And then there were 4!

I am finally finding time to get a blog done! Life as we knew it is over and we have opened a new chapter. A chapter I wouldn't say we were ready for, but one that we embraced with open arms. On March 13, we welcomed Megan Grace into our family.

I began having contractions at about 4:30AM on the 12th, her due date! I thought we were going to deliver on her actual due date! As my luck would have it though, I would have to wait. This labor and delivery was so much easier than Jade was. Although I started having contractions 24 hours before delivery, They weren't real painful until about 8 o'clock or so the night before. I also didn't have consistent contractions all day. They were consistant until about 9:30AM and then I would have 1-2 each hour until about 6:00PM when they started coming back more consistently again. I attempted to sleep a little at home, but then decided to just go to the couch and read until our little one was ready to meet us. I went into our bedroom to wake up Nate around 11:30. We left the house around midnight and was admitted around 12:30. I had called my Mom around 8AM and asked her to come down. I told her it was no hurry as the contractions weren't strong, but they were there. She got here early afternoon. I had thought about sending her home with my contractions going away, but was glad she was here once I started having them again! We had no idea what we were going to do with Jade if my Mom wasn't here as we don't know many people in Fergus yet. I delivered just 4 hours after being admitted into the hospital. I was dilated around 5cm when I got there. I got an epidural that worked this time and would have another in a heart beat if I ever deliver again! My water broke on it's own about an hour after I got my epidural. The nurse called the MD after my water broke. By the time he got there, I felt ready to push and he agreed. He had the nurse prep me and get started. I only pushed through one contraction before she went to get the MD. I told them all I was going to be fast. I don't like messing around. From the time of my first push to calling in the doctor and getting him ready to delivery itself was 10 minutes! I think I pushed through 4 contractions is all. The epidural was amazing. I could tell when I was getting a contraction, but had to have Nate or the nurse tell me when it was over. Megan was born at 4:16AM.

Nate brought Jade up the next morning to meet her little sister. That is one memory I hope never fades! I was actually changing rooms when they got there because the birthing center was so full. I got to pick Jade up and show her Megan before we pushed the bassinet down the hall. Once we got in my new room, I asked if she wanted to sit with me and hold Megan. She said yes, so the three of us got to sit together. Jade gave a bunch of hugs and kisses and kept saying "baby," She continues to give Megan lots of love. There have been a few jealous moments for her, espcially when other people are around, which is to be expected. When it's just the 4 of us though, she does good. She loves wearing her big sister shirt too. She picks it out herself often.

Week 1-2 - adjustment weeks! I was lucky to get a shower in this week and was happy with one every other day. Nate just took Thursday/Friday off from work. Megan and I came home Friday. I had my Mom stay until Saturday. Mike and Jean came down to see us on Sunday and then my parents and grandparents came down on Monday. My Dad also visited while we were in the hospital. Megan ate every 2 hours all day and night, which means by the time I was done feeding and got back to bed, I only got to sleep for an hour. She slept fine on her own in the bassinet, which is different than Jade. I slept with Jade on the couch often the first couple weeks (I know you're not supposed to do that, but I needed the sleep!) Tuesday was our first day at home alone. I did fine, life is just much busier with two. I have to time when we go somewhere with when Megan is going to need to eat. I have to make sure Jade is occupied with something while I nurse Megan or she wants up on my lap too. I had to explain to Jade that I feed Jade and when I pump I'm putting milk away. She used to try to hook the pump up to herself and now she thinks she needs my nursing pillow to feed Minnie (or whoever) from her tummy. She is too interested in breast feeding!! I have to admit, it's weird having my 2-year old staring at me while I start nursing. Oh well, she won't remember that right?

Weeks 3-5- we are getting the hang of things! Jade is getting to be better and better with Megan. She thinks it's funny when I talk to Megan and has started to talk to her too. It's absolutely amazing to me to see how much Megan loves Jade already. She watches her when she can find her, she quits crying when you lay her next to Jade in bed... I think Megan knows Jade's voice just as well as mine. Truly amazing!

