.Prairie Gardens: Autumn Adventure

In a world where you never go anywhere fun because you always have other responsibilities or plans or your child is always napping or your husband is always sick or your extended family is always busy, it can be difficult to find a Saturday to just GO and spend together at the corn maze/pumpkin patch/farm. Sometimes you just have to pick a day and make it work.

We happened to pick the windiest day there ever was, and one of those days where Ames just really needed a good long nap. Despite all that, it was still one of the most fun days we've had in months! haha This is the second year we've gone to Prairie Gardens & Adventure Farm and we absolutely love this place! We were really happy that Air’s family could come along with us this year too.

We started out in the little petting zoo because we all know how obsessed Ames is with animals:

 

↓↓↓Can't you just see how tired this poor boy was??↓↓↓

These little goats are so adorable and its hilarious to see them walking up and down the ramps onto the rooftops. Goats are the best.

↓↓↓He loves playing drums↓↓↓

↓↓↓Then something pretty terrible happened… Ames got pushed (by a little boy) off the platform of this little playground and landed on his back on the ground about 4 feet down!!↓↓↓

Most of the rest of the day was pretty emotional for him… Amesy+no nap+getting hurt=one sad boy! He was really clinging to his Daddy (I don’t think Air minded one bit).

↓↓↓We took his mind off it by going on a train ride. Another one of his favorite past times↓↓↓

↓↓↓If I wake up one day and find that Ames no longer has this incredible big cheeky profile… I might die↓↓↓

 

↓↓↓Tessa and Josh had fun playing giant chutes and ladders and checkers while we rode the train↓↓↓

↓↓↓We watched some cute puppet shows↓↓↓

↓↓↓Baby Jake gets cuter and cuter every minute of his life↓↓↓

Then when we went over to watch the pirates shooting off the pumpkin cannons, Ames couldn't handle the loud bangs and he went to sit with “Gwomma” and fell right to sleep on her lap… THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED!

He slept for a little while while we wandered around… and then Tam and I went through the sweet haunted house together and I almost peed my pants and went into labor at the same time when some kind of creepy hanging skull started moving right in front of my face. haha

I do miss going to awesome haunted houses every year growing up.

↓↓↓Air caught this adorable photo of his parents holding hands and swinging …young love↓↓↓

Thank goodness we found a day to go again this year! These are the kinds of things that make life worth blogging about right? haha

(See last year's adventure here)

.project eight: master bathroom

 

There you go, I’m starting you off with a before and after shot of our master bathroom renovation.

But now, before I show you more after’s I’m definitely going to show you more before’s and some during’s, m’kay? We actually started renovating this bathroom back in February and we finished it in April… it was easy peasy compared to the master bathroom reno. No tile, no problem! For some reason I never got around to taking photos of it finished until recently? Weird, guess I was too focused on our big basement renovation, which we were beginning at the same time.

This bathroom was gross. The inside of that cabinet was so filthy I refused to store a single thing in there for the entire two years before we tore it out. I didn’t get a picture of the original toilet though. This is our new one here.

Here’s the floor once everything was torn out (including the light fixture hence the lamp):

So just like every room in this house—the walls! Just horribly filthy and covered in dents and blobs of painted on guck. Every inch needed to be scraped and sanded and mudded and sanded again and painted.

Once I had the walls and ceiling all painted we installed this vanity fixture I fell in love with from Home Depot:

We installed the same awesome and simple vinyl flooring we used in our kitchen and main bathroom. It went in in a night and we immediately re-installed the toilet and a new cabinet! Yay!

Air cut the big wall mirror again and built this frame for the smaller sized one:

I begged him to let me paint it white but he wouldn’t have it this time, he loves the natural wood color in there.

It’s pretty nice I guess.

And here it is again… the finished master bathroom:

I can’t tell you how spoiled I feel having a bathroom right beside my bed these days with my multiple nightly bathroom breaks, etc. It’s heavenly.

