Early Update

I'm doing my update a little early because I fell asleep on the couch a couple of times today and can't seem to fall asleep now because of it, even though I'm still really tired.

So the last few days in my house have been spent trying to catch up a bit on housework. I assign myself a few chores to do each day and some to John as well. We use www.cozi.com so that I can update John's to do list each day and he can check it from wherever on his iPhone. We also have the family calendar and shopping lists on there since I do the meal plan and make up the shopping lists, but he's the one who's actually out there buying the groceries. I wasn't sure I'd use it when I first signed up, but we both love it and it definitely suits our needs. I would highly recommend it.

Last night we had our weekly date night. I had planned on making Jell-o and playing Mario Party 8 on the Wii, but I was super tired and also got a bee in my bonnet about making nacho dip, so we made Epicure Cheese Nacho Dip (we love it) and John suggested watching M*A*S*H, so that's what we did. It wasn't anything super creative, but we both enjoyed it and that's what matters.

Today we had to get to church a little bit early so John could meet with a high councillor from the stake. We knew as soon as we got the phone call yesterday morning what it was about. John is our new ward financial clerk, taking over for our brother-in-law who was in the calling for 4 years. So we ended up at church for 6 hours today, me having such bad Braxton Hicks that I actually thought I was in premature labour at one point and my kids crying because they wanted to go home. John has talked to the bishopric and they are totally cool with him dropping the kids and I off at home right after church and then coming back to do tithing and what not. I think this will be a really good calling for him and am more than willing to support him in it. Now can someone please remind me of that every Sunday while he's at the church? :)

Our ward's Relief Society is start a Food Storage group that will meet once a month. I won't be up to going for the next 2 months, possibly 3, which I'm very sad about. But they handed around sheets today that had the website they are basing it off of and I checked it out. I'm really excited to learn more about it than I already do and to work towards building up our food storage. If you are curious, the website is foodstoragemadeeasy.net This month they are talking about Emergency Plans (Family Plan, Disaster Kit and Evacuation List) as well as Shelving For Your Food Storage.

I think that's really all that's new. My goal for this week to add to the 4 I'm already doing is to get changed for the day before noon. I know, it's shocking that I needed to make that a goal. However, when you're 31 weeks pregnant, in lots of pain and have no where to go during the day, it's easy to stay in PJs as long as possible. Hope you have a great week and I'll see you on Thursday:) Have a good one!

Attitude of Gratitude Day

First up, here is this week's Attitude of Gratitude, brought to you by a very tired mother who was woken up early by her son who'd had an accident on the top bunk.

1) I am grateful for the calming effect that prayer can have on me when I'm not at my best. It's amazing how powerful of a thing prayer really is and I'm so grateful that we have a way of communicating with our Heavenly Father.

2) I am grateful that there's a door connecting my bedroom and the main bathroom. Sounds silly, but when you're getting up every few hours during the night to go to the bathroom and your hip is super sore, it's really nice to only have to walk a few feet to get there. (Which just makes me grateful that I live in a time where I have the conveniences that I do in general).

3) I am grateful for a wonderful primary presidency and Activity Days assistant. When I told them I wouldn't be able to do the meeting yesterday or the ones in February that I thought I'd be able to do they had no problem with taking over the reins and saying not to worry about my calling until I'm settled with the baby and that if I needed anything else at all to let them know. It's people like that who really make my day sometimes. Do I need help with stuff right now?Yeah, big time! But I'm too big of a chicken to ask for help...But it's nice to know that it's there if I get brave enough to ask.

Anyway, on another note, since John and I are pretty much stuck in the house for date nights for the next 6 months or so I'm looking for ideas of cheap at-home date nights. So if you have any, send them my way because I'm getting a little bored of doing the same things (movie, board game, card game, Wii game) over and over each month.

