Shower at 36 weeks, Ultrasound at 37

I had a shower on August 19th that my mom, sister, aunt and cousin organized for me and it was an absolute blast! Just look at the tasty treats they served up! And check it out--what do you think? Most adorable toothpicks ever? Yes, I think so. It was amazing, and the entire table scape was so cute and fun. Aunt Sara and Bridget made delicious little cucumber sandwiches, and there was a delicious punch made from pineapple juice, almond extract and other yummy additions. Here are a couple of shots of the table:

Here is a pic of the wonderful swing that came from Andi and Paul Dwyer:


I am positive that it will be put to good use! Most parents I know say that the swing helped them calm and sooth their babies a ton, and helped them keep the babe occupied while they worked on other projects.

So I was 36 weeks at the shower, and here is a belly shot from a week later, at 37 weeks:

I feel happy and healthy and so does the baby, who is still hovering around the 90th percentile for size. We got an ultrasound done half-way through our 37th week. The pictures of this sonigram are much blurrier than our earlier shots, but here's a profile picture from the ultrasound:

Still busy and big at 36 weeks

We've been pretty busy the last few weeks, and while it's been a ton of fun, I think that it's finally time to slow down. Two weeks ago (I was at 34 weeks) we went camping over the weekend and met our friends Jesse & Crystal in Sequim. We shared a campsite, had a ton of fun, got "rained" on (which wasn't actually rain, but dew falling from the big trees we were under), and picked blueberries the next morning. We picked over 21 pounds of berries in under an hour! It was good fun, and THANK GOODNESS for our Aero Bed. It was the only reason I was able to camp, and made things a lot more comfortable. That, and the fact that Jesse & Crystal picked a site directly adjacent to the bathrooms :). Here's a quick snapshot of our site:
The next weekend, (this last weekend), we drove down to Portland on Sunday afternoon and I stayed the night down there with Luke. He had training at the Honda Training facility in Gresham, OR. While we were there we got to kick around downtown Portland and meet up with my good friends Matt & M'Lissa who live down that way. It was great to see them, and scare them with my pregnant belly and new haircut. I got to spend some time with M'Lissa on Monday, and then drove back up to Tacoma in time for my final childbirth class. Mom came down to come to the class with me, as Luke was still in OR. We covered postpartum care and briefly covered some newborn care. You should have seen me swaddle. Let's just say that I found my own technique. Here I am at a small park we found in Portland. It was near the restaurant we ate at with the Tabors, and it was made from reclaimed industrial land. It was a peaceful little oasis in the city, so we thought it would be a good place for our belly-shot:

Jammin at 33 weeks

Last weekend we went out to Graymarsh Farms in Sequim, WA (pronounced "squim") to pick raspberries, blueberries and strawberries. It was a nice day trip, and we came home with some beautiful strawberries and raspberries for making jam. I don't really recommend going for a full day of berry picking at 33 weeks pregnant...but if you have to, do what I did: leave the squatting for strawberries to your husband after about 15 minutes of effort and move on to arm's-height berries like raspberries. Also, blueberries really are the perfect berry to pick; their ripeness is easily detected, they do not grow thorns on their bushes, the bees generally leave them alone, and they stand at about 3-5 feet in height, meaning that they won't break your back reaching for them. There didn't happen to be too many that were ripe enough to pick on this trip, but we're hoping to get back out there in a week or two to try again. Here I am back at the ranch prepping the strawberries for the blender. Normally I insist on "driving" the blender, but strawberry prep can be done while sitting down, so it won me over. I just like "shifting gears" from "stir" to "liquefy". I usually downshift back down before I can feel right about pushing "off". Luke makes fun of me for this, but he is after all the man who pretends to shift while driving our Volvo (automatic transmission). I say, let each one find a way to shift in the way they are comfortable! I'm now going to attempt to shift my growing body and bottom out of this glider and get into bed...thanks for reading and more pictures soon!

32 week belly pics

Here I am at 32 weeks. Please excuse the tired circles under my eyes and the rumpled hair...it was hot and I had just gotten up from a nap. Luke suggested that I update the blog, and I agreed to at least take a couple more belly pics. I'm measuring at 33 inches, which is pretty much right on track for being 32 weeks along. It's the same measurement as two weeks ago at my last appointment, so my growth seems to be tapering out a bit (but not the baby's!). The books tell me that the baby is now somewhere between 3 and 4 pounds, and measures out between 16 and 19 inches from head to toe. It sounds huge to me, but judging from the amount of activity that I feel on a regular basis, I think it's still got plenty of room to move and stretch.

