9.18.2010

more fun at the farm

We had to stop at my brother's house the other day and of course Connor needed to see and check out all of the pieces of the equipment. We plan on getting him out there during harvest so he can see how this all works!

He's in there, look closely :)

9.17.2010

ecfe vehicle fair

The other night Krystal invited us to a vehicle fair in St. Peter sponsored by ECFE. Of course we wouldn't pass up that opportunity and Connor loved it. He may have gotten the most excited about the garbage truck, not entirely sure why? Ha, but that was until he saw they had a mini backhoe and a packer. The cop cars were pretty cool too, always nice to see them in other places than your rear view window...

the kiddos in an army truck


proof sporting our jerseys did nothing to help the vikes

Connor of course has to find some button or lever immediately.
At least Ashlyn smiled for the camera :)

9.16.2010

visit to the farm

Bryan, Connor and I stopped at my old neighbor Marlin's house the other night. I grew up next to Marlin and spent many, many days there helping in the field (or at least I thought I was helpful), helping in the garden, picking up eggs, etc. We saw him a month or so ago and he mentioned he had baby peacocks and that we should stop by sometime, so we did.

the babies

looking at all of the geese, ducks, pheasants and peacocks Marlin had

terrible photo, but one of the adult peacocks

having fun with his new peacock feather

We certainly need to make our visits to Marlin more frequent, I think he enjoys it, too!


9.15.2010

new neighbor

As I've mentioned, Bryan's brother Aaron recently bought a place really close to us and we are so excited. I wish I would have taken a before picture, so all you get is the in-between, after Bryan, Aaron and Connor ripped out all of the overgrown shrubs and landscaping around the house.

Congrats to Aaron on his new home!

9.09.2010

baby #2

As you're probably already aware, we are expecting baby #2 in March. I was officially 14 weeks this past Tuesday so we're moving right along. It's easier for me to just list things out...so I'll now bore you with every detail (ha, not TOO many details) that I can of, mostly for my sake so I can remember it someday. Sorry no cute picture of Connor in a big brother t-shirt and I haven't scanned in the ultrasound pictures yet (which really are just a little blob at 9 weeks). I tried to think of other creative ways to announce on the blog and clearly didn't think of any. So all you get is this list.

-Found out the Monday of 4th of July weekend. For how badly I wanted another baby, it surprisingly took me a long time to start getting excited. Absolutely we are blessed, but I think it was in the height of Bryan's crazy season, he wasn't getting home til 9 or later and I was wondering how the heck I'm going to be able to do this with two children. Don't worry, we are pretty excited now (and always have been, but yeah...there might have been some emotional discussions, blame it on the pregnancy, right?).
-I did not tell Bryan in any cute or creative way, either. We had just gotten home from Al and Mary's cabin and I went to take a test while Bryan was unpacking the car. Came out to the garage with the test and said well...we're having a baby. Sorry, no kodak moment there.
-The first 8 weeks took forever. I'm overly paranoid as it is, but the time between the first and second appointments went so slow and I was just so anxious to hear that heartbeat again. But all was well at both appointments.
-Dr. Gildner is no longer in Mankato which is a huge bummer, but we did get into Dr. Taylor who I really like, but is notorious for being late and behind and I'm 2 for 2 on my appointments being behind.
-Not a fan of insurance right now. With Connor's pregnancy all prenatal visits, labs, ultrasounds, etc., were fully covered. I've already received bills for over $800 with this pregnancy. Not cool. (I don't think it would be quite this high, but I had to be re-tested for gestational diabetes so that was another $300 ish). So, yeah, not a fan.
-We were originally thinking our due date was March 15th, but at our first appointment the baby was measuring an entire week later so he moved our due date to the 8th of March. If you ask me...I'm not entirely sure if that's possible, but whatever. Obviously just planning ahead that we'll go well past our due date.
-Connor has no idea how much his life is going to change, but he's been good about 'giving' his crib to the baby, his old dresser, etc. And if you ask him if he wants a baby sister or a baby brother, he just picks the second option you list. Oh, but he hasn't fallen for if we should give his nuk to the new baby, bummer.
-I am finally starting to feel better. I never actually got 'sick', but never felt great. If I got out of bed too fast I had to pause for a moment, etc. This could have been so much worse, but I didn't have any symptoms like that with Connor so it was all new to me.
-Lost 6 lbs from my first to second appointment, which was great. The doctor was trying to make sure I wasn't worried, and I assured him that I knew it was just fine. Unfortunately I have plenty stored up for the little 'parasite' :)
-I forgot how difficult it was hiding pregnancy those early weeks. Summer is hard with volleyball, parties, weddings, etc. The worst is when people suspect you're pregnant, but they try to offer you drink after drink after drink anyways. Most everyone we're close to had a pretty good idea but always just nervous to officially announce until after that second appointment.
-I am unable for the life of me able to think of a name for a boy. Yes, we have lots of time, but I'm out of ideas and have started looking at other people's birth announcements at work for ideas. Options from yesterday at work were 'Guy' and 'Willy Wally'. No lie.
-Oh, and no, we won't be finding out the sex. But I had a dream that I told the ultrasound technician to wink at me on our way out of the appointment if it was a girl and I think she did (again, in my dream, we haven't had this appointment in real life yet). The good 'ol string test says boy, girl and done so we will see. I'm sure I'm bound to have all boys, which with this one, it'd be essentially the same season as Connor was and we could reuse all of Connor's clothes and there are certainly some that I just loved or that he barely even wore.
-I'm already having problems sleeping and it's annoying. I either wake up anywhere from 1-3am every night and am WIDE awake or have to get up to go the bathroom 2-3 times and can't get back to sleep. For how often I say I want three children (Bryan says the third wouldn't be his so not sure on that I guess...), I think I said to myself last night, why would I want to do this again?
-I am really excited to go nuts on decorating the nursery. From the post a few days ago, you can see I never really completed Connor's so I want to try and actually finish this one. It's been a goal of mine anyways to start completing rooms in our house and I think I'll start with the nursery. My aunt Mary has AWESOMELY agreed to making the bedding since I'm stuck on orange and can't find any bedding. My friend Anne and I have been on a hunt for fabric (her mom is making her bedding) and I think we finally found it. Who knew it would be that hard to find fabric!
-I've already popped a little, which is a little frustrating but everyone says how you start showing sooner with the second. So, no big deal. My friend Sarah had borrowed a bunch of my clothes and she's returning them next weekend at Scrapfest (this is your official reminder, Sarah :)). Hopefully I don't have to purchase much since it's essentially the same season as Connor's pregnancy however I did splurge and get a few things this past weekend, oops.
-I think that's all I can think of right now, but at least I can start blogging about it now that it's officially gone public :) We're obviously pretty excited. My next appointment isn't until I'm 18.5 weeks then we'll schedule the big ultrasound, then it'll probably start feeling a little more real.

