THIS IS WHY.......

He comes home broken and bruised. When telling me he is going to go ride, he usually leaves out the other things they are going to try while out playin on their bikes. These are some videos and pictures that his friend sent him recently. I figured I'd post some for you guys all to see. With me having random contractions the last week I told him he couldn't go really far. (I know I'm paranoid) I didn't want him on some trail that takes a few hours to get home from, and not be able to get a hold of him while he's out. So he's restricted in the next few weeks as to where he can go. I think he'll live, it looks like he had plenty of fun.



Just a note that the trails they do are for the advanced :)



They decided to build this to ride






This I am jealous of-the sights they get to see. Adam said this meadow was amazing.




The post a did a few back about him coming home with road rash all over-this is where he wrecks. You can't really see him wreck, but on the end hill it flattens out instead of leading to another hill. When he landed it threw him off a bit.
Please excuse the langauge

Not the Best Timing

Last night Gabe wasn't acting quite herself. She has lately been testing her limits with us to see what she can get away with. Good timing with a new baby coming huh? Well last night Adam looked at me as Gabe was crying like crazy over something silly and asked, "What's wrong with her?" I had no clue. I said, "She's acting like she does when she's sick." Well this morning was even worse. She was really hard to deal with. Everything was overly dramatic and hard. Well low and behold her nose starts running. I think I jinxed us. She now has this full blown cold going on. I think she slept maybe a half hour of her nap time, when it's usually close to two hours. That was even with me taking her into bed with me to try to help her sleep. It usually works. It didn't. Poor thing couldn't breath, and kept coughing because of it.

On top of all that fun, I've probably had one of the most uncomfortable days as of yet so far. I couldn't even walk. I don't tell you for sympathy, just to state it was a hard day. I told Adam, I can't afford to get sick right now. If I have a full blown cold going into labor, my breathing methods are out the window. Also I don't think coughing like crazy will feel good on my body either. So then of course I have a few contractions today. AH! I also don't want Gabe sick when this baby comes either. One, she is so excited for him, I don't want to be the one to tell her she can't touch him. Two, she's hard for us to deal with when sick, let alone leaving her with someone. Especially in the night when she is up a bunch of times miserable just wanting one of us to comfort her. If some random person walks in, I think it'll freak her out. So here I am for the first time in my pregnancy praying this guy of ours will wait to make his appearance, until Gabe's cold is over. Or that Gabe will get over whatever it is she has quickly and it won't lead to something else. I don't know like mouth sores, or an ear infection. I also don't want it spread to Adam or myself, but I'm pretty sure I already have it. So here I am venting it out to all of you as I just got Gabe back to sleep for the third time since she has gone to bed. Poor thing. I do just love a wonderful understanding husband who came home after work and took care of both of us. Wish us luck, this could be an interesting few days/weeks...............

Learning to Play with Boys

Tonight we went to a friend's house for a get together. Gabe loves playing with their little boy, so she was excited to go. After everyone showed up Gabe was the only girl (besides a six month old) among five boys. She lately is really interactive with her toys. She wants to play barbies and have them talk and do things together. She could play with her dollhouse all day. Trust me I know, cause she asks me all day to play with it. :) ANYWAY, our friends have a play room where all the kids were playing with toys. Now our friends have two boys, so barbies weren't there. Which Gabe is fine with, just stating there were all boyish toys. Adam stopped in there to play with the kids for a few minutes and told me his findings tonight.

They have this big train table for their boys where you can set up all of these tracks for trains. Gabe thought it was cool and being a girl wanted to get everything set up to play. All of the other boys wanted to knock their trains off the table to see how far they'd fly off. They wanted to knock anything set up down as well. Adam said Gabe was really thrown off by this. She looked at him and said, "Whoa. Messy." She then found these two monkeys to play with and gave one to Adam. So he sat down with her for minute to have a conversation with her between the two monkeys. Well having an adult in there playing made all the boys want to join in. So one of the boys brings his car over to join their conversation. He then says in a very gruff voice, "I'm a strong car and I'm going to shoot you down and kill you." (just being a boy and trying really hard to play along) Adam said I should have seen Gabe's face. She was lost on all of that. She usually wants her dolls to talk about how pretty they look in their dresses. He said it's so funny to watch how differently boys vs. girls want to play with things. I think in the next few years it'll be interesting to see how our kids adjust. With having a girl as the oldest, poor Ollie probably won't have a choice but to play girl things all day. We thought it was amusing.

Geocaching

I told Adam at the beginning of the week that we need to try out Geocaching as a family again. He did it with his young men on Tuesday, and they were all fans. They went all around town to find some. I told him to plan it, and we'd go. Well Gabe has been telling us all week she wants to go climb the mountains. What can we say, we've brought her up right. Well there are these dirt, desert foothills right off of I-80 near our house. We decided we'd venture over there. I really didnt' know what I was getting myself into when Adam said it would be a little hike. I thought, no problem. I told him to let me rest my already swollen feet for an hour, and we'd go. Silly almost due pregnant woman. Ha. We were successful in our three finds, and I think I might have been successful in furthering my progression along. Which so all of you know, is actually not what I want for at least another week.



