Pardon the dust!

Well, we're at 30 weeks. Baby is moving all the over a lot of the day and making me slow down just a bit. We've been in the midst of finishing the basement, one weekend at at time. My dad started by framing it in and my cousin came up last weekend to put in lighting and electric. He has a few little things to finish up, then the heating and cooling guy will come in and put in some vents to keep the basement warm. Next comes insulation, dad coming back up to do dry wall, a mud and taping guy will finish it up and we'll take it from there with carpet, painting, trim work, etc. This is all being done right now to create a new guest room as baby #2 is taking over our current one. So as you can see time is running short with baby getting closer to making it's way into our family.

With all that, I'm getting the baby's room prepped for some painting and other fun things to be installed in it's room. It's a bright shade of sherbert orange (which surprises some of our guests) but will be really nice when all the furniture is in and the elements have been painted on the wall. We felt the same way about Anna's room, but it all worked out really well. The baby's is getting a big tree like Anna's, some critters of various sorts, fun colored mirrors, an alphabet print and some script on the wall. We're going to swap rocking chairs in the room, so Anna will have the small black one and the baby will get the big wooden one (it matches better and we don't use the rocking chair for Anna much anymore). I have to freshen up the changing table with a coat of flat white paint and put together the crib. Anna's getting some mirrors in her room as well ( reusing our IKEA frames from back in the day) painting light blue with clouds. She's already seen the baby's mirrors and loves them. So that'll be cool. Much to do, but I'm finally able to get to it!

We also have some projects to work on for Christmas presents this weekend (more on that after Christmas of course) along with shopping for other family members. I've already started picking up things for Anna and Gary and have ideas for the most of the rest of the family. Which leads me to the Christmas Card. Gotta do that yet. It may be a condensed version this year as most of you read my blog and see our lives more indepth than a card can get, plus there's that time thing. :) Don't worry, it'll still be designed and not store bought. Christmas decor will go up hopefully over Thanksgiving break and we'll see how Anna takes to a trinket filled tree with sparkly lights. She listens pretty well, so hopefully not too many meltdowns of us saying no to her. Hehe. We're hosting Thanksgiving this year so that should be fun - never made a turkey before! But I can't wait for turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie! Maybe I can convince the fam to do some bowling that day - bring out the back home tradition.

I'm excited for the holiday season, I'm already gearing up my Christmas music selection to start up right after the big eatin' day! I'm excited to have Anna start to see what Christmas is, what we do and what it really means. I'm excited to decorate (hopefully with some new things) and to make Christmas cookies. Despite the dreaded snow, I look forward to this season every year. It's so magical and will only become more as our kids get older and create our own traditions and experiences. Making cookies with grandma, heading to Chicago to see if Santa followed us to Grandma and Grandpa Tiemens house, going downtown to see the windows, maybe try out ice skating, making gifts for family, getting gifts for those less fortunate, waking up Christmas morning to see how good they really were that year and going to Church to sing in the kids choirs, to hear the beautiful music that surrounds such an amazing Gift.

The Boog is doing well. She had a rough week with not being quite herself. Very moody and some not so great diapers if you know what I mean. We changed up her diet a little bit and the past couple days she's been in a great mood. So hopefully we're on our way back up. She's probably teething too and that probably is giving her pain, which she turns into clinginess and an upset tummy giving her those lovely diapers. She's starting to chatter more with forming new sounds, saying "hi" when she sees us and when she puts a phone up to her ear. So cute! She's really learning her limitations with us saying no and her not pushing as far. But even when daddy gets stern but a quiet voice with her, the drama turns on! Our little drama queen.

Gary and I are doing well too. Work is going fine - keeping busy as usual. Still working on side work projects of wedding invites, logo design and web design on top of our own projects we would really like to get to. We're enjoying the things in life that make it a little simplier or manageable. These might be frivilous or a no brainer, but a welcomed changed in our house. We purchased a Tivo for a combo birthday gift and love it! We program our shows for the week and when we have a moment, we can watch them and fast forward commercials, rather than trying to be by the TV at the time of the show. This gets us away from watching things that fill space and watch more of our interests. We've also instilled a "clean up all the dishes right after dinner." As some of you know, dishes are one of the jobs we both really despise doing. We got sick of dishes piled up for days, stinking up the house and then spending an hour trying to get them somewhat clean to fill the dishwasher. Now we take 20 minutes to load the dishwasher and clean off the counters. It brings just a little more weight off of our weekend chores. There are others we'd like to become apart of our daily routine like laundry, my "organized piles", filing, cleaning, etc, but slow and steady wins the race, right?

Otherwise all is well in Tiddville. Bracing ourselves for another cold Michigan winter, but thankful we can have heat and the money to pay for it. Have a lovely weekend and enjoy the pictures (finally ones of our painted rooms)!

The Booger
Paint Jobs
Baby #2

Love to all,
GCA