Cullimore Family Reunion

Labor Day weekend we had the opportunity to go down to St. George with the extended Cullimore family.  There were about 80 people there!  Carson's aunt and uncle have a gorgeous house down there that backs onto a golf course with a nice pool and entertaining area out back.  Most of us were staying in a nearby hotel but would often gather there. 

We visited church sites, swam, ate, and enjoyed each others company.

James had fallen asleep in the car on the way down and woke up as we were getting into St. George.  All we heard was a gasp from the back seat.  He saw the red rock and was thrilled that we were in "Radiator Springs" :)

We checked in and turned on the game just in time to cheer on BYU!

Eating at Pizza Factory

Doing gel glitter toes.  I bought a kit and it's really fun to do plus they look super cute!

hmmm this pic really doesn't show 

it right but they are super cute 

and my feet look tan here ;)

It was SO hot and surprisingly really humid down there.  We were visiting numerous church sites and James sat down on this curb to "take a break" in his words haha.  

He was happy though and gave me a smile for the picture.

The boys found a big snake that was pretty aggressive and "jumped" 

out at them a few times.

  Luckily it was not a rattler :)

Ha, Carson ran into this guy at our hotel and talked to him.  Recognize him, Friday Night Light lovers?  

It's Landry's dad, the cop.  Glenn Morshower is his name.  I think he's such a great actor and there's something about his voice I love.  He just always plays a down to earth nice guy.  This is a pic of him in 24 I really liked him in that.  He was in St. George on his way up to the Comic Con.

Thank you Gummy and Gumpy for putting this together and allowing us to have this great experience.

 We had a blast.  I seriously love this family.

Me oh my have I exploded in the last month!  It seriously was like one day I woke up and thought did this baby grow like 3 lbs over-night? 

I looked back at pics and sure enough he really has been super busy growing in there!

I am currently 33 weeks.  Only 7 more weeks to go! 

I'm busy finishing up a project- I know, I know I said I was done but this one HAS to be finished before baby comes...plus surprisingly enough, Carson is forcing me haha.  But it's a good thing.  I will post about it when it's done.  I am also organizing and getting baby boy's room in order.  Just bought some new curtains for it and I absolutely LOVE them!

He still doesn't have a name :(  We keep asking James what we should name him and he usually replies "Hmmmm....Momma?"

August has been hard.  I figured it would be.  I'm ALWAYS hot and I am oh so uncomfortable- already!  I'd be really pleased if he came at the end of September :) though we still have lots to do before he makes his debut.  

Thought I'd throw in a pic of my other boys.  

James is such a copy cat.  I love them both, they light up my life. 

Story of a Broken Nose

Yeah, I broke my nose.  I know, you're thinking how the heck did a pregnant woman break her nose? I'm wondering the same thing haha.  Well, it's kind of a funny story that I thought I'd blog about so that I can remember the details so here goes.

My sister, Kristy, called me Monday morning to see if I wanted to go with her and her kids and also my other sister's kids to Trafalga.  She was watching my oldest sister's kids while she was away for girls camp.  I thought, sure I'll go to help and James will have fun playing with his cousins. Plus we have a POAP so it was free!

We got there a little late and they were on the bumper boats so we watched them do that.  After that, my sister informed me that they had an 11:00 laser tag game and had also scheduled an 11:30 as well.  We were going to take turns taking the kids since the two youngest kids weren't old enough to go.  We watched Zach on the go-carts and then let the little ones play in the toddler section while we got ready to head up to our game.  My sister's little girl was crying so we decided I would go with the others for this first game.

all the kids hanging on the chain link watching Zach on the go-carts

The game was fine all until the end.  We were all obeying rules such as "no running" etc but somehow I still managed to hurt myself.  I swear only I could do that.  So here's how it happened.  I'm embarrassed to admit it but I just have to preface, it was dark, ok??  I was crouched down in an alcove and thought someone was after me so I abruptly turned and quickly headed into a dark hallway...or so I thought.  Nope it was a wall! Yep, I ran into a wall...

