work work work all day long

Our house is really coming along! We had Ben(my brother) and Sarina come over and help us paint the living room and three hours later we had a completely painted living room! Yay!!! Ben did a great job painting the ceiling and I'm so grateful he did it without complaining because I don't feel comfortable using the extender when I paint. I touched up the upstairs bathroom paint and some trim paint and Sarina painted the trim. It's awesome to have the living room all painted. Ben also painted the hallway ceiling and so that's done as well. Now the only upstairs area that needs paint is the kitchen, blah. I'm getting tired of painting but it really does make the room transform for not a lot of money, just a lot of work! Ben(my Ben, not my brother) and I also painted the stairway on Thursday. It looks great! It took a long time though! Five plus hours!!!

Ben has been working outside to get the gutters in better shape as well. Somehow when it rains the water is falling in-between the roof and gutter rather than into the gutter. It doesn't really make sense because we have the drip edge(I think that's what it's called) that's supposed to bridge the gap and allow the water to run directly into the gutter. I'm glad that I have Ben to work on it because I don't think I'd be able to do all that work by myself. The goals for the house for this next week are finishing the front door and finishing the gutters. After that all we have is odds and ends.

We've also done a bit of pretty-ing up the yard. We went to J&J Nursery with Ben's Mom and picked out flowers to put in our containers and hanging baskets and driveway strip and it is looking nice! I'll have to take some pictures and post them. They look so nicely arranged and once the vines and petunias start spilling out it'll be even better! I'm very excited about our back railing hanging basket. We filled it with different colored super bells and it's going to look so pretty once it starts spilling over.

School is going well for me. I've been keeping up with my homework all right. I did just realize that my community health class ends the end of June. Now, I already knew this, but it's practically the end of May now. I need to get in gear on this class to make sure I finish all the classwork. It's a go at your own pace class so I took two quizzes in the last hour and plan to just keep pushing through. I honestly haven't done much schoolwork this week. I think we worked so hard last week on the house and with school that I just took a break this week. I have a goal to do better from now on though.

I want to be better organized with school, working out, Tafton, house projects, etc. I've decided that I need to have a plan for when I'm doing things. Ex. I'm going to work out and do schoolwork every MWF mornings. I can do it other times too, but I at the very least need to do it then. I really want to stick to this because I feel when I'm organized that everything goes more smoothly and that makes me less stressed and more happy which makes everyone else more happy! :-)

Tafton is getting more and more independent. He loves to do things himself and he's very opinionated about what he wants and when he wants it. We've been watching a baby sign language DVD and Ben and I have been trying to use signs as well as speaking to help our communication. Tafton has really picked up on "milk." He knows how to sign it and he understands when we say it. It's nice to say do you want milk? and if he does the sign then yeah he wants it. It's cool. I wish he would say or sign Mommy. He says Daddy so well! Ben and Tafton play this game on our bed where Ben will hide on one side and Tafton will crawl across the bed until Ben jumps up and grabs him. Tafton always squeals and laughs and it is really fun! One night last week, Ben was working and Tafton crawled into our bedroom, pulled himself to standing by the bed and got on his tiptoes to look across the bed and said, "daddy?" It was so cute!!! Tafton really says daddy for a lot of different things but I knew he was looking for Ben, it was so cute.

Baby girl is getting bigger and making me look pregnant. I swear I didn't look pregnant at all and now it's BAM! Pregnant!! I don't mind looking pregnant cuz I am! I do mind the heartburn and the aches and pains though! She's moving around a lot and kicking really hard. I like to feel her move as much as possible. I'm a slight hypochondriac and I swear in between doctor appointments and especially right before an appointment I start to get worried that something is wrong with her, so knowing she's there, feeling her tap on my belly is comforting.

Well that catches us up for now. I promise I'll get some pictures up of all the work we've done!

Our One Week Vacation from School

This last week was the one week we had a break from school, in between finals for Spring Semester and Summer Semester starting. I had high hopes for accomplishing a lot on our house, we didn't get everything done but we did get the master bedroom done and we're sleeping in it!! It's been over a year since we've been sleeping in the master bedroom. It's kind of weird to be down there but Ben is loving it. Ben used to be the one with his clothes spread all over the house and now I am. I can't say I'm loving that.

I still have a whole list of projects to work on next. Most important, I need to paint the trim in the closet and then the closet is DONE except for carpet and then I can move my stuff in! and painting the bedroom door so we can put it back on. Once that's done the downstairs is done unless we decide to paint the bathroom. I couldn't get a chip off the wall that's the size of a quarter so we can could either try to match it to new paint or just get a whole new color. I wanted to just get touch-up paint to keep costs down but I don't know if we'll be able to match the color...

Anyway, I've figured out that I have about 12 more weeks of unemployment to pay out. I've heard I can file an extension once that is up but who knows how long it would take to get approved and actually receive any money. So we need to get our house projects done and this house up for sale because once unemployment is up I either need to be working so we can afford the house or we need to just be out of the house. Kinda scary to think 12 weeks and then who knows what'll happen to us?

I do love being home. It's nice to be with Tafton and it's so nice to spend time with Ben. I like being at home and keeping things looking nice and being a homemaker basically. It's great. Lots of work too, the house is always getting messy after I clean it. Anyway, right now I'm going to focus on finishing the projects then I'll clean like crazy and then we'll sell.

In baby news, we had our big ultrasound last Friday. The baby is doing great, everything was normal. Her head and abdomen were measuring about a week behind and her femur measured right on. I'm kinda happy her head is small, easier to get out you know? We still don't have any names picked out. It is nice to know for sure though that it is a girl. Now we'll have one of each! My next appointment is the fasting glucose test and then my appointments are every two weeks. It's so crazy how fast this pregnancy is going by. She'll be here before we know it and we still won't have a name! We'll just call her baby.

I'm taking three classes this summer, all online. I looked over the class schedules today and they all seem pretty intense. I don't think it'll be hard course work, it's just a lot of work and it's hard to focus on school-work in the Summer. I'm excited about my classes, I'm taking Human Sexuality, Stress Management(should come in handy once we have TWO kids), and Community Health. Community Health is only half the summer but it seems like it'll be the hardest. A lot of work to cram into eight weeks and a research paper! I don't know what it is about papers but they freak me out. In the syllabus she said it shouldn't be longer than 25 pages. 25 pages?! I don't know how anyone writes a paper that long. She didn't specify a "shorter than" length so we'll see how that goes!

Anyway - this is the start of our crazy summer. I'm praying that we'll do well in school and that the house/employment situation will work out. Honestly, if I can stay home with Tafton and Ben is happy - I'm happy.