Target Haul

Call me crazy, but I love good deals!! Target just had all of their clearanced toys marked to 75% off....so for the past two days the girls and I have gone to 3 different Target stores twice! This is the best time to stock up on birthday and Christmas gifts. Not just for our kids, but for their friends and cousins too! I got all of this for $126.68. Retail = $436.73 

The Haul:

Lots of Zoobles, Zooble Storage & Zoobles Playset

Polly Pocket w/ car

Kid's Ice Cream Maker

Train Track Expansion (to one we already have)

8 tubs of Moon Sand

2 Squirt Guns

Sky Ball

My Generation Doll (like American Girl doll)

Wheel Barrel

Mini Football

Shorts for our boy :)

Little Dump Truck

Wooden Food w/ Picnic Basket Set

2 Barbie Fairy Dress Ups

Last Word game

2 Aqua Sand Sets

Magnetic Dress Up Doll set

Q-Bitz Game

Kerplunk game

2 Motorbikes that can be put together and taken apart w/ tools

Cute Bunny Bike Helmet

Zhu Zhu Pet Accessory (now I just need to find a good deal on a Zhu Zhu pet to complete the gift)

Lemon Meringue Doll (from Strawberry Shortcake)

There are at least 8 gifts to give here. We usually spend around $20 on friends gifts so that exceeds our total out of pocket right there! Then we practically have the girls Christmas done now! Besides listening to a few things that they really want and we'll probably get those. The only problem with having the girls with me when I get this stuff is that they see most of it. I try to keep them distracted and have told them that everything is for their friends. Hopefully they will forget about it by the time Christmas rolls around! We've already got 2 presents wrapped up now for upcoming birthday parties in the next 2-5 weeks. :)

This is random and not related to this post at all. But the girls are doing this as I type so I thought I'd mention it. They are watching a Stranger Safety video.......this is their 2nd time in 3 days! They must really enjoy it AND I've noticed them doing the things they are learning in this video. Like, wait for Mom before answering the door if someone knocks/rings doorbell. Always stay near a parent when out of the house, don't talk to stranger unless a parent is with you and says it's okay.

You're A Good Cooker, Mom ..... and Goggles

Tonight's dinner was fajitas cooked on the grill by yours truly. okay, I had to call Derek to ask how to turn the grill on, but I did it! The girls never eat fajitas, so I just fixed them something else because they were "starving".
After eating we went to the pool for some swimming. Allie wanted to try out her new goggles (different story once she actually got in the water with them). We got there late, around eight pm. It was fun though.

After we got home Derek ate his fajitas. The girls were saying they were hungry and so Derek told them they could have what he was eating. There was a little bit of whining but they decided they would try it. They both liked it! Then we had some homemade strawberry sorbet that I had made. They loved that as well. After Allie finished she said, "You're the best cooker, Mom. I liked both things you fixed." And then she gave me a big hug. :)

Licking their bowls clean

These next two pictures are just of them posing yesterday.

More Home Improvements

While we were in Indiana Derek worked on a few projects around the house. The major project he did was rip up the laminate flooring in front of the stairs, bathroom, and laundry room. Then he replaced it with tile......doing all of the work himself. What a handy man!! It looks super nice.

You can kind of see the BEFORE look here with the laminate flooring at the bottom of the stairs. It looked weird because we had tile to the left in the main entry way and then off to the right is an entrance to the kitchen which has that same tile.

And AFTER

SO much better. We were so lucky to have been able to find the exact tile that was in the kitchen and entry way. This home was built in 2005 and there were two builders in the subdivision. We just so happened to have a half of a box of the tile that was left behind in our garage....so Derek called up the builders and found out where they got the tile. He then contacted that company and they said they are no longer making it, but that the did have some boxes left!

Now this was just smart. In order for everything to line up  and look uniform, Derek thought of doing this right where the kitchen and hallway meet up. I actually LOVE how this looks!

The other major thing Derek worked on was staining the swingset. It didn't look so hot. I don't have a good before pic, that I can find right now anyway. It looks A LOT better though. Now the girls can actually use the rock climbing wall too.

He actually built the roof on this. It came with a green tarp, but we thought the wood roof would make it look nicer. This is staying with the house when we move because we cemented it down. We also made the area underneath a sand box, which Derek built the cover for that as well.