30 weeks at the Rose Garden

Here I am at the Point Defiance Park in North Tacoma. Luke and I strolled over there a couple of nights ago to visit the duck pond and see the Rose Garden, one of my favorite places! Can't believe that I'm at 30 weeks already. Time is moving faster than a pregnant lady towards a bowl of ice cream! Lots of kicks and squirming is coming from the baby these days, and most mornings it wakes me up at 4:30 a.m. and is ready for breakfast. I can see how easily my child is going to train me (wink wink).

Graduation, Crib Assembly, & Shower "oh my!"

It has been such a busy June already! Luke graduated from UW Tacoma with his Master of Ed. on June 11th. The hooding ceremony was on June 10th. There are some quick snapshots of us at the hooding ceremony with our friend Jesse, who went through the same program and also graduated:

More pictures from graduation to follow. We took several lovely ones with Luke's parents the day after commencement. (Due to the size of the class of 2010 and the commencement location-Tacoma Dome-we weren't able to get many great shots during the ceremony.) We held a small open house at our apartment right after graduation and welcomed family and friends alike to come and help us celebrate Luke (and Jesse's) achievement. It was a fun time, and we are so thankful to everyone who showed their support--it's been a lot of work and we couldn't have done it without our friends and family and church family.

Also happening that weekend was the baby shower hosted by the members of Mount Cross Lutheran, our home church. Again, more photos to come from the shower. I didn't get any on my phone or camera because I was otherwise occupied during the festivities! We received so many beautiful and generous gifts including: 3 bouncers/baby-rockers; a stack of blankets a yard high; over 15 onesies; sleep sacks, crib sheets, teddy bears, lots of books and board books, 2 Baby Bjorn carriers, a sling carrier, a gender neutral diaper bag, a towering "cake" made of diapers, bottles, binkies, booties and rattles, about 20 different rattles and toys, a large blow-up rubber ducky bath/pool, baby legos, a Boppy nursing pillow, 3 bath sets including a miniature bath robe that is so cute it breaks my heart, a first aid kit and lots of other delightfuls as well. The two large group gifts given at the shower were 1) a $400 gift card to Babies R Us (WOW!) and 2) $645 towards the cost of moving a vehicle out from Michigan this summer so that I can have my car back! It was so overwhelming and so exciting. We feel so blessed to have received so much. There are too many people to thank. (We tried, and fell overwhelmingly short of expressing our true gratitude.)

One special gift from the "grandparents" otherwise known as Luke and I's parents, was our Crib! During Luke's open house we were presented with the crib, and Luke was so excited about it that we had it set up the next morning. Here are some pictures of the set up (he took the wise advice to set it up in the room where it will live--often people set up their cribs in other rooms, go to move it in to the nursery and then find that it won't fit through the doorway! We fortunately didn't have that issue!):

Birthday fun and another belly shot!

A lot has been going on since our last post, and I'm sure it's just an indication of the many busy times we've got ahead of us. At the end of May we celebrated Memorial Day weekend by enjoying a lot of quiet time around the apartment and taking a day trip to Olympia. We had a great time walking in Olympia; the sun came out and we haven't ever really gotten to spend much time there. As a cool and unexpected bonus, we found this statue titled "Motherhood" and I just had to get my picture next to it!We also found this pretty little garden near where the Olympia farmer's market normally is. It's a garden that is kept and maintained by the botany students at the Washington State University Extension program. I was ready for a break anyways, so I took full advantage of this pretty little bench in a quiet resting spot. Plus, it had been kind of a long time since I'd had so much sun on my face, so I rather enjoyed it.
June came and we started to get ready for all the excitement and activity that it brought with it. I have two showers in June, Luke graduates with his Masters of Education from UW-Tacoma, which his parents are coming out for, and it was my birthday at the beginning of the month. Here's a lovely shot of my chocolate raspberry cake with curly-cue candles before I tore in to it with a vintage cake cutter. The cake cutter was the high-light of the evening, as it looked like a large, straight, thickly pronged comb (or as I pointed out at the table, "worst toothbrush ever!"). I think I figured it out though, and by the third or fourth piece I had worked my technique perfectly for slicing and thumping each over-sized piece of cake on a plate. There were many jokes around the table about this--you know me, always good for providing a laugh (usually at my expense somehow!).Although it was cloudy and drizzling on the day I celebrated with my family, my actually birthday turned out to be a pretty sunny day, and it was a good thing, because we spent he evening at the ballpark here in Tacoma. We had a staff outing planned for all the church staff and their families to attend a game at Cheney Stadium to watch the AAA league Tacoma Rainiers face off against the Reno '51s. This turned into a double-header due to the rain the day before so we got two games for the price of one (only one hot-dog though...). Here's a shot of us between games. Notice that it looks as though I've stuffed a football under my shirt (I'm already at 26-27 weeks!)