The Pumpkin Patch

We have had a lot going on lately, and a lot to post pictures about, so I am VERY far behind.  But, I'll just start from the beginning.  A few weeks ago, we took Ani to the Boone Hall Pumpkin Patch.  She loved it, and had a blast.

 Mike had a lot of fun, too, playing on the big toys like a little kid again.  If you know Mike, then you'll know that he wishes all the cool, fun stuff made and sized for children were really made and sized for a big guy like him.  

 A big tube swing.

 Pumpkin Checkers board.  Anabelle watched some kids play and just HAD to go play herself.

 She loved seeing the pumpkins and bringing one home :)  She gets excited and points them out every time she sees one.

 Anabelle is obsessed with all types and forms of bounce houses.  She has been lucky enough to play in some on a few different occasions lately.  The slide ones are her favorite.

 They had an enormous jumping pad, don't remember what they called it.  Mike and I each took a turn with Ani up there.  It was pretty fun, but not the best prego exercise (but I do love me a good trampoline-as my open gym friends know :)  )

We had a great family outing that day! She even got to feed a goat.

Nuke School Grad

So yes, it has been an entire week since Mike graduated from Nuke school, but here are the photos :)  He was a distinguished graduate among 50-60 or so (can't remember exactly how many) officer graduates.  He did very well throughout this training, working very hard and putting his engineering brain to great use.  Here is a picture of his class section

 Such a handsome man back there :)

 This is a photo of all of the officer grads, plus 3 of the 11 enlisted sections of Nuke school graduates.  All in all, the whole ceremony took about 2 hours because there were so many graduates.

 Anabelle did great!  I brought plenty of snacks and activities to keep her busy.  I even got comments from other people about how well-behaved she was.  That was nice :)  By the end, though, she was saying "I want to go home" and I was covered in princess stickers.  We had a nice time and the weather that morning was great!
Here is Mike being congratulated by the Captain of the Command.

 Getting his diploma.

 Anabelle is so funny.  She HAD to have her cheek right up against mine during all of the pictures.  Pretty cute, eh.  And this is my prego belly at 32 weeks.  Yay for Mike!  We were so happy to be able to celebrate this with him.

 For his congratulatory gift, Anabelle and I went shopping for a bunch of different snacks that Mike loves (because whoever knows Mike knows that he loves junk food).  This is the card I created for him.  Needless to say, he was pretty excited when he saw it.  And he even still has quite a bit of the treats left.

Well, we love Mike and are so thankful he works so hard.  We will enjoy the next 2 weeks with him before he heads up to CT for his next training.  We're taking a family vacation next week up to the Great Smokey Moutains!!! We're very excited, as we haven't been on an actual several day-vacation that doesn't include a "moving across the country" road trip in quite a while.  Yay!

Mike's birthday and other fun stuff

By far, Anabelle's favorite thing to do is to get thrown up in the air by her Daddy.  She's always wanting to "go up in the air", "jump and spin", or do "helicopter".    They are so fun and entertaining to watch, and both Ani and Mike's faces just light up when they're playing together.

 

And some more pictures of us

 This is Mike's "comp stache".  It's a Nuke school thing.  They earn the right to grow a comp stache once they  reach a certain number of points from all of their cumulative test scores.  Mike grew his for about 5 weeks.  Upon taking and passing his comp this Tuesday, the comp stache is now GONE. :)  Congrats to Mike for passing his comp!! He scored a 3.56, and did very well all throughout school.  He graduates tomorrow.  Now we get to enjoy another 3 weeks of having him home with us before he leaves to Connecticut for another 10-week training.

Mike's 27th birthday was yesterday!  We had a nice day.  He took Anabelle fishing in the morning.  As you may guess, she was thrilled!  She absolutely loved it.  Mike even caught a fish (his first stroke of fishing luck here in SC).  It was about a 5-lb bass.  Some pics of AB fishing with Daddy:

 She loved it so much that she talked about wanting a princess fishing pole of her own.  When Mike came home from his birthday shopping yesterday afternoon, guess what he had for her?!  They practiced casting together for a while and then Ani sat in front of her little swimming pool and fished for at least a half hour.  She did it again later.  What an awesome Daddy she has!

 And now Mike has a fishing buddy who will actually be excited to go with him every time :)

 For his birthday dessert, Mike asked for a lemon cake.  I am not a huge lemon fan, but it's his birthday.  He wanted his mom's recipe.  So I made it.  It was surprisingly delicious!  He loved it too.  And of course, so did AB.

 Happy Birthday Mike!  I love your guts!!!

