Unrolling

Recently I have been working on a big sewing project, which means my desk in the office is a mess and there are sewing supplies all over my little area. Of course Parker likes to get into some of them- He especially loves to play with my little measuring tape.

Today he would ask me to roll it up and then he would stick it in his mouth and unroll it, then ask me to roll it up again. He did this like 5 times in a row until I didn't feel like rolling up a spit covered measuring tape anymore.

I thought it looked super funny though so I'm going to share it:

Parker

Most of the posts recently have not been about Parker- so here's one for the grandparents to see their cute little grandson.
Just random pictures: the first one is obviously one of him saying "cheeeeeese"
And a funny story about Parker just for fun:
Parker points out lights on a regular basis. This has been ongoing for the past 6 months- he consistently points out lights, and within the last couple of months he has begun also saying whether the light that he sees is on or off.
I don't know why he does this so often, but many times a day he points out lights and whether they are turned on or turned off.
The other night he pointed to a lamp and told us it was a light and that it was on. Then he covered his eyes with his hands and said "off"- It made me laugh, he couldn't see the light shining when he covered his eyes so he said it was off.
I love little kids and their logic.

36.5 Weeks

I had my 36 week check-up today.
First off, about a week-and-a-half ago I started to think that little miss might be breech. Some days I was sure that she was upside down, and others not so much. When I told my doctor today- he felt around on my stomach and said that he's almost positive that the baby's head is right under my ribs and that she's in a 'frank-breech' position.
So he went and grabbed an ultrasound machine to check, but it turns out that she is head down, she just apparently has a butt that feels like a head :) I was happy to see that she was not breech- everything is just easier that way.
While he had the ultrasound machine out he decided to check to see if it really was a girl since he knew that we weren't able to get a conclusive picture before. He said it's hard to tell this far along since the baby is so squished, but he said it's about a 95% chance it's a girl based on what he was able to see today.
Also, I'm dilated to a 3 and 75% effaced! We're moving right along with this pregnancy.

Just 24 days until the due date!

I'm married I swear

This past week I had to take off my wedding ring.
My hands got a little swollen (as is normal during pregnancy), and so off the rings went.
So now people can look at me and think I'm a heathen whose pregnant and not married. I know most people won't care- but I still would prefer to be able to wear my rings.
Is that crazy?

The end is near

Today is the 14th, which means I have exactly one month left until my due date.

During my last pregnancy one of my old bishops told me that "God created the 9th month of pregnancy so that women would be willing to do anything, even go through labor, to get that baby out"--

AMEN, the end of my last pregnancy was rough, and I'm feeling pretty uncomfortable now.

Obviously, I'll gladly take all the back aches, fatigue, inability to reach my own feet, etc. since it means I get to have another child.
But, I would definitely be pretty annoyed if I had to be this uncomfortable for anything less than a little miracle like this:

Geeze, It's hard to believe he was ever that small!

Anyway, I had my 35 week check-up today.
Things are still going well... But Guess what?!?! I was dilated to a 2! This is exciting because I didn't dilate until after I had been induced with Parker. Not even a tiny bit- so I know it doesn't really mean much- but I'm going to be optimistic and assume that since I'm dilated at 35 weeks that I'll have the baby on my own instead of being induced the week after the due date. **knock on wood**

Other than that everything is boring and normal, good heart rate, my BP is fine etc. So we'll just wait and see.

P.S.- We still don't have a name, but we have managed to create a short list of names, so we're making progress.

Good-Bye Gina

Yesterday I hung out with my sister Gina for the last time for a long time.

My older sister Gina and her family are moving today--J.D. is going to Florida to start Law School in the fall, and Gina decided to go with him. (Go figure)

I'm sad that Gina's leaving, especially since it's so far away. My sisters are like my best friends- so it will be hard to be across the country. Gina is an awesome older sister- I love having her in my life- and I've been lucky to have her around so I can hang out with her all the time.

She has two adorable little boys, and Parker will miss Donovan very much! Donovan was the first person that Parker would recognize and try to call by name other than myself and Jason.

I'll also miss J.D.- Gina made a good choice... he always makes me laugh.

Have fun in Florida Gina- I love you and I'll miss you!

You'll always be my favorite older sister!

Card Swap

Every month I go to a cardswap. It used to be an enrichment activity, but after our ward split, it is now just a group of friends swapping cards- so sisters from both wards attend cardswap.

This month it was my turn to host, so I got to have cardswap at my house last night. The way it works is that everyone makes 14 duplicates of the same card and brings them. The Host (me) gets stuff ready to make a card- so that we can all work on the cards together.

Here is the card I designed for all of us to make:

And of course you must have refreshments of some kind, so I made a cake.

