Fingerpainting

I made Claire some finger paints on Monday. It was very cheap--cornstarch, sugar, water and food coloring. It was also very fun.

Okay, ready to go

Just wants one finger in--not too sure

Okay getting a little more brave

And some more

Now this is fun

Really getting into it

Wait I can paint my body?

Finished product

She was distracted by looking out the window.

We had a lot of fun.

A couple more yoga pictures. She is just so stinking cute!

She came and told me she wanted to paint her toenails and then proceeded to.

I went to the chiropractor today. My back and hips have been hurting pretty badly. I've gotten a little relief but not much. I wasn't really expecting much since pregnancy just does a number on your back. I'm really more interested in just getting things aligned.

I'm just glad tomorrow is Friday. Gotta clean a lot this weekend since the midwife is coming on Wednesday!

Our days

Sometimes we bake. Claire loves helping. She makes steps using my flour buckets. The one with the red lid is my wheat bucket so it's pretty heavy. Sometimes I hear "Heavy! Help me!" as she is trying to push it from one side to another. Claire loves to help mix.

Claire loves to get herself undressed. She loves running around with her fairy wings too. She is getting so imaginative lately. She will read to her baby dolls and is now pretending to be a dog and is licking us. A couple of the books she reads has food in them and she pretends to take it off the page and eat it.

She LOVES LOVES LOVES going on walks. Every time Brian comes home for lunch she goes and gets her coat and shoes on and then cries when he can't take her. Usually they go on a long walk once he gets home while I cook dinner. She would live outside if we let her.

Sometimes we take naps.

Sometimes we do some yoga with Daddy!

Sometimes she runs from the camera. Or if she doesn't want her picture taken she covers her face. If she doesn't want to talk on the phone she plugs her ears. Silly girl.

Yoga

More

As for the rest of us...Brian is doing good at work. It was very busy last week so he is hoping for a calmer week. My ticker says 41 more days! I feel very very big. Huge actually. 41 days doesn't seem too bad though. I had an midwife appointment last Wednesday. Everything looked good. She said he was head down which is always great. My next appointment is May 5 (AH! Claire is almost 2!) She is coming to our house to check stuff out. I'll be almost 36 weeks by then. My back is hurting some. I think I need to make an appointment with a chiropractor. My hips feel creaky. My wedding ring still fits and I don't think I have any swelling around my ankles so thats good. I just can't remember when that started with Claire's pregnancy but I had Shrek feet. I'm really trying to get all my protein in. It's a little hard but I have some protein powder that I like to stick in my chocolate milk :)

We are officially leaving Sequim Thursday July 1st after Brian gets off of work. We figure we can get a couple of hours in at least. They get Friday off from work so it gives us a little bit. We are contemplating a house hunting trip soon but I told Brian if he found us somewhere to live month to month we would wait. There are two houses I really really really really really want to look at. They are big, have decent back yards, and are in our price ranges. Also they are close to where we *think* the office will be. Brian is a little stressed but really, when are you ever going to be ready? Hundreds of people buy houses. I'm sure we can figure it out too. I dunno. We are praying about it. We would drive down since Claire will no longer be free to fly. Thats gonna cut down on our trips. We'll see.

Easter and Beyond

We dyed eggs for the first time. Claire loved it. In fact, she loves watching the video of it too. Over and over and over again.

Finished products.

We did the Easter egg hunt before conference the next morning. She loved the eggs with the chocolate in them. That girl loves her some chocolate. Seriously.

We found out that Claire loves to wash dishes. We are eager for that to continue when she is older :)

We went to Bella Italia for Brian's birthday. For those of you who read Twilight it is where Edward and Bella go to dinner. No, I did not get the mushroom ravioli. I guess it's a pretty busy place because they asked us if we had reservations. Umm...it's Port Angeles...no. Anyway, the food was pretty good but the service was HORRIBLE. Seriously. Bunch of girls standing around and talking. It took forever to get anything.

Other than that we didn't do anything too exciting. We went walking every morning and relaxed and just enjoyed eachothers company. I did make a couple of things.

Greek Wrap Bread---very very yummy. We got some buffalo chicken and put it inside with lettuce and cheese and eggs and blue cheese dressing.

Strawberry tart---also very good.

I don't own a tart pan but the pie pan worked quite well.

Thanks Grandma for coming to visit!! We can't wait to see you again!

Marriage Advice

I was reading on MSN an article about marriage and they had a bunch of readers give a piece of marriage advice. It was pretty interesting and I thought about what I would have said. And since dinner is in the oven, kitchen in clean, Claire and Brian are playing outside and I am procrastinating blogging about Easter because it takes forever to upload videos, I thought I would blog my marriage advice. Granted, I have only been married 3+ years but I got some from some very wise married people :) and because I am nice to my (few) readers, I will only give a few.