I’m really gonna miss this house some day… Hopefully that happens later rather than sooner.

.one more month

Our big day is coming and we are slowly working on preparing for it.

I’m preparing mentally and emotionally. Hoping I won’t be so sore for so long after giving birth this time around. And those post partum hormones made me an anxious mess for the longest time. I won’t let that happen again ok? This time I know what’s coming, so I’ll take control over my anxieties. I’ll breathe in deeply and relax and take care of this baby without feeling like the weight of the world is on my shoulders. I’ll breathe out slowly and I won’t let myself be overwhelmed with all the bodily leaking and soreness and hair falling out problems that will come. 

This time I know it won’t last forever.

And if none of this preparation does any good… at least I know that the end result will be worth going through it all again.

  

Air told me that he is preparing to take Ames off my hands as much as he possibly can, and to cook and clean as much as he possibly can. We are both extremely hopeful that he will have good enough health and endurance to make it through the delivery with me without passing out… he gets so dizzy these days with his anemia. Lets all pray for him ok?

 

I’ll have you know that Ames is preparing too... maybe even more than the rest of us. He loves to tell everyone about his baby sister whenever possible. He will give my belly big hugs and kisses and tickles. He plays with his cars and toys on my belly to keep her involved (happening as I type this).

We gave him a baby dolly a few weeks ago that he adores and attends to with as much love and kindness as you could ever expect from a two year old. We call her Practice Sister.

This is gonna be great!

.gusa gram

These last few months have been a whirlwind. Air has been on short term disability since July and it’s been so different to have him around so much. It’s been a strange transition for him to go from being completely stressed out and busy with work 24/7, to having a completely different kind of stress and just trying to keep our family afloat. It’s actually been really nice to have Air around every day, of course it would be better if he weren’t so sick, and it would be better still if we didn’t have this uncertain future/doomsday thing sort of looming over us. If you asked us right now where we’ll be and what we’ll be doing five months from now, we would have no answer for you. And that’s pretty scary.

At least we know we’ll still have our little family, plus one more little girl who we can’t wait to meet.

We have been lacking a little bit with taking photos and videos lately too! This is probably the worst we’ve done with this ever. Boo…

*****

↓↓↓We babysat a friend’s fish for a month. Ames enjoyed it a lot, but Air and I were excited to give it back. Guess Air and I aren’t pet people?//Ames loves his chubby little cousin Jake. He always asks to “hold it?” and then he says, “that’s a big one!” haha↓↓↓

 

↓↓↓We finally carpeted our basement this summer and have been in heaven actually having a basement ever since. Ames’s favorite thing is pretending the steps are his bed. Air and I both did this when we were little//We set up an old projector in the basement and enjoy watching all the Disney movies down there↓↓↓

 

↓↓↓Some days you just need to make a recipe that calls for a pound of butter. Salted caramel bars were pretty yummy↓↓↓

 

↓↓↓Ames loves play dough, he especially likes to smash everything I create?//We have a lot of fun at Tam and Jadey’s acreage. They have a perfect fire pit for spending an evening roasting dogs, s’mores, bannock and singing songs with the family↓↓↓

 

↓↓↓We went to a free Edmonton Symphony performance at Churchill Square downtown. They performed all of the best Disney songs and we got to see tons of cute little girls dressed up as princesses↓↓↓

 

↓↓↓Ames loves to “help” us whenever we’re cooking. He usually stands on a stool and tinkers with anything in his reach//Air is seriously an amazing chef, and I am seriously a lucky girl↓↓↓

 

↓↓↓It snowed here on September 8th… that was insane. Luckily it’s melted and warmed up again for now//Ames sure loves his superheroes. He would wear this spiderman shirt every day if I let him… also his Daddy’s lambs wool socks for pants?↓↓↓

 

↓↓↓Ames is a super funny little guy… he is constantly cracking us up around here—coming up with all of his own jokes and shocking us with his understanding of everything. We love our Amesy so much↓↓↓

And a few videos: