Monday started out pretty well...except for being Monday, and an extended drive to work thanks to the still icy highways. I was feeling quite a bit better, and the work day flew by though with my being gone so much last week. It literally took me just about all day to go through my e-mails, route the stuff that came in while I was out, and get the work I did at home last Thursday going. I finished the day off doing some tedious tasks that I tend to put off as long as possible, and it was quitting time before I knew it. Christian's days at work remain long, with plenty of overtime coming in...which is good, because he was worried it would be dwindling. The girls were off to school and happy as always to be back with their friends. It remains to cold for them to go outside...not that they could even do anything with all the snow we have, but I feel so bad for them, cooped up ALL.THE.TIME. I'm glad we have a pretty fun weekend coming up for them. After work, things went downhill a tad...but, surprisingly, I held it together pretty well. I arrived at my car, to find the battery completely DEAD! Not a dang thing would work. I texted Christian, my phone was on it's last bit of battery and I wasn't sure what to do. Luckily, I caught my friend Kelly before she left the lot, and, luckily, I am always equipped with jumper cables and an well versed on how to jump a car, so she was able to give me a jump. The car started right up, and I realized I had left my headlights on this morning. Oh man did I feel like an idiot! The drive home was long and slow. LONG and SLOW. I picked the girls up and we stopped quick at Walmart for some dinner ingredients. We rushed through as fast as we could and made our way home. It was SO late at this point, I had to get dinner going immediately. To top that off, our wonderful dog got into the trash and it was all over...I became distracted picking that up, I ended up burning the rice (to go with our tacos) to a crisp. Christian "happily" stopped to pick up another box of rice while I finished getting everything else ready. Thankfully, the girls were shockingly well behaved this evening, otherwise I may have just fell apart. We got them ready for bed, had a VERY late dinner while watching the premier of "The Voice", and they were off to bed shortly after. Christian and I watched The Walking Dead and called it a night as well. Hopefully tomorrow my brain will be working a tad better!
Tuesday did go quite a bit better. The drive wasn't AS bad, but still annoying. The work day was fairly productive, but I also got a few personal things checked off the list throughout the day as well. I got Olivia signed up for her first season of "baseball"...it runs from roughly late April-early July, depending on the weather. Softball was my big sport growing up, so I'm really hoping they both take to it over the coming years! I also realized that the next session of swim classes is filling up fast, so I had to get them signed up. Olivia is right on the cusp of passing Level 2, so I checked with the program to see what I should sign her up for, and they said go for Level 3...so exciting! So, I did get them signed up, this will run from early April-early June. It's so crazy to think in the middle of these activities, baby will come...it really made me realize how close we're getting! So, along those lines, we FINALLY ordered our new infant carseat! We have FINALLY done something in preparation of baby's arrival! Woot! My in-laws are actually buying it for us, but I offered to order it online, using my redcard, to save them some time and a little money. We do still have our old carseat, but it may be expired now, and is definitely in rough shape from the girls playing with it, so we needed a new one regardless. I also ordered a new fun gadget from babysteals.com...the Baby Shusher, which I'm super excited about, just in case this baby decides it likes to cry non-stop like Amelia. I'm a sucker for gadgets! Christian and I even had a brief name conversation, so I feel like we're actually making some progress! I have 1 boy name I really like, and 2 girl names...he wasn't a big fan of 1 girl name, but seemed OK with the others, so we may just even have our names picked. Pretty exciting! After work, I picked the girls up (after another long drive) and we made our way home for some dinner and a quiet night. Christian wasn't feeling too hot today, so he just took it easy. It was an early bedtime for all tonight. I will say...today was my first truly uncomfortable day of this pregnancy. While I LOVE it to pieces, this baby was moving non-stop, all day long...in a lot of very uncomfortable positions, which just seemed to get worse as the night went on. Hopefully that's not a daily thing from here on out quite yet!
