Projects Abound

While I work on nurturing “Project Belly”, Tom has been busy making progress on “Project Built-Ins II”. The space is really coming along nicely, and we now do see a speck of light at the end of the project tunnel. A majority of the hard, tedious, and swear-inducing work is passed (we think ;-), so next on the list involves building of the actual shelves. Here are a few photos that show what the stairway looked like when we first bought the house in 2007, and where it is today.

July has been a good month overall. The warm, summer weather in Portland has been gorgeous (some days a twinge too hot, but I’m not complaining), which has made for fun evenings BBQ-ing with friends, watching concerts in the local park, and working outside in the yard and garden. Our gardens continue to grow, though the only things (besides herbs) that we have been able to actually harvest so far are the golden cherry tomatoes. I’m very curious to see if the corn starts that we got from my brother-in-law will actually produce some edible ears. Here are a few recent views of things.

We are getting excited about an upcoming week-long trip in August to the east coast. My whole family (and all the extended family which includes 17 kids!) is getting together for a reunion in the Catskill Mountains of Upstate New York. We look forward to spending quality time together catching up, reminiscing, breathing in fresh mountain air, and visiting my late father’s gravesite up there. I think being pregnant has brought upon lots of nostalgic feelings for me (reflecting on my own childhood, family, parents, upbringing, etc.) and this trip will undoubtedly feed into those emotions.

Now in my 23^rd week of pregnancy, I have been feeling a lot of baby movement lately – kicks, rolls or just general shifting of body parts. It’s fun when Tom can actually feel these little “spasms” and I think allows both of us to feel involved. We are slowly getting things prepared for the nursery, and this is of course where the “designer mind” in me gets to have some fun, coming up with some of the details and little extra touches. From what I am told, the baby’s room is where we will spend a lot of time - at least in the early months – so it better be a place where we actually enjoy hanging out!

Here is a photo of us just being our usual dorky selves. (We apologize in advance to the munchkin, who will have to endure a lifetime of embarrassing parents :-)