Cross Country Race

Sept. 24, we went to Oak Park to take a walk. We noticed that there were millions (almost) of kids there. There is apparently a cross country race there every Monday for five weeks. Any kids, even pre-k, can run it. Wow! How did I not know that? Anyway, Adora was really disappointed that she didn't get to run that week, so she actually jumped in mid-way with the elementary school kids. We went to the next race on the 1st, and she competed with the pre-school kids. She got 13th for the girls with a time of 8:36.98 on a half mile. She raced again this past Monday and was much, much faster (Jake was around this time, so he and Salem chased her). I will find out her time in the next couple of weeks. That was the last race. Just in time, too. It started snowing yesterday.

Photo Book

Click here to view this photo book larger

Photo Book Tip: Create an adventurous travel photo album at Shutterfly.com.

Washington, D. C.

Jake and I went to Washington, D. C. about a month ago for him to interview for a job as a Presidential Advance Agent. He was chosen! It means he will go on several trips throughout the year in advance of the President, mostly, and set up the airport for his arrival. Anyway, I went to D. C. along with him to take advantage of a semi-babymoon and because I figure if I hadn't been in my first 30 years, I probably wouldn't get another opportunity to go in my second 30 years, and I've always wanted to go, so. . . it was time!

We ate at a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown the first evening we were there. It was cool how they served hot tea on every table. Chinese people don't believe in mixing cold drinks with hot food. (We also got ice water, though.) Anyway, here is a sampling of the menu. Yum!

This was the best thing at the restaurant--a shrimp roll, or something like that.

We were trying to get a self-portrait in front of the Capitol building.

My handsome guy!

My sister keeps complaining that she doesn't realize that I am having a baby soon because she hasn't seen any pregnant pictures of me, so here you go, Laura--I am just a month further along now!

Some kind Asian tourist took this picture of us. I was surprised how many Asian tourists were touring our capitol--I don't know if I have that much interest in the capitols of other countries.

This is at the FDR memorial. I have mostly pictures of things and not pictures of Jake and me because I did so much sightseeing along while he was at work, but after a girl in a wheelchair asked me to take her picture with this statue of FDR in his wheelchair, she offered to take mine, too, so I happily agreed :)

This is Jake at the Library of Congress. I thought it wasn't that interesting, but he wished we'd had more than an hour to spend in there.

This is a replica of the annointing stone that was used to annoint Jesus's body prior to his entombment. Behind me is a replica of his tomb. In real life, the annointing stone was very close to the cross and not so close to the tomb (I think they said). It was at a cool Franciscan monastery!

 This is at dinner with some of the people who work with the President's Advance Agents program and the new hirees.

Why did this one upload way down here? It is from the Chinese restaurant on the first evening. Jake is drinking his hot tea.

Sweet Eyes vs. Spastic Eyes

You tell me which is sweet and which is spastic :) I am not quite sure why Adora turns sweet eyes into such an event, but it's hilarious. This is from a month ago.

Adora's poem

She made it up by herself!


I tuck in tight.
I pull out the light.
I say good night!

Yellowstone falling into place!

I have wanted to go to Yellowstone for a long time, and we are finally taking that opportunity! We are leaving later this month to go to a dinosaur museum in Glendive and then stay overnight in Miles City. I am excited because I booked the hotel tonight (with a free breakfast and the all-important POOL) at 15% off because I searched for a deal on the hotel's website. (BTW, why are hotels in the middle-of-nowhere-Montana so dang expensive?! Wait, it's probably the oil boom. Dang oil! We should at least get cheap gas out of that, right?) The next day, we will head to Nye, MT to meet up with 13 other Hostetlers on Kristen's land (too bad she and her hubby won't be there--they are fighting fires in Alaska). Kristen & John live in a camper on their land and just finished building a yert that they will be moving into this winter. I think it's funny that they snowbird to Montana for the winters, but hey, what do I know about living in Alaska?

Kristen's yert in Nye, MT

The following day, we will head into Yellowstone to stay at our awesome vacation rental!
http://www.brooktroutinn.com/brooktrouthome.html
It sleeps 18 in 6 bedrooms and is 3450 sq. ft. I am super pumped to get together and see everyone. It's been since October--I just wish Kristen could make it, too! We will spend the days at Yellowstone seeing the sights and the evenings here hanging out together for some family QT. After that, we will probably go to Wyoming for a few days before heading back to Minot. This is my last trip before the baby, by the way!

Speaking of the baby, she is doing great! She was head down at my appointment last week, although I assume she can still easily move around. She does move a lot, but I mostly notice it when I'm still, which isn't often. A couple of times, Salem has patted my belly and said, "Bebe!", and Adora loves to feel her move. We are working on picking out a name, but haven't found the one yet. I took my glucose test the other day to screen for gestational diabetes, and I didn't get a call saying I needed to take another test, so I assume I passed that.

The basement is coming along well. The electrical inspection today went well--Jake has to fix a couple of things, but it doesn't sound like a really big deal. Plumbing is going ok. It is actually really frustrating sometimes, but it is getting done, which is the main thing. We still need to run cable and insulate and then, hopefully, Lutheran Disaster Response will come over to help hang sheetrock. Baby will be born in 3 months, and I feel like we're making good progress! Almost every night, Jake and I are down there working after the kids go to sleep. It's good to see it paying off.

Daddy Daughter Dance

Jake took Adora to the Daddy Daughter Dance out at the base tonight (Adora laughed so hard when I called it the Father Daughter Dance). She had a great time. They decorated balloons and wands, got tiaras to wear, had a big overstuffed chair to take professional pictures in, and danced the night away. Oh yeah, and they had rolls, mac & cheese, and chicken fingers for dinner. Plus TWO different kinds of cookies for dessert.

