Who needs the beach?

We've had a really nice week, considering we should be at the beach now.  Actually, I take that back- today would've been our day to spend hours in the car.  So, I'm thankful for that to have not happened today.  I am way too tired to think about driving that far.  Stephen had the week off and we had a fun and productive week.

On Tuesday, we decided to blow up our new purchase- a backyard pool/play center thing.  Man, this thing has been a hit!

On Wednesday, we took the girls to daycare bright and early and had our 3rd annual house cleaning day!  Woohoo!!  I'm talking, vacuuming the blinds/vents/couches/mattresses above and beyond the obvious floors and carpet.  I washed all the curtains, windexed all the windows and glass doors, Stephen caulked windows and any cracks in the house, dusted, mopped, cleaned the fridge, cleaned the oven, washed the fronts of all cabinets, etc, etc, etc.  Whew!  At least we have a clean house now!!  Yay!

Thursday, we took the girls to daycare again, and Stephen played golf and I did Pinterest craft/girly movie day.  I got some cute crafts done for the kiddos' rooms- a hairbow holder for Taylor's room, a wall painting thing for her room, and I painted the letters for Parker's name to hang on his wall.  I also made a necklace for yours truly.  I'll have to post pictures later, when I actually take some.

Today, we decided to venture out to the Yellow River Game Ranch.  I went there back when I was a camp counselor in college, but couldn't really remember what it was like (yes, that was many, many moons ago!).  I thought the girls would like it.  (Insert side note here: my girls, especially Sydney, are unreasonably/insanely afraid of animals).  But, I thought- the animals will be behind fences/cages, it'll be cool.

You can buy food at the ticket place to feed the animals, but I knew my girls would have no interest in that, whatsoever.  So, we walk out and, right away, we see a deer, waiting for some yummy treats.  Sydney immediately gets in panic mode.  We promise her that the deer is behind the (rather low) fence, and that it won't jump out.  A nice family is right behind us, and they have plenty of treats for the deer.  All of a sudden, that deer jumped the fence to get close to that family.  Oh, goodness, that about did Sydney in... and we were all of 10 feet into the one mile long path.  Apparently, lots of friendly animals can walk the grounds freely.  Needless to say, Stephen carried Sydney for most of the way, though it fortunately did get a little better.  We got to see a lot of animals, like foxes, bears, coyotes, alpacas, ducks, turkeys, geese, roosters, cougars, skunks, pot-bellied pigs, and more.

This was the look on her face for most of the morning!

Taylor was pretty content with her goldfish, except when the deer tried to take a bite of them.

Checking out the buffalo.

See that top sign?  That's where the water rose to in the floods in September, 2009.  I totally remember it was on 9/23 because it was Sydney's first birthday, and they actually cancelled school!  So, I got to spend that day with Sydney. :)

The pigs didn't smell very good.

We went to lunch at Chick Fil-A and then hit the "pool" in the backyard again.  Since this is what we were facing today...

I picked a great time to be pregnant, huh??

... all four of us ended up in the pool!  I didn't realize we were out there for almost 4 hours.  Poor Taylor was so sleepy this evening that she fell asleep at the dinner table.  I am so sunburnt, it's ridiculous.  At least we look like we've been beach bums all week. :)

I'm thinking that we'll be hitting the pool this weekend, too! (105 degrees??  Seriously?)

So, a fun week was had by all.  We had a good mix of practical activities, fun things for me and Stephen, the girls had fun at school, and we had some good family bonding time.  Plus, time with the neighbors is always fun, too, which we got to do this week.  Good times!

Belly Updates

Updates from the belly...

I will be 26 weeks tomorrow!  Hard to believe- this pregnancy is flying by much faster than the other two.  Probably because I don't have much any time to think about it.  Baby boy is moving around like crazy, and I can see my belly shift in all sorts of directions.

25.5 weeks

 

Check out that whopper of a belly!

I'm starting to feel really pregnant- I get so winded going up the stairs (esp. if I'm carrying one, or both, girls).  I'm waking up to leg cramps.  Just tonight I noticed a little bit of acid reflux.  The skin on my legs is SO tight- I'm hoping I don't start swelling this early.  I've been having Braxton Hicks contractions for a few weeks now.  It's hard to think about how much harder it'll get over the next 3 months!  (Speaking of, we will probably have the baby on September 27th (when I'm 39 weeks)- 3 months from today!).  Plus, I am just exhausted.

And, we have officially decided on a name!  Woohoo!  We went with our first boy name choice, what it would've been if Sydney or Taylor had been a boy. 

So, we will have...

 and...

Can you believe Taylor wrote that so well?  She's so smart!

 and... drumroll, please...

Parker William.  Can't wait to meet him :)

Enough for tonight... must.go.to.sleep!

The Almost-Beach Trip

Howdy all!
We have had quite the adventurous week in the K-Bash household.  Things didn't turn out quite as planned.  I should be sitting on the beach right now, drink in hand (ha!), but sadly, I am sitting in my PJs at our home computer desk.  Let's just say a certain little tropical storm changed our plans.  Boo, Debby.  Thanks a bunch.

We headed down to South GA on Friday to see Stephen's family for the weekend.  That was lot of fun- we got in some good family time, dancing, pool time, and more. 

Sydney & Taylor heart their Uncle Randy.

Dancing.

Taylor was having a blast.

Sleepyheads.  Taylor woke up at 5:15 AM every morning.

No pictures from the pool- I've learned that having 2 toddlers at a pool = all hands on deck.

