Yum! Apple Pie!

Brian and I have been watching a few episodes of "Master Chef"....for those of you not familiar with the series, amateur chefs receive challenges from master chefs/critics for elimination. The last episode gave a challenge of making apple pie...oh it looked so good! A day later, Brian came home from work and I mentioned I had been craving apple pie ever since we watched that episode. Guess what!? He got to it and baked me an apple pie! Talk about the best care a husband can give to a craving fanatical pregnant wife! Here are some pictures of him at work. The pie turned out delicious and we ate a quarter of it just between the two of us! It lasted only a day.

I was hoping it would be my 'last meal' but "alas" we are still waiting. UGH. The Doc says I'm dilated to a 4 and 80-90% effaced, so we're just waiting for contractions! But they don't come....not even after all the walking. I guess we'll just have to play the waiting game now. Cross your fingers for us!

Help!

Aggh! We've got a week or so left (maybe less- fingers crossed) and we can't decide on a baby boy name! We are set for a girl name, but we've been flip-flopping with boy names. If you have suggestions or favorites, please pass them our way (but don't feel bad if it's not chosen in the end). We've looked at hundreds of names....you would think we could settle on just ONE! Some from our list include: Simon, Mason, Sam, Eli, Austin, Crew, Aiden...oh we're so indecisive! What's your vote?

Things don't slow down

Last week, was our chance to take the Bell's kids for three days in fulfilment of our "kid swap". The cousins always have fun together, and honestly, they behaved better than my own. I tried to make sure we did something fun each day. We visited some parks, fed the ducks, made cookies and watched movies. It went by pretty fast. (Uncle) Brian kept saying, "see, we can handle 6 kids!" My kids kept calling Brian (their dad) "uncle Brian" for days even after they had gone home. We hope to be able to do this swap every year because it is soooo nice when it's your turn to have three days "off."

We had put in an order for fruit at the beginning of August, and now that it's mid September, we are reaping it all in! We canned 40 jars of pears last weekend, and our peaches are ready and waiting to be canned (we have three bushels). The only thing that is slowing us down is that we all got slammed with a wretched head cold! I haven't been so sick in such a long time and I am so tired I feel like I could sleep 12 hours only to wake up and feel like I could go back to bed! We have also bottled homegrown tomatoes and some soup base, but we also plan to do applesauce and are waiting for the grapes to come in for our homemade grape juice. I had forgotten how busy September is! I hope we can keep up!

Friday night was our 5th annual dutch oven cook-off. It was well-attended and the food was delicious. We are going to put together a dutch-oven cook book (after 5 years we have some AMAZING recipes to share). I'll post more about that event as I get pictures back from Danny.

On another note, I only have 2 more doctor appointments left until the baby comes! All have voted that it's a boy except for Annie and Danny....so we'll see!

Day Off

Not often are mothers blessed with a day off, paid vacation time, or sick leave. It's a 24 hours a day, 365 days a year type of a job.

But today, Brian was so nice to allow me some "me time"...a chance to indulge myself before the baby comes. I got my hair cut and colored, enjoyed a pedicure, hand massage, and head massage.... had a wonderful lunch all by myself... I got my wedding ring cleaned, some shopping done, and a lot of reading on Mockingjay (a book I've been waiting to dive into since January when I ordered it)! It was truly a nice day. A once in a blue moon event and I LOVED every minute. I came home feeling much more rejuvenated and ready to handle the changes that will happen in our family with having a newborn....knowing I'll have to be dedicated to this little person every three hours day and night for the next few months!

I've got three weeks to go! I'm so super excited. Time to cast votes! Boy or Girl? Let us know what you think!

And then there was Light!

Our entry chandelier fell around Easter time (about 6 months ago) and we have been without light in our entry, patio, stairs, and upstairs hallway until this weekend! We now have light--thanks to Brian!

An inconvenient and unexpected repair, but we are lucky it fell when it did and nobody was hurt. Since we needed to replace the entry chandelier, we ended up replacing the other hanging lights on the main floor so that they would all match (at last). That was part of the reason why we waited six month to do it! Brian spent the weekend putting on his "electrician hat" and getting the job done. He kept saying "I'm doing this because I love you..." and I kept thinking, "Just don't get paralysed!"

The entry light was the most difficult because of the height. It was hard to find a ladder that could reach to the height we needed, so Brian rigged up a pretty scary, but pretty good scenario. He had to strap the ladder to the front door (locked so nobody would open it unaware) and then strap himself to the ladder at the top. That way, he could reach out to the ceiling without his body weight causing him and the ladder to fall away from the wall. I was nervous watching!

He accomplished the task without too much complaint other than his arms falling asleep on him from working at that angle...until we went to put the light bulbs in! He had changed ladders to a smaller cherry picking ladder and just as he was screwing in the last bulb, the ladder collapsed on him and he fell from about 12 feet up! He rode the ladder down, but the ladder scraped up his shins pretty darn bad. I couldn't believe the damage. There isn't much skin on that part of the leg, and well, he doesn't have much left anymore! He's bruised about the worst I've seen...but he's handling it like a man! He played tag football with some boys last night, is floating the Provo river with the YM tonight, and going fishing in the Tetons this weekend, so I guess you could say not much will slow him down!

Other than that, I'm amazed it's September! We're hoping for the baby to be born towards the latter end of this month. I am getting especially anxious to find out what we're having! We're close to picking names: Paisley Sophia (or Paisley Jane) for a girl, and Eli Austin for a boy (or Austin Eli- haven't totally committed to either way yet). Of course it could change anytime between now and then!