Big Girl Room

I was hesitant to post about this excitement too soon, but after almost 2 weeks our Clara has officially transitioned to her big girl bed in her upstairs bedroom! We started her off taking naps upstairs and had planned on putting on a railing and moving her bed against the wall, but she was doing so well with the naps and the railing ended up not fitting her style of bed so we let her try without and so far, so good! We still use a video monitor to make sure that she doesn't get out of her bed on her own or roll around too much at night. We are SO proud of our BIG GIRL! Now our focus is giving the nursery of good cleaning so it will be ready when "Gem" comes.

Mama with precious "Gem" at 37 weeks

It is hard to believe that 37 weeks have gone by so quickly, but here we are! It could really happen any time now, but we feel pretty confident that she'll keep cooking another few weeks.
(For fun, compare to this photo at 37 weeks with Scout.)

Mommy & Scout's last little road trip before "Gem"

Last Sunday, Daddy had a lot of work to do so Mommy & Clara took our last little road trip together before "Baby Gem" arrives. I am to the point in my pregnancy that I shouldn't really travel too far away from home and am realizing how much I need Kevin around for some of the physical aspects of my life like lifting Clara and getting our bags and her stroller in and out of the car. Luckily this trip I had a lot of help from my parents and one of my oldest and dearest friends, Christy.

In all honesty, Clara is getting to a great age to "help" me out with many little things, she runs in and gets my shoes (as long as I am willing to wear whatever pair she brings ;-), throws away her own snack wrappers, and is great at picking up all the MANY various things I seem to drop lately! She really is a great helper and hopefully all this help will continue when her baby sister arrives.

Clara's first corndog

On our little road trip we headed to Chehalis for a few days and since Grandma and Grandpa Stevens were busily painting their house, it was a great opportunity to spend some time with Christy and her boys who were also in Chehalis for the weekend. The SWW Fair seemed to be the best idea for a fun activity for us to do with the kiddos. While the SWW Fair was such an important part of my childhood as a 4-H member, it has been about nine years since I have been back to the fair. It was so nice to get to share my experiences with Clara and to reminisce with Christy, also a trusty 4-Her!

One important stop for me was visiting the rabbit barn, a place where my family spent so much time during the fair and made a lot of very special memories. This year there were not as many rabbits but I had the chance to see some cute bunnies and run into a few familiar faces.

Clara was curious about lots of the interesting things that she saw at the fair, like the cowboy on the chicken...

...and the rides, much larger in scale than what she rode on the previous weekend at Remlinger.

One highlight of the day was catching the JP Patches show. JP is such a Seattle icon and has entertained several generations. Apparently, Grandpa Mark was on the JP Patches show as a child with his boyscout troop. Scout was a little young to be brought up on stage, but Hayden and Logan got to.

Logan and JP even preformed a duet of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star - absolutely precious!

Next we headed over to the kids area where Logan and Hayden spotted the pump cars. Clara of course wanted to ride as well and Christy, who is always up for a thrill, jumped in an volunteered to take her - Somehow I couldn't imagine me with this pregnant belly trying to keep up with the kids, so I kept to photography duty!

Hayden

Logan

Clara then flocked to the craft area where she applied hand sanitizer on SEVERAL occasions. Our joke right now is that she is taking on some of Grandma Jan's cleanly obsessions and insists on washing her hands MANY times a day. I am assured by other mothers of tots that the excuse to play in the water is just another stage most kids go through. I sure hope so, because we can't go on too much longer washing our hands at every sink in sight (or arguing about why we can't)!

After checking out more animals and an essential trip to the wildlife building to see the fish, we indulged in more treats! Clara selected a ice cream bar dipped in sprinkles. We typically share treats whenever we go to an outing of this sort, but since it was late in the day and we had skipped a nap, when I took a bite out of "her" ice cream cone, Scout made a sound so obnoxious and horrifically loud it drowned out all of the commotion of the fair and everyone looked at us (me). Christy was way down the midway in the elephant ear line and was able to identify it as Clara! In order to calm her down, my 37 week pregnant self got down to her level and have a quiet discussion with her, juggling the ice cream cone she no longer wanted, lost my balance and fell a bit forward only to get my earring caught in her hair. I couldn't figure out a way to stand up and was quickly loosing my balance - Chaos!

It was not too much longer and Clara was willing to settle down and apologize in order to have some of her treat. That little meltdown aside, Christy and I deemed the day long outing with all three kids a success.

We hit the "footsie wootsie" chairs on the way out!

The next day we enjoyed spending time with Grandma Jan and went and picked up our bassinet from Matt & Danielle's before heading home. We are planning on spending the next few weeks close to home and getting everything ready for our precious lil' "Gem" to arrive.

Delight of Great Grandchildren

During Matt and Danielle's visit, it was really important to Matt to make a trip to visit Grandma Elaine. He had not been to see her in quite a while and she had yet to meet little Brendan. While Grandma's warm spirit and love of family is still extremely present, her memory has been significantly slipping over the past year and each time we make a visit, we prepare ourselves for a time when she doesn't recognize us as her grandchildren. This time that was not the case and I could tell Matt felt so overjoyed when her face lit up as he snuck up behind and embraced her with his hug.

Grandma loved watching the girls laugh and play together.

She was absolutely tickled to see Matt and his growing family.

And of course, to meet Brendan...

