Baby Things

Here is that promised post about the recent baby things we have acquired. Impressed that I have posted twice in 24 hours? I sure am. 

Also, Whale Baby has a name! We have decided that her name is going to be*:

Gwyneth Jane Coughran

Gwyneth is Welch, meaning "Happiness" and Jane is Hebrew, meaning "God is Gracious" and is a way to praise God. I love both of those meanings plus I just think it is such a pretty name!

*(unless we discover or think of something else that we like more from now until she is born.)

Back to the baby items that we have gotten. Here are some of my favorites:

These are two of my favorite clothes that she has. I really hope she doesn't grow up with a complex because we called her Whale Baby. (Also, these are the only clothing items she has with whales on them. I promise her whole wardrobe isn't just whales. Talk about a complex.)

These are Nate's old stuffed animals we brought back from Denver. The whale was a present from my sister- & brother-in-law. So cute, right?

My boss was getting rid of a bunch of toys and I snagged these as soon as I saw them. Heck, I still love trains!

I got these at a yardsale. The lady just gave them to me for free. 

These are books that I got at my baby shower and also from Nate's childhood. Whale Baby better love books!

This is another collection from my boss. Seriously, wooden blocks are the best!

This is the diaper bag that I got. I am thinking about adding some fabric to spruce it up but other than that, I love it! I spent the whole week watching my sister-in-law carry a very similar one and soon saw the brilliance in the smaller, one strapped backpack. I have been using it for my everyday use lately and this thing is fantastic. I figure if I need a bigger one later I can always upgrade. $12 on Amazon. 

Now this is my pride and joy right here. A few weeks ago I bought a pack and play at a yard sale for $2. It was the most hideous grey I had ever seen and slightly dirty but I figured for $2 I could just make a cute cover for it and call it good. But the more I looked into it, the more I realized that would be pretty expensive plus once I opened it up, the thing was dirtier than I had imagined. So after unsuccessfully (and understandably) trying to it pawn it off on some other pregnant friends, we decided to take it to the thrift store. It took us a few weeks but I have never been so glad to procrastinate! We pulled up to the thrift store and the first thing I saw outside was this stroller. It is in perfect condition and was only $20! The only thing was I couldn't tell if it would work with an infant car seat so I asked the lady if she could hold it while I ran home and Googled it. Much to my excitement, not only did I find out it does indeed hold an infant car seat, but it is also normally $140! My excitement was added upon when I remembered I had a 20% coupon to this thrift store that I had just gotten the other day. That's right, I used a coupon at a thrift store. And got a $140 stroller for $16. 

Boo.Ya. 

Family Reunion and a Surprise!

Note: This is a long one but I promise it will be worth it if you stick it out to the end....

The past few weeks have been flying by! Summer always whizzes by after the 4th of July which on one hand is really sad, because I love summer but on the other hand totally awesome because once summer is over we will have a baby! (Ok, not right after summer, but close enough.)

Anyway, we were able to check off one of our summer activities last week. We spent the week in Colorado with Nate's family at a family reunion. It was "just" his parents, siblings and their kids but with seven siblings, seven significant others and 11.67 grandkids it was quite a full house! We stayed in a giant cabin/house/lodge in the mountains of Winter Park. It had about 9 bedrooms and a giant living room that was great for games and activities. It was a pretty busy week so here is a pictural representation of all the fun that we had:

We went on a hike around the cabin we were staying in. Clearly at a young, old and pregnant skill level. 

And then a night of Minute to Win It

And a day at the Winter Park Resort

This was the Alpine Slide. Despite multiple assurances that I could handle it, I decided it was probably in the best interest of my child to avoid said slide. Especially after what happened to my bro-in-law:

I did however do the maze. Which was mostly Nate pulling me through the whole thing. But we did it in just 7 minutes which was crazy, dizzying fast!

This beauty was a giant ball that two people were strapped into and then spun around in for 30-60 seconds. That's Nate in the background. I totally would have done this if I weren't pregnant.

We rode the gondola up to the top of the mountain and this was our view.

Then they threw me a baby shower! It was so cute!