When I hit, the first thing I thought was Oh my gosh, I really hit that hard.  Wow, how embarrassing.  I hope no one saw me. Luckily and surprisingly no one was around.  It was a pretty full game.  Then the pain hit.  My whole mouth and nose hurt.  My first thought was, Did I bust my teeth? So I reached up to assess the damage.  Phew, my teeth were still there.  Then I felt the blood start trickling out of my nose so my hand went up to my nose.  Yep, bleeding and wow did it hurt!  Great.  Can't hide my stupidity now.  Now I have to find the exit while trying to contain the blood.  Luckily the game ended so I headed to the exit.

I came through and feeling like a complete idiot, I told the worker I had a bloody nose and asked if she had a tissue.  She did not have one nearby but told me there was a bathroom out the exit and down the stairs. Um, I'm not going all the way out there with blood all over my face and hands.  That'll bring lots of attention.  Also my younger nieces and nephews needed help with getting their vests off.

We were still in a dark room so I thought ok, I will hold my nose and can get these kids out of their vests and out of here and hopefully no one will really notice.  Wrong.  Of course my sweet nieces and nephews were asking "Shell, are you alright?"  I told them I was fine.  By then my oldest nephew had come out and I asked him to go down to the bathroom and get me some tissue.  A couple grown women coming up to me saying, "Oh my gosh, You're nose is bleeding!"  Uhhhh really??  Yep, that's why my hand is covering it.  Thanks.  I just waved them off and told them I was fine.  After the fact, I do appreciate their concern.  I was just so embarrassed and didn't want attention.  My nephew came back up with a tissue and we snuck out.

We got out into the light and my sweet six year old nephew wouldn't leave my side and was so cute wanting to hold my hand (which was covered in blood) and kept asking, "Shell, are you ok?"  I looked at him and was shocked by what I saw.  I immediately asked, "Jacob, you're asking if I'm ok!?  Are YOU ok?"  He had a huge goose egg on his eye and it was already black and blue.  I said, "What happened!?"  He just shrugged haha.  I didn't even hear him cry during the game.  What a brave kid! Later my sister found out from him that he ran into the back of someone's gun.  Just a bunch of clumsy's we are :)

Here is his shiner that day.  This pic doesn't even do it justice.  

And by the second day it was even worse!

We were getting a lot of stares, ha I'm sure between me and my nephew, we looked like quite a sight.  What are the odds that there would be injuries from the same party, in the same game that weren't even related?  I had them wait outside while I went into the restroom to wash up.  Luckily my bloody nose had stopped at this point.  When I went back out, they had found my sister who mouthed to me across the facility What the heck happened!?  Haha I felt like everyone was staring at us.  I was mortified.  I filled her in on all the happenings and then the pain really hit and I felt light headed and sick to my stomach and had to sit down.  I kept laughing though.  It really was funny. She suggested I go get it checked out.  We both were really concerned that I may have broken my nose.

I sat for a minute and made sure I was ok to drive then grabbed James.  He was so sad we had to leave early.  So was I.  Luckily he didn't realize I had been injured.  I didn't want to bring any attention to it so I wouldn't freak him out.  I had forgotten to get ice at Trafalga so I stopped at a gas station to get some and called to set up an appointment with my doctor.  I also shot Carson a text.  He was working.  It read, I very well could have broken my nose...Call me when you can.  He called me right away.  After getting back in the car with ice and James seeing me put it on my face, he became a little concerned.  He kept asking, "Momma, what happened?"  the whole drive home.  I would tell him, "Momma just ran into a wall.  I'm fine."

When I went in to see my doctor, he evaluated me and I got some X-rays.  He looked in my nasal passageways and said that my septum may be deviated.  He couldn't tell if it was that or just swelling but that it was definitely swollen.  In fact it was completely closed off.  No wonder I couldn't breathe out of my nose.  So he said he would look again after the swelling had settled.  We looked at the x-rays and sure enough there were two breaks on my nasal bone.  Luckily he said they were aligned and he wouldn't have to set it.  Oh man, was I glad.  I was so worried about that part!  He also said I shouldn't see any bumps on the bridge of my nose after it heals.  When the swelling goes down, then I'll know for sure.

