Author: Nikki

I’m dedicated, however slowly, to a few blogs that I love.  I feel as though I know the writers personally and like I’m looking in through a window on their lives. This idea draws me in two very different directions – are blogs reducing and/or changing the ways in which we engage with others or are the allowing technology to reduce geographic challenges? and – I would like to create that sort of environment for friends and family we don’t see often to keep up with us (other than just through pictures on Ben’s site).

So, is this a good format to engage?  If so, what would you like to know about?  Daily activities, struggles, what direction our family is headed, something else entirely?

It’s been a while, and Casey and Ben have been keeping us very busy.  They’re fabulous, and exhausting!  I did draft a post late March, but I just found it today, so I thought I’d start over and give the whole big update.

–  finish the guest room

I think it’s gotten more junk in it recently, but we’ll get there.  The new throw pillows for the couch are on the bed, waiting on the seam of one to be fixed, the mirror for the new dresser in our room is waiting to be installed, and then there’s a pile of boxes that are empty and a pile waiting to go into the attic.  Sometime in the next few weeks, I’ll change Ben’s clothes out and the pile to go to the attic will move out.  Maybe I’ll get sewing stuff out at some point and fix the pillow, hem the couple of pair of pants, and such that needs.  As for the lamps and the picture… no progress.  I’m still hopeful for having this back as a functional guest room by the end of the year.  The pile of boxes of hand-me-down items are also in need of going through and finding homes.  I don’t want to talk about that though.

– learn to coupon

I don’t regularly get the paper, but I do pay attention online to grocery sale ads and when the coupons in the paper are extra good, so I can pick them up.  I have learned several things though, such as, we’re a couple of brand specific people, the things we buy most, we like in our brand of choice, so couponing is a challenge.  Also, buying brands just because they have coupons and not because that brand is your favorite is dumb, i.e. diapers.  I did some math a couple of months ago, tried some different store brands (after determining that my preference between huggies and pampers depended on where Ben was in growth related to the size of the diaper) and decided that I like target brand diapers just as well as any, and when not on sale, they’re the cheapest.  Unlike many store brands, they do go on sale, and I get 5% back when I buy them online with my debit card (which I now do, unless, like last week, I can get 10% back on a store gift card).  So, I have definitely learned about couponing and shopping sale ads, including when to forget it and buy the store brand instead.  Also, when I buy formula, wipes, and diapers online, I do get about $10 back a month, so I consider this a success!

-find a church

This is a hard one for us.  It’s hard because we like to hang around in our pjs on the weekend and because it’s hard to get a puppy out, exercised, fed, and back in her crate, while trying to get two adults and an infant presentable, fed, and ready to leave the house.  Also, this is just a hard thing to find a good fit on.  All of that, combined with our goal of listing our house in March to transplant across town (closer to Adam’s work), means that this is even harder.  We did actually talk about it some this weekend and since we were able to, without hurry or stress, leave the house by 9am on Sunday, we’re planning to start looking for churches near our hopefully new side of town (so we don’t have to do it twice, and because we’ve had no luck on our attempts on our current side of town).

-lose the baby weight

Done.  By the grace of God alone, I managed to fit back into most of my pants when Ben was about a month old, and about the time he was 10 weeks old, I finally lost those last few pesky pounds.  My new goal is to hit and maintain my end of first trimester weight (which, yes, is lower than my pre-pregnancy weight – thank you lots of puking, not).  I’ve hit it a few times, but maintaining it is a different story.  It would be helpful if I’d jump on the treadmill more than once a week.  My current goal is twice, then I’ll work back up to three times a week.  August wasn’t a nice month to my schedule, but September is looking up.

So, only a few months left, combined with several holidays, birthdays, and too much else I’m sure.  We’ll make more progress, and hopefully I’ll finish the guest room at least.  It’ll be one less thing to do before the March listing date.

In case you spied the January pt 1 on my last update, I had the best of intentions of updating progress twice a month…oops.  Things got busy, or stayed that way, and I didn’t.  Now that it’s 6 weeks later, I’m going to make my new goal once a month and if I can easily make that happen, perhaps updates will become more frequent.