Do you get it?? It was designed to match the card that I made. (Yes, I'm a mega-nerd; deal with it)

And what better use for cake scraps than cake balls. I love these things- SO yummy- if you haven't seen them go here. If you haven't tried them yet: Do it!

It was a small crowd since it's the middle of summer and everyone is out of town, but getting just a few cards is still fun. Plus, I invited my little sister to come, so we got to make cards together before hand and hang out!
SO, with decorating a cake, and making cake balls, and making cards and more cards, it was a day full of craftiness-- My Kind of Day!!

I know some of you may not care, but I love to look at this kind of stuff so I'll post it for anyone who is like me. I put together a little slide show of all of the cards that I have made since I started attending cardswap (a few of these were not made for cardswap, but I included them anyway)

Seriously, I love making cards, and I love going to cardswap!

Cutting Back, Feeling Good

I have always tried to be relatively thrifty. And I think I was pretty good at it with clothes and such. I always love when I go to check out and the cashier is surprised by how cheap something is or how low the total is... the best is when they double check to make sure they scanned everything, since they don't believe how little I'm paying for what I'm getting.

For example; the day after I had my ultrasound and found out that we're having a girl, I went shopping (of course) and I spent $53 including tax. And when I got home and showed Jason what I had purchased I realized that I had gotten 47 items of little girl clothing (in many different sizes) and a couple pairs of pants for Parker (making that and average price of $1.08 per item of clothing). My normal limit is that I won't pay more than $2.50 for a piece of kids clothing, and I had spent less than half of what I allow. I was proud of myself for getting a good deal, but then again I had always been pretty good at it.

What I was not good at was grocery shopping. Seriously, I always just bought whatever I saw or wanted. I often wanted to do better shopping, I wanted to spend less, but I just didn't really know how. My first problem was that I didn't know what a good deal was when grocery shopping- I would try to buy stuff that was marked as being on sale, but I didn't know if I was really getting a good price or not.

The last bank that I worked at before I had Parker was inside a grocery store, and we happened to be situated right next to the produce section. They would put up displays of produce on sale right in front of my desk. Customers would sometimes make comments to me like "Wow, that's a REALLY great price for asparagus." I would just smile and nod. I had no clue-- should asparagus be like 30 cents per pound or more like 3 bucks a pound???

I realized that I wasn't magically going to be able to tell a good deal on groceries when I saw them- so I had to put some work into it. I started keeping the grocery ads that I got, and I kept track of the lowest price I saw on anything. It may seems super nerdy- but I now have an Excel spreadsheet with TONS of items I buy at the grocery store, with prices next to them so I know whether any sale price is a good deal or not.

It took some time to figure this out, but on a recent shopping trip I went to check out and my total was $15.00 even. The cashier printed out the receipt and looked at the bottom where it showed how much I saved- I had saved $19.54, if those items had not been on sale I would have spent $35 instead of $15-- I was so happy- I felt so accomplished.

That may sound crazy, but it's true. It was depressing knowing that I was spending more than I needed to- and it felt good to save some money-- especially without having to change what we eat or buy- we still get the same stuff- just much, much cheaper.

Sorry if you're bored by this post, I know it seems so simple, but I struggled with it and I'm just so happy that I have finally made some progress.

4th of July Weekend

For the fourth of July weekend we (along with almost everyone else in Phoenix) left the valley and the heat for a few days. We went to Jason's parents cabin in Northern Arizona with his family for the weekend.

Parker in Parks, AZ

On Saturday we rode a ski lift up to the highest point in Arizona

On our way up

A view from the top

Making a call from 11,500 feet above sea level

Our little family

The whole Tieman gang

Dang! This boy is cute!

All three cousins

Speaking of cousins, it was interesting to have all three kids together now that the boys are older. Parker and Kyle are old enough to play together a little bit. And Megan seems to like having a little kid around that isn't her brother.

Parker about to get hit by a stick

Megan and Parker walking hand-in-hand, Megan was obviously feeling more friendly than in the previous picture.

Parker trying to push his cousins on the tire swing.

Pushing the tire swing again, while Megan is, ummmm... licking her little brother (ah, siblings)

Parker and Kyle getting a ride in the Wheelbarrow from Uncle Kody

And just for fun, this isn't a good picture obviously, but it shows my giant belly at 34 weeks (that's right, just 6 more weeks to go!)

Parker and Kyle are funny, they gave each other lots and lots of hugs until Kyle began getting too excited with his hugs, but it was super cute.

The boys playing peek-a-boo

If you notice, Parker has a baseball hat on in some of the pictures- He LOVES his hat. Really, he LOVES it! And in some of the pictures where the hat is on backwards and crooked, that means that Parker put his hat on all by himself- stylish right?