Adora wanted this headband and all these clips in her hair.

Here she is posing before the dance in her beautiful dress.

Look at my big skirt!

Daddy on just an hour and a half of sleep. He is working 10:30 p. m.-11:00 a. m. with no sleep. He came home and had to finish the electrical because we had an inspection on it today. He got to sleep an hour and a half before the dance and now he is sleeping another hour before he has to go back to work.

Sweet kiss!

Adora at the dance with the wand she made and the tiara and corsage they gave her.

Her favorite part was the crafts :)

Being silly with Daddy at the dance!

Jake told me that at some point, she was spinning and spinning and crashed into the tables :) For some reason, blogger won't let me upload a video of them dancing.

Adora's 4-year checkup

I am setting an alarm when I nap during the day because I am so stressed out with our house that I need to spend some of nap time organizing stuff or I will go crazy. Literally! So I have been waking up while the kids are napping or having quiet time to go through some papers and sorting them and filing them and that kind of stuff. I ran across the paperwork from Adora's 4-year checkup. I wanted to record her weight and height so I can put it in her 4-year photobook, whenever I get around to doing THAT (it'd better be before the baby's born!). Anyway, she was 33 lbs. and 39.75" tall. The kids are both doing great! Salem is recovering from a stomach virus. She got a molar, too, so now she has five teeth on top and two on bottom.

Dentist

The girls both had dentist appointments today, and they both did great. Adora even got x-rays! Weird. I was unprepared for that. I hate exposing her to radiation--did she really need it? I don't know. It showed her front top four adult teeth forming over her baby teeth. Adult teeth are twice as big as baby teeth! So the dentist said all her spaces are good :) The two adult teeth on the sides are forming sideways, but he said they should straighten out as her mouth grows and creates more room. She has no cavities and has 100% overbite. It may be causing her bottom teeth to bump against the roof of her mouth (or something) and chip. If it does it with her adult teeth, she will probably have to go to the orthodontist when she is 8 or 9. Salem did great, with her six teeth. Her molars are really close to coming in, as are the two teeth just on the outside of the bottom middle. She also has no cavities. Her thumb sucking has caused mild damage to her top teeth, pulling them out a little. The dentist said not to try to stop her thumb sucking until she is about 3, though. He also said that once some kids with severe damage stop sucking their thumbs around age 3, their mouths go back to normal in about six months! So that is cool. They will both be in the newspaper for the no cavity club. I love this dentist way better than the Kool Smiles dentist because I got way more information and they had different flavors of flouride (which they didn't call candy, like they do at KS), so Adora didn't hate the flouride so much.

Update on Salem's sleeping--she is doing much better. If she had her own room, I think she would sleep through the night most of the time. As it is, Adora wakes her up when she goes to bed about 50-75% of the time. Salem still wakes up around 5:00 sometimes and needs someone to go in and hold her a minute before she goes back to sleep. That is a pain, but not nearly as bad as it used to be. It mostly is bad when she wakes up Adora before 6:00 because then I have two cranky kids for the morning. I feel a lot better now that Salem is sleeping better, but I still enjoy having an afternoon nap.

Lutheran Disaster Relief called me Tuesday morning to let me know that a crew was on their way! I had spoken to someone from LDR the day before who told me that they had a crew who could probalby install our kitchen floor this week, so once I got the call, we rushed to get our floor completely cleaned and prepped for the crew. When they got here, though, they told us they were going to frame up our basement! Even better! After three days of work, the framing down there is 80% complete. What a huge relief! It looks so great. Our room is going to be so much bigger, and we are going to have a huge closet where Adora's old room was. The bathroom will also be bigger, and Jake thinks we can even fit a tub in there. The family room was once two rooms and will now be one--much better because you couldn't really do anything with the two little rooms before. I am also excited to soon have an enclosed laundry room, because the washer and dryer are so loud echoing in that huge basement. The girls and I are going to visit their new cousins tomorrow, so Jake will have another week where we are gone, and I hope that he can get lots done while we are gone. The volunteers that were here are going back home to Michigan tomorrow, but I hope that LDR will send us another crew. Who knows. They even have a master electrician to wire, but I don't know how far down the list we are for that. Jake is planning on just getting his self-wiring permit and starting it himself because we can't just wait around for the help when we have a baby coming in four-and-a-half months.

I think the kids are asleep, and I need to finish packing for our trip!

New Baby Girl!

Sucking her left thumb! The weird-looking stuff by her head is uterus or placenta or something like that. I probably won't comment a whole lot on these because they are mostly labeled.

You can see her left eye lens in this photo!

You can faintly see her left hand up by her face in this one, close to her nose.

I am so excited to have a new baby girl on the way! Girls are awesome. I don't really know what I'd do with a boy, although I'm sure I'd figure it out. I will get to reuse all our girl stuff, which is neat, because it's so fun to see Salem in an outfit that I remember Adora wearing. The only pitfall is trying to pick out another girl name since my favorite two are already taken :) Anyway, my ultrasound was really cool. They clicked on the 3D so we could see really neat pictures and videos of baby girl doing cool things like sucking her thumb and twirling her hair (well, probably not really twirling her hair, but her right hand was up by her head just like Salem does when she sucks her left thumb!). So now, you get to see them, too :)

Thumb sucking in action! I can't believe she still has like 20 more weeks until birth! She looks ready to come out already and soothe herself :)

This baby already weighs 10 oz. and measured 19 weeks and 3 days (I was 20 weeks and 3 days at my ultrasound). That, to me, puts her right on par to be born about a week late--like my other two! So I anticipate a birthday of around 09/10/12!