We are running out of things to do inside and can't wait to get outside more! I wish I would have found time to blog before this as I'm sure I had some funny stories to share, but hopefully I can start those now that I've figured out a time to blog in peace and quite!

Welcome Megan Grace Noland!

Early morning family picture minus our big girl.

Holding little sister for the first time.

Megan has gotton more kisses already than Nate and I have ever got!

Megan's gift to Jade. She loved it!

Megan's first day at home and Jade had to show her some of new things Megan got in the mail.

Red haired cutie!

Megan and Daddy time.

Big sister holding Jade all by herself! I know, I'm daring but she does great!

First bath at home.

Just hanging out.. "Mommy, Megan's holding Jade's hand!" Yes, we are working on talking in the 3rd person, 1st person is hard!

Home Sweet Home

We said goodbye to our home of almost 5 years on Wednesday, February 26. Had we not been in such a rush leaving, I might have shed a few tears. It was the first house Nate and I bought together. We brought our first puppy home to that house after almost a year of living there. It was also the home we started a family in and brought our first baby home to. We built a deck and fence and dog kennel, finished the basement, and bought big ticket items you need for a house: couch, snow blower, lawn mower, deck furniture, etc.

Because moving day was in the middle of the week, we rented a U-Haul the Saturday before we moved to move everything but what we thought we couldn't live without for 4 days. Tyler helped load the U-Haul Friday night and Saturday. My parents came down Saturday morning. Mike and Jean were supposed to help, but their Friday night flight back from Mexico conveniently got canceled until Sunday afternoon. :) (They were stranded in Denver, not Mexico). It would have been nice to have them there, but we managed without them. We loaded the U-Haul and 3 vehicles and drove to Fergus to unload everything into our basement. We thought we had a pretty full trip over, but in hindsight wished we would have taken more as moving day came and Nate and I had to take 2 trips to Fergus on moving day to get everything over. Haha! We thought we could get it all in one trip. Thankfully we have an amazing baby sitter who happened to have class canceled the morning we moved so we were able to take the trip back and forth without Jade! We hired someone to clean the upstairs of our house and left as the carpet cleaners got there. We stayed in a hotel in Fergus the night before closing. Jade got to go swimming and we got to relax for a night. Nate was so tired, he beat Jade to sleep that night.

Closing went smooth. We signed our life away, went to our fist doctor appointment in Fergus right after and finally got to show Jade "the new house" we had been telling her all about. She was excited to get all her toys back! She has made a smooth transition to the new house. I am now glad that we got her into her big bed at the old house so she knew it was hers. We have the crib up in the baby room and she hasn't even asked to get in it. She says "baby's crib." I know kids are resilient, but I was still nervous about all the change! She still asks where Mom and Dad's room is or where her room is because they aren't side by side anymore, but I think she really does like the house. She loves the basement since it's unfinished! She can ride her trike, play basketball, blow bubbles, drive her car, etc.

For me, the house is everything I had hoped it would be. I can't pick one thing that I like most about the house. I love the mudroom already. Our island has already stayed more clean than it did at the old house. We have a big bench with a shelving unit above it for all our coats, hats, mittens, bags, purses, etc. We have a drop zone for mail, keys, and whatever else we carry in that doesn't really have a place to go. The garage is huge and warm! Our kitchen is made to entertain! Our finishes turned out great. I wasn't sure I'd like the two tone on our island, but I love it and we've already had compliments. I love our flooring throughout the house. The master suite is amazing. It's so much bigger than what we had. Nate and I have our own spaces and it's really nice. Jade got to choose her room. She actually chose the smaller of the two rooms, but she seems to like it. She has a bunch of her toys in there to play with and when we were unloading on Thursday she just sat in there and played. I love the built-ins around the TV. I think it adds to our living room. We have tons of cabinet space in the kitchen and a huge pantry too! This house is truly amazing! I could go on and on about the little things of the house I like, but I won't bore anyone with those. All that's left now is the stone on the front of the house, the screened in porch and deck, picking a back-splash, and getting window coverings up, which get installed on Tuesday. We also have the whole basement to finish, but we are thinking about just getting the 2 bedrooms and bathroom done and leaving the unfinished portion for another winter so the kids can play down there for another winter on their outdoor toys. We will have a lot of work to do for landscaping too. One more thing I LOVE...our huge windows and view! I love this "country" living. It's quiet and peaceful.

