July is flying by!

Our July has gone so quickly!  The first week in July was so hot in Owatonna I feel like I didn't do much of anything other than sit in the AC.  Luckily we didn't have our regular softball games that week because I might not have managed in the heat. 

The night before the 4th, friends of ours came over and brought their 3 month old little boy over too!  It was fun hanging out with them and watching Maple with the babe.  She was super interested when he was on the ground getting his diaper changed but I wasn't brave enough to let her go check it out without me holding onto her.  I'm hopeful she'll be good with our baby in three months!

The 4th of July was a scorcher and I spent the day at home in the AC doing laundry, making a few digital scrapbooking pages and watching How I Met Your Mother.  Jeremy played in a softball tournament in Faribault and had fun even though it was super hot!  Here are a few of the scrapbook pages I made.

Jeremy had the Friday off after the 4th so I took it off as well and we headed to the cabin a day early!  It was so nice having a long weekend and a 3 day work week :)  Friday up at the cabin it was still quite warm so we headed up to Hayward for the day with Jeremy's parents.  We checked out all the local shops including the candy store and the ice cream shop!  Jeremy got 2 lbs of taffy from the store and surprisingly, he still has a little bit left!

It was a full house up at the cabin as Rose came up to hang out of the weekend as well as Tony's brother and his girlfriend.  I was so grateful for a storm that came through early Friday evening and cooled things off!  It could have been an unbearable weekend otherwise but the weather ended up being gorgeous.  We spent the weekend in the sun, on the pontoon and at the sandbar.

Last week was an exciting week for us!  Besides being back in our usual softball regimen, we finally took the plunge and bought a new vehicle!  I've been wanting a new car for a long time but we always seemed to say, we'll get a new one when we have kids.  Well, no time is better than the present for that!  My car is a Saturn Ion Coupe which is basically a 2 door car which wasn't going to work with a baby besides the vehicle just not being very safe.

Originally I wanted to get an SUV.  Started out wanting a Ford Edge or Ford Escape but as soon as we started looking at them and considering the space we would have in it with a baby, our dog and eventually a second child, an SUV of that size just wasn't going to cut it.  The cost and poor gas mileage of a bigger SUV just didn't make sense so we decided a van was the best vehicle for us!

I've been looking for quite a while trying to find the best one for us and I kind of panicked that if we waited too long we might not find what we were looking for!  I found this Dodge Caravan in Rochester and we were headed over to "look" at it Wednesday night.  I know better than when I say "look" at something, it usually means we are going to buy it!  Well, buy it we did!  Check out our new wheels!



So far, I'm absolutely loving my "mom" vehicle!  And as you can tell, Maple likes it too!  She's never had windows in my car that she could stick her head out of.  Plus, she's going to have so much room to run around, she won't know what to do with herself on our long car rides!  Next step is to get a car seat and get it put in there so she learns she has to stay away from it :)  Wish us luck!!

This past weekend my mom and brother Matthew came to visit!  It was so fun for them to come visit us and see the finished basement and the nursery (which is practically done and pictures will come later in this post).  We had such a fun and yet productive weekend, it was great!  My mom loves gardening and me, not so much, so since I can't do any gardening anyway, she helped out and cleaned out the side flower bed and laid mulch in it.  It looks so much better!  Thanks Mom :)

After all the hard work in the yard, we headed over to Waseca for their county fair.  We played a couple of games and at LOTS of fair food.  Jeremy had a gyro, mom had a corn dog, Matthew had a pulled pork sandwich and I had a pretzel.  On top of that, we shared some fries and deep fried pickles!  For dessert my mom wanted to try deep friend snickers so we all tried some of those and surprisingly, they were good!  Jeremy also got a chocolate shake and I got a homemade raspberry chip dilly bar.  Phew...lots of food but it was all so yummy! :)

Mom won a penguin at the fair!!

Mom and Matthew also helped us do some cleaning outside the house!  Our neighbors didn't rake their yard last fall/spring so ALL their leaves blew under our awning up against our house.  We also had some wood piled up from the last of the remodel in the basement that needed to get moved to the shed.  Sad that we haven't gotten to cleaning that space up until now, but it's so nice to have it cleaned up!  Thanks again :)

Throughout the past couple of weeks Jeremy has been working hard on the nursery!  He's put all the furniture together and made all the elephants for the wall. 

Jeremy made the elephants to match the sheets perfectly, cut them out and painted them!  Lastly, he is going to make matching elephant bookends for on the bookshelf.

We are just missing a mirror on the wall and new blinds!  (Thanks Shawn for the elephant picture on the wall!)

I'm so impressed with all of Jeremy's work he has done on the nursery!  He's so talented and doesn't give himself enough credit for how great the work he has done is.  Baby C is super lucky!!

In pregnancy news, not much new other than Baby C is moving a LOT!  I've been feeling him/her kick for quite a while but over the past couple of weeks it's been really fun watching my stomach move when baby kicks!  Jeremy was able to feel it kick probably four weeks ago already and it was so much fun for Matthew and my Mom to feel baby this weekend :) 

I've been feeling pretty good the past few weeks and have a decent amount of energy.  Still going strong for the last couple of weeks of softball and I've changed up my workouts from Zumba to doing Turbo Fire or Turbo Jam at home.  I love going to Zumba classes but it was really hard for me to modify them and feel like I was still getting a good work out.  I love the jumping parts in the songs so it wasn't as enjoyable knowing that I couldn't do those parts.  With Turbo, I can easily modify them and don't fee like I'm loosing as much of the workout.  Hopefully I can keep going with them for weeks to come!  If not, I will move to the elliptical or walking on the treadmill.

Next week I have my glucose test and then my appointments go to every other week.  I love going to the doctor and getting to hear Baby C's heartbeat and see how it's measuring :)  Here are some pictures of my baby bump!