Not Yet

I just wanted everybody to know that Ethan is not here yet. Tomorrow, I will be 39 weeks, and it appears Ethan is content as ever to stay just where he is. It doesn't matter that I am not, and that I want him to come (really, am I ready for that?)

At my last couple of appointments, the doctor has said, "Nope, he is not coming this week." I haven't had any contractions, nothing to signal that Ethan is ready for the big journey to come to this big, wide open world. Nope, he seems to like his squished environment.

Everybody tells me that I should enjoy it while it lasts, that I won't get any sleep once he is here, but really? I don't think I am getting much sleep as it is. If anybody has any suggestions for a (almost) 9 month pregnant woman to be comfortable enough to sleep at night, please share. I will be willing to take any suggestions!

Update!!

I am told that I do not update my blog often enough. I know, I really don't. The reason that I started the blog is so that people I know (and love) can keep updated on my life, and then I don't update!

I decided that I really needed to take some preggo pictures of myself. Here I was at 37 weeks, and I didn't have any pictures! Here is one taken on Sunday (completely sad that it took me a week to post it.)I feel like I look huge! I didn't think I looked that big until I saw the picture, and then, wow. Yep, huge.

Over the 24th of July, Mike and I went camping with his Warenski cousins. It was fun! I actually found people to play games with me and I got to spend time with Mike's cousins and family that I hadn't really spent a lot of time with. We went up to Main Canyon (just past Daniel's Summit) and spent a couple of days. We had some "white man" fires, laughter, and a lot of fun. I thought I took pictures, but can't seem to find any.

We also went to the Proctor Family reunion. I always give Mike a hard time because his family doesn't seem to get together too often (beyond immediate.) I know mine doesn't either, but we have a summer bbq, usually sometime in July and a Christmas get together. While not everybody makes it, most try. Because of this, the two family events with the Warenski side and Proctor side were fun and gave me the opportunity to meet more of Mike's family. The Proctor reunion was the opportunity to celebrate Grandpa Jack's 85th birthday. He is an amazing man and it is so easy to love him (and his sense of humor!)

On Sunday, we went up to my families cabin by Strawberry Reservoir for the Lewis bbq. It was gorgeous, if a little chilly. Mike found a game he knows my dad can't "cheat" at and won. Horseshoes. Mike totally skunked my dad, but I am not sure if he beat Adam, my cousin's husband. I have never understood the allure of horseshoes. I guess I consider it the game all the "old men" played when we went up to the cabin. I was never allowed to play as a child. I would get in the way after all, so it is a game that has never interested me.I took my camera, but then had too much fun talking, that I didn't get too many pictures. I did go on a little walk (a little hard on dirt roads wearing flip flops.) Here is one of my favorite pics from this walk.If the above picture is dark, I am sorry...it wasn't dark on my computer, until I uploaded it. I am just too tired right now to fix it.

There are two reasons I wore flip flops up to the mountains.
Reason #1. I have pretty bad edema. My feet (especially my left) are swollen almost all the time with my pregnancy. I try to keep them elevated, but find myself sadly lacking in that aspect. Mike refers to them as my sausages. They are really that bad. I no longer have ankles...just big ol' cankles. I don't think that I want to take a picture of them, so you won't see them, unless you see me. :)
Reason #2. I have been a bed hog lately. I will admit it. It doesn't help that Mike and I have a full size bed, and that I sprawl, trying to get comfortable. Well, Sunday morning, my feet were on Mike's side of the bed, and his were hanging off. He swung his feet to get them back up on the bed, I guess he felt like he was falling off the bed or something, and his foot connected with my little toe just perfect. I woke up swearing. It hurt! By Sacrament meeting, I had a little bruise starting on my little toe, and by Sunday night, the whole thing was black and blue. Mike felt really bad and was extremely worried about my toe! I taped it (or tried to) throughout the week and on Thursday at my doctors appt. had my doctor check it. It isn't broken! (yeah!!) It was probably just sprained or jammed pretty good. It didn't help that Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, Mike got it again. I am pretty protective of my feet lately in bed. hahaha.

