Today

Here I am at 32 weeks (and two days, but who's counting.) I had my 3-hour glucose test today. I was prepared for the worst. I had emergency food handy, but it turns out I didn't need it at all. I didn't even feel sick, as I expected to. I actually felt a little heartburn-ish, but oh well. No passing out or barfing for me! Yee haw! I am confident that my results will come back negative for gestational diabetes. Though it's not fun to pee in a cup and get blood drawn from the same vein four times in three hours. But I survived!

Chelsea was calling to Daddy this evening saying, "Daddy! Catch me!" She didn't jump or anything, no worries.
Chelsea looked at this one and exclaimed, "I have orange eyes!" Yes. It is true.

We went shopping this afternoon with Grandma Kelly. I've been eyeing these cute plush toys for some time, but I've never sprung for them. Grandma had no problems! They are actually for the new baby, but Chelsea decided that she would share them. :)

This is my favorite one of the evening. So precious! She gave each of them a kiss before tossing them to the side.

Then she kissed each one again, they kissed a buddy, and then each one gave ME a kiss, too!

Gathering them all up again, begging for more pictures to be taken, Chelsea smiles and says, "Cheese!"

Chels was also very cute this evening with her ponytail. It made her feel so beautiful! She asked me to put it in her hair and then said, "Look, I'm so beautiful!" And who can deny it? She is. :)

I thought of another cute story I must share. The other day we were at Grandma Heit's house. Grandpa Heit has a display case showing off his car collection, and Chelsea wanted to see it with the light on. She asked me to turn it on for her. I was sitting on the loveseat and was ALMOST able to reach the switch. I said, "I can't reach it." She climbs up on the seat next to me and leans in close. In complete and utter seriousness she says, "Maybe you should get up from the couch."
Hah!
The logic of it all.
I had a good laugh, and then got up and turned the light on for her. It was SO funny.

Comfy

Mommy was having a lazy moment on the couch one morning. Chelsea came over and cuddled up, making herself comfy too. :)
This, like so many Chelsea things, makes me smile every time I look at it.

Swimming in the Summertime

This is at the Sleep Inn waterslide park a couple weeks or so ago. Daddy likes to go on outings with Chelsea and she likes to request going in the water. It was too cold for Roosevelt or the Splash Pad, two outdoor favorites, so they came to the hotel instead. This is the only picture they paused to take (I was working this day) but it sure is cute!

This was last Monday. They had free swimming and some prizes (we didn't win any) at Roosevelt Pool. The credit unions in town sponsored it, just to give back to the community. It was a lot of fun.

This year Chelsea is big enough to go down the kiddie slides all by herself! She was a blast to watch. She got really into it and braved the kids (as well as some scary daddies that were there) to get up the steps and take her turn going down the slide. Daddy was the "take turns" monitor for quite awhile, making sure Chelsea didn't get intimidated into letting all the other kids go before her.

Cheese! Actually the thing she said the most was, "AGAIN!" though she is saying cheese in this photo.

Here's how Daddy and Chelsea "swam" in the pool. It was quite cute, and quite cold by this time.

Time to warm up! It was fun wrapping up and snuggling together as Chelsea shivered and watched the other kids around her. Very sweet. But eventually she started squishing me and it got uncomfortable, so I passed her on to Daddy. :) It was a very worthwhile trip to the pool. Thanks for letting us know about it, Grandma Heit!

A small taste of the fun.

This is in the car on the way home. I ran out of memory space at the end. You can see as Chelsea reaches for the duck at the very end. She picked it up by the hair and flung it back toward Daddy. It was pretty funny.

Teeth Brushing

My little ham. She let me put piggies in her hair this day. In fact, she requested them! I think it has something to do with the fact that Grandma bought new little scrunchies. These are her old ones, but we won't tell her that. :)

I guess I've got these backward since this one is Chelsea rinsing her toothbrush. She's not the best at getting her teeth scrubbed by herself, but she's much more accommodating than she used to be in letting us help her.

Maybe it helps to be able to see what you are doing. I don't usually let her sit on the counter, but she's still a little short to see in the mirror otherwise. Oh well.

Just a cutie playing with her daddy. I love my family.

Belly time!

