14 weeks remaining!

Monday marked the beginning of week 26!

See the bump, doesn't look much different from last week, does it?

Each week it will grow about a centimeter which will be hard to detect via photo week by week but in the end when I mesh them all together into a video, i'm sure it'll be clear that it was getting larger.

Nothing new to report though, things are still going smoothly. She still kicks to tell me she's alive in there.

The baby websites say that this week the baby's eardrums, etc are basically fully formed and she can now hear me talking. We decided we're going to sing her a song every night and see if that helps her when she's out in the world when she needs to calm down. I've read that it's possible they can associate the two so we'll do a little experiment. Still trying to choose the song to sing though. We're going to have to sing it for 14+ weeks so it needs to be one we're not going to get tired of. Born this Way by Lady Gaga sounds appropriate, right?

The baby websites also say she's the length of one of those long cucumbers in the grocery store. It also says on the site 14 inches, so that's easier to think about. She's also about a pound and two-thirds in weight. Keep growing little girl!

Monday night we started our childbirth classes. We're probably on the early train for this but I didn't want to start later when the holidays are in full swing. It went quite well. It was interesting to sit down with other couples who are going through the same thing at the same time as we are. We mostly talked about anatomy and some labor stuff. I think next week we'll be talking about the stages of labor, so that'll be interesting even though i've already read about it. We did a neat activity with a balloon and a ping pong ball.

14 weeks to go!

iPhone 4 or 4s?

I'm struggling to decide what phone I should get as an upgrade from my current phone, a blackberry. I really don't use the blackberry for email or even web, just phone calls and texts. The iPad is my primary tool for email and web, as it should be.. it's larger and easier to read/write content on.

I know I want an iPhone but I don't know if the new 4s is really something that I need. Here are some of the main pros and cons. We'll start with the cons first.

Cons of buying a 4s:
-Price.. obviously. A 16gb 4s costs $200 while the 16gb 4 costs $150 and the 8gb 4 costs $100.
-I don't really need the personal assistant Siri. I don't do business on my phone, so I don't make appointments that need to be changed/moved and I can type my own text messages.
-iOS5 is available to all iPhones.. not just 4s. So i don't need the 4s to get iOS5 and the new apps/features that come with it.
-The iPhone 5 will probably be out in a year. If i take the 4 now, it would make it less expensive to upgrade when the 5 does come out.

Pros of buying a 4s:
-The camera is better in the 4s than it is in the 4. From 5 to 8.. plus the 1080 HD video capability. With a baby coming in January, it would be nice to have the 8MP over the 5 but is it really necessary?
-The A5 chip makes it faster. Twice as fast as the 4. But the 4 is still pretty fast.. what's another nano second?

Obviously I have more cons listed than pros. I still don't know what this means in whether I'm going to get an iphone4s or not. Part of me says, you don't need it, those extra features aren't good enough to warrant another 100 or even 50 dollars. The other part says, you probably should get the newest technology. The MPs in the camera are going to be better.

Anyone have any thoughts?!?!!!

Teaser: The Quilt

Just a teaser photo of the quilt that Alex's mom, Charmayne is making for our baby girl.

Charmayne was telling me yesterday how intensive quilting is, which I wasn't aware of. I didn't realize that after you sew all of your squares together and put the batting in and sew the back on that you have to go through by hand and sew on top of all the squares again. I repeat, by hand. I guess I didn't know much about quilting but I have to say, not that we weren't thankful for this before, we are, definitely, but there's a lot of love, time and effort going into this quilt from Grandma Charmayne. I hope our baby girl will grow with it her whole life and when we explain to her how much love went into it, she'll treasure it forever.

Hot! Peppers

For the last couple years, Alex has been growing hot peppers (or chiles). We generally use the jalepenos and serranos for salsa and guacamole and Alex puts them on lots of other stuff too.

 He's grown a few other varieties that aren't easily found in grocery stores and farmers markets in our area. Most of these pepper will never even get close to my lips because they're all past my heat tolerance.

With a lot of these pepper plants, he gets a bountiful harvest and can't decide what to do with all of them, so he strings them up to dry in our dining room. The ones he currently has strung up in the dining room are Thai Yellow, De arbol, Punjab small and Assum. Honestly, I don't know what's what in the pictures. There's lots of orange this year which is perfect for fall and halloween and also some red which will carry into Christmas. He uses them as much as he can (since I can't really tolerate levels of spice greater than a serrano) but some of them end up going to waste when they've been dried and hanging for over a year.. there's just too many to eat.

He has to wear gloves or else the peppers will burn his fingers!

If anyone is interested in trying any of the varieties I've listed. We'd be happy to give you one of the peppers to eat/use in cooking/trick your friends (though that last one could be dangerous, literally).

One from every board

Since I love Pinterest so much, I thought i'd share a recent pin from every board I have on there. Enjoy ;)

Random Love- Book Holder Opener Thingy

Baby Love- Custom Birthday Onesie

Food Love- S'mores Krispie Treats

Home Love- Trash & Recycling that dumps into the garage bins

Party Love- DIY Chillers that look awesome

Art Love- Vintage Disney Poster

Kid Fun Love- How to manage glitter

Jewelry Love- DIY Necklace, so pretty

Hair Love- If only I could do this myself

Clothing Love- Cute little dress tutorial

Gift Love- 137 inexpensive homemade christmas gifts

Holiday Love- It's early but I'm doing this for Christmas

DIY Love- This is awesome and probably super easy!

