Our Weekend In Florida

I come from an impulsive family, and it was definitely evident this week! Mel and I got a call on Wednesday afternoon from my dad, asking us if we felt like driving to Florida this weekend. He said that they missed all of us and they'd pay for gas if we would handle the crazy travel. How can you turn that down? We cleared it by Steve and started packing. Turns out, it's incredibly easy to pack when you're only going to be there a day and a half; I fit everything for Steve, Bella, and I into one duffel bag.

Our first stop on Saturday was downtown Venice with all of the shops and stores. Mom wanted our opinion on a little sushi place she had found. She and Steve loved it!

Mel, Steve, and Dad trying the sushi. Dad is NOT a sushi guy, so this was a big step for him!

Baking with Mimi...cookie dough is almost done!

The whole gang at Cheeburger Cheeburger, a 1950's-style diner with make-your-own-burgers. Dad has wanted to take us here for awhile, and he was a little disappointed that I was craving a salad! Bella's great-grandparents on my side of the family are my mom's parents.

Great-Grandpa Zinn sneaking his hot fudge sundae to Bella. They both enjoyed this!

Proof that we actually got to see each other during the crazy weekend!

Hanging out with Papa by the pool. This is Bella's favorite spot in the whole house!

Family picture on Sunday morning; we even got one with Rachel smiling!

It was a quick visit, but a wonderful one! We just don't get enough time with family and it was nice to spend a few hours with mine. In just two weeks, we'll be headed to our Ohio family for Thanksgiving!

Meeting Our First Midwife

Last night, we met with and interviewed our first midwife. At first, I was a little nervous about meeting her because she had seemed kind of...abrupt in her emails. Not rude at all, just not overly warm and friendly. Meeting her face-to-face, though, was much different! She is very no-nonsense, which I think came across in the emails and she was extremely knowledgeable. She has attended over 1,000 home births and has been a midwife since the 70's.

She spent just as much time focused on Steve as she did me. She answered all of our questions about how she would respond in different situations and what could potentially go wrong. She is definitely not anti-doctors, and it was nice to hear about her willingness to be completely flexible if I decided that I wanted to go to a hospital at the last-minute.

Our only negative was that she doesn't have an office. She works completely out of her home, so she isn't able to run tests like an ultrasound at 20 weeks or a strep-B test at the very end. It wouldn't be too big of a deal to find a close midwife practice that is able to see us just for those tests, but it's an additional cost that we'd have to think about.

We meet with our next midwife on Monday. I'm ready to know for sure and get the ball rolling. I need to schedule my next prenatal visit very soon, so hopefully, we'll have a midwife by next week!

Halloween Festivities

I'm combining pictures from our church's "Trunk Or Treat" event with the ones from trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. Our church had our yearly Fall Festival on Sunday night with one little change...we had all of the games and activities inside, but the candy was outside! As people walked up to the front door to enter the event, they walked through a line of cars with our trunks all decorated and adults dressed up, passing out candy. It was so much fun! We got to meet so many kids and interact with their parents; I didn't even have a chance to take Bella inside to play the games. (I promise we'll do that next year!) I didn't get many pictures of us outside, but here are a few of us before we left.

Our family picture. We had to put tights and a long-sleeve shirt under Bella's Tinkerbell costume, but she still looked adorable!

Steve is dressed as Captain America and I am ready for a masquerade ball! We found all of our goodies at Target and I was pretty impressed by Steve's willingness to participate! My dress is an old prom dress that's been in my closet. I got it zipped at 14 weeks pregnant! I'm not sure how and it wasn't the most flattering look, but at least it stayed on and it was an easy costume to put together. I'm pretty sure I've tried this dress on while not being pregnant and couldn't get it zipped, so I think God was having mercy on me!

...and masks off! We had a great time and I was very happy to get home that night and take the dress off!

