This week's excitement

Have you ever heard of nutria? Me neither. Not until this week. Last week I thought I saw some groundhogs near the lake and I told Dan how exciting it was. When he told the people he hometeaches, they told him that they were most likely not groundhogs and were probably nutrias. So then I looked that up online. Unfortunately, I think they were right.

Nutrias are nasty giant rat-like rodents (around 12 pounds) that live near water. They remind us of ROUS's from the Princess Bride, just smaller.

So gross!

Tuesday night, a friend of mine hosted a baby shower for me. It was so sweet of her! It was nice to visit with friends and hear about other people's experiences. Everyone was really generous and I'm getting more excited about having a little girl. (Not that I wasn't before...) The clothes are just so cute. Here's a picture I remembered to take after some people had already left.

And here's a picture of me with Keri, the hostess.

Other than that, this week contained playgroup, storytime at the library, a doctor's appointment, the birth of a new niece (YAY!) and a playdate. At the doc, he did an ultrasound to check the baby's position. She's still breech. He talked about possibly trying an external version in 3 weeks or so, which requires an epidural. And he said the success rate for them is between 40 and 50. Not great odds. I'm going to try harder this week to move around and hope that she gets the hint.

Here's my sassy pose from last week. (33+ weeks along.)

Dan used Sam's blocks to create tunnels on his train table. He loved it!

Projects

Admittedly, I didn't use the sewing machine I got for Christmas for a while. I was a little intimidated by it. But in the past few months, I've made a few different things with it. Please keep in mind I'm still a MAJOR beginner, but I thought I'd share some of the projects I've done.

The first thing I made was a set of dishtowel bibs, using a tutorial by my friend Sarah found here. Here's Sam modeling a bib I'm going to send to my niece. (Both of his were dirty.) I love these bibs because they're nice and big, absorbent, and you can just toss them in the washer.

I've made a few pillows for our couches using remmants from Joann's (so they were a lot cheaper than usual). I don't normally arrange them this way, I was just trying to fit them all in one picture.

I think it would be fun to make burp cloths cuter, so I want to sew flannel in the middle of plain ones, but when I went to buy some at Walmart, they didn't have the right kind. So I practiced on an old one of ours using a scrap of just plain cotton. I'm glad I practiced because I'm not really good yet!

Last, thanks to Amanda for showing me a tutorial on making carseat covers. First I made one for our baby girl. (I simplified the tutorial a little bit.)

And I just finished one for our nephew who's set to make his arrival in a few months.

Minnesota

First, I want to start out by saying that today in primary, Dan taught a lesson about Samson and spiritual strength, as you will. At the beginning of class, the kids arm wrestled each other. The strongest kid (age 8) then arm wrestled Dan. Dan won. Then that kid arm wrestled me. I am pleased to announce that I won! I was a little worried he would beat me, but I pulled through beautifully. What can I say - I'm that macho.

Second, and the main reason for this post, we went to Minnesota last weekend and I wanted to write about it. Actually, I wanted Dan to write about it, but he wasn't going to. So I've taken matters into my own hands. Dan's maternal grandpa and step-grandma live in Minnesota. Dan hadn't seen them in a really long time, and I had never met them, so we decided to spend the long weekend visiting with them. It was so much fun!

We spent two nights with Dan's aunt and uncle and their family in Wisconsin. They have a pool and the weather was actually quite hot, so it made for a nice combo.

Grandma Betty, Grandpa Jack, Dan, Sam, Dan's dad.

They had 3 dogs there, which kind of worried me. Sam would ride around on this train thing and terrorize the pit bull. I was so afraid that the pit bull would snap and terrorize Sam back, but fortunately, that never happened. Here's Sam riding the train after also discovering a purple helmet. He can't resist a good helmet.

We sat by the pool a lot and visited with Dan's parents (who flew out from Washington), aunt and uncle, cousins, and grandparents. By the end of the trip, we had gone to breakfast a few times, visited the St. Paul ward for church on Sunday, visited a nice free zoo called Como Zoo in St. Paul, and just enjoyed meeting family.

Gma and Gpa with Gpa's antique Ford truck. He's really into antique cars and motorcycles and used to have a larger collection. He scared Sam to death with the ooga horn. (I don't know how to spell ooga...)

Four generations.

Most of the gang.

Side story: Dan's cousin (who had the cutest Minnesota accent in the world) was talking about how it would be so weird to see a truck with longhorns on it like we see sometimes around Texas and how that is so bizarre. Well, we were driving around St. Paul and we came across this. You tell me which is more strange!

Como Zoo.

Sam and his great-grandpa both love cars. Here's Sam showing off his cars. Grandpa Jack gave Sam that white corvette as a present.

It was a really nice trip. I was also excited to cross 2 more states off of my "states to visit" list!

Happy 4th of July!

We might be busy on the fourth, so I wanted to post this now. Every week our library has a special hour for children ages 2-3. Sam loves it. They sing songs, the librarian reads a book, and sometimes they do a craft. Sam's favorite part is when the librarian walks around with a big bear puppet and gives each of the kids a hug. He loves to hug the bear. Maybe that will help ease his fear of other characters like Santa and the Easter bunny?

This week they made patriotic door hangers. Other than the big blue star and the "USA", which I placed, Sam either told me where he wanted the stars or put them on himself.

Sometimes he's so photogenic when he says, "Cheese!" Other times, not so much. But he's still a cutie to me!Hope you have a great fourth of July!