iCal - how I've missed you!

If you didn't hear from my last post, I got a new laptop for Christmas!!

It's really nice, and really more than I deserve or need right now, but I'm going to put it to good use! It came with the new iLife and I'm excited to use that to make some awesome photo books so I don't lose any more photos! It's also got iCal. One thing I really missed about having my own computer was iCal. Sure, I know I could have gotten an old fashioned analog calendar and used it to keep my life organized, but let's be realistic here. How could I ever go back to paper when I've experienced the ease of using iCal?

In the last few days, I've gotten 5 Calendars going: Training, Dinners, Food, Finances, and Appointments (and that's the order I created them in... where are my priorities?).

It's probably too small to really see, but here's my training calendar: (click on it to see it bigger)



I've got myself starting running about a month after the baby's due. I might have to push that back to 6 weeks or just start out a little easier than I've got planned, but we'll see. I'm flexible, but I still like to have it all spelled out there for me. :)

I've also got myself going to a Cycle and Core class on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and swimming on Saturdays. I like to think of that swim as a nice recovery for the week, and I can bring the whole family with me since we now have a family pass to our nearby rec center! Yay! Sundays, as usual, are rest days.

There's also something called TriWater on Monday and Wednesday mornings. I might just have to find out what that's all about, or I can just go swim those mornings when I feel like I need to add in more swimming. Really, I just need to focus on running for a while, though, to get myself ready for Utah Valley Marathon which I'm pretty sure I'm going to switch over to the Utah Valley Half Marathon. That just sounds a lot less stressful and I know I can be ready for that on time without hurting myself in the process. My sister likes this idea as well since she'll be working and going to school full time and doesn't feel like she'll have time to train for a full marathon right now. That's cool. Half will be my distance this year. Full next year.

Onto the food! Here's my Dinners calendar:



This one is my favorite because now I've got dinners planned out for the whole month! Yay! I also have each dinner repeating every 4 weeks so I don't have to go through and plan this out every month. If we don't like something, I'll just switch it with something else. Also, if 4 weeks seems to be to often to eat everything, I can always go in and add more things later.

The hardest thing for me about cooking dinner is knowing what I'm going to make and having the ingredients to make it when dinner time comes. I've been really bad about this lately, especially because when dinner time comes around, usually nothing sounds good to me. I'm hoping that will change once I'm not pregnant anymore. Of course, then I'll have a baby to add into the mix.

Anyway, this calendar is really handy because I put the url of the recipe (if it's online, which most of them are) in the location section of the event so I can just pop over to Safari and look at that when I'm making my shoping list and when it's time to make the meal. I'm really excited for this, and I hope it helps keep us eating healthy dinners and also save us money because we won't be so inclined to eat out as much if I've got a yummy dinner planned.

Speaking of babies, my friend who was due the same day as me, was induced today. She's in the hospital this very minute having her little girl! (Congratulations, Sara, I hope everything goes well!)

I have a doctor appointment tomorrow so we'll see how things are progressing for me on that front. I've been having a lot of contractions and just feeling super uncomfortable, but I don't know if that means labor is in the near future or if it just means I'm 38 weeks pregnant.

Our Christmas

We had such an amazing Christmas this year! It could have been the best one yet. George even got some stuff, and he’s not even born yet! Lucky guy.

The day started off with Pete waking me up at 3am because he sat up to see what time it was. I guess he was too excited to sleep which has to be pretty excited for him! At the time, though, I thought it was more like 6 for some reason so I just kind of laid there waiting for the kids to wake up. Eventually, I realized how early it was and went back to sleep for a little while. They ended up getting up at about 6:30 which isn’t too bad. I think we told them 7, but we got up anyway since we couldn’t sleep any longer either.

Opening presents was fun and crazy of course. I just managed to take a few pictures:

Ethan got a book that they learned the song to last year in school so that was just perfect! He sat down right then and there and read the whole thing! We're so proud of him, he's getting really good at reading! At 3:00, all my family came over, and the excitement began again! We had a really yummy dinner, then opened more presents:

Shane, Heather, and Aria

Baxter

Grandma Angela, handing out some pretty freaking awesome handmade presents for all the kids.

Katie trying to get Mindy to smile. This is the best we could get! It was such a fun day. Everyone got WAY too spoiled, especially me since Pete got me a Macbook Air! It's so beautiful and little! Plus, we got the kids a Kinect for the Xbox360 and some fun games to go with it. It's like a wii, only without controllers. You just move around to do everything. We had quite a good time playing that with everyone, along with Rockband 3 to finish out the day. Wow, what a Christmas!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!

We love you and wish you all happiness this Christmas, and in the year to come!

Love,

The Lasko Family

Staycation

For the last few days, Pete and I had a wonderful "staycation" (as they call), where you just take time off and do fun things or relax around your house. The kids were at my dad's and we did both fun things and relax, and it was really nice. I told you about Monday night, when we got a new couch and put it together. Well, here's the couch in all her beauty:

I couldn't quite get the whole thing, it's so big, and the boxes were in the way so I couldn't back up any more! The kids have now made an awesome fort out of all the boxes!

Tuesday I had my doctor appointment, and Pete went snowboarding. I'm happy he got to go, and he said the powder was unbelievable! When he got done, I picked him up with our swimming stuff and we went to a near-by rec center that has a hot tub for him and a lap pool for me. We had to pay because my membership is up. So sad. Maybe I'll get a new one for Christmas. (hint hint). Anyway, I took it really easy, and I was glad to not be doing a serious workout because the pool was really warm! It felt nice to just swim a few laps in, though. I think I did a total of 800-1000 m or something like that. I had a few contractions, and the baby kept kicking me while I was swimming. That's just a weird feeling so I was happy to get out when Pete was done with the hot tub.

After swimming we went out to dinner and got Pho. I'd never had it before, but Pete's always talking about it. It's a Vietnamese soup with beef and rice noodles that you put thai basil and bean sprouts in. It was so good! I think I'm going to be craving that again very soon!

Yesterday we drove to Heber to pick the kids up. It was raining here, but snowing and so beautiful there! It really made me miss Heber, but Pete reminded me that that was because I'm not the one who would do the shoveling! Very true.

They were all out playing in the snow when we got there, which is good since we don't have any snow at home, and look at the awesome Dr. Seuss snowman they made:

While we were driving around they kept playing my running songs on the radio, and it just made me want to run! I'm getting so excited to be able to start training again so I started looking into a training plan for the Utah Valley Marathon. I know it's a little early, but I'm just a planner!

I think I want to do the FIRST marathon training plan. It just has you run 3 times a week, which I like because then I have time for other things (swimming, biking) that I like to do. The only problem is that it puts my first long run at 8 miles, the second week in February! That's exactly a month after the baby's due so I don't know if I'll be able to safely pull that off. Maybe it would be nice if he came a little early... (just kidding!)

I'll leave you with a picture of a delicious salad I had on Tuesday after my doctors appointment:

It has a handful of baby spinach, a handful of baby spring mix, a whole avocado (what? There was no one to share with, and I couldn't let it go bad! Personally, I don't think there's ever too much avocado!), chicken from a freshly roasted chicken I brought home from the store, some chopped up almonds and some craisons. I did put a little, tiny bit of poppy seed dressing on there too. It was so good! I'm planning on making it again for everyone for Christmas, and I can't wait!

3 Weeks to Go!

I had my 37 week checkup today, and everything went well. I'm dilated to 1 cm, and my doctor said that was good progress from my last visit! She set up an appointment for me to be induced on January 14, but it's just tentative, we might have to cancel if she doesn't think I'm ready enough by then. I really am still hoping to go into labor ON my awesome due date (1/11/11), but if I don't get that day, I'm ok with waiting a little longer. Though it would be nice to have a for sure day to plan babysitters around, let him come when he's ready.

My doctor said, "You've only gained one pound this week. Congratulations!" I'm not too surprised since I'm still not really eating that much. Even when I do feel hungry, I can't fit that much food in my stomach. I feel bad that I'm probably not getting all the nutrients the baby needs, so I finally went in and picked up my prescription for prenatal vitamins today. I had a ton of samples so I used those up until maybe a month ago.

So far, I think I've gained 22 pounds, but that's a lot when you step down from a car bumper and you're not used to the weight. My leg was hurting for a few minutes after doing that last night while helping Pete tie some big ol' boxes onto the top of our car:



Have I mentioned how much I love our car? Seriously. Especially in the winter. I'm always so glad to have the all-wheel drive and traction control. It is sweet!

Yesterday we dropped the kids off with my Dad and he took them to Heber where the good snow is, and they're having a grand time. He had taken the days off to watch them while we went to St. George, and they were so excited to go, we decided to still have them go even though we aren't going to St. George anymore.

Since the kids were gone, and we were able to fold all the seats down in the Jeep, we decided last night was a good time to go get the couch we've been wanting from ikea. Merry Christmas to us! It was actually a really fun date night. We had an early dinner at Bombay House, went to ikea and got our couch, and took the long, slow way home so we wouldn't lose it. Once we got home, we couldn't find any instructions so it took some thinking to figure out how to put it together. Then we opened the slip covers and found instructions! So, if you ever order a couch from ikea, make sure to look in with the slip covers for the instructions!

It took us a few hours to put together, but it was fun, and made us feel like furniture builders! Now we have a nice big couch in our basement just in time for having everyone over for Christmas! Yay! (It's even red!) I'll post a picture of it once I can get passed all the boxes to get back down there!

Speaking of Christmas, it sure is coming up soon, isn't it? Here's our cute little gingerbread house:



(it came pre-assembled from Costco, all we had to do was decorate! That was stressful enough with 3 kids trying to help!)

