How 'bout a contest to help pass the time???

I'm still hanging in here all nice and pregnant just waiting for this little guy to decide to come out. In order to make the time go a little faster I've decided to host my

very

first

contest!!!

The winner will receive a bag of Hershey's Reeses Peanut Butter Cups



and

a $15 Target gift card

All you have to do is leave me a comment with your guess of what day my baby will be born. (you don't have to be right I just want you to guess ;P )
Also, if you just happen to mention this little contest in a blog post of yours I'll enter your name twice!!

So come on...leave me a comment!

(I'll leave the contest open until the baby is born)

***My due date is the 5th of May and I've never gone past my date with any of my previous pregnancies, just in case that helps***

Waiting

Last weeks agenda included: More muffins (peach, berry?), turkey soup, King Turkey Ranch casserole, BBQ shredded turkey (for sandwiches) and make another large batch of Laundry soap.
I'm happy to report that it actually ALL got done!! My freezer is looking full and now I'm just playing the waiting game. I'm down to one week before my due date and I've been having days of sporadic contractions that do no seem to be leading anywhere. I'm sure it will all happen soon enough, it's just so hard to focus on much else. I'll keep you posted.....

Are you counting the days? I know I am!

Finally I have a moment to sit and blog! Life for the past week has been pretty busy. I'll go back through and give you a brief overview. Lets see...Friday we cleaned up and prepared for visitors who came late that evening. Saturday we visited and watched the men play pool and Sunday we said goodbye as they drove off for home. :( We did another quick clean up as we had another round of company coming. My Aunt, Uncle and Cousin came and installed some carpet in the basement here so our little tootsies wouldn't be cold when walking around. Carpet is really fascinating so I'll even show ya what it looks like :)

It's kinda tan and green really low profile commercial grade type stuff. Great for the basement! The kids have played down there a lot more in the last few days, makes a mom happy :)

Then starting on Monday a friend and I have been cooking up a storm trying to stock our freezers (she's pregnant too). So far we've made:

Lasagna, burritos, breakfast burritos, Stuffed shells, Spaghetti sauce, banana bread, blueberry muffins and instant oatmeal (blueberry, banana and apple cinnamon). There have been lots of cute moments amongst the busy-ness too...

Here's Abe taste testing the oatmeal...he definately approved!

Little hands helping hold shells as they are being filled...






Little buddies...yeah, they know they're cute!

Then there was yesterday, a day of contractions for me...all day every 10-15 minutes or so. Only stopping when I laid down to rest last night, UGH! I'm back to feeling 'normal' today so the plan is to cook more :P

On the agenda today is: More muffins (peach, berry?), turkey soup, King Turkey Ranch casserole, BBQ shredded turkey (for sandwiches) and make another large batch of Laundry soap.

We'll see how it goes.

Spa day brings happiness

I have very fine, thin hair. Always have, always will. It tends to get static-y and scraggly looking very easily. Combine that with the fact that I'm not really into having to style my hair and I end up with a pony tail most of the time. A hairdresser of mine once told me pony tails were 'lazy hair'....nice! Anywho I'm coming to a point here. I went to my MOPS group this week and it was their annual spa day. (didn't want to miss that one!) I got entered into the drawing for a free haircut (yep, FREE) and I won!! Now, I didn't do anything remarkable I just got a trim. I was chatting with the lady though and telling her my hair history. Last year I permed my hair, loved it but now it's growing out and most of the curl is gone. What's left ends up REALLY frizzy, so the pony tails that used to be most days have become EVERYDAY, UGH! Well, I'm watching how she decided to 'style' my hair and when she was done I was back to healthy looking straight hair, no frizz!! The best part is...I can do it too!! I hate it when you watch someone do it, it ends up perfect but you can never repeat the process yourself. Oh, it's EASY too :) I just grab one of these...

Lovely Round Brush...A bottle of Mousse

and a hair dryer

Proceed to dry hair while brushing in a downward direction with the round brush and Presto! Normal hair that I'm not embarrassed to wear down.

*happy sigh*

Today in a nutshell

One pregnant mom

Six Kids

Major shopping trip to Super Walmart and Costco......


Totally Exhausted!

Doctors appt. update

I'm posting again today to let you all know how my doctor's appointment went. The last time I was there she had mentioned that she would want to start seeing me once a week (hence the indecisive bit in the last post). Well, after listening to baby's heartbeat (what a wonderful sound!) and doing all the measuring, poking, prodding stuff we went to schedule my next appt. To my surprise it worked out perfect. She thought next week sounded too soon, the next week she's on vacation so we made the appointment for May 7th...two days after I'm due. So my dilemma is solved, no stress involved at all!! Not only that but she checked my cervix and I'm 75% thinned out and dilated to almost a two, with baby's head WAY low...yippee progress!

