And then there were three....

Well, the day has finally come. At 8:41am we welcomed our son, Nixon Shane Famulak into the world! He had quite the set of lungs on him when he came out, but has been really content and happy to sleep for the rest of the day. Even though he was delivered over two weeks early he weighed in at 7lbs 15oz and is 19.5 inches long. We couldn't be more thrilled and of course we think he is the handsomest little guy around. We had quite a few visitors so we are pretty tired. I will give another update when I get home. So for now just know that he is happy and healthy and we love him to bits.

Our baby's nursery!

Whoo hoo - It's finally done :) Hope you like it as much as I do! I LOVE clean lines, a simple modern look and punches of bright color. I can't wait to bring my little baby home - only 5 more days!

I do have a cute lime green change pad cover, it just hasn't arrived yet :(

I love this shelf for many reasons: The little leather shoes are some that Nick actually wore when he was little - so precious! The abc's frame Ashley made for me, and I put two little wooden animal puzzles on it that I brought home from Botswana. I can't wait to fill the frames with pictures of my little boy, and the empty space to the left of the shoes is for a wooden initial letter that'll be scrapbooked with cute green/blue paper!

I randomly bought this metal tree from a Home Hardware in a teeny tiny town in Saskatchewan last summer - and even though I wasn't even pregnant,
I knew even then that I wanted it for our nursery.
It reminds me of a Geneology Family Tree.

I have a lime green sheet and matching bed skirt that are also still on their way. Sheesh! Hurry up already!

I absolutely love the rag quilt I had made for the crib.
I want one for each of my kids.

I think I'm going to have to hem these curtains to just below the window. How else am I going to close them without knocking everything off the book shelf?

There are so many things I love about this book shelf. It made it SO easy to add punches of color to the room. I love the cloth boxes - very cute, but still functional. I'm not really going with turtles as a theme, but I have a few on top of the shelf that I brought back from Madagascar, and I just loved the green turtle piggy bank so I had to get it too! The bottom right corner is the baby book (which I love) and I can't wait to add more children's books to our little collection!

My cute, comfy rocking chair with matching rag pillow :)

Hope you enjoyed my labor of love!

Some deep thoughts...

Just to warn you, this post is probably going to be long winded because I'm a little emotional these days. The past few days I have been feeling very blessed, and today something really just touched my heart that I wanted to share.

In the past month a few things have come up for Nick and I that just make me feel like, "Are you serious!?! Can't we catch a break?!?" While driving home from work last month my car just up and stalled out in the middle of busy rush hour traffic. We got it home, and after talking to a few people realized that it was probably going to end up costing $1000-2000 to fix. Oh great. The next week, our jeep wouldn't start when Nick and I were trying to come home from our YW/Scouting activity. It needed to have a new starter put in ($200). And then to put the icing on the cake, our dryer died this past Saturday. Like totally died. It cannot be fixed. So out we went to purchase a new washer and dryer (because lets face it - our washer is REALLY old as well and most laundry prices are best when you buy a set). For those of you that don't remember, we are due to have our first child in less than a week, and it has not been an inexpensive process to get ready for his arrival. Baby stuff is expensive! Let alone the fact that this is the first month for us that we have gone from a two income family to just one. Big changes and some big challenges for us.

I'm sure most of you have already heard of Stephanie Nielsen (or NieNie as she blogs) and I had heard of her as well, but never taken the time to read about or watch her story. Until today. (Thanks for sharing the link, Christal.) I honestly just bawled as I watched the video clip. (I don't know how to attach a video clip, so just copy and paste the address into your browser.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHDvxPjsm8E

She is such a good example of how to live a life with meaning, embracing the trials as blessings, and how we need to always turn to our Savior. She inspires me to be a better person. To be more conscious of the blessings I do indeed have and to remember that life is not about the worldly or material things, but about how we grow personally along our journey. This life is about how we prepare ourselves to meet God. About what we do to share and strengthen our testimonies of the truth. It's about how we treat others and how we need to remember that EVERYONE is a Child of God. It's about recognizing the blessings we have and being grateful for them.

We searched and shopped all Saturday afternoon for a washer and dryer. After realizing it was going to cost around $2000 for a set we liked, we were discouraged about having to make such an expensive purchase unexpectedly. This is NOT a good time for us! But we are having a baby in a week and need a washer and dryer, so we bit the bullet and placed an order and paid. Our tender mercy came on Monday morning when my dad called me and said that they've been thinking about getting a new washer and dryer for awhile and this would give them a good excuse to do so. They offered us the set that they currently have. For free. And they would be able to bring it up to us next week. We were able to cancel our order and get a full refund of our money.

