Beth Had a Birthday, Shout Hoo-ray!

 Chelsea has the cutest face here, hehe. Happy Birthday to Auntie Beth!

 Beth looks pretty snazzy in her new clothes as well! 

 Here we have Grandma Kelly, working diligently on a baby blessing blanket, which she has now finished. It looks wonderful!

 Grandpa Kelly is chillin' out while watching the prezzie-opening.

 Brie was in and out of the action. She's eating a bag of fruit snacks, one of which has made it to the floor. (Surprise, surprise.) She knows she's supposed to sit at the counter to eat. Good girl.

 Jennifer and I were both playing the role of photographer.

Notice the infant car seat sitting here, ready and waiting to be useful once again. Maybe soon...

Autie Beth got some nifty Hex Bug Nano things with a habitat, among other things. Science people like that sort of thing. ;) The girls liked looking at the bugs but initially the vibrating bugs gave them the heeby-jeebies! By the end of the night they were alright touching them ever so briefly, and only if necessary to get it back in the habitat. So funny!

And here we have me at 38 weeks. This is the point that Brie decided to come all on her own. I've been waiting since Wednesday for this little one to decide she wants to enter the world. I found out on my last Dr. appointment (last Wednesday, five days ago) that I'm dilated to 3cm, 80% effaced, and -2. Progress! This was more progress than I expected. So all week since, I've been very...aware...of every little movement, pain, pressure, etc. taking note if it felt even remotely like a contraction. Nothing has. Bah. I'm not REALLY antsy for the baby to come quite yet. The only real reason I would want baby to come early is a selfish one: it is FAR easier to recover after having a smaller (aka early) baby. I'd rather have a baby that is "done" though and suffer a little bit more in the process personally than have to deal with breathing tubes or feeding problems or any such thing. 

Dr. was none too gentle with his exam last week. I'm wondering if he stripped a couple membranes (sorry if this is TMI) in the process. All that evening I felt pressure in my lower belly and baby has definitely dropped more. Well, we'll see if I've made any further progress at my next Dr. appointment. My next Dr. appointment is Wednesday afternoon, RIGHT before I go in to work for the evening. Should be interesting if Dr. prods as aggressively as he did last time...

:)

Today-Part Two

Flood Journal? Yes, please.

Be sure to read Today-Part One, which is after this post to read about the events of earlier today. It has been quite a busy day!

 The baby girls missed out on some good old fashioned fun swimming this evening. Good thing Chris, Amanda, and Wesley could come!

 My belly was dragging on the bottom of the pool if I wasn't careful, hehe. Brie hitched a ride with Daddy while Chelsea clung to the pole. She thought it was neat that she could do that. There are buckets overhead that are usually filling with water and then dumping down on folks. It didn't hurt my feelings that they were not functioning today. I don't really like getting dumped on, and the girls don't either even though they always think they will. They never do. 

 Alright, I give in. Here is a *gulp* swimsuit shot of me. Scary, I know. Enjoy it, because this is the last full body swimsuit shot you will probably ever see of me. Yes it is blurry. I am aware. ;)

 And yes, this does in fact give me some motivation to work out after having this baby. I look a bit tubby in many of the shots I'm in (thanks to Beth for taking these pics by the way!) which is why you will never see them. Bwah ha ha!

 Little kids are SO cute to watch have fun in kiddie pools. The tiny little slides are so exciting to them. The beach ball and noodles are so intriguing to them. I love it!

 Brie was really cute playing with this little fountain. She had been trying to get some in her mouth, and I was encouraging her to try it again for the picture. But then she was just having fun opening her mouth like me instead of playing in the water. What goofs we grown ups become for our little kids. And to get a good picture of them doing their funny things. 

 See what I mean about the noodles? They are so versatile and can be just about anything. Including binoculars.

Chelsea was having a blast beaning Uncle Chris on the head repeatedly with this beach ball. He played along quite nicely. He must have kids or something. ;)

Tomorrow I get to visit the doctor once again and take the Group-B Strep test or whatever it is. Pleasantness. *sure* 

In the evening there will be a family fun night at the Our Redeemer's Church with free food and games and bouncy things that is open to the community. We definitely plan to take advantage! Thursday there is a pot luck for flood victims and their families at Magic City (flood vics are not required to bring anything, but the other folks are asked to) and then on Friday there is an Applebees's-goodbye-night-out (Applebee's is a traditional girls night out for us) for a coworker of mine. I will be eating a lot this week. Good thing I'm not on that weight loss plan yet.