Bella was so excited by Steve's mask on Sunday night that she chose the mask over her Tinkerbell costume when we went trick-or-treating in our own neighborhood. Of course, after about 5 minutes, she freaked out about having the mask on, so she just walked around with her Captain America t-shirt on. We must have looked like really lazy parents! :)

At our very first house, the people weren't there, but they had left a bucket of candy. Bella was pretty convinced she could just "swap" her bucket for theirs.

This is how Bella and Liam approached every door. At two of the houses, they knocked and then opened the door before Erin and I could get to them! Good thing people were very laid back when they saw two, adorable toddlers!

Carrying our loot back down the stairs.

Walking with Daddy.

Worn out and ready to go home. Next year, we might make it a little longer, but the kids had a great time, we got some good candy for Mama, and Bella was in bed at a decent time!

Steve's 30th Birthday!

Happy Birthday to our wonderful husband and daddy!

Having a major milestone birthday when your wife is pregnant is not a great recipe for a huge party weekend. Friday was Steve's birthday; we had a fun dinner out at one of our favorite local restaurants. We took Bella with us and she did great. We headed over to Trey and Whitney's after dinner with Steve's favorite birthday dessert - an ice cream cake!

On Saturday, we dropped Bella off at Whitney's again and had a lunch/shopping date. It's so nice to get out every once in a while without the little human! We went downtown, ate sushi at our favorite Thai restaurant, and did some birthday shopping. It wasn't exactly a party weekend, but Steve had fun and I was awake after 9:00 PM!

In honor of our handsome, strong, wise, and gooooood-lookin' man, I've been thinking of some ways that Bella is the mirror of her Daddy:

Bella LOVES spicy food! She definitely gets this from Steve (and he seems to get it from HIS dad, so it's a cool connection!).

She tries to whistle; this may seem random, but Steve and his dad are always whistling. And they're really good at doing it on pitch! I can barely whistle and definitely can't do it on tune.

Her little blue eyes make her sensitive to the sun just like Steve, so they always sneeze as soon as they step outside.

I'm sure there's many more, but these are some of the little things that Steve and I noticed this past weekend.

Dance Party In "St. Louis"!

I will be so amazed if this video actually works! I took it on my phone, so no promises on sound and clarity. This is the video of Bella and Mel dancing to a scene from "Meet Me In St. Louis".

My phone can only take 30 seconds of video at a time, so we continued the fun below...

Puggles-Mania

I finally ordered a Puggles shirt for Bella this week! I have to confess that my main motivation for taking her to church on Wednesday nights has been the cute shirt. She loves it so much that she wanted to sleep in it last night, so I took some pictures of her playing on the couch this morning.

Moments Of Chaos, I Mean, Bella!

I posted this morning about our missions conference, but I couldn't resist adding a few updates about Bella. Some moments that I want to make sure I remember...

Picture day at preschool. I tried and tried (and tried!) to get a cute one of her without her cup or jacket, and actually standing up, but no go. At least her smile is pretty stinkin' wonderful!

Rolling all over the floor right after I did her hair for church tonight. I have no doubt that she does this on purpose; she's a crafty little human!

I love that her attempts to say "cheese!" come out silly. She usually looks just slightly annoyed at the camera; like she's about to tell someone off.

Bella's favorite movies this week are Pocahontas ("ahontas!") and The Little Mermaid ("arel"). My favorite thing to watch lately is whenever songs come on during these movies...Bella will sit down on the floor at the edge of our bed and try to sing along. She only figures out every few syllables, but it's priceless! It's one of those "pride" moments as her mom. I love to sing and have grown up singing with my dad. I like to think that she gets it from me.

Hmmm...what else? She likes to put her head on the floor while she's standing, peer back between her legs, and say, "I see you!" It makes me smile, even if I just got done scolding her.

Her favorite movie last week (and for about the last three weeks) was Meet Me In St. Louis. If you don't know this movie, I weep for you. Bella learned how to copy some of the dance moves and I'm going to see if I can post the video of her and Mel dancing. It will make your day, even if you don't like musicals!