PS - sorry about all the unintentional ads in this post. First Jeep and Ikea, and now Costco! Jeez!

Thank you!

Thank you so much to everyone who left such sweet comments on my last post, or otherwise sent me messages. You're support and advice really made me feel so much better! I feel lucky to have so many awesome friends, even if I don't know most of you in real life! :)

I feel so much less stressed now!

What we're going to do is just skip the window, keep the baby in our room, and get me a new tri bike! :)

JUST KIDDING!

What we've really decided to do is go with the cheaper window that's big enough to be safe, but not necessarily to code. We've told the contractor that we want to do it, but he's been busy so who knows when it will actually get done.

I'm not going to worry about it any more.

Several people suggested just keeping the baby in our room, and I guess I had just ruled that out since I'm such a light sleeper and have trouble sleeping with a baby in the same room as me. I just wake up at every little grunt or movement the baby makes, and end up constantly checking on them all night. If they're in the next room over, I can hear them cry, but at least get some sleep in-between feedings. Maybe this baby will be a really quiet sleeper, or maybe I'll just get used to it. If not, it won't be for very long since we will get the window in and move the girls downstairs eventually.

Besides, won't it be so cute to have a little baby in our room with us?! He's going to be so little!

Birds Nest, Humans Stress

I'm at 35 weeks and counting (5 more to go!!). Here's what I look like today (Well, last night...and thank you, Pete, for telling me there was a sticker on my belly!):

I would say I'm officially to the "nesting" stage of this pregnancy. Actually I've been there for a while, but there's really not much I can do right now. Here's the story.

Right now we've got all 3 kids in the same room, upstairs, next to ours.

We're not really wanting to squeeze a crib in there too.

There is a bedroom in the basement, but the windows (like all the windows in the basement) are not to code. What that means is that if there was a fire, the windows are too small for a fireman to get in to rescue someone. Not an ideal place to put my precious little girls.

No big deal. When we found out I was pregnant, we started getting our debts paid off and saving up to put a new, bigger window in. We were thinking we would need about $2000 to do this. Well, the first guy came in and gave us an estimate of $1500 so we were really happy with that. We even told him we'd do whatever work we could to keep the price down, like digging the hole outside.

In digging the hole we found out that this house (built in 1914) originally didn't have a basement. It just had a shelf foundation (I think that's what it's called). Someone went in, dug the basement out and poured in a huge cement footing. This kind of gets in the way of the window, and it would also mess with the structure of the foundation if we cut it without pouring more cement.

The first guy had another guy, who specializes more in this kind of thing, come in and look at it, and the estimate suddenly turned into $4,200!

Um, ok, that's a lot more to chew on.

So, now we're wondering if it's even worth it to put that much into this house (just for a window!), and how much we could get if we tried to sell, then we could just rent a bigger place for the same price we're paying on our mortgage.

We talked to a realtor who went to run the numbers, but haven't really gotten any answers back. We're just kind of in limbo, which is a place I hate to be. I want to get stuff done!

We've also talked to the first contractor and he's still willing to put a bigger window in for the price he gave us, but it might not be strictly to code. This seems ok to me, as long as the kids are safe down there.

Still waiting to hear back from the realtor to see what he thinks about that.

What would you do??

I just hate sitting around waiting. Like I said, there's really not much I can do. I'd love to show you the crib set I made, but we have nowhere to put the crib yet so you'll have to settle for a sneak peak:

I'd also love to show you the matching car seat cover I made, but we don't have a car seat yet.

I have sanded 2 dressers and painted one. The second one is waiting for the paint. Ethan wants it to be red, but I did the first one white and it looks so nice I just want to do the second one white too. It will be for the boys though. I can't decide. What do you think?

Icing On The Cake

Yesterday I had a doctor's appointment, and everything went just fine, but I asked her about our trip we had planned to St. George (about 5 hours away) in 2 weeks. Pete's business partner and company is down there and we were going to leave the kids with my dad, go down for the Christmas party and to see our friends. Um, yeah, I wasn't really thinking about the fact that I'll be 37 weeks pregnant at that point when we made the hotel reservation. Sadly, my doctor said it would probably be fine, but that she doesn't recommend I go. (Shocking, hu?) I was so looking forward to one last trip alone with Pete before the baby's born. I guess it's better for us to listen to the doctor though.

Also, yesterday, I found out that I did not make Team Trackers. I'm not really surprised, and it's probably better this way since I'll have a new baby and won't be able to train, travel or race too much, but it's hard not to be a little bummed about it. I am really excited for my 2 blog/twitter friends, MAraul and Tribirdie, who did get in, though! Congratulations!

So, that's about it. Less than 5 weeks to go and we have nowhere to put the baby.

*dramatic sigh*

And I have a hangnail.

No, I'm not stressed at all...

(Seriously, though, we have 2000 square feet in this house! We will find somewhere to put the baby. Worst case scenario, he'll just be in our room for a while. Hopefully he's a quiet sleeper.)