A Wonderful Visit With The Grandparents...

I'm very thankful for the fact that even though we live far away from family due to James' job, we're still able to have constant visits with them. For a little over a week, my parents were here and a certain little boy was in HEAVEN. As I'm sure I've mentioned in the past, Samuel and my dad are BFFs. In fact, during this trip, Samuel would run to the guest bedroom yelling, "Da-DAAA, Da-DAAA, Da-DAAA" as he called out for Grandpa Grant. The boy doesn't talk much at all, but he sure loves his Grandpa!

We had a great visit. We hit up the space museum in Alamogordo, NM, as well as White Sands National Monument. Why it took us this long to get up there is beyond me, but I'm glad we finally saw it! The rest of our time together was spent doing projects -- like cutting/sewing Molly Bears inserts and the Pinterest project that I blogged about yesterday -- and spoiling the little man rotten with attention. It was sweet...even my dad got involved in helping with the MB inserts during Samuel's afternoon nap.

As I'm sure it comes as no surprise, we broke out the good camera to get a ton of pictures of Samuel with his grandparents. Here are a few from our time at White Sands, NM. Sadly, they were all taken at the first stop where it's not nearly as beautiful/breath-taking as it is if you continue further into the area. However, by that time, Sam was done and we didn't bother getting the camera out...

Grandpa, slow down! I'm coming!

I couldn't resist...

The sweet boy and his dad...

Love these two. They're so cute!

Samuel always refuses to wear his sunglasses. However, after a little while, he decided he was finally willing to try on his daddy's...

He still wasn't so sure about the idea of covering his eyes, ha...

Total success! Now if only he'd be willing to wear his own on a normal basis. :)

And, of course, a little family shot. That boy is getting SO big!

Fast forward to the day my parents left, my mom asked if I could take a few quick pictures of the three of them one last time. Samuel wasn't exactly in the picture taking mode, so a few of them turned out rather amusing. People frequently tell me how much he communicates through his eyes (instead of talking) -- you can definitely see it in some of the pics, ha. In fact, I was told that again during the speech therapy meeting earlier today. Sweet Sam...you have no issue telling us how you feel with those eye brows...

Looking a little concerned about what Grandma Julie is about to do to him, hahaha.

I've got Grandpa Grant, Grandma Julie, and my (LeapFrog) cell phone -- what more do I need?

Oh, those eyebrows...

Love seeing how much these two adore him...

It's always sad to see them go. Luckily, there's talk about another visit in June when Samuel turns 2. It can't come soon enough for this boy!

6 More Weeks...

That's right. Today marks 30 weeks into this pregnancy and (hopefully) no more than 6 weeks left! Here's to Sam staying strong and active until then. He definitely has his own little dance party each night -- James even commented on it last night. I just hopes he keeps it up!

With edging a little closer to the end, I have started to look through the stuff that we had for Liv, including a few projects that I had planned to do back then but never got around to it. One of those projects included a Boppy cover. I had gotten a brand new Boppy pillow for super cheap while I was pregnant with Liv, but I wasn't a fan of the cover and knew I could easily make one. I had fabric that I had also gotten for cheap that matched Liv's bedding, so it would work out perfectly. Well, I never got around to doing it before the awful news came, so the fabric and pillow just sat after that. That was...until today.

After talking with a friend the other day about various sewing projects, I finally found the motivation and pulled everything out that was needed to create this cover. So while I worked on the project, Oba laid next to me...snoring...

I must say...I probably could've done a better job on it, but for just looking at the current cover and eyeing how to make a new one, I suppose I didn't do too bad. It's super soft and is already making a certain 4-legged someone jealous. He's been staring at it since I finished, but hopefully that punk doesn't get his paws on it!

Front...

Back...

(You can see that due to not having a zipper in my sewing stash -- and not wanting to go buy one -- I created an opening similar to a sham where one side folds over the other...)

Now if I could just find the motivation to start/finish the other projects that I had planned while pregnant with Livy. Maybe one day soon...

5 Months...

Well, today marks 7 months into the deployment, so only 5 months to go! I wish we had less. I sure hope the next 5 months fly by, as James and I are both just about done with this deployment. After all that's happened, we're not exactly looking forward to the rest of this deployment and the separation that comes with it. I jokingly told James I wish he was going to be part of the ADVON party, and he said he wishes he could be on the TORCH party...or better yet the ADVON to the TORCH party. HA! That'd be great. I suppose that doesn't make much sense to the civilians out there, but either way, we wish he'd be one of the first to come home. June/July can't come soon enough.

Along with it being the 7 month mark, today was also the AFC Championship game. Luckily, our Colts kicked some butt when it was all said and done. They are now on their way to the Super Bowl! I made sure to have the game on, but still got antsy, so I decided to start packing up Liv's stuff in the nursery. I had been putting that off, and didn't want to do it. However, it had to be done at some point. It definitely sucked having to go through everything again, knowing that she wasn't going to be able to use any of it, but oh well. It was only going to sit there collecting dust until I got to it. Hopefully we'll have a need for it all at some point in the future. Hopefully...

On another note, the quilt that Cara and I started is slowly coming together. This is what has been done so far...

I guess Oba doesn't care too much for it though. After I was done working on it for the evening, I went to go look for Oba and he had gone upstairs to his bed. Either he doesn't like David Crowder's new CD or the sound of the sewing machine, because he would usually be right beside me. However, he sure wasn't that night...