Feels Like an Early Christmas

Tomorrow is the day! Had our last doctor's appointment today (to make sure she hadn't decided to turn at the last minute) and everything is all set for the delivery tomorrow. What have I been doing on my last day without baby? Pretty much nothing. Cleaned the apartment a little bit (I really should dust tonight because I am sure it will be a few weeks before that ever gets done again!), took a walk, watched a movie, took a nap, tried to get into a new book (just finished Jane Austen's Emma... LOVE it!) , and now I am blogging. Hmm... I feel like I need to be productive on my last day before this baby is born but I can't seem to want to. Maybe I will tonight when Arek is done with work and homework...

I still am having a hard time believing tomorrow is the end of this pregnancy and the start of mommy-hood. Where has the time gone?! It has been so awesome being pregnant, feeling this little one grow inside of me, I can hardly believe it is time to meet her! Arek and I are super excited (and scared and intimidated and...) to become parents. We are so excited, it feels like an early Christmas. I already have that Christmas Eve feeling, and I know I am going to toss and turn with excitement all night and not get hardly any sleep. Oh well... starting tomorrow I won't ever get a decent night's rest like I used to (or so everyone has told me)! So... tomorrow we have to check into Labor and Delivery at 5:30 a.m. for pre-op stuff. At 7:30 the surgery is supposed to begin and by 8 (or shortly thereafter) we will have our little baby! Craziness. I better post this before I keep rambling on. It may be a week or two before I have access to the internet again to update... so be patient please :)

Yellowstone

Finally... documented evidence of our trip to Yellowstone. One of my best friends has been working at a bakery & motel up in West Yellowstone, MT, all summer long. Labor Day was the first weekend we were able to go up and visit her. It was SUPER fun to see all the sights (and have such an amazing tour guide... since she spends all her free time there!) and we were also VERY grateful that Arek's cousin Drewann could come up with us.
We made it! :) Actually, this was one of the last photos we took before we LEFT, but still...
Our first geyser... we were pretty excitedOne of the many hot pools... the colors were gorgeous! If only the smell of sulphuric acid wasn't quite so strong!Waiting for Old Faithful to be "faithful"... it sure did take a while
Finally... the grand sight we were waiting for!
Drew, Brynn, and me on a bridge just past the Upper (?) Falls
"A buffalo... a real buffalo!" Yeah... we saw about a million of these. This one was right along side the road while we were driving by, though
Our last geyser for the day... we all forgot our hoodies back at the motel and we were freezing! To emphasize how cold it was: it started snowing on our drive out of the park!

That's all for now... One week from today until Baby's here!

"Funny" baby

Ok so Yellowstone pictures are still coming, I promise. Suffice it to say (for now) that we had an awesome vacation and I have just been too lazy to go through photos and update. But I will...
Anyway, last Friday we had our 36 week appointment (see above belly photo). and at said appointment we discovered that our little girl thinks she is pretty clever or funny or both... take your pick. Either way we found out that she is footling breech. What exactly is that, you might ask? Well at this stage a baby is supposed to be head down. That is good and normal and safe. Frank breech (the most common) is when the baby is bum down (meaning the head is right under the ribs). Footling breech is when the baby is feet first... meaning our baby is pretty much standing straight up and down inside of me, with her head pressed right under my ribs and her feet in my pelvis (see photo). Anyway, so what does this all mean? Well, our doctor let us think things over during the weekend and on Monday we came back for our 37 week appointment (yes she is still breech) to decide what we want to do. The options? Try to turn her or just schedule a c-section. She can't be born the way she is because footling breech babies come out feet first... and that means that the umbilical cord almost always comes out first, too, which is BAD. So, after asking lots of questions we decided to forgo trying to turn her. Our reasoning: The odds were against her turning - the way she is positioned and this being my first pregnancy (i.e. my uterus isn't super stretchy since it hasn't done this before) and my having an anterior placenta. So instead of risking having an emergency c-section, we have scheduled a normal c-section for our baby's birth date. So unless I start going into labor early (hopefully not!) our baby girl will be born around 8 a.m. on September 28 (at our 39 weeks, 2 days mark). That is 2 weeks from yesterday! Needless to say we are super excited to meet this little one and are SO glad to live in a day and age where our "funny" baby can be born safely!

