Check List Progress

I have been itching to get a lot of changes made around the house to prepare for the upcoming baby...for various reasons this has been taking a bit longer than I would have liked, but things are finally starting to come together. I think once I realized the calendar was on August it really kicked everything into high gear! Monday evening we got Lorelei's cube shelves put together. They aren't full yet but we are glad to have things more organized. Lorelei put Elmo in one of the open shelves and then decided she needed to sit in one as well. :) The old dining room/office is now going to be her playroom. This should make room for more baby stuff in the living room and also it will just be nice to have all of her toys in two areas (her room too of course) so we are excited to have that totally done, but still need to get the kitchen table moved out. I think I may have to post a video when we are all done of the rearrangements. :)

On top of our huge "to do" list I decided to add drying out fruit to the list! I saw some great looking strawberries and blueberries for sale VERY CHEAP at Walmart during the week, and then decided we just couldn't pass up the chance to have healthy snacks for Lorelei for the winter for those kind of prices. So the weekend was also spent running the dehydrator and preparing the fruit to put in it...I'm not sure if I'm on board with this idea completely and I have come to the conclusion that those tiny little bags of dried fruit are overpriced for a reason. :) That quart sized bag of blueberries are 5 containers worth..and it didn't even fill one quart baggie! Then we are now completing the strawberries tonight, but it will be 6 containers worth and I'm pretty sure it will only end up filling ONE quart baggie...a lot of work for what seems to be a little bit...not sure it will last much past November at this rate! :) We'll see if I change my tune when apple season comes around.

Oh I should also mention we managed to fit in another Saturday morning trip to the beach! We had another gorgeous day and decided that the list needed to wait as fun family beach time was more important. :) We definitely try to make sure and keep Lorelei having fun through all the jobs to get done.

And of course to finish off our weekend we spent Sunday afternoon searching for a sleeper sofa. We felt it was important that both moms, who are generous enough to fly out here to help us out when the baby comes and for the surgery, deserved a bed to sleep on rather than just the couch, so we wanted to get a sleeper sofa. Apparently these are harder to come by than you realize as most stores had only a handful or less to choose from, which does not go along with my picky taste in furniture. :) I had been searching craigslist for a while and given up (it is basically like the worlds ugliest couch contest), but after going to 4 furniture stores with no luck I ended up checking again Sunday evening after my mom asked about it. Well sure enough there was one for a great price in great condition! I figured it would be sold already but apparently we were the lucky ones this time and they even delivered it for us that night! Then to add to the chaos we had to put our couch up on craiglist today and someone already came to pick it up, along with a couple of other furniture pieces we were going to have to donate...at least we don't have to drive them there! Progress has been crazy the last 24 hours! I was surprised to be a bit sad to give up the couch as I realized a lot of memories were made from when Brad's parents had it and we used to be able to relax and watch movies there when I would visit (ah the pre-kid days) to Lorelei sleeping on it as a tiny baby, then using it to help her walk across the room, to now having it as the only way she will cuddle with her mother while watching her shows. :) The couch will be more missed than I realized!

We still have a pretty long list but we certainly made a dent the last few days. Thankfully Lorelei has embraced the changes better than I thought she would. Guess we'll see how it feels to cuddle on the new couch tomorrow. :)