Belly shot! 28 weeks. I keep getting bigger. Weird. j/k :)

My last visit to the doctors office left me wounded! At least the guy that took my blood said that I looked like I had been through the war zone! He must have been new because I've never seen him there before, and he had a bit of trouble getting my blood. Luckily, I've had worse pain and we were able to have a good laugh at how I ended up looking. It's quite funny, I think.

ND State Fair!

The parade opens the fair every year. This was Saturday. We didn't get to go to the fair until Monday. But she brought in much more candy than last year, hehe. :) We are all still munching away at it. Every morning, afternoon, evening, bedtime, etc, she wants a piece of candy. Kids. ;)

I had to switch shifts in order to make it to my reunion banquet, so I missed going to the parade. But I'm pretty sure that Grandpa Heit is driving this car.

Finally! It's time for the fair! Where is the first place we went? The bathroom of course! Chelsea was happy to show her excitement for the fair. She's been waiting so long! A few days at least! We passed the fairgrounds when we went to my reunion and Chels got a glimpse of what to expect. She wanted to go right then!

Yay for petting zoos! She wasn't as interested as she was last year. But she did enjoy feeding the goats. This goat was especially slobbery and left quite the slime on both Beth and Chelsea. Good thing they have hand washing stations and sanitizer right there. Ick.

Just like a baby bird, Chelsea requested a bit of ice cream by opening her mouth wide and waiting. Auntie Beth was glad to oblige. We are big into sharing in our family. So much so that Chelsea feels entitled to have a part of or piece of anything that any one of us has. We'll have to work on distinguishing between mooching and sharing. :)

Petting the turtles was very fun to Chelsea. A new experience! Some of them were free to roam about and we were allowed to touch them.

She also enjoyed picking up the shavings laying around and watching them blow around in the wind. Until, that is, the lady said that the turtles pee in it. It was funny to see her face when she heard that. She got this look of disgust and she promptly dropped what she was holding and held her hand out like, ick, now what. That was the end of the turtle exploration. So funny! She wasn't interested anymore after that.

The albino kangaroo. Chelsea liked looking at these guys, despite the fact that it was super windy. She waved at them and said hi and bye. Cute!

The sign says, Please don't feed our birds your fingers. Do you think they would be ok with noses?

Yes, I'm making a frowny face. One time at dinner in order to make Chelsea take a bite, we told her mommy was sad and to make her happy she needed to take a bite. So she took a bite and then asked me to be sad again. So I was sad, she took a bite, and I was happy. It was a productive meal for her. For me not so much, but at least she ate, right? Anyway, now she'll ask me to be sad and I'll tell her to do something to make me happy, such as a hug or a kiss, or whatever it is I'm trying to get her to do. Silly thing, but whatever works I suppose. She wanted me to be sad. Don't know why, and I don't remembe what I had her do this time. Oh well.

We were headed out for the afternoon when we passed this cowboy doing his show. So we stopped and watched. Chelsea sort of watched. She really liked the horse and how he would take off his blanket and fetch the cowboy hat and lay on his back.

Finally heading home for nap time. We are all ready for a little break. It was a fight to keep Chelsea awake in the car on the way home, and then when we got there, she took FOREVER to go to sleep! Figures, eh?

Back for round two of fair day! After nap time we brought Grandma and Grandpa Kelly and Jennifer and Elizabeth and Uncle Greg (who met us there, really) to share in the fair fun. What is a fair without a blow up thing to jump in!

Chels had a ball jumping until she got bowled over once by a boy a little bigger than her. After that she was very cautious and mostly hung out in the corner by the net looking at the family. She got very leery of any kid that came near her. Ok. On to the next thing then!

Fishing! She wasn't quite sure what to do with the fishing pole. She's got a puzzle that she uses a magnetic fishing pole to get the fish, so I thought she would catch on quick. With some help from Auntie Jennifer she was able to catch TWO fish on her pole at once!

Her lovely prize for catching TWO fish. She loves this little ducky. He is a great addition to our stuffed animal collection.

It only cost us (well Grandpa Kelly actually) six tickets for Rick and Chelsea to ride the carousel. Poor Chelsea was two inches too short for all of the kiddie rides except the blow up things and the carousel. I was kinda sad for that because I know she would be able to handle most of them already. But we'll all just have to wait another year.

Grandma and Grandpa Heit work at the Pioneer Villiage every year. We stopped in to see them and to check out all the old houses and outbuildings. Chelsea really enjoyed going through all the buildings with Jennifer and the rest of the family. Mommy was tired and sat on a chair by Grandma at her post. Ah, chairs. They are great inventions.

