Rondy Time!

Time flies! I feel like I was just writing about our first Fur Rendezvous - and here it is already time for it again! This year we wanted to catch a couple of events we'd missed last year, and since last weekend we went to Oregon and left Ripley up here, we needed to do some things that Ripley could attend with us because he was really sad that we'd left him.  We decided to head to town Saturday morning to catch the parade.  I love a good parade. 

Before the parade started, we were able to watch the Frostbite Footrace.  It's a 2.5 and 5K that runs through town along the parade route before the parade begins.  Most people run in costume, and there were some pretty funny ones. 

The Rondy court was in attendance to cheer on the runners.  I think they get to keep their furs.  Gross.

Considering it was a whopping 10 degrees outside (seriously cold!) with a bit of a breeze to make it even more pleasant for bystanders, I was surprised at how many runners there were.  The costumes were pretty top-notch, too.

Fred and Wilma - I like the giant fake feet on "Fred"

 This one was probably my favorite - how do you run in this?? And yes, they are connected.

Ripley was hardly amused.  We made him wear his coat and after a few minutes of walking around downtown, he was lifting his feet, so we put on his booties.

He was still pretty cold, but also super cute if you ask me! He was also VERY popular.  We had at least five different sets of tourists come up and ask if they could take his picture because they'd never seen a dog wearing booties before.  This is how you know they are tourists.

After the footrace, we walked around a little bit to get our blood flowing.  I made Andy and Ripley pose around landmarks.  

We also headed over to the camera shop on 4th avenue to see if we could buy another battery for our camera because ours was totally DEAD.  They were closed, but I was able to eek out just enough life by stealing five minutes of electricity from Starbucks and then doing that awesome trick where you take the battery completely out of the camera before and after each picture to squeeze out as much juice as you can.  This is why our pictures are few and less than stellar.  Boo!

We saw them setting up the dogs to do the sled races.  They were all insane and ready to run.

This is one Sarah McLachlan song away from being the saddest thing in the world.  I promise they are super happy dogs though, they just want out so they can run! 

We finally picked our spot and got ready for the parade.  It was so cold! I had a hat on under my hood (faux fur - I think the lady behind me is wearing the real deal.)

Meanwhile, we saw this guy walking around:

Shorts, a t-shirt, no jacket, hat or gloves, AND you can't see it but he's drinking a frappucino.
And no, he didn't just run the race, either, he showed up in that outfit.

At the head of the parade, right after the color guard, was STAR! She's not much bigger than Ripley. Also, he barked at her.

The court upgraded to a sweet convertible.  The one in the back remarked loudly that she loved Ripley's booties and then yelled and asked us what his name was so she could say hi.  She started yelling his name and waving and he began barking uncontrollably, because of course he did.

And JUST before the camera died for the absolute last time that day, we got a picture of all the Berners for mom and dad.  They must have had 30 in the parade, and none of them were wearing booties and jackets (sorry Ripley).  Ripley also barked at them because he thought his friends might be in there, and because he was having a great time barking at the parade.

The parade was super slow moving, and we were at the end of the route, so we realized it would be more enjoyable for all of us if we started walking along the parade route to make things move a little faster (and move our legs a little).  By the time we got to the head of the parade, it was done, and we got to see everything! 

I hate to say it, but this one beat the 4th of July Parade by quite a bit, though I think I preferred standing in 50-60 degrees and drizzle versus 10 degrees with wind.  

We considered heading back downtown to catch the outhouse races later in the afternoon, but we decided to do some serious baby stuff organizing instead.  I mentioned we were in Oregon last weekend and while we were there my awesome brother and sister-in-law totally loaded us up on baby clothes and some gear, too!!  Somehow we managed to get it all home, but then it spent the week in a heaping pile along with the unassembled crib, stroller, car seat, and other great things we have received but haven't done anything with.  The mess was driving us both a little crazy so we decided to use the cold weather as an excuse to clean up.  We got a lot of projects completed this weekend, which we're both happy about, and I'll be updating you on that later.  It's finally coming together!! 

POP!

I'm 20 weeks this week - halfway done with being pregnant! Time has flown and I'm sure it will continue to do so over the next couple of months. 

I feel great this week. No major aches or pains and I'm finally getting used to sleeping on my side, which I still kind of hate, but I can actually tolerate it now. The big pregnancy news is that when I woke up on Monday morning my belly had popped! I literally looked just kind of smooshy all weekend and then suddenly there it was! Andy definitely noticed it while we were getting ready for work and a bunch of my coworkers (all ladies - the men are afraid to comment on my appearance, rightfully so) noted that I "finally" look pregnant. Here's what the belly looks like today: 

I know I may not really look THAT big, but I'm definitely feeling it! 

Working on the Nursery

Even though we JUST found out the baby's gender, we'd been working on the nursery for some time already.  We both knew that, boy or girl, we weren't going to want a very gender-specific space for the baby, so once we passed the first trimester and things were going smoothly, we started to look at paint.

