36 Weeks!

Greetings Again. :)

I've noticed that I haven't put any pictures of my pregnant belly self on the blog...this is a pet peeve of mine when other people seem to "forget" about allowing people to peek in on all the changes that their body goes through in pregnancy. I'm definitely going to extend more grace to those who "forget" because it sure hasn't been intentional for me to withhold my belly from any of you. :)

Anyway, about the picture...and the pregnancy.

Tessa decided that she wanted to be pregnant too, isn't this the cutest thing you've ever seen? :) I may be slightly biased, but she is just so stinkin' adorable!

It is crazy to think that a baby is going to be joining our family pretty soon here...and that this baby is going to be OURS! How do we get our mind wrapped around that huge change???? If anybody wants to comment on how YOU wrapped your mind around it, I would greatly appreciate your wise words. :)

Baby still doesn't have a name. Perhaps if we had a name for baby that would possibly change our feelings. Mark has his names and I have mine...neither one of us seems to want to budge. It makes me chuckle at the fact that God knows exactly what this child is going to be called, it's just a matter of the journey the parents have to go through to get there. ;)

Baby has been very healthy and growing nice and strong so far. It is most definitely a mover and a shaker inside my belly! I have thoroughly been enjoying this little one (whatever it's name is!)

Hmmm, what else? Please allow me to brag about my amazing husband for a moment. If you are observant, you maybe noticed the new look in our kitchen. While Tessa and I were gone in Michigan, Mark worked his buns off to paint the walls yellow (instead of olive green) and tile the floor (instead of our grey laminate). He did a beautiful job and it has made our kitchen a brighter place. :) We also got a new desktop computer with a nice large screen that takes some pretty sweet photos.

That's about it for now, I'll try to continue to do little posts here and there so I don't get all overwhelmed again. Have a great day! :)

Fall Color Trip

What a blessing it is to have a husband who encourages his wife to go out and travel...of course, first I have to find a great deal on airfare. Well, I've been longing to experience a true fall season (it has been years since I've seen REAL colors and such a plethora of them as well!), so I thought it would be fun to take one last mother/daughter vacation before our family of 3 turns into a family of 4. We had such a lovely time with my parents! We didn't have much time, but what we had we thoroughly enjoyed. :) Whenever I'm in Holland I feel so at home and it would be so great to go and knock on all my friend's doors to just say "hi". Someday.

Here are some pictures capturing our time in Holland, MI:

Downtown Farmer's Market

Apple Pickin' with Great-Grandpa

Holland Aquatic Center

Hanging out with Grandma in the backyard...what fun!

Teusink's Pony Farm

Picture with Great-Grandpa....someone's not very happy to be posing for a pic.

Now we're in a better mood...hot drinks after a chilly walk.

Hmmm...Can you smell the fall leaves? The crisp air?

BIG Girl Underpants

I am going to talk again how our patience has paid off...I'm sure not saying that we are patient in everything we do / purchase, but with this particular item...wow!

We had been toying with the idea of switching over to cloth diapers for a while now, and without getting into "details" let's just say that Tessa goes through a LOT of diapers. "Why don't you just start potty training her?" may be your first solution...I'd answer that one, but that would involve "details".
Anyway, being the Craigslisters that we are, I had been searching for Bumgenius One Size Diapers for quite sometime. This way, Tessa could use them and then we could transfer smoothly over to baby using them. Slick! Well, you don't find too many cloth diapers coming up on Craigslist (hence the patience), and if you did, they probably wouldn't be a "deal". So, you can imagine how large my eyes got when I saw an add for $5 / diaper! These usually go for anywhere b/t $18-$30. This woman had a ton she wanted to get rid of. I called her up and asked what kinds she had. You name it, she had it! (She's one of those people who can afford to try all brands to see which ones she likes best...her son grew out of all of them by the age of 8 months.) I did my research and each one looked do-able for us. They weren't all One-Size fits all, but at $5 a pop, one can be flexible.
I let this woman know that we were on our way! There, in her office, was a huge box waiting for us to dig through. I didn't even know where to start! Talk about a kid in a candy store. :)
Anyway, super long story short...I chose about 30 of the "nicest ones" (there were probably 25 left) and offered her $150. She says, "how about you take the entire box for $125." Wow. Complete blessings from Above! We walked out of there spending about $2.25 per diaper. Unbelieveable. Blessed, amazing. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!!!!
So, today was the first day Tessa got to put on her Big Girl Underpants (we're trying to encourage her to like them) and as you can see from the picture, she's pretty proud of them! :)
We've got lots of different ones to choose from but we thought we'd show you the first ones. Again, patience sure "pays" off!

Ta-Da!!!

