Guess where we went today...

Anytime I go to a public place or event, I seem to see a lot of pregnant women.  Maybe it's because I go to places that are generally preggo-friendly... or maybe I'm just noticing them more often.  Today I went to a place where pregnant ladies were noticeably absent-- the Abbotsford International Airshow.  I was there for 5 hours, among huge crowds of people, and only saw one other suspiciously pregnant woman.  They all stayed home for good reasons-- it was 35 degrees celsius outside today-- much hotter on the asphalt tarmac (our car read 46 degrees when we crawled back in to head home), there was no shade, no seating, one of the main activities was crawling up ladders into small cockpits, it was super loud... and did I mention it was extremely hot?  Now you're all probably thinking I was dragged there by the boys of this household-- but I actually suggested that we go.  It's our last day to hang out as a family of three (as my family arrives tomorrow and will be staying until the baby arrives) so I thought it would be a great activity for us to do to celebrate this milestone!  And I also knew the boys would love every minute of it :)  So this morning we packed up our cooler, threw our lawn chairs into the car, made a quick stop at Starbucks, and took off for the air show!  Needless to say, Caleb was beside himself with excitement (we only informed him of the plan this morning)-- there was yelling, squealing, pointing, and car seat dancing when we pulled into the grounds.  We parked our car and spent the morning taking in the ground exhibits.

We spent a good part of the morning looking at the Canadian and US Air Force military transport planes.  Most of them were open to the public to tour-- Caleb had quite an awesome time inspecting those planes and meeting the pilots.

If you felt super adventurous, you could wait in an extremely long, hot line and crawl up into the cockpit of these planes.  Were we feeling adventurous?  You bet!  We roasted in those lines... all for a chance to crawl up  steep narrow ladders into tight, even hotter spaces.  Today I decided to forget about the fact that I am 39 and a half weeks pregnant and lugged my pregnant self up the ladders to see those cockpits for myself!  At first I wasn't going to do it, but when I witnessed a fairly large woman (not pregnant) manage to make it to the top I figured, why not?

And if I did happen to go into labour right there on the tarmac, I would have probably been alright.  The place was crawling with military personnel equipped with first aid training (and I did see an ambulance display when we first drove into the grounds)-- I'd be fine.

Look at those boys-- they had so much fun.  Here they were looking slightly warm...  Even in the heat, Caleb did great.  We didn't bring a stroller for him, he spent the day walking around by himself and didn't complain once.  We all did our best to stay hydrated (consuming many bottles of water and multiple juice boxes) and even though we were sweating profusely, we all felt pretty positive about the experience.

We packed a picnic lunch and headed to the main grounds to see the planes in action!!  It was incredibly hot at this point of the day... and dusty, and loud.  Thankfully we thought to bring an umbrella for Caleb to sit under while he ate his lunch.  I did my best to not complain about the heat-- it was my idea to go after all.  We thankfully discovered some misting sprinklers that we could stand under and cool off a bit. In the end, we didn't make it through the whole afternoon-- Caleb asked to go home and was looking so tired that we decided to call it a day.  After a quick dip in the pool and some long naps, we've recovered from our outing.  All in all, it was a fun family adventure!

On the agenda tonight?  Find a place with air conditioning :)

Castle F-U-N Park

Over the past week, certain aspects of bedtime routine have become a bit challenging for Caleb-- more specifically-- staying in bed has become difficult for him.  While it has not always been easy to get Caleb to stay in bed, lately it has been impossible to convince him to stay put.  This new behavior has been driving Doug and I absolutely crazy over the past few days.  2 nights ago, Doug and I sat down and came up with a plan of action.  It felt like we had been too focused on the discipline aspect-- and hadn't rewarded positive behavior enough.  So, we came up with a reward system-- Caleb loves to do fun activities and events with us, so we drew pictures of some of his favorites and put the slips of paper into his reward jar.  If Caleb does a good job of following our bedtime rules and stays in his bed, the next morning he gets to select one activity to do with Doug and I that evening (obviously this isn't a sustainable practice-- we decided to go big now and slowly bring it down a few levels over time :)  Today he got to choose his first reward activity-- a trip to Castle Fun Park.

This is probably his favorite place in the world-- it is probably one of my least favorite places in the world.  But after dinner tonight, we all hopped in the car and hit the highway with Caleb clutching the slip of paper he had pulled from the reward jar in excitement.  All of a sudden, I hear my sweet, innocent, three year old son repeating over and over again (in the cutest sing-song-y voice):

Caleb:  "F-U"... "F-U"... "F-U". (I turn to look at Doug in disbelief... am I hearing this right?  Where on earth did he learn to say that?  Apparently bedtime routine should be the least of my worries...)
Me:  "Caleb, what are you saying back there?"
Caleb:  "I'm just trying to spell this word Mommy.  (holds up the Castle Fun Park picture he pulled from the reward jar)  What's the last letter?"  (I finally clue in... much relieved)
Me:  "That last letter is an 'N'.  F-U-N spells fun." (Phew)

Doug and I tried our best not to laugh.  (Doug succeeded better than I did).  And eventually we pulled into the parking lot of Castle Fun Park for a fun filled family evening.

