No Work, All Play

This week was fairly uneventful.  I feel like for the most part we are just biding our time until baby girl arrives, which is not great because there is still much to be done, but it is what it is.  Merrick is probably the only one of us that had something he was anxiously awaiting this week, a class field trip to the musical Pete the Cat on Friday, which he reported did not disappoint.

The other bright spot of the week were our family adventures yesterday.  The kids have been really bad lately about not wanting to do any kind of work, projects, or cleaning on the weekends.  They have somehow decided that Saturdays are their day for fun and nothing else.  I should be better about getting them to do some work, but honestly I haven't been too motivated either.  So yesterday, instead of starting the day with chores, we started the day with cousin fun time.  We met at the church building and Jeremy and Merrick played basketball with Quincy and Colvin (Ben and Lincoln were at Lincoln's first ever soccer game) while Becca held ballet class for Carrigan and Isabel.  There is a story behind that that involved us missing our chance to sign the girls up for ballet and Isabel being so disappointed that Becca decided she knew enough about ballet to teach an intro class for two 3 and 4-year-old girls.  Anyway, the girls had a blast and I don't think felt cheated in the least by the arrangement.

Later in the afternoon we headed out to run an errand.  Carrigan wanted training wheels for her "new" bike, Merrick needed an SD card for his GoPro he got for Christmas, and we are on the hunt for a very specific gift for baby sister.  For the most part the outing was kind of a bust as we didn't find the gift we were looking for and decided to buy everything online, but I don't think anyone was too disappointed.  We ended up being right buy Dave and Buster's and thanks to some free promo offers we had, spent a couple of hours having some free family fun.  All that was left was to round out the night with some pizza for a great family Saturday.

One of these days we need to get serious about getting ready for baby girl.  I guess that day was just not this weekend.

Baby Prepping

Very shortly after getting home from our AZ vacation I had a routine check up at the doctor.  At that visit (and actually, truth be told, at the visit before) my blood pressure was elevated to the point of concern.  I have never had a problem with high blood pressure and actually it is usually quite low, but the doctor didn't feel good about just sending me off for a month until my next appointment.  She decided that she wanted me to come back the next week for a non-stress test (NST) on the baby and a blood pressure check.

Well, that follow-up apt didn't go so well and while the baby looked great, my blood pressure was even higher.  So just like that the doctor decided that I needed to switch from monthly visits (which they do all the way to 36 weeks, seems crazy to me but is beside the point) to twice weekly NST and blood pressure check visits.  Thankfully, on my second NST my blood pressure was way down and stayed down for my third so back to monthly visits I go. Hooray!

This put me in a really weird place where they were telling me that they might have to take the baby early if my blood pressure continued to rise and so I felt like I needed to start getting my house and things ready to welcome another human, but all my free time was spent at the doctor so I had no time to prepare for said human.  It was kind of a stressful situation, which also likely didn't help my blood pressure!

In any case, we got through it and now I have my life back a little.  The whole situation really lit a fire under me to get things ready for baby girl's arrival (she is due in just under 5 weeks).  This week my mom came to help me start all the prepping.  It has been a little bit of a layered process. Merrick's room needed to be sorted out and cleaned to make room for some things that had been in Carrigan's room.  Carrigan's room needed to be sorted out and cleaned to decide what was going out and what was staying and how we were going to add baby sister's crib and dresser.  We are not done with this process yet, but have made huge progress and that has been comforting.  And, Jeremy set up the crib this weekend so one more thing off the "to-do" list!

For the most part the kids are handling the changes well.  Merrick has a really tender heart and develops attachments to things really easily so it has been difficult for him to let go for some the toys and things he hasn't played with in years and sorting usually ends in tears.  For him, I bought a small little toy that goes with one of his video games to show him that it is good for us to let go of things we no longer need because it frees us up to allow new things into our lives.  Carrigan has been a trooper but I think was starting to feel like her territory was being taken over a bit by baby sister.  For her, I have been trying to spend extra quality time with her when I can.  This week we made pop bead jewelry together and it was actually the only picture I managed to get taken all week.

We all have a lot more work and adjusting to do before baby sister arrives, but we will get there.  I am feeling closer and closer to ready by the day!...(which probably means she will take her sweet time).

