Entering the Third Trimester

I can't decide which picture I like best (out of the 20 or however many we took), so I posting both of these. I don't think I look this big in real life, but maybe I do :P

It seems like just a couple days ago when it felt like the weeks were dragging! Like "now" was never going to get here, like being pregnant was going to last "forever." Now I am realizing (of course I always KNEW) that it is very most definitely NOT going to last forever and it is not much longer at all until Baby George will be in my arms instead of my belly! I think the month of December is going to be non-existent in this pregnancy. Just the hubbub of the Christmas Season and all the goings on, it is going to fly past much too quickly. Which kinda means only 2 months until Baby is born instead of the 3 it really is. I need to get crackin' on getting things ready for Baby!!

I am still feeling great! Even better than I was, actually! All the pregnancy reads say you "must" sleep with a pillow between your knees after a certain point in the pregnancy (comfort, circulation, hips alignment, etc.). I chalked the pain I was having up to "this must be my pregnant body and it's just the way it is", but my hips were killing me every night. I would wake up many, many, many times in the night with whichever hip I was lying on hurting so badly. And it was torture to roll over, especially since I knew that in a short while THAT hip was going to be hurting just as much and I'd have to repeat the process. As a result of the poor sleep at night I was ex.haust.ed so many of the days it wasn't funny. It was nothing for me to sit down on the couch and totally pass out for a 3 or 4 hour nap and be tired again come night-time.

Then one Sunday afternoon just a week ago, I somehow didn't use the pillow between my knees for my Sunday afternoon nap. I couldn't sleep (for whatever reason), but when I got up I realized that my hips never hurt and I wasn't sore!! That night I slept without the pillow between my knees and NEVER WOKE UP from 10:30pm - 6:30am!!! I was SO excited I literally jumped up and down when I got out of bed! (Daniel thought I was a tad crazy...) Since then, no pillow for me! I'm still using that same pillow (it's just a small one) to snuggle with, put under my belly, or behind my back to lean on, but I am sleeping SO much better! I have more energy than I thought I was going to have at this point! My afternoon naps are much shorter since I'm not so dead tired every day. It's like a new me!

On the Baby front, our little baby is not so little anymore! He or She now weighs right around 2lbs and is getting fatter every day! He or She is about 14-15" from head to toe, and is starting to open and close their eyes. I'm feeling lots of wiggles and hiccups now, and I'm pretty sure they have a sleep/wake cycle going on. Things will be quiet for a while, then lots of action for a bit. I haven't had any heartburn or reflux yet, and still have my fingers crossed that I won't (one of my sisters didn't). No weird food cravings, either, unless I happen to not get much meat in a day for whatever reason. I gotta have my meat!!

We're getting more and more excited every day, but also anxious when we realize how quickly our life is going to TOTALLY change (for the better!) and the adjustments that I'm sure will go with having a baby in our family. Daniel loves my pregnant belly and I'm really, really enjoying being pregnant. It's hard to explain. I can't say it's something I would "do" just because I love it so much, but I guess I'm just enjoying it more than I usually hear people talk about. Oh yes, there are certainly difficulties! I had to try and couple different ways before I could get my socks and shoes on yesterday. Washing the floor on my hands and knees doesn't happen anymore because it makes my back muscles spasm and hurt incredibly bad. Shaving my legs... WHOLE different ball game when you have a basketball in the way! But I have to say I think the joys of being pregnant FAR outweigh and are very worth every bit of the discomforts.

Welcome, Winter :)

I know winter officially started a couple weeks ago, but just recently has it started to feel like winter - and only a few days at that. One morning this week it was 34°, the next day the high was 70°. Gotta love Virginia weather!

Today it's snowing! I'm so tickled :) On this side of the mountain we do not get snow nearly as much as we do where I grew up, so any and all snow is welcome at my house! Late this morning we were out getting wire and switchboxes for a project Daniel is working on today, and on our way home we stopped at a U-Cut place and got our Christmas Tree! We were driving home from that and the closer we got to home, the more the VERY COLD rain was becoming snow. It's sticking a little bit, but it's snowing for sure :)

While we were eating breakfast this morning, my sister called to tell me that Paul (my 3yo. nephew) was so excited that the snow Aunt Mini (me) had prayed for was at his house!! I thought that was really cute. I don't remember specifically praying for snow, but I guess he somehow knew that I was really wanting some (I wonder if he secretly follows me on Facebook... :P ).

We are once again enjoying a full day at home with nowhere to go. We did get a later start on our errends and projects than I'd kinda hoped to, but hey, it's Saturday! Right now I have bread started in the KitchenAid and I know we'll enjoy fresh, hot slices of that when it's done baking. We will put up our tree sometime this evening, but I don't know if we'll get as far as decorating it. Daniel's projects are ones that kinda have to be done start-finish all at once, and we can work on the tree a little here and there next week if we need to.

Thursday and Friday just didn't turn out the way I had envisioned them, so I hope to do the main cleaning that I would have done those days, today. I'd better go check on my bread... I don't want the yeast to get out of hand before I get all the other ingredients mixed in!