Extreme excitement

Ridin' the train

Racing game

A good time was had by all (for the most part-- I tried to have a good attitude :)  And... Caleb went to bed tonight like a dream.  Sweet success.  Doug and I are celebrating tonight-- here's to parents who bribe their three year olds into good behavior :)

Not too bad for 50-ish... eh?

It's been rainy and cloudy out here the last few days... and I've been feeling a bit bored (hence all the recent blogging activity :)  So, I decided it was time for a project!  Now what kind of project should I do?  I did some trim touch up painting around the house last week-- wasn't up for it again this week.  Sitting on the floor... standing on chairs to reach the taller sections... probably not a good idea when I'm home alone and feeling off balance.  So, I decided to dust off my sewing machine, pull out my fabric collection, and make a few new throw pillows for the guest bedroom or downstairs TV room.

Now let me take a few minutes to tell you about my sewing machine.  She works like a charm (most of the time) and is actually pretty special... but she sure isn't new.  

She actually belonged to my Grandma and was probably purchased around the time my mom was born-- 50+ years ago.  My mom learned to sew on the machine and I completed some of my first projects on it when I was a young girl.  And even though I may not be the most accomplished seamstress... that sewing machine is still helping me create things for my house.  Not bad for 50... just like my mom :)

My mom's the hottie in the middle-- in case you're wondering...

Now I am not a sewing extraordinaire... that title belongs to my Mom and Grandma.  But I can figure out basic stuff like pillows, curtains, blinds, and the occasional blanket or two.  But today I felt inspired...

Once Caleb was down for his afternoon nap... I whipped these two up.  Now they may not be perfect (I'm sure my Mom would be able to find about 10 things wrong with the way I put the zippers in) but they looked great in the downstairs TV room.  And they were cheap to make!!  I bought the fabric online for $8.98 a yard and managed to squeeze two pillows out of 1 yard.  I already had the pillow forms, so it was a fairly inexpensive afternoon project.

I am going to go ahead and call this project a success.  I succeeded in keeping myself busy and the end result is pretty great!  Can't wait for you to come check them out Mom... can't wait to see you in a few days!  (and by the way... I've got a few more projects that I need your help with :)

An exercise in positive thinking...

As the weeks go by and my due date approaches, being pregnant becomes less appealing.  Don't get be wrong, I'm not desperate to be done with this stage yet-- I'm still enjoying my time off and have yet to pack my hospital bag.  However, there are moments when I begin to consider what life will be like on the "other" side.  People have told me that I tend to be an optimistic person-- so in an effort to remain positive I've decided to compose a list of the perks of being 38 weeks pregnant.  Here we go:

1.  I do not suffer from indecision when it comes to selecting my outfit for the day-- because I have so few options.  I pretty much wear the same thing every day... a super long, super stretchy white tank top with one of the few maternity purchase I made this time around-- my maternity jean cut offs!!  Best $25 I've spent in a while.

2.  I have a portable shelf (aka my big belly) that comes with me wherever I go-- I can rest books on it, the TV remote, my snacks... oh the possibilities are endless.

3.  My belly button is remarkably easy to clean at this stage in the game-- because it's flat and stretched out beyond recognition.  This is particularly wonderful to me-- as not many people know that I am really grossed out by belly buttons-- even my own-- and feel a bit squeamish at the thought of cleaning it.  The stretched out belly button makes my life more enjoyable at this moment.

4.  I have enjoyed making use of front row parking stalls for expectant mothers at Walmart, Superstore, and the mall.  Whoever came up with that concept deserves a pat on the back.  I did have one terrible incident in one of these parking stalls last week though... I pulled in, opened the door of my car, stepped out... right into a McDonald's container of half eaten pancakes.  Sticky pancake syrup all over my sandal and foot.  I was quite disgusted... even more disgusted to realize that I couldn't bend over far enough to properly clean off my sandal and foot.  Oh well, I decided not to let it get me down-- so I tracked sticky syrup footprints throughout Superstore and left my sandal outside my front door when I arrived home.  It's still there... waiting to be cleaned.

5.  More about feet-- can't reach them... so keeping them groomed is not my responsibility.  The responsibility now rests with the Wild Orange Spa and the European Day Spa  until I reach the "other" side.  Now there's a perk we all could appreciate!