Here it is on the day I injured it 

(my upper lip was swollen too but luckily went away that evening)

So luckily my healing consists of ice and pain meds and making sure nothing bumps it because then it could easily get out of alignment.  Hard to do with a two year old :/  but so far so good. Hopefully it'll heal on it's own and go back to the same ol' nose I'm used to.  If my septum is deviated, it may mean surgery.  Let's hope not.

I'm surprised it didn't bruise as much as I thought it would.  I'm grateful for that and grateful that I'm not disfigured haha.  The first two days were pretty painful.  I never realized I crinkle my nose so much when I talk until it hurt to do so.  I was also so stuffy from all the swelling and a little "nasaly" sounding when I talked.  Sleeping was also a little rough between waking up because I couldn't breathe or the pain and also the pregnancy factors but it was definitely better than I thought it would be.  By now, about four days later, I actually feel pretty good.  I don't have to take anything for pain and the swelling has improved.  So now it's just a matter of letting it heal and being careful.  I can handle that.  I will go back to my doctor to have him check it again in a few days.  Hopefully everything will look ok and no surgery will be needed.

I guess it's time for me to take it easy.  Really though, that game was not that risky.  I'm just clumsy haha.

End of July

As I posted before, July was a crazy month but it was also such a fun month! It went by so quick. Here we are already at Aug. 1st!  Here are the highlights from the rest of the month:

We took James to the pet store.  Out of all the animals there, he liked the fish the most...really kid?  The kitties were pretty cute and active though.  They kept jumping on each other and it was fun watching them.

James had his first haircut by a professional.  I have been cutting his hair which wasn't perfect but it was definitely cheap.  Well, we let it get too long and I just didn't know what to do with it.  I tried to remedy but it was disastrous so I took him to Cookie Cutters which was such a great place to take small kiddos.  He did so well.

He chose the pink car to sit in???

Not so sure about this...

there's the tears.  He actually did really well for a while.  This was near the end and I think he was just done with it.

Our friends from our old married-student ward were in town and got a bunch of us together for a bbq.  It was so nice to see all of these guys again!

On the 24th we went to 7 Peaks.  We have a Pass of All Passes and James and I have gone this Summer but Carson has never been before.  He had the day off so we took advantage of that and really enjoyed the day there.  James surprisingly liked the "tunnels" aka slides.  He especially liked "Cave In" which is a completely closed in slide and is very dark, never would've thought he'd like that one.  I even went down a few rides :)

Later that night we went up to Cottonwood Heights for Butlerville Days.  It was HOT and poor Carson and many of his family were out in the heat passing out Otter Pops for the "Re-Election" campaign and participating in and watching the parade.  

During the firework show, James kept jumping from lap to lap.  He LOVES fireworks and loved watching them with his grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.  

Every Thursday in July Courtney and I have been going to a sewing class.  Laurie was so kind to buy us each a sewing machine along with some sewing classes and offered to watch our kids while we attended the classes.  We had a lot of fun!  James is so proud of the things I have made.  It's so funny, he loves to show them off when people come over.  He'll say, "Momma made this.  Momma sew."  I love that he's so proud of me.  Such a sweet boy :)

I think our August is going to be a little more mellow.  It'll be nice to take it easy.  I am really starting to get uncomfortable and tired in my pregnancy.

Project Post: Striped Bathroom Walls

As I have mentioned before, I am going through a weird "nesting" phase where I am refinishing furniture and wanting to decorate and do projects around the house like a crazy woman.  Maybe I feel like I will never have this sort of time again with two kids? I dunno.

So here's another one of my crazy woman projects....This was probably the craziest.  I have seen lots of people painting stripes on their walls and I thought, I could do that.  I have also heard it is pretty easy too and it seemed easy reading the tutorials.  I pretty much knew from when we moved in about a year ago that I wanted to do that in our half bath and have just been putting it off.  Well one night I couldn't sleep.  My mind kept racing and got fixated on this painting stripes idea.  I realized I had the paint- I would use my oops paint I used on my end table from this post here!  Then I thought about how I would go about doing this project.  I thought about that for a while until I realized it was WAY too late and I needed sleep so I had to try to turn my brain off.

