our new dance hall!

Well, we- well Garrick- has finished the dining room floor- we feel like the space is so big that it would be able to be used as a dance floor with the two rooms connected and finished the same. It was a long weekend and week of work for him, but it looks beautiful- it is also nice to have our house back together without our kitchen table in the living room etc... Here are some during/after pictures.

One thing that happened was the handle of the sander somehow wiggled loose, it ran away from Garrick and smashed into the wall... The way that we looked at it was we were really really really glad that it didn't run into the patio doors and ruin that wood or break the glass- that was less that a foot away... this will be mostly covered by our baseboards and then can be just touched up after that.

AND here we are at 34 weeks. Kermit is getting bigger, people have finally said that it is clearly obvious that I am preggo and the kids at school are getting excited. They went sledding the other day and could not figure out why their dare-devil teacher wouldn't go with them! I just kept saying- "babies don't sled!" But it is getting tight in there... 6 weeks to go! We are getting a crib this weekend and then are going to set up his room so that we are ready in case of an early appearance!

My Husband... the stripper...

Get your mind out of the gutter!

This is what he worked on over weekend while I was away at mom and dad's keeping Kermit and Scout safe from the fumes. (Well, Scout just likes to visit Payton which is why he gets to come.) But he stripped what I thought was a junky old dresser that turned out to be beaUtiful and the perimeter of our dining room floor to get it ready to be sanded down and refinished! It will look so great when it's done- our kitchen was an amazing transformation.

Other accomplishments for the week include:

Garrick making new floor boards for the gap between the kitchen and dining room- he was about 5 short after he salvaged them from the back porck.

Garrick finishing the really hard puzzle that our neighbor Joan challenged him to do- the sky is completely black- no pattern, no constellations, just black.

Me hiking with my parents at the best place in the whole world- Devil's Lake- Payton was scared to go out on the rocks- this is how she participated in the photo shoot. And then just a few other nice pictures from the day :)

Finally, I had the 33 week checkup today (actually 32 and 5/7, but who's counting) and Suzanne one of my midwives said that everything is perfect, my 'girth' is 32 cm, the weight gain has slowed down, but she says that the baby is still growing and kicking like crazy- we watched it for a little bit while I was there- AND she also said that it is head down which is key. I'm still able to keep running and swimming too! Life is good. (The heartbeat ranged from 138- 150 while I was there, she said the head was low in my pelvis, but the feet were high and I drank an entire pitcher of OJ in the last 2 days, but also bought chocolate covered raisins the other day- any guesses?)

BRRRRRR

Officially in Winona it was -21* without the wind chill!!! With the windchill it was supposed to get to -40-50*. So, in order to keep the children safe (as my dad would say) we didn't have school.

It has been a pretty quiet couple of weeks, last weekend I ran a 5K just for fun to see how I could do... I am getting slower, there is nothing that can be done about this- but I was 30 seconds aways from placing in my age group with a 27+ min race! It was real fun to go at least. Maybe Kermit and I will do one more race together as a team... I'll have to see if I can't find one to do. :) Garrick has been skiing like crazy with all of the snow that we have been getting- he is doing a big ski race in a few weeks in the Twin Cities. I haven't seen him race before so I'm excited to go and see the race etc... It will be a really fun weekend.

Garrick is a miracle worker. This room was by far the WORST room in the entire house and in a few weeks he re-mudded, taped and painted the room. Now we are starting to get things that we've acquired moved into Kermit's room- I don't think that this falls into the nesting phase quite yet, but it's like we are gathering sticks to make the nest.

AND here's how we are looking at week 32. (The next project Garrick is going to tackle is the dining room floor- that's why there is the big crack between the two- he was fixing a few missing boards from where the wall used to be.) I took it when I got back from the Y running- so that explains the sweaty shorts and rosy cheeks :)

Happy New Year!!

Garrick finished our dining room and it looks so beautiful!


As usual, I worked New Years Eve and on New Years day we went for a hike- in a tribute to Ani, Steph and Kristen- {did any of you go??} We went with our friends Kelly and Marty- they are having a baby in February! and their dogs Merks and Haas. Scout was very very tired after the day of running but it was really warm and sunny out.

And... here is the next installment of the belly shots- week 30-