Then yesterday Nick got a call from the mechanic who said, "You guys got lucky..." He was able to figure out what was wrong with the car and fix it for less than $400. Which also allowed us to be able to pay him to fix something else on the car that's been needing to be done for awhile. All for less than we'd anticipated on the repair that caused the car to breakdown! Having these two things happen honestly took such a big weight off of our shoulders to know that we wouldn't have to stretch ourselves so tight financially right now.

I would feel ungrateful if I didn't also mention the other big trial and blessing that we've had this past year. As I'm just a few days away from having the baby, I've been thinking a lot about the road we've taken to get to where we are today. It was really hard for me to struggle with not being able to get pregnant, finding something wrong, and having to have surgery to fix it. Hopefully that was the only factor that went in to our struggles. Regardless, I know that we have truly been blessed to have been able to get pregnant at all. I am so excited for this big change, so happy to be able to experience it for myself, and so grateful to have a Father in Heaven who has answered my prayers. I know that His love is real, and that he cares about what I am going through. I know that if we trust in Him he will provide a way for us to accomplish anything. He has for me.

Pregnant ponderings...

So the past few days I've been thinking about many of the 'blessings' of pregnancy. A lot of these examples are very cliche' since I of course didn't buy into any of them before I was pregnant myself. Quite funny actually..... at least to me anyways.

1. I think that 99% of women look BEAUTIFUL when they are pregnant. Even when they are complaining about weight gain or saying how they feel 'huge' I still think they look amazing, and that they should be taking a belly picture on a regular basis to remember this amazing time in life. Now that I am pregnant myself, I DO NOT feel like I am very beautiful most days and I feel like a tank. I'm sure that my Young Women's girls are lying to me when they say I'm such a cute pregnant lady, and that I'm glowing. (Don't even get me started on the term 'glowing'.....) And anytime I try to get a decent belly picture, I end up making Nick take 50 (which results in a nice little argument) just to get ONE half-decent one. Bleh.

2. Waking up (at least) 2 times a night to pee is A-W-E-S-O-M-E. The real kicker is that I feel like I'm going to pee at least 4 litres, and probably 1/4 cup is all that comes out. How is that even possible? It's barely even worth rolling out of bed, pulling my pants down, sitting down, pulling my pants up, and washing my hands for that piddly amount. (no pun intended)

3. I haven't had very many cravings (probably because in regular life I eat whatever I want whenever I feel like it) But I have noticed a NEED for healthier food on a regular basis. If I eat crappy processed stuff like fast food, within an hour or two I end up feeling like garbage. This is clearly a blessing for me as it helps me to eat healthier.

(random side note - ironically the two things I actually have craved are Cheetos and Slurpees. Very healthy I know...)

4. I have always liked my ankles. Unfortunately for the past month I haven't been able to see much of them. My feet are like little sausages (ankles included) and I'm pretty sure I will have to wear flip flops for the rest of my pregnancy.

5. My husband thinks I'm a hormonal moody mess. I get agitated, annoyed and stressed quite easily. I cry over everything (even more than normal - example : Nick was mocking me because I got teary eyed just watching a preview for "Letters to Juliet" at the theatre the other day. A preview!) I know he is really looking forward to me being 'normal' again.

6. For how hormonal I am these days, my skin has gotten quite nice. I don't usually have it too bad, but I can always count on having one zit come along just as another is finally going away. In the past few months I've had next to no zits. I am loving this! (knock on wood...)

7. It is really hard to get into a comfortable position when sitting on the couch or sleeping. My arms fall asleep at least 4 times a night which cause me to wake up in order to roll over. I forget what it's like to not have 30 pounds layered onto my abdomen. I really miss being able to sleep on my stomach.

8. Why did no one tell me about hot flashes??? I feel like I'm going through menopause because you hear about it all the time in relation to that, but I never heard anything about pregnant women getting them. I am constantly SO hot and SO sweaty. It's gross! I always thought that 'a bun in the oven' referred to the fact that the baby was growing like bread/dough would in an oven. I now know that 'bun in the oven' is (or should be) referring to the fact that my body literally feels like an OVEN!