1) Get a King sized bed to start with. Please. It just makes life so much easier, especially when kids get put in the mix. It is just SO nice.

2) Speaking of beds...the whole "don't go to bed angry" thing? Totally bunk. Some of you may disagree but I find that we are a lot more likely to get into arguments if we are TIRED. So, it is counter productive to talk about anything if you are just going to get MORE tired. Go to bed. Get a good nights sleep and then see how the issue looks in the morning. Usually a whole heck of a lot better if you have had a restful night.

3) The guy gets to choose where we live (as in state or general area) Usually the guy is the one who works full time and so he needs to like his job regardless of whether or not the wife wanted to live in one state or another. There are good and bad things about every state but I think lots of bad things if the husband hates his job. BUT, the wife gets the house. That is her job area and she has to like the house and how it is decorated/run.

4.) Speaking of jobs...the husband works full time outside of the home and the wife works full time inside the home. Each have full days and problems. When the husband gets home they then run the home together. The husband shouldn't think the wife had it easy all day and so he doesn't have to do anything when he gets home or vice versa. Go ahead and let each other have a little down time sometime in the evening but the rest of the time share responsibilities. Besides, when else would a child see their daddy? ")

5) Remember Christ at all times. If both husband and wife try to remember Christ at all times a lot of problems won't ever happen.

So....what is your marriage advice?

Random

#1. We went to the store today and bought some milk. The expiration date is Claire's birthday! I was a little shocked that her birthday is so soon!! Totally not on my radar lately. Bad mom.

#2. Found a good quote that I just wanted to pass on.

"When God permits His children to go through the furnace, He keeps His eye on the clock and His hand on the thermostat. His loving heart knows how much and how long."
-Warren Weirsbe

Grandma's Visit Part 1

We were lucky enough to have Brian's mom come visit us during her spring break last week. Her flight came in late Friday night so we decided to all go up to Seattle and spend the night so we could do a couple of things up there and not have to do so much driving. Brian booked our hotel on Hotwire and it ended up being a place that he had wanted to try out, right next to the airport. So we get there and we find the hotel but want to get something to eat first. I saw a couple of strange looking people and told Brian it looked like they were dressed up like Star Wars. We got some food and went back to the hotel. OH MY GOSH it looked like crazy had exploded. Unwittingly, we had gotten a room at the only hotel in all of Seattle that was hosting the Northwestern Fantasy and Science Fiction Convention. There were guys dressed as fantasy character girls, people walking around with tails, and pretty much anything you can imagine, there was. I gave Claire a bath and put her to bed while Brian went to pick up his mom. He said he got on the elevator with 4 scary women who told him they could have some "fun" if he went back upstairs with him. *SICK* I was super annoyed because the room across the hall from us was having a party. A very loud weird party. When Brian and Sandy came back I asked them to shut their door because I had a two year old who was trying to sleep. We ended up calling security around 2 and they didn't quiet down until almost 4:30. I didn't fall asleep until after that. Needless to say I was not a very happy camper about it the next morning. Luckily Claire did sleep through the night or I may have gone over there myself and freaked out. lol. When we checked out that morning we complained to the guy at the counter and he gave us our money back for the room and also $50 for breakfast at the buffet. That made it worth it. Free night in Seattle :) Everyone was still dressed up. Claire was very intrigued with a lady wearing monster slippers. She couldn't figure out what was on that lady's feet.

It was very cold and windy that day but we went downtown to the Curiosity Shop.

I had never been there before. It was a little stressful making sure Claire didn't grab anything.

Then we headed over to Pike's Market. I had never been there either and was really surprised about how BIG it was! It had like 3 different levels to it. It would have taken all day to explore it but we only had 2 hours where our car was parked.

Claire did pretty well on the trip but we weren't going to risk it by driving all the way home. We took the ferry. I had to go to the bathroom (all the time...it's the most annoying thing of pregnancy) and came out and saw this right next to our window.

There were two and the guy at the front was in full gear. Yes that is a machine gun. Brian said later it was a training exercise but at the time I thought a sail boat had gotten too close to the ferry because one headed right towards a boat and chased it off. It was pretty cool.

Up next, Easter.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband! He is 26 today! Getting so old lol. Brian shares a birthday with his dad which is way cool. Happy Birthday Rob!

I took this picture from Brian's mom's blog. I love it. So cute.

Brian is an amazing husband. He is so patient with me and my ideas :) He never tells me no, even when I come up with some crazy ones that he knows will never happen. He is such a great dad. He is very patient and loving with Claire. Claire is going to love having such a fun daddy...until she's about 13 or so...I told Brian to be prepared;)

I LOVE YOU BABY!!

A good rule to live by

Never sacrifice what you want most for what you want right now