Exciting News!

OH, and the most exciting news that was a secret a few weeks ago? Well, it wasn't about me (I had known I was pregnant for a while), but that my sister-in-law, Piper is pregnant too and due a couple weeks before me. Yeah!!!!

There are many areas in our neighborhood that are being constructed right now so I can't tell for sure which one, but isn't 4:00 AM a little early to start the trucks up with their annoying "beep, beep, beep" backing up sounds? As Michelle Tanner would say, how rude!

I had a dream that I was babysitting Nancy Pelosi's baby girl. Scary, no?

One thing I don't love about this pregnancy is my teenage acne. With Henry, my face was nice and clean, and now it's all zitty. Oh, baby, it's all worth it though.

RJ' s parents are coming to town today and staying through Monday! This is pretty exciting!

We had a neighbor's cat in our yard last night and it was very strange. It was just lurking around very slowly and stare at us and wouldn't get spooked too easily. Henry was trying to catch it and meowing at it like crazy, but we were trying to keep him away because the cat was just too freaky.

The weather is going to be gorgeous this weekend! The official end to summer. It went so fast!

Happy Friday, everyone!

Refreshing Week

After my completely, self-centered pity party ALL last week, I feel much more refreshed this week. It helps to get out and have some good girl time! I met a couple of gal pals at Cheesecake Factory Monday night, went to an amazing MOPS meeting last night (cried through about half of it), and went to a groovy concert at Pottery Barn Kids this morning.

If you live in my area and are looking for a MOPS group, we would love to have you! It's going to be a very exciting year! We have a new mentor "mom" this year and she is a sweet, Godly woman with many years of expertise. I'm also going to work on setting up a lot of fun excursions/free things to do with our kids, and a couple of fun things to do with mommies only. We've also got some fantastic meeting ideas in the works....
Seriously, I can't wait to see what God has in store for our whole group this year. I have a feeling it's going to be something huge.

Right now I'm looking forward to RJ coming home. He started coming home on Wednesdays before he does his other job and I love it. Thanks, baby.

I got to hear my baby's heart beat today. :)
Now I'm looking at baby slings on etsy. Anyone have one they suggest?

Hello, cuteness!!

We had a great day Friday and Saturday, and I don't mean this in a bad way, but Saturday was the longest day of my life. When everyone is up and at 'em by 6:30 it's amazing what you can get done! We went to the Junker's new house in Parkersburg. They could not be happier with it and we're so happy for them too that they no longer have to live in someone else's basement and have a place to call home! They still have landscaping to do and build a garage, but otherwise they're all set. We went in to Waterloo to visit RJ's other grandparents and went out to eat. It's sure nice having so much family in the same area.


Hope you are all enjoying your Sundays! RJ is cleaning and Henry and I are heading outside to ride his scooter. What a gorgeous day.

Henry found a ton to play with as we sorted through all their stuff.
Pop-pop hiding in the cupboards.
Helping Pop-pop while daddy was crawling under the house.
Helping mommy paint some pretties.
The end!

Okay, forget all that complaining. I just got this picture from my cousin from the reunion last weekend and all is well. :)

Do you ever have days where you want to stay in bed all day? Like, literally. All day. And you wouldn't even care. Oh man, there goes my disguise.

When your husband leaves for the day and says, "good luck", you know it can't be good.

When your little boy is up and as wide awake as ever at 5:45 but it doesn't matter because you've been up since 4:00 tossing and turning anyways, you know that can't be good either.

And when you try to go to a couple of simple garage sales but end up taking 5 detours because of all the ridiculous construction and end up buying a few things because the lady is shoving stuff down your throat and you simply can't say "no thanks" and walk away? Well, that's just down right bad.

Oh, what petty little things. I know you all have stuff and then some going on in your lives way worse than this. It's Friday. Lighten up, self!

Everyone says each pregnancy is different and I've come to learn that everyone is right. I had started to feel pretty good earlier this week and after initially being worried about that, wondered if I was just going to have a super easy time, but now realize that this time around it's just more random. Good days and not so good days. There's a lot of little differences this time and lots of things I think I just don't remember. For example, I cry while watching the Olympics, whether pregnant or not. But it's been a little extreme. The other day I caught the last 15 minutes of Legally Blond and cried at the end when Elle gave her speech at graduation. Seriously. Commercials get me too. And talk about moody! That probably explains the above complaining......

I have my first real appt next Tuesday and I can't wait! I feel like I've been pregnant for forever since this will be the 5th time I've gone in since I've had a positive test. I'll only be just over 10 weeks so I'm trying not to expect to hear the heartbeat since it's a bit early, but of course I hope we do. We heard Henry's at 9 1/2 weeks but it had a lot to do with a very determined and patient doctor, and my appt is not with him.

RJ is golfing all day in Ames with some church buddies and Henry and I are heading up to pick him up and then head to Parkersburg to see his grandparents new house and paint something pretty in grandma's kitchen. His parents are coming down too so I'm looking forward to it. When they're around Henry is glued to them.