Ethan seems to be in no hurry to get here. I have still not started dilating at all, which is ok I guess, considering I still have two weeks. I feel like I will probably go over the September 6th due date. I just hope it isn't too far over. On the other hand, I guess I can wait because we still don't know if Ethan is in the position he should be. While the doctor swears he feels head down, his heart beat is up by my ribs, which would indicate that his head is up in my ribs, not down, waiting to come. It doesn't calm my worries that this morning, Ethan had hiccups and they were coming through nice and strong, right under my ribs, right where the heart beat was. Hmmm....we really need him to turn because I do not want the automatic c-section that will happen if he is breech.

I hope that this was a wonderful update. I am sorry it is so long, but I did try to include some pictures (I know, not many) to help out. Just keep an eye out because when Ethan comes, there will be a TON of pictures.

Two weeks and counting!

Jake

If you ever wonder why Jake has a sunburned belly, this is the reason! This is how we found Jake laying outside.

Just like his daddy...

I have decided that this baby is going to be a jokester, just like his daddy. I had my doctors appointment yesterday and he kept playing hide and seek with the doctor when he was trying to get a heart beat reading. The second the doctor would start to keep track to see how fast the heart was, Ethan would move and the search would start over. You would think that there isn't that much room for him to move, but he kept it up. Dr. Liddle had to search and start over 4 times to get the reading!

We are still not sure if Ethan has turned at this point. Because of where we finally got the heart reading, statistically, that means he is still breech. However, the doctor swears he feels the head where it is supposed to be, so, I guess we'll find out one way or the other, right? Ethan just wants to keep us guessing. :)

The Demolition

Some of you may know that Mike and I have not been living in our house for the last month. With all of the rain we had in early June, a leak in our roof got much worse, and we discovered mold. They came out and tested it, and it was Stachobotrius (sp?), in other words, the not good mold. Because of this, we have been living in Mike's parents camper trailer on our driveway or in the backyard.

The insurance finally decided they were going to cover the repairs (it seriously took them long enough) and last week, we had the containment go up. Mike refers to it as the CSI lab. Pretty much, we have floor to ceiling plastic with zippered doors around the area where the mold was found. The containment blocks off our bedroom, the bathroom, and the baby room. Until they started demolition, we were able to access our bedroom and bathroom, but seriously, because of all the zippered doors we had to go through, we just removed anything we would need from our bedroom. As a result, all of our clothes are currently in the living room. Convenient, eh?

Because the demo was started today, we no longer get to use the bathroom. Not too bad right now as we still have the bathroom in the trailer. How lucky are we that it was available for us to use? They will be coming back on Monday and doing a little bit more work, and then they will have to retest for mold to see if it is gone. (Let's hope it is.) If it is, the containment comes down and we have our house back! We just have to share it with the builders as they rebuild what they tore down.

Trust me, when I get back in, that house is getting a top to bottom scrubbing. I think I may wait until the rebuild is done so I don't have to clean it twice, but I don't know. We haven't been spending too much time inside and it got a little (LOT) neglected. I never thought I would look so forward to cleaning.

You can see here where they ripped off part of the ceiling. You
can also see down to where our bedroom is cut off. Right in
front is a huge heppa fan that runs all the air through it and
then through a plastic hose that goes out our bedroom window.
One of the reasons we took everything out of the bedroom we needed,
we didn't want to climb over the fan and the hose every time we
went into the bedroom.This is inside the actual containment. I promise, I just stuck my

camera in and snapped a few pictures. This covers a chunk of our
kitchen and blocks off our bedroom etc. You can see where they
pulled off a bunch of the pillar to repair.

This is the view from the kitchen. The red is where one

of the zippered doors is. You can go in that into a little
room where the guys doing the demo suited up in their little
hazmat suits. You then go into another zippered door into
the main containment area.

As you can see, everything in our house is pushed all together.

The table is pushed up right up against the stove and we have
quite a few things pushed in front of others. It makes for a
nice little mess.