My cute nieces!... who are only a few years younger than me...

Fabulous gluten-free cupcakes. Thanks Lalana!

Guess the Type of Baby Food Game. FYI - turkey and gravy is the nastiest thing to ever have entered my mouth. Do not feed it to your child.

Guess the Mashed Up Candy Bar in the Diaper... pretty gross actually.

My niece drew this for me. Isn't it fabulous!?

Thanks so much everyone for putting this on! It was so nice and so much fun!

We also celebrated all of the summer(ish) birthdays while we were all together.

And of course, we had Family Olympics. Thanks to Steve and Lalana for the awesome shirts!

Events included Speed Skating [running around a track without lifting your feet] won by this guy!

Shooting

Shot put. (Which I must say, I did fairly well at considering I am 6 months pregnant.) But I had to post this picture because it was so awesome.

Tae Kwon Do

And Synchronized Swimming

Nate also made a little friend. Who is pretty much the cutest 2 year old I have ever met.

And we got to play lots of Monopoly Deal.

And shoot things. (But no animals. Only cans) and mice.

And the best part was everyone was there for the family picture!

Needless to say, it was a fun week!

And as for baby updates, we are feeling ready more than ever for her to get here! Especially in terms of baby stuff. We decided that if she were to come tomorrow, we wouldn't be ready but if she were to come next week, we could be ready by then. Which is saying something considering 1) the amount of things one requires for a baby and 2) the inexpensive route we are trying to take in acquiring such things. This post is already very picture heavy so I will save pictures of our recent yard sale/thrift store finds for my next post.

But of course, an extremely flattering picture of me and my tummy:

(Is this a good enough side shot for you, Madison?)

And of course the moment you have all been waiting for... what is Whale Baby's name??? We have decided that her name is going to be*:

Gwyneth Jane Coughran

Gwyneth is Welch, meaning "Happiness" and Jane is Hebrew, meaning "God is Gracious" and is a way to praise God. I love both of those meanings plus I just think it is such a pretty name!

*(unless we discover or think of something else that we like more from now until she is born.)

Happy Birthday America!

I love the 4th of July. Absolutely love it. What other time do you camp out in the hot, blazing summer sun all day and then get to watch the most awe-inspiring and spectacular show of the year? Seriously, I love it. And that is just the celebration. I love the fact that what we are celebrating is the independence of our country. America is freaking awesome. And don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

This year we decided we wanted a good spot so we headed down to the Charles at 1:00 and picked the perfect spot, spread out our blankets and got comfortable. We spent the extremely hot afternoon playing games and eating lots, and lots of snack food (fortunately we borrowed a a canopy from my boss which was a life saver and made the day very pleasant.) Once the son went down it started to cool off a tidbit so that was really nice (and by a tidbit I mean it was 75° at 10:00 pm). Then about a half hour before the show was about to start, it started to thunder and lightening. The guy on the speaker told everyone to clear out and find shelter and would you believe it, but people actually listened to him! Our neighbors who had been there all day packed up everything and ran off - only to have their spot quickly snatched by those who had stayed. I didn't really mind since we were smart enough to tough it out (though some people in our group were terrified we were going to get struck by lightening - we made them stay :)) but then as they came back, people tried to squeeze more people in than were there before which was major annoying considering they were seriously encroaching upon our long claimed turf. But then the fireworks started and we couldn't care less about the people around us. The show was phenomenal and even after 23 years worth of 4th of July's, I am still mesmerized by how awesome fireworks are. Who ever thought of celebrating our independence with fireworks was a true genius. It was also really fun watching the fireworks considering about a minute after they started, it started pouring rain. It was coming down only like it can in the East. It stopped just a minute or two before the fireworks ended, allowing us to walk to our car without getting any wetter (not that it was possible - we were pretty drenched). Perfect way to celebrate the day and I loved every minute of it!

(Notice the awesome view in the background. That was our backdrop to the firework show.)

