Weston

Where to begin.... Four weeks ago the most amazing life change happened to us. Our baby Weston was born! Weston was born October 16, 2013. I had been in false labor for a couple of days and I finally went into real labor the night of the 15th. I was so nervous! Going to the hospital that night was one of the scariest things that I have ever done. We got to the hospital at 3:30 am and Weston was born at 12:39 pm. He weighed 7 pounds 12 ounces and was 20 inches long. He has a beautiful complexion and dark hair, just like his daddy. 

The whole thing was so surreal. When they handed him to me for the first time, I still couldn't grasp that he was mine. That night I was absolutely exhausted so the nurse took him to the nursery for a couple of hours. It was just Steven and I in the room. Steven was sleeping in the pull out bed. It was quiet and dark, except for the night light that was on. The nurse brought the baby back to me a few hours later in the little rolling crib. She took my blood pressure and asked how I was feeling and left. I looked over at the crib and saw his sleeping little face. That was the moment. I just knew he was all mine. 

We had always loved the name Weston. In our first ward in Taylorsville, we were in the primary. There was a boy in our class named Wesley. We just loved Wesley. He was the most tender-hearted boy and he loved Steven. After meeting him, we decided that we wanted a baby named after him. We had a couple of different boy names picked out, but after a few hours of cuddling him, we just knew his name was Weston.

The next few days that followed are a little bit of a blur. I was so exhausted and we were running back and forth to the different families. But there are a few moments that really stick out in my mind. The first morning that we were home and got to sleep in, Steven and I were laying in bed with the baby. Steven turned to me and said, "Why were we so scared of this? I didn't realize that something was missing out of our lives until we had him." I feel the exact same way. Why was I so focused on working and school? Why did I feel like I had to squeeze in just a couple more years of working before I had children? Babies don't care if you are rich. They just need food and love, and we already had that to give. Why was I so worried that things between Steven and I would be so different? I have loved being married from day 1, and I was worried that things would be too different. Our relationship has definitely changed, but it has only made us feel more connected and more in love. There is nothing in the world like seeing Steven hold the baby and watching him take care of us. 

We are tired and exhausted and it is hard to run on a few hours of sleep. But I would take every painful moment and every tired minute in order to have our little buddy with us. He has turned our whole world upside down, but by turning it upside down he has actually turned it right side up. He has shown us what is really important in life. How lucky are we to have such a great blessing.  

Baby Blocks

 It's almost that time!! I'm 38 weeks and the doctor says that it is any day now! {Please come soon little guy!!} I just had to share this idea before the baby comes and I take a little blogging break. I saw some blank blocks at The Wood Connection and thought that it would be so cute if we made custom blocks for the baby. I bought enough for our parents, our sisters, two future brother-in-laws {wink, wink}, and a few extras for Steven and I to do. Everyone was so creative! Here are the blocks that we all made...

The block on the right is the block that Steven and I did together. We did it about our hobbies. Besides the birdie stamp on the side, one of us would start the picture and the other one would finish it. It turned out really cute! On the other block I used plain stamps. 

These are blocks that Steven and I made. Don't you love Steven's Bronco? :)

Here is the other side of the same blocks...

These are the blocks that my mom and dad made. The thing that is great about these blocks is that they can be as fancy or as simple as you want them to be and they all look so cute! The only "rule" that I had for everyone is that their name had to be on the block somewhere so that the baby would someday know who made what block. 

These are my sister's blocks and one of the future family members. :)  I love how different everyone's turned out!

These are my in-laws blocks... I feel like their blocks totally show off their personalities. Cute, right? I love the self portrait going on with Ken's!

Seannie did something so creative with hers. There were enough sides for each letter of her name so she added little pictures to each letter. I love the elephant!

It was so much fun seeing what everyone did with their blocks! Because it was so fun, I decided that I am going to make this a tradition for each of our babies!

Only a few more days!! We are ready for you baby!

Bubble Quilt & Nursery

Bubble quilts! They are so much fun! I saw this link on Pinterest from Awaiting Ada and I wanted to see if I could make one. I didn't do a full tutorial because she did such a great job. I will just tell you the few different steps that I took.