We just finished our first 4-week session of Tumbling class this past Friday...what a hit!

Tessa is an active little girl who loves to go-go-go. Well...she went-went-went the entire hour of tumbling. Her teacher was amazing and led a great class of 18 month-2 year olds (and somehow got everyone involved...even the 6 month pregnant mommies! :))

The final day was a bubble show...Tessa didn't quite know what to do with herself.

Here are a couple of friends she made...the picture was just supposed to be Tessa and her friend Kate, but hey, the more cute kids in the picture, the merrier! :)

I look forward to signing her up for another session...what fun! :)

The Latest Favs

Well, you're looking at my latest purchase off good 'ol Craigslist...it's been so good to me! (You can see in the background that we decided to keep the "huge" kitchen.)

I had been patiently awaiting a specific table for a good 6-7 months,when this one popped up you better believe I was ON it! Thee very one I had been waiting for...the price that I was willing to pay...the distance I was willing to travel...the excitement from Tessa that was so worth it all! :)

Ever since the table has been here, Tessa has taken an extra liking to her play house, to her games, and tries to get anyone to sit down next to her so she can share in all her excitement...I love it! :) AND, best of all, after hosting church here this morning, the chairs withstood 3 grown men...now that's the kind of versatility you look for in a table/chair set! :)

Here's Tessa playing Lite-Brite (a $2 score at Goodwill) and her play house.

Tessa & Daddy playing with beads.

Something else that Tessa has been enjoying has been the birthday parties that we've been invited to! As you can see...she takes a special interest in the best part of the party. :)
(This reminds me of something Malachi Olson said about Tessa's 2nd Birthday BBQ back in April..."Mom, where are the cake/cupcakes? Every birthday party has cake." We had just decided to keep her party really low-key and invite some friends for burgers & smoothie popscicles...he was pretty disappointed.) Now...I can see why, I think Tessa would be too.

Sorry Malachi, never again! :)

And finally, the heat has been pretty intense these past weeks. In addition to the healthy fruit smoothie pops that I usually give her on these hot days, I thought it would be fun to make a special treat for all of us to indulge in. My friend, Pamela, introduced me to one of her favorite blogs recently. They had posted this yummy recipe for pudding pops:

Mint-Chocolate Cookie Pudding Pops
1 small box instant chocolate pudding
1 3/4 C half and half10 Oreo cookies, crushed (about 1 heaping cup)
1/4 t peppermint extract
Blend pudding mix, extract, and half and half in a blender until smooth.
Stir in crushed cookies by hand. Place in molds and freeze.

Amazing! As Tessa would say, "Yummy in my tummy!" She wears it well, doesn't she? :)

Why Does Someone Always Have to get Hurt?

Tessa and I had lunch at Chick-fil-A with a couple of good friends and then walked over to the "new" splash pad. The kids LOVED it! Us moms were a tad more concerned than they seemed to be...it was a lot of fun but quite slick. I'm pretty sure each one of them slipped and fell at least once. It wasn't until all the kids ventured over to the kiddy playground when the accident happened. Tessa loves to hang on the bars...she does it all the time and she's fine. Unfortunately either her grip or her dismount didn't go as planned. Little pumpkin fell off the bars and came arunnin' to her mommy (who wasn't present at the time...bad mom!). I didn't see it at first, but she kept saying, "what happened? why did that happen? what was that?" I gave her a super hug and when she pulled away I noticed a HUGE gouge in her chin! (Is it possible for a gouge to be small? The word gouge and small just don't go together...so in my eyes, it was huge.) Anyway, she seemed to be fine, it was me that was so concerned about what to do next. We ended up going straight home and putting a couple butterfly bandages on it. 2 year olds don't fair well with band-aids on their faces so I found out. We'll see what this scar ends up looking like...at least it's on the UNDER side of her chin. Who doesn't have a scar there? Well, I do! She was a champ through the whole thing! She makes me so proud. :)

Here are some pics of the fountain:

Such a brave little girl!

Hmmm...awaiting the surprise

"Look, it's right here, see it?"

Side-Note: Just in case you didn't know, Mark used to be an EMT. If any injury happens to us, I'm confident that he'll know what to do and then proceed to take care of us with a steady hand. After two attempts at putting on the butter-fly bandages I thought I'd let him have a shot at it..."he'll do a much better job than me, I'm sure of it!" Anyway, as I watch him carefully put on the bandage I notice that he put some medicine on the gouge. "Of course! Why didn't I think of that!" I look at the tube setting on the table, anti-itch cream. Hmmm. I guess it has been a few years since he was in training. :) You can just imagine how great it felt to give him a hard time about that one! I love you, Honey. :)

Lots of Laughs These Days :)

Tessa Picture Gallery

How do I get this to go upright???

