Andy's excited and Mary's pregnant

and we're both overwhelmed!!  My sentiments are no longer quite as dire as this title implies...although they were to start with.  But for those who haven't heard it through the grapevine, we are having a baby girl at the beginning of October.
To answer the most basic questions:
We will go down to Cedars-Sinai Hospital to deliver.
I am feeling fine for the most part.
We have put a registry on Amazon for any interested; you can find us by searching either of our names.
Baby's Name: not definite, but thinking Caroline Adele; we would call her Adele or Addie
We are scrambling to try to get lots of projects (updating the blog being one of them) done before there is a sleeping (hopefully) baby in the house.
Below are pictures tracking my growth.

beginning of 2nd trimester (I think)

end of 2nd trimester

start of 3rd trimester - only 2 weeks after the previous picture

House update

The flooring went in, and the kitchen and master shower went out.  We had a pipe crack in the master bathroom shower that just happens to be right above the kitchen.  So, we've been dealing for several months with an insurance claim to have these two places repaired.  Andy & I knew that we wanted to make changes to both the kitchen and master bathroom, but they were on the 5-10 year section of our renovation plan.  C'est la vie.  So, we spent a ton of time trying to make a plan for the materials, costs, upgrades, changes, etc. for the two locations that were being worked on.

The kitchen is most of the way finished now; eventually, we will make a few other minor changes.  We added a breakfast bar to the kitchen so that now we have a breakfast nook.  We still need to change out the fan, replace the French doors (kind of rotted in a few places outside), and add a pellet stove to the corner.

These show the kitchen with the breakfast nook, the door to the garage, and the French doors.

when we bought the house

now

Once everything is complete and dry in the kitchen, I can put all of the dishes and food away in the cabinets and then actually clean all of the dust.  I can't wait!!!  Right now every flat surface downstairs outside of the kitchen is covered in dishes.  When we ran out of room on tables, we laid some things on the floor to set food and appliances on.  Here's a portion of the mess.

The master bathroom needs a lot of work still, but we are really happy with the shower design that finally worked (3+ tries later) and that the claw foot tub polished up so nicely.  We are still waiting for the glass and frame for the shower, but otherwise it is ready to go.  The paint color is supposed to be gray, but it looks light blue...ugh...I hate choosing paint!!!...we'll change it later...

We have had multiple leaks and burst couplings with our sprinkler system and other pipes outside.  It is so frustrating when we find another one.  It's a good thing that Andy had lots of experience digging post holes out at the ranch as a teenager, because he has been putting that skill to good use.

We got our garage doors fixed so that they close all of the way so that snakes can't get in and surprise me while I do laundry.  The doors are even fully operational now!  We are in the process of organizing the garage so that we can actually pull the vehicles inside of the garage.

When it rains, it pours

I found this post sitting in my draft box.  Apparently, I forgot to publish it...back in March!!!

Hello from the world of concrete and saw dust. I'm finally able to start cleaning it all up knowing that there won't be more added inside the house. We do FINALLY have our new floors in (sans the stairs...a different project); there will be more about how beautiful they are in a later post.

We've had plenty of things going on in addition to the floors over the past week and a half. Randomly, our dishwasher decided that it was no longer going to empty completely. We attempted a little bit of investigating on our own, but couldn't find a problem or easy remedy. Based on what I found on the internet, I was concerned that the motor might be going bad. Oh well, thought I - I'll call the home warranty company. So, a young man comes out and talks with Andy about the problem. I was told the story later (The parenthesis are all the reactions I had in my mind.) He opens the cabinet doors under the sink and is able to immediately diagnose the problem. There was a kink in the hose. (Are you kidding me??? We spent $60 to have him tell us it was a kink from moving stuff around under the sink!!! Well, this situation was bound to happen again; I guess now we know what to check first.) Whoever connected the dishwasher to the sink disposal used the wrong type of hose and it is too long. The man would check with the warranty company to see if they would cover the cost of replacing the hose with the proper kind and length. (Yeah right, the dishwasher works - why would they cover the cost of fixing something that isn't actually broken?) Low and behold, the company says they will cover the cost. (Yippee!!! It worked out well for us that the hose got a kink so that we could have the proper kind of plumbing under the sink.) They fixed this on Sunday (a week ago that is).

The flooring installation happened Monday - Wednesday.

Tuesday afternoon, they stopped installing early so that after work Andy could crawl under the house to investigate a place that kept creaking no matter what they did to fix it. So, Wednesday morning, Andy zipped up his white (coverall) suit - like you would wear in a clean room - and crawled under the house. After me stomping on the creaky spot a whole bunch, Andy found the culprit. We have a beam that is cracked, almost the entire length of the beam. Thankfully, several men have told us how easy it will be to fix and exactly how Andy should do it AND it shouldn't be expensive.

Still Wednesday morning - Andy changes from his white suit into his work clothes, drives off, and comes back. There is a river of water running down the side of the driveway to the road. In my grungy clothes, I hopped around trying to find where the leak appears to start. We identify it and turn off the water to the property.  Andy heads off to work, the guys finish installing the flooring, and a plumber comes out to fix the burst coupling in the supply pipe to the house from the main water line.

We think that the floors are beautiful....of course, they are rather clean right now....