Fabric Love- Deep Purple, I'm thinking crib sheets

Happy Hour + Typical Saturday + Pumpkins

Friday, I left an hour early from work. Alex and I grabbed Jen and we headed to Bulls Head in Lititz for 'happy hour'. This is deceiving because they don't actually have any specials and we stayed way longer than an hour. Alex invited a bunch of people but I guess they had other friday plans so it was just us 3 for a while before we were joined by Scott and Michele and later we saw Bob and Karen. It was nice to see everyone and catch up a little bit, not to mention eat the best 'nachos' ever and split a bison burger with Alex. After Bulls Head we hung out at the McHenry's for a little bit before heading home.

Saturday, Alex went to work on the farm and I cleaned up around the house. When we got back we went to Bombergers and then Stauffers for groceries. Alex picked out some decorative pumpkins as well as some carving pumpkins for Sunday. Later in the day, I headed over to Courtney's for a little bit to hang out with her, Evander and Jen. Evander just gets cuter and cuter. I headed home for the special dinner we were planning to have, which turned out not as expected because the awesome salmon we purchased from Mr. Bill's had spoiled :(. So I whipped up some risotto and it turned everything around. After dinner, Dan and Steph came over so Dan could help Alex get the rototiller working. Steph and I chatted and watched the first 3/4ths of Bridesmaids.

Sunday, I got up nice and early to start the crock pot chicken chili and clean the house even more before our guests came over. I really don't enjoy cleaning that frequently but it had to be done. My sister, Jess came down because she needed to hit up the Apple Store, so I went with her and ended up getting two really awesome nail polish colors at Sephora. One sparkly gold and one sparkly red. I'm currently wearing the gold and i'm in love, I stare at my nails constantly. They couldn't fix her phone without an appointment so she headed home. The Hix's and Herr's arrived and we did the following: Girls- eating, chatting, pumpkin carving (i should've taken pictures, darnit!), watching the last 1/4th of bridesmaids, reigning in the men. Boys- eating, football watching, taking shots of jameson, engaging in some target shooting, being reigned in by their women. We had a great time! After they left, Alex and I got subs from Caruso's and relaxed for a while before saying goodnight to the weekend.

I regrettably did not get any nursery projects accomplished as I planned to. I am going to do the Roman Shades tonight though for sure and if that goes as fast as I think it will, I'm going to finish putting the mobile together. Because this weekend I need to get reacquainted with the sewing machine so I can start some other projects. Oh crazy baby nursery stuff!

Enjoy the week!

The Crib + Baby Registry+ Evander + Football

If i had to sum up the weekend in one word, I would say, productive.

Finally, the meyer lemon tree has lemons!

Friday night, my parents came over with Makayla for dinner and to help set up the baby crib. Alex made a flank steak which was delicious and we introduced my parents and Makayla to quinoa which I think they all liked. After everything was done, I was too tired to do anything else so we just hung out a little before going to bed.

Saturday morning we didn't sleep in too much, Alex went to work on the farm and I watched Grey's Anatomy, followed by a trip to JoAnn Fabric for some supplies. I started on two projects and watched Private Practice. It's best to watch those shows on Saturday when Alex isn't home. He doesn't love them. Later when Alex got home we went to Hoss's for dinner (yum) and then watched Bridesmaids while I created our baby registry. Those things are not easy folks. Hopefully I did it right and didn't miss anything, though Courtney was giving me tons of good advice yesterday about registries so I'm sure i'll be updating it over the next couple months.

Sunday, Alex headed over to Dan's to help with an electrical project and I slept in.. a lot. I worked some more on my nursery projects. Alex came home for a little bit before heading back to Dan's to watch football. I'm pretty thankful for this because I don't generally enjoy watching football and usually when I do so I end up sleeping which is not my idea of a good Sunday, but the fact that Alex has been heading to Dan's to watch football gives me lots of time to do solo things. I went to visit the Nowak family for a couple hours and baby Evander is so freaking cute. Babies are so tiny.. it's unbelievable to me even though i've seen it with my own eyes. I also cannot believe that i'm growing one (sorry if I sound like a broken record).

Anyway, it was nice to catch up with them and get some new parenting insight. I really needed to go to JoAnn fabric again on my way home but decided I would just go later since it's really only 5 minutes down the road. I had some lunch and relaxed a little more when I got home, followed by working more on the projects. Around 6 I decided I should hit up JoAnns before they close since it's Sunday. Little did I know they close at 6. After arriving at 6:15 to a locked door, I went to the grocery store instead. I really miss having our garage door working.. it's kind of a chore having to carry 3 or more loads of groceries in through the front door instead of just in from the garage to the kitchen. Especially since I can't really carry heavy groceries for far distances. Luckily this time, Alex came home in time to help with the last trip inside. After unpacking all of that, I took some pictures of the things I was working on and wrote a couple of blog posts. I made us some dinner and messed around on my ipad while Alex watched more football or something.. soon after we called it a night. The end.