Today-Part One

To the Flood Journal Post I go!

 These pictures are a bit haphazard as far as their order, but oh well. I'm too lazy to try to fix it. 

This morning we had weeds that were like THIS all over the yard, as well as  lots of trash and debris laying around the yard. 

 And this little guy was smidging around in our basement the other day. We didn't see him today.

 Amanda took care of those monster weeds and trash. Yay! It's been bugging me having all that in our yard, even though every yard looks that way. Thanks, Amanda! She found some interesting things, such as a whole crayfish carcass, among other things.

 How do you feel about cleaning, boys? That good, eh? Just kidding. They did Grrrrrrrreat! Thanks, Rick and Chris!

 It was a busy day at our house. Along with cleaning, there were people picking up debris on the boulevards. There is a video of this below. I thought it was pretty interesting at least.

 The siding is now clean!

 And so is the deck!

The sinkhole that is right here in front of our house was also being worked on today. The street was blocked off, but luckily Forest Road is a handy detour, as well as a place for me to park and easily reach the house.  I have a video of them digging around in the pit as well, but it's not very interesting to watch. It was interesting to watch in person, though, which is why I took a video in the first place.

I watched for a little while and one of the guys came over asking me if I was waiting for them to get out of my way so I could leave the driveway or something. Nope. I parked out of the way. I learned that the folks doing this were all from Virginia. There was a father and two sons, and then another person who was also from Virginia on their crew. In case you were curious.

Along with all of this that is going on, we were expecting our flood insurance check to be delivered today. It was coming by way of UPS. We weren't too sure that UPS would even try to deliver it with the road being blocked off and tons of vehicles directly in front of our house. So I went to the UPS office (did you know their hours are from 4:30 pm to 5:00 pm? crazy!) and had them tell their driver to not even try and deliver it, (it needed a signature, of course)  but to bring it back to UPS and we would pick it up after he got done with his deliveries. 

Which we DID DO!

We have our $15,000 advance check in hand (that we never did anything with in case the claim didn't go through), the check for the remainder of the balance, a check for $1000 for taking our belongings out of the house, and a check for nearly $500 for putting up sandbags (even though they didn't do a lick of good in the end.) To the bank we go tomorrow! Next step: we are probably going to try to sell the house as it is, which should still give us a good start on a whole new house, in a different location outside of the flood zone. We have already had someone interested in buying it, but we couldn't work with his payment preferences. Rats. Oh well. Wish us luck! A few prayers on the matter wouldn't hurt either. ;)

Heit Pic-a-nic

 You can see just about everybody in this picture. Wesley is hiding there behind Chris, but he's featured later. Randy came also, but he didn't appear until a little later when most of us had finished eating. I didn't get a picture of him at all apparently....sorry!

 Ok here's later. These two were ready to go back to the playground instead of eating much. Neither of them cleaned their plates before heading back out to play, hehe. Brie is in the stage where she eats next to nothing and I wonder how she stays alive. But she does stay alive, and she's happy, so we go with it.

 Chris and Amanda and kiddos. It is very nice to have them here visiting. This is our first time meeting the twins. They are cute in person just like in pictures. And not to forget Wesley, he's also quite cute. :) They are related to US after all. :) :) :) hehe

 Chelsea is big enough to go on this part of the play equipment. It stumped Brie however. She had to go down and around instead of across.

 Siding! That's what Brie would say, anyway. These two can't get enough of slides.

 The little girls got to try it out also.

 Wesley was happy to "smile" for me in this shot.

 You know, they've told me which twin is Katelynn and which one is Kairi several times, but for some reason it doesn't stick in my brain. This little one was not as impressed with the slides by the time I took her pictures. She WAS happy and smiling previously.

 Two of my cuties hanging out. Awww.

I love family. What more can I say. I'm really glad our kids get to see their cousins sometimes, even though it's not very often.