One Month...

Today is September 3rd... which means it is just one month until our baby's due date. The past few weeks I have just been amazed at how close we are to having our little girl. Are we ready?!?! Baby item-wise I know we are not, but that will be rectified in about a week (my baby shower is next Saturday and then we can finally begin buying baby things that we don't get but need/want). Anyway, we are both super excited (and nervous!) to be parents and I think we are just going to be counting the weeks/days for our little one to arrive. Luckily there are lots of things happening this month to keep us busy. For instance: this weekend we are visiting my best friend who works in West Yellowstone, Montana. Next weekend is my baby shower. September 18 is my parents' house party - their house is 100 years old this year. September 25 is my birthday. Mix in doctor's appointments and more baby shopping, Arek's school and work schedules... and I think/hope September (and however much of October she chooses to stay inside) will pass by quickly. Anyway, this is mostly just my rambling thoughts... next week I promise to post something with pictures, which is almost certainly to be of our Yellowstone trip!

Ugly Cupcakes

The other day I asked Arek what treat he was in the mood for and he said cupcakes. Well, it had been a while since we last made cupcakes (or a cake, for that matter) so we quickly whipped up batter for cherry chip cupcakes (they sound weird... but they are not cherry at all; they actually taste like almond extract which reminds me of my favorite childhood candy: divinity... yum!) and put them in the oven to bake. Anyway, for some reason or another the cupcakes mushroomed when they cooked. And when I frosted them... well, you can see for yourself that it didn't turn out pretty. Honestly, I think these are the ugliest-looking cupcakes I have ever made in my life. Good thing looks have very little to do with taste! Regardless of their homely appearance, we are still enjoying eating them! I have learned a valuable lesson, though: next time I make cupcakes that have huge mushroom tops I am definitely going to use a icing bag and just squirt out frosting on top instead of trying to spread it with a knife.

Newest Craft Project

It has been a while since I last did a craft project (since I finished my quilt) but I have been thinking for a long time about what I wanted to make. I knew that I wanted it to be something for our baby but exactly what. Here was my dilema: 1) my mom has made a cute cross-stitch picture that will have the baby's name & birth date whenever she is born, and 2) Arek's mom is making our little one a beautiful quilt. So... what else is there for me to make? Well, I decided to whip out my dusty crochet hook and try my hand at making our little girl a blanket for her baby blessing. We are going to be able to use the baby blessing dress that my mom used for me and all my sisters, but I thought making my baby her very own blessing blanket would be sweet.

Anyway, here is what it will look like when it is completed (hopefully) except in white because, well, it's for her blessing:
And here is how I am progressing... nearly half the rows are completed, then I get to do the border!And I know I am about a week and a half late in posting this, but here is me at 32 weeks! I know to YOU I may not look huge (that's what everyone tells me), but it is so exciting to me and Arek how big our baby and I are getting! :)

Bingham Copper Mine

Last weekend I got off work at three and Arek and I looked at each other and asked, "What should we do this afternoon?" Our answer: drive down Bingham with my dad and two younger sisters and visit the Copper Mine. Turns out, for being "just" a big hole it was pretty cool. We watched two videos about the mine and how they make copper and learned a ton! And for a souviner we bought ourselves a postcard (we buy one for every place we visit) and a copper Christmas tree ornament. Here's some of the sites:
The mine itself. Holy cow, it is a big hole! I still find it fascinating that it can be seen from outer space! Also, the entire town that my grandma was born in is now somewhere in the middle of where the hole is
Kat and I in front of one of the trucks they use for hauling the dirt. It's looks pretty small to me...
Me and Arek in front of an actual-sized tire from one of the trucks in the picture above. The tire itself is 12.5 feet and weighs over 10,000 lbs! And the truck... it's as tall as a two-story building! Wowzers...Arek trying to "steal" the copper sheet on display... it's 99.99% pure copper. Me and my seestors by the official mine plack. It was a really fun day trip!