First of all, here's the before.  This picture is from when we did our home inspection and the last owners' stuff was still inside.  For the past year almost we've been using the room to store a couple pieces of extra furniture and it came in extra handy as a second guest room when Andy's parents and brother were visiting.  We used to call the room the princess room for obvious reasons:

We still need to do something about the ceiling fan...

Pink is not my favorite wall color, so we were excited to paint.  We went to the paint store and picked out three shades of green and eventually had to go back and get two more because they all looked a little...minty.

The colors don't show up well here, but they're all actually pretty close to each other.  We ended up going with the one in the bottom row on the right, called rainwashed.  Here's a link to the color on Sherwin Williams' website so you can see it better: Rainwashed

We got the whole room painted fairly painlessly about a month ago, and it looks SO MUCH BETTER!

As you can see, the room has become a dumping ground for all things that do not fit elsewhere in our house.  Pretty soon a bunch of this stuff is going to need to find a new home!

So once the paint had cured for a couple of weeks, we decided to get artsy and put these birch tree decals on the wall that I bought on Amazon.  The process was kind of daunting, but ended up being an easy weekend project, or really something we could have done in one day had we not decided to start in the late afternoon.

First we cut out the pieces.  It's important to have as many people in the family watch you as possible.

Even Andy's Paddington Bear, who he is passing down to the baby, was observing me.

Isn't that blanket pretty?  We got it in the Aran Islands on our honeymoon in Ireland!
It matches so well, and completely by accident!

Then we laid the trees flat on the floor.  Check out that rug - $50 at home depot! Such a good deal and super fluffy!  I wish it was a little bigger, but the next size they had would have been wall to wall carpeting in the room.  I think once we get all the furniture in the room, it will be plenty big.  Also, it was only $50.

Once we figured out how we were going to put them up, we went right to it!

The first tree was probably the hardest...

 ...but before you knew it, they were all up on the wall!

The next day we went for the branches and other accents (birds and leaves).  They were a little easier to manage than the giant tree trunks.

Voila! The finished product!

Here's a detail of the birds over the doorway, which I really like.

They aren't sticking perfectly because our walls are slightly textured, but we found that putting a little clear craft glue on the edges helps with any lifting.  The smaller pieces are sticking better than the trunks.  Mostly I love that it was an easy project, they look great, and they're temporary, so when we get sick of the trees we can do something else.

Last night we ordered our crib from Target, who is doing a free mattress with crib purchase promotion, which saves a lot of money.  My email says they should be here by the middle of the week, so I think I know what we're doing next weekend!

Now that we know we're having a girl, we can start accessorizing to make it a little more gender specific, but we definitely won't be going pink crazy.  We found an artist online that does great graphic prints that should go really well with our foresty/nature theme, and I also have some cool craft projects I found on pinterest that I may try fairly soon.  Obviously I will share them on the blog.  I feel like we're pretty ahead of things, but I also know she'll be here before we know it!

It's a...

On Friday we went in for our anatomy scan and we found out the baby's gender! We'd both been waiting for this point because we've been calling the baby "it" for months now, which is a little weird, and we'd also been at a total impasse when it comes to boy names.  Girl names were easy for us - we had our top pick and a couple of solid back ups on the list just about the day I found out I was pregnant. As for boys, we just couldn't get there.

The ultrasound went well - it looks like everything's totally normal with the little one, who's checking in at a whopping 9 ounces already and has been wiggling up a storm most days lately.

Sadly, the pictures weren't great because the baby just wouldn't cooperate.  The head was WAY down, which made it difficult for us to get any great views.  You know how some people get those perfect profile pictures and maybe even a little hand waving?  Not us.  Our child is clearly stubborn.  Already.

These are some of the better pictures sadly.

The ultrasound tech tried a couple of 3-D pictures, but said when 2-D isn't great, 3-D won't be much better.  You can tell in these though why the profile isn't very clear and it looks like the baby has four noses:

Yes, someone's a little camera shy!  Also, I know it's my baby and everything, but the 3-D pictures will never stop being creepy.  Look at this next one - it definitely just looks like an alien.  Is that a hand? A claw? It was really funny as the tech went around and said "here's the baby's stomach, here's the baby's kidneys..."  I'm glad he knew what he was looking at, because I was at a loss.

In the end, even though the little one was being super camera shy around the head, there was no modesty displayed when the tech got to the crotch!

It's a GIRL!!

Sadly, I do not have any pictures from the magical time when the ultrasound tech displayed our daughter spread eagle on the big screen for all in the room to see.  She was clearly not shy about that part of her body! While we're sad that we didn't get better pictures at the ultrasound, we're extremely happy that she's healthy and progressing just as she should, and we're even happier that the pressure is off to find a boy name (though we may think up a couple in the slim chance we all missed something). Now it's time to shop!!!