I have to tell you that these take a LONG time to make. Don't think that you can take one weekend to make it and have it all finished unless you can literally use every hour from that weekend. Even just the way you have to pin it takes quite a while. But they are so cute that I think they are worth it!

Here is the bubble quilt I made to match our nursery...

The material I used is the Michael Miller and Sarah Jane fabric "Out to Sea". It's my all time favorite material!

This is the first bubble quilt that I made. I had some extra purple material and my friend was pregnant. I was crossing my fingers that she was going to have a girl so that I could give it to her. (Luckily, she did!)

 

For this quilt, I used much bigger squares than Awaiting Ada does. I already had them cut so I thought I would try it out. I think it worked out pretty good! I did use her measurements for the bubble quilt I made for our nursery though, just because I had less fabric. 

If you read her tutorial, you can see that she has a really cute ruffle that goes around the bottom and then has the minky. Honestly, I was running out of time so I skipped the minky. I tried sewing the minky on my machine, but the bubbles were already full and it was just too hard to do. So I had to hand sew the whole bottom portion. (I told you, it took a LONG time!)

This is how I did the sides instead of using the ruffle... I cut the minky so that it was just about an inch and a half longer around each side. Then I folded all the minky up so that it bordered the bubbles and pinned it..

This is how I did the corners... First you pin one whole side.

Then you take the end corner and pull it in so that it looks like a triangle... just like this picture shows. 

Then I pull the non-pinned side up and fold it down into itself, to hide the raw edge. 

Pin it and start hand stitching! Luckily, minky is very forgiving and hides mistakes well. I think it turned out really great!

A few people have asked me to post pictures of my nursery and it's finally all done! So enjoy :)

The theme of my nursery is sailing, based on fabric from Michael Miller and Sarah Jane. Isn't this mobile perfect? I got it from my cousins for one of my showers. 

On the wall behind the crib, I am going to get newborn pictures done and get one of those big canvas pictures to hang. 

This is a shadow box that Steven made for the nursery. He is incredible! 

 We found the wheel at Hobby Lobby. The weekend that we found out it was a boy, Steven and I went shopping to find some cute details for the nursery. This was one of them and we also found the wooden sailboat in the shadow box at Hobby Lobby. I made the poster hanging up in photoshop and had it printed. 

These two blankets are extra special! The one on the bottom is a blanket that my grandma made before she passed away. She had been talking to me about how much she wanted me to have a fall baby at the same time as my aunt. She said that she was making this because she just knew that it would happen. At the time I was thinking, no way! But a few months after she passed away, boom! Surprise! :) Both me and my aunt are having fall babies just like she wanted!

The blanket on top was done by Steven's great grandma Francis when he was a baby. I think that my mother-in-law said that the blanket was made for his baby blessing. So our little guy has a blanket from his great grandma and his great-great grandma! And these cute little shoes are the very first present that Steven and I bought for the baby after we found out that we were pregnant. 

Here is a toy box that Steven made! I told you... He is incredible! I had mentioned to Steven that I wanted a home made toy box and about a week later he totally surprised me with this. It matches the room perfectly! We decided that we are going to do a hand print from the baby on the front of it when we bring him home from the hospital. Then every time we have a baby we will do the same thing. By the time we are grandparents, it will be full of different little handprints!

This is the rocking chair that my mother-in-law recieved from her mother-in-law when she was pregnant with Steven. I just love hand-me-downs! They are so much better than store bought. Steven's aunt helped me re-cover the rocking chair so that it didn't have the awesome 90's fabric on it. :) I tried to do something that would match a boy or a girl so that we can use it for all our babies. 

This teddy bear was made at Build-a-Bear when Steven and I were dating. The weekend we found out we were having a boy, we bought it a little sailor outfit to match the nursery. Every good nursery has a teddy bear in it. :)

As of today... we only have 39 more days until the due date! It's getting really really close! Any good advice for what to do the last few weeks?