Hope you have a great weekend:)

Decorating

So my mum is in the process of decorating my house. I say her because she's really the one with most of the ideas and doing all of the work. I just give opinions and approval. As I already mentioned, she's recovering my chairs for the dining room, which will be a huge help to me as the new material will be so much easier to keep clean. She's also moved some pictures around. She is repainting a mirror with a shelf on it and that will be going in my living room and then she's in the process of getting things ready for my 'feature' wall in the living room which will consist of 5 8x10 photos (since we'll be a 5 person family) with 'FAMILIES ARE FOREVER' in large vinyl letters on top of the photos and 'Bly Family est. 2005' in small vinyl letters below the photos (Yes, C, I got this idea from you and just tweaked it. Thanks again for another decorating idea!). Mum also made me a menu board that's in my dining room. I like it a lot. I'll have to get around to taking a picture soon. Plus, I also have the letters 'C' 'T' and 'R' that we're going to hang up the next time she comes.

I'm really looking forward to getting all of this stuff done and so glad that my mum is so good at this stuff and wants to help me with it.

Baby Update:
Dr said that Brettley is head down and growing very well. Always good to hear.

The Monday Update

The boys got their bunk bed on Friday:) Then they decided they would rather camp with Grandma in the living room than sleep on their new bed, so it didn't get used that night. It took some figuring out and moving around to find the best place in the room for it. We had to worry about keeping it away from the window a bit so it would be easier to change the sheet on the top bunk and then we realized we also had to keep it away from the light fixture/bulb, so that was when we had to actually move the bed. But it's all figured out and they love the bed, even though we're trying to keep Ty from climbing the ladder and failing miserably.

On Saturday my mum cleaned some stuff in my house for me that I can't do anymore without hurting myself. I get really bad Braxton Hicks in the last 2 months. Almost anything that involves bending more than once or lifting sets them off and they are wicked painful. Plus, I'm just a few weeks away from the point where I was put on bed rest with Ty because I was having too many contractions and was at risk for going into labour prematurely, so I'm really going to have to watch it from now until the baby comes. So having my mum here was a HUGE help for me. Later in the morning we went to Value Village and got some jeans, shorts and a bathrobe for Caleb and the last 2 things I needed for Brett's first year clothing wise. Mum also got me a shirt to wear to Church for the last few weeks since barely anything is fitting me properly anymore. I am now officially bigger than I have ever been. I'm very confident about my plan to do something about that after baby B is born, though.

We went to the mall and had lunch after that and I got my Booster Juice that I'd been craving for the last few weeks. I got a Strawberry Sunshine, but ended up drinking a fair bit of John's Funky Monkey smoothie as well. I forgot how much Brett likes chocolate (it must be him because I've been loving chocolate this pregnancy and I am NOT a big chocolate fan). When we got back to my house my mum started recovering my dining room chairs. We didn't get very far at all because there were a lot more staples in there than she'd thought, but she took 2 chairs home with her and my step-dad is dropping them off finished and picking up the rest on the 8th so that when my mum comes for Family Day weekend they will all be done. John and I got to go out for date night that night. We went for fruit smoothies and desserts at Boston Pizza.

Nothing exciting happened yesterday. I was stuck at home from being on cement floors too much the day before, which just shot my hip. Last night John and I made and ate chocolate chunk banana bread, which was really yummy.

So that's about all that's new here. I'm just plugging along and looking forward to my mum coming for another visit on Family Day weekend. John and the boys will be in Magrath, so we're doing a girly weekend. She's taking me to get my hair thinned and eyebrows waxed before the big event and we're doing at-home manicures, pedicures and facials and all that fun stuff. For today I'm just hanging around until my prenatal appointment later this afternoon. They are every 2 weeks right now.

Hope you had a good weekend:)

PS
Forgot to add what my goal for week 4 is. This week I have to have at least 30 minutes of chill time to myself each day, which for me will probably involve listening to music, reading or taking a bath.

Attitude of Gratitude

On Tuesday I went to a Relief Society meeting about meal planning and couponing. It was really great and fun to get out of the house:)

Here's today's Attitude of Gratitude:

1) I am grateful that I went to the meeting on Tuesday and finally got motivated to plan my breakfasts and lunches out as well instead of just planning my suppers. I've been planning our suppers for our whole marriage but for some reason hadn't been planning the other two. This is going to make life even easier, which I'm really happy about:) It also motivated me to get all of my most used recipes into one cookbook, which is nice and convenient.