9. I always secretly thought that 'pregnancy brain' was just something people used as an excuse to being forgetful. But as someone who prides herself in the great memory she has, I can now attest that 'pregnancy brain' is no myth! If I don't write something down I WILL forget it. Every. single. time. This is also something Nick has not been enjoying as I am the one who keeps things running smoothly around our household. Needless to say, I write EVERYTHING down these days. haha...

10. I LOVE feeling the baby move around and kick me (except when he jams his foot up in my ribs - that HURTS!) but when the baby does a big movement like rolling over, it sometimes creeps me out because it makes my belly look like a moving waterbed. Nick says it's like I have a little alien inside of me, and then I start thinking of "Breaking Dawn" and that's probably why I get a little creeped. Does anyone else feel that way?

11. Because of the surgery I had last year when the right 1/3 of my uterus was removed, my baby is growing mostly on my left side where my remaining uterus exists. It is visibly noticeable that my stomach is lopsided, and I'm currently working on getting a picture that shows it. I think it's pretty funny - but definitely something better seen in person.

I swear I had way more thoughts on pregnancy, but since my brain is now drawing a blank (surprise....surprise....) I will end things here. Besides, since my baby is due on the 11th of May, having 11 points seems very fitting :)

Also, I hope that no one felt like I was a big whiner while sharing the joys of being pregnant, because I wouldn't change one single thing about my experience. I truly am so grateful for the blessing of being able to bring a baby into this world, and more often than not I am simply amazed with this whole experience. It really is a miracle that it's even possible. Here's just one picture for those of you who wanted to see that ever increasing waistline of mine!

I didn't think I looked that big until I saw this picture...
(and this was 2 weeks ago!)

ps. T-minus 14 days until this baby arrives!

Easter, Maternity leave and Randomness...

Jill & Ryan came up to visit us for Easter with their kids and we had so much fun! We took the kids swimming,shopping (which was clearly more for our enjoyment than theirs) to the park behind our house, and did an easter egg hunt for them on Sunday between conference sessions. Us adults also got to enjoy a nice Friday night out. One of my laurels babysat, and we ate at Montanas and saw the movie 'the Bounty Hunter'. It was pretty funny - though I'm sad I never got any pictures of us that night. I don't think that Jill and I have even gotten a picture with just the two of us in MONTHS! We always seem to forget!

Levi was trying to be such a big boy and carry the floaty - it was so cute.

I think I'm going to have a hard time with the task of getting my children to look
at the camera when I want them to. Levi and Dani are my perfect example.

Nick and Ryan just being silly - I think they were just excited to finally be eating
the nachos they'd been talking about for 2 days straight!

This is Levi's 'morning smile'. He would always scrunch up his face
and give us the cutest cheesiest grin. I love it.

Dani and Jill looking for easter eggs at the park

Dani and I made easter nests with no bake cookies and mini eggs.
She LOVED it! (Thanks for the idea Dawna)

I am now officially finished work and have started maternity leave. Getting paid for being at home. Whoo Hoo!!! A couple days after I finished, I went back in to work for a little going away party luncheon. Kathy made some delicious crock pot sloppy joes, we had some other yummy sides and Tobi's brownies for dessert. I am going to miss those home cooked lunches! It also turned into a mini baby shower as everyone gave me some fabulous gifts :) A few books, a couple adorable outfits, and my boss (more like Kathy....) got us a Bumbo chair & tray, and an awesome bouncey chair. I really appreciate their generosity and I am going to miss everyone so much! It has been a fabulous 3 years.

The girls from work L-R: Kathy, Linda, Tobi, me and Megan

Helen and her cute little girl Olivia came in to work for my goodbye party

This is actually Olivia smiling so big she looks like she's scowling. haha

And last, but certainly not least, Nick and I have been busy as we continue to get our house ready for the baby. The nursery is finally all set up (though I'm still working on getting pictures and decorations up)! And the rest of the house is getting cleaned and organized bit by bit.

I was so excited for our crib and dresser to FINALLY get here after 10 weeks of
waiting !(I will post nursery pics after it's all finished...sorry)

I have been DYING to organize our hall closet, and was so annoyed with Nick just
throwing his work stuff in there on top of all my cleaning supplies. Ugh!

Amazing what some shelving from Home Depot can do 'huh!
It's such a small change, but it makes such a big difference to me.
My heart just feels happy when I look at this picture :)