The next morning first thing I said to Carson was, "I'm going to paint stripes in our half bath.  I'm just going to do it."  In which he replied with a lot of excuses like, "Are you sure that's a good idea?"  and "We have so many other things we should be doing."  I told him, I don't care what excuses you come up with and you don't even need to help.  I'm doing this.  So I got right to work that evening.

BIG MISTAKE!!  I will publicly tell you, Carson was right! Husbands do sometimes know what's best ;)  Now I in no way am some sort of professional and frankly I had never painted before so I really didn't know entirely what I was doing haha.  But the first night, was horrible!  NOTHING was going right, including the fact that I ran out of paint! grrr.  I started when James went to bed (about 8:30pm) and was up until midnight so I could get to a good stopping point to go to bed.  It was a rough 3 and a half hours!  I just kept thinking What am I doing?  Why do I do this to myself?  Why am I going nuts and doing all these projects when I'm almost 7 months pregnant and tired?  After I was finished for the evening and cleaning up, I let the best of my emotions get me and just cried.  Carson is so good to me and just hugged me and told me it's going to look great.  Even though in his mind I'm sure he was saying, I told you so.

So here is how I tackled this project.  I found there are two ways to do this, you could tape off your segments and then paint or do your whole wall the lighter color first, let it dry and then tape off and apply the second color where designated.  I chose to do the latter.  Not sure which is better or easier if there is one but I personally felt that having half of it done before I taped was appealing.  Plus if you did it the other way, you'd maybe have to tape in two stages because the tape covers part of where you need to paint anyway.

Here's the run down on how I did it (if you dare to tackle it):

• Removed any decoration on walls and spackled in the holes and let dry
• Cleaned walls with warm, soapy water and let dry
• removed hardware including toilet paper holder, towel rack, and outlet/light switch covers
• Take tank off toilet (if doing this in a bathroom) I did not realize this until I got there and thought I don't know how to take a toilet apart without water spurting all over!  So I You Tubed it and it's actually quite easy.
• Taped off with Scotch Blue Tape anywhere like around cabinets etc where you don't want to paint
• Now you're ready to paint!  I chose to do white and gray stripes so I painted all of my walls white.  I used Glidden High Endurance Plus 2 in 1 paint + primer in semi gloss white GALLON size.  I used a large roller and then used a good angled paint brush around cabinets, ceilings etc.  I had to do two coats because my walls were a cream color (I didn't realize how dark they were and didn't take into account I'd have to do two coats! arg- more time!)  Let dry.

• After second coat of white paint was dry, I marked where I wanted my stripes. First I decided about how many stripes I wanted (I decided 12) then measured the height of the wall (91") so I took 91 and divided it by 12 to get roughly how wide each stripe would be so 7.5" and then marked every 7.5" on one wall.   Now I don't have a fancy laser level or anything so I used a good ol' yard stick and hand held level from my tool kit and just drew straight lines on my marks and matched them up around each wall.  I was very meticulous with this.  I was so afraid I would come out with uneven lines!  
• After measuring and marking, it was time to tape.  (I actually marked and taped at the same time as I went). Make sure you tape off in the "white" areas because those are already done and don't need to be painted.   I also made sure the tape rested just above or below (depending on  the pencil line so that I'd be painting over and covering up my pencil marks with gray.  So you see here, the "thinner" stripes are going to be my white stripes and the "thicker" stripes will be painted gray but they will all come out to be the same size.  Sort of trippy....I kept having to second guess myself and check.

• Then I painted my gray stripes with a small roller.  As I mentioned, I used my oops paint from another project.  Since it is an oops paint, it didn't have a color name.  I just know it was America's Finest line from Glidden.  It was a flat finish so I was a little worried about how it would look with the white semi-gloss but I really like how it turned out.  Again, I made sure to tape off and use a good angled brush to get up around the ceiling, mirror, baseboards and cabinets.   Update:  Flat finish paints do not clean well and easily leave fingerprints, dirt, marks etc.  I knew this going into my project but decided since I already had the paint I would see how it turned out.  The walls still look pretty good now about 8 months later but I do have a couple spots where my son has touched the wall with grubby fingers that I can not get off.  So in hindsight, I should have found some satin finish paint.  

