Still haven’t had this baby, so we figured we’d actually get out and do something today. We headed out to the sod farm and watched ultralight trikes flying (there was a lot of touch-and-goes, and landings and takeoffs, so it was actually quite interesting), and kites.

Daddy brought his powered parachute, but he couldn’t launch while we were still there as the wind kept kicking up. (There were plenty of other PPC’s there, but none in the air due to the weather.)

Though I’ve been to the sod farm before, for the life of me I wouldn’t remember how to get there (it’s off road 9), so we followed Stephen & Heather out. My parents showed up right after we got there, and the girls had a great time saying hi to their grandparents (and each other for that matter). :) The sod farm is like a big park, and the girls had a great time running all over (especially Evangeline after she got a taste of Heather’s frappe and a dose of sugar!). Wow. There was no way I could keep up with her in my state, so I put Tobin on two-year-old duty. Ha.

We sat for awhile at the edge of the “runway”, and watched all the action there – it was pretty cool – there was a lot of stuff to watch. I think there must’ve been at least 3-6 ultralight trikes in the air at any one time, and several kept showing off (I suppose they could have been testing, but I doubt it).

After awhile, the kite people broke out some huge circular kites and that was very cool. I walked over and shot some video with my phone and a bunch of pictures. In the process someone dropped a kite on me (well the kite string hit me TWICE), so that was a little exciting. Ha.

Here’s that video:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvBgYIookCk

Aren’t those kites cool? I thought they were just beautiful.

Evangeline got so tired she started running in circles, so we decided it was probably best to head home and get her down to bed (this was around 6:30 – she is  normally in bed between 5:30 and 6:30). So that’s what we did.

This is going on all weekend, so if you’re in the area, you might want to check it out.

View all the pictures here.

Yesterday in an attempt to get things going (we want to meet this baby!), I went to the airport and walked the trails and roads with my mom and Evangeline.

Mommy was nice enough to push Evangeline in the Bob the whole way, and we had a fun time seeing the airplanes do stunts - but seriously, being in the plane would make me sick, just about made me sick watching them. Once I was in a plane with my brother practicing stalls. Never again I tell you. Ugh. Anyways though I had some contractions last night, I’m still pregnant today <sigh>. Pictures here.

Stephen called me up today and told me he’d caught a horned toad at work yesterday. He brought it by today and Evangeline was especially interested in it. Poor thing, Stephen kept prodding it, and it kept puffing itself up and hissing at us. Fortunately, Stephen didn’t keep the thing in captivity for too long – he turned it loose in his garden after he left our place. :) Pictures here.

In other news, we had a great time at the sod farm tonight – but I’ll put that in another post.

Well my due date came and went (May 23), and unsurprisingly I am STILL pregnant. Oh and not only am I still pregnant, but the doctor says there has been no change for weeks. Nothing is happening. Cool. I think it was the same way with Evangeline…

I went a full week over with Evangeline and am HOPING that we can keep it under a week with this one! Apparently these Springs babies just like to cook. I was hoping too that I would have a smaller baby this time around – Evangeline was 9lbs 4oz, but I’m not getting my hopes up on that…now. And yes, just like last time, everyone I knew that was pregnant and due around the same time as me has had their babies – just not me. Sigh. I’m hoping for this weekend seeing as my doctor is on call and it’s a 3-day weekend AND Tobin’s art show is over! Woo hoo. Anyways, Baby Boy Springs – we really want to meet you! Hurry up and get here! :)

Anyways, Margie Lou popped over a few days ago and shot some maternity pictures for us. Nothing like waiting until the week you’re due to take pics. Ha. Thanks ML, for the shots. We love them.

View all the pictures here.

Hard to believe that Evangeline is now two years old. Wow. We wondered if she’d have to share her birthday with her little brother, but her birthday came and went and still no brother. :S

We took it pretty easy for her birthday – no big shindig like last year, as this year we didn’t know if we’d even be at home (wishful thinking on my part put us in the hospital adding child #2 to our family). We lucked out and the high school FHA was putting on a petting zoo for Grant. We (my parents, Margie Lou, Evangeline and I) snuck in right at the end (the last kids from Grant were just leaving), and Evangeline had an absolute BLAST getting to pet a calf, sheep, puppy, etc. We looked at all the animals very thoroughly, then walked to the gym where Tobin was setting up the art show. Everyone got to look at the show, then we headed off to my parents house (well everyone but Tobin who had to keep working on the art show).

The weather was beautiful so we pulled out the kiddie pool at my parents’ house, and Evangeline got to swim in it (we left a suit at my parents for just such an occasion). She had an absolute blast, and then Claire came down with Heather and that made it even better. The girls played in the pool until the sun went behind a cloud, and we packed it up and moved inside – just in the nick of time! Not two minutes after we came inside, there was literally a cloudburst. It was quite something! It was sunny but downpouring.

Tobin was finally able to join us – and he brought with him pizza from Safeway, cake & ice cream. Evangeline got to open her presents then – she got a super cool marble toy from Stephen & Heather, and we ate, sang Happy Birthday to her, and then fed everyone cake and ice cream (an especially huge hit with the girls).  It was a fun time.

View the pictures here.

My dad heard at work that due to some maintenance on the dam above Summer Falls, there was a lot of water coming over the falls (usually there is only a little bit of water if any at all).

