Favorite Kitty Pic Friday!

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Happy Friday!  I know my posting has been very non-existent lately, but I had a full 2 weeks+ of painting, cleaning, etc.  We had our baby shower, and after all that was said and done, I needed some relaxation time.  Apparently my energy isn’t coming back now though.  I still have things to do that will require a bit of energy, and I just haven’t been able to find it.  I do have more posts that I want to create, just need to sit down and write them now!
So, here’s my choice for this week’s post.  I think it’s very fitting to how I feel lately:
Lazy, lazy, lazy.  I took this picture while we were painting.  We kept the kitties in our very large bedroom (with everything they needed, of course) while we painted.  This was a common sight to walk into.  Sometimes we even caught them snuggling with each other, which was adorable, but unfortunately I didn’t manage to get any pictures of those times.
Hope you all have a good weekend planned!  I will be attending a baton competition tomorrow, and a friend’s wedding in the evening, and on Sunday we are getting a nice dining room set from my aunt and uncle.  We will finally have a complete dining room set, and a table in our eat-in kitchen!  It will make the house seem a little more complete.   :)

Getting to Know You

I didn’t get to participate in this the last week, maybe even two now – I lost track.  This is also supposed to be a Sunday post, but she still has the linky up, so I’m making sure I participate this week, even if I am a little late!

This week’s questions with my answers:

1. do you watch/read the news?  Hardly ever.  I’m not at a complete loss with what’s going on in the world, thanks to commercials for the news, my dad, and Hubby.  Otherwise, reading the news and watching it are usually just too boring for me or depressing. 

2. how would you describe your "look"?  very casual.  I’d probably be an ideal candidate for “What Not to Wear”, but I don’t spend much money on clothing, and when I do buy new stuff it’s to replace something that finally wore out, and I still won’t spend much.  I only buy necessary clothing, and I tend to shop at Wal-Mart and Target, sometimes Fashion Bug.  I have a hard time finding clothing that fits and is flattering, so most of the time it’s jeans and a t-shirt.  Except for right now – it’s maternity clothes from Motherhood Maternity, and I only have a few pieces of that too!

3. did you play sports in high school or college?  Only whatever I was required to for phys. ed. classes.  I stayed in shape in high school by dancing (tap, jazz, and ballet), and twirling baton.  Those are my sports (and yes, I consider them sports – you may have your own opinion, but no debating here, kthanks).

4. would you rather give up lipstick/gloss or high heels?  Heels, considering I never wear them anyway.  I wore them on my wedding day, and I have a pair of black strappy ones that have a very small heel, but I haven’t worn those in ages because they no longer fit my feet very well.  But I use lip gloss/balm at least once a day, sometimes more.

5. what's your favorite show to watch on tv?  I can’t really pick a favorite.  I watch too much TV, period.

6. would you rather bake or cook?  Either.  Depends on what I’m baking or cooking.  I don’t do much baking because I really shouldn’t eat the products of baking, but I like to do both.

7. shorts or skirts?  shorts.  I never was much of a skirt/dress wearer, but I did buy a maternity dress for an upcoming wedding, and I am hoping to wear it this weekend for my baby shower as well, depending on the weather and temperature.

8. what's your favorite scary movie?  Again, I don’t really have one.  I used to watch more scary movies, but lately some of them are just too scary for me and freak me out to the point of not sleeping.  Even just thinking about them now is starting to give me the creeps!

I hope everyone had a great weekend!