We have a lot more projects that we would like to get done before baby gets here. So hopefully we'll have more "home improvement" pictures to come in the next month.

Today, Derek took the girls to Sea World. They've been asking to go ever since we got back to Texas. It's actually not too hot out today and kind of overcast. Maybe rain later??!! I probably could have handled going, but didn't realize it was actually decent out until I walked them out. Now I just need to use this time to get some things done around here! So, I'm off!

Sea World, here we come!!

Playing in the Rain AND 32 weeks

Tuesday it finally rained here!! We (our yard) desperately needed it. We have water restrictions right now because of the drought and can only water our lawn once a week before 8am or after 8pm. The past two weeks our sprinklers weren't working for some reason. Come to find out Derek just didn't get the water turned all of the way back on. He turned the water off while he was picking us up in Indiana. We always turn our water off now whenever we are out of town because of our experience with the flood.

Anyway, back to the rain. It was about 15 degrees cooler outside because of it which felt so much better than the usual 100 degree temps. I told the girls they could go out to play in it after they ate their dinner. They had fun!

Don't mind Avery ;)

They still had some dinner on their face :)

Here I am at 32 weeks. Blah!

I feel huge and miserable....nothing new I guess. I'm measuring right where I'm supposed to be. But even though I feel huge I am sick and tired of people telling me I'm huge. Geesh! Way to make me feel good people. There are a select few that do tell me I look good and they are sweethearts :) I had to go in today for my glucose test. I still feel nauseous from it and it's been 12 hours. In other news, my c-section has been scheduled for 6 Sept. I'm kind of disappointed about that b/c I'm ready for him to come out....now! That's not even a full week early, but they wouldn't schedule it on the weekend or a holiday so my first available option was the 6th. I have a feeling I'll end up going into labor before then, but I highly doubt I'll be able to convince them to schedule it any earlier.

Avery

Last week we were sitting at the table eating dinner. We are constanlty reminding the girls, especially Avery, to lean over their plates when they are eating. Well, the food was super hot and I had just got done reminding the girls of this. I went to take a bite and quickly pulled it back out of my mouth and the food fell off of my fork right on to the table! Without any hesitation, Avery said, "Lean over your plate Mommy!" We all cracked up after her remark.

In other news, after returning home she started regressing in her potty training. She went those first two days with accident after accident. I'm not even sure if she actually went to the bathroom in the toilet once. Pretty frustrating because she was completley trained except for at night. We're thinking it may have had something to do with wearing a diaper for the two day car trip back home?? She's good now and for the past week has even kept her pull ups dry during naps. I wouldn't even put a pull up on her before, but was afraid she might go since she had been having accidents. The past couple of days I haven't put one on her and she's been doing great. She even kept her diaper dry all night last night!! She woke up early this morning...around 5am and said she had to go. She went and then went back to bed. Now hopefully things won't change once the baby gets here.

Haircut

We all got much needed haircuts while we were in Indiana. I only got pics of Allie while she was getting her haircut. Avery actually chickened out, but later got the courage in front of everyone while at Grandma's and got a trim.

BEFORE - she was a little nervous and I had to keep reminding her that she told me she wanted it cut short!

AFTER

Last Days in Indiana

Grandma had us over Friday evening for a "Goodbye" dinner. We also went ahead and had an early celebration for Avery's birthday. It was good to see everyone one last time before we left and I know Avery enjoyed every bit of her time in the spotlight.

A pool was set up for the kids to play in

A slip n slide too!

Avery loved her "rainbow" cake (just like Sissy's)

Can't believe she's going to be 3 in a month

Video of "Happy Birthday"

The Cove

4th of July Weekend

Tippy River @ the Pierson residence on Saturday



tubes from our float trip. Allie rode in her own tube! This was Avery's first float trip and she fell asleep just like Allie did on her first one!



slowly waking up. It was SO hot out.....and what's a day at the river without a storm?! It happened that night!



All dolled up for church

We did our fireworks Sunday night. Dad and Bryan went and got some small fireworks and Bryan also got the girls some sparklers and popper things. The girls, especially Avery, were in awe.



Avery's reaction to the fireworks