They actually have these official stickers you can get to put on a cache if you hide one, so people will leave them alone if found.

A quick show off of the dress Nana sent for Gabe. Thanks she loves it as you can see. Please excuse her crazy hair I was trying to maintain by her headband-unsuccessfully.

These are the "small hills" we climbed. When you are almost 37 weeks pregnant, those aren't small. We hiked about three, so normally not bad. About halfway up the second, Adam says, "I probably could have pulled the car up here." Ha! We also joked upon seeing an old crappy chair, that someone knew I'd be hiking and set it out for me to rest. (Sorry- I was playing with my black and white setting back and forth. I forgot one of the settings was on it.)



Gabe even eventually hitched a ride with Daddy.


While Daddy checked coordinances to even make sure we were by our "treasure", Gabe observed bugs...

And threw Rocks

Daddy then told us we needed to climb another hill. Okay I thought, here goes nothing.

Greta ended up cutting her foot on something (she's okay), so I hung out with her, and sent the other two frolicking off to find the cache, or treasure/toys as Gabe would say.


They found it!

With bigger caches, the rule is you are supposed to put something in if you take something out. You never know what you're gonna find. Ours was full of fun little trinkets. The cache was called pirate something, so the original guy put a pirate theme on all his stuff. There was some of that left, but a lot of other random toys. Gabe loved this little dinosaur key chain for some reason. She wanted to take all the toys out and play with them all right then and there, we thought it was funny. It was hard for her to just choose one.

Adam sampled the sunglasses found in there. Gggrrr, lookin hot babe.

Gabe was good at letting us know a dinosaur says ROOOARRR. We weren't aware she knew what one said.

Proof I did hike myself up there as well

Our third cache was on the way home at this fun new park, where Gabe found a beautiful bracelet. (It was really ugly)


Is that not the biggest tunnel slide you've ever seen? Ha. Gabe has been into the tunnel slides lately, and actually volunteered to go down it. It happened only once and she was nervous the whole way down

There you have it folks, our new hobby. With all the hiking and exploring we like to do, it'll be fun to add this onto it. Maybe in a week I'll be making Adam take me to the "real" mountains to put myself into labor, and we can still find caches along the way. Our next goal is to hide our own near our house somewhere.

Grease Monkeys

Gabe is always Mommy's big helper during the day. She loves to "help" clean. Well she can be just as helpful when it comes to the stuff around the house Daddy needs to get done. Adam let her help change the oil in the car. Really she just watched and got in the way I think. She tried. I kept hearing him ask her for something, telling her where it was. Such as, "Gabe can you hand Daddy those napkins. Look by my foot." This is all stuff she knows and understands, and should be able to do. Then I could hear her asking him as she's spinning in circles trying to locate the item, "This? What? This one? Behind you?" It took a little longer to change the oil than normal I think, but she loved spending time with him. She loved that he let her help him. I had to capture the moment.

I've changed my mind...again....and again.....

:) I have to say that this is humorous to me at the moment, when last night I was bawling over it. Hysterically bawling. My first initial reaction after my doctor's appointment as you all read, was joy. Joy knowing I'd soon be done, that my body was progressing, and that life being a big pregnant woman would soon come to an end. With a happy ending, with a bouncing baby boy. Well then my mind gets going about what we still need for this guy, how I don't feel ready with my natural birthing method, and how I'm still unsure as to where I'm taking Gabe when it all goes down. I wonder not being induced how my body may progress through labor differently. All this plus a lot more going through my head, and I'm trying to figure it out all at once. So that didn't help, and ended up with me in tears at the end of the day.

Today I started freaking out about having a dirty house if someone has to come and stay the night (or the day) here with Gabe. How I don't have any instructions or babysitting list ready in case it does happen. I started frantically trying to get my house clean, when at this point it's really hard for me to clean.

So I keep going back and forth emotions wise as to how I feel about it all. Today is a good day, and I'm ready. Tomorrow may be different. It doesn't help I'm a planner and a worry wart, on top of pregnancy hormones. Oh the joys.....

According to the Doctor

I had my first cervical exam at the doctor's office today. Always so much fun. She first checked my stomach growth, right on track. She then checked the heart beat which is still Gabe's favorite part. It sounded good. Gabe gets all excited to hear it. The doctor always says, he's a happy baby. So when Gabe hears it, she says, "Oh happy baby. I hear it." She made sure he was heads down still, which he definitely is. It's kinda funny that I have gotten more stretch marks recently on this one part of my stomach. Yeah it's where his bum is. He likes to poke it out. (Okay stretch marks aren't funny-but the fact it's his bum causing it is amusing to me) Then came the fun part. Just so everyone knows, Adam and Gabe were in the corner, and didn't view any of it. My child doesn't need to see that, but I still wanted Adam there to ask questions and hear what she had to say. The doctor said, "Well you're at a one. No, you're more than that, I'll put you at a two." I then asked about effacement. She said that I was 50% effaced, and it was feeling thin and soft. Well nothing too crazy or anything. Most women wouldn't brag about it, but for me it was a big deal.