Hey, this is fun! Look at me go!

And one more stop at the petting zoo before heading home for the night. What a busy day it's been! Chelsea asks to go to the fair everyday! But now it is officially over until next summer. She'll have a better idea of what to look forward to when next summer rolls around and we tell her "The fair is coming to town!"

Daddy's ____th Birthday

Miss Chelsea is great at helping to set the table. Utensils are her specialty at this point.
Daddy chose to have a roast for the Kelly-side celebration of the big 3-0. Oops, did I say that out loud? :)

No dessert was specified by Rick, so we went with one of Grandpa's favorites: strawberry shortcake! We cut the cake and then remembered the candles. Squishy cake=crooked candles. Chelsea was glad to help Daddy blow, but she let him create the smoke-effect himself. He got all the candles out.

Now to take the spoils!

And enjoy!

And here's yet another family photo. We are so cute!

I'm happy to be married to my "older man."He is wonderful and worth all of the many birthday celebrations that we have each year. (There are benefits to having both grandparents in town: many parties for each event, such as birthdays!) We will be going to the Heit's tonight for a combined birthday meal for Rick and Randy. I will attempt to remember the camera. If not, oh well. We didn't take any pictures at OUR celebration either. I love you, Rick!

10 Year Reunion

Here's the gang I sat with. I'll stick with first names: L-R Cassie, Chelsea, Rick, Nicole, Amanda's husband (don't know his name, sorry), Amanda, and another Amanda.

In case we forgot what year we graduated.

Some random photos on a board. I was not in any of them, surprise surprise, hehe.

The kids in our class that married each other. Those poor folks had to pay $90, full price for both classmates! At least I got off cheap by just bringing a "regular" guest, for a mere $75.

A poster about homecoming senior year. This is the extent of the decor. Actually there was one other poster by the dance floor, but it just said "Class of 99" also. I liked what they did at Rick's reunion. They had class photos from elementary school and junior high from many of the schools their graduates went to. It was fun seeing how people changed from then, to high school, to now. No such luck with my class. Sigh. Oh well.

There was only one other kid there and it was just a baby, but I don't feel bad about bringing Chelsea. This banquet was the only event of the reunion I went to. How else was I supposed to show off my cutie baby girl???

Jake and Katrina. These guys were good game-playing buddies when they lived here. Too bad they had to move away.

One of my best high school buds, Nicole. We met in my dad's class. She sat behind me and we were partners on a project. We got along just swimmingly from then on, hehe.

And of course, our little family. I've been really into family photos recently. Can you tell?

I wasn't sure what to expect when coming to my class reunion. I didn't know how many of the people that I actually hung out with would be there. I did know Nicole and Jenae were coming, so that boosted my optimism. I was a little disappointed in the turnout of "my" crowd, but there were lots of familiar faces and several people that I knew all the way back from kindergarten. I enjoyed catching up with them and just seeing their faces again. It was also lots of fun for me to be able to show off Chelsea. Everyone thought she was really cute and some people I didn't expect to speak to me, did come up to speak to me and tell me how cute she is, and ask about the next baby. That was fun. There were several others expecting babies soon too, which was fun to see.

I was surprised at the choice of food for this banquet. I was expecting something similar to Rick's ten year reunion, which I was privileged to go to two years ago. They had places set with silverware and water glasses and even individual cheesecake appetizers set at every place. Our tables had a tablecloth and a mirror with a tealight candle. I expected a MEAL similar to Rick's with pasta, sauces, salad, rolls, meat of some sort, etc. We had little buns with a token of ham on them, cheese and crackers, cold veggies and ranch, a noodle salad, deviled eggs, teeny tiny paper thin french bread "pizza" type things, and little smokies wrapped in bacon. Appetizers! All of it! That was the banquet. I thought that was really lame, expecially having to pay $75 for it. But I survived. And Chelsea had lots of things she was willing to eat, so that was nice. I'm glad I went though, despite the unimpressiveness of the food and decor. It's the people that matter, and I had a great visit.

Oh, and Rick won a door prize! He won a ten dollar gift certificate to Space Aliens! Woo hoo! We'll have to use it soon. Maybe on a special occasion, like in a few days... ;)