Elliot's collection

i decided it was time to do a little sewing before i went into labor. dan says the fabric i chose for elliot's collection is way too girly. he has a small point, but instead of saying it looks girly, all i'll admit to is maybe it looks a little more babyish than any other bag i've sewn for ethan or any other boy... he said the fat rick rack was too much, and doing his name in lower case REALLY made it look girly. but anyway, it's done, and now i can load it up for the trip to the hospital. i chose to pair seersucker and canvas - i liked the way it turned out. i did do a few things i don't normally do for customers, like making it waterproof on the inside of the bag and changing pad & putting a pocket on the changing pad. putting in the iron-on vinyl makes clean up so much easier; you'd be surprised at how gunked up the inside of a diaper tote can get!

to use all the fabric, i went ahead and made him everything in my repertoire (bag, changing pad, hooded towel, burp cloth & bib). i make a couple of different styles of bags, but this one is by far the easiest, and well, i'm into anything easy these days. i had a good time sewing it all, but the whole time i was sewing i kept thinking about my sewing room i'll have soon!! yipee!

Not much to report

not much going on around here. i'm trying my best to take it easy and rest up before the baby comes. we've decided on his name - it'll be elliot christopher. not sure about the spelling of elliot, but that's his name. emily calls him eric, i call him everett and ethan just calls him baby. i like everett a lot better, but dan took the fun out of that name when he changed his mind and decided he would not let me call him rhett, so elliot he will be. i'm not too bummed though, elliot is a good name. he should feel lucky - he's the only mcneal baby to be named before his/her 38th week. actually, ethan was not "ethan" until after he was born. dan was sure i'd give in and let his name be jacob & i was holding on tight to ethan. i won, but i think only because he was born at 3:45 in the morning. dan was probably too tired to discuss it anymore. :)

also, thank you all for the kind comments on my last post. i know things will all be worked out, so i'm really not stressing, well, not too much. my blood pressure was up a little at my last appointment, so i can't afford to dwell on what may/may not happen - or how things will turn out. the only thing we know for sure is i'll have a baby, and we'll move. that's all!

since i don't have a ton to say, i thought i'd end with some pictures.

their latest fun thing to do is to take everything out of ethan's changing table and get inside. i don't care what they are doing these days as long as they don't make each other bleed...

sometimes, you just gotta let them sleep where they want too!

i count myself lucky emily even naps anymore, so again, who cares where she finally goes down. i've been told some kids give them up around 3; i need her to nap until she's 5!!!

The heat, and the hassles

well, i don't know who bradley is, and why he gives shandra a hard time about her posts, but bradley, if you hear i mentioned you in my blog, - IT'S STINKIN' HOT IN HOUSTON! i thought by giving birth in early may i would escape the heat. no dice! it was 85 degrees here in league city today!! we live near galveston bay so you'd think that would cool things down. WRONG! it's only going to get hotter. yikes! i feel bad about having the air set on 73-74, but we'll just have to deal with the $300 electric bill this month! i'm not going to be hot.

so on to other things. mid-may will be very interesting for the mcneals. check this timeline out:

ethan's 2nd (belated) birthday party - may 6 (poor ethan, his birthday was april 6)
my church shower - may 6
i'm due - may 16, but will probably deliver sooner
we close on this house - may 18
we close on our new house - may 19
we move from this house - may 23 or 26
we move all our things to storage - may 23 or 26
we move our things out of storage and in the new house - may 31

in the middle of all that, i'll have to find a good time to give birth. and if you caught it, we'll be homeless for a few days; we'll be living out of a suitcase in a hotel room. at least there will be a pool to go veg in! but really, it's going to be a living nightmare. i'll be crying non-stop because i'll have a newborn who won't nurse and won't sleep (and he'll be crying as well). i'll have the baby blues, the kids will be crying because they are jacked up about not being able to be with us during the day (and they'll be missing their naps), and finally, dan will be crying just because. we do have great friends who we are depending on to help out with the kids during the day. nights will be a hard time, but hopefully a grandmother or two will show up to help us out.

anyway, pray for us. we sorta have the scarlett o'hara attitude about it now; we are putting off thinking about it until tomorrow, and the next day, and the next...

dan said i'm being a little melodramatic...yes, i am, but those are the facts.

Farmer Ethan

My wonderful husband Dan showed me how to post videos to this thing. I just can't believe how talented he is!!! Isn't he the best!!!




This is Ethan feeding the animals at this year's Easter Egg Hunt.

Easter

the Easter bunny came to our house and brought lots of jelly beans and starburst. he did not bring chocolate for the kids (he brought me and dan plenty), but funny enough, they had no clue it was missing. :) emily's basket had a few eggs, a veggie tales dvd, a new purse and white gloves, and some other girly little things. i was not up yet, but dan said she looked at ethan's basket and said, "look ethan, you have grass!!" he only had a few eggs in his basket; his let's go fishing game was too big for his basket, so it was underneath. i think she felt sorry for him! but really, the veggie tales dvd was for both of them. and, admittedly, her basket was a little better than his was....sorry ethan, but you don't wear white gloves, or carry a purse on Easter!!

saturday dan took the kids to a another church's egg hunt to do some recon to get ideas for our egg hunt next year. they had fun. ethan liked the fire engine more than emily - but she did like the hat.

we could not get them to stand still to get some pictures of them dressed up for Easter, but here is the best. emily loved her white gloves. they are a little big; her fingers are not that freakishly large...