A little background on Gabe, I was at a zero dilation with No softening even way past her due date. My other doctor, (I'm going to a different doctor this time) told me I had an uncooperative cervix, and possible problems with my uterus. So upon hearing today that my body is actually functioning that way it's supposed to, and that I won't have problems, makes me so happy! So hurray for something, I'll take anything. Now I know that some women can be where I'm at for weeks at a time, and that's fine with me. I just liked hearing that my body may cooperate a little better with this child. I asked this doctor about having problems from the beginning, and she just told me to wait and see if this pregnancy was different. I did have some real contractions Sunday night. Nothing consistent, but I did make my doctor go over with me when to go to the hospital and such. I've never been through that having been induced, so I made sure I had some steps on when to go to the hospital. The nice thing I guess is that I know what a real contraction feels like versus a Braxton Hick, so that will be helpful. She did tell me today that I tested positive on my strep test, so I have to be on antibiotics when I'm in labor. It doesn't effect me, but Ollie can get sick from it when going through the birth canal. So as much as I don't love the idea of being hooked up to an I.V. the whole time, I asked not to be with Gabe, I am fine doing it to help our little guy out. Anyway there is my status update.

My Morning Snuggle Bug

With me being pregnant and not sleeping, and my child being a morning person, it has made my days a little sluggish. I really struggle until I can get some kind of power nap when she finally goes down for a nap. It really is the only time I get any kind of sleep nowadays. Gabe usually wakes up at six to six twenty in the morning. Well about a month ago she came rolling into our room at five. This was after a bad night on my part, and I about died. (Or cried one of the two. HA!) So I took her into bed with us and told her to go na-night, and she did. I was amazed when she slept until about seven. Why am I not doing this more often?! Ha. SO it has kinda become a habit in the morning. If she wakes up earlier than six twenty, she'll go back to sleep with us for a while. If it's after that she just wants to lay in bed with us and cuddles against me. She usually ends up playing with her binky while I snooze for ten more minutes. Now it might sound pathetic, but when you are sleep deprived, you get desperate for that ten more minutes.

She has started bringing in her blanket in the mornings from her bed and everything. This is actually pretty funny to me, cause it's a little heavy for her to drag across the hall, but she still does. You can hear her coming. I kept wondering what would happen if she woke up earlier than five. I found out last night. She woke up at one in the morning and came into our room ready to cuddle. When I told her we needed to go back na-night in her own bed, she became very sad. "No Mommy's bed!" I then took her out of our room so her crying wouldn't wake up Adam, and she became hysterical. Once I got her to her room, and calmed down, I told her when it's still night time she has to sleep in her own bed. I told her she can come into ours in the morning. Honestly, she probably can't tell the difference, but she was satisfied. She usually doesn't wake up at random times like that in the night, so I don't think it'll happen all that often. It is my fault though, I did train her that way. Right now I don't think I'd change it though. One I get more sleep, and two I worry once baby comes, my cuddle time with my girl will be harder to fit in. So the fact that I get ten minutes in the morning with my cute daughter makes me happy.

Some Photo Fun

Well they may not be the best pictures coming from the iphone (first generation-so not that high tech), but I do have some fun ones of what we've been up to. We've done a few fun things this week. There are a lot of random ones all mixed together. There are a bunch too.


Daddy wears Bandanas often on his head when he's working around the house, or in the warehouse. So if Daddy does it, Gabe wants to as well.

Going to church in style

We had a play date with some friends. The girls wanted to get into the water, so we stripped them down and let them play.



Her diaper was so huge within a few minutes. It was really funny to watch her try and get around in it. I ended up just taking it off towards the end of pool time.


This is their son Miles, he's about six weeks old. I cuddled him the whole time, he was so sweet. It was a little different trying to hold him with my big belly, and Ollie kicking him. I think he knew it was his buddy out here hanging out.

She hardly ever falls asleep in the car, but when she does, it's with her arms behind her head like this.

Our first attempt at GeoCaching. We went to feed the ducks, and looked up to see if there were any Cache's hidden at the park we were going to. For those who don't know what it is, it's modern day treasure hunting. People all over the world are into this. You hide something somewhere, anywhere, and give GPS coordinates, and then people try to find them. You can hide them in town, in the mountains, at parks, etc. It was a lot of fun. The one we found had a paper in it to sign your name saying you had found it. Some have prizes, or little toys, or other things. You then put it back so others can find it too. I think we'll have to try it out some more soon.


We Found it!



On to feeding the ducks


Large and in Charge


This is how Daddy lets her fly. She loves it. It was hard to time the picture right, having such a delay. I kept getting just her feet.


Well there you have it folks. After so many picture-less posts lately, I loaded one up.