The Grotto

Yesterday, Mike and I went with our friends, the Peacocks, to The Grotto. We had been planning this for awhile, but had to keep putting it off because of the rain (seriously, is it supposed to rain this much in June?) On a side note, I didn't realize how welcome the cooler temperatures the rain brought were until it got really hot last week.

The Grotto is located up Payson canyon and before all of the runoff is gone, is beautiful. It isn't a bad hike (rather short actually) and when you get there, it has it's own little air conditioning unit. Quite handy I might say. :)

Here are some pictures:

Ella had fun splashing in the water and
was just a little sad that she wasn't the
one in charge of Jake. Wyatt was dang cute on the hike (although he may
not appreciate being called cute when he is older.)
He had to lead the way and was extremely adventurous
in all things.
Here are some of the red rocks for Amy.Jake had a blast, and Emary loved being in charge of him!

Even though he almost pulled her off a couple of logs in his
haste to smell even more of the canyon.

Don't you wish you had been with us to enjoy this beauty?

This is the old trail. It doesn't seem to do justice

to how beautiful it was up Payson Canyon.

This is Mike on the hike. Somebody kindly put logs over most of

the stream crossings. You just had to make sure not to fall off! :)

This is The Grotto. From what I understand,

the waterfall isn't nearly as big later in the year.

After the hike, we were invited to Jamie's parents for family dinner. It was fun. We had fun talking to Jamie's family and getting to know more Peacocks. Mike and I felt very welcomed and were put right to ease. It was definitely an enjoyable afternoon/evening!

On another note, we created the Proctor Drive-In in our backyard the other night. We set up the TV and brought out some camping chairs. It was fun (if only the mosquitoes had left us alone.) We got Inkheart from Redbox (something we totally love, cheap entertainment) and quite enjoyed it. Makes me want to read the book that the movie is based on. We will have to do it again and let people know. Come one, come all!

Air Show

I have been extremely lax about updating my blog lately. This is probably because I feel that nothing is going on in the Proctor lives right now that is extremely exciting. I graduated, Mike is working, I am job searching (trust me, anything and everything and it gets extremely discouraging at times.) I hope to be able to blog about a new job soon. Trust me, I would be extremely excited to do that.

On Saturday, Mike and I took Tait and Blake to the Hill Air Force Air Show. I am almost convinced that Mike may never want to go with me again, as I ended up directing us on the longest walk/hike in the history of any 4 and 7 year old.

The last time I went to the air show was in 2006. I went with our friend Kevin, who happens to be in the reserve and works up at Hill. When we went, we parked at the high school about 1 1/2 miles down the road, walked up the hill to the base and then caught a shuttle to where the air show took place. Well, I convinced Mike that we didn't need to drive onto the base, that we could just walk on up and catch a shuttle. The climb up the hill is a lot of work for a 4 and 7 year old and Mike ended up doing this walk with one of them on his shoulders the whole entire time.

The best part was when we got to the base. Unlike last time, there were NO SHUTTLES!!! Well, there were shuttles, which we discovered when we go to where the air show was, but where they were picking up, we have no idea, not in the same place that we caught them before. We ended up walked for over an hour (honestly, I don't know how many miles, but it felt like 4 or 5 total) just to get to where the air show was. I know that Tait and Blake did not expect this, neither did Mike or I and I would NOT recommend doing this at 6 months pregnant. I was extremely sore/tired/worn out by the end of the day. The best part? We met Mike's parents there and guess where they parked? Right in the parking lot, next to the tarmac where the air show took place! Walking distance? Less than a mile. Trust me, if I get Mike to go again, that is where we will plan on parking.

Once we got to the air show, it was fun. There were things to look at in the sky, planes to go into, crowds of people to wade through, little boys to try to keep track of. A lesson for parenthood, I don't know if I am ready to deal with the stress of keeping track of little children in a crowd that the news estimated was 300.000 strong.

Here are some of the things we saw. Trust me, lots of fun, lots of noise, and something I want to take my little boy to in a couple of years (when ear plugs will fit in his ears and stay in.)