Painting While Pregnant

I believe I mentioned on here before that Hubby and I were going to tackle the biggest paint job of our entire house last weekend while we had my dad’s help to get started.  Well, after a (slightly longer) weeklong process, we finally have all the walls in our front living room, entry, entry hallway, staircase, and upstairs hallway painted.  All that’s left to do today is the touch ups.  I started off this project, with some of Hubby’s help, one week and two days ago by sanding rough spots on the walls, spackling any divots and imperfections, and fixing nails pops that got missed on the first go around.  That fixing didn’t end completely until this past Thursday.  The walls were terrible!  Every time we thought we had things pretty fixed up and prepped for paint, we’d find more to fix.  So, last Saturday the upstairs hallway got painted, on Sunday the staircase got painted, the entry hallway was done on Monday, and then the front living room and entry were finished up between yesterday and the day before.  Hubby did end up doing the majority of the work, because painting that much surface area at 28/29 weeks pregnant is even harder work than normal.  I feel bad about that because I wish I could have helped more, but my body just couldn’t take any more than it withstood already.  He had taken this entire week off for this project and a few appointments we had scheduled, and now he says he’s actually looking forward to starting work again on Monday because he will be more physically relaxed.  Except for now we have to clean a majority of the house by Friday afternoon and I most likely will need a lot of his help for that too.  The house is a mess to begin with, but adding in all the painting and sanding we’ve had to do, it really needs a good clean up.  And I say it has to be done by Friday afternoon because his parents are arriving that evening to stay with us for the weekend since my baby shower is next Saturday.  So, needles to say, it’s been a very busy and tiring week, and the next week isn’t looking much better for me.  Between the painting and the appointments, and the location the appointments were in, I need a good break, but I probably won’t get that until Monday the 18th!  The appointments we had to go to included my 3D ultrasound, which was an hour away, and Hubby’s last oral surgery follow up, which was also an hour away.  Both trips took us to good shopping areas as well, so we ended up doing some of that with our time too.  I know I missed my Favorite Kitty Friday post, as well as Getting to Know YOU post (I also missed some big blog hop party this week too), but some days I couldn’t even tell you what day it was, and when I wasn’t helping with the painting task, we were not home, eating, or sleeping.  I will be very happy when this is all done and I can relax a little more.

To give you insight as to how behind I am on things, my Google Reader count is up to at least 625 unread items, there are at least 40 unread e-mails sitting in my inboxes, and I missed doing those posts this week.  Hopefully I will be able to start catching up on things, like trying to do at least 2 posts this week.  I would like to do a post about my 3D ultrasound too, but we’ll see how the week goes along.  We also started our Prep for Childbirth classes too, so that’s been thrown in there as well.  I can’t wait until Monday the 18th…

One last thing before I forget – I read this blog:  http://www.lifeofsaucyb.com/  Every Monday, she does a “Make Me Laugh Monday” post where she posts a picture of her cat, and accepts caption ideas.  On Thursday of that week, she will pick the commenter who made her laugh/who’s caption she likes best, and this past week my caption was chosen!  As a reward, she has my blog button featured on her sidebar.  Please check it out, and enjoy her blog!

Favorite Kitty Pic Friday!

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TGIF!  Well, not really for me.  We are starting that really big house painting project this weekend while we can get my dad’s help (even though I will be at a baton twirling competition until the afternoon tomorrow), but I’ve already started prepping the walls by sanding and spackling, and taping of the trim will hopefully get somewhat done today.  So, while many of you enjoy your weekend, we will be hard at work here for quite a few days this week.  We do have some exciting things happening this week though – I start my Preparing for Childbirth classes on Sunday, and we go for the 3D ultrasound on Wednesday!  Especially excited for that day!  :)
This week, as promised, I have Favorite Kitty Pic Friday in video format.  Hopefully I get this all to work properly, since I never put video in a post before.  Here’s Dusty:

I hadn’t seen Dusty do this in a while, but sometimes when he gets wild, he really goes wild!  He’s up in the cat tree perch, and you have to consider that there is a big hole that takes up a good portion of the resting area – it’s amazing he doesn’t fall through at all!  We don’t usually have the video camera charged and ready to go, so thankfully Hubby’s phone can shoot video so we were able to finally get at least one of the cats doing something silly!

I hope you all enjoyed this video – I still laugh every time I watch it!   :)  If you would like to share your own favorite kitty photo or video, just create a post of your own, grab the badge from the top of this post, and link your post here in the comments.  If you don’t have a blog but would still like to share, just leave a comment with the link to your photo.

Hope you all have a wonderfully relaxing weekend!

Favorite Kitty Pic Friday!

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I actually scheduled this post very early in the week to make sure I at least had this post in for the week.  Here’s my choice for this week:

Dusty sleeping in his own bed.  We bought this bed for about $10 at Wal-Mart as a Christmas present for him this past year.  He always loved sleeping in pet beds before, but we haven’t had much luck with them, all thanks to Jasper.  For some reason, Jasper likes to pee in pet beds.  The very first one we had for them was a small foam dog bed – eventually Jasper peed in it.  So we upgraded to a large foam dog bed, hoping they would both fit in it together again, like they originally did with the first one.  The first one took him a long time to destroy.  The second big one was a $40 bed, and we had it less than a week before he peed in it!  We gave up on the beds for a while after that, until we moved into our house.  My parents had an old foam bed, same size as the one that lasted us a week, and offered it to us since they didn’t have a cat at the time and were just going to throw it away.  I told them Jasper would probably pee in it, but we took it anyway.  Sure enough, he did!  I don’t remember how long it took him to get to that one, and those foam beds have removable covers you can throw in the wash, but they have a shaped foam body, and once the pee gets in there, it’s very hard to completely rid the bed of the smell, even if you manage to rinse out all the fluid.  So, pretty much those beds are trash once he pees in them.  We decided to avoid beds from that point.  But, I felt bad for Dusty because he always loves to sleep in them until Jasper ruins it.  We decided maybe to try a bed that you could throw the entire thing into the washing machine to really clean should Jasper strike again – except all we found were really expensive ones.  Finally this past Christmas we saw this one at Wal-Mart, and decided to buy it.  At first Dusty wouldn’t sleep in it unless one of my towels was covering it (he had most recently been making his bed out of the dirty towel pile).  Eventually we got him to sleep in it without a towel, and it made me so happy to see him all snuggled in his own bed.  Until recently…  I’m sure you’ve guessed it by now – Jasper peed in this one too!  I noticed Dusty wasn’t going in the bed, so I checked it out, and sure enough, full of pee!  I threw it in the wash right away, gave it a rinse cycle, and a full wash cycle.  I don’t really notice much of a smell now, but since I put it back, Dusty still hasn’t gone back in it.  I’m afraid Jasper ruined it for him.   :(   But at least he looks happy and cozy in it for this picture.  Anyone have any suggestions to coax him back to his own bed?

If you want to share your favorite kitty too, you can create your own post, add the badge at the top of this post to yours, and just link back here in the comments section.  If you don’t have a blog of your own, you can leave a link to the photo if it’s viewable online somewhere.  Hope you all have a good weekend!

Decisions, decisions…

Wow, I’m actually getting a post in before Favorite Kitty Pic Friday this week!  I scheduled that post for tomorrow very early in the week in order to make sure it got posted this week since I didn’t get to do it the last 2 weeks.  But I thought about something I wanted to post, and I figured I better do it now or it will fall to the wayside.

I have made some decisions lately, and there are still a few decisions I have to make.

1. I have decided not to peek at my baby registries.  This is very hard for me because I’m so curious and would love to know what kinds of things we are getting and what necessities might be left for us to purchase.  I did end up seeing a couple items that were purchased because it was early on after shower invitations were sent out and I was still adding/removing things from the registries.  Also, my mom can’t really keep a secret, so I even know who the one item is coming from.  Which is one of the reasons I know about my shower as well.  It was never planned as a surprise, because we had to coordinate scheduling with the out of town in-laws, but she would never have been able to keep it that way anyway.  She says she would have been able to, but she blurts out everything at some point, and I’m absolutely sure I would have figured it out somehow either way. So – no more looking at the registry.  We’re done adding things to it at this point anyway, and I need some surprises from this shower!

2. I have decided that the “joys of pregnancy” are not always so joyous.  Sleeping is becoming more difficult since I have to sleep on my sides and apparently want to sleep on my back more than I ever thought I would want to or ever did in the past.  My hips hurt so much throughout the night and it feels like I’m a beached whale when I try to get up for middle of the night bathroom trips or even (especially!) just to roll over to the other side.  I have reflux issues.  I’m somewhat of an emotional person, but lately, “somewhat” emotional doesn’t even begin to describe it.  I notice I get irritated sometimes at stupid things, and so much more that I watch on TV makes me cry.  The show “One Born Every Minute”?  I bawl during every episode.  I used to be able to watch those shows in peace, but now I just cry all the time.  What am I going to be like when I finally have Bean??  One emotional mess coming up!

3. We have decided to have a 3D/4D ultrasound done.  This was up in the air for us at the beginning, mostly due to cost and the fact that it wasn’t a necessity, but furniture and such is.  Well, since we are well furnished now and it was all gifts, we decided to go for it and get a peek at Bean in there.  I have to schedule it yet, but I’m hoping to do that tomorrow and will hopefully have it done in about 2 weeks – depending on appointment availability.

4.  We have decided to take on the biggest paint job of our whole house in about 2 weeks.  Due to the layout of the house, we kind of have to use one color for the front living room, entry, entry hallway, staircase, and upstairs hallway.  It’s such a huge undertaking that we have recruited my dad’s help for a weekend, and Hubby will even take the week off work to continue and finish the job.  We decided we wanted to get at least this paint job completed before Bean arrived, because after that who is going to feel like taking on that huge job, and it will be done for when he starts crawling around and can touch walls with messy hands and such.  Right now those areas are still painted with contractor grade paint, which is not scrub-able at all.  If we get it painted, it will be easier to clean, and our house will finally start to look more finished.  We will still have some more rooms to paint yet, but those are smaller easier rooms and can be done anytime then.

