Christmas Present

It's been just a little bit sine I last posted in here. Goodness! I'm really going to try to do better but I know that I say that every time. Oh well.

I thought I would update on all of the going on, mostly focusing on Christmas happenings since I know my in-laws would like an update :)

Monday night we did stockings since we were taking off first thing in the morning. It was fun. I got tons of makeup and candy (does my husband know me or what?) and Drew got movies as well as some random food items. Joel got some toys and a cute new binky holder. I'm not going to lie, for his birthday I may regift him some of the gifts we gave for christmas. I"m cool like that. :)

Tuesday morning we had quite the hoopla getting Chester ready to go to doggie daycare. This is what we get for being late getting his vaccines up-to-date. We dropped him off around noon and then headed to my parents place.

I love Christmas with my family. We did our finger-food dinner for Christmas Eve then sang some carols and then read the nativity story. Christmas morning Joel let us sleep until 8:30 and it was wonderful then we ate breakfast, sorted presents, and got to unwrapping them. We always open one gift at a time, watching and seeing what other people get. It makes it more about giving and less about getting that way I think.

That was one stocked Christmas tree

Joel and Lilly "sharing" before present opening

Christmas PJs! Drew and I were ying and yang with our Diet Coke/Coke shirts 

Pre-presents energy drink for Mr. Joel

It was a ton of fun seeing what everyone got and getting things from people. Joel was into the whole thing for a little while but then he just wanted to play with everything. Between he and Lilly, we had some pretty tired kids by the end of presents.

I was trying to take a picture of my dad's present but then suddenly this head appeared. Photo bomb!

Joel's first gift to open!

I'm too sexy for my bow, too sexy

In the end, Drew got a bunch of dvds and music. He also got some nerf guns that by far overshadowed all other gifts. They're for work because apparently they have nerf gun fights all the time there and he can only watch. No more though, he will be a fighting machine now :)

Joel got some clothes, books, and toys. He got a riding zebra thing from Grandma and Grandpa Goodrich that both he and Lilly quite liked. He can't ride it by himself just yet but give him a month or two and he'll be riding that thing all over the place.

As soon as Joel fell off the first time Lilly was right there to keep the zebra going.

He wasn't quite sure what to think of it when he first got on

But then he warmed up to it! 

 Drew rather spoiled me with some chocolates and some under-cabinet lights. I am crazy excited about the lights even though it makes me feel kind of old. Our kitchen is rather dark even with all of the lights on so having the lights under the cabinet is going to be faaaab-u-lous!

I definitely got spoiled! Especially love the recipe book with all of my mom's recipes

Drew's "fantasy football" shirt is epic. I also got him a mug that looks like a beer mug.  You can put liquid in the mug but it still looks like there's beer. It's for work too since they call Drew's workspace "Drewskie's Pub"

Joel had a pretty good first Christmas I'd say.

Uncle Colton got him a safety gate that we can use on our main-level stairs since it'll be safer than our current make-shift gate that we have now.

Cute PJs from Grandma and Grandpa Madsen!

Yup, I'd say he loves his horse. 

Definitely love Christmas even though I can't believe it's already past. Next big thing is Joel's birthday that I need to start planning.

Housin'

So I said I would show pictures of the house so you all can see the loveliness. No joke, I was going to take pictures this last Thursday night but decided I was too tired and the house would look better with daylight. The next day I got home from work fully intent on a) buying some decorations so I would feel like my house was more home-ish and b) taking pictures to post on the blog.

My plans were foiled, however, when I discovered that our basement carpet was wet. As in, super wet. As in, somehow our sprinklers turned on and didn't turn off for at least 4 hours and as a result flooded our basement as well as our neighbor's basement. As in  "crap..."

So currently the carpet is torn up in the basement, the baseboards are popped off, there is a chorus of several hug fans all humming together, and our TV is crammed into our front room.

Instead, I shall show pictures of Joel's room because that's probably the cutest room in the house anyway. Plus I can show off my craftiness that I did.

I cut out some fabric birds and then made some fabric starch. You then get the fabric wet in the starch, blow-dry the fabric so it's not dripping wet, and then iron the fabric on the wall. It's great because you can do some great decorations and if you decide you don't like where it is you can move it no problem; no lasting damage to the walls.

I'll post more pictures of the place when we get the gi-normous fans out of the basement and get everything somewhat put back together. We're going to have to wait to re-finish stuff so it won't look put together in the pictures but I guess that's ok since it lets me figure out what I want to do with the paint color and all that.

In the mean time, enjoy some Joel pictures (I need to start taking more pictures of Drew and I.. we have no pictures of just the two of us.. )

The Incredible Shrinking Dog

Chester got a hair cut. I think he lost about 10 pounds and seems a lot happier about it

Joel is also happy about this

Life Continues

So you remember that one time I had a baby? … Yeah… I do. I guess I feel like I need to give a quick synopsys of how the whole “I had a baby” thing went down and then I can dive into the details of the here and now:

I was checked into the hospital Monday, January 21. We went to my “last supper” with my family that evening and then at 8 pm Drew and I checked in to the hospital. I was so scared because I had no idea what to expect. Don’t get me wrong, I was really excited but it felt like these were the last few moments of my life as I had known it and within a few hours life would be COMPLETELY different.

I  was right, having Joel has changed everything about life but that’s definitely not a bad thing. So yeah, there I am laying in my hospital bed terrified of what’s coming. They started me on the meds that would induce me and then said they’d check on me throughout the night. Yeah, they did. Somehow I was magically able to sleep and when the nurse came in at 6:30 the next morning I was oddly rested. She checked me and said I was about 3 centimeters dilated. The doctor came in soon after that and said I was close to 4 cm and he’d keep an eye on me throughout the day.