And for those of you who don't really care what Nate and I do but are much more interested in Whale Baby... here is an update on her:


I think that Whale Baby is going to be something of a diva. It's just this feeling I have and talking to other women with children, they said they could all kind of sense what their kids were like while they were pregnant with them and so I may not actually be crazy. But I just have this feeling that she is going to be something of an attention lover. I noticed that anytime I make a comment about how sometimes I forget that I am pregnant, I get a nice, hearty kick. She also apparently loves music. I like to listen to the radio in the car and when certain songs come on, she starts moving and shaking and kicking. So far her favorites are Starships, I'm Glad You Came and Party Rock Anthem. Nate suggested I start listening to classical music. 

Speaking of diva... Whale Baby's first MySpace shot.

And here is a normal one. 23 weeks down, 17 to go!

As for a name, we are definitely favoring one of our choices over the other but have decided not to say anything until we know for sure. So until then, I am just going to keep throwing these little teaser updates out there for you to enjoy. 

Also, these are the flowers Nate got me this week, just because. That is my favorite reason.

Notice we have our first pet (bottom flower, on the right.) We named her Lily.

Don't I have the best husband ever? Seriously. And so handsome too!

Over Halfway!

I am officially over the 1/2 way point! It is all downhill from here, right? 

So far, everyone who says the 2nd trimester is the best has been right. It is so fun finally looking pregnant and not just chubby (though my darling husband continues to tell me I have never looked chubby- isn't he so sweet?) I also don't feel sick (though I got incredibly lucky and only ever felt nauseas, I never actually threw up. And I am grateful for that everyday!) I have much more energy than I did before, and along with that energy, more motivation to get things done. I have been incredibly productive the last few weeks and it feels so much better to be getting things done. Unfortunately, the weather has been above comfortable so on some days I just lock myself in my room with the door shut and the AC blasting but I still manage to get some things done.

The baby's room is coming along and is beginning to look so cute! We are almost set on the furniture. I have a fabulous crib - which I am absolutely in love with - and an adorable dresser - that I spent a whole morning repainting - and now all we need is a bookshelf to house all of our books/baby toys that we are accumulating. Once I find that, I can begin making these fabulous bins 

that I found on this site. And once those are made then I can finally put all the toys that we have been collecting away and not have them in piles all over the room! We are trying to only get toys that require creativity to play with, such as building blocks, train tracks and other such fun things but unfortunately those kinds of toys have lots and lots of parts. So these bins will be absolutely perfect for all of them! I know she probably won't be able to play with them for a little while but so far we have gotten them all for free so I really can't help myself :) 

Speaking of can't helping myself, I am having the hardest time trying not to put fabric on everything that comes into my home! I have a rocking chair that needs to be recovered (the chair is in perfect shape, the pads just need some TLC), crib bumpers I'd like to re-cover, the ugliest gray Pack n' Play you have ever seen (that I only got for $2 thinking that I could tolerate the grey.. which I just don't know if I can...) and a baby bounce chair (that is just a weird blue. I'm not a fan.) Add a diaper bag and those bins to that list and even I will admit that it is out of control. Tis the curse of being crafty I guess. I simple cannot look at something without making a project out of it :) 

Also this past week, I had a really cool experience while I was working at the temple. I always feel slightly bad when I go because even though I know I am serving others, the main reason I go is for the peace and blessings. I just cannot live without the blessings that I receive by going regularly and can feel missing when I don't go. But then I had an interview with the assistant to the matron and during it she said that one of the greatest reasons we go to the temple is to get the peace that comes to your life by visiting it. I felt much better hearing that come from a woman of authority and realized that is the best blessing of the temple. Despite my crazy life (admittedly self-inflicted) I can always rely on the peace that comes from my visits to the temple. I am going to try to go as often as I can while I can since little Whale Baby is going to make that a tad more difficult that it currently is. 

And finally, here are some pictures of me and Whale Baby. She is getting so big*! According to our Baby Bump app, she is about 11" long, which is about the same size as a spaghetti squash (length only, not her girth!)

*Don't worry, I have know she is going to get much, much bigger. But compared to before, she is so getting so big!

We think we have a name narrowed down between two choices. Any guesses/suggestions? As soon as we decide, we will let you all know for sure!