the nursery

Well, I think this is about as done as our little nursery is going to get!  We finished it up this weekend as a special mothers day treat for me.  We spent time going through old baby clothes and sorting out the newborn clothes from the biggers sizes.  One thing we learned is that if it is a girl, we are totally set on clothes.  If it's a boy, well, we will need to do some shopping! All of the boy clothes we do have are pretty big and also winter wardrobe from those Misawa winters!

I have this strange false sense of comfort surrounding the baby.  I mean, I feel like instead of being stressed out ready to scratch my eyes out of my head from sleep deprivation and chaos, I feel like the baby will instead bring peace and solitude to our family.  So weird, I know.  Am I forgetting how crazy newborns are with their demanding around the clock sleep/nursing schedules?

I have some pretty serious braxton hicks, much much worse and more frequent than I ever had before. I'm not sure if it's from over exerting myself due to life with two hyper munchkins, or if it's just my uterus being pissed off at me for having to work so hard the last few years.  Either way, every day I wonder if I will spontaneously go into labor, how bad will this contraction get, etc.

We shall see!  The last thing we want of course is to have a premature baby not ready for life in the big world, so I try my best to take it easy and guzzle all the water I can. I'll talk to my doctor more this week about everything and see what she thinks.  Maybe it's just third baby stuff after having babies so close together.

So here is the nursery! I made the curtains myself and Peter painted the crib and shelf.  I painted the hot air balloon painting and also painted the banner.  Once I find out if it is a boy or a girl, I can spend those late night nursing sessions shopping online for cute gender appropriate accents.  I am SO EXCITED to meet this baby!  Names have changed and we are going to just keep them to ourselves. Well, the boy name changed at least, we still don't have a girl name.

I'm also going to include a link to our wishlist on Amazon in case anyone is wondering if they can gift something for this special baby!
wishlist ---> http://amzn.com/w/5C3SEY5P4MD1

come on and give us a hug...

Well it was another lovely day at the Fort Sam Houston Quadrangle!  Always a wonderful time going there and feeding the extremely sweet and docile animals.  The kids love to safely study the animals and I love the incredible opportunities to practice photography. 

My friend Tracy was with us visiting again for nine days.  She's from Illinois, so naturally she is drawn to the warmth that Texas weather has to offer.  That, and also of course we just have so much fun together! We did a LOT of Sea World, a little bit of shopping. 

Everything is still great with the pregnancy!  I switched my insurance so now I can experience having a baby in the civilian world.  It was cool to be able to actually choose my OB for once.  I actually have not yet met this year with an OB for my prenatal care in the military, all they ever had available were nurse practitioners.  So, next week I'm excited to meet an actual OB for the first time in 31 weeks of this pregnancy.  I'm also excited to not have to labor through San Antonio traffic, the hospital I will be delivering at now is only about 10 minutes away.  Woohoo!  No more fears  of baby being born on the floor mat of the car in rush hour! 

Kai's face just looks hilarious here....hahahahha!!!!!

Running towards me at full speed...'mommmmyyyyy' 

mud pit

The kids love their mud pit, and that is all I have to say about that.

It's nice that it is so hot here now that I can just hose them off when it's time to come inside!

...meanwhile, papa Pete was inside studying lectures...

Poteet Strawberry Fest...but where's all the strawberries?

Today we ventured to the Poteet Strawberry Festival.

We have seen a cute commercial for strawberries sold at a local grocery chain here that are grown in Poteet (and it is the source of a few of our inside jokes), so when we saw this festival we just had to go.

We were surprised upon arrival of the lack of strawberries at the festival.  I think calling it a taco stand festival or just plain food festival would have been more appropriate.  Anyway, we made the most of it despite our difficult time finding strawberry goodness amongst the funnel cakes and fajitas.

They had the traditional carnival rides you see at most fairs and lots of food vendors.  We had roasted corn, BBQ sandwiches and strawberry shortcake.  We also bought a pint of some fresh strawberries that the kids devoured in about 20 minutes. I was just surprised that out of the whole festival we only bumped into two fresh strawberry stands.

Anyway, it was fun and I took just a few photos.  I probably should have taken more photos of the local food vendors, but I was too busy juggling kids and making sure my ever growing belly didn't bump into anyone.

We left after just a little bit because I was having some third trimester fatigue that even the worlds strongest coffee wasn't a match for.

Here is Pete attempting to de-weed our yard before we left.  We seeded the yard a few weeks ago and now we are trying to let the grass grow and thicken up.  When we moved in to this house last year there was just a dirt patch for a yard! Watch out for fire ants, babe!

If it wasn't for him being on call this week at the clinic, there would surely be a beer in that other hand!

 Kai started gnawing on his roasted corn right away.  Sabrina was picky because it was still warm.  She likes everything she eats to be practically cold.  'Mom, can I have some cold waffles please?'  Yep, that's Sabrina for ya!

 LOOK AT ME KIDS!!  LOOK AT MEEEE!  I give up!

Okay, so today was a big deal.  Sabrina is suddenly big enough to ride the carnival rides....ALONE.  Wow, where has the time gone?  She is officially a little girl in my book, no longer a toddler!

It's not a Texas festival without some bulls!!! 

 .....and then we found Waldo and his companion...

a sprinkle

Tomorrow will be an exciting day.  A very sweet co-resident of Peters will be throwing a baby shower for my friend Julee and I.  Both of our husbands are in the residency and we are both due soon.  Julee in May and me in June.

It is the third baby for both of us, our kids are very similar in ages.

I just think about how crazy it is that I'm about to attend my third baby shower.  What is even crazier is that my Air Force family is responsible for most of my showers.  It allows me to reflect on just how appreciative I am to be part of something so wonderful.  Military life obviously has immense amounts of sacrifice, but through it you make some amazing friends and some actually start to feel like family.  It stinks to have a baby overseas or even at a stateside base you just recently moved to. Gestures like these make it much, much easier to handle the feelings of loneliness and frustration being away from family and old friends, or having to go to a new unfamiliar hospital with unfamiliar faces.

So while none of my actual blood related family will be in attendance at my third baby shower (or rather it should be called a 'sprinkle'), it still kind of feels like family knowing my military family will always be there to rely on.  It seems the Air Force only takes the best of the best, or we just keep getting really lucky with who we are stationed with.

wrestle mania

Almost every night when we all head up stairs to start 'bedtime routine', Pete wrestles the kids.  It wasn't until just recently that Kai has really been able to hold his own during wrestle hour.  In the past, he would get hurt feelings easy, yes, he's a shy & tender guy.  However, now, he's getting pretty big and tough.

Just thought I'd snap some images before these little moments are lost forever.  This guy grows fast! Already time to go shoe shopping again, and we just went two months ago!