Ups and Downs

This has been an interesting weekend to say the least.  I feel like it has been a weekend of highs and lows.  We spent much of the day Saturday buying a new car which is fun in the end but not exciting when the weather is beautiful and you are spending the entire day at a car dealership.  I also spent a large chunk of the weekend not feeling well, so there were some definite bummer parts of the weekend.

On the other side of the coin, like I said, the weather was beautiful this weekend and we were able to take advantage of our zoo membership we got as a Christmas present from Grandpa and Lollie.  It feels like it has been a long time since we have been to the zoo and it was good to be back.  The animals must have been enjoying the nice weather too because they were all out playing.  I know have posted lots of zoo pictures in the past so I will just share a few of the best.

While the weekend is technically over, the kids and I still get one more day off for Martin Luther King Day.  I am really grateful because I feel like I could use another day of R&R.  Unfortunately for Jeremy though, he is back at it bright and early in the morning and his R&R will have to wait.

Christmas In Arizona

It has been a few weeks and they have been a whirlwind, but given that we are barreling forward into 2018, I think it is time we put 2017 to bed. Our last almost 2 weeks of 2017 were spent in Arizona with the Clifford side of the family and Emily's crew.  We had so much fun and crammed so much into our time that I almost don't even know how or where to start, I am going to have to focus on the highlights.

We spent a good chunk of our time at various parks.  There are several local parks that we have recently been renovated and combine new, fun, parks with 70 degree weather and you have a recipe for a good time.

Of course we saw Santa.  This was quite the story.  We wanted to go see Santa at Bass Pro Shop but apparently that has become the thing to do and we didn't realize we should have gone to the store hours before it opened to stand in line.  Long story short, we shouldn't have gotten to see Santa at all but after two sets of people took pity on this very pregnant lady and said "We really aren't supposed to do this...Don't tell anyone we did this...", we got our time with Santa and came away with an adorable picture.

On Christmas Eve we had the Clifford family Christmas party.  The food was beyond delicious, but the real highlight of the night was the white elephant gift exchange.  Jeremy's gift of a hairy belly fanny pack won the night.

Christmas day was great!  We started early with all the family coming over for presents.  Santa spoiled the kids for sure and Jeremy and I got an amazing baby quilt, handmade by Carolyn.  She actually made gifts for each of the kids and I got to help with some of them after we got to AZ.  It made for some really late nights, but we had a lot of fun together.

After Christmas the fun continued.  We hiked "A" mountain at ASU.

We went to see Star Wars.  Well everyone but Carrigan, Garret and Brianna, and Emily went to see Star Wars.  They went to see Coco and since their movie was a little shorter and started later, Emily took Carrigan to the playground in the mall to play while they waited.

Grandpa and Jeremy took the kids paintball shooting.  Of course Merrick had a blast, but the real surprise was how much Carrigan got into it.  Someone would help her aim and she would rapid fire.  Afterwards she really enjoyed telling people how good she was.

Twice over the time we were there some of the family went to ride go carts.  Merrick enjoys this even more now that he can drive by himself and he was really pleased to find that the cars at this track were really fast.

One of the times that the boys went go cart riding, the girls got to go see Cinderella.  It was a seriously magical night.  Not only did we have amazing seats at 7th row center, but we got a backstage tour after.  Carrigan got treated like a princess. She got to climb the stair to the palace, got an invitation to the royal ball, got to see the glass slippers, and got a poster to take home signed by the entire cast.  There really is no other word to describe the night besides magical.

This is just scratching the surface!  We also made gingerbread houses, had an amazing dinner cooked by Tala, had a graduation celebration party for Savannah, cooked, ate and ate and ate, and laughed more than I can even tell you.  It was the perfect vacation but, just like all good things, it came to an end.

We headed home on New Years Eve and, after two stops on the way home, that was pretty much it for the day.  We had dinner that night at my parents and opened gifts from that side of the family and then went home and went to bed early.  We didn't even try to make it to midnight but that is ok.  We were all so exhausted that we were ok with calling it a wrap on 2017 a few hours early.

So that's it for 2017.  It was a great year for our family and we are so thankful for all our many blessings.  We are now anxiously awaiting what 2018 will bring and can't wait to meet the new member of our family and see what else is in store.