Happy Snowy, Saturday Evening!!! I have some Christmas music playing (Charlotte Church's "Dream A Dream") and I might need to mix up a mug of hot chocolate to sip on while I work :)

Grocery Roundup 12/3

Whew, it's been a busy week! Just doing the same-old, same-old every day! Wednesday I went with my MIL and we ran some errands and got a few groceries that were specifically good deals on Wed. only, but my main run was yesterday, Thursday, when Kroger had select Kashi cereal for 50% off. I used my VocalPoint coupons and got several boxes for almost free! If you haven't signed up for VocalPoint coupons yet, you are missin' out! Every so many weeks they send you a packet with mulitple high-value coupons for a certain product. The expiration date is usually long, so you have a really good chance at getting some great products for a low price.
Kroger, Ukrops, WalMart:
6 Gatorade - $1.00 ea.
7 Kashi Cereal - $.13 ea.
3 Chex Cereal - $.50 ea.
Milk - $2.99
4 (8oz) Kraft Cheese - $1.16 ea.
All Purpose Flour - $1.66
10oz. Pecan Halves - $2.99
Cooking Spray - $1.49
Pint Heavy Cream - $1.62
Parkay Margarine - FREE ($.50 MoneyMaker)
4 Oscar Mayer Ham - $1.99 ea. (Markdown)
18ct. Eggs - $2.49

Total Shelf Price - $95.64
Total OOP - $36.94
Saved - $58.70 / 61%

On a different note, I did spend a whoppin' $48.88 on Wednesday at Costco. We were down to 1 1/2 lbs. of hamburger, I needed cheese for a MOPS activity (we're making a bunch of freezer meals for the expectant moms), we needed more OJ concentrate and more RinseAid for the dishwasher.

The hamburger was $2.49/lb for less than 12% fat lean ground beef, and the 2lb. blocks of cheese are cheaper than it ever goes on sale - unless, of course, I have coupons that make it super-duper cheap. Their orange juice is also cheaper than any store brand (unless there's a sale!) and it taste pretty good. I had a coupon for JetDry rinse aid, but at the reg. store it was a MASSIVE $4+ for a teeny tiny bottle!!! I paid $11 for a huge bottle of the stuff that will last us a very long time. So yes, it was a lot of money to shell out at once, but it was all very low priced things when it came down to it. I could not afford to shop there weekly, and not everything is cheaper there, but the rare trips I make are very worth it.

Monster Project - Freezers

This was a cool project. Literally. I'm a week behind in posting my success in this department, but I didn't really get the project TOTALLY finished until just tonight - and that was only because I was in bed for 2 hrs, couldn't sleep a wink and decided to get up and finish it.

On Thanksgiving Day my goal was to clean out, sort and organize our 2 chest freezers. They are not the great big kind, but neither are they the tiny-winy little cube kind, either. The freezers themselves have been a blessing to us - they were both given to us within a year after we moved here. They are getting pretty old and we need to start thinking about replacing them with newer, more efficient models, and ones that aren't starting to rust and won't risk konking out from old age :)

Anyway, I was quite successful with this project, with the help of my amazing, stud-muffin husband who eagerly helped me with the hard parts. He lifted the coolers of food around so I didn't have to, he pulled the bottom layer of food out of the freezers so I wasn't standing on my head or squishing Baby George trying to do it myself, and he even volunteered to wipe them out once they were defrosted. The final surprise of all surprises! We had planned to move the meat freezer from the shed to the cellar, but after we (mostly "he") moved it, he said "we can move the vegetable freezer, too." I think I fell in love with him all over again! I knew moving one of them was going to be a big enough deal, I didn't expect him to move BOTH of them! I am SO in love with the fact that I no longer have to traipse over the river and through the woods, barefoot in knee-deep snow, up-hill both ways (ok, not really...) to get to the freezers. Instead, I can go out the back door, down the steps, make a U-turn, go down 3 more steps into the cellar and VOILA! there are my freezers!!

This evening I went through the refrigerator freezer and inventoried it. I found several things to move to the chest freezers, and then when I was typing up my inventory list, realized I could've put a few more things down there, but I didn't feel like making a trip in the middle of the night just to suit my organizational side. My menu planning is going to be so much easier now that I have these lists, and I really hope that I will keep them current, as well as use up some of the odds and ends that get put in the freezer and forgotten about.

One thing we found we have an abundance of would be Green Beans - we have 26 quarts (all from this year's garden)! If only my peas and corn would do so well! We also discovered enough cherries to feed an army, it was 31 quarts in all, both sweet and sour. I rediscovered our large stash of jellies - Strawberry, Grape and Peach. I forget it's in there and don't eat it. Guess what I've been eating on toast and biscuits this week :)

I'm glad this project is done. It was one I knew I wanted to do, and wanted to get done before I got much more pregnant, and definitely wanted to get done before the baby comes or who knows when it would happen after that? I am enjoying (do I sound crazy?) getting these monster projects accomplished. Not so much the doing part, but knowing that I have a week (that's my goal, anyway) to get X done, and just working on it and really enjoying the results.

I have started whittling away at this week's project. I really hope to have it completely finished by the end of this week, when I will blog about it for sure :P Hint: it involves our bedroom and the "exploded mountain of clothes," as Daniel called it the other day.