Sunday morning, we headed down to Vero Beach, FL- about a 6 hour drive from Waycross.  It was raining most of the time.  We had seen weather reports about the tropical storm/hurricane/whatever it was, but it looked like it was heading towards Alabama.  Anyways, we made the trek to Vero and got to see my Aunt Katherine and Uncle Jack!  Plus, I got to see my cousin Kristen, whom I haven't seen in WAY too long.  We hung out, the girls got some energy out, and we went out to dinner.  We hung around the condos that evening, listening to the calm rain.  We also made sure we turned on the weather radio because of the tornado watches/warnings. 

Monday morning, Taylor got up AGAIN at 5:15 AM.  She just couldn't wait to start the day!  We headed to the beach around 7 AM, just to get outside before the rain came again.  The girls loved it.  It was really nice, cool, and breezy- very overcast, but it felt great.  We grabbed some grub at Einstein Brothers Bagels and then headed back to the condos.  We hung out with my aunt, played some ping-pong, rode the golf cart around the complex, did some crafts, etc.  It was starting to rain, so we didn't want to chance the pool or the beach again.  After meeting my uncle for lunch, we went back to the condo and turned on the weather.  This is what we saw as the projection for the next couple of days:

And guess where we were supposed to go from Tuesday-Friday?  St. Augustine.  Yep, right smack in that mess that was moving 5 mph.  Vero had rain all week, plus tornado watches.  The girls were starting to go stir crazy, being cooped up inside most of the time.  We had to make a quick decision.  Should we still go to St. Augustine and just do what we can, even if it's raining the whole time?  Or should we call, like yesterday, to see if we could cancel our reservations (24 hour notice... it was pushing it!).  We thought about it for a few minutes and decided it would be better to cancel and try to reschedule.  There's really nothing two toddlers would enjoy doing in St. Augustine in the rain. 

We also decided we better head home, as our drive back home on Tuesday would've been way worse than driving back on Monday, weather-wise.  We sadly said goodbye to Aunt Katherine, packed up our car really quickly, and were in the car for 9.5 hours (including about an hour worth of stops) through some heavy rain.  We didn't get home until about 1 AM.  We thought about stopping, but we had SO much stuff with us that it would've been more of a pain to lug it all out and then lug it back in the next morning than to just suck it up and make the drive.

You'd think this would sound like a terrible few days of so much driving and bad weather... and, on top of that, me locking Sydney in the car, Sydney getting her first bee sting, and me konking my head on something and having a huge knot on my forehead.  But, it was actually great- our time in Vero Beach actually seemed like a lot longer than 24 hours, and it was great to see my family.

So, here's hoping we can reschedule some sort of a beach trip before I go back to work!  Enjoy the pictures that we were able to capture:

Taylor's first trip to FL!

What's up?

Feel like I haven't had much to say on the good ol' blog lately... so why not just update with what we've been doing?  Not so much exciting stuff, but I'll share anyways.

Happier Girls:
Last week and this week were MUCH better with the girls.  We all felt better and had more (positive) energy, so things were happier in the K-Bash household.  We had some fun outside, water-playing, popsicle-eating kind of days. 

Thanks, Pinterest- this really DID entertain her for a long time.

We left Elmo at church and had to replace him.  This is Taylor giving her new Elmo a kiss.

Swim Lessons:
Sydney has now had 7 of 8 swim lessons.  As much as I was hoping she'd be able to somewhat swim after these sessions, alas, my dreams were dashed.  I think these 2 weeks have done a good job of getting her used to moving in the water, blowing bubbles/putting her face under the water, jumping in, and showing her how to kick... but all was done with the instructor holding onto her.  So, she has no clue how to doggy paddle, float on her back, do anything independently.  And they've done the same thing every single day.  I'm definitely no swim instructor, so maybe that's what is best- to keep the same drills every day for 8 days.  Definitely not a waste, but don't know if I'll continue any more this summer.

Big Girl Room:

One of my goals this summer has been to get Taylor's big girl room ready, as well as getting the baby's nursery ready.  Taylor's room will be the former guest room, which was painted this lovely brownish/green color... kind of classic for a guestroom, but not so much for a little girl's room.  However, the thought of repainting it brought dread (even with my kind parents offering to do so).  So, I luckily found a pretty quilt comforter that had the same brownish/green color in it, and I went from there!

Bare with my iphone-quality pictures, but this will give you an idea.  The colors are ivory, dark purple, lavendar, olive green, and that brownish color.  I got an ivory bed skirt and shams, and bought dark purple sheets.  I painted her "T" (which was pink with white polka dots) purple and put green buttons on it.  I switched out all the guestroom pictures and put in some colorful scrapbook paper (again, thanks, Pinterest!).  Here are some pictures:

Before- framed pictures

After- not a very detailed shot, but you can see the colors.  I feel like it looks better in person- the colors are a little distorted here from reality.  At least, I hope!

A view of the pictures with the comforter.

The "T" I painted.

There are still a few things I want to do, but thankfully most things are done.  She won't be moving into this room for a couple more months, but I know how hectic things will be once I get back to work, so it's nice to have it somewhat done.

Baby boy nursery is next... crib skirt is ordered- we'll be using the same green/blue/brown theme as Taylor (minus the pretty flower mural).  His shouldn't have too many changes!

Plus, I think another goal is for us to actually decide on a name.  Once I think that we're close, Stephen will start throwing out ridiculous names and won't take it seriously.  Sydney now wants to name him "Marty". 

So, that is an update from us.  In the near future is vacation, where we'll be going to south GA and two destinations in Florida.  This summer is starting to fly by a little too quickly... here's hoping it'll slow itself down!