Spring 2010 School Pictures

well, they can't all be winners folks :) but every time I look at this pic, it gets funnier and funnier. Just got these back today and while it won't be the photo on his bday invites, I'm positive we'll be ordering some!

Nearly Wordless Wednesday

not a whole heck of a lot of photos taken this week, but here are a few.

we're never, ever, ever at superstition mall. we had to go this weekend and we realized that connor had never been on a carousel before. no idea how he made it to nearly three without ever riding on a carousel, but this weekend he did! He picked the tiger and loved it. Also, please note his new hi-top chucks. love.

Connor and his look-a-like cousin Jacob when we got together to celebrate my FIL's birthday

this is how i found him watching his new obsession, Chuggington. Totally engrossed.

In better late than never posts...

Jeffrey and I at the Dbacks company Christmas Party. They have the official Dbacks team photographer going around taking photos and I've been asking Jeffrey to get our pic for months-two to be exact :) and I finally saw this little gem last night. It's a pretty good one I think.

Week 26 Update

We're nearing the finish line folks. 93 days until Noah's scheduled arrival. I feel like he's going to come early though I have zero reason to feel like that so I'm sure he'll arrive at his scheduled time and date!

Noah should be about 14 inches long right now which really feels impossible...plus he's supposed to be about 1 2/3 pounds now and putting on more and more baby fat so he looks more like a normal baby and less like a skeleton. He's about the length of a hothouse cucumber-so random but there you go. This news of course has me thinking that cucumber sandwiches and cucumber water sounds lovely. His ears and eyes are really developing more this week so he's much more aware of what's going on around him...not that there's really anything to keep an eye on in there. Here's the funny news...his testacles are dropping sometime this week. Hooray for descended testicles. I guess the process of dropping takes about 2-3 days so good to know.

As for me, I'm working on trying to stay calm and relaxed. I've had a couple, well let's call them episodes, in the past couple weeks where I could seriously feel my blood pressure going up. Nothing too dramatic, but enough to get me pretty upset...stuff with the kitties, my alumnae group leadership role, being completely and totally swamped at work with no help, finding new child care and the crazy expenses that go along with that and just other randomness that's going on. I'll survive, but I've just got to breathe and call the eff down. :) Today I entered a request to be released from jury duty. I have my gestational diabetes tolerence screening the day the trial I was assigned to starts and with all my issues I've had this time around I really want to stay on schedule with my OB appointments. I'm supposed to report to the courthouse on Tuesday the first and I'll find out this friday...the 26th after 5pm if my request was granted. Fingers crossed!

I made my hospital bag list yesterday. I know it's crazy early, but I like planning and I'm also a big fan of lists. I don't want to go into labor and realize too late that my cell phone is dead and I have no charger. Since I'll be having a c-section, I'll be there for several days so I want to be sure we're all set. So dumb, but I'm really excited about the cute bag I'll be taking along to hold all of my unnecessary extremely important items. It's a super cute black and white damask bag with my embroidered monogram. love. does my Carly know me well or what!?!

That's really it for now. Remember, fingers crossed that I'm let out of jury duty!!

Nearly Wordless Wednesday

Baby Noah has already been the lucky recipient of some pretty cool gifts, plus a couple items from mom & dad!

One of my bffs Katy got Noah this adorable owl storage tote. I looooves it so much. Obviously, it has an owl, amazing. I think we'll use it to store Noah's diapers somewhere that Connor can get to them so he can help me out when I'm still recovering. Or when I'm lazy. Thanks Kate!!

our friends Carroll and Danny love dogs. They breed shelties and work with Gabriels Angels and therapy dogs. They got Connor this super cute puppy print sleeper.

Jeffrey got Connor and Noah matching Dbacks piggy banks. I think I'm going to pick up some lettering from Michael's or something to put their names on the banks...I anticipate great arguements over these matching items.

so these little gems are my doing. i saw them and i bought them. i love little man shoes :) I got them in a size three so who knows when Noah will wear them. If he's anything like Connor, he's arrive with huge feet and they'll fit him the minute he starts walking!

My dad, papa, got a new truck this weekend. Well, new to him. It's a `69 chevy and awfully pretty. Connor is really into cars and trucks right now so he climbed right up and started driving.

we've been trying to be more deligent about the potty training over the past few weeks. Connor really lost interest this week and almost never tells us that he has to go anymore. We decided to use a sticker incentive chart and so far it's working pretty well. Everytime he's home and goes in the potty, he gets to put a sticker on the chart I made him. Once he gets to #10, he gets a prize. Today he got his first prize, a sucker. Next prize is a car he picked out today at the store.

Happy Valentines Day 2010!!

Connor's little classroom exchanges Valentines amongst the kiddos just like the big kids. They make little mailboxes for the kids to collect all their cards and bring them home. I made really cute ones with his handprints for his first Valentines Day in 2008, last year we did something but I have no idea what it was and this year I needed to do something easy. His class is bigger now with 14 kids or something and we just don't have the time to do some elaborate craft project for 14 kids and 6 teachers. Or the attention span. Either of us.

