Freezing away in Margaritaville....

This morning our sidewalks were extra icy. Steve is very innovative and because we didn't have any ice melting salt to pour on the sidewalk he took our tub of margarita salt instead. So much for Cinco De Mayo this year, but then again, no drinking for me anyway!

On to other news, I've been feeling extremely overwhelmed lately. Just realizing that in 6 short months I'll have a child to care for is really starting to hit me. I feel so inadequate. On Friday, we babysat Lily (who is just a month old) and I got a good dose of reality.
I am thrilled to be having a baby, but sometimes I can't help but feel completely overwhelmed when I get to thinking and wondering about how we're going to provide for a child and what kind of parents we will be. From what I hear these are pretty normal feelings, but somehow that doesn't bring me any comfort and I'm still scared to death.

It doesn't help that things are miserable at Steve's work (which will soon be our only source of income). He's been under a lot of stress and has been working 12 hour days just to get everything done and it still doesn't seem to satisfy his boss that he's doing enough. I get so sad when I see my husband under so much stress at work because I know life isn't much better for him at home since he's been picking up so much of my slack. I am so grateful that he has a job and through that good health insurance for our family, but I just wish there was something I could do to make his life a little easier.

Okay, enough of my Debbie Downer attitude. I know it's all about perspective and I'm praying that mine will change soon.

Just a little mix up....

My mom is excited (to say the least) that she is going to be a grandmother.
When she asked me what we wanted for Christmas this year, I told her baby stuff - and stuff that was practical, not just like cute teddy bears or things like that.

So, the other day I got a box in the mail from Target. There was a gift nicely wrapped with a little card that had a printed message from my mom on it. Imagine my surprise when I opened it up and it was a handheld Tetris game. Wow. At first I thought my mother had gone off the deep end, until I looked at the packing slip and saw that it was actually supposed to be accessories for a breast pump.

Steve and I had a good laugh when we realized that some little boy somewhere was going to open his box, find MY breast pump accessories and think that Santa thought he must have been a naughty boy this year in order to receive something that must seem so repulsive to a 9 year old boy!

Needless to say, the Tetris game is getting returned.

The Great Blizzard Of 09!

It snowed a lot last night and it's still snowing this morning, so I guess winter is really here. Steve's company closed down for the day and not only could I not get my car out of the driveway, but I was feeling like crap, so I decided to take the day off as well.
I'm sitting inside sipping on my coffee (don't worry, it's half-caf for the baby), and eating a delicious home made cinnamon roll that our neighbor brought over for us, and at some point plan on taking a big long nap today. It's a perfect snow day!

I am so thankful for our snowblower today! Last summer we found an old man on the side of road (can you tell we have a theme with items from the side of the road here?) just wanting to get rid of a snowblower so we bought it for $22 (he wanted $25, but that's all the cash I had on me). What a steal! Not sure how long our bargain will last us, but while it's running we will take full advantage of it!

Steve's been outside for the few hours trying to clear off the driveway and sidewalk while the snow continues to fall down. Down the street you can see all of our neighbors trying to shovel themselves out. I still stand beside my hatred for snow, but I do have to admit that I kind of like it when it means I don't have to go to work.

Bedroom Before and Afters

We've finally finished our downstairs guest room, just in time for Jessica to arrive this weekend. I will be so happy once our entire basement project is complete. At least it's looking so much better.
I had a lot of fun when I realized how little we had spend on our little project. Here's the before picture of this oh so hideous room:
What was the worst about this room was without a doubt the concrete flooring, which suprisingly was a step up from the dog pee infested carpet that was in the room when we bought the house.
Here's what the room looks like now:
Because of my love for both decorating and doing it cheap, I was excited when I crunched some numbers and realized how little we spent on EVERYTHING to make this room look better.
Let's start with the floors:
We got this flooring at a great deal at lumber liquidators - $.59/sq. ft!
The room is 110 sq. feet total so the flooring cost a total of $64.90.
This cutie little rug I got a few years ago on clearance at Target for $4.88.I found this cute little reversible comforter and pillow set last year at Target on clearance and was so happy because it matches nicely with the rug.
Comforter and Pillow Covers = $12.00
Picture Frame = Ikea for $3.99 (The pictures inside are actually greeting cards that I got for free way back when I worked at Starbucks)
Also pictured are the two different paint colors we used for this room. As I mentioned before our entire basement project has been done with "Oops" paint. The darker khaki was $4.00/gallon at walmart and the lighter brown was also $4.00 for the gallon. The two gallons of paint not only went to good use in this room but we also used it in the family room, so total cost of paint for this room when you divide it out was just $4.00.On to the dresser....I've had this dresser for a few years. With my love for cheap/free stuff I actually found it on the side of the road back when I lived in St. Louis and gave it a very small amout of TLC.
Funny fact about us Rodriguez' is that actually every dresser or chest of drawers in our house have been found on the side of the road. To some people this might be gross, but we love the challenge of fixing things up. I can't even begin to tell you how many times we've recieved compliments on the matching dresser and chest of drawers in our bedroom that we refinished together and then stained to match our headboard (also consequently FREE) back when we first got married. I will have to do a post on our bedroom on another day though.
Cost of Dresser: FREE!
The pretty fresh flowers are compliments of my sweet friend Katie.
So that's it, the room is finished. We still would like to replace the ugly blue curtains that don't really match so well, but until I find a great bargain they'll do.
Total cost of a brand new guest room - flooring, paint, comforter, area rug, pictures frames and all....$94.65!

