Longest Week Ever!

Since last week Tuesday, it's felt like the longest week ever! It's just drug on and on. Fortunately it's Tuesday again and we did get a ton done over the week.

Last Tuesday was our second birthing class and it went really well! We went though all the phases of labor, coping skills for each phase, and watched a short birthing video. I never wanted to watch one of those, and although it was gross, I walked away thinking "That's not so bad. I can do that." Good thing since I'm already committed to having a baby.

Wednesday was a super rainy night and I just couldn't find the motivation to do much of anything but cook dinner. We had both worked late, it was just a rough day and my hips were just sore! Dave did the dishes, started laundry, and cleaned up a bit (what a great husband) while I read a little on the couch. We watched a movie when he was done, and called it a night.

Thursday we did a little more work. We cleaned, ran errands, and packed things up for Friday. We even set up water walls over our tomatoes - in the rain. It was a freezing, pain of a job, but I'm glad it's done. I've been worrying about our tomatoes freezing every night. We've had bad weather all week, so I've insisted on covering each plant at sundown with either a milk jug or a bucket. I also fixed the tension on my sewing machine and whipped out a baby bib to make sure it worked. Now I'm ready to start working on my quilt again so I can (hopefully) make my deadline to finish the top by July.

My brother Daniel received his endowments Friday night at the Mt. Timp temple, and we knew to make the session we would have to leave right after work Friday. Traffic wasn't as bad as usual, so we ended up being a half hour early. But better safe than late! It was great to be there for his important day and great to see the family in the temple! After we just spent the night in Highland, since my car needed a trip to the shop down there and I had a baby shower.

The shower went well! We had all kinds of tasty foods and played some fun games. It was mostly family, but we also had some friends from Michigan join us (the Poulsons and Moes). I was given so many cute and fun gifts at the shower. Now I'm trying to get everything sorted, washed and put away. I want to rearrange the nursery this weekend so we can start hanging up pictures, shelves and finalizing the placement of everything. It will just to be good to get that out of the way before I have too much on my plate (and am too exhausted).

The Garden is Planted!

Dave's  been dieing to have a garden since we moved into the house. With all the flower beds we already had in the yard, I was a little reluctant to add more weeding to our weekends, but now that it's all in I'm getting more excited to taste the fruits of our labors.

In the main garden we planted about 9 tomato plants, 3 bell pepper plants, 4 hot pepper plants, corn, and green beans. half way through planting, it started pouring rain on us, followed by high winds. So we've covered the tomatoes, bell peppers, and hot peppers with milk cartons and jugs to keep out the wind and cold. Hopefully it won't snow again so everything will survive.

To the left of the garden is my favorite part, the strawberry patch! We got starts from my parents a month and half ago  and today planted spinach on the end of the plants. We're told the two plants help each other, which is why we put them together. Some of Strawberries have started to flower! Hopefully we'll get berries this year, but if not next year. They looked pretty sad when we planted them, so it's encouraging to see them looking so vibrant and green now.

Next comes the wild children of the yard, the rasp-babies! We planted 11 of these last year. Most of them died, so we tried again this year, and got more success. We had starts taking over the world! We had to thin them out and transplant more starts so they were in a more uniform row. We also read online if you steak around them and tie twine to hold them back, it keeps more orderly. This keeps the plants out of the way of the lawn mower and hopefully will be strong enough to tie them to if they need.

On the far end, we have one blackberry plant too, which is looking good! Hopefully we'll be able to get one to two more of these in the future so we can have an abundance of rasp-babies and blackberries! We just love fruit!

Now we're just hoping it will stay warmer than 50 degrees out, so our little garden will survive. I'm ready for spring and summer!

Class Started Tuesday

We started our child birth class last night. On the way over to the class Dave asked "do I really have to go to this?" My response was, "It's really important for me to feel prepared for this. If you don't want to come be my 'coach' I guess I could find someone else to hold my hand and be my birthing partner." He didn't like that idea too much, and the instructor was just what we needed.

Our instructor, Andrea, has been a midwife and birthing educator with the hospital I'm planning to deliver in for 11 years. She knows her stuff and is great at not only educating the moms about what's happening and what we need to do to prepare, but also the dads on how to help. The class is every Tuesday for 7 weeks (2.5 hours per class). We were provided with two books to refer to at any time and take with us for delivery. Tuesday's class was more of an introduction than anything. We discussed necessary nutrition, how to minimize certain pregnancy symptoms and practiced some exercises that should get our muscles in shape for the eventual big day.

