baby countdown activities cont.

We've been counting down the days! Here's some of the things Elle's been doing:
Some friends at church threw us a baby shower. Thank you Laura and Katie! We are so blessed to be at Mayfair with such talented ladies! I'm so glad to have such wonderful people to raise our kids with. Check out that awesome diaper cake Katie made and (WARNING!!! if you don't want to know the name don't look at the pic too close!) the cute sign for the baby Laura made.

Elle got the book Little Mommy by Sharon Kane. She loves this book! It's about a little girl who takes care of her baby dolls.

We spent a day looking through Elle's baby book and started baby brother's. She was fascinated with pictures of her at the hospital and I loved looking back at how much she's changed. This also got me motivated to catch up on a few pages and it will hopefully, encourage me not to slack on the next one. Check out the baby pics of our cutie!



We also went and toured the hospital. They were all full so we couldn't see a room, but a nurse showed us around the floor and answered any questions we had.

That's not all! Another baby countdown post coming soon!

ossm makes the sports page

It was last Sunday's paper and it was the last page, but they made it. It was a little paragraph about OSSM's rowing team participating in the regatta on Wednesday with other area high schools.

Thankfully, we got to watch from the Chesapeake Tower.


Most of the students cheered down by the water even though it was freezing! I forget how invincible you feel at 17.

Teams 1 and 2 coming in 2nd and 3rd in the qualifying race. Then we had to wait around for the final race to determine the medals. But, the weather made it so difficult to get started that we lost daylight and couldn't really tell what was going on. Only Team 2 made to the final and I think they came in 3rd.

Here's the Devon Boathouse all lit up at night.

It was a really nice event and I'm really impressed with the buildings.

it's going to be the dryer or a fire...

that makes me go into labor this week! Last Monday the dryer started squealing and making a burning smell. The maintenance guy looked at it and decided it was the motor, but couldn't get to it again until yesterday. He took it out (since it's a stackable and on top this is easier said than done), worked on it, and then brought it back claiming it was fixed. He put back in, but when I tried to dry a load it had trouble getting started and I saw sparks. Chris messed with it, got it started, but after about 10 minutes it shut itself off and had the burning smell again. Did I mention the one guy who can work on it will now be out of town until the Monday after Thanksgiving?! So we've been sharing a dryer with the girls, which means scrounging for quarters and dragging wet clothes out to the floor. The creepiest part of this is that our dryer in Waco went out just before I had Elle.

On top of that mess all day yesterday, the fire alarm went off about 11:30 last night! I was in bed trying to read, but nodding off. Chris was getting ready for bed, but he did have pants on this time! I grabbed a robe and corralled Mops to the back door. Chris grabbed Elle and then we headed out into the rain. Chris handed off Elle and went back for some shoes for me and covers for Elle. Mops somehow ended up trapped in the stairwell, and had to wait until the girls ran out. Then she went into full panic mode and started barking and chasing them. Elle and I went in the library building to wait and Chris finally got Mops' leash on and went to deal with the girls and the fire department. Probably the scariest part was that I think Elle was going into shock. She kept shaking even though I was holding her and she was wrapped up. She didn't stop until we got back inside. She was a trooper though and didn't cry or anything. The story last night was they had been testing alarms in the new wings yesterday. They're messing with them again today, but thankfully we'll be gone most of the day.

So now I'm going to get in gear and make sure I'm ready to head to the hospital just in case!

daddy/daughter date

Chris took Elle on a special daddy/daughter date as part of her baby brother countdown. They went down to the boathouse district to take a bike ride along the river and then stopped at the park to play. This was a perfect activity for just the two of them since I shouldn't be on a bike. I don't have any other pics, but they had a great time. Apparently, they have 11 slides at the park and Chris had to drag Elle home.

slumber party!

As part of our baby brother countdown I thought Elle would enjoy a slumber party in the living room. This will definitely be something we can't do once there's a new baby around. Chris and I used to do this when we lived in our apartments in Memphis. We would move our mattress into the living room then stay up late watching movies and eating snacks. We never did it at our house in Waco, I think because we had a TV in our room and then a baby so it wasn't feasible.

Anyway, I decided to try it with Elle and it went really well. We didn't stay up late, but I'm okay with going to bed a little earlier one night. We did move our mattress in the living room and she decided on the Duck Tales movie. I think Elle spent most of the movie jumping on the mattress, but at least she had fun. We also made stove-top popcorn. Chris ended up sleeping on the couch since I require a little more in the bed now with my millions of pillows, but everyone was comfortable and slept through the night. (Mops ended up in our room because she kept whining to get on the bed, but she still slept.) My only complaint was the noise from the floor when the girls were getting ready for their test Sat. morning. Elle wanted to do it again the next night, but I told her we could probably try it again next Friday and maybe keep doing it until baby brother gets here. We'll see!

baby brother countdown

We're 3 weeks away from the due date! For a while now Elle will ask if baby brother's ready to come out, or when he'll be here. I know she can't really understand when Dec. 2nd is. But, I wanted to help her out a bit so I made a baby brother countdown. We started at a month out. Each day she peels off a sticky note and it shows how many days we have left. There's also a pocket where I leave a note about something Elle gets to do or a special present to help us get ready for baby brother. I think she likes peeling the sticky note off more than anything. We skipped a day somewhere, but here's what we've done so far:

1) she picked a place to hang her countdown and took the start note off
2) she got a new movie in case she's stuck at the hospital
3) we've spent a couple of days working in her room getting things organized
4) we got him a car seat and some other baby things from friends
5) she got her own camera to take her own pictures with (it's a kid's camera so she can work it herself)
6) we got him a piggy bank and she put his first penny in
7) slumber party in the living room tonight!

I also have a list of other things planned such as, a special daddy-daughter date, big girl pedicures, touring the hospital, a sibling class, going over her baby book and starting baby brother's, packing our bags, some special holiday things and so on. I'll post again later about what we end up doing. If you have any suggestions please comment!

the weekend of firsts

Our friend RV spent the weekend with us. He didn't realize he was going to be doing a lot of firsts. We checked out the Myriad Gardens update, he got his first smoothie, and experienced his first earthquake!

The big hill at the Myriad children's area was probably Elle's favorite part, but she liked everything. This is going to be a great free resource for entertainment for us when the weather's nice. They were also putting up the Christmas lights while we were there so I can't wait to go down at night!



Mops enjoyed the doggy water fountains and dog park


This is the print out from the Geoscience professor's seismograph