Big bloomin'

My plants are getting huge-mongous! When I take stock of my supply it doesn't seem so large - sure I have lots of plants, but not so many of each kind, right? If things continue to grow so well, though, I doubt I will still consider 11 pepper plants, 3 zucchinis, 6 tomato, 3 basil, 3 cucumber, and 2 watermelon plants all for a small family of 3 not so large. I think I'll be regretting my lack of foresight, instead, while Joe regrets eating yet anther batch of zucchini muffins for breakfast and stuffed peppers for dinner. For the time being, though, each morning I enjoy my zucchini plants, which have these giant orange blooms on them (where I will presumably be getting those scrumptious actual zucchinis from) but by noon they wither up and are gone. Fortunately, I'm up PLENTY early to catch the "action" and a little photo. I'm so proud!

Piled high and deep

Patrick cleans up like I do - just throw it all in one pile! It's not too abnormal when it's all toys, or all clothes, or whatever, but there was quite a conglomeration in the kitchen one morning and it was too funny! I saved it all day for Joe to see when he got home.

Let's see... corn on the cob, his mower (upside own, so the handle would fit), Joe's iPod case, Patrick travel medicine kit, some mineral oil for wood cutting boards, cloth napkins... it's lucky I wasn't doing laundry or dishes that morning!

Up until today we've been (im)patiently twiddling our thumbs, waiting for the ultrasound that could hopefully tell us the sex of baby #2. Meanwhile, we picked out a number of names we liked for each gender (Eli or Everett for a boy, Ellie or Molly for a girl - obviously we'd have to be pretty settled if we chose Eli or Ellie, because one kinda cancels the other out!), we listed the reasons it would be great to have either one (a boy would be a great playmate, a girl could help us teach him how to treat a lady), but we really just hoped the ultrasound would show us we had a healthy little baby. And sure enough! Healthy and (as far as we can tell) happy, our little baby BOY is doing great! He was very active during the ultrasound, stretching his looong legs (see the photo!) and smacking his lips while we watched, it was so precious! I've really been enjoying Patrick getting older and more independent, closer to talking, sleeping like an old pro, etc etc, so I was starting to worry that I would be bummed out to go back to square one. Watching the sweet little movements of our newest and cooing over tiny little body parts, though, I can safely say I am REALLY EXCITED for the addition to our family! We planned (a much as one can plan) this pregnancy, so of course we were excited from the get-go, but you know how sometimes you're more excited about the IDEA of something than the actual PROCESS? Like having a newly remodeled home, how you have to go through messes and headaches and mistakes to get this great finished product you can sit back and enjoy in the end? I'm thinking life with 2 under 2 is going to be lots of messes and headaches and I'll make plenty of mistakes, but when they can play together and be brothers I'll be giving myself a few more pats on the back. Of course, by then maybe we'll be posting ultrasounds of #3, so let's not get ahead of ourselves :) Meanwhile, here are a couple shots of Baby Jacobs; enjoy!

Long-legs McGee here, head on the right, back to the bottom of the picture, and leg stretched all the way up over his head!

Closer profile picture, head still on the right, a hand up right by his nose (which, by the way, I think will be a Gustavson nose - I detect a definite bulb on the end! Perhaps I'll get to see what I would have looked like as a boy!)

If God is in the details...

...then He is most definitely not in my scrapbook! (But if he's in me, he'd better like enchiladas... I seriously had them for lunch today). I was working, working, working on Kari's wedding scrapbook and neglecting my own, and now it's caught up with me. She got married last summer, which means I worked on her book for nearly a year, which means I neglected my own book for nearly a year, and Patrick is barely over one year anyway - I am seriously behind! So I got back in gear and printed off a whopping 210 photos from birth to 16 months, PLUS I sorted through other old photos needing a home (our extra wedding photos, Joe's sister's wedding, Kari's extra wedding photos that I stole [thanks, Kari!], the wedding of the girl next door that I barely even know, etc etc) and new photos of old things (like Joe's dad as a child) from my MIL Debbi (thanks, Debbie!), meaning I have roughly 400 photos to scrapbook before the next baby gets here in 5 months. I will be a BUSY BEE, shall we say! Now there will be a serious lack in off-the-charts creative detail, but I DO plan on getting all those photos down and scrapbooked so I'll have a clean slate in November. I can only imagine that with a new baby right before the holidays plus another sweet neice on the way, I'll be bombarded with a whole new pile of photos! I would just ditch the scrapbook and slide them into a pre-made album, but I realised that scrapbooking is one of my great loves and my biggest creative outlet at the moment (and a perfect outlet with kids to scrapbook), so it wouldn't make sense to give up. Next time I'll just try to keep it to 100 or fewer pictures at a time!

Memos

To: Weather

Re: Your stupidness

Dear Cloudy Weather,

We would all be much obliged if you would STOP RAINING already. Spring is officially over, or did YOU not get the memo that Memorial day has come and gone? It's the MIDDLE of JUNE and my son and I would like to go to the park for once without bringing alternating outfits of sweatshirts/jeans/ponchos and shirts/t-shirts/sandals because YOU can't make up your mind. If you could kindly wrap up your moody hailstorms, my vegetable sprouts would appreciate it, too.