While I'm aware that you can just run into target and grab a box with your fav character on them, that's not my style. I think they are cute and way more practical than what we do, but it's just not how I roll. I roll on the crazy train apparently. Well, the train left the station last week when Connor and I got started on the project. We're still going really simple since we need to make 20 of them, but it should be fun for him to put them together. Since I didn't want to go and buy anything and we have a few crafty things around the house, we worked with what we had on hand. Here are a few pics of the work in progress. We did all the tearing and cutting and prep work the night prior and then did the assembly stuff the next day.

Here he's tearing up the little pieces for his mosaic hearts. yes, mosaic. crazy train-i told you. i cut out the hearts since my little man has only mastered scissors by being able to put his fingers in the right holes-sometimes.

Here he is putting his valentines together. He was a willing, interested participant for about 2 1/2 valentines at which point he abandoned me and I was left to make the rest of them look like they were made by a two year old. this wasn't much of a stretch for me.

while i slaved away on the valentines, he read a book...

and rode around on his rocket.

Here he is hogging all the glory of the super cute valentines. I think they are pretty adorable, which may or may not be because I made most of them myself.

Lastly, here he is on Valentines Day with his bag of goodies and valentines from his classmates. He's also holding some kind of heart that has arms and legs. Happy Valentines Day everyone!

I want this

Super cute alphabet wall decor for Connor's bedroom. I really love this.

Week 25 Update

So baby Noah is the size of a rutabaga today, as I'm officially in my 25th week. That also means I have 100 days until his arrival....meaning tomorrow i'll be in the double digits. Crazy. This week, Noah should be around 13 1/2 inches long and about a pound and a half. His size will increase lots faster at this point, which means I'll be getting huge at an alarming rate. Watch out. He should be getting more hair now and lots of baby fat too!

For some strange reason, while I've totally wrapped my head around the fact that I'm pregnant the fact that there's going to be another child still escapes me sometimes. Do I think I'm some kind of surrogate? No. I think the thought of being a family of four is just a wee bit surreal still. Assuming it will sink in when his room is all prepped and ready, when I'm packing for the hospital or when they hand him to me. :)

Speaking of hospital bag...I've had all kinds of crazy hospital dreams about going into labor early and being mad that I didn't have my bag packed with the essentials...my own pillow, slippers and socks, phone/camera/ipod chargers, and other necessities. When you already know you're going to be in the hospital for 3-4 days it's best to have plenty of options so you're not having to send hubs home daily to grab items you forgot. Maybe I'll kill the craving and start my hospital list. There's no way I'm packing it all up yet, but a list is a bit more reasonable I suppose.

Did I mention that Connor calls Noah "baby no no"? Cute stuff. Sometimes I think he forgets that he's in there, except when I remind him, which prompts him to do cute stuff like rub my belly and talk to Noah. Then he remembers :) I talked to him yesterday about how he's going to help mama and dada with Noah when his baby brother arrives--slave labor mostly like fetching diapers, getting bottles from the fridge, grabbing a new onesie when Noah pees through his five times a day. Ahhh, newborns :) I'm excited and a bit overwhelmed just thinking of starting all over!! And the thought of having Connor home with us running wild while I'm recovering and Noah is so teeny tiny is a bit much as well.

My plan is to get some Valentines pics posted later this week so stay tuned!

Jury Duty, Smury Duty

Ok, to be honest I have always been a bit excited when I get a jury duty notice in the mail-I feel like it's an honor, not to mention everyone's civil duty, like voting. I mark the date diligently, and have even been known to laminate my little juror badge-just in case. Without fail, the last three times I've been dismissed before even having to appear at the courthouse.

A few weeks ago, three women at my office and a couple facebook friends all mentioned that they had received jury notices. blah, they all stated and I agreed this time around too. I've got a toddler, one on the way that is sucking the life out of me and a job too busy to even step away for a real lunch. I don't have time for jury duty. I laughed at their misfortune. This of course should have told me that Ms. Karma would be present and sure enough I had my very own notice waiting at home for me that same day. Super Duper.

I noted the day and let the receptionist here know that I may not be here. What I didn't realize is that the day I noted was a Saturday. When the recept told me I was crazy and to double check my notice I thought no way can they start doing this on weekends. No way at all. I was right. I just didn't read my notice very well. What it said was that I needed to call sometime the weekend of the 27th, because I was on call the entire week of March 1st. WTF. On call?!!? What am I a doctor? Can they really have me on call an entire week? Isn't it bad enough to have a single day carved out to make us wonder if we have to drive downtown and deal with this junk?? I may have been fortunate enough to get out of one day in the past, but 5...there's just no way.

Last week the news got worse. I got a large envelope from the Federal Court with a letter. It said something like, as you know you're on call the week of March 1st...you've been randomly drawn for a trial scheduled for March 2nd. There was a lengthy questionnaire attached and instructions to complete it immediately and return it to the court. Bad sign, right? The questionnaire gave a brief description of a case (the case? not sure) and asked if I'd heard anything about the case and then went on for 8 pages asking my opinions and biases on the topic of the case. I'm not really sure if I can even talk about it at this point, so let's just say my political stance gives me huge and unwavering opinions and biases on this topic and I made sure that those were clear in my answers. Hopefully that will excuse me, as I really and truly could not be unbiased on a case if it were really on this topic.

