Countdown....

Our friends Chris, Kiley & Blake let Kella come over to play while we tried to get in just one more movie before Ryan's arrival. Kella LOVES Kiley and she was sweet enough to send Kella home with her tent that she's outgrown. What a perfect place to read and watch movies! I've been trying to buy little surprises along the way to give Kella once Ryan is here so that she has something "new" to play with. I know she will be excited, at first, but a new sister will probably wear off after too long. (I can only assume).

Today is 5 days 'til my due date!!! Our appointment yesterday showed signs of progression. I am dilated to a 2 and my midwife, Cherie, said it would be soon! I was trying to get through today since Kipp's day was booked at work. Success! I made it, what a sweet wife! =D

I am hoping to have her at some point this weekend. Cherie was the one to deliver Kella and I really want her to be there for Ryan's arrival. She is on-call until Monday evening, so as long as Ryan cooperates I will have one request answered!!! After my exam she thought it could possibly be Saturday, but who really knows. My sweet friend, Allison, is coming to spend the weekend with us, should I go into labor in the middle of the night, she will be here with Kella. What a sweet friend! My family has been on stand-by for the last couple of weeks and mom is all set at school. Lesson plans are made, parent/teacher conferences are out of the way. Everyone is set to come. I love the anticipation, but have to plan my escape routes wherever I go. It's always in the back of my mind, what would Target think if my water broke in the produce section??? I guess it can't be any worse than Wednesday at Ulta. I ran in to get some cleanser when Kella told me she needed to potty. I grabbed what I needed, bolted to the register and next thing I know Kella is jumping in a puddle of pee! Luckily there were 2 mom's behind me who completely understood the joys of potty training, but somehow the 18 yr old cashier didn't see our humor! I asked for some towels for our "accident" and she brought me a box of kleenex. Oh honey, I'm gonna need something more powerful than that! I tried to keep Kella's embarrassment to a minimum, but hopefully, she understands she can't just let it go when & where she wants. Fun stuff!

Ryan's room!

After many trips to the fabric store, I can finally say Ryan's room is FINISHED!!!! I don't know how I did this with Kella... since we didn't know she was a girl, I did everything for her room in the weeks after she was born...WHEW! I have, however, looked forward to getting Ryan's room finished beforehand. Here are the final results....

We painted the room Tiffany blue with hot pink and orange accents. I knew I was going to use this paint color after seeing several rooms on HGTV.com. I found the pink/orange stripe fabric here in Frisco and went from there. My favorite day was putting her name on the wall (it's Uppercase Living, of course!!!)

I couldn't find the plush crib sheets in hot pink so I decided to make it myself... this started a, what seemed to be, never ending project of sewing. Thanks to mom for the sewing machine I got for Christmas!!! I started with the crib sheet and dust ruffle. In my opinion, baby bedding has been a little overrated. I remember being so excited to get Kella's and then was stunned at how little you actually use the stuff. By the time she was pulling up and standing we had to take the bumper out AND she never even used the blanket that came with it. So this time, I decided to just buy a white bumper from babies 'r us..... BUT, after putting it on I decided it just wouldn't do. So how hard can making a bumper be, right?! This was my thought as I contemplated this journey. I thought about what I liked & didn't like about Kella's bedding and how it functioned. Even after we removed her bumper (for fear of her using it as a launching pad to get out of her crib), we would still line the sides with stuffed animals to prevent any limbs from getting stuck in the bars. So I decided to make it in separate pieces and more like pillows. Her mobile was a must when putting her to sleep, but it didn't fit over the bumper, so I made a special slot for it to hang on the side properly. All in all, I think it turned out pretty good for my experience level only being 1 semester of Home EC.... thanks Mrs. Moffett!!!!

I bought this chandelier for $10 from our neighbor. It was brass, so I spray painted white, added crystals left over from mom's dining room fixture, covered the "candlesticks" with scrap booking paper and made a cord cover.

This armoire was given to us by our friend Chris. I decorated his daughter's room back in the summer and she didn't have room for this due to her new bed. Luckily we did! I got the turquoise antique-looking pulls from Anthropology. Thanks Chris!!!

When searching for a piece of furniture to use as a window seat, I started looking around my house as well. I noticed I had been moving my ottoman all around my living room, because there isn't a good spot for it. Soooo, I drug it into Ryan's room one day and it fit perfectly! I made the slip cover out of the same fabric as her crib sheet, covered a bolster that I got from a garage sale and VOILA!!! I also got one of those cheap, plastic window shades and covered it with her dust ruffle fabric to black the room out for naps.

I hope this girl likes it as much as I enjoyed doing it for her!

Hot Dog, Hot Dog, Hot Diggity Dog!!!

Kipp's office manager's daughter celebrated her 2nd birthday on Saturday with a Mickey Mouse theme party.... YES! We were asked to dress up. Here is our sweet little Minnie Mouse. I think I got a little carried away with the makeup. This was a good warm up for Halloween... we are still undecided on what to be....???

Go Mavs!!!

Our sweet friend Allison has season tickets to the Dallas Mav's. We were invited to go last week so that Kella could get at least one game in before Ryan arrives. Allison bought Kella this Mav's jersey last season, she was soooo excited to wear it! For the last few months, she has picked the jersey when picking out what to wear.... mom thought it would be best to at least wait for basketball season to start =)

Picasso in the making!

