Vacation fun

We had such a great time on our vacation to Gulf Shores. Its bitter sweet to think that it was our only vacation with just the three of us, but we are all excited to meet our little girl in August.

We quickly learned that a beach vacation with a toddler is VERY different than any other beach vacation we've ever been on. Harrison RUNS as fast as he can on the beach and at the pool. Adam and I would take turns chasing to make sure he doesn't:
1) dive into the big pool and drown   or
2) run into the ocean and get swept away

There was no laying on the beach and reading a book, building sand castles, or really relaxing at all!

Our daily schedule looked like this:
8:00 wake-up, eat breakfast (usually on the balcony), watch Cars (again!), get swim suits on
9:30  play at the beach
10:15 play at the pool
10:45  back in the condo for lunch
11- 2:00 NAPTIME
2:30  beach
3:00 pool
4:00 shower and get ready for dinner
5:00 go out to dinner and explore the town
8:00 Harrison in bed

Sometimes we would take turns going to the pool by ourselves while Harrison napped but usually we would just nap too!

Harrison enjoyed watching the men clean the pool each morning.

view from our balcony

One night we went on the dolphin tour

there's a dolphin!!!

Another night we went on the giant Ferris wheel! There was a sign that said not to ride if  pregnant but that didn't stop me!

I think Harrison liked it, every time we would stop he would sign "more" but he also had this expression on his face! 

I on the other hand, was quickly reminded of my fear of heights! Adam enjoyed rocking our cage to help me feel more secure!

We had a wonderful time and can't wait to go back. Maybe next summer will be more relaxing!

We made it!

We survived our 16 hour drive!
We left on Saturday morning at 3:00 am. Adam and I spent the better part of the night tossing and turning because we were so nervous we would oversleep! We woke up around 2:00 and put the last few things in the car. When we were completely ready, I scooped up a sleepy Harrison and put him in the car.

Harrison is so funny when he is sleeping. If he is not ready to wake up, he will fight you! He slaps my hand away and rolls over or hides under the covers! He reminds me of my sister Jeanette when she was younger.

Adam and I took turns driving all day. I made the mistake of taking 2 Dramamine tablets around 6 am and ended up passing out for a few hours! Warning- do not take if you plan on driving at all. I was such a waste!

We stopped for breakfast at McDonalds (surprise, surprise!) and I went inside for the bathroom and to change Harrison. Apparently as I was leaving, we discovered that they weren't even open yet! Someone forgot the lock the door when they closed. No wonder the music was so loud! Ha! The employees were really sweet and served us anyway.

Harrison surprised both of us by having remarkably amazing behavior. He usually gets very crabby during car rides but was pretty content most of the time. We read books, sang songs, and watched a movie. When we arrived at our hotel in Hattiesburg, we spent some time swimming before the entire family went to bed at 7 pm. We were tired...very tired.

We only had a short drive to the beach. First we stopped at Target for new batteries for my camera (they died the night before!), aloe, and a magna-doodle. We went to Sharp's for breakfast a few weekends ago and they gave all little kids a travel size magna-doodle to entertain them while eating. Genius! He was so good, we swore we were going to buy one for all restaurant trips. Our breakfast at Waffle House was so nice with him entertained. Best $15 spent.

While driving through Mobile, AL we saw the USS Alabama sitting on the bay. We quickly decided to make a detour and paid our $26 dollars for tickets. It was really neat to explore the ship and also to tour a submarine.  Harrison loved climbing all the ladders and there were a LOT of ladders!

When we first arrived at the condo, we quickly put on swimming suits and walked across the street to the beach. I took a video of Harrison touching sand for the first time expecting a big squeal but he took a few moments to warm up to it. In no time though he was having a blast. The waves scared him at first and he didn't like that the sand pulls out from underneath you when the wave recedes. Look at how much fun he is having!!!

Nursery progress

 Here is our original To-Do List for complete before the baby is born in August:

1. Transition Harrison's room from nursery to big boy room. see here
2. Merge office into guest bedroom downstairs. This will be changing BIG time... more on that later!
3. Sell all work out equipment (that we NEVER use) and transition room into a playroom. completed (mostly) here and here
4. Decorate old office and create new nursery!
5. Insulate the garage ceiling so the new playroom and nursery are not FREEZING in the winter.

So far, so good. Although we are running out of time and keep getting side tracked in the back yard and living room. More on those later!

Back to the nursery. It used to be our office and was a beautiful pumpkin orange. I thought I could work with it until I found out we were having a girl. Something about an orange room doesn't scream baby girl to me, so after searching the internet for hours days I decided to go with simple gray. Since I love the color in Harrison's room so much we went with the same color in her room too.
Since our budget is minimal non-existent, we were working with what we have here.

Here is a list of weird things we needed to fix before we could even start. When you first walk in the room, the door opens to the right. Sounds okay, right? Not okay. The light switch is on the right side of the door too, meaning you open the door, walk into a dark room and walk around the door to turn on a light. Weird! I mean who decided to put the door/switch on the same side? So I called our favorite handy man (my step-dad) and put him to work.