And that's it!

Seems pretty easy huh? Oh but let me tell you IT IS NOT haha!  I easily spent like 5 hours alone on measuring and taping.  It was probably a 12-15 hour project.  I worked on it for three days every free time I had.  I'm not sure if it was just me making it harder than it is or what but it was the project from Hell! 

Let's see a before and after

and some more of the finished product from different angles

When I was done, Carson asked me, "Well, was it worth it?"  I quickly responded, "NO!" haha but I am happy with the outcome.  It is exactly what I had in mind.  I am so happy with it, just so glad it's over!  In hindsight I would've paid someone to come do it for me ;)

So I promised myself (and Carson) no more projects until well after baby is born.  I was SO sore after this and emotionally drained.  

I can't wait to decorate now!

3rd Trimester

I am currently 28 weeks pregnant which means I am officially in the 3rd trimester! Man oh man do I really only have less than 3 months left?  It is going by so quickly now and I still feel like there is so much I want to get done before he comes!

Here I am at 28 weeks

What's been going on lately as far as pregnancy goes?

It is HOT!  With James I was pregnant through the Winter which is SO much easier!  I feel like I have so many layers (and I probably do with the maternity pants etc).  August is going to be hard, just sayin.

I feel HUGE, though people tell me they can't believe how small I am, I still feel huge and I have 12 more weeks to go!  I do think I am about the size I was with James at the stage, maybe smaller.  I thought for sure with the second I'd be humungo especially because I started showing earlier.  Maybe this baby will be a little smaller (not a bad thing at all) haha.  Sleeping is hard and has been for a few weeks now.  I've had bad restless legs which makes it hard but now even just turning over is difficult and wakes me up.  I feel like a beached whale turning over...thwump!  haha

One difference from James is that I don't get the leg cramps like I did...oh those were bad, often with me waking up screaming in the middle of the night scaring Carson half to death.  This would happen a few nights a week.  This time I've only had a few nights where I've woken up with them but can quietly get them to go away.

I have been having braxton hicks contractions since about 22 or 23 weeks which I was thinking was sort of odd (not to the point I was concerned).  With James I started feeling them at about 28 weeks which I think was even early.  But it was interesting, I went for my last OB appointment at 24 weeks and he asked if I've been having any contractions.  I said, "Yes...." He asked,"Did you have them early on with your last pregnancy?"  I told him I started having them at 28 weeks.  He nodded and said, "Ok, yeah.  Generally if you feel them sooner with your first, you'll get them even earlier the second time around.  Nothing to be concerned about."  So that's good.  Though the further along I'm getting, the more uncomfortable and some-what painful they are becoming.  Gearing up for show time I guess!

I am having a couple kind of odd symptoms.  One being the soles of my feet and the palms of my hands are often itchy and really really warm.  Doctor said it's nothing to be concerned about.  Also my left foot in a certain spot in my arch has been really sore since like week 20.  So needless to say, standing or walking around for long periods of time is not ideal :)

This little one is a mover especially at night!  This better not be a sign of how he'll be outside of my tummy ;)  He is already in my ribs quite a bit.  James never hung out in my ribs, I don't even remember it really being a problem in the last few weeks of gestation.  Maybe a little, but not like this one!

I really do enjoy being pregnant even with all the symptoms and extra layers.  I mean, so far I have had two excellent pregnancies with no complications and nausea so I can not complain!

I am now starting to see the doctor every two weeks instead of monthly so it's getting close!!

We have I think narrowed down the names to two but can't decide from there.  It may come down to deciding on a name when we meet him.

We are getting ready to clear out James' old room where the crib is.  Currently we have all his toys in there so it's sort of his play room.  We bought a few scrap pieces of