Cameron, I love your face!

Belly Update

I keep receiving requests for belly pics, so here are 2.

30 weeks

31 weeks

Here are some thoughts on being pregnant: 

1. I don't have a lot of clothes that fit

2. My stomach is in my chest-along with half my intestines

3. Always know where the bathroom is

4. Flip flops with lots of padding are a life saver

5. Sleeping for more than 45 minutes at a time is nearly impossible

6. If you have twins, they do not like it when you sleep on your side. One of them is always getting squished

7. I think Cohen has ADD-he is ALWAYS moving! He was a good little baby and WAS head down, but then decided to squiggle into a transverse position that is more uncomfortable than you can possibly imagine.

8. Simple tasks like loading the dish washer, mopping the floor, and walking up stairs are HARD.

9. Always make sure there is air conditioning in the building or you are going to die

10. Have a husband who gets to come home at night and that you get to see more than 4 days a week, it would make things a lot easier (love you babe!)

Beach!

I have been trying to find the beach state park for a couple weeks now with no avail. It was not until my friend Tina told me she would escort that I was finally able to dig my feet into some real sand!

Tina is on the right, Emily is on the left. The cute pup on the bottom is Triscuit ;) Even though it was cloudy and windy it was still nice to walk along the water. I'm kind of amazed at how nice the sand is for a lake beach!

Triscuit really enjoyed the trip. I think he thought it was one big treasure box in which to dig up things for us, including the following: sticks, rocks, used tissues, beer bottles, and a pair of pretty nice sun glasses!

Emily modeling the sun glasses.

Apparently Emily and Tina like to snuggle. I was taking the picture so I couldn't get in too well. Tina is shorter than the rest of us so she was actually standing on a sand bank lol.

Another of Triscuit for cute measure. He's smiling because he gets to get out of the house. You are a good stinky boy B!

Trip to the Land of Cows

Cameron & I went on a trip to Kenosha Wisconsin a few weekends ago and it was really great! It's only about 30 minutes away, and we got to go to the jelly belly factory on the way (yummy!!)! Why Kenosha, Wisconsin you ask? What could be up there besides lots of cows (and nasty ice cream-there is NO good ice cream here!) Well, not only does it have a cute name, but the city boasts 3 museums, 2 of which are FREE.

 

I am so FAT in this picture...but anyway...It is only about 15-20 minutes to the jelly belly factory (home to not only jelly beans, but a wide variety of candies as the tour says) and we were in Wisconsin 10 minutes in, surprisingly. Cameron had a half day of school Saturday so I picked him up and after we had lunch at home we headed off. The factory isn't as big as I thought it would be, but they do have a fun little train thing that pulls you around the big warehouse and stops every 2 minutes for a historical video (did you know it was Ronald Reagan's love of jelly belly beans that made them famous? He even sent them into space on the shuttles)! The best part is at the end when they hand you a free assortment of 60 delicious flavors....yuummmmm!! I forgot how much I absolutely love jelly belly! I don't think I've eaten them for years, but let me tell you, they are FAR better than the average jelly bean (they paid me to say that ;) )! Anyway they had a bagillion (yes that is an official amount) flavors but since they were all $9 a pound (which is like 2 kristie or 1 Cameron handfuls of beans) we opted to purchase the "belly flops": beans that had been deemed unfit for the jelly belly name because of some kind of defect and were being sold in bulk at the back of the store. LOL They taste the same, you just don't get to pick the flavors you like (and unfortunately we got a TON of coffee and licorice flavored beans-yuck!)

Our next stop was the Dinosaur Museum in Kenosha...that is, if you really want to call it a museum. Really it is one big room full of carnivorous therapods (meat eating dino's that walked on two legs). It was full of some quite nice specimens despite it's size. Besides being a kind-of museum, it is also the laboratory for an archaeologist and his team who have made some neat discoveries. I found out while here that Disney didn't completely lie in the movie "Dinosaur"...there were in fact Carnatores, though not as big as Disney made them out to be. I had tried doing research after seeing the movie years ago and came up with nothing, probably because only one specimen has ever been found.

Sorry this pic is so bad...my camera is kind of crappy. Anyway...this is the history museum in Kenosha. It's a neat little museum right on the waterfront surrounded by cute condos. We only got to see about half of what they had due to time constraints (they closed on us), but what we did see was pretty neat. They have a reproduction of a mammoth skeleton found in the area nearly a hundred years ago, as well as an impressive collection of local Native American artifacts (you would have loved all the types of arrow heads dad!).

The trip was pretty fun and we plan on going back to the history museum. When we have some money we'll visit the neighboring Civil War museum (it costs to get in). On the way home we found a drive-in movie theater, making the end to a near perfect day. :)

Itchin' to Sew

So I have had a desire, no, more like a craving (worse than my craving for taco bell chicken burritos during my first trimester) to get a sewing machine and start some baby projects. Actually, it started before I even knew I was pregnant-when I found etsy. Etsy is pretty much the best thing that ever happened to crafts/the internet/cuteness! The only thing is...almost a year later and STILL no sewing machine...sigh... If only we weren't so poor (stupid bills!)....If only I were better at hand sewing...and if only it didn't take so long...double sigh. I feel like I have all this pent up creativity inside of me-pressing against my seams and making it impossible not to think about it! (or that could just be the two babies inside my tummy pressing at the seams?) Here are a few of the types of projects I would like to try my hand at:

 Ragdoll bunnies

 Fruit Bibs 

(girly but super cute! One day I'll have a girl, right?)

Onesies with appliques

Infant car seat covers

 Burp Cloths 

Cute Purse/diaperbag

Will my dream of owning a sewing machine ever come true? Will I ever get to make my own personalized baby things? Tune in to "The girl who would like a sewing machine but all she gets is this dumb radio program" next time for more exciting stories! Oh, and donations excepted! ;)

Chicago Temple & Other Such Things

We finally got to take a trip to the Chicago temple a few Saturdays ago on Cam's duty free day and had a lovely time. The temple here is much different than we're use too...it is pretty small even compared to Houston and the layout is really weird inside. Not to say we don't look forward to going back, it's just different. When we asked to rent a dress for my pregnant belly the ladies looked at us kinda funny and said, "we don't take money for things like that here". Well OK! Free is great too!

I practically ran down a passerby in the parking lot and asked her to take this picture. She was probably like "what the...? Who are these people?" Cameron still has to wear his "peanut butters" everywhere until he earns "phase 2".

Later on at the base we stopped to check out the RV campground on the lake and found that you could see the Chicago skyline across the lake!

It's pretty faint in the pic (and fuzzy-sorry!)  But isn't it neat!? I can't wait to actually go to the city.

A pretty view of the lake.

Triscuit

I thought I would put a few pics of Triscuit up seeing as he was our first baby and he's not going to get much attention after the twinses are born. Since we've moved he's really missed all his puppy friends back in Houston :(

Triscuit LOVES Emily. Maybe because she was the first person he met in his new home state...or maybe because she pays attention to his ego (which says you must throw balls for me to chase at all times, then give me a tummy rub in coencentric clockwise circles for 5 minutes, followed by scratching behind the ears for 4...).

Did I mention he loves to swing? There is a little kiddy park not too far from my apartment that has a dog park connected to it. Triscuit really likes to feel the wind blowing in his face as the swing swishes back and forth.

Here he is peeking through a hole in the fence. He is always alert to any mobsters that may be near by-so don't even try to get close you mobsters!

"This is what I do to mobsters who get too close!"