We had some extra time today before church and snapped a few pictures. Scott and Hailey had their primary program and did a great job!

39 weeks it will be on Wednesday and we are still waiting for this little guy! :)

 

 so sweet these girls! During the primary program Ari pointed up at the stage while the kids were singing and said, "There's Hailey! That's my sister!" I thought it was cute- she was proud

 I tried to get some outside of Hailey

She can't do serious for even a minute

We've had Grammy for over a week now and the kids are sure enjoying all the extra attention!

Kevin's Mom has been visiting this week. We went out to get breakfast Saturday morning and this was what we had across our street- 5 deer

 they even came running across our front yard! The kids were pretty excited. Our neighbors said we will probably be seeing them every day in the winter time.

 The girls making some crazy cheese faces

Since all the kids have been born earlier than the one before (like Scott at 40 weeks, Hailey at 39 weeks and Ari at 38 weeks) I was kinda planning on having this baby this week! The other thing that's been different is I usually have nothing happening until the day I have them but with this one I've been having contractions for a week and still no baby. I have been nesting though that's for sure! And since I don't have a new baby to post pictures about I guess I'll show some projects I've been doing.

Bow holder to match the upstairs bath- just spray painted an old picture frame I had and a board sprayed brown with some ribbons to match the bathroom.

The kids love doing art and I never have a cute way of displaying it except taping it to the back of their doors so finally I decided to hang up some cafe rods with the clip rings to hold the art work. One for the upstairs mudroom and one for the downstairs craft/art room

Then my ward (in our church) does a "Fabulous Friday" instead of a "Super Saturday" so from around 6 until midnight Friday night we were crafting. I picked these 3 and was a bit worried about how much work they were, but I was nesting big time and got all of them done before leaving. I went with my neighbor and we just had a blast. We ran out of paint for the boo jars and she said, "Well lets just buy some spray paint and do it at home" and I was like, "No way! Lets go to Walmart and get some! I'm not leaving until these are all done!" So we went to Walmart at almost 11 and finished up our projects around 11:45 or so.

Turkey for Thanksgiving

I couldn't resist these! So cute for Halloween!!

and these were quite the ordeal let me tell you. The bases are 3 pieces each and the tops are 2 and everything had to be painted and glued together. (like the bottoms are glass candle holders! awesome idea) What a project though I'm glad that one is done! But the fun part is you can buy different letters and do like "JOY" for the winter and fill it with peppermints, "HOP" for Easter...you get the idea

Then I was feeling awfly bad about doing all these projects around the house and nothing for this new baby! So I made this carseat cover

and this nursing cover

I guess I've just been trying to get everything done thinking this baby was coming but you know how it goes when everyone plans on a baby coming early they make you wait! On the brightside I have a bunch of projects done that I don't have to do....but still- I'd rather be holding my new baby! :)

38 weeks and waiting patiently...well sorta

Our wood floor is complete! Yeah! I won't bore you with all the pictures of the house, but I wanted to at least show some of the rooms upstairs that we did the most work on.

Here's our entryway BEFORE

white walls, gold hardware, ugly tile floors

 and AFTER

The flash kind of makes the walls look a bit yellow but they are crisp kaki. We painted the entire house this color (and all needed several coats because of the weird crazy colors they had!) We put hardwood floors in the entire upstairs and carpet in the 3 bedrooms upstairs along with the basement and also switched out all the gold hardware for satin

This is the white wall you would see when you walked into the front door with carpet too(and 2 closets along the wall) BEFORE

 AFTER

 directly to the right of the front door when you come in is this little sitting room

BEFORE

 AFTER

This is the living room and kitchen. It had a little carpet and then laminate floors in the kitchen which really made the little living room too small to use. That's one of the main reasons why we wanted the wood floors, to make it all one big room. You can also see how the cabinets in the kitchen were all one level on top

BEFORE

 AFTER

In the kitchen Kevin added a water line to the fridge, gas line to the stove (and laundry), electric for an over range microwave, moved a few cabinets up so they weren't all the same, put knobs on all the cabinets and we also got new appliances

 BEFORE

 AFTER

 the fridge Kevin wanted was the biggest fridge you can buy lol so we actually also had to take out the door to the pantry and put in an accordian one instead

 the little living room (you can see how tiny it was with the carpet)

BEFORE

AFTER

(We are going to hide the tv cords and have since decorated with a plant and pictures, etc. and gotten rid of the wood floor boxes too :)

 

BEFORE

 AFTER

 Also upstairs:

 Our master was a dark olive green along with the bathroom, Ari and Baby rooms had walls and the bathroom was almost an orange color. We painted everything, put new carpet, added knobs to all the cabinetry in the bathrooms and replaced all the doorknobs and we also put in blinds throughout the whole house (bought online and did ourselves- so much cheaper!)

Downstairs:

The carpets were all forest green! Actually Hailey's carpet was purple and Scott's walls were lime green and his trim and doors were painted purple (seriously people!). The guest room had wallpaper too that was oh so fun to take down so of course we painted all of downstairs and got new carpet and changed the doorknobs and cabinet knobs.