House updates

well, we are getting closer to finalizing things! the home inspector came out today, along with the termite guy, the appraiser, the buyers and the air conditioning guy. why an air conditioning guy you ask? well, let me tell you.

wednesday night at 3 in the morning i had to go to the bathroom. emily had already made her way in our bed and things were crowded, so i decided to go and sleep in her room. as i was walking through the dining room i heard something dripping. i looked up, and there was water coming out of the ceiling - a lot. i realized it was coming from the area of the attic where the air conditioning drip pan was. and although it was coming out of one area, it had spread all the way around the seam. i woke dan up so he could deal with it. he got up in the attic and cleaned up all the water, put a fan in the attic, and tried to dry the ceiling a little. we were soooo frustrated! tuesday we'd already had the roto-ruter guy out here for nothing; monday all the toilets were clogged, but of course by the time he had gotten out here, the line had magically cleared itself...now this happens?!? anyway, obviously we had to tell the buyers about it so we had an ac guy out to fix the clog. dan thinks the only thing we'll really have to do is patch a little where the water was actually coming out, and just kilz and paint the rest. the buyers were okay with that - thankfully!!

not the greatest picture, but you can sorta see the damage.

also, the buyers loved what dan did in the kitchen. he worked really hard, and it shows. emily did make us laugh a little about the kitchen. every couple of days she would walk in there when dan was working and comment about the pink not showing anymore. also, ethan was on the counter yesterday when i was fixing him something to drink and he patted the counter and said it was "daddy's work" - it was funny, they both knew dan worked hard on it! also, emily was very concerned about the sink; she kept telling dan how glad she was he put it back together. she told me she was happy about it because now she could put her cups in the sink where they belonged! she was so concerned things were not getting put in their right places; a little ocd if you ask me - just like me, actually....

also, we've made an offer on a house here in league city. we looked all around the clear lake area, but found one in league city that we really liked. it's across the freeway from where we are now, just about 10 minutes. it's a 6 bedroom with a gameroom; master down - and i can have my own sewing room!! hopefully we'll know this weekend if they'll counter us on price or not. but since it's Easter weekend, we'll probably have to wait until monday.

so that's all the news on the hunting. hopfully i can do two posts in one day and give good news about the house we made an offer on!!

update on the update: they counter offered us, and we accepted! we are moving!!! come and see us!

Hunting of all kinds

last saturday's second annual Clear Lake Baptist Church Egg Hunt was a great success. we had over a hundred kids, and most of those were from the community and our church's PDO program. one of the sunday school teachers in the all-spanish class has 3 families she feels like will visit our church because of the hunt - that was worth the whole effort!

the kids had fun with the games, face painting, the petting zoo and the egg hunting. we had a small worship service where they sang kid songs and heard the gospel. it was a great day!

our house hunting has gone into overdrive. yesterday we saw 7 houses i think. we had high hopes for one, but it ended up being a bust. we found one we both really liked, but it's location is a bit out of the way for dan. but it's a great house with an amazing floor plan. i'm trying not to get my hopes up too much; we have 3 houses we are scheduled to look at wednesday. the other houses we loved are sold, so we are starting over again.

i've learned a great lesson in this whole house selling thing. although it did not sell as quickly as we had hoped, it did sell in God's timing. i had an ob appointment last thursday, and it was not so great. i think now selling the house now is just what God had planned; now if i need too, i can go on bed rest and let the house stay a little messy! and also, i'm not going to sweat my appointment - if things don't look better next week when i go back, then i'll worry about it!

SOLD!

we officially have a contract on our house!!! we got an offer today, countered with a couple of details, and they accepted!! whoo-hoooo! i'm so happy about it all, but high on my list is not having to keep the house eat-off-the-floor clean 24 hours a day! :) we are under a little bit of pressure though; they want to close two days after my due date. i sure hope the next tiny "e" is a tad early!

also, dan is nearly finished with the kitchen, and it looks great!

ethan likes to help cut tile.

New addition

most all of you know Janna Sanders Park. she, her husband and son have welcomed a new addition - a baby girl, Brooklyn Elizabeth. stop by her blog and check her out!!

http://parkjm.blogspot.com/

The post about the house

i've been meaning to post something about the house for a while now, but i've been a little busy. i've been planning our church's Easter Egg Hunt, teaching emily's class on wednesday nights at church and trying my best to keep the house clean and the laundry caught up. oh, yeah, and i feel like i'm 50 months pregnant as well.

so anyway, we've had the house up for sale for about 6 weeks. we've been disappointed with the way things are going. we've only showed it 9 times, way less than we expected!! we've even lowered the price a little. but recently it has come to our attention we had a couple who would have made an offer, but they just could not deal with the countertops in the kitchen. we know pink is not really "in" right now, but we honestly thought the overall house would impress people enough to ignore the color. to the couple: if you are out there, COME BACK! dan is replacing the countertops and putting a tile back splash up this weekend!! PLEASE COME BACK!

we hope once the look of the kitchen changes from late 80's the offers will start rolling in. we've even scheduled an open house to try to get some traffic. and also, i only have 6 or so weeks left. it's coming down to the wire with me. we need to sell this house!

here is the color of the new countertops.

here is the pattern dan will use on the 6" tile back splash.

did i mention dan is doing the job himself? for cheap too, may i add. the cost may go up a little if dan happens to crack or break the porcelain sink when he tries to take it out. did i say that? here's praying for the best! :) if you want to see what we were up against as far as the pink goes, go to the link below and look at the kitchen. ignore our bathroom though; there's no way we are going to replace the tile in there!!