Nate's "man cave." His 3 stall garage. I have to admit, it's nice to have a big 3-stall garage.

Mud room coming in from the garage. Drop zone straight ahead with 4 junk drawers. Then a door that leads to the laundry room

Mud room. Our version of a locker system.

Kitchen island. The back splash is a work in progress. I didn't want to pick tile for that yet. I wanted to see the counter tops and wood together first. This is coming in from the mud room.

Kitchen - obviously

Dining area and the door at the back leads to our bedroom.

Master bedroom. Again, a work in progress. I need to talk Nate into getting a bedroom set for us.

Closet before all the clothes got in on moving day.

Master closet after unload.

Master bathroom. Our bathroom is between the closet and bedroom.

A look at the master bath without anything moved in yet.

Opposite direction from the last pictures.

Looking out into the kitchen/living room from master bedroom. Our pantry is the door on the left in this picture.

Entry way and stairs to the basement

Another look of the living room/kitchen

Unfinished basement/Jade's play area

Current guest room...lots of privacy

Basement bathroom and another guest bedroom.

Basement setup for the next couple years.

Built-ins around the TV in living room.

A look at our counter tops and flooring. this is our island. We did the bottom granite throughout the kitchen and then did a different granite on the top tier of the island and also did that same granite in the bathrooms. Our floor is a laminate hickory. Love it all!

Megan's room. Still has some things to put on the walls and I am going to paint it this summer.

Megan's room...with my little helper.

Jade's big girl room. She loves her bed! We got it before we moved.

A little messy, but it's also a work in progress that needs some paint and things for the wall.

Home sweet home to our family of FOUR!!

I already caught multiple spelling errors...so I'm sorry if there are still more. I am sleep deprived with a newborn! Hope you all enjoy a small tour of our dream house! Come visit anytime!

House/Baby Update

It finally feels like we are moving! I have 8 days of work left counting today, 13 days until our closing date, 12 days until we are completely moved out of our house, and 26 days until Baby 2 due date!

This weekend we are headed up to a UND hockey game. Next weekend, we plan on completely getting out of the basement so we can clean it and have less to do on moving day. Hopefully we will be able to throw some things into our garage if they are done taping and texturing that. If not, we have our storage unit. We have decided to use the 26th as our moving day. We will pack up a U-Haul in Fargo that day and then stay over night in Fergus Falls to make it to closing at 8AM in Fergus. Then, let the unloading begin. We will officially "own" our new house!

As for where the house stands right now... Everything that I had them paint is painted and it turned out great. Our kitchen and bathroom cabinets are all installed and look awesome. Lovely Menard's screwed up a couple of our kitchen cabinets, but they won't do anything to "fix" the problem. It's basically our word vs theirs. They just screwed up a couple cabinets and it's something we think we can deal with, but it's not what we wanted. They put our spice cabinet in the wrong spot and we wanted a different slide out cutting board than what they ordered. Oh well... It sucks that they won't make it right, but I don't think it's worth the hassle to send the cabinet back in and reorder it especially with the time crunch of us wanting into the house before the baby comes. Our flooring is all down. We love it! We've already had compliments on our laminate flooring in the kitchen. Our lighting is all installed. Countertops should be installed next week sometime and then I think it's just trim and doors. They are also going to make a locker system in our mud room. The end is definitely near!

Once I get over to take pictures, I will post some to share! We will still have our builders coming back this spring to finish the stone on the front of the house and the screened in porch on the back. I think Nate will do the deck, but who knows. Then, this spring/summer I will be painting the kids rooms and ours hopefully. We are excited and ready to move!

