Rockin the Suburbs

OK, here is the 36 week photo – went to the Doctor this morning, all is well, she is in “launch position” but no dilation. So we’ll see next week! (Oh and I LOST 3 pounds, ha ha! confirming my theory that some of this weight is in the waste management area)

36 weeks

And here are pictures of the house – clean. and the baby’s room – done (Of course extra special thanks to my Mother-in-law and husband who did the lion’s share of the cleaning… I did most of the fit-throwing)

Living room – wow, furniture

dining room with chandeliers

bathroom – 98% complete, 100% functional

Veronica's room

The crib wall – those are wooden letters

Her IKEA dresser with 3D wall accents

So here is the 34 weeks photo… ugh!

34 weeks

Had a wonderful baby shower on Sunday. So special thanks to Sue, Jen, Kathleen and Mom for such a great event! The theme was “Baby Bling” and Jen did a spectacular Tiffany-themed cake. the jewels inside were edible! We also had brownie lolly-pops and a watermelon baby stroller. So fun!! I wish I would have thought to take a picture of the crowd – but we all had a lot of fun!

baby shower cake with bling!

awww – down to the last detail

It would be safe to say that the tiling process for “Project ClusterF%!K” has been an educational experience. As my better half put it “Simple, but not easy”.

It’s up, every last damn piece of tile….(the tape is holding some of the top-heavy pieces in place until the thinset fully cures)….but behold the wonders of a LOT of tough nights and 125 pounds of thinset.

I would like to have a gallery on this site – sure easy, no problem. BUT I would like to be able to order prints from one of the online retailers right off this site… like snapfish or kodak. Anybody seen anything good that will work? It seems like a simple thing, but it doesn’t look like it happens that way!!

Although this time I made the theme myself (based on the previous one of course) But it’s a start.

So this weekend we have some headway on the bathroom. All the doors have casing on them and we are officially done with the professional building type of help (actually he is coming back one more time to drop a piece of molding off, but E is installing). We do have one minor issue with the electrical that we have to have a box moved a bit (got a little too close to the tile line). And Erich did his first foray into trim. He did an excellent job putting the outer trim on the octagon window, and the recessed cabinet he built for storage. We got the tile started on Sunday – Saturday got sucked into the remodel black hole… I don’t even remember why or what happened! But we got the fancy part mostly figured out and hopefully every night this week we are going to do a little bit of field tile to get that out of the way. Then I am hoping to finish the tile work Friday afternoon and grout on Saturday (then maybe I can get my toilet installed on Sunday!!) We’ll see.

the bathroom – a start

fancy tile work – electrical outlet was getting into the thick top border

And Bon Jovi on Friday – we had a good time. Kid Rock opened and was really good (I was surprised it was such a good show) then Bon Jovi started at 9:30… ugh, that was a little rough. And we had to walk out in the mob, that took about 40 minutes. But E was waiting with the car so it worked out. The weather was perfect, cool, nice breeze, low humidity (lucky for me!)

our seats – pretty close, but nobody ever came over on our catwalk

Unnamed person: “Hey Steph, when are you due?”

Me: “September 25 [insert big sigh]”

Unnamed person: “Are you sure?”

Me: “Yeah, pretty sure – it ain’t 1860 anymore”

Unnamed person: “How tall is your husband again?”

…

In other words – yes, I am a giant cow – and WTF? Sue assures me that Erich was a perfectly normal size at birth.

30 weeks – 10 more to go!

Took a short trip to the dunes this morning, beautiful day!

When we made the big “welcome to suburbia” move a couple years ago, we decided that when and where it’s reasonable, we would try and go “green”.

As one of the “never had to have one of these before” purchases was a lawnmower, we thought we’d try and get one of them Rechargable Electric ones. for a little while, it seemed like a good option – neighbors would marvel at how quiet it ran, it ran perfectly fine, we felt no buyers remorse.

Then, after a few months, the typical “rechargable” issue seemed to creep up……the battery stopped holding a full charge..and it would take a charge or two to complete the lawn.

A couple of times it would give up halfway through mowing the front lawn, leaving us with that “did your landscapers go on strike halfway through?” aesthetic.

We limped along for a while after that, until a couple weeks ago it gaveup the ghost. I brought it into an authorized repair shop. One of the gus there started it up, and the noise alone made everyone in the shop turn around and ask “Dear GAWD, what the hell is that?!?!”

While it is a bit of an optical illusion, the description on the invoice says all it needs to with regards to their prognosis:

Love chandeliers… just got some for the house

Medium 6-light for living room – there will be 2 of these, so awesome

Large 12-light for dining room

3-light for foyer at the bottom of the steps

Don’t ask me when we are going to stop spending money on this house… it’s getting a bit ridiculous though!