Bugaboo Donkey

When searching for a double stroller (I know. My obsession again.) There is one specific stroller that always gets my heart a-racing. But that specific stroller can cost around $1500. EEEEK! The Bugaboo Donkey is amazing, though! But right now BabyGizmo is doing a giveaway of one. Could I be that one? I don't know! But it's worth a shot, that stroller is amazing and everything a girl could ask for!

What is wrong with this stroller obsession of mine?! My husband does not support it at all. Not in the least bit. Which is why I am scouring craigslist looking for my dream stroller. (I have no disillusions that the less than one year old donkey will be on CL right now. But I do know that several others I have my eye on are there - and at prices my husband will approve of, ish!)

If YOU want to enter to win the donkey, just check out the baby gizmo company on facebook. It will give you all the instructions there!

PS. If you HAVE a donkey.. and you want to give it to me/sell it to me for an amazingly low price.. I would be glad to take it off your hands! :)

High Five Friday 12/16

Well I am trying something new - a linky party called "High Five Friday" - which, as I understand it, is 5 highlights of your week. I think (I hope) this will get my tush back in gear and update this bloggity way more often than I actually do! At least it will give me a good excuse to have a bit o' randomness in my posts :)

So here goes. In no particular order:

1. We did Christmas early this year. We will not be in our house in Christmas morning, we will be travelling, and we have all our gifts to each other and Colton wrapped and under the tree so last night, we threw caution to the wind and opened everything! (Santa, please forgive our naughty behavior!) It was super fun to be a little spontaneous with Christmas! And even MORE fun to watch Colton love his gifts. The big thing we got him was this awesome pirate ship water table (YES, its december!). He was really really enjoying playing with it while Brad was putting it together, even without water! So we set it up in our garage and put a couple inches of water in it, and he had a ball. I loved watching him and can't wait for the weather to be warm enough to set it up on our back porch and hang out in the sunshine all. day. long. I know.. it's Texas.. that will probably happen in March! :)

2. We are in the process of making sure everything we own fits in our house (its so hard changing houses!) but we have gotten rid of, thanks to Craigslist, several things we decided we don't need in this home and won't use. PHEW. It feels so good to start getting our garage ready to be a garage and not a place to store furniture that we won't need here! (Bye-bye old TV stand and old TV!) Only a few more things to sell and we will be cleared out! I also just recently took a large box of donations to the Good Will. I suppose I should have done that while in NC, that way it wouldnt have had to be moved all the way to TX. Oh well, live and learn! 

3. I have been making a family cook book for my husbands mothers family and I am almost done! I have even tried a few of the recipes that were sent to me to include and LOVE them so far! I can't wait to have the rest of them in. I was hoping to get it distributed by XMas, but that is looking unlikely now... But I really think it will be  in the mail to everyone by Thursday this week (that is my goal) and so people should receive them right after Christmas. I hope they enjoy them as much as I will! It has been more work than I might have expected it would be, but definitely worth it!

4. Colton is obsessed with the Christmas tree and all of the ornaments. I have found ornaments in every random place because he steals them and hides them, silly boy! We have all of the nice, dont want them broken/lost ones up high. But the ones that are low enough to reach, he will take off the tree and walk around with one in each hand, banging them together. A few have been broken this way, but as long as I am watching him and making sure he doesn't get hurt I am okay with it. He just loves the ornaments so much!

(I saved the best one for last!)

5. We had a sonogram on Tuesday evening and found out.................. ITS A GIRL! I can hardly believe it! We are so excited to have a baby girl joining our family. I know that God has picked her out especially for our family and it will be so much fun to meet her in April, watch Colton play with her and interact with her, and just to generally love on her. I have been crocheting a blanket for her these past few days and I learned how to crochet little flowers, which are quite adorable. Thank you youtube tutorials! :) After Christmas, I will definitely be getting down to the business of figuring out her room. Right now it is storing everything Colton has out-grown - clothes, blankets, burp rags, baby swing, vibratey seat, baby carriers, nursing cover, etc. etc. etc. But I will need to organize it and figure out what is gender neutral enough to use for baby girl! I think almost everything but the crib bedding and the clothes will be, luckily!

Well that's all. Link on up! 

We live in texas!!

Well 20 plus hours of driving and 3 days, and we made it!!! The Lord 100% took care of us on the drive and while looking for a house. We found a house we love and in the price range we hoped for! In only 2 days, we found the house, offered a bit less for rent, filled an application, and signed a lease :) phew! So we got to drive to ks for thanksgiving and it was so good to be there and see our loved ones!! We do know we are truly blessed.
Colton did so well during this stressful transition time! He slept well, napped well, ate well, adjusted well. He is so great! I love his relaxed nature.
Baby #2 is growing great! I am just now at 21 weeks and transitioning to maternity clothes. This pregnancy has been fairly easy so far! Very similar to my first pregnancy. I am a bit more tired but I know part of that is my days are not spent relaxing at all this time :)
We do get to find out the gender early next week and I just can't wait!!
Well I am typing on my iPhone and it's a little more difficult so I will leave you with some fun photos of colton during our traveling!