One of the gifts Kella received at the "sprinkle" was her Travel 'N Doodle. She takes this EVERYWHERE! She has been able to spell her name since she could talk due to another doodle pad she had when she was younger, but now her new thing is smiley faces. One night before bed I found her drawing and couldn't believe it. She usually draws (scribbles) some design and then explains what it is, but this time they were obvious smiley faces... I had to capture this so my usual dramatization of her skills was caught on camera!!!

Here's Kella mimicking mommy's "b-i-i-i-g belly"! You can only take that kind of criticism from a 2 year old, right?!

Sprinkle...Sprinkle... Little Star!

My sweet friends Allison, Heather & Casey threw us a "Sprinkle" to celebrate Ryan's upcoming arrival. I think Kella thought it was a celebration of her, she received just as many gifts as Ryan! The guests received pink nail polish and lip gloss with a tag that read "Lullaby wishes & pretty pink kisses.... All for little Miss Ryan Kate!" So cute! Great job girls!

Just some fun stuff!

While daddy was shopping for some snow gear for his upcoming ski trip, Kella & I had a little fun in the hat section!

Kella has learned to wink, both eyes! Somehow she learned this from watching Cars, Mater is her favorite and she usually says (in her version of a hick accent) "Shooot Mater"

We absolutely LOVE living in Dallas. Before having kids, Kipp and I always talked about how we couldn't wait to take them to all the sporting events and activities that D has to offer. Neither one of us had professional baseball, football, basketball and hockey games at our fingertips. Hopefully she won't grow up taking all this for granted. So far, she knows the Rangers and Cowboys. She gets excited to wear her Rangers hat and I just made her a new Cowboys t-shirt. She runs around saying "Go COWBOYS!" Ahhh... my little cheerleader! I couldn't be more proud!

First day of "school"

After lots of consideration and consulting with our Dr.'s at Children's we decided to let Kella start a mom's day out program. She goes 2 days a week from 9-2. I figured that she needed the socialization, but mostly knew how bored she would be here at home once Ryan arrived. She started a couple weeks after everyone else, but quickly got aquainted with everyone. Thankfully her teachers said you would never know this was her first time out of the house away from mom. Since she was never in full-time daycare, only the occasional day/evening at the hourly drop-in center by our house and church nursery she has made the adjustment quite well. No separation anxiety here! :D

First day!

To celebrate such a great day, we went to our favorite cupcake store, Cupcakery, for an after school treat!

This was her second day when all her gear was official. New backpack & lunch pail!

More from our big night!

I love that her heart is in the shape of a heart (does that make sense?!)

Big Sister!!!

Here's the group that joined us for dinner when we found out we were having another GIRL!!!

It's a .....

I know this is a little late (these are from May to be exact), but I got so caught up in my other posts that I missed this one!

Seeing how we haven't done anything conventional when it comes to starting & growing a family, why start now! We decided with baby #2, unlike Kella who's sex was a total surprise, to find out what we were having. We felt a 2 yr old would better understand she was getting a brother or sister rather than, "Hey, there's a baby in mommy's belly!"

After we left the room, we had the tech write the sex on a card with the appropriate color sharpie, give some sort of "proof" with a picture and seal it. We went to dinner and unveiled our fate with some of our closest friends.

Here is Kella & Heather. She was so sweet to change her birthday dinner plans and join us on our big night. She did get a serenade from the nice waiters at MiCo to make up for it!

THE BIG REVEAL!!!!!!!

Proud dad showing off the pic!

On to August....

My little helper! Kella got this AWESOME vacuum for her 2nd birthday. She loves to get it out whenever I'm using the "big vacuum"! Notice her purple hi-heels. Girls gotta be in style even when she's cleaning!

August was a big month for us. Seeing how the baby is was fast approaching, I was looking for activities for Kella so that she would have things to look forward to other than feeding time once Ryan got here. A friend of mine is a former Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader and knew of a dance studio that another cheerleader opened up last year. http://www.legacydancecenter.com This has been the best thing for her! One, she loves to dance, but its a great, fun way to learn listening and following directions. Miss Libby, a former DCC also, has amazing patience and creative ideas for this age group. It's amazing to see these 2 & 3 year olds paying attention, doing the motions and giggling the whole time! So, so cute! There is a 2-way mirror that all us mom's crowd around to watch our little angel's "perform". It's so great to, literally, be a fly on the wall. They have no idea we can see them. I thought Kella would be her usual shy self, but she quickly took over and had all the other little ones following her lead. She took her instructions literally and when she thought another little girl was on her "spot" she made her cry by sitting in her lap. Oops!

Fun at Grannies!

Here we are at my grannie's house in Oklahoma. It has been a tradition to have Sunday dinner at her house every Sunday for as long as I can remeber. These were definitely my highlights during college and after, to come home and get the best home-cooked meal. The tradition has continued even though Grannie is gone, but its just not the same.

This is my cousin Nate and his little boy Ashton. In our family, there were 3 little ones born within about a 5 week period. Nate was October, Me in November and 6 days later on Dec. 2nd came Matthew. From our first Christmas until 2 years ago we took a picture of us lined up, left to right, Oct to Dec. Nate is now an air traffic controller living in New Mexico. We don't get to see him very often, so this was a special treat for us to be in town at the same time!

Uncle Tommy brought down his Ranger for us to go "exploring" around Grannies farm!

Here is Ashton & Kella terrorizing Aunt Martha's gold fish.

Checking out the chicken coupe and guinea's. (Isn't this the sweetest picture!)