Olivia has been LOVING feeling baby move around. She says "Mom, where is the baby at? I wanna push him so he will push me back". LOL - so fun!
Wednesday I was really feeling better. Down to just the slightest cough and just your run of the mill pregnancy stuff (started to get really tired, congestion, etc.). Christian seemed to be feeling better and the girls have still managed to avoid the most recent illnesses, so things are looking up. I still can't wait for the day we can open up some windows and start letting some fresh air in! Which, will not be anytime soon...we're now back below zero, with crazy windchills, so it's going to be a while. Work has been driving me nuts...there are 3 women in the office right now sick...coughing, hacking, sneezing, sniffling, ALL.DAY.LONG. Seriously, STAY HOME!!!! I can't tell you how much precious, MUCH needed leave time I had to use over the last month+, there is no excuse for these people to be coming in every day like this. I swear, if I get sick again, I WILL unleash a wrath like nobody has ever seen before. I made it through the day, with some sanity left and was off for a busy evening. I stopped at Target for some cards and flowers, picked the girls up, and we were off to dinner with my mom...to celebrate her birthday. YAY! We met her at Applebee's and the girls were so excited. We chatted, ate, enjoyed the girls' entertainment and stories. And, to top it off, they sang to my mom and gave her a little dessert - OMG the girls could not stop laughing, they seriously thought it was the most hilarious thing ever, and, they now insist we always go to Applebee's for all birthdays. LOL, so funny. We met Christian at home, got into our jammies and watched some American Idol. Not kidding, I literally passed out on the couch about 5 minutes after we got home...yes, 3rd trimester exhaustion is starting to kick in!
Birthday Dinner for Mom/Grandma
Thursday was another long day of listening to the hacking symphony in the office - and I'm growing VERY impatient over it. On the bright side, the drives were slightly better...in anticipation of tomorrows snow I guess. I was able to get quite a but done, so at least it was a productive day. After work, I stopped at Walmart for some dinner groceries (apparently I still don't actually go grocery shopping...maybe this weekend), picked up the girls and we made our way home. They had a pretty quiet night, watching some videos and playing iPad games together. I made dinner and got our laundry folded, finally (now, ask me when it'll actually get put away), and it was another fairly early night for the house. Hopefully this weekend I can manage to stay awake later than the girls, so Christian and I can finally have our little "final episodes of Breaking Bad" marathon!
Friday came, and marked the first full week I've worked in God knows how long. HALLELUJAH!! It was a long week, but I made it. And, this weekend couldn't have come fast enough....finally feeling better, AND, I couldn't posssibly take one more day of the coughing, hacking, sneezing-fest going on at work this week. So gross, and so over it. Hopefully these GROWN ADULTS will make some better choices and STAY HOME next week if this is still going on. After work I picked the girls up, and we made our way home. Watched some movies, had some dinner, and hung out around the house for the night. Our "Breaking Bad" marathon did not happen tonight....Christian passed out shortly after the girls went to bed, so I pretty much followed suit. OLD!
These two crack me up. Amelia was handing out head massages, whether you wanted one or not!
Saturday was a fairly lazy day. Even though I'm feeling better, I just wanted to do nothing....all day. Christian was off to work, so the girls and I had some breakfast and relaxed around the house for the morning. Until, we were finally off to swim class. Amelia is still a handful in the pool...her poor teacher. She constantly lets go of the wall and flails about. Hopefully she ends up being a REALLY quick learner, because that girl needs to learn how to swim, for sure. Olivia is doing better and better every week. She pretty much has her floating down, and she has a couple of strokes down pretty well. She mainly has to work on her endurance. I can't believe how far she's come in a year though, it's such a wonderful thing to watch. After swim class, we made our way home for lunch, and naps. YAY naptime! I caught up on some shows while they napped. Christian stopped to visit his parents for a bit after work, and arrived home shortly after the girls woke up. We ended up breaking out some paint and art supplies and crafted for a while. After dinner, Christian was off to watch tonight's boxing match with some friends, the girls were off to bed, and while I planned on having a little Netflix binge, I didn't make it much longer than the girls.