5. We decided to go on a trip in August.  The baton group that I teach for is going to one of the Jersey shores for almost a week to perform on a stage right at the boardwalk.  I’ve taken this trip many many many times, but this will be our first with a newborn, and depending on when Bean decides to arrive and how he ends up entering the world, we’re not sure if this is going to be ok, or not such a great idea.  Guess we’ll have to wait and see!

6. We decided Hubby should have his wisdom teeth removed last week.  He had it done last Friday and is still in some pain from the one extraction site.  That particular tooth hadn’t really come up through the gum much and was actually sideways in his jaw.  I feel really bad when he’s hurting because I told him he should have it done after hearing all the reasons from the oral surgeon why it would be a good thing to do now, even though they weren’t bothering him now.  He goes back tomorrow to have things checked out, so hopefully his pain is all normal and there are no infection issues or anything.  I can’t remember how long I had pain when I had mine done, but I seemed to luck out with my surgery – no swelling or bruising, and I don’t remember the pain being that bad or lasting longer than a couple days.  So, hopefully everything is ok with his mouth. 

And for the decisions yet to be made:

1. We have a first name picked out.  Everyone seems to like it.  We’re still not 100% committed to a middle name though.  At least, we have not both said we are 100% committed to it, though I have a feeling we will end up going with it.

2. To circumcise or not to?  That’s the big question…

So, that is all for now.  Look for my Favorite Kitty Pic Friday post tomorrow, and next week I might have a video for it instead of a photo, if I can figure out how to add in a video that has to come from Hubby’s phone.  It’ll be a funny one though!

Getting to know YOU is back!

Mannland5 decided to bring back this great post opportunity!  If you were a follower from the start, you might remember me participating in some of these – maybe not every week, but the ones I felt I was able to answer.  She posts questions you answer about yourself, create your own post, and then link your blog on her blog.  So here are this week’s questions with my answers:

1. if you won the title of miss america, what would your platform be?  world peace, of course!   ;)  Isn’t that every beauty pageant contestants platform?  I don’t think I would even know what else to say…maybe something against animal abuse?

2. outdoorsy or indoorsy?  a little of both.  We used to go camping a lot when I was younger, but we had a trailer and the campground had a bathroom with showers and all, so it was a little cushy for camping.  I am indoors a lot, but I still like to go hang out on my porch or patio on nice days, and hopefully this year we will get some more use out of our fire bowl on the patio.

3. pajama's out in public..classy or tres tacky?  You will never see me out in pj’s…the only way would be if something terrible happened and it was the only clothing I had to wear period.  I like to go out in comfy clothes a lot, but that’s what cotton/yoga/dance pants are for (and track suits, if that’s what people still call them).

4. what's your favorite room in your house?  I guess the family room, since that’s where I spend most of my time.  But I am loving how the nursery is turning out and that may soon become my favorite room!    :)

5. nook, kindle, or book?  I still only read from real paper books.  Mostly because we only have one Kindle, which was Hubby’s Christmas present, and the books I have lined up to read I bought before we owned a Kindle.  If I were to ever switch formats, it would be Kindle.

6. would you rather wear the same outfit for a week or not brush your teeth for a week?  Neither, especially if the same outfit wasn’t allowed to be washed.  I’ve gone a lazy/sick day at home without brushing my teeth already, but even then I still usually tried to bathe and at least put on clean underclothes.  A whole week though?  Not going to happen.

7. what's your favorite blog at the moment?  Um, not really sure.  All the blogs I read offer different posts, and each person is obviously different, so it’s hard to pick a favorite.

8. lately i've been daydreaming about.........?  Having my baby boy here safe and sound, and what life will be like then.   :)

If you would like to participate, just go to the blog address in the picture, read her post and create your own!  I’m looking forward to adding this back to my somewhat regular posts, since at the moment I only have one weekly post for sure, and I even skipped that one this week again!  Hubby had oral surgery on Friday to remove his wisdom teeth, and it was a long day, especially since we had to travel an hour to the office.  I also ended up in 2 different grocery stores and Target to pick up soft mushy foods and medicines.  I’ve been kind of pooped out this weekend.  I do have to go clothing shopping badly, since on Thursday I started to feel very pregnant all of a sudden and started realizing a lot of the clothing that I was still able to wear is now not fitting so well anymore, but I’m conflicted between staying at home today and going out.  It seems nice out, so I want to go, but I like to go out with Hubby, and he’s not feeling up to an outing today.  So, now I go off to figure out what to do with my day…