Wow that was long, if you made it this far, promise any future posts related to the pregnancy will be more exciting :)

9.08.2010

i wanna ride in the skid loader

right now!

This is what I heard ALL weekend. Bryan had his annual golfing trip with Craig, Aaron and Trav and conveniently had a skid loader parked in our driveway the entire time. Which is great for Connor. Not so great for me. I couldn't even begin to count how many times he needed to go look out the window while trying to go to sleep to look at it just one more time. Or ask me if he could ride in the skid loader. It got just a little bit old after three days of it. When I would ask him how long he was going to sit in it, he'd say 'two days'. Ha. So FINALLY on Monday he got to be with Bryan in it all day working at Aaron's new house.

I tried to compare it to Bryan if we have a daughter someday and I was gone for the weekend and all she wanted to do ALL WEEKEND LONG was have him help her comb Barbie's hair. I think he understood :)



Bryan's truck wouldn't start for some reason, so they drove it to Aaron's house. Another blog to come about Aaron's house, we're pretty excited to have him so close!

9.07.2010

state fair

Bryan was able to take off of work last Thursday so we could go to the State Fair. We lucked out with the weather, no rain and it was a little cooler, perfect! We had a great day and Connor fell asleep for about 2.5 hours in the stroller so we were able to just walk around and see everything. I hadn't been to the state fair in 10+ years, I'm sure, so it was fun. Sorry for the lack of pictures.


Both pictures the result of his 'say cheese' face.

9.06.2010

the nursery theme that never really was

Well, this is a little embarrassing to admit, but I never really finished Connor's nursery. It was the last room in the house that I painted before we moved in and I think my motivation to paint was wearing very, very thin. Yes, one would think over the two years we've been here (wow, two years to the weekend, actually!) I'd have finished it. Nope. If you look closely, you can still see some plant things are still just stenciled on the wall, waiting to be filled in.



So, I figured I should document what I actually did accomplish...before painting over it today. The original plan was that this room would stay the nursery for a future child, but this room features a little bonus area in the back corner that Connor will probably appreciate more than a baby would and this theme doesn't really reflect his personality very well. Pictures to come of his new and improved room. Hopefully in less than two years :)

steele county fair

A few weekends ago Connor, Bryan, Aaron and I went to the Steele County Fair in Owatonna. My parents met us there as well. I had never been to this fair, but supposedly it's the biggest county fair in all of Minnesota. It did not disappoint.


Shocker, pictures of Connor sitting on equipment.




I'm not sure. I think he really liked how the horse's mane was done up.



Funny picture if you don't see Connor in there.





Dad's competitiveness came out a little bit and challenged the boys.


Dad won.

We will definitely be making the Steele County Fair an annual event. It's free (well, no entrance fee), tons of food vendors, tons of animals, a huge carnival and more.

9.04.2010

little update

Same story as always, haven't been good at keeping this thing up. Getting old, I know.

This past week Connor didn't have daycare so Mon/Tues my aunt Mary came down to stay with us, which was wonderful! Wednesday he spent the day with Nate and Cheryl, Thursday we took him to the State Fair and yesterday back with Nate and Cheryl followed by dinner and playtime with Madelyn and Ava. Tomorrow he's going to my parents for the morning, Sunday afternoon/evening he's spending with Aaron and then Monday he'll be in the skid loader all day with Bryan working at Aaron's new house. To say the least, it's probably been the best week of his life, ha.

I have pictures from the Steele County Fair yet to share, but I think that's about it. I'll get to it.

Since it's 3:26 in the morning, I'm going to try and go back to sleep. Been up since 1:20 for no apparent reason and feel like I should be up for the day. Not cool. Hopefully Schmo and I will get a good nap in this afternoon.