July 2013 Recap

4th of July "Weekend" (July 3-5)

We had a crazy busy few days leading up to the weekend over the 4th of July. Mark and I tackled the big project of prepping and painting the new nursery as well as prepping Cashel's room for paint. We also spent a nice evening in Worthington at Rhonda and Bryan Larsen's beautiful home on Lake Okabena.

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Weekend in Humboldt (July 6-7)

We spent the weekend after the 4th of July visiting family in Humboldt. We had a fun time visiting, a little time at the pool, and for Cashel, playing with his cousins.

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Vanderhill Girls' Weekend in West Des Moines (July 19-21)

I met up with 12 girls I lived with (or were part of the group of us) my junior year of college in Vanderhill Cottage at NWC. It was my last "big" trip before the baby comes.

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Afternoon in Worthington (July 23)

We decided to take the afternoon off work and head down to Worthington, since Mark had a dentist appointment that afternoon and softball game later that evening, we thought it'd be a good opportunity to catch up with Grandma Vi :)

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Busy Saturday in Windom (July 27)

Cashel and I spent a fun afternoon on a long walk around Windom while Mark and our contractor buddy spend the morning and early afternoon getting a wall put up in our lower level for Cashel's new room!

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Nursery Progress

We spent a fair amount of the month working on the nursery and preparing for the new baby. After receiving a little inspiration from my friend Steff, we decided to use a cute owl theme. Between painting the room, refinishing an old ugly dresser, adding a little custom wall art I designed, and selling a bunch of stuff, we're getting there, but thankfully have another month to make it all happen!

Looking Ahead

As I'm posting this a day late, we had a great time celebrating Mark's 34th birthday today with a half day off, lunch at Bergen, a nice nap, and a fun celebration with our little family at home with balloons, gifts and a cake :)

All our major travels before this baby come are finished, so we have quite a few "free" weekends to putz around the area, hopefully get a date day or night in, and finish up our downstairs renovations. Rest assured, we will be BUSY with all of this, but at least for now, we're breathing a bit of a sigh of relief that we will no longer be busy prepping for weekends out of town.

I am also thrilled that I realized that I have more vacation time to use up before maternity leave because of how our fiscal year falls (In the midst of my maternity leave), so I'm looking forward to a few down days in August to catch my body up on sleep, digi-scrapbooking, and hopefully getting our house in order for our new addition :)

We're hoping that by the next monthly update, we've got some news to share with you all, but with my due date being the 31st, we're also well aware that we might not have any big news on the baby front until early September. Only God knows at this point :)

Room Addition Progress: Walls Up!

We were thrilled to see the wall finally go up this past weekend! Mark and our contractor buddy worked a good chunk of the day on Saturday to get the wall structure for the wall itself and the closet as well as the drywall and insulation all up!

If you recall the before:

The guys worked from 8am until around 2pm getting it all done. It was fun to watch how quickly they got it all done. I was fully expecting them to get about this far:

But I suppose that with all the help they got from our tiny little helper, they were able to get much further :)

Cashel and I let the guys work hard for a few hours in the morning, and we went for a nice long walk to the farmers' market, then to Ace Hardware to pick up paint for the tree/owl mural in the nursery. We had McDonald's for lunch, then played at the park for a good hour before we headed home for naptime and found this!!!!!

We've still got quite a ways to go before this baby arrives, but it feels great to have made so much progress! Our contractor buddy has plans to return this coming weekend to install the closet doors, bedroom door and spray texture the new walls. I cannot WAIT for this project to finally come to a close and see it all together and finished :) Mark will have to do a little touch up painting in Cashel's room, prime the new walls inside the closet as well as the wall on the living room side, but beyond that, it will be ready to move in! I think I'm still in shock a bit as to how much progress was made this weekend. The rest seems fairly miniscule in comparison. All I know is that in the next couple weekends, we should be able to start making this enormous transition, and I just can't believe we're that far already!

So until next weekend...there's my update :)

A Busy Saturday in Windom (July 27)

This past weekend was unexpectedly busy for us! We weren't sure what it would hold, but after Mark got a text from his contractor buddy saying he was ready to start on the new wall downstairs, we couldn't wait to get that project under way!