To: My heparin

Re: Ouch

Dear Heparin and associated paraphernalia (namely needles),

My sides are really getting tired of your prolonged stay. Your needles, though touted as "comfort assured," are most assuredly NOT comfortable while twice-daily jabbing my tender skin. Your increased dosage, as well, is creating some pretty ugly bruises and lumpy hard spots among my once-soft-and-supple muffin top, which is really just awkward. Finally, it just adds insult to injury to pay so much money for something I really dislike. Like YOU. So if you could kindly gettheheckouttahere, I'd be much obliged. Thank you.

To: The Post Office

Re: Stamps

Dear U.S. Postal Service,

REALLY?!? Rising the price of stamps AGAIN? So unnecessary, I think someone should give you a dose of your own medicine and raise the price of gas for your stupid wrong-sided mail trucks. Oh, wait -they already did. Never mind.

To: The Insurance Company

Re: Your tree-killing ways

Dear BCBS (and all insurance companies, I would suppose),

I knew it would be a little work for us to keep track of medical bills and deductibles and such, but it is really ridiculous to have to fill out one form per bill and/or receipt, equalling about 100 stupid forms already, not to mention the $50 in ink to print the stupid things. I should fill out a form to get reimbursed for the half-ream of paper we'll be using before the year is through! And why have only half of our appointments shown up as counting toward the deductible? And how am I supposed to file when you only counted HALF of our bill? And why aren't there people to do your insurance paperwork like there are to do your taxes? You've already shown your aptitude for giving the run-around (it seems to be a highly refined talent of yours), so it's gonna be a LONG YEAR if you keep this up. Basically, if you could just ADMIT ALREADY that we've met our deductible and pay the rest like you promised to, that would be GREAT. Meanwhile, I'll be billing you for the 10 bottles of aspirin for my paperwork headaches.

To: Cinnamon Toast Crunch

Re: My undying love for you

Let's go drown our woes in more cinnamon-y milk, shall we?

June Brides

All you June brides out there: represent!

Happy anniversary Kari and Jonathan (belated) and Elsha and Brian (in advance).

Fingers crossed

Well, we don't actually have any NEWS news to share, it's more like rumors... but they're really good rumors, so I want to share!

First, Whiting-Turner Contracting (aka Joe's company) got the new Williams Village dorm job in Boulder! That's a big "whew!" since they were seriously hurting for work. We were never worried that Joe would be laid off since W-T doesn't lay people off (another "whew!"), but we were wondering where he would be working next since we're in this whole process of trying to buy a house. We've been looking for homes in Thornton so that we'd be semi-close to Fort Collins, to the main office in south Denver, and to all that other junk around Denver where jobs might crop up. Now we're pumped because it's for-sure super-close to Boulder! Getting the job wouldn't mean anything to us except that Joe is named on the team, so it's 99% sure he'll be working in Boulder as soon as his dorm job here in Fort Collins wraps up. Another year and a half of security in Colorado, and THAT is "wheeeeewwwwww!"

Second, we are still in the process of procuring a residence to call our own, but it feels more like "oh my gosh can we PLEASE just find a house in our price range in a decent neighborhood that doesn't already have 14 offers on it??" The answer is finally "YES!" Actually, we've gotten that answer once before, so now we're under contract on TWO homes! Anyone want a house in Thornton? Haha! The first house has been under contract for coming up on 3 months, but it's just in the beginning stages of short sale, a completely misleading term. It's anything BUT short! (Reminds me of Fast Sunday...) The realtor said it could go quickly, but we could also possibly have 5 children by the time we closed on it, and it looks like it's leaning towards the family of 5. This NEW house, however, is ready to rumble. We put in our offer and were out-bid, sadly, so we were beginning to dejectedly look for apartments around Thornton when we heard that the winners didn't follow through on their paperwork so we, the back-up bidders, we're now WINNERS! Now everything is moving quickly (a true-to-life "short sale") and we're scheduled to have the inspection in the next 2 or 3 weeks and the closing date (should our superstitious finger-crossings work) is July 7th! To sum it up: we could have a house of our own in less than a month.

This could be our house! Or at least the outide of our house.

And this could be our crazy awesome back porch where we could have a crazy awesome house-warming party with family and friends! Just dreaming...

I'm suppressing extreme over-use of exclamation points because, like I said, it's just rumors right now -vicious rumors! It could turn out that the house contract falls through and Joe gets sent to another job site, even to a site in another state, where we live in an apartment for another year or two. That could definitely happen, and if it DOES happen I can't say I have anything to complain about - I still have the most handsome husband around (even if you other wives say otherwise) with an incredible, crazy toddler to fill our days, we're looking forward to meeting Baby Jacobs #2, and we're fortunate in 1,000 other ways nobody cares for me to list. But that certainly doesn't stop us from crossing our fingers!

Happy Anniversary to Us

June 3rd was our 3-year anniversary! It seems it's been about 3 months or about 13 years, depending on the topic or the day. How long have we been together? 13 years! When HAVEN'T we been together?? (at least in our minds; others might remember such a time). When did we get married, though? 3 months ago! I'd swear it was yesterday, but I know we didn't get married on a Wednesday, so that can't be right. At any rate, we surely haven't AGED a day since we got married (at least in our minds; others might notice a few more wrinkles or pounds here and there. Or babies). So we celebrated our day with a babysitter and a movie, then dinner as a family. Low-key to be sure, but did I mention the 14-slice sampler cheesecake we came home to? Looks like I really haven't changed much since Day 1! At least my appetite hasn't.

Anyway, happy anniversary to us! Looking forward to many, many, MANY more.