Now I’d been warned that induced births can take a while so I didn’t know what to expect. It seemed like things were progressing pretty quickly but I knew it would probably end up lasting longer than I thought. Then the contractions set in. Oh. My. Gosh. It was ridiculous; I tried to be all grownup about it and act like it didn’t hurt and this was all child’s play but inside I was screaming “mommy!!!!”

I only lasted through about an hour of intense contraction when the nurse urged me to get my epidural. She said to get it before there was a waiting line. Apparently getting an epidural is like getting ice cream on a hot day: the longer you wait to go get ice cream the longer the line becomes as the day progresses. Anywho, I decided to just get the thing done.

All I can say about the epidural was that I was seriously terrified (sticking a needle in my spine, I mean seriously??) but that was possibly the best money I have ever spent. Within about 30 minutes all of the pain with the contractions went away and I was happy as a clam. The next 6 hours were passed in naps and watching TV and talking to my parents (Drew slept most of the day). I was in and out and happy and didn’t care that a baby as about to bust out of me cause I felt good. :)

  

4 pm came and the nurse decided it was time for me to start pushing. That was a fun little experience. I pushed for about an hour and a half until the doctor came in and up until that point I was not making much progress. I was getting so tired that I just wanted to quit. Finally (about 2 hours into pushing) when I told Drew that I couldn’t do it any more I started to make some real progress. Seriously in a matter of 10 minutes I went from no progress to almost having the baby out.

At 6:50, Joel was pulled into the world. All 8 pounds, 1 oz and 19 inches of him. My first thought when I saw him was “I just had a black baby!” His skin looked super dark and his features made him look black. 

That was the most amazing moment of my life: when they handed Joel to me so I could do some skin-to-skin time. I couldn’t believe what had just happened and I dind’t care that I had torn so they were sewing me back up. This baby was mine and he was perfect.

Drew and I looked at him and when the nurse asked what we were going to call him we both just looked at each other and knew: “Joel Andrew”. He is totally a Joel too so it’s perfect!

But yeah, we brought him home 3 days later and had to have a lot of follow up visits because his bilirubin was high. A week after we got his bilirubin back to a normal level, he was then admitted to the hospital for RSV. That was the most terrifying night of my life considering the nurse actually told us “things aren’t looking good for him.”  But yeah, 8 days in the hospital got him on the mend and he doesn’t seem to be any worse for wear now.

He is now 5 months old and is seriously the cutest baby I have ever seen. Look at this: how could you not love it?

In other news: we bought a house! I know, out of nowhere right? Well, we started talking and decided that we wanted to get our own place. After a couple months of knowing that come April we were going to start looking to find an apartment or something Drew’s dad suggested that we look at buying a place. At first it seemed like a stupid idea since Drew was still in school and we didn’t know where we would be in the coming years but then as we started to talk about it it just made sense. We know we’re going to be here for at least another 3 years with Drew finishing school and then either with a job or figuring out life. I make good money and we could get approved just off of my job. We’ve been able to save up a bit. The housing market is on the mend now and we would be able to get an amazing APR and a house for a great price.

So, we started looking just for fun. We set up an appointment with a realtor to see a townhouse in American Fork and ended up signing with her. The townhouse in AF was not at all what we wanted and so I was from the start rather doubtful we’d be able to find something. Well, after signing all of the paperwork with the realtor we decided we’d go to this open house for a townhouse in Lehi and just look around. We wanted room to just look at not have someone leaning over our shoulder and we just wanted to see as many places as we could.

After looking at the place, something just told us “this is the place.” It was ridiculous and made no sense. We’d only been seriously looking for a couple of days and already we found a place we wanted to put an offer on. Even now we’re not sure what it was that spoke to us so much but it just felt right and the price was perfect and the amount of space was great and it just all felt right. We put in an offer and found out there were 3 other offers on the table so we made our’s a little higher. Luckily our offer was accepted so then we just had to get the whole process over.

Let me tell you, buying a house is not fun. Like, at all. I don’t know that I ever want to do that again it was such a headache and I was stressed through the whole thing and it never felt like we could count on it working because we had so many hoops to jump through and hurdles to jump.

Finally on May 23 we closed and we got our keys on May 24. We own a place now! It was amazing having free rent and being in Orem so close to work but I have to say I am so, so stinkin’ happy to have our own place with our own furniture and our own area where I can wander around in my garments and not have to worry about someone jumping out of nowhere and seeing me. I love the place

It’s a 3 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom townhouse in Lehi. 2000 sq ft with a theater room in the basement that’s wired for a projector and surround sound. It has a fenced backyard with a little garden (we want to do a ton of work to the backyard). The main level has a nice sitting room/front room and then the dining room and kitchen. We have a really good sized pantry and I LOVE it so much. It’s nice to have that kind of storage area. Downstairs is an unfinished area where the washer/dryer hookups are and we’re using that room as storage as well as the laundry room. There’s also the entertainment room just off of that. Upstairs are 3 bedrooms, the master bathroom, the master closet, and a full guest bathroom.

I’m still working on getting things settled (it’s hard to do when you work full time and have a 4 month old) but things are starting to feel like home. We painted one wall that’s in the master bedroom just because it really needed it and I wanted to make the place feel like our’s. I'll post pictures of it when things are a little more settled (just a couple days more I think!).

 I love having my furniture there too. We bought a couch off of KSL.com for $300 and it’s a HUGE sectional that’s only 2 years old and originally sold for $2,100. We also got some wingback chairs for $16 total. One of them needs a slipcover but that’s not too bad.

Also, I finished redoing the kitchen table and chairs and they look AWESOME! I love how they turned out so THANK YOU GEOFF!!!

So that's it for now. I’m going to try to write in here more often just to keep people up to date with what’s going on for us. Plus, I need to share more pictures of the adorableness that is my child. :)