They got started around 8am and finished around 2pm, and I wrote a separate blog post about the progress they made :)

Meanwhile, Cashel and I decided to get out of our PJs around 10am and take a long walk around town, hitting up the farmers' market, Ace Hardware, McDonald's and the park. We were gone about 2 1/2 hours, but we had a fun time just spending the day together. We couldn't have had more perfect weather (especially with me at the waddling point this pregnancy: Just a little over a month to go!) :)

Cashel just LOVED running around at the park.

I've been missing our walks and visits to the park like crazy this summer since it has gotten so hot, so it was a pleasant surprise being able to revisit our favorite spot and spend some good Mama and Cashel time together :)

Of course, a long walk like that so late in this pregnancy left me pretty well laid up most of Sunday from being so sore, but after most of a day of recuperation, I'm feeling much better.

Afternoon in Worthington (July 23)

We spent a fun afternoon in Worthington catching up with Grandma Vi and attending one of Mark's softball games. Since Mark had a dentist appointment scheduled for the afternoon, we all decided to take the afternoon off from work and enjoy the (BEAUTIFUL!!) day. We tend to not just head down to Worthington on a whim like we used to BC (Before Cashel), so we don't see Grandma Vi nearly as much as we used to, and it was definitely time to play a little catch up :)

We met her at Arby's for a short-lived lunch before making our way to Dean and Barb's house to visit a while longer (and try to get Cashel down for his nap...for over 2 hours - yikes!). Eventually, we ended up roaming the back yard in lieu of a nap, and he finally dozed off around 3pm towards the end of our walk, thankfully.

Cashel had an absolute blast chillin' in the tree with Daddy, and kicked and screamed when it was time to go in.

It was nice to catch up with Aunt Barb and Grandma Vi for the afternoon while our busy little guy napped. It's difficult to both be able to sit down and have adult conversations with anyone but each other lately as one of us is always chasing after our little guy trying to keep him out of trouble.

Grandma Vi sure enjoyed the few sleepy snuggles she was able to get (this kid is too active to snuggle for too long) :)

We grabbed a quick supper before Mark's game, and then enjoyed an absolutely beautiful evening at Mark's softball game! (Seriously - after temps in the 90s and humidity, we were thrilled with mid-70s and a light soft breeze!)

After the game, Cashel and his buddy Madelyn had fun running around in the infield.

All in all, it was a wonderful afternoon, and we thoroughly enjoyed the break from the "norm".

Des Moines Reunion Weekend (July 19-21)

I had been looking forward to this weekend for a long time to catch up with some of my old roommates and friends from NWC from my Sophomore and Junior years. Twelve of us were able to make it - a huge group!

Friday I took a half day off work to drive down to Des Moines and spent the evening catching up and reminiscing with another really good friend from NWC, Stephanie! I haven't seen her in over a year, and it was just so great to catch up with her without having any distractions. We enjoyed dinner together at PF Changs followed by just catching up (and hearing about her amazing vacation!) and hanging out :)

I didn't get to my hotel room until shortly after midnight to meet up with the other girls, but it was well worth it! We ended up staying up until 2am (yikes!) catching up a bit :)

Saturday morning, I enjoyed an incredible hour-long prenatal massage (albeit a tad early, considering the hours I kept the night before), then rejoined the group at the hotel and enjoyed some pool time with the girls most of the day. We had fun catching up with each others' lives - it had been way too long!! It was so fun to see so many people I haven't seen since college!

We went out for supper at Biaggi's - YUM.

Sunday morning, we celebrated 3 very special ladies with upcoming events in their lives: Kristen's upcoming wedding, and the first babies on their way for Carissa and Jaime! We gathered at the Cheesecake Factory for a delicious brunch and they opened some gifts. It was fairly low-key, but nice to just be able to get together and celebrate :)

I started for home shortly after, making a stop at TJ Maxx to pick up a few things for the new nursery and cute things for the baby, and made it home at a somewhat decent hour, although my boys were definitely ready for Mama (and Mark was ready for a break from having Cashel by himself all weekend) :)

All in all, a wonderful weekend! It was so great to see these ladies again, and hopefully it won't be 5-10 years before we can all get together again!