Guest Room – all most of the extra stuff is out, except for a bag of back up Casey amusements for the dog sitter and a late birthday present for the baby nephew, oh and 3 boxes and a basket of magazines, but all of it is much more out of the way than the packing for brunch/shower or packing for the hospital stuff (which is now out of the way) was.

Learn to coupon – I’ve continued to use coupons each week.  I had $3.65 last week, and only spend $60 on the trip (aka didn’t buy a whole lot).  I still need to blog about my shockingly awesome couponing trip – where we bought one of everything in Target’s baby section and them some (or at least it felt that way).

Find a church – we went to one.  We decided which one to go to next, as the first wasn’t quite it.  We appreciate that we have friends there, but it’s more Nazarene (not that there’s anything wrong with that, we had a Nazarene wedding) than community (which is really what we’re looking for).  Now, to get to the second one…

Lose the baby weight – still gaining…just made cookies because I wanted to eat cookie dough…oh well.  I haven’t had any cravings like I’ve heard others describe (of the “someone’s going to pay if I don’t get x” variety), just my normal stuff…chocolate, cookie dough, ice cream, and at the normal capacity really.

I’m progressing on all 4 counts for now!  Better than half at the last update!  (yes, I count still gaining baby weight as progress, since the baby isn’t born yet, it’s just what I’m supposed to be doing.)

changes…

Guest room – the baby brunch stuff invaded, the packing to travel to the baby brunch invaded, and both were cleared out.  Then packing to go to the hospital invaded…no progress yet on hanging the picture or painting the lamps. 

Learn to coupon – I have a whole other coupon file for baby coupons, and the past two times I’ve gone to the store, I’ve used coupons.  This isn’t $10 a week yet, but it’s a start! 

Find a church – we’ve talked about it…and about going this weekend, but we’ll see, I’m not hopeful that this is the weekend.  Maybe next.

Lose the baby weight – I’m still gaining it, right on schedule.  I guess that is part one, to gain the baby weight. 

That’s 1 for 4 in the progress department, but I’ll take some credit on the last one, I”m doing exactly what I should be for now, so I’ll say 2 for 4!

I love the idea of setting goals.  Just look at the white board on our fridge.  It’s got a grocery list down one side and a to do list on the other (and sometimes the to do list takes over the whole board, like this week).  However, the idea of goals/resomutikns at new years is intimidating to say the least.  I have lots of goals and lots of things I’d like to do, and they usually just get pushed to “later,” yes I’m a procrastinator.  Also, with the anticipated arrival of our son, I keep saying that not losing my mind is my goal, but that doesn’t seem nearly concrete enough.  So, that said, here is what I hope to accomplish this year:

– finish the guest room.

Since we moved in, there has been a print in the floor of the guest room. 

We recently added two lamps that are desperate for a couple coats of paint (and I like to start projects before finishing others and then come back years later).  I will get those things taken care of and finally off the to do list.  This really doesn’t require that much time, so I should be able to accomplish this before April is over.  — If by some miracle this happens in the first quarter, I have some ideas for quarterly “finish the unfinished project” goals.

– learn to coupon.

Years ago, I’d save at least a few dollars a trip, recently I don’t even get the paper, so I’m going to start getting the Sunday paper for coupons, clipping coupons online, and paying attention to sale books for groceries.  My goal is to save $10 per week by the end of August. 

– find a church.

Yes, this is Adam’s goal too.  It’s also something we have talked about for a long time, and something that’s even more important to us now that Ben is on his way. 

– I said that Casey and I were going to start training for a 5k this fall, then pregnancy happened and that didn’t.  As things stand, my goal is to be at my pre-pregnancy weight by labor day. 

Before I get questions about this being realistic, this does take into account several worst case scenarios all together (c-section/extra long recovery, another 10lbs of weight gain over what I’m on track for, etc.).

