Baby's Room

The baby's room is finally finished!! It's all organized and ready to go, and Travis was so great to help me put everything up on the walls. It's great to have an outlet for all the creative energies I have stored up all summer, and I love the way that the room has turned out. (I know the baby won't remember any of it, but I sure had a lot of fun doing it!!)

Baby only gets half the room, but I had a lot of fun putting this all together!

The other half of the room is Travis' office and wall of Air Force photos, but we've turned his desk into a changing table, and his office chair is now otherwise occupied. :-)

The border I created around the top of the wall is made out of green and brown ribbon, flowers that I made out of ribbon and paper, and monkeys found at a teacher supply store in Houston. I absolutely love the way it turned out!! And, since Travis wouldn't let me climb on any ladders, he gets major brownie points for patiently affixing all the ribbon, monkeys, and flowers to the wall!

Here's a close-up of the monkeys over the closet...

A close-up of the orange flowers that I made... (There are also blue and yellow ones)

A close-up of the decor over his bed...

The letters are mounted on paper so they will be easy to take down when we are ready to move, and I used command hooks so we won't have to fill in any holes in the walls either! All the ribbon and monkeys are attached to the wall with staples, again so we won't have to fill in any holes, and the decor will be very simple to take down and relocate! :-)

One of the photo boards I made for the room...

The other photo board...

The door hanger that I made for the entrance to the baby's room...

(Again, just paper, ribbons, and monkeys!)

And finally, the cute little collection of monkeys our baby has already amassed!

I know they can't stay in the crib forever, but right now, that's where they are hanging out...

We are ready for this little guy to come home! :-)

We're Almost There!

We are officially at 37 weeks, only 19 days away from our due date of September 7th. Baby is doing great and is weighing in at 7 pounds as of Wednesday, August 17th. Mom and Dad are doing great as well, working hard to get the house, nursery, dogs, cat, cars, life, etc. ready for our new little addition! :-)

Here's a look at the last nine months:

Here we are at 36/37 weeks:

A true round belly now!!

And here's the most recent picture of our sweet little boy:

The big, bald white area at the top is his forehead, and you can see his (closed) eye and ear on the right hand side of his head. His hands are up in front of his face - one at the bottom left of his face and the other draped across his face. He was faking sleep, though, because he was kicking the sonogram machine constantly. We sat there about five minutes waiting for him to move his hands, but he refused and continued to kick the machine away. We did get the chance to see his kidneys, heart, head, spine, and femur (which is really long and apparently indicates that he is going to be a tall kid)!! He's in a head-down position and has dropped (finally, I can breathe again!!), so he is doing great and looking good. He continues to roll, kick, squirm, and stretch like a maniac, so we can only imagine how wiggly he'll be when he arrives!

We are really excited to meet him and look forward to introducing him to everyone soon!

Master Educator

It's official! I am finished with my Master's degree and have received my diploma! Now, whenever I start teaching again, I am just that much more certified!! :-) YAY!

Graduation was August 13th, 2011. And, even though the robe would have looked dazzling on my 36-weeks pregnant belly, I opted out of walking at the graduation ceremony since it was a three hour drive from here. So, the diploma just arrived in the mail, and I couldn't be more excited!!

1000 Hours

Travis has officially completed more than 1000 hours of flying in the T-6 as an instructor

(and just received the patch to mark the event)!!

That's a lot of flying, especially when each flight lasts only about 1 hour and 15 minutes!

These hours include the months he spent in Bee-flight as scheduler, in training flight as an instructor for other instructor pilots, and in Aces-flight as flight commander. He's been doing a fabulous job over the past two and a half years and is really a great instructor!

Kitty and the Baby Bump

Over the past few months, Kitty has decided that his favorite place to be is snuggled up to the baby bump. The past few times he has been sitting there, the baby starts kicking him so hard that the cat's head is bumping up and down! He sleeps so deeply, though, that I am not sure if he notices it or not. Little does he know that the bump will be a little baby who likes to pull his tail and mash his fur in just a few short weeks!! :-)

This picture was taken back when I was about 15 weeks pregnant, just starting to show, and the cat was just figuring out that he couldn't really fit comfortably in my lap anymore. It took him a while to snuggle in, but I'd say he found a comfortable spot!!

I woke up one morning to see this... So cute!!

(And yes, the big giant lump in the forefront of the picture is my belly!)

He is so chill and relaxed. I hope the baby doesn't traumatize him too much!! :-)

Remodeling the Kitchen

We FINALLY had the opportunity to get our floors fixed after the water damage from months ago. We also decided to go ahead and update to granite countertops and a more modern tile backsplash in hopes that this will help our house sell faster in a few months when we put it on the market! Overall, the work went really smoothly and only took about a week, but the house was a disaster!! I'm glad we finally got it all taken care of before the baby, and we've managed to get everything back in place so we can function in our house again!

Here are a few "before" pictures:

And here's what it looks like now:

You can't really tell a difference on the floors, since we just replaced the wood with pretty much the same thing. The countertops and backsplash, though, look completely different! I had hated that white tile with cornucopias on it since we had moved in, so I am thrilled to have what we have now! We also had the new sink remounted underneath the granite, which also looks really good, and with the new baseboards all around the new floors, the dogs' damages are gone!

We are really pleased with how it all turned out. Now we just have to keep it clean and in good shape for when we are ready to sell the house! :-)

Happy Second Anniversary!

Monday was our second wedding anniversary! Thanks to everyone who sent cards and congratulations - we had a wonderful anniversary!

Travis made a salmon dinner, and it was delicious! For a gift, he gave me a new camera - a really nice one that will make documenting every second of our baby's life so much easier! I am really excited to get a chance to get it all set up and learn how to use it. I gave Travis a new gym bag (since that's one of his excuses for not going to the gym!!!), an arm band case for his i-phone (to use at the gym), and a gift card to Home Depot (to support his habit of making lots of home improvements!!).

Overall, it was a wonderful evening and the perfect, low-key celebration that this tired pregnant lady could easily handle. So much has changed in just two years, and we are looking forward to seeing what the future brings! :-)