 I had to add a picture of why Hailey and Scott wanted us to buy this house so bad- "the secret hideout door" that connects Hailey's walk-in closet to Scott's walk-in closet. They love it!

Kevin has been working crazy amounts of hours at work and I know he wasn't thrilled about working on the house every night once he finally came home, but he did it and we are super excited it's done! Thanks Kevin for all your hard work!!!! :)

Because the last few posts were about big brother and sister going off to school, this one is all for Ari :)

This was her choice of outfit the other day-she is such a goof ball.

 The kids don't start school here until 9 so we usually have it all together by the time we walk out the door, but on crazy mornings where someone (aka Hailey) throws a fit about her outfit or hair or something and I'm not able to get Ari dressed and ready, she rides to school with this going on. This is how her hair looks every morning, sometimes even worse.

Business in the front, party in the back wouldn't ya say? I have to admit though I absolutely love looking back at my mirror to see the big poof in her carseat....makes me laugh every time

 Last night Scott had a school event with just Dad, so the girls had bathtime and then we painted our nails and did braids. I'm soooo excited she can wear 2 braids now- absolutely adorable! :)

Now an update on Ari and her eating issues. Yes, this cute adorable face has major issues with eating....which we can't really complain about because she's an absolute angel in every other way.

Well she's not just your typical defiant eater or power struggle eater, she really deep down inside is scared of most foods. She's always had major problems with gagging and even dry heaving just looking at food, so her experiences haven't been positive and now she's scared to eat.

So after a week of observations and testings, she has qualified for an occupational therapist to help her with these issues. I'm so excited! They said we will probably be working on this for the next 5 years and it's definitely a marathon not a sprint. Her goal for the next 6 months when she turns 3? To get her to bite, chew and swallow one piece of meat and one piece of vegetable. I had no idea that there are 25 steps to eating your food! She use to not even let a plate sit in front of her (she'd push it across the table) and now she sits it in front of her and will look at it. That's about step #5 so we have a way to go.

I've already learned so much just from her first session today! First of all- no more baby food (the only thing she loves) and no more trying to get her to take a bite of anything. Her goal for each meal is touch each piece of food before she can be done. If she doesn't do this then she can take her plate to the trash or sink, but isn't allowed to dump it in- she has to physically pick up and throw away each piece of food. Along with the touching we have do to lots of crafts with food and play games like "who can find the toy hidden in the bottom of these dry noodles!?" (sounds fun right? :)

I was soooo proud of her today! The therapist kept sticking a piece of cheese on her fork and having Ari take it off (this is huge). She would say, "Oh no! It got stuck can you help it off?" You could tell Ari was getting pretty frustrated like "Okay lady quit putting that crap on my fork!" lol but then she dared her to kiss a carrot and kiss a piece of cheese (both of which she never touched until today) and she actually "kissed" the cheese! First it was just in the air, but after several attempts she touched it to her lips and kissed it... and then frantically wiped off her lips and took a bite of her sandwich, but that's okay! Since I cut the cheese into cubes and we got past touching it and then kissing it, I have to always give her the cheese cut like this or I have to start over again because she will think it's a different food. (Yes, she can even tell a fresh fruit from canned and use to only eat it if it was canned!)

So this is our goal each day to have one meal we work on and hope she can continue to grow and improve. Oh she is still the cutest thing on the planet seriously! We just love her to pieces! :)

 Hailey had her first day of preschool on Friday

This was a few days before at her preschool orientation. The theme for the year is Dr. Seus, so of course they got a special Lorax tree....so cute!

We are super excited about her preschool this year. She gets 2 hours of learning and instruction with no recess, and then the last hour is an academy class. Monday is gymnastics, Wednesday is swimming and Friday switches between dance and tennis. As you can imagine Hailey is super thrilled about this! I'm sure she will also be super bored when she gets to kindergarten next year, but oh well :) She needs to be physically busy-it's just how she stays happy

Thursday night (September 6th) Hailey learned how to ride her bike without training wheels! Kevin had the super great idea of taking off her pedals along with her training wheels earlier in the week. For 2 days or so she was just scooting along on her pedal-less bike to get the hang of the balancing. Then Thursday night he put her pedals back on and you'll see on the video but she just took off! He never once had to run behind her holding her seat or anything...just crazy! Now she's already riding around on the grass (more like dirt in our yard right now), getting speed and trying to go up hills. Good job Hailey!

Oh yeah you have to hear her on this video saying, "First grader!" Well the only kids around here without training wheels are the 1st graders, so she thinks she's pretty cool!" lol

Hailey Riding Bike (longer) from Nicole on Vimeo.

 Tis the season for canning peaches! :)

Hailey and Ari have been helping me this week for the fun event. We went to Brigham City to pick up several bushels of my favorite peaches- early alberta.

 She thought it was way fun to "line up" all the peaches and replace them as we used them. Including the ones my wonderful neighbor brought me from her tree we did almost 50 quarts of peaches! My neighbor thought it was going to put me in labor, but there was no way I was missing out since I didn't get to do them while we were in Missouri.

It was a very busy few days- glad to be done with that project!