A Life Update

A picture update of our lives the past couple months:

We have enjoyed wonderful weather at the park with good friends!

Colton turned one!!! (More on his actual birthday later, but here are a couple shots from his pre-bday photo shoot)

He is SO handsome, don't you think? :)

 Colton would like to announce to the entire bloggity world: He gets to have a little sibling!! Yes, that's right. I am now in the beginning of my second trimester, with a baby due the middle of April! He is very excited! :)

Well I think that's all I have got for now. We have a couple more announcements, so stay tuned! :)

Etsy? NO way!

The other day, I decided to make Colton a pouf. Maybe you read a blog called the nester? Well the other week they did a whole post on poufs, http://www.thenester.com/2011/07/moroccan-poufs-pouffes-and-poofs.html. I have had a pouf before in my life (I was in college... real furniture seemed way too expensive. poufs, on the other hand, not quite as much. and really comfy!) but it was HUGE. I am talking barely fit through a doorway huge. And so... the pouf project began. My darling husband and I went to the fabric store, found a medium-weight fabric at an acceptable price (luckily he was there... I would have picked a different one at double the price. and this one turned out FABULOUS!) and bought a zipper to go along with it. When we got home, I was just too darn excited to wait and so I went straight to work creating a pattern for this pouf. I wanted it simple but sturdy. Since it's for the play room, it didn't need to be fancy, but I did want it to be cute. It took about 5 hours for the whole thing, including figuring out a pattern, and this is how it turned out:

Lola thought it was for her. Silly cat!

But it was really for Colton, who has decided this is where he will drink his bottle now. :)

And so Brad and I got to chatting. And looking these up on Etsy. There is one person who is selling a pouf similar, filled with torn foam (thats the best way.. its extra comfortable that way) and she is charging $195 + $40 shipping. I can't imagine she is selling that many of them! Other than that, many people are selling bean bags anywhere from $75 (these are pretty small) to $150ish for the larger ones. Seems pricey, right? So then we thought.. why not sell poufs? I will probably be able to make one in less than 4-5 hours now that I have a pattern... hopefully! And so my Etsy shop has begun. It only has one thing, and I am still trying to figure out the banner. I created a tag for my poufs:

But haven't quite figured out how to turn this into an etsy banner. Paint just isn't cutting it! I think I need photoshop or something! :)

So friends. As part of being my valued bloggie friends (okay, most of you I am related to.) If you order a pouf, etsy convo me, let me know you saw my blog, and I will create a personal listing for you using the fabric we will pick out, and give you 20% off. (As soon as I figure out how to do all those things. I am sure just attempting it will work, right?)

Feel free to send this deal onto your own friends and family if they want one!

PS. my husband is stoked. he was all for this. I am not sure I have seen him as excited as he was on Sunday (when we were discussing etsy) in a long time. So hopefully this works out! :)

Lots of love to you all!

Lunch time fun!

One of Colton's very favorite things to eat are plums. Usually I peel them and cut them into bite-size pieces for him to pick up, but today he stole the one I was eating. So I grabbed the camera and got some cute cute photos of him eating the plum "big boy style." Love that boy so much!

Have a blessed Wednesday, friends!

My New Bicycle.

I got a bicycle!!! I haven't had one since I was probably 8. Seriously. Well this year brad has really gotten into cycling, and I thought "what the heck... I could be a cyclist too!" So we went to the bicycle shop and picked out an amazing Comfort bike - the Trek Navigator 2.0 WSD in charcoal. And I love it. It came in while my mom was here and I got to ride it quite a bit that week. We also got a bike trailer to pull Colton in, and it's so stinkin' cute. He is really adorable in it and loves looking at everything passing us in a faster-than-walking/running pace.

And bonus - it's great exercise. I have lost 2 lbs since getting this bike (don't laugh - 2 lbs is an accomplishment to me! LOL).

Double bonus - it is so fun for Brad and I to go on evening rides together. We only go probably 5 or so miles, and we don't do a crazy fast pace -more of a pace where we can chat as we ride side-by-side. I have fallen in love. If only we lived close enough to a grocery store that I could get a basket and bike there when we needed just a few things. But alas - walmart is probably 8 miles away and through some streets that are too busy for me to feel comfortable pulling the baby on.

Check the link out so you can see a photo of my adorable bike!! :)

http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/town/recreation/navigator/navigator_2_0_wsd/#/us/en/model/details?url=us/en/bikes/town/recreation/navigator/navigator_2_0_wsd