Happy 4th of July!

The day when dogs all across the US hide in terror from the explosions and quite possibly do the unthinkable and wet themselves and anything they may happen to be anywhere near...  At least, that is how our dog, a 65 pound Black Lab spends her 4th of July evenings (as well as New Year's Eve).  She'll pant, sweat, and stay literally wrapped around my feet the entire evening and come bed time, she'll either try joining us in bed (something she never does, except for when there is fireworks involved) or try to dig her way through everything stored under the bed to hide under there.  I even considered moving the storage boxes this morning, but I'm not sure how she'd get back out once she got under the bed!  Granted, it's on four-inch risers, but she's a big dog!

As a reminder, if you haven't voted yet, please do so!  Less than 24 hours remain until the "boy/girl" poll closes!  Hopefully by this time tomorrow, we will be happily shopping away for tiny baby clothes that are gender specific!  Our oldest nephew (who will be turning 8 years old on August 8th) is visiting with us this week, so he'll get to be there for the second anatomy scan.  He is less than thrilled about that, but he is looking forward to picking out an outfit for the baby!  I told each of the oldest three of my sister's boys that I would take them shopping and let them pick out a special outfit.  Not sure how/when I'll be able to do that with the 4 year old, he isn't scheduled for a trip up here until after the baby is born, but the 6 and almost 8 year old both have trips here this summer.

July 2011 - Getting his birthday present!

Each summer since we moved from Central Oregon to Eastern Washington (5 years ago August 1st), we have had our oldest nephew visit us for 10 days (up to 3 weeks).  We've done this since the summer he turned 4 (he turned 3 days after our move).  Some years the trip itself has been his birthday present (an early one), he has spent the last 4 Fourth of July's at our house!  Last year, we gave him an old laptop for his birthday that Garrick spent weeks getting set up and adding age appropriate games to.  This year, we got him a World of Warcraft Battle chest (original game, Burning Crusade expansion, and a game guide book which he has spent hours reading)!  Of course, his Uncle then had to spend a few days working on the laptop getting it prepped and usable for the game!  That included finding a new hard drive that was large enough to handle WoW...no easy feat when you're trying to do it for little to no money.  He did manage to find a larger hard drive that would fit into the laptop (in the form of an old HD that used to live an an MP3 player, before the iPod) and got everything installed, it took almost 2 days to get it working!

After we got the laptop working, we had to set up an email account and gaming account for the kiddo!  Or rather, an email address only used for the game account and a "free" account on battle.net under my name (this allows me to have parental control over when he can play as well as the ability to transfer characters to his account if we really want to).  The battle chest comes with a free 30-day game play time, but after that we'll have to figure out how to make it a "free" account so he can continue playing without the need for someone to pay the $15 a month subscription fee.  However, I can see game cards as gifts in the future! 

As a side note...if you go to the WoW website (battle.net), between now and July 9th, they have the battle chest, Wrath of the Lich King, and Cataclysm all on sale for $10 each!  That's $30 for the game and all the expansions!  We paid $50 for the original game and around $80 each for all three expansions (we got collector's editions on the expansions...)!  Keep in mind though, if you go the subscription route (allowing you to play all the races and classes), it'll cost between $12 and $15 each month to play.  I pay for mine in 6-month chunks, making the "per month" around $12, 30-day time cards and monthly subscriptions are $15.

For today, we are celebrating by not spreading our germs around too much.  We do have to go to the store for cold medicine (I caught a cold when in Central OR last week and gave it to Garrick who is just starting to show symptoms) and food...cause we still have to eat!  Our nephew decided he would rather stay in and watch the fireworks displays in World of Warcraft than journey out this evening to see the "real" ones!  Works for us since the adults in the house are all sick and this way we can keep the terrified pooch company.  That reminds me...I need to remember to let her go potty before dark, she won't go out once the "big booms" start!

Friday we leave for our trip to Vancouver/Portland...the baby shower is this weekend!  That means I'm 24 weeks (today) and there are only 13 weeks left until our little "nugget" is a real-life human being we have to care for!  It doesn't seem all that "real" yet...mostly cause our house still looks like adults live here and there's no way a baby could survive here.  We really need to buckle down and start turning one of our offices into a baby's room!

I don't really have the energy (or time) to make the laundry basket dresser/changing area that I want to make, so it looks like we'll be purchasing a dresser/changer.  I have found one I really like at WalMart (of all places), but it's around $170!  That's actually cheaper than the ones I was going to build, but we'll still need a dresser too...I always thought the crib was the expensive part of nursery furniture, boy was I wrong!  The crib I like (a 4-in-1 convertible) is only $150...the "matching" dresser/changer though?  $270!  Basically I'm down to settling on a furniture color (either white or natural pine) and then looking for pieces that sorta-kinda-almost go together.  I need to see if I can get the crib in white, otherwise it's back to looking for a different dresser/changer, I really want there to be some semblance of "matchiness" to the whole "look", lol.

I did settle on a paint color for the room though!  I think anyway...I want to go with a really light/pale minty green and then get dark brown "peel/stick" decor things to add a bit of decoration to the room.  I found an alphabet set to monogram the wall with too!  I think it's super cute and the plus side is I don't have to really worry about anything falling down (assuming the stick works as intended).  There are also dot sets and a set of vertical "ruffles" that I like too.  Again, I was looking at WalMart.com, so everything there is fairly cheap ($15 a set).  The peel/stick decor option is great too, if I don't like it or (god forbid) the child wants something else in his/her room, it peels right off and away you go with another theme!