6.  For some reason-- seeing someone as pregnant as I am is entertainment for random strangers.  The occasional brave soul will make a comment or come talk to me- most just stop and stare.  It's great that I can provide entertainment for others-- but what these strangers don't realize is that they are actually entertaining me with their strange behaviour.  At Ikea the other day Doug saw a woman abandon her shopping and watch me from across the store three separate times-- then she walked ahead of me and stood in the aisle watching as I walked by.  Awesome.

7.  I have a few more weeks to eat whatever I want-- without feeling guilty or enduring the strange looks of others.  Some of my favorite moments in ordering food this pregnancy-- "Can I have a side of fries and a coke with my salad?"  and... "I'll have the grilled cheese-- I'd like the fake cheese please, not the real cheese."

That's all I've got for now.  We'll see if week 39 has as many perks as 38...

And just because he's cute... some pictures of Caleb!!  On occasion, our family has pajama parties-- Caleb gets to pick out a kids movie, we make some popcorn and chocolate milk and he gets to have a picnic in the living room while we watch the movie together-- Last night we watched Mighty Machines. Here's a few pictures from our pajama party!

For some reason-- all of Caleb's PJ's with feet have holes in the toes.  Ever since he was a baby, the toes would always wear out first.  It would drive me absolutely crazy to have 2 of my toes peeking out-- but Caleb seems to love it.  It cracks him up every time...

Have a good week everyone!

Caleb's Room

Caleb's room is the next stop on the tour.  What did I tell you-- selecting paint colors was not the previous owner's forte.  Maybe I'm just a little bit picky since I used to mix paint in a former job years ago-- or maybe color blindness was an issue.  Anyhow, here's what we had to work with for Caleb's room-- intense orange walls and stained worn out carpet (was it blue?  grey?  who knows! who cares!  It's gone...)

Here's what we did...

STEP 1: Time to repaint.  Out of all bedrooms upstairs, this room actually gets the most natural light (causing Caleb to wake up around 6 am each morning during the summer :)  but it still felt so dark.  After several coats of primer followed by new paint, things were starting to improve in this dark and depressing room.  

A before shot of Caleb's Room

STEP 2: Get rid of that nasty carpet.  We ripped it up only to discover that we had old lino that needed to be removed as well.  That definitely was a fun and joyful moment for Doug and I.

The moment we discovered old lino that needed to come out-- wish I had a picture of Doug's face...

STEP 3:  Lino's been removed, new flooring installed.  Now time to put in the baseboards and casings.  (As you can see-- this part of the process took place last fall-- Caleb sure looks little in this picture!!)

Flooring in... now the finishing begins

And now... a room for my little man.

Some of you may be wondering why we opted to put laminate in the bedrooms, not carpet.  The main reason was Caleb's asthma.  Health care professionals we have encountered all recommend that we keep his environment as dust-free as possible.  Carpet is a big no-no. I also prefer laminate and hardwood over carpet since I grew up in a house that did not have a stitch of carpet-- hardwood throughout.  It always feels so much cleaner to me.   Actually let me rephrase-- it IS cleaner.  If you could only see what my mop looks like after cleaning the floor you would understand why I prefer it over carpet.  And... it's also cheaper!  Purchasing decent carpet is usually more per square foot than laminate, and then you have to pay for installation.  We can install laminate ourselves.  So that's why we chose laminate-- it's healthier for our family, cleaner, cheaper, and I like it!

I do have a small woven cotton rug in his room, but it's super easy to keep clean and dust free.  I just throw it into the washing machine every few weeks and it comes out looking like new-- thank you Ikea!

One thing I love about this room is all of the storage space available for Caleb's toys, clothes, bedding, and anything else a 3 year old boy needs!  When I got rid of his change table and needed to buy him a dresser, instead of purchasing one large dresser, I decided to buy 2 identical Ikea dressers and put them side by side.  One day-- if needed-- they can be split up and used in two different rooms.  The shelves also provide additional storage-- out of the reach of small hands storage...

Wanna know what's stored in those baskets?

Caleb's best friends-- all are needed for nap time and bed time.  If one is missing... he knows.

One of my favorite things in Caleb's room is this Bus Roll Poster I bought for him off Etsy from a shop called MySweetPrints.  Check them out... they've got a really cute customized eye chart poster you can have made with your own message-- I've been "eyeing" that one too!  Maybe I'll order it for Child number 2...

A few other pictures of Caleb on Papa's farm-- driving the garden tractor and skid steer...