Grandma loves babies and since Bren is such a sweet and happy little guy she was tickled to get all of the fun expressions out of him!

Grandma even commented to Matt when we came back after lunch that Brendan
"really looks like you boys" (which he really does) indicating that she was able to remember Matthew and Ryan as babies.

It had been a few weeks since Grandma had seen Clara and while she can't always remember her name and never how old she is, she ALWAYS makes a comment on her eyes. This time she leaned over to me with a wink and said, "I wonder where she gets them dark eyes!" Her statements are heartwarming to me because I have always felt honored to share my grandmother's big brown eyes. When I was first pregnant with Clara, Kevin and I went to Grandma's house to share the news with her. In her delight she joked that she didn't care whether the baby was a boy or a girl, as long as it has "those big black eyes." So very glad to fulfill your request, Grandma!

Remlinger Farms

We recently had a fun visit from my brother Matt and his family, Danielle, Taylor and Brendan who is now 6 months old already. While we get to see them fairly often in Chehalis, it had been a while since they had come to visit and so we tried to make the most of it for the kids. We decided to make a trip out to Remlinger Farms, a very popular family farm/amusement park located in Carnation. Surprisingly, this was our first trip out there, but it was such a hit, we are sure to return!! We went expecting there to be a crowd because it was a hot summer day, but ended up being surprised with how few people were there and how few lines we had to stand in - perfect for Taylor, Clara & Uncle Matt (not known for his patience)!

Right after getting into the park, we headed right over to the pony rides. Clara loves to look at horses, but her opinion of touching them, let alone riding one, has been very hot and cold over the past year. We half expected her to fuss and not want to have anything to do with one, but were thrilled to see her allow Kevin to put her on little "Spice" and take off on the ride. I guess it was one of those "I'm gonna do whatever big cousin Taylor does" scenarios and while we didn't get too much expression out of her on the ride, she has talked about enjoying it quite a bit since which is pretty typical of Clara.

Uncle Matt & Bren who is such a sweet little guy. He just goes along with whatever and seems to love watching his big sister and cousin play. It will be neat to see how he and "Gem" get along since they will only be 7 month apart.

After the pony rides, and some climbing we were off on the cute little train where we all got to ride together. I tried hard to capture some expression from the girls but they both seemed to be taking it all in!

The Michael Family, in our last month of being a family of 3, posing on an antique fire truck. They had great stuff like this for the kids to climb around and explore, but with it so hot outside the girls were not doing too much climbing on the hot metal.

Clara's first roller coaster ride with Daddy. Mommy really wanted to go to since I am such a fan on roller coasters, but Uncle Matt scolded me for even thinking about it since there was a sign that said pregnant women should not ride. Maybe we'll come back in a few weeks and see if it really would induce labor!

After a nice lunch in the air conditioned cafeteria, we attended part of the musical program. The girls were fascinated by the show. They went to the front to pick out musical instruments with the rest of the kids but refused to stay up front with the other children for the song.

There was really only one ride that the girls were too small for, but it didn't stop Matt & Kevin. They had a blast racing these bikes!

Clara on the vintage Merry-go-round

Canoe Rides for the girls

While I didn't go on the roller coaster, I did defy my brother and take the girls on this fun pumpkin ride. It actually went faster than I realized and with the centrifugal force, I ended up squashing poor Tay into the wall of the pumpkin. Good thing she's a tough little gal!

By 2:30, both girls were starting to slow down and all of the adults were getting pretty warm, so we headed back home after grabbing an ice cream treat! All three of the kids sacked out in the car before we even got back on the main road. The capstone of a successful day!

Celebrating 5 Wonderful Years of Marriage

Last Thursday morning Kevin and I dropped Clara Natalie off at Grandma and Grandpa Stevens and headed for a little anniversary getaway in Portland. We chose Portland because Kevin had a mediation scheduled there on Thursday plus we are fairly limited on destinations since I shouldn't be too far from home. He ended up working all day on Thursday so I was able to get in some shopping, leisurely child-free meals and even found a great park to enjoy a little sun and a great book. I savored every second of the personal time since I don't anticipate having too much of it in the future.
Kevin did a little research and selected the Hotel deLuxe, a perfect fit for us! The hotel was themed around the Golden Age of Cinema and was quaint but extremely charming! Together we did some exploration of the city and had some fabulous meals, capping each day off with restful and uninterrupted night's sleep.
At 35 weeks pregnant with precious "Gem", I am waddling around slowly and having to sit to rest much more than I'd like, which impacted the weekend quite a bit. But in the same way, it was good for the two of us to have some time to focus on this pregnancy, making a few small purchases for the little gal and allowing the opportunity to for Kevin to hear all about her movement and position throughout each day. After dinner, Daddy was even treated to some crazy belly commotions courtesy of Gem.
We were excited to see Clara by Sunday, but are very thankful for the opportunity to spend some time alone together before we embark on our next life changing adventure of adding to our family.

Loving her BIG GIRL bed!

We have yet to receive the curtains or the blinds for Clara's new room so she has not slept a night in her bed, but I let her talk me into putting the bedding on the bed and letting her try it all out. Since then it has been a morning routine to select some books, climb up into her bed and spend some time reading. Mommy is thrilled with this newly discovered independence as it allows me a little time to get some things done around the house (or rest). Clearly, our Scout is so proud of the stuff she has picked out for her room and hopefully will transition to her new room easily!