I am getting more nervous/anxious/excited about putting my career on hold and staying home with two little ones. For some reason, I like packing life changes on top of each other. Five years ago, I graduated from college, got married, moved/bought a house, and found a "big girl" job. Now I am moving, quitting my job to do something even harder and more time consuming (full-time Mom), and having a second child. If there ever is a next time of big changes, maybe I can learn to spread them out a little bit!

If it wasn't for this move, I would be ready to be done with this pregnancy too. I'm starting to have the regular aches and pains that come at the end of a pregnancy. I have to say I'm less achy this time than I was with Jade. My back is stiff and sore often, but I don't have the pain in my pelvis I had last time. I can also feel the weight of baby a lot more now than before. It actually feels like I'm carrying the extra weight now. This child also likes to move a lot more than Jade ever did which can make sleeping difficult at times. Baby likes to move right before I go to sleep so I have to either fall asleep with my tummy moving or wait until baby has found a comfortable spot. Baby also thinks it's great to move early in the morning, which keeps me from falling back to sleep. By that time in the morning my back is achy from laying down all night and then I have a baby with either hiccups or ants in his/her pants. Still, I am very thankful to be pregnant for the second time with what so far seems to be a very healthy baby! We can't wait to meet the little one and see how Jade interacts and helps Mom with Baby!

Building the "Dream House"

I just looked back to my previous posts about our house and realized I haven't really said a thing about the process we've gone through. Since I'm so far behind, I don't know where to start...

Originally we were hoping to be moved in around Christmas, but thought January was a more realistic time table. Our builder was even happy with that as a completion date. But, things didn't go as planned as I guess they often don't when building a house with a deadline and we currently are still renting our house from the new owners in West Fargo. The upside, we have a closing date set for February 27...just 13 days before Baby 2's due date. Yikes! What was the hold up? First, it was the trusses. There was a mix-up and the wrong trusses got ordered so we had to wait for OUR trusses to come in. Then, when they came in, the weather turned bad! It was too cold and snowy to work, so our builders were out a few days work due to weather. Once this happened, our move-in date was changed to January. Two more smaller things that have gone "wrong" have turned out to be things we both think we'll like in the end. Our roof line in the back was measured wrong and we will now have a covered deck in the back. I wasn't excited about that to begin with, but now that it's there, I think it will be great. We are putting a fan out there and it should provide some shade and shelter on those warm summer days. We also originally planned on having the corners of our house be the same color as the siding, but they didn't get ordered and the only color they had in stock was white. We have white trim and garage doors too, so we decided we didn't want to wait any longer and that we'd make white corner pieces be fine. I actually think it looks awesome and breaks up the green color of our siding.

Since then, things have gone pretty smooth. I have to brag and say our house is HUGE! The square footage isn't crazy big, but it looks big with a walk out basement. We have just over 1700 square feet on each floor. Our basement will be unfurnished right now and Nate will be finishing it when he can. There will be 3 bedrooms up and 2 down; 2 bathrooms up and 1 down; a mudroom with locker system and laundry room off the garage. We have a large 3 stall garage. Our master bedroom is on one side of the house with the other bedrooms on the opposite side. We realize this means we will have to walk across the house in the middle of the night right now, but will like the separation as our kids get older. Our master bedroom leads into our bath that leads into our closet. We are not tiling anything right now, partly because of the cost and partly because we didn't want to pick our tile right now. Nate has said he wants to learn how to tile, so he will either do it down the road sometime or we will have someone else come in and do it. We wanted our TV mounted on the wall in the living room and decided to have builtins put in there around the TV so it wasn't just a big wall with a TV on it. Our kitchen has a huge, 2-tierd island that opens into our living room. We will have a screened in porch right off our dining room too. This part won't get finished until this summer.

