Extreme Home Makeover- Nesting Edition

So after the Fourth of July, we began a small project to paint the baby's room.  I had already decided that I would pick out a paint color for our bedroom too since we had never painted it in nine years.  We called Hector, the guy that remodeled my parent's home a few summers ago.  He painted the baby's room on Monday and was coming back Tuesday to do our room.  We went ahead and had Cole's room done too.  What's another $150.  Stephen knows that I always wanted to take down the wallpaper in the two upstairs bathrooms, so he told me that Hector could do it if it would cost less than $1,000.  Hector came in a $950 (with new baseboards) so we moved forward with that too.  Meanwhile, Cole and I moved in with my parents for the time being so we could stay out of the mess and the fumes.  I went ahead and bought new fixtures and mirrors.  No since in putting up the long flat mirror of the 1990's.   We also decided to put up two fixtures in the master bath, so an electrician had to be called.  One week later...and it was all finished. 

 Onto project number two...In addition to painting the baby's room, we had already decided to replace all the flooring upstairs.  Ideally, we wanted to put hardwood on the stairs and game room and new carpet in the bedrooms.  This process took much longer than a week.  Once we picked out the hardwood, our contractor came back and said it had been replace with a new/similar product.  He needed my approval to move forward, so he brought the new sample by school so I could check it out.  At this point, I was already back to work.  My goal was to have all of this finished by the time the other teachers started back to work..August 20.  The hardwood went down and few days later and we ran into a problem with the stain color for the trim.  Not sure who picked it out, but it was all wrong...way too yellow.  After they came back and fixed that they were onto the carpet...another bump in this long road.  The carpet wasn't ready when they went to pick it up.  Somehow it wasn't there and it needed to be made. That's right...made not ordered.  About a week later they got started on the carpet.  It only took a day to install and when all was said and done it looked great. 

Now we needed time to put everything back, clean, put up wall hangings, etc.  I had also purchased new bedding for the master, new mats and shower curtain for the boy's bathroom and the baby's room was yet to be put together.  After teachers had been back a week, my mom, aunt and I were able to spend a long weekend getting it all together.  We still needed a few finishing touches in the baby's room...like the letters for his name (he doesn't have a name yet).

I didn't think to get before photos so just imagine really old beige carpet and plain eggshell walls.  Both bathrooms had hideous wallpaper and long flat mirrors with Hollywood bulb lighting.  Yuck.

"Crackers" Room

Howdy!  We finally finished the baby's room...minus the name.  Here are a few pics.

And after he was named we added...

Maternity Pictures

I decided that since I didn't have maternity pictures taken for Cole that I wanted to have some maternity/family pictures done for "Crackers."  A friend at church has a photography company so we decided to give her a try.  We went to a park in Friendswood.  Nothing special really, but the pictures turned out great.  She does natural light photography, so we went at 6:30.  It was pretty hot, but the sun was starting to come down and we were in a pretty shady spot.  The first place in the park we went was infested with mosquitos.  We didn't get any good shots there. We brought along my mother-in-law to help wrangle Cole.  That was a big help for shots that didn't include him. Here are a few of my favorites.

Baby Boy Bailey- 2nd and 3rd Trimester Update

I haven't blogged much about our new addition and I definitely haven't been very good at taking belly pics and blogging about his stats.  Stephen says the second child always gets the shaft.  This pregnancy has been very different from my first.  I have had issues with my sciatic nerve and bladder...lots of heart burn and no cravings.  At last appointment he was frank breech...legs, head, hands, all towards my heart...bootie down.  He has also been more difficult to photograph.  I had to go in for two 2nd trimester ultrasounds just to get all of the anatomy checked.  At my last visit I had to do my glucose test.  After I drank the juice, I also had to get the Rh negative shot which caused me to pass out at the doctor's office.  Never get a shot on an empty stomach.  Today we went to the 3rd trimester ultrasound.  Cole and Nonnie came with us.  Cole loved it.  We did get a few good pictures of his face and profile...still hard to tell if he will look like Cole.  He has turned and is in good position.  He is weighing about 4 lbs. and is in the 77th percentile.  He is definitely bigger than Cole was at this point.  I am measuring two weeks ahead of my due date.  Here are a few pics of my belly and our last ultrasound.

Me at 19 weeks

Me at 23 weeks




Family Pic- 27 weeks





Profile Pic



Facing Forward

First Family Vacation

We decided to go on a family vacation/babymoon before Cole's brother arrives.  After speaking with Ali, we decided to go to Longboat Key, FL.  We left Sunday, June 10th and returned home that Thursday, June 14th.  We flew into Tampa early Sunday morning.

When we arrived in Tampa, we headed to the car rental place.  We decided to get a convertible; we figured Cole would love it.  Later we found out he didn't like it at all.  He said, "It messes up my hair."

 We stayed at the Lido Beach Resort.  We had a great one bedroom, two bath that was oceanfront.  It was perfect for Cole's nap and allowed him to go to bed reasonably early and then I slipped in with him later on in the evening.  Stephen slept on the pull out in the living room.  We spent the whole week at the beach and the pool.  We also hit up a few good restaurants and went shopping some on Thursday before we left. 

We had a great time together and Cole is still asking to go back to the beach.