one vehicle and I love it. I love that we are not only saving ourselves one car payment a month, we're also not having to pay for insurance and car repairs on it. Sometimes it's not always convenient, but we make it work. Kyle owns a moped that he rides to and from work when the weather is nice. That was cheap to buy, is cheap to maintain and gets like 40 miles to the gallon.

Okay, so here's the dilemma. We're having a second child in March and we only own a 5 passenger vehicle. So, once the baby comes, if we have 2 people fly in to visit us, we can't carry everybody in one vehicle. I just don't feel like "resetting" our car payment right now and we can't afford anything in cash that would reliable enough for us. I'm all about owning "newer" vehicles to alleviate a lot of unnecessary car repairs. Our Jeep is 2003, so it's 5 years old, so if we bought and sold, I'd want to buy something more like a 2005. But, that puts any type of 7 passenger van at around $12-14k on the low end for a decent brand.

Our Jeep will be paid for in 2 years, if not sooner if we decide to pay it off with some of our savings. It's hard to live without car payments, but I don't want to have car payments any more.

Ugh...I'm just ranting. I don't know what we should do. It's always such pain to deal with cars and I HATE dealerships. HATE HATE HATE HATE them! So, I really don't want to go there, which means everything would have to be independent. We'd have to sell our Jeep independently and then we'd have to find an independent buyer and sometimes that can be scary.

I don't know what to do.

Follow-up From Yesterday

I think this is a good follow-up from yesterday's video.



It makes me sad :-(

Life and a Cute Boy

Still sick in these parts. Overall, I'm feeling better throughout the day, but still throwing up almost every day once, first thing in the morning. Just thought you'd like to know. I feel really grumpy, a lot, though and I don't love that about me right now. Hopefully, it passes.

Here's a videos of Maddox for your viewing pleasure:

Fun Stuff

So, the Bloggy Carnival came and went again this past week and I won 2 totally sweet things.

Let me show you:

This is a $129.00 baby sling!!! Yep, and the colors are gorgeous and the embroidery is gorgeous. Everything about it is gorgeous and I'm so excited to use it when the baby comes! I won it from the blog This Mommy Gig.
Then, I won this organic baby onesie for the baby on the way. I think it's adorable! And, I won it from Little One's Baby Gifts blog.

This & That

I woke up yesterday feeling like I was getting a bladder infection. So, I had to make a Drs. appt. and go get it checked out. They couldn't tell me anything for like 3 days which would put us into the weekend, so she went ahead and wrote a prescription for me to start taking because it wouldn't hurt to just get on something before it turned into something worse like a kidney infection. I've only ever had one bladder infection before and that was when I was about 13 weeks pregnant with Maddox, so I guess that's just when I get them. Weird.

Today, I feel terrible. Almost like I have the flu. It's not been a good day. Oh well, I'll survive!