Also, as you can see from above, I've been dying my hair.  I've had to re-do it once or twice because it seems to fade quickly, but all in all, I like it for now.  Here's a pic from before it starts to fade.  Also check out my gnarly neck burns.  I know they look nasty (and they're gone now).  Hot oil splashed up from the pan I was cooking in and attacked my neck.  OUCH!  It hurt.  But like I said, all better now :)  Sorry it has taken so long to update.

More projects :)

Finding time to sew during the day still proves nearly impossible.  Mike has been so wonderful as to play with Anabelle in the afternoons and leave me alone to sew for a little while.  Over the past week or two, I have accomplished a few new fun projects.  The first one was the completion of maternity pants.  Well, adapting a pair of jeans into maternity jeans. I used an old black shirt to make the waistband.

Since I apparently forgot to take pics how I used the shirt, imagine cutting a horizontal line across the shirt to cut it in half just a few inches below the armpits.  That bottom tube that is left will be folded inside itself and sewn into the waistband of a pair of jeans.

So, I took this pair of jeans (that I love), but are just too low rise for me to wear comfortable after having a c-section, and I cut off the waistband, like so:

 I then placed the tube around the jeans so the seams lined up and sewed it in.  Flip it up and you are finished!

 This is how they look.  The fabric from the shirt kind of stretched out throughout the day, so I had to keep pulling my pants up over and over, which was kind of annoying.  If I try this project again, I'll use different material.

Now, this next photo, is not only a belly photo of me at about 27 1/2 weeks, but I also re-made the shirt :)

 I took a Downeast basics shirt I have that I really like, but the bottom lacy stuff was totally ruined.  After washing it even a few times, the elastics came out all over the place and looked terrible.  I've been plotting a refashion for this shirt for several months, and finally decided on one!
So, to start, I removed that horrible-looking lace band along the bottom.

 Done.

 Then, I cut a strip of black stretchy fabric (I think it's polyester, but I'm not sure because it was a remnant-75% off!).  I sewed the ends together to make a big tube and folded it into itself just like the one for the pants.

 I placed it upside down around the perimeter of the shirt with raw edges together, pinned it in place, and sewed.

 After sewing, I folded the tube back down, and now I have an extended contrasting waistband :)
The shirt needed a little something more, so using that same black polyester, I sewed a bunched flower together and sewed it onto the shirt.

 I really like how it turned out.

Now, on to the baby boy (nope, he doesn't have a name yet) projects!!

An, if I do say so myself, AWESOME beanie/newborn hat for the little guy.

 I made it out of a brown stretchy knit, using another baby hat as my pattern.  I wanted to get creative with it somehow, not just making a boring plain brown hat.  The only other stretchy fabric I currently have are some small bits of ribbing I used to make Ani's towel bibs with.  I cut strips of the ribbing in different widths and zig-zagged them onto the hat, then sewed it together.  I love it!

 And then, some shoes.  I made a few pairs of these when Ani was a baby.  I really do not have much boy fabric at all, so this was about it.  I really need to get some more.  But here is what I came up with.

 The middle strip is brown flannel that will fray like a rag quilt when washed and dried.

Yay, yay!  Having this baby boy here to put these cute shoes and hat on will be fantastic.

Hangin' Out

Announcement:

Anabelle is potty-trained!!!!!!!  Wahoo! I feel like I should throw a party.  We have been working on this off and on for the past year.  She would be very interested and want to go potty on the toilet for a few weeks, and then want nothing to do with it.  Then a month or two later, we would go through the same thing all over again.  It was coming to the point where I knew she could be trained, but she was still going in her diaper because she knew she could get away with it.  So one day, Mike and I decided to just put underwear on her and let her learn that way.  She did surprisingly well.  The first couple of days, she had a few accidents, at least one or two a day.  I can count only 2 pooping in her underwear incidents (thank goodness, that is nasty to clean up!).  It has been a few weeks now, and she only had one accident last week, and it was at the beginning of the week.  It's awesome!  She even does great in public.  She still wears pull-ups at night, but keeps them dry most nights.  I'm so happy that we've accomplished this before our new baby will be here :) That was my goal.  Good job Anabelle!  And if I may, good job Mommy! (And Daddy, too).

Now, on to the pictures.

Our little cutie, posing by the tree.

 Cheese!

 Ani likes to build "fires".  We gather sticks from our yard, break them into small pieces, and arrange them into fires.  She LOVES it.  At times, we have several small fires all over our front and back yards.  Sometimes, like in this picture, we even roast marshmallows over the fire.  Can you see the marshmallows on our sticks? :)

 I love her!

 She loves to wear Daddy's cover

 This photo is from when we went downtown a few weeks ago and walked all over, then let Ani cool down in the pineapple fountain at Waterfront Park.  She loved it, and we had a lot of fun.