Have a Happy Friday, all!

Happy 3 Years!

Alright, here's the before again:

And the after. It took me a while to get this up because, well, you guessed it, I had to clean it first. Some beautiful tile work by RJ, some wainscoting, a bunch of white paint and my favorite color ever on the walls.
So it's been 3 years since we got this house. It was a painfully long process, but so thankful it worked out. We put a bid on it in March and didn't get it until August! Crazy. I don't know if we'll stay in this house for forever, but as long as we stay in this city I want to live in this area so if we moved it wouldn't be too far. The only bad thing about this bathroom...it's the only one and it's upstairs. Oh well.


This game kept us entertained for a big chunk of the afternoon yesterday. He'd hind behind the curtain in his closet and then "scare" me. He nearly hyperventilated he was laughing so hard. It's a rough day so far today, but hopefully a nap cures all. I think he's working on teeth for real this time. They never actually came in the last time. Poor little man.
I love this weather today. I think it calls for a chicken pot pie for supper!





Happy Thursday!

So yesterday afternoon I was feeling quite sluggish. I've been feeling pretty decent the last couple of days, but the usual pregnancy tiredness and crabbiness was still in gear. And then, my batman called. It's like he saw the signal again! He surprised me with a date and a babysitter. Music to my ears. It felt like an extravagent date, but took advantage of some good deals. RJ had got one of those coupons a while back without my knowing where for $25 you get a $50 gift card to Splash and since it was Tuesday, the movies were only $6 instead of $9. We saw The Dark Knight, which we've wanted to see it for so long. It was a great movie, but both kind of agreed afterwards that we are so over going to movies. It's a lot of money, you have to sit still, and you can't talk the whole time. Regardless, it was a great time alone with my hubby. The meal was so fun Henry also had a ton of fun playing with his cousins while we were away.

No more dates until we go to Minnesota at the end of Sept and we're on a mandatory no eating out rule until then. Yikes!

I've got nothing on the agenda today and fear it's going to be a long one. I really haven't done anything since I've been "feeling" pregnant, but am getting so tired of it so I have to get out today. Even if it's just to Target or a park. We're going crazy here!

must....get.....out......

3 years ago, we walked into this. Except that I somehow made the picture backwards...the toilet is on the right.....Anyways, we didn't know about the rotting tile because there was carpet in the bathroom. Gross. But that would explain the hole in the kitchen ceiling.

It's so weird to think back to what this house used to be like. We didn't do any major gutting or anything, but it was so yucky. It's come a long way, baby.

Stayed tuned for the after.....

We had a Bloom cousin reunion up by my parent's this weekend. We had the party at my aunt and uncle's farm and it was a ton o' fun! I had 4 cousins there and my brother (my sister couldn't make it), but her kids did, so all in all there were 15 children and 3 of us are pregnant. Quite a big group!

Henry's Bloom cousins: Elise, Ben, Jack, Maggie, and Sam.
Sweet Elise
Grandpa Bloom and Henry. Henry loves his grandpas!
Cousin Jack
Henry "driving" the big kids around on the Gator.

We finished the fun weekend with lunch in Storm Lake after church, so since we were there we had to take a different route home and it was the nicest drive. It was our most enjoyable experience driving with Henry too. After driving there ump-teen times the last 10 years, it was nice to see some different scenery. I don't see RJ and I living in a small town (though I'm up for anything!!), but I have a slight obsession with them. I adore small town cafes and little stores and saw quite a few that I want to stop at another time. We got back just in time for a party on the Charlton side celebrating RJ's grandpa's birthday. It was a great weekend!

I just saw on MSN the winner of tonight's beam competition........:)!

Have you seen that sprinter from Jamaica? Crazy fast. It looks like he's jogging and still demolishes everyone. I think I'll go into some sort of depression when these Olympics are over.

This is where I used to work. Sticks. This is a picture from a wedding reception, I'm assuming, with all the pretty candles inside, but it is still an awesome building. I used to love it when it snowed and I could watch the snow fall as I slaved away in what often felt like a sweat shop. Seriously. NO air conditioning in the summer, and a pretty poor heating system in the winter. We had to wear layers of clothes and scarves and hats and gloves with the fingers cut off so we could paint. Crazy! But I loved it.

They called the other day to see if I wanted to come back to work part time. Ugh. I have often thought about how much easier it sounds to go in for a day and work there than stay home. I got paid to paint really cool stuff for crying out loud! RJ and I talked about it and I thought of a plan to just go in for one really long (11 hour) day and have someone watch Henry one day a week. Sounded so refreshing! The money could go into savings and pay for the delivery. And of course it would just be temporary because of the baby. RJ was totally fine with it if I wanted to do it, but the more I talked about it, the more I decided not to do it. I had to call quickly the next day before I changed my mind again, and now I feel good about it. Maybe someday, if we end up sending our kids to school instead of homeschooling, I could work there again. But in the mean time I'm staying home and keeping up with my own little painting business!