Now, off to make somethings happen…

A couple of weeks ago, we had an event at work, and at 7 months pregnant, I saw several people that I haven’t seen in…oh about 6 or 7 months.  This made me want to write a post explaining a little something about myself. 

For those who didn’t already know, I’m not a “scream it from the rooftop” type of person.  I’m can be very quiet and reserved and even shy at times (I know, this is shocking to some).  Don’t get me wrong, I was very excited to tell close friends and family we were expecting (and engaged when that happened), but I didn’t feel the need to blast Facebook (just the opposite with the baby news), rent a billboard or anything like that.  I don’t Ohh and Ahh at showers, parties, and the like, and I, like most of my family, don’t get very outwardly excited ever.  Yes, that means it takes a lot of energy for me to do parts of my job, but it does not mean that my gushing thanks is any less sincere, on the contrary, because it is such a stretch for me to be so enthusiastic. 

I wish my co-workers from the spring of 2007 could tell you about how they found out we were engaged.  Let me preface it with, there were 3 people in our building, so we were relatively close for the 3 months I’d been there and I might have been the most extroverted one- and I’m definitely an introvert.  So, we got engaged over the weekend. I went to work on Monday with my new, shiny ring on and went about my day.  Hours later one of our regular clients came in, noticed it, and inquired.  When he left, I remember turning around and Craig was just staring at me and Vanessa had her hands on her hips.  They were surprised I didn’t tell them first thing, and Vanessa said I should have walked in the door with my left hand on my forehead to tell the world.  I told her that just wasn’t me or my style. 

Some may say “but you had a big wedding, doesn’t that mean you sort of are a more ‘scream it from the rooftop’ type?”.  I did, but that wedding was Adam’s, not mine.  Don’t get me wrong, I wanted the big dress and I picked the flowers that I really wanted, but, having a wedding like that was what Adam wanted, not what I wanted.  (And yes I am awesome for planning that wedding for Adam and yes he knows it!)

I’m not sure where I’m going with all this except to say, writing is easy for me, but topics and putting it out there is hard.  I get easily overwhelmed with lots of attention and I’m generally a very level person (I’d like to think I’ve had only few exceptions to that, even during pregnancy, so far) and it takes a lot for people who do get outwardly excited to perceive me as excited, because I don’t show it like they do. 

Now, don’t take any of this the wrong way, both Adam and I are super excited about our baby, but you may think he’s more excited (and maybe he is, I’m nervous about it too, and a little overwhelmed with the holidays-  but, I’m also a realist, that’s another post) because of his behavior as compared to mine.  Really, we just have different personalities and different ways of feeling and showing emotions.  Neither of us does it the right or wrong way, just different ways. 

Despite the 11,000 things on my to do list, today has been a fairly lazy day so far. We’ve been sitting on the deck talking, reading, watching Casey play, yelling at Casey to get out of the flower beds with her freshly bathed self, and doing somethings online. It’s been really nice. Soon, the sun will climb high enough in the sky to encompass the entire deck in it’s heat and we’ll go inside to be more productive…maybe. One load of laundry is done (2 more wait), the meal planning for next week is done, the grocery list is near complete, now to finish the laundry, go to the grocery store, and clean the house. Oh well.

It’s been a beautiful and moderate morning. It’s been lovely to sit outside the three (then 2 of us when we realized we were getting onto Casey a lot, because she’d been up 3 and a half hours, so it was nap time) and enjoy our coffee and each other’s company. Now, we’ll soon have to rejoin the world of our to do lists.

We talk a lot of blogs in our home, but rarely of this one. We both have readers that where we subscribe to many blogs (ok, I subscribe to several, Adam subscribes to a ton), but we haven’t really discussed the direction of this blog. It’s been rambling so far and includes much of Casey and her growth and antics, but what should it be? We have some examples of people who work full time and have families and still find time to blog many times each week, then we have other examples of people whose full time job is to blog. We’re much more in the former category, but we’re still trying to determine our subject and the direction this will go.

What do you think? What should we blog about?