A little surprise

Suz and I planned on having a sleepover Tuesday night since a little baby would be joining my family in just two short weeks. We wanted to have one last baby free sister night.  Well baby Paterson decided to crash the party!  I'll share more details later but for now I'll just say that Jensen and I could not be more in love with our bundle of joy.

Weeeeeekend!!!

Giant belly!

Last week's Sunday nap, joined by Pigeon

 

We made it to the weekend! Things I'm looking forward to:
- sleeping in tomorrow
- a family baby shower thrown by my awesome aunt and cousin!
- a long Sunday nap

Is it sad that 2/3 of those have to do with sleeping?  The bump will do that to you. :)

I need a nap

 

36 weeks now! Baby will be here in less than a month. I feel like I still have so much to do (like get a car seat and stroller. There's just too many options to pick one!).  I'm getting increasingly more tired and uncomfortable, but I know as soon as baby comes I'll be a whole new kind of tired so I should just enjoy my quiet time while I have it.  Lately I've been waking up in the middle of the night and can't fall back asleep for several hours.  I wish these wake ups came with more energy so I could make myself get out of bed and be productive, but I just lay there playing on my phone or reading.

 

Baby boy's room/ my craft room is almost done!  I'm excited to post some pictures once it's finished.  I'll be sharing the room for my crafting so right now it's bit of a craft explosion.  I'm trying to organize all of my stuff and get rid of anything I don't use anymore so it will be easier to keep that room clean once our baby arrives.  Hopefully sharing the room with baby will be good motivation for me to stay more clean and organized. :)

One Line a Day Journal DIY

I mostly use this blog as a journal, so I have been terrible at keeping a journal ever since I started my blog.  Even though it is nice to keep track of my life on my blog I only write about "exciting things" and usually only things I take photos of.  I've seen a few one line a day journals and I thought it would be fun to make my own. Now I have no excuse not to keep a journal, because writing just one line a day is much less daunting than keeping a traditional journal. 

Materials:

- 366 4 by 6 inch index cards (don't forget one for leap year!)

- 12 photos for month dividers

- scrapbook paper for dividers (You can buy scrapbook cards that are also 4 by 6 inches, or cut paper down to size yourself)

- wooden or cardboard box

- stamps for dates on index cards

- paint for decorating the journal box

- paintbrush

- glue

- scissors

Step 1: Print photos for month dividers.  I wanted square photos, so I chose some of my instagram photos to print from the past few years.  Before I printed them I added borders and month names using A Beautiful Mess photo app.

I was originally only going to use photos as my monthly dividers for my journal, but I found cute scrapbook card stock at Target that was already 4 by 6 inches, which was the same size as my photos and index cards.

Step 2: Cut your photos into squares

Step 3 (optional):  Use a corner rounding paper punch to curve the edges of the photos.  I did this so my photos would match the scrapbook paper index cards.

Step 4: Glue photos onto scrapbook paper.

Step 5: Stamp away!  There should be one index card for each day of the year.

Step 6: Paint your journal box.  I wanted to keep mine simple so I just taped it off and painted triangles across the front, but feel free to be creative! 

Step 7: Place your month dividers and index cards in the box and get to journaling!  A great thing about this journal is that even when writing in it every day it will last you several years.  Each line on the index cards should have a new year written on it, so this year each card will have a line from 2014 and next year a new line will be added to each card for 2015.  I think it will be fun to compare what I did each day from year to year.

Getting ready for baby



I reached 35 weeks this week!  I can't believe I'm already so close to the end of this pregnancy.  I have finally started to get baby's room together so if he does make an early appearance he will now have somewhere to sleep :)

I had my last ultra sound on Monday.  Baby boy is measuring about 10 days big.  I sure hope that means his arrival will be 10 days early, and not a giant baby!  Everything looks good right now. His head is already down so that is nice to know.

As usual my back has been killing me.  I told Suz to start doing sit ups/push ups/whatever exercises strengthen back muscles now so when she wants' a baby her back will be stronger, because apparently I have no back muscles to speak of.  I have also just barely started waking up in the night to use the bathroom and because I'm uncomfortable.  I'm so grateful that I've lasted until now sleeping through the night. I know a lot of women wake up a ton in the night even early in their pregnancy.  I'm also still finding it next to impossible to fall asleep at night.  I think my body is just preparing me for sleepless nights once the baby comes.

Besides my back and always feeling tired I feel really good.  We're just getting ready for this little baby to arrive, even though my due date is still over a month away.

 

2013 Year in Review

2013 has been one of my best years yet.  Every year I have together with Jensen seems to get better and better and I hope this trend continues.  Some people have a "honeymoon" first year of marriage, that was definitely not the case with Jensen and I.  So far that was our hardest year of marriage and I look forward to every new year I get to spend with him.  At the end of 2012 I got a new job, we moved out to Eagle Mountain, and have enjoyed all of 2013 in our beautiful new home.  I've been growing a baby about half of 2013 and am so excited to meet our little boy in just about a month! Here's a little wrap up of 2013!

We did some skiing in the beginning of 2013.

We took a trip to Denver.



Had a few picnics when the weather was nice.



Celebrated 3 years of marriage!

Spent time in Salt Lake with Daley and Desiree when they came to visit.



Went skeet shooting.



I got braces!



And we went on lots of drives up the canyon.



I grew a little baby bump!!!



And watched Jensen in lots of mountain bike races.



We found out baby bean is a baby boy :)



And went on even more drives up the canyon.



Went camping up to mirror lake for Jensen's birthday.

I went to Idaho for Thanksgiving



and we stayed home for Christmas.

We ended the year with a trip to Canada to see Morly, Jensen's brother, get married! 

Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time

As usual Jensen and I celebrated Christmas Eve and Christmas day at home together.  Christmas Eve we had soup and bread bowls, opened pajamas, watched Christmas movies, and went to bed.  Christmas day was pretty relaxed.  I woke up way too early for an adult and waited until a reasonable hour in bed before waking up Jensen.

I picked out my own jammies this year and found some with my favorite on them. Kitties!

Jensen's ornament this year... a jeep!

Pigeon likes Christmas too.

My big gift, a silhouette cameo! This is my third year asking for one and I am so excited for all the projects I will get to do with it!

Holiday Cheer

One of my favorite things about Christmas is transforming my house with Christmas decorations.  Pretty much every flat surface is cleared off and filled with Christmas.  My mom and grandma both went all out for Christmas every year too.  I think the love of Christmas and especially Christmas decorations runs in my family. :)  Almost all of my decorations besides the ones on my mantel were gifts from my mom and grandma.

Every year growing up for Christmas I got an ornament from my mom.  I love having a tree full of mix matched ornaments, but I hope to have a fancy themed tree one day too.

 Tonight after work the decorations are coming down.  Even though I'm sad to see them go it will be nice to have a cleaner looking house again.  Now I need to starting thinking of some fun Valentine's decorations to make!