So after he got off work, we piled into my parents rig and drove out to see for ourselves. Sure enough there was a bunch of water coming over the falls – it was actually quite impressive. Summer Falls is at the northwest end of Long Lake (Billy Clapp lake for you dems). Usually when we ski on the lake we don’t really make it up to this end of the lake at all (there is a boat launch on the south end of the lake), but there’s actually a pretty nice park at this end of the lake – all grassy, even with bathrooms and picnic tables. Tobin was impressed that something like that existed basically in the middle of nowhere. :) (It’s fun showing Tobin the local stuff he hasn’t seen before.) :)

Evangeline had a blast hanging out with my parents and running in the grass (fortunately we didn’t see any snakes in the grass though we did see TONS of fish – mostly carp – jumping in the lake). My mom had shown her earlier how you could blow on a dandelion gone to seed and they were ALL over the place so she kept picking dandelions and blowing them. It was a lot of fun. :)

When we came home, we drove a slightly different way – through a canyon, and that was an area that I hadn’t even seen before – we had to stop for some rock chucks that decided to cross the road RIGHT in front of us. Evangeline got a kick out of that too. Good times.

View all the pictures here.

Here’s a video of the falls that my dad shot:

I hit 38 weeks (full term) on Monday, and found out I was dilated to 1cm. Tobin thinks that the baby is going to show up at any minute, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was right. That said, I’m not getting my hopes up as I was sure I was going to (there goes another contraction) have Evangeline at 38 weeks and then I went and had her at 41 weeks. So with my luck, this baby could hold out another 3 weeks. We’ll see ’bout that.

Anyways, I think that hearing I was actually starting to dilate has really made me think about getting ready for this baby and it dawned on me that I wanted a hospital gown, with a matching nursing cover if possible. I was too impatient to wait for fabric to get here in the mail, so on Sunday we made sure we hit Jo-Anns on our Wenatchee trip (otherwise known as our last pre-baby Costco stock-up). There was lots of fabric to choose from but ultimately I opted for a relatively safe black and white floral pattern (I figured some of the other ones I looked at wouldn’t age well in pics). I bought 4 yards, but there was and extra 16 inches on the bolt that I picked up at 50% off. It was a good thing too, as I ended up sewing more off the fabric than I was anticipating, and I couldn’t have done it without those extra 16″!

I found a free hospital gown at Lazy Girl Designs, but then decided that if I was going to actually take the time to sew something cute, I wanted to wear it as an actual dress – or at least around the house. No thanks to ties up the back! I looked high and low on the rest of the interwebs with no luck on a pattern I was leaning toward – a peasant topped a-line dress. Ultimately, I went through my mom’s patterns, found a pattern that was similar to what I was looking for, and then I drew a pattern based on that (top) pattern. I ended up using around 3 yards on that – with a packet of double bias tape, 1/4″ elastic, and then some rolled elastic that my mom had (for the sleeves, they were too tight with the 1/4″ elastic that I started with). I serged pretty much everything, and then went back and sewed the seams again with my mom’s sewing machine. The dress turned out pretty cute and I will be able to nurse in it. Not sure if I’ll actually wear it around (my mom wants me to wear it to church if the baby hasn’t come by Sunday, jury’s still out on that – don’t need to draw MORE attention to the fact that I’m SUPER pregnant).

I finished the dress and decided I NEEDED to make a matching dress for Evangeline and a nursing cover. I didn’t have quite enough fabric to make both so I figured I’d just piece the nursing cover. First though, I drafted up a pattern for Evangeline’s pillowcase dress based on these directions from Prudent Baby. I couldn’t make the dress quite as long as I wanted to if I also wanted to make myself a nursing cover, so I cut it a little short figuring I should be able to find some solid black cotton in my mother’s fabric stash. It wasn’t easy, but I did find some solid black that I *think* is 100% cotton (neither my mom or I could tell for sure, guess I’ll know when I wash the dress – everything was preshrunk though so we should be good). :)

I used some more of the black double bias tape on the arm holes of Evangeline’s dress and I thought that looked really cute. The dress itself didn’t take very long to sew – it took me longer to make the pattern and find the black cotton (well and watching a toddler in a non-baby-safe environment also slowed things down some).

After I finished Evangeline’s dress, I started on the nursing cover. I liked the look of the black border on Eva’s dress so much I decided to just do that at the top and bottom of the cover – to bring it up to size.  I’m glad I did too, because I LOVE the result! I’ve made a bunch of nursing covers (and only know where one or two are, sad), and in the past (there goes another contraction) I’ve used this pattern from Blisstree. But I decided to search around, and ended up mostly basing this cover on this tutorial from Sew Much Ado. I did end up sewing my boning differently (her directions didn’t make sense to me), and I HATE D-RINGS on nursing covers – nothing is worse than having the cover slip, and that has happened to me before, so I just went with a straps that tie behind the neck. Then, just to make things more complex, I decided to copy the pocket design from Hooter Hiders, and sewed a rounded pocket on the right side of the cover. I basically cut a half circle, serged the rounded edges, sewed those under, sewed bias tape across the top, then ran some more 1/4″ elastic across the top. My mom helped me pin the pocket on the cover while I was wearing it (hard to see around my bump), and then I sewed it on. I’m really happy with the result – this is by far the cutest nursing cover I’ve sewn to date. :)

The pocket turned out so well, if I’m feeling really motivated, I might go back and sew a few on my dress. We’ll see. Would be nice to have a place to stash my cell phone. :)

I think I’ll sew one more thing to pack into the hospital bag – a matching fabric hair band for Evangeline. I’ve already cut the fabric, I just need to sew it. I’m going to sew a fabric cover based on this tutorial from Calico. Then I’m going to sew a flower based on this tutorial from Gone to Earth (though all my petals will be the same length). That is if the baby doesn’t show up before I get around to it! (There are a lot of things on my to-do list today as final prep for baby – mostly involving work and that Fine Arts Festival).

If you’re interested, I keep track of things I want to make on Pinterest. If you aren’t already a member, and you want an invite let me know.

View all the pics of my sewing projects here.

p.s. It was 2 years ago today that Evangeline was due. She showed up on the 20th.