2) I am grateful that even though Caleb has been waking up early lately that he's more than content to sit on the computer and look at pictures and play Fisher Price games until I'm ready to wake up. This works out great for me because he's still in the same room as me and I am able to get more sleep, since my sleep is not the greatest lately.

3) I am VERY grateful that my mum is coming up tomorrow and bringing the boys' bunk bed with her. She's also helping me recover the chairs for my table and has told me that she'd buy me the Booster Juice that I've been craving for the last few weeks. I'm really looking forward to spending the weekend with her.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Also, decided this morning that my 25 weeks of goals isn't going to include housework goals anymore. I will wait to start doing those after I've recovered from having Brett since my Braxton Hicks act up bad everytime I do more than the bare minimum now.

11 For 2011

Here are 11 things that I'd like to do during 2011:

1) Get into a routine with my 25 weeks of goals. So far so good, except for missing 1 thing yesterday due to being sick.

2) Finish cleaning out and organizing the basement. This is about 2/3 done, so we're definitely well on our way.

3) Get to 160 lbs or less before the end of the year. This is for health reasons as much as it is for looks.

4) Have Ty toilet trained by the end of the year. I'm not starting this until the baby's about a month or so old, though.

5) Have at least 2 nice sets of family pictures taken. It's Brett's first year, so he will change so much.

6) Have at least one weekend without the kids. My mum tends to like to help me with this and I love that:)

7) Get rid of the big brown couch in my living room one way or another. As soon as the snow melts to a reasonable level, it will be leaving this house somehow.

8) Steam clean all of my carpets. My mum is bringing us our steam cleaner this weekend that she got us for Christmas, so it won't be that hard to do other than just making the time for it. Sounds like a good June project to me where it'll be nice enough to open all of the windows but not too hot.

9) Take the kids to a zoo. It will probably have to be Valley Zoo (BOO!), but I want them to at least get to A zoo this year since we didn't go to one last year.

10) Go for a walk at least once per week from the beginning of May through to the end of September. That way I'll get more use out of my double Phil & Ted's stroller as well.

11) Give birth to another beautiful baby. Can't believe that Friday will be 10 weeks until my due date and that means that the actual delivery is probably only 8 weeks away...

So what are your goals or wishes for 2011?

New(ish) Couches, Date Night and More

I got my couches sort of switched on Friday. The two ones that I wanted are upstairs, but only one of the old ones fit downstairs, so now John's going to have to find someone who can help him bring the big one to Value Village or something because I just want it gone. It's so nice to not hurt from sitting on the couch anymore, though.

On Saturday we went and got groceries and had to buy a new cord to plug the van in with because someone thought it would be a good idea to steal our's the night before. I'm just glad that our van started at all. It was a very cold night. That night for date night we played Skip-bo and had nacho cheese dip and taco chips. The snack was very yummy and I had a lot of fun playing Skip-bo with John, even though he won 4 out of the 5 games that we played.

On Sunday I made it almost the whole way through church, which was nice. I'm looking forward to being able to sit through all of it again in April.

Tomorrow will be the start of week 3 of my 25 weeks of goals. I've done my goals every day so far, which I'm really impressed with. My house care goal for this week was to get at least 1 load of laundry done every day. My week 3 goals are to clean the dining room every day (house care goal) and to get at least 8 hours of sleep within every 24 hour period (personal care goal).

Not too much else is new here other than Ty coloured on my walls and lino with permanent marker yesterday. I managed to get the walls clean with a Magic Eraser, but the lino is a whole different story. I've tried some scouring cream I have from Shaklee, Magic Eraser, nail polish remover, disinfecting wipes and WD-40. None of them have worked so far. I'm going to try rubbing alcohol next and if that doesn't work I'm just going to give up.

Anyway, I guess that's about it. Hope you have a great week!