Necessary is all relative

Living on an island has brought about many thoughts on just what is necessary. We don't having any major shopping stores, there are two local grocery stores a pharmacy and that's about all. So if we want something or to go do something it involves a lot more preparation and time aka ferry trip. Noticing these things led me down another thought trail as I'm planning to get in the van today and drive to the OB doctor. Hmm, how often really is necessary? By the grace of God all of my pregnancies have been very uneventful/textbook. Here I am, now in my last month of pregnancy with baby number 7 and the doctor wants to see me once a week. Do I really need to drive across the ferry, arrange for late appts. to ensure Dh can be with kids just so that I can be weighed & measured? I'm really tempted to go in today and then just wait and show up when I'm in labor.

~Or~

I could just be a good little patient and submit to the doctors wishes

*sigh*

What to do....What to do?

Since I'm talking about pregnancy and I'm feeling a bit bored today (and a bit crazy) I'm going to give you updated photos of me :)

My belly has grown...hopefully not too much more before the little guy decides to come out!

Lovely Morning

Today was nice and sunny so the kids spent sometime outdoors. I saw them ride bikes, climb trees, play in a fort and then end up here...chickens are fasinating creatures that apparently provide hours of entertainment.

While they were all outside I had a pretty productive morning....

the bread dough started to rise

the sourdough rolls in the oven...

the finished product: two loaves of bread, rolls and a pan of cinnamon rolls

and a roast in the crockpot for dinner

mmmmm, the house smells good!

How I spent my weekend

Have you ever found yourself with a project that you never imagined you'd be a part of? This weekend my husband and a friend went and picked up a pool table they found off of Craigslist. The only problem? It needed new felt. Simple, no? If you can see in the picture the light pink color under the green...that's the old felt we removed.

Here we are attempting to refelt one of the side rails....

we look like we know what we are doing (hahahaha)

Here is the finished product, it turned out quite nice if I do say so myself.

Now if only I was any good at playing. I guess I'll leave that to my husband and any guests who want to play. (Jim?) We've also acquired an air hockey table, people get rid of things cheap on that Craigslist if you look, it's great!

The next two are just a couple of my boys. Doesn't he look much better than the photo last week?

Look who's walking!!!! ~And~
Our move brought us closer to the church where the local AWANA group meets, so now we have three little Sparks in our house! They are SOOO excited to be a part of this and are already memorizing like crazy :)

First glimpse of our new house

With six kids, sunshine beckoning, monsterous laundry piles, schoolwork and everyday chores/errands the unpacking process is not going as fast as I would like. So I'm going to give you a view of the outside of our house!

This is a little fort my husband is building with some extra wood we had from a previous project. I love that he's handy like that :)

This is the view from our living room. That water in the distance is the Puget Sound and that white speck between the trees is a ferry boat.

Here is the fireplace, which I wanted to include because it's much better than the one at the last house. I'm not sure how exactly but it has some sort of fan or air vacuum or something that makes getting a fire started super easy!!! I LOVE it!

Well, that's it for photos for today. I did make a lot of progress unpacking yesterday since it was the first day that we've been able to stay home the entire day. Today should be about the same and the weather man is predicting sunny days all week so the kids can play outside...life's feeling good!

Our first week in a new house

Being in a new place always brings new things to discover. New places to hide in 'hide and go seek', new closets and cupboards to organize stuff in, new creaks and groans the floors make and even sounds at night. This house is an old farmhouse and has lots of character (that I'm loving). It also has a basement and a garage under the house. My husband and I were standing in the garage the other day and heard a noise...like a scratching sound.

My mind went immediately to 'oh, please do not be a mouse!' I walked over to a cupboard where it seemed to be coming from and slowly opened and ......

THERE WAS A CHICKEN!!!

Not exactly what I expected, but at least it wasn't a mouse. Our neighbor raises organic chickens and apparently this one is a free range bird :)

The weather turned out to be a bit wacky this week too going from a great 60 degree day on our moving day to this two days later...

Snow! We got about an inch before it started to rain and all melted away. Very strange start to spring in Washington.

To make the week even more eventful my two and three year olds decided to fight over who would get to go down the slide (off the bunkbed) first. Of course this was very polite 'I would like to go now, is that ok?' because these are well trained angelic children right? Nope! Said three year old decided to push her little brother out of the way and this resulted in him falling off the bed....

These pictures were taken a few hours after he fell. Under his chin was really swollen and he has a big hole on the inside of his lip. I freaked out a bit and took him to the doctor, who told me not to worry he'd be fine.

It just looked so bad :(

I'm still trying to get enough unpacked before I take pictures of the house, it'll happen soon....really, I promise!