Weekend Update

The weekend flew by. Steve and I went on a much needed date of Friday night. It was so nice to get out do something rather than sit at home. Our typical evenings have consisted of me falling asleep by 8:00 pm and Steve watching movies on the couch.

I will say that because I've been so tired and unmotivated Steve has loved that he has had so much time to watch his favorite movies. Despite me being sick and tired he told me the other day that one of the perks of me being pregnant is all the time he gets to sit back, relax and watch some flicks (probably because I'm asleep half the time). He loves watching his action movies!

Saturday it was back to the grind. Jessica's moving up a bunch of stuff from St. Louis this weekend, which means we really have to get the basement ready for her now. Steve finished up some flooring that needed to still be installed in her closet and did a bit of painting in the family room. We still have more work to do, but we're almost finished. Yea! I'll have to do some before and after pictures of her room now that it is finally completed! It's kind of empty just because we want her to feel the freedom to decorate as she pleases.

Saturday I went shopping for tires for my car and came home empty handed. Every place I went was absolutely packed and I was so not in the mood to wait 6 hours. Sarah and I went out for lunch and were brave enough to head to the mall....such a bad idea. You would think it was the day before Christmas with how crazy it was!

Sunday was nice. Went to church in the morning and then I came home and slept (of course) while Steve spent a few hours cleaning the house. Seriously, he has been so good to me throughout this pregnancy! Katie came over to hang out in the evening and then I actually ended up staying awake until 10:00! I'm feeling it this morning though.
According to babycenter.com, my second trimester will begin on December 14th. Woo-hoo, energy, here I come!

Thanksgiving

We had a good Thanksgiving. We had originally planned to head back to St. Louis, but because I've been so exhausted I figured I wouldn't be fun to be around. Just thinking about making a trip home kept stressing me out, so we just decided to stay in Madison.
The weekend went as I expected....lots of sleeping for me!

One of my favorite traditions as a kid was to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade - something I haven't been able to do in years, so I had a good time relaxing on Thanksgiving morning while Steve and I watched the parade together.
We went over to Chris and Tina's for a Thanksgiving feast in the afternoon which made for a happy husband! (sorry Tina, I was to lazy to take pictures, so I stole some of yours)

Steve loves any holiday that involves food - when he's happy, I'm happy!

We woke up early Friday morning to do some black friday shopping. I
hate black friday shopping. Not so much the shopping part, but the crowds and all the rude people. We had a few things that we really needed that were selling for really cheap though, so we figured it was worth the trip. Really we only got up 15 minutes earlier than we normally do for work, so it wasn't that bad. We got home at around 8:30 and I was exhausted so I took a 3 hour nap. Then it was back to work.
We just found out that Jessica is coming up on the 12th with a carload of stuff to move in, so now we're scrambling to get everything ready for her as we thought we had another 6 weeks to prepare the basement for her. The rest of the weekend pretty much consisted of working on the house....so exhausting and so not fun!

So Excited

I haven't been so good at keeping the old blog up lately - mostly because I've been completely unmotivated and exhausted. This is a good thing for you though, because since I've been completely exhausted our lives have been extremely boring and I've had absolutely nothing to write about anyway.

Back to being exhausted though.....there is a good reason for all of this and it's because I'm pregnant!

Well there we have it, the cats out of the bag! It's actually not much of a secret anymore as we started telling the world (i.e. facebook) on Thanksgiving.

Thrilled does not even begin to express how Steve and I feel! We were a little surprised when we found out, to be perfectly honest. We had literally just started trying and then 2 weeks later I was pregnant. I was not prepared for that at all and figured it would take a good 6 months to a year, but apparently Steve does in fact have "super sperm" (his term, not mine) like he's been bragging about for the past 6 weeks.

So anyway, I'm about 10 weeks along right now and due on June 29th. We had an ultrasound that looked good and my midwife seems to think that things are progressing perfectly.

I've been exhausted and kind of sick and these last few days have been especially miserable with those round ligament pains I heard so much about when I first got pregnant. Last night I was in so much pain every time that I tried to lay down and go to sleep that at midnight I finally ended up going down the living room to sleep sitting up in one of our arm chairs. Not so comfortable, but at least I wasn't in as much pain.

Time is passing by so quickly and I'll soon be out of the first trimester (Thank God!) and I know that before we know it our little one will be here. I've been overwhelmed with how much we need to do in a short amount of time and am constantly reminded about how much life is going to change. I'm pretty scared, but full of excitement at the same time.

God has been so good to us and I am so thankful! What way to bring in the holidays!
Here's a picture of our little bean...I think he/she kinds of looks like like a little chicken in there, Steve thinks it looks like it's smoking a cig. Hopefully we have neither going on in there! :)