Anyway, we had this lovely foot bath at our house today and Tessa was really excited to pamper herself, she LOVED it! Thanks Angie! :)

Don't think she's potty trained. Looks can be deceiving...she's proud of 'em, but doesn't quite understand the whole idea of going pee-pee in the potty. Patience...

Bath-time! This is the first time Tessa put her head in the water in the bath. I was helping her float on top of the water so it wouldn't be so scary...she was so proud of herself!
Slip & Slide at Grandpa and Grandma's house!
This little lady LOVES the water...and her ring. This is up at Silent Valley...we call it "cush camping".
Tessa is getting better with eating her fruits and veggies...it sure takes some creative techniques to get her to put them in her mouth. The raspberry is an obvious one, it's the grapes that we've gotten REALLY creative with.

This was taken a while back but I obviously wasn't blogging at that time so we never got to post this adorable video. She LOVES these things!

Wow...where did the time go???

Hello Everyone! I'm writing to apologize for the lack of posts. I've had this before, so much to catch up on...don't quite know where to start. Aaaaaahhhh. Anyway...first things first. If you didn't quite catch our sly pregnancy announcement in our photo shoot, you're not the only one. One of the pictures has me with a pillow in my stomach. No, I'm not that pregnant. :) The baby's due date is mid-December. Pretty exciting! :) All has been going very well (other than a major loss of appetite). Tessa and I heard the heartbeat last week Wednesday, that was very special to share with her...even though she probably doesn't have a clue of what's going on. Oh well, it was fun to share that experience with her. :)

We've lead very busy lives this past monthish and a half. Goodness gracious, there are people in our community that we haven't even seen for several weeks...now that means that we have been way too busy! We are looking forward to chilling out here for the next few weeks. Mark just started teaching summer school on Monday and will be teaching M-Th for the next 5 weeks. We still have no clue as to what we are doing for our summer vacation (that's a first!)

Stay tuned for some fun pictures of what's been going on in the Fieldhouse house. :)

Photo Shoot

Well, here they are.

Let me remind you again...this was all Mark. He couldn't wait to slip into his green polyester suit again...as well as see me in my "Marsha Brady" dress. :)

Anyway, here are a few that Mark especially enjoyed.

Mother's Day Present...I guess

I finally talked Mark into getting some sort of family photo taken of the 3 of us for my Mother's Day present. Mark agreed under one condition...he got to pick the outfits. What kind of husband requests this????? After hearing his suggestions, it seemed as though he had been planning this for a really long time. Let's just say that you would have gotten a good laugh if you were our neighbors. Anyway, after rolling my eyes...I submitted (despite his "choice" selection of clothing).
Our neighbor, Nathan, is a semi-professional photographer and threw a photo shoot together in about 10 minutes. With a hand full of chocolate chips, Tessa did amazingly well! He said he would try to get us the proofs later on this week. He's getting a new photo-editing program on Wednesday so that's why we have to patiently wait for the outcome. From what we saw of the photos, they turned out pretty good. We're excited to see how this new program will "polish us up"...Mark wanted to know if the new program had a "bigger muscle button" in the new program. I guess we'll wait and see. :) We'll share them when we get them.

Hmmmm...

What do YOU think? A tad big? :)

I've been looking and looking and looking on Craigslist for a wood kitchen set for Tessa for a good 6 months now. I saw this one and the price was right, the color was right, the accessories were right, the distance was right (thanks to Mark and Louie who drove down to Newport after work!)...anyway, the picture was right. THEN we got it home. This is where the hmmmm comes into play. This thing is huge! It takes up 1/2 our living room. We unloaded it and all the neighbor kids followed us into the house and started digging in to all the goodies. All Melissa & Doug food / plates / tray & plates & bowl / etc. Wow! We've got a treasure on our hands here...however, we have no room. I think we're going to sell the kitchen and just keep the food stuff. Too bad we don't have a basement...this kitchen would go great in a basement!

In the meantime, the neighbor kids will be pounding down our door to come in and play with Tessa's new toy. :)


Time to start searching again. Man, talk about patience!

Hangin' with Jen & the kids

What a treat! We got to visit my good friend, Jeni, and all her kiddos while passing through Layfayette/McMinnville, OR. :) We had met Bella when she was just a baby, but now we got to meet Keagen and Camille! Jeni took us to this awesome park out in the middle of nowhere. However, when we arrived, this is what we saw:

What a fun park! And to add the the coolness of it all, the Spruce Goose is parked in one of the buildings...I think it was an aircraft museum or something like that. We didn't really pay attention to that, the playground was way more fun. :)

A little role reversal :)

Keagen doing his own thing...he and Tessa traded shoes (it's the new thing).