• Isn't he the best? Apparently, you can't just take a door off and turn in around. You have to buy a whole new door. Bummer. So off came the old door and went of to live happily-ever-after at ReStore and in came a new door. Guess who got their first baby present? This little girl! Pretty sweet right? See, Dave really is the best. :)

I wish that was the only obstacle before we could get to the fun pretty stuff. When we first moved into our house there was a tiny amount of insulation in our attic. We discovered this when we needed our furnace and it ran and ran and ran all day long. My dad and Adam rented the tools and blew in insulation in the attic. Unfortunate, when it was finished, we discovered a new hole in the office/ now nursery ceiling from a mysterious knee. Hmmm... If we had regular ceilings, this would not be a huge problem but since we have these weird old paneling on the ceiling that are all interlocking this was a bigger problem. So we left it. For a few years. This whole, a-person-is-going-to-live in here-and-we-are-going-to-see-it-a-lot made us change our minds. So Adam had to fix the his mistake!

Luckily after the ceiling and door were fixed, I could start decorating! I really, really wanted a beautiful small chandelier for the room and really, really, really wanted the Ella chandelier from Pottery Barn Kids but am WAY to cheap to buy it. So I stalked ebay and craigslist looking for something cheaper. My mom apparently was looking too because she bought a $5 chandelier from the Wentzville Flea Market. It wasn't an Ella but it was $5!
After a quick coat of spray paint and added crystals from the garage, we had a girlie light fixture. I think she's pretty cute!

I found the perfect yellow, round rug at JCPenney Outlet store for $50!! Score!

I also made a collection of tissue pom-poms for a "mobile" above the crib.


We finally kicked Harrison out of his crib and were able to move it to the nursery. Here it is being set up. We are planning on using the same bedding but now I'm starting to think I may make a longer bed skirt. Let's see if that ever happens!

 Well that is a ton of words to describe an un-finished room. Maybe I should have broken it down into smaller parts! Oh well.

30 weeks!

Only 10 (maybe 11) more weeks to meet our little girl!

14 weeks, 20 weeks, 22 weeks, 26 weeks, and 30 weeks.

I wish I would have been smart enough to wear the same outfit in all the pictures! Oh well, I can at least start now :)

Leaving for Vacation!!!

Our first (and only) vacation as a family of three commences tomorrow. We are driving 16 HOURS to Gulf Shores, AL. I can't wait! Mostly I am worried about my pregnant self being uncomfortable and staying awake and alert enough to help drive and also about entertaining a 20 month old boy in the back seat. Hmmmm....

We are planning on leaving Sat. morning at 3:00 am for our first leg of the trip. We are driving 12ish hours to Hattiesburg, MS and staying in an amazing Holiday Inn Hotel. We expect this 12 hour drive to be more like 15ish with a lot of stops for stretching, diaper changes, bathroom breaks, and hopefully a LONG lunch somewhere (park maybe?). This will get us to Hattiesburg around 6ish for dinner and an evening of swimming in their awesome pools!

The next morning, after breakfast, we will drive the last 3-4 hours to our condo. We are staying at the Gulf Shores Surf and Racquet Club. It looks really pretty and on one side is the lagoon and on the other the beach! CAN'T WAIT!!!

We will stay there for 6 nights (although we get the 7th night free, its just not enough time for Adam to get back to work on Mon) and then start our trip back on Sat morning. This time we will drive to Springfield, MO to rest and then 3 more hours to get back home.

Pictures of our travels to come....

Toddler Room, here we come!

This has been one of the longest projects yet!

I started planning Harrison's room around his first birthday in October. I searched and searched for ideas and we finally decided on a robot theme. I fell in love with this room and was off to find robot things. I found an adorable robot toddler bedding set from Target but it was not sold anymore. Boo. Luckily there was a woman in Lawrence selling her set on Craigslist for $10. Yes, please! A short drive down K10 and we had our bedding.

When we went home for Christmas, my cousin Dawn gave us her toddler bed. Of course I couldn't wait to set it up and Harrison was sleeping in his robot bed the last week of December.  I painted Harrison's room a soft gray (Gentle Rain by Behr) on New Years Eve. Lauren was visiting and we both worked to get it finished so we could watch the countdown!

At this point, I was 6-7 weeks pregnant and VERY sick. I spent most of my time laying on the couch with Adam as my servant. He's such a good husband. :) So the room got pushed back to the back burner. Jordan is a very good artist and he offered to paint some art for his room. I purchased 4 small canvases from Hobby Lobby for $12 total and a few weeks later had amazing art to hang on the walls.

It wasn't until Spring Break time that I got back to work on his room. We were still working with a tiny budget and I kept talking about building end tables for Harrison's books. Adam kept insisting that we probably have something that would work. There may or may not have been some frustrated conversations over the issue. :)  Finally one night we went "shopping" in our house. We ended up with a bookshelf from the workout/storage room and turned to the side was the perfect height for our guy. We also used my lamp from the same room. It's amazing how things I love end up hiding in our house!

