Friday, July 31, 2009

FestBlog 2009: Pregnant Kathleen Edition (Day 1)

It's Musikfest 2009! For those of you who don't know about Musikfest... it's a ten-day music festival in our town, including eight stages of free music - only a ten minute walk from our house.

Festing won't be like it's been in the last few years, but Kathleen and I are planning to enjoy the festival no matter what this year (unless a certain someone comes a little early). With Kathleen being home every day now and not able to do much, she's been a little antsy. So, we're going to try to get her out to a concert or two each day, so she can get a little fresh air. I'm planning on taking half-days at work this week. We have one or two "low-key" concerts picked out for each day - mostly bands that we've seen at past Musikfests.(That's Volksplatz in the picture - one of the free music stages)

We were actually able to get out tonight after the rain, even though the weathermen were calling for the great deluge tonight. I think they said 60-80% chance of thunderstorms all night with up to 5 inches of rain. It didn't rain after 6pm (when the festival started).

So tonight, I dropped pregnant Kathleen off downtown, drove the car home, and then walked down to meet her. I didn't want to pay $10 for parking... but I might pay it one or more of the days this week. We also might take the bus downtown one day.

Anyway, we had a nice little walk around the festival and caught a few minutes of a few shows. Here's what we saw...

A Dixieland band @ the Main Street Stage.

Sarah Ayers (local blues band) @ Americaplatz

Donovan-Roberts Band (local blues/jazz band) @ Liederplatz

So... the question is... will Mr. Owen come during Musikfest? Or will he wait until his due date?(which is two weeks from today!)

New Carpet!

We got new carpet installed on our stairs today. Another thing that we wanted to get done before Owen comes. The old carpet was so old that is was somewhat of a safety issue - it was very slippery. No traction. Even the carpet guys said, "Wow, this is old carpet!" Just one of those things that we didn't get around to until now. After first moving in (and having a few falls on the carpet), we learned to be careful on it. But that's no longer a problem. We'll be able to carry Owen up and down the stairs without any issues. And it looks great!


Betsy also approves of the carpet. At first, she wasn't too sure. She did a "crab walk" the first time that she walked up the stairs. But after that, she lounged around on the middle step (from where she likes to watch what's going on in our living room).

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

He's Still In There

Kathleen @ 8 months

At least the belly comes in handy for resting your frozen yogurt on.

Tree Gone

Well, they took the tree down last week. It all went pretty smoothly. Sidewalk came out on Monday. Tree came down and stump ground on Tuesday. The sidewalk went in on Wednesday and Thursday. And then on Saturday, I spent the day clearing the area and moving dirt with the neighbor, so that we could get grass planted. Of course, it ended up being the hottest day so far of our rather cool summer.

I guess it was quite a scene on our street on Tuesday when they took the tree down. They had the street closed and a whole fleet of cranes and trucks out. They didn't even let the branches hit the ground - just swung entire, giant portions of the tree into a big wood chipper. Kathleen got a pretty good picture...

With the tree gone, you can see our house clearly from the street. So, now we can see all of the other things that need work with our house. Time to think about a new roof. Oh... and that second front door. Who decided to put a second front door about 15 feet from our main front door? We're slowly correcting all of the bad decisions of the previous owners of our house.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Goodbye, Tree

Here's a picture of the VERY large maple tree in our front yard that we have to get taken down. It's ruined the sidewalk and we want to get the sidewalk fixed (before anyone gets hurt), so the tree has to come down. The city controls what must be done with the tree and the sidewalk, but, of course, we have to pay for it all. Not that we have anythting else to spend thousands of dollars on now. Oh, well. Hopefully, this the last home improvement that we'll have to get down before Owen comes. And we'll be planting a tree in the fall to replace the maple (probably a flowering pear tree - not as big as a maple). We can tell Owen that it was planted the same year that he was born.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Owen's "first" Ironpigs Game

We went to a Lehigh Valley Ironpigs game tonight (they're the Phillies AAA team). It was a beautiful evening. It was our first time at the new stadium - it's pretty nice! The Phillie Phanatic was at the game, so we had some extra entertainment. And the Pigs won 7-5 over Rochester! OINK!

Kathleen @ 35 Weeks


Saturday, July 11, 2009

Nursery

Here are some pictures of the nursery. Some of the pictures are a little dark, but the room is rather bright. I took the pictures on a sunny morning - I guess the bright window affected how my camera took the picture. Maybe I can take some better pictures and post them later.

Kathleen picked out the street-map rug that you can see on the floor.


The crib looks really nice with the Jungle-themed crib set and the jungle animals mobile (as well as the matching wall art above the crib).


We have the rocker positioned so that we can look out the window at Bethlehem while we're rocking Owen. Also, the rocker is right next to the book shelf so that we have easy access to all of Owen's books to read to him.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Update

Sorry that we haven't updated the blog in a while. Kathleen and Owen are both doing fine and growing. Owen seems like he's trying to bust his way out of Kathleen. He's really been pressing and pushing in there. I'm sure he's cramped - Kathleen's not that big. We've found that he'll calm down and stop pushing if we rub him a little.

We're finished up with the showers, so we've been trying to fill in all of the other baby stuff that we need over the past two weeks. I think we're in pretty good shape. The nursery is pretty much done. I'll post some pictures soon. It's really nice and peaceful in there - at least for now.

Kathleen has been off from work for about two weeks now. She's been resting, reading, cleaning the house, and getting ready for Owen to come.

Here are some pictures from the last few weeks.





Kathleen @ 33 weeks