Fun in Marion

Scott and I went to Marion Saturday afternoon to visit his family and stayed the night at his sister and brother-in-law's house. It was nice to visit with everyone and exchange gifts...baby shower and birthday gifts for me and baby shower gifts for Christy. Saturday night, Alan put together a fantastic fireworks display...almost 40 minutes of fireworks. Here's a few pictures from the evening's event.

Baby Nursery #1

With some urgency, we put together a second nursery. It's so stinkin' cute if I do say so myself. Of course it is construction themed...what else would we have in our house?!?!?

It wouldn't be a McDonald home improvement project without Casey's involvement.







And then there's Peaches...who is close enough to see the action, but does stay out of our way.



After battling the wall paper border and some defective parts...here is the completed nursery!

oh baby, baby!

So the last seven days have been rather insane to say the least. It will be a long time (if ever) before I forget the phone call I had with the nurse last Wednesday. I had called the doctor to get some medicine, but they didn't want to order it until I had a pregnancy test done. When I called the doctor back on Wednesday, I was shocked to find out I was pregnant. The nurse's first question, were you trying to get pregnant? Uh no...why would we be trying to get pregnant...we are adopting a baby in September. I went through probably a hundred thousand dollars of infertility tests and procedures...why would I think that I could get pregnant now with no interventions? The nurse just chuckled and scheduled by first ob appointment for last Friday morning.

Below is a picture from the ultrasound. It was hearing that heartbeat and seeing it on the screen that made me finally realize this is real.



I went back to Peoria this weekend and gave the news to my family. I also had the chance to attend a wedding reception for a distant cousin who got married. I would have attended the wedding, but I opted to stay home with my nephew who was sound to sleep. It was nice having 3 hours in the car each way to sort through all the emotions and also gave me time to call a lot of people who hadn't heard the news yet. By Sunday night, it had finally sunk in and was moving into the excitement phase.

I have started working on the second nursery and will post some pictures when it's complete. I finally feel like I getting a handle on this crazy, but good new life that is coming my way.

12 weeks and counting....

I'm trying hard to keep my excitement somewhat contained, but it's getting harder with each passing week. The more stuff that I put in the nursery, the more real it becomes. I've have a wonderful friend who gave me some really good stuff...bouncy seat, swing, stationary jumper, car seat, and two car seat bases. I also found a stroller at a garage sale that I couldn't pass up...a graco stroller used less than a handful of times. I've also started buying diapers, baby toiletries and clothes when I find good sales or have coupons. I've come to realize that having a little boy is much easier for me...no matching hair accessories, matching socks or tights, or matching shoes for each and every outfit. Simply have a few standard colors of socks, maybe three pairs of shoes, and a slew of outfits that can be mix and matched and you are good to go.

I've also come to realize that I'm in the nesting phase...feeling like I need to get several major projects done before this baby comes. I conquered yet another one while Scott was gone a few weeks ago...painted our master bedroom. I'm down to painting our master bathroom, a bedroom, and our kitchen. Feels daunting, but will keep me busy enough that the time will fly by.

Time to go do yet another home improvement project...hanging curtain rods and curtains in a couple of rooms tonight.

Hopefully I'll set aside more time to keep this blog up to date over the next few months.

Oh where does the time go?

I've been a busy beaver ever since the end of March. I did have a good week to ten days of down time, but that's about it. So much has happened in the last eight weeks. Scott and I got our tax refund...Scott let me do the one thing that I've been wanting to do for two years now...rip up the carpet and lay laminate wood floors. The least stressful and quick part was picking out the laminate style that we liked. From there...oh boy...it was insanity. In the process of deciding to have new floors installed, I realized that it'd be a good idea to repaint the baseboards and trim in the same rooms that would be getting new floors. If I'm going to paint the baseboards and trim, well might as well paint the walls and the fire place surround. So in a matter of three weeks time, I painted the walls, trim and baseboards in the family room, hallway, dining room, and computer room/living room.

In order to install the floors, everything had to be moved out of the rooms...and I mean everything. It was going to be easier to paint with everything out of the rooms, so we basically spent three weeks with the majority of the contents from the first floor either stock piled in the garage or the basement. After managing this small project and doing most of the manual labor myself, I have no desire to build a house...this was enough stress. Thanks to the help of our friends Vince and Karen, I didn't have to lift some of the heavier furniture pieces and I had a couple extra hands helping me paint for a few hours.

So here's the before, during and after pictures. I can now look back and say it was worth it, but in the midst of it, I wasn't so sure I would survive.