  

Here are some before and after pictures of our transformation! 

 I love the round crib!

Our house came without closet doors. The inside is wallpapered in pink! Yikes! I hung a shower curtain to disguise it!

and after pictures...

Hurray for closet doors! They were purchased at ReStore for $5 a piece! Unfortunately the track was $35 but still... good deal!

My favorite corner in the room. I am in love with the orange!

Our "free" bookcase and lamp. I recovered the shade so it was bit more cheery.

Mess-free chalkboard!!!

Our backyard is pretty boring... especially if you are 1. We spend a lot of time out there hanging up clothes on the line, grilling, or working in the garden. Harrison tends to always want to help which usually doesn't help at all! Someday we will purchase a fancy swing set for him but it's not in the budget right now, so I've been looking for some cheapo ideas to keep him entertained.
My sister introduced me to Pinterest recently and I am hooked! Its amazing how many awesome ideas are out there! I found this and knew Harrison would love it!



Remember when we completed the stage with free wood from my step-dad? Well we still had a full sheet of plywood sitting in the shed. After a quick rummage through the paint pile in the garage, I found two cans of primer with enough to cover the plywood twice! Perfect. We were off to Walmart and Home Depot for paint and grout. Walmart was out of the paint we wanted but then we checked the clearance/messed-up paint rack, we found an un-tinted gallon of outdoor flat paint! $10! Yes please! Always remember to look there, sometimes you can find awesome deals! Next was charcoal grout at Home Depot for $8 and we were ready to go. It took two coats of  3 parts paint/1 part grout mix and sanding but it looks great. The best thing is Harrison WANTS to draw on it while I am outside working. Hurray!!!

I love how it looks from the distance. It really breaks up the monotony of the privacy fence.  I can totally imagine leaving messages there for birthdays and parties.

So far Harrison only makes straight lines up and down! Someday he'll advance to circles! 

14 more weeks!

That's right! I am 26 weeks pregnant which means only 14 more weeks to go. 99 days to be exact. Weird to think that in less than 100 days, we will parents to TWO children. Holy cow, we are totally grown-ups now.

Check out how big the belly is getting!

My baby has a baby!

Harrison is obsessed with babies. Anytime we see a baby in public or visit a baby, he attacks them. Expecially girl babies! He knows the difference! Here is an example:

He also gets extremely jealous when I am holding someone's baby or even our dogs. He normally is not clingy at all but when my lap is occupied he gets very angry. He climbs in my lap and tries to push the other baby/dog off! Not going to work with a newborn.

I was worried that he would smother his sister once she got here or would spend my entire maternity leave fighting over my lap space, so we bought him his own baby doll.  I wanted him to practice holding a baby and being gentle since he tends to make out with babies for abnormally long time or sometimes even hits them!

Adam was hesitant about buying our son a baby doll but K-Mart had their clearance toys for an extra 50% off so she was only $8. It was easy to talk him into a doll for $8. 

What I didn't expect was for Harrison to fall in love with his baby. He has never been attached to any toy. The first time he does, it's a doll! Oops. She goes everywhere with him! He even gets mad when we are buckling him into his carseat and we have to take her out of his arms for a sec to put his straps on. He's pretty sweet.

I am hoping that when our baby is born, he will be accepting of me holding and nursing a baby all day and he can be content with his baby. I know this is me dreaming but a girl can dream right?

Playroom makeover 2

The playroom is coming together.
I am still trying to stay as close to a $0 budget as possible but unfortunately we had one problem. Remember how we were using the extra gallon of paint from Harrison's nursery? Well, we underestimated how BIG that room is. Our house has weird walls and ceilings upstairs and we didn't realize how much wallspace there was in there. Our one gallon of paint was cheapo stuff from Wal-Mart which means it does not cover well. We (and by we, I mean Adam!) got two coats on and it wasn't looking good.

So off to the store we went. This time we splurged on the fancy paint with primer included. Spring Garden was our final color choice and it covered with one coat! Horray! It's a bit lighter that the original green which helps since there is no windows in the playroom. So much better.

We used the existing storage shelves from the workout/craft room. Hey Mommy still needs her storage too!

Reused rug from office plus leftover foam mats from the workout room...equals a perfect floor to play on!

The room was looking pretty plain and was screaming for some color. It tooks lots of days thinking and searching for ideas online then I ran across this idea. How to fabric wall mural
Perfect right?!?  So off I went to ransack my fabric collection. Luckily Jordan was visiting for the day so I put him to work.

Continuing our use-what-we-have theme, found brown craft paint in the paint box! Awesome.

I tried a few things to attach the leaves to the wall. I wanted something that wouldn't damage the walls but would hold up to little hands too. Elmers glue stick was the winner! Works great and so far no fallen leaves!

Finally some color! Poor Zee the bird still needs her eyes finished... someday, Zee. Someday.

Closeup of the leaves. Adorable, right?

We are almost finished. Give me a few more weeks and I'll be able to share the rest of the room!
Dollars spent so far, $28. Not bad! :)