Picking our finishes... Flooring: We are doing wood laminate in the kitchen/dining room and foyer; carpet in the living room and bedrooms; and vinyl in the mudroom, laundry room, and bathrooms. Picking flooring was pretty easy for us other than it took us a long time to find our laminate. We knew what we were looking for, just had a hard time finding it. We chose a hickory flooring that's a little darker than our hickory cabinets. It has a distressed look and looks like real wood with the cracks between the boards. Carpet: We didn't need anything special here, just wanted something with a nicer cushion and fuller look and feel than what we currently have. I don't really even know the details of our carpet, I just picked one. Vinyl: We chose one vinyl for the laundry room and a different one for all the bathrooms. Both look like tile. The one we chose for the laundry room has browns in it and the one we chose for the bathrooms is grey. We really liked the dark grey tile my parents put in their bathroom and decided to do something like that. Our bathroom vanities are also hickory, so hopefully it all goes together in the end.  Countertops: We originally wanted to do quartz throughout the house, but quickly realized that once we got into the colors and "design" we liked, the price sky-rocketed. We went back to the drawing board once we figured that out. We found similar granite's to what we had liked in the quartz. We are going to do one color of granite on all surfaces in the kitchen except the upper tier of the island which will be different. We saw this done in a show room in Fargo and thought it was pretty cool. That same granite used on the upper tier of the island will also be in the bathrooms, drop zone in the mudroom, and laundry room. I think that's all the major finishes we've picked. Lighting for the house has come from a smaller store in Grand Forks and Menards. We are doing a brushed bronze finish for our sink and bathroom fixtures and cabinet pulls. We have also picked a stone that will be put on the house this spring when it's nicer outside. It will be on the front of our garage, part of our house and our front porch.

To date: The outside of the house has 3 complete sides with siding. They are waiting on some warmer weather again to finish up the siding on the front. Obviously all windows and outside doors are in. Garage doors are on. The inside now has walls that have been taped, textured, and painted. We have chosen to keep similar paint colors in this house as we have in our current house. Our kitchen will go from being red to green and everything else will be the same. I'm not doing anything with the bedrooms right now. I like painting and I didn't want to make any more decisions...just wanted to get the house done.  They are putting in the cabinets today and started on the flooring today! It's really coming together and so exciting to see. Today is exactly 3 weeks from our closing day! I wish I had pictures to share, but they are all on my phone and I'm too lazy to load them to the computer.

Christmas Fun

We have been able to spend the last few Christmas's with both sides of the family because my parents have been coming up here for the holiday, but this is the first year my parents lived here. The 3 1/2 of us stayed at their new house for the first time. Their house really turned out nice, but I still think it's big for just 2 people. I guess I thought they were downsizing....not so much. We had our traditional Christmas Eve dinner of lutefisk and lefsa... Nate is scheming a way to change/add to our menu and I'm fully supporting that. I need more food than that! We had boiled potatoes and meat balls to go with, but I still left the table wanting more. Erik missed out on the family festivities this year as he was in Arizona trying to figure out life...he's doing an internship in Scottsdale to become a golf pro. He sure picked the right winter to go south!!

Anyway, Christmas Eve was fun. Jade did great handing out gifts to everyone and opening gifts of her own. Spending Christmas with a 2 year old is amazing. The excitement she got out of little things was so fun to see! Christmas Day we went to the Noland's for dinner. We didn't open gifts there as we were going to meet Lee and Jenna at Thumper Pond the first weekend of January. Jade got to go sledding on her new sled at their house and show Amma (Gramma) her new baby.

Jade is getting ready for bed, but wondering if there are any presents left...she searched for more!

Santa came Christmas Day to Gramma and Grampa Elgin's

The first weekend in January we left a day earlier than planned to miss a snow storm and made it to Thumper Pond to meet Lee and Jenna. We had a blast! Jade got to go swimming all weekend, we had a mini Christmas dinner in Mike and Jean's suite, and opened gifts together. It was perfect! Mike and Jean brought all the fixings for brisket sandwiches and garlic potatoes. It worked perfect to have them cooking in crock pots all afternoon.

As for New Years....we didn't do a thing. We missed the New Year for the 3rd year in a row! We are duds! Maybe next year we can bring in the new year like you're supposed to.

Jade and I got our New Years cheers in before she went to bed with our sparkling cider!

We hope everyone had as great a Holiday Season as we did! Look at me go...2 blogs in 2 days! Stay tuned for some house updates!!