This was the only way we were able to get all their pictures together...stick 'em in a tube. :)
No way out!
Here's Jen and her precious little Camille (who pretty much slept the entire time we were there...what a great baby).
Again, another role reversal. Tessa's such a big girl these days!

And to top it all off, Jeni made us some amazing banana bread and chocolate chip cookies for the road...what a treat! Also, they got Tessa a Water Doodle book and pen for a little something to play with on the roadtrip. You guys are awesome! We look forward to seeing you next time in MI! :)

Our Adventure Continues...The Budds

I'm back...trying to catch up on my life. :)

Well, after Tessa and I spent time in Alaska, we flew back into Seattle where Mark picked us up. He and buddy, Louie, rode-tripped it from LA to Seattle in 18 hours! Louie flew home and we headed for Portland to spend some time with our good friends, the Budds. :)

We did lots of fun things...we went to their church with them on Easter Sunday, tagged along at their friend's house for lunch, we all took public transportation downtown Portland and caught a fun children's play, we went to the OMSI, went to Bob's Red Mill and bought 125 lbs. of steel cut oatmeal (do you think that effects gas mileage???)...we had to pick up some for our friends too!

We hit up lots of Thrift Stores / Goodwills. This area has always been good to us! However, this time...nothing worth writing home about.

Mark and I went out on a date one night to this really cool place called The Kennedy School. I think I'm just going to put a link in here for you to check out if you're ever in the Portland area. A friend of a friend told me about it and I'll just say...I'll trust this person's opinion anyday after that recommendation. http://www.kennedyschool.com/index.php?loc=57

We had a great time just hanging out with Dave, Sarah, Ellen, Isaiah, and Brennan. Just chillin', enjoying good friends. :) It was fun to watch Tessa interact with these kids. It's amazing how quickly she "grew up" in front of our eyes while playing with these older kids. Pretty cute. :) Dave took Mark to a Blazers game the last night while Sarah and I stayed home and enjoyed some raw icecream. You inspire me Sarah, you just need to live with ME now and tell me what to do. ;)

Just a couple more shots of Tessa:

This is how Tessa experienced our walk around downtown Portland...the life!

"Say Cheese"...taken with Sarah's sweet camera.

Thanks for everything, Budds! You guys are amazing friends. :) We look forward to having you come to our place next.

Our Alaska Adventure

OK, let's rewind here to Thursday, March 26. Tessa and I headed out to Anchorage, AK to surprise my sister for a nice long weekend. What an exciting feeling! The flight to Seattle went very smoothly and the adrenaline was really starting to kick in..."I sure hope this works! How is Erin going to react??? She's going to be so excited!" Anyway, you get the picture. Well, Tessa and I arrive to our gate in Seattle's airport to find out that Mt. Redout decided to erupt a couple of times in the past hour or so. This was just the beginning of our weekend stay in Seattle's airport. Yep, we never made it to Alaska. That stinkin' volcano kept right on blowing. God was good though (as always). One of my friend's parents live in Tacoma (about 25 min. from the airport) and they graciously put Tessa and me up at their house for 2 nights...as well as picked us up from the airport 2x and brought us to the airport 2x! Wow! It's truly amazing how God took care of us the whole time. (I only broke down twice throughout the whole thing...that's pretty good if you ask me!)

Anyway, we ended up having to purchase a separate ticket to get Tessa and me back home. Quite the expensive trip up to the Seattle Airport...I don't know if I'd call that a vacation. Thankfully we got to spend some nice quality time with the Knibbes! :)

THEN, we didn't get our luggage back for a week! Ahhhh. I can laugh at it now, it's in the past.

Fast-forward to April 6...we're on our second attempt to get up to Alaska. Another no go. Our flight got delayed and we were going to miss our connection. Unreal! Were we ever going to get there???

April 7...finally, Tessa and I boarded our flight, Mt. Redoubt behaved, and we arrived safely on Alaska soil and had some great times with Erin, Mike, Freeman, and Arch! Praise God!!! :)

Cousins RE-UNITED at last!

Having fun with bubbles...brrrrr, this is definitely NOT California! (My fingers were numb after only 5 minutes of blowing!)

Mike and the Arch :)

Uncle Mike's sweet bus

There's a good reason for this...Freeman asks to go potty outside all the time, so Tessa jumps on that wagon and demanded to try to go outside as well. I think she was a tad chilly down there because nothing came out. At least Auntie Erin was patient. :)

Tessa and Freeman loving on Arch

Tessa loved being the older cousin...she's not "an older" anything right now so it was fun to see her take on this new role.

Story/playtime at the library

Saying good-byes at the airport

Tessa playing in the sprinklers the day before we went to Anchorage...quite the California girl