They fight all morning, then hold hands as we're driving. My girls.
My Beautiful Girl
Art Night!
We had our own "Wine & Canvas" Night...minus the wine, or canvas. I'm very proud of my preschool artisic skills!
Amelia did not follow the example.
Sunday was a BUSY day around the house. After my long stint of illness, and a lay day yesterday, the house was in need of some major cleaning, on top of my usual weekend chores. I spent the day doing laundry, sweeping the kitchen, dusting and picking up all around the house. Christian got the entryway cleaned up and vacuumed the house. I was pretty exhausted, but boy does it feel good to have a CLEAN house! Before I knew it, the girls were down for their naps and it was time to start getting ready. As soon as they were up, we were off to pick my mom up and head to our annual trip to "Disney on Ice". This was Amelia's first time joining us. Olivia was SO excited when she finally figured out what we were seeing, and Amelia was just in awe of the entire show. It's so fun watching them experience these shows and watch the wonder in their eyes. After the show, we made our way home, had a quick late dinner and we were all off to bed. Hard to believe another week has come to an end!
My princesses, ready for Disney on Ice
Also, day I began the home stretch of this pregnancy...30 weeks! 3/4 down, 1/4 to go, and I honestly cannot believe it! I have my next check-up this coming week, baby gets more and more active every day...we're entering that "alien" stage now, where you see some major shifting going on. So exciting!!! However, there are 3 big "unknowns" hanging over my head right now, that are really starting to drive me crazy. I'm a planner by nature...an overplanner really. I love my budget, and I love looking over it, updating it, finding places to save money. And, no, love is not an exaggeration. Basically, these are the major hangups right now:
- Childcare: Childcare while I'm on leave, and once I return to work, is so up in the air right now. If it were ANY other time of year, I'd most likely keep the girls home with me while I'm on leave (for savings reason - I think it's more important for them to be at the center than sitting at home with me), but, during the summer, they do so many fun activities, have a lot of special events and Olivia will probably get to go on a few actual field trips this year. I really don't want them missing out on those things. So, I'm faced with figuring out if I do want to bite the bullet and keep them home (and, pay a holding fee), have them go 3-days a week, part-time every day, or keep their schedule as is. Then, once I do return to work, we're still not sure what we're doing with the baby...either full time like the girls, or, 3-days a week, one day with my mother in law, and Fridays with me/my mom. All of these things make big differences in pay, and our overall budget, and I just wish everything was finalized.
- Leave Pay: I will be taking the full 12 weeks off this time, because it's summer, and my last chance to do that. While FMLA will protect my position while I'm out, I'll probably only have abuot 9 weeks of leave time saved up...so, I'll be going 3-weeks unpaid. BUT, as I've mentioned before, I was finally able to get approved for Short Term Disability last summer. That will pay me out for 6 weeks after the baby is born...but I have no idea how much that will actually be (you only get a portion of your pay, and of course it's taxed, so I'm kind of in the dark). I'm hoping it covers my unpaid weeks, but at this point, I have no idea.
- The Van: Finally, the minivan. There's a good chance we won't have to take a loan out for the new van...we'll have a good downpayment, we should get a pretty good trade-in value on the truck, plus we get a small discount because I have an uncle that works for Dodge. But, we won't know exactly how much the trade-in is, or the discount, so we don't know exactly how much we have. There's a chance it will basically cover the costs...and that's my hope, but there's also a chance we'll have to take at least a small loan out. So, we have no idea if we will, or how much the payment might be.
Basically, all of these things drive me batty. Funny enough, it seems to drive EVERYBODY crazy that we don't know baby's sex, and that seems to be the only unknown that doesn't bother me! I know all of these things will start working themselves out over the next couple of months, but for now, I'm slowly going insane!
Until Next Week XOXO