So, I mailed my stupid questionnaire off today...fingers crossed they find me too close-minded and biased to even consider sitting on their jury :)

Who doesn't love free? Who doesn't love fro-yo?

It's pretty simple...if you have a blog, click below for a code to post on your own blog, print it out and take it to Yodipity on Feb 20th for a free yogurt. If you don't have a blog, that's ok too...just click the link at the bottom for a buy one get one coupon. Enjoy!!

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Free yogurt for bloggers, click here for details.

Payson - Feb 2010

As I mentioned here, I spaced and forgot my camera at the cabin this weekend when we went out in search of snow. Jeff's phone did a pretty good job though, so here are far too many photos of the snow play!

Kohl's Ranch

we didn't make this snowman, but we decided to continue decorating it when we found it

this was taken just moments after connor hit me right in the side of the face with a huge snowball. you can kinda see the ice on my face! ouch!

connor loves big trucks so we had to stop and stand by the huge tire. taller than me!

Nearly Wordless Wednesday

I'm really trying to get back into the blogging mood now that I'm feeling a bit more human and alive as I inch toward the 3rd trimester goodness. Four posts in one week is pretty good I think! We'll see how long I stick to it though :) My bet? Not long.

We drove up to Payson to spend the a couple days this past weekend. We're so incredibly fortunate that one of my bffs Dawn's mom and step dad own a gorge cabin up there that they oh so willingly allow us to stay at whenever it's available. Such generosity! We leave them little thank yous (booze) every time we're there so they know how much we adore them! :) We don't get up there as much as we'd like to but it's a great escape and the less than two hour drive fits into my ADD criteria. Any longer in a car and I start to tick.


We'd planned on going up a couple weekends ago, but it ended up being the weekends that all of Northern AZ was pummeled with snow. Pummeled. We were just hoping that there would still be snow on the ground for Connor to play in. While there wasn't any at the cabin, we drove about 15 minutes up the 260 and came upon a bunch that we played in for a couple hours. Unfortunately, I managed to leave my camera at the cabin so we took pics on Jeff's Droid. As soon as he figures out how to download them I'll post them here. He better break out that manual. So, here are some pics from the weekend...no fun snow ones, but some cuties of the kid anyway.

we took his legos up to the cabin so that he'd have a few things to play with while we were inside. he's really into building towers right now.

this is seriously how my crazy kid sits in the car while he's watching a dvd. he was looking at it so intent until he realized that I was taking a photo and then he broke into a cheese smile. BTW. chocolate chip cookies all over his face!

Jeffrey put together this cube storage thingy for Connor's room last weekend. Anytime we're using a hammer, Connor runs in his room and grabs his "Pat" hammer from his Handy Manny Tool Kit. He loves it. I hung a few pictures last night and strung up his artwork in his room a few weeks ago and he loves to pretend that he's doing the work too.

Connor is obsessed with taking pictures right now. I hate handing my camera over to him because he's a 2 year old boy, but he rarely drops it and he's actually really careful with it. this self portrait is the work of Connor Keith Barnes.

Connor's New Room

Now that the Christmas high has long worn off, we've been trying to focus on getting things done before Noah's arrival. While Noah's room is currently a disaster, we have Connor's new bedroom done for the most part. Our goal was to try and make good use out of the limited space in there. Since his bedroom was the playroom just a few months ago, we had to cram two rooms into one-two rooms that already had way too much stuff in them. We noticed that his new big boy bed is nearly as long as the closet is wide. We tried putting it in there and he really liked it-and it freed up a lot of room. It's kinda like a bunk bed since he's tucked in there. He really loves his little sleeping cove thingy. I have also struggled with what the hell to do with all of his art projects that he brings home. I love that his school does art every day, so I wanted to show off as many of them as possible. It's tough to believe, but there are still a bunch that aren't hung up with the others. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with them but I am considering getting lots of cheapy thrift store frames and hanging them at different levels around the room.

Connor is really into books right now so we moved all of his books (& movies) from the big hutch/changing table that will be staying in Noah's room and put them in the new cube shelf in Connor's room. I know it's going to morph into a disaster, but for right now...at this moment it looks pretty and organized and I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts.

You can see some of his artwork hung up around the wall. it hangs on all four walls, and looks pretty great. I just hung it up on a brown twine with clothing pins...this way we can change it out if we want to and it won't damage the priceless artwork! we managed to get about half of all the items displayed by doing this.

Connor's books and movies...all lined up and pretty. For now. Jeffrey put this ikea-like item together this weekend and I was truly proud of him and the lack of profanity that commenced.

loves his room. loves mickey.

this is where I trap my child in his closet :) We worried about him being scared waking up to his clothes hanging above him but he doesn't seem to mind. I really love that the bed fit perfectly in the closet and it frees up a ton of floor space for playing and other large furniture like all of his toy storage and his table and chairs. Plus, there's still plenty of room for running the bases!