She gave book recommendations for both parents (I already had purchased the ones recommended for me, but we'll have to get Dave his) as well as three home work assignments:

1. Do one thing every day to improve your nutrition (can be the same thing each day)- We wrote down everything we had eaten that day and assessed where we stood nutritionally in class. I thought I was doing really great, but it looks like I need to eat more grains. So I'll focus on increasing my grain intake throughout this week. I also could probably use a little more protein and fats, so I'll look into adding more peanut butter or more frequent fish into my diet. The no lunch meat has really cut my protein intake back to only at dinner (if we even have meat then). 

Dave does better on grains and protein than I do, but he needs to get more veggies into his diet. So he'll be focusing on that this week. Andrea provided separate "what to eats" for the husbands so they knew exactly what they should be eating too. She's just great at making the husbands feel like they're needed and an important part of the process (which was exactly what Dave needed).

2. Practice our exercises - We learned two different kinds, and I'm supposed to do one of them 10 times a day in increments of 5! That one really isn't too hard, but I'm worried about remembering to do it 10 times every day. The other one isn't hard either, but I'll need to remember to do it. On top of that, I want to start doing a work out DVD two to three times a week. Nothing major, probably yoga and one low impact pregnant lady cardio. I currently walk 10 - 15 miles a week, so the cardio will help build up my endurance and the yoga will give me more flexibility. We'll see when I can squeeze those in... I swear there's never enough time!

3. Pack for the hospital or make your packing list - We have 5 couples in our class; one due in 4 weeks, all the way to one due August 30th. So she said if you're close, pack and if not, make the list and pack when you have a month left. One thing I do plan to work on now is creating two birthing play lists for my ipod. She recommended having a playlist of calm, soothing music to help you through the initial contractions, and a second playlist that's energizing and invigorating for the point when you're just warn out. 

Dave and I ended up taking about a page of notes each, and both walked away feeling well informed and better prepared. I'm so glad after going Dave could see the importance in taking a class, and that we can both work together to be the best prepared we can. His attitude did a complete 180 degree turn by the end of the class on "having to be there".

We walked down to the nursery after to sneak a peak at the babies. The nurses were washing up a brand new baby girl, so we hugh around as they lotion her up, styled her peach fuzz hair, and glued a bow to her head. I headed to the bathroom and was surprised to find Dave still watching the babies in the nursery when I got back. He said there was something special about seeing such tiny little babies and thinking about how soon we would have one in there ourselves. He's going to be such a great dad!

Saturday is a busy day!

Saturdays are such busy days for us! Lately they've started with my waking up and starting the yogurt and bread machines. Every other week I'll head out to the grocery store after that and do our shopping. Then we come home, clean the house, work in the yard, and run any other errands that are needed.

Every other week I also have to plan a lesson for Gospel Doctrine, but that doesn't take too long if I've looked over the lesson in advance. And this year I'm teaching New Testament, so it's a lot less researching than last year (Old Testament). I do enjoy teaching the class, although I'm glad I'm not teaching every week.

Now that Dave's done with school for the summer, the yard is starting to come together too. If the weather stays nice, we'll need to start planting our garden soon. We need to transplant some of our raspberry starts (that grew from last year's plants) from a massive clump of baby raspberries to one respectable row. We haven't gotten any berries yet, but I'm really hoping to in the next few years. If we get enough, I'd love to make jelly! I was planning moving the starts tonight, but it is raining and 40 degrees out! So it will have to wait. I've also started diving into the weeding... it's quite the feat with all the flower beds we were cursed/blessed with.

We're trying to decide what big yard project we want to take on this year. First choice is to downsize our front right side flower bed (filling in the non-garden with sod and making the bulk of that garden a rock garden so we don't have to weed as much). This process will probably require us to put in new trim on that side, since the current trim is cemented in and I don't know if breaking it up and trying to recurve the section will work.

Second, we could choose to tear out the flower garden in the front yard middle and build that space up so it's more of an elevated garden (hopefully) giving our house more dimension to it (look less boxy). This will be more work than it sounds like, because I want to dig up and dry all the beautiful daffodils we currently have planted so we can plant them again in the fall. Also, after we pull out the daffodils we need to ultimate death spray the bed, because it's infested with the morning glory weed. So it will be a slow process. Oh decisions, decisions!