And his "big boy" bed-- Doug would love to make a bed frame for it eventually-- but that will have to wait until his back feels better :)  In the meantime, I tried to dress it up a bit by buying an extra fitted bed sheet to cover the ugly box spring instead of using a bedskirt (much to girly for a little boy's room)  Turned out great and it only cost me $9.99 from Superstore-- a great deal if you ask me!

And there's room number two!  Like the nursery, this room was done as cheap as possible.  My sources include Ikea, Craigslist, Superstore, Target, Etsy, MCC, Pier One, and the closets of my own home.  If anyone would like a more specific source guide, just let me know!  Hope you like it!

Oh, and one more thing... Week 38 officially arrived!!!

The Reveal begins...

As you all know, Doug and I have been slowly renovating our house... we've been at it for just over a year now. I've had many people ask me to post some pictures of the transformation... so here it goes! Instead of doing a huge post to show all of the changes, I thought I'd do it one room at a time. I've decided to do it this way for two reasons-- one-- they're all not finished yet (rooms in my house are ever evolving and changing as I dream up a new project) and two-- I really don't have the energy to clean the entire house, photograph it, then write about it :)

So... I figured it would be fitting to start with the nursery! Let me start by showing you what we had to work with. What a beauty, eh?  I'm sure this room was well loved by it's previous owner... but I had something a little more sophisticated in mind.

Nursery Room Before

The people who lived here before us had quite an obsession with colour-- bright colour, in every shade, and lots of it (stay tuned for more images of shocking paint jobs).  When we first moved in a year ago, we knew that we couldn't tear the entire house apart all at once since we didn't have the time or money.  But I could not live in a rainbow house.  So we primed everything twice, and then repainted the main floor.  It took a week.

The nursery was a special case.  Not only was it painted in a shade of purple I could not live with, but the picket fence/garden mural was painted on so thick that even after covering it with a different colour, you could still see and feel the picket fence.  Thankfully we had a friend who was willing to spend several hours in that room with a palm sander (Go Brent!!) to get rid of the sun/butterflies/birds applied to the top half of the room.  The picket fence would have taken months to sand down-- so instead we had to find a different solution!

Nursery after demolition-- oops!  Forgot to take the pictures down...

Doug installing the wall panelling late into the night!

Fast forward to the fall-- Doug and I have now torn up all of the flooring on the main level of our house. Remember this post?  After installing laminate throughout the main floor, we decided to tackle the MASSIVE job of re-doing all of the baseboards, casings, and crown moulding.  As we didn't take any time off from work to do this project, we ended up spending every evening and weekend working in our house together till 11 or 12 each night.  Doug was in charge of cutting and installing, I did all of the filling, sanding, and most of the painting.  Took us weeks... no... make that months.  Some of you may be wondering how our marriage has survived projects such as this, but we actually have a blast working together.  Those late nights were hilarious at times...  

To solve the picket fence dilemma-- we opted to install style and rail panelling to the bottom half of the room.  As we were finishing up the panelling in the room, we discovered that room would soon become a nursery.  We figured that the panelling would look great in a nursery, but decided to repaint the top half of the room a beautiful blue (the right blue can be gender neutral, eh?)  After spraying the the room and doing some repainting the picket fence was a thing of the past, and the room looked beautiful.  

To make the room more conducive to housing a small child, we decided to tackle yet another project in this room-- the closet!!  This room has the smallest closet in the house.  

Before shot of the closet

While babies have small clothes, they also come with lots of other stuff!  How I managed to store and organize all of Caleb's baby stuff in our tiny condo still remains a mystery-- actually, it was more of a miracle.  We didn't want to spend a lot of money on this project.  Actually, we didn't want to spend any money on it-- we're a little bit cheap at times (blame it on the Mennonite heritage:)  So, Doug creatively managed to find pretty much all of the materials needed to build custom closet shelving lying around in our garage.  We had ripped a few cupboards off of one wall in the kitchen, so Doug was able to re-use one of the tall pantry boxes for the closet.  After cutting it down a bit and making a few modifications he installed it in the closet along with a few more shelves he built out of scraps of material.  After a good paint job and some new closet rods-- project completed!  For less than 10 bucks (we had to pick up the parts for the closet rods) we put custom shelving in the closet.  Here's the finished project!!  Don't I have a wonderfully creative and handy husband?

So, that's the miraculous transformation of the nursery!  Keep in mind... this did not happen overnight.  All of the major grunt work happened last fall, while the organizing and decorating was finally finished recently.

If I had a few more dollars to my name, I may have made a few changes.  But in the end, creatively using what you already have and searching for good deals (and I mean REALLY good deals-- the as-is section in Ikea, MCC Thrift store finds, or clearance section in Home Sense kind of deals) is more fun in the end.  Once the baby arrives I'll make a few more adjustments depending on whether we have a boy or a girl.  But as of now, it's ready to go...