The Top Chef tour is coming to the farmers market this Saturday. I used to love this show and was so excited when I heard about it! But of course. The one Saturday we will be gone is the one Saturday they will be here. There is going to be cooking demonstrations and samples. Seriously. I can barely type about this without crying. I can't quite explain my fascination with cooking shows. I adore them. I don't so much now that I have a kid, but I love pre-measuring all my ingredients and putting them into little bowls before I start cooking/baking. I love practicing my chopping skills. I love reading through cookbooks. I'm such a dork. Oh, I miss you cooking shows, yes, especially you, Barefoot Contessa, but PBS helps me get through it. Especially America's Test Kitchen!

I'll try and post some real pictures later. My picture-less posts can be so lame. Sorry!

Still dreaming.....

of this goodness I had at the fair on Monday.

Hot. Beef. Sundae.

I know it looks kind of gross, but it was seriously amazing.....

Alright. It's still a little "early" in some books, but I'm letting it out anyways. And besides, a lot of you already know!

Announcing.....

That there's a baby growing in the Charlton household! And, of course, we're VERY excited about this little one!!

Right away this time when I had a positive pregnancy test, I went in for blood work to check my hcg levels. They started off low, but the next 2 times I went in they increased beautifully. So with those numbers and this ultrasound I feel great about sharing the news. RJ and I went in yesterday to determine the due date and got to see our little bean and hear the heartbeat. Baby bean did a little jiggle for us too. It was by far my least tense early-ultrasound because the reason was just for the due date and not because of any bleeding. Yeah! We got to just sit back and enjoy it. SO, I'm only about 8 1/2 weeks along, and due around March 20th. And yes, we plan on finding out what we're having! I had thought about not finding out this time, but who am I kidding? I'd be horribly impatient and it was my favorite part about being pregnant with Henry knowing he was a boy. Hopefully in about 10-12 weeks we'll find out!

And, YES, I'm expecting it to be boy #2!!! :)

Other than the usual pregnancy symptoms, we are doing great. I feel nauseous off and on mostly mid-day to evening, but I don't throw up so really can't complain! (sorry to all my friends who get so sick with pregnancy--I can't imagine!) And honestly, every day when my feelings start I'm thankful to have a good "sign" that the baby is still growing. Sleeping poorly at night has been more my issue, but my body is adjusting and with just Henry I can nap when he does so that's great.

So if you think about it, we'd love your prayers as this little one grows. We are so thankful that God has given us this gift and can not wait to meet this babe.

By the way, was anyone else obsessed with this Amy Grant song in the 5th/6th grade? I remember making up dance routines to it.

By the way, anyone else obsessed with the Olympics??? I love it!!!

Happy Birthday to my niece and nephew who turned 3 on Sunday! This is the first birthday I couldn't celebrate with them because they just moved, but I'll see them next weekend.

This was the ultimate meal on that stinkin hot day the other day. BLTs with cheese (of course) on Ciabatta bread from the New French Bakery take and bake line found and Hy-Vee or Dahl's. Good plug, huh. It's a little spendy, but so GOOD! If you've ever been overseas, you must try this because it's really similar and it will totally take you back. Hard crusty outside, soft and warm inside. I get it a lot when we have company. Mmmmmmm. Who doesn't have a picture of their kid in adult sunglasses? Look at those skinny, little legs.

Henry is STILL sleeping and it's almost 8:00! This is miraculous. Well, I have to say that he was up talking from 5:15-6:00 for some reason, but still, this is great! Maybe once a month he'll sleep past 7, (psh, once a month he'll sleep past 6:30), and maybe once every 4 months he'll sleep past 8. Whoops, I just heard him, but a little boy waking up talking instead of crying is music to my ears!

We're off to paint a mural this morning and then find something fun to do this afternoon. Looks like it's going to be a beauty. I think we'll have to find a park.....

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Pictures will be posted later. Promise!

I don't want to write much without photos because it's just not as fun, so I'll save some posting for later.

Henry is getting one of those stinkin eye teeth and is having a rough time with it. Poor little guy. I called RJ today to tell him how much I need him and he surprised me by coming home for lunch. Well, as he put it, his lady put out the bat signal and batman came home.

Any tips/suggestions on how to encourage a 19 month old to stop saying "no" constantly? He was doing it a lot and then got much better, but with these lousy teeth it's become extreme. Sometimes, he is nicely answering your question and showing his independence. That's great. Other times, it's very, well, not that. If you know what I mean. I'm sure teething has a lot to do with it, but still, any advice? Hopefully his teeth come out quickly. I can't imagine how horrible it must feel. And I miss my sweet little boy!!

Good weekend!

An incredibly fun art show. A date. (Yippee!!!!) Time with my mom. Playing in the "water park" with Henry and RJ in the backyard.

More tomorrow.

Me tired.