Category Archives: Just Life

Posts about the good normal everyday life stuff: eating out, family outings, coloring, just living life and loving it.

Perspective

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Lately I’ve been feeling a little stressed and busy. It’s been a fun, action-packed month of July with vacations and an awesome work conference. I’ve gotten to spend time with family and friends and it’s been great. But coming out of it all, I feel like I have so much to do: normal laundry and cleaning, getting the house back in order, collecting baby gear, getting things ready for the latest addition to our family, wrapping up projects at work, other to-do items. For a few days, I was really overwhelmed. (And it doesn’t make it easier to accomplish my to-do list when I’m so tired coming home from work that I just want to lay down and do nothing.)

This evening our house was hot, and BYU has faster Internet that we do, so Josh and I brought our computers and some things to work on and headed up to campus. I was tired and whiny, but after a frosty and fries (yum yum) and once we got settled in a study room, I started tackling my to-do list.

After a little bit, I looked around and realized that I was on BYU campus in a study room, somewhere I hadn’t been in a while, and it reminded me of being a student. Those days of papers and tests and studying and deadlines. Then I took a second look at what I was doing: writing thank-you cards for generous baby shower gifts from family and friends. Sitting next to my best friend in the world. Getting ready to be a mom. Wow, how easy, fun, and carefree compared to studying for finals!

I really enjoyed being a student and going to college, but I think if my college self could look ahead to me right now, I’d be jealous and excited. Me with an awesome job I love and free evenings. With no homework. And with an amazing miraculous blessing about to enter my life, just around the corner.

So remembering my past tonight helped me enjoy the now just a little bit more. It’s so easy for me to get caught up in dreaming about and waiting for the future. Sometimes I think I forget that this current now I’m in is the future I once looked forward to more than anything. I think I need to stop and enjoy the now more often.

35 Weeks

Just Life,

So getting close now! 35 weeks, with just 5 weeks to go. I’m getting bigger…

Yep, look at that baby grow! (I probably should have picked a different shirt to take these pregnancy pictures in, but oh well.) Notice my finger has swollen out of my wedding ring; sad, huh?

I’m still feeling, overall, pretty good! Well, pretty big and more and more uncomfortable, truthfully. It’s harder to move, walk, sit, sleep…but I’m surviving. Also, I lucked out with a maternity clothes sale at the Gap, and I found an on-sale maternity swimsuit, so clothes-wise, things have been great! And swimming (aka, standing/sitting in a pool) feels so good when you’re 9 months pregnant. Especially in the summer.

Baby preparations are going well. We’ve had some really wonderful baby showers from family and coworkers (thank you, everyone!) and we’re collecting things for the baby’s room (my favorite of which are baby books). We’re shopping around for a few more essentials…like a car seat. But that’s next on the list. I’ll have to post pictures of the baby’s room soon.

And the baby himself is doing great! At my last appointment, the doctor said he weighed almost 6 pounds and his head was down. The baby moves a lot still, though I can tell he’s getting cramped as he kicks less and squrims and stretches more. And Josh and I have started to notice that he gets the hiccups. It’s still all fun to feel and watch. :)

31 Weeks

Just Life,

I’ve made it to month 8! Now I’m 31 weeks pregnant and here’s how I look:

And I’m still feeling pretty good! I’ve heard horror stories about being pregnant in the summer, but so far it hasn’t been bad at all. That’s probably because we’ve had a nice, wet, cold spring, and I have yet to make it to the hottest part of summer or pregnancy, but no complaints from me about the weather so far.

I am starting to feel ever more big and ever more uncomfortable… yesterday I tried to do a good Saturday cleaning like I’ve always done, but I completely ran out of steam halfway through. Too much bending over, I guess! Josh had to step in and finish the kitchen floor.

The baby is doing great, and it’s so fun to feel him kick…well, most of the time. Sometimes he likes to kind of camp up by my ribs, and that’s not so comfortable. But still, I feel like I could just stare at my belly popping all day long, and it would never get boring. :)

I am more of a man

Just Life, ,

I am more of man now, for I have changed my own brake pads.

We recently took our car in for an oil change and safety and emissions, and several hundred dollars later we finally got the car to pass. Now we like our mechanic, and we feel that he is an honest guy (if a bit proactive) but he is a little pricey. The rear brakes didn’t pass safety inspection (who knew? not us), so those were taken care of at the shop, but he also recommended doing the front brakes too, as they wouldn’t last until the next oil change with only 1/32″ left on the pads. His quote? $280. I was in no mood to spend that as well.

So I embarked on a journey through the wonderful thing we call the Internet and Youtube videos, and found that changing your own brake pads is actually quite simple. It’s just a process of removing your wheel, unscrewing the caliper, and switching out the old pads for new ones. There are several other things that you could do while in there too (resurface or replace your rotors, etc.), but the mechanic had said that the rotors were in good shape, and just the pads needed to be replaced. I decided to take on the challenge.

Compressing caliper piston with c-clamp

Saturday was the first nice and sunny day we’ve had in a while, and so I went to AutoZone and picked up new ceramic pads for a whopping $54.99. Came home, put the car up on a jack, and went to work on one of the wheels. I took it slow, since this was the first time I’ve done brakes, but it actually went quite well. The one snafu I had was when trying to get the caliper piston to go back in to make room for the new pads, and I couldn’t do it with my sheer, amazing strength alone, and found that everyone online was using a C-clamp to get the job done. Luckily, AutoZone had one of those too, and we were back in business.

Overall, the whole endeavor took a little bit longer than any experienced person would have taken, but it only cost us about $70 in all, saving a couple Benjamins, and seriously boosting my pride in my mechanical skills. ;) Paige was really nice and thought that I was pretty cool, probably just because my fingers were all dirty, which is the sign of a good job well done. Everything seems to be going well with the brakes and we’re quite happy to have done it ourselves and to have saved some money in the process. Thank you Internet!

Resources I found helpful: