Baby Belly 2

This morning I took photo two of my "Baby Belly" series. I think it's gotten a little bigger since mid-May when I took the last picture. Click and compare!

Also, a quick "Happy Birthday!" to my sister-in-law Katrina. She's just started the final year of her life before 30. It's a scary place to be. :)

A Look Into the Future?

Today at church, a little girl named Emily did the special music. She did Kum Bay Ya, and was accompanied by the song service musicians: a guitar, a mandolin, and the piano. She did a fabulous job, and it was so cute! It makes me look forward to when Little Miss is old enough to do things like this...I just hope she's interested when the time comes!

It's About Time

Jason and I took a brief hiatus from playing games during May. We'd been playing them a lot, and we got a little tired of them. Tonight, separate of each other, we decided we should start up again. So we pulled out "Agricola," a super fun, super spendy game that we splurged on this winter after hunting for it in several stores (we finally found it in a tiny game store in Boise). It's been so long since we used the strategic part of our brains that we both found ourselves making stupid mistakes throughout the game. "Argh!" was a common exclamation.

In this game, you try to grow your family and grow your farm, including fields, pastures, stables, animals, and rooms in your house. You can build stoves/ovens, dig a well, turn your field's harvest or animals into food, and more. With two people who know how to play it generally takes 2 hours to play. Great for a Sabbath evening!

Just for the record, I beat Jason 38-27. Perhaps we should take a break from games more often!

Recognizable

Today I had another ultrasound. Because they're monitoring me to make sure I don't get gestational diabetes (which is looking very good, by the way), they also have to monitor the baby to make sure she doesn't get too big. Apparently when the mother has gestational diabetes (or close, like me), the baby absorbs a lot of fat and sugar and carbs and gets quite large. This is dangerous for the mother because it means a harder labour (or a C-section), though it isn't life-threatening at all for the baby.

On the screen in this picture you can see Little Miss's face, with her hands tucked up under her chin. Yes, really. I promise. It was awesome this time because last time we had an ultrasound (early March), the technician would say, "Oh, there's her nose..." and we'd nod and say, "Okay, if you say so, cuz you know what you're doing!" But this time I saw the face and KNEW it was the face before she said anything. Little Miss looks like a human now! Well...mostly.

And where was Jason during all of this? Watching in fascination, just like me...with brow raised in apparent surprise. I just love this picture. (Thanks, Ruth!)

A Transformation

Tonight I decided I needed to put away the shower gifts. It was too late last night when we got home - I was exhausted! So I waited until tonight when I knew I'd be home earlier and should have more energy. So I turned on some music and got to it. That bag in the front there is full of tissue paper. To the left (you can't see it in this picture) is a mountain of tissue paper from the first baby shower. There's probably just about as much as in that bag! I'm not going to need to buy tissue paper for about five years! So here's the end result of my organization:

Some of it was already done from previous organization attempts, but it took a bit of rearranging to get everything to fit this time! We got some great stuff from our friends and I appreciate the thoughtfulness of everyone who planned and attended the shower. We had a lot of fun. Here's probably the most unique gift we got. Sarah is a senior Mass Communications major at the university, and works for me in my office. She even made it green and yellow - the colours of our nursery. (I love it! Thanks, Sarah!)

Like Bandits

Tonight was our workplace baby shower. Jason's office and mine got together and planned a shower for us, and we invited the other departments we've been close to, as well as some individuals we work with regularly. It was a great gathering; probably close to 35 people came. Though some had to leave for studying, paper-writing, putting little ones to bed, etc., there was a sizable crowd that watched us open our gifts. We got a lot of really great stuff, as you can see from the picture. They also had fabulous desserts - chocolate dipped strawberries, mini muffins, fruit pizza, brownies, and even homemade banana sorbet. Delicious! (And full of carbs...but I was conservative...) And...they gave us some decorations to take home:

A Small Dent

Tonight I sat down and started my thank you notes for the shower we had yesterday at the church. The people were wonderful, and we received 24 gifts...but that means 24 thank you notes. And we have another shower tomorrow night. I ran out of cards tonight, so I'll have to pick up some more, and by the time I pick up where I left off on this list, I'll have a longer list of notes to write since we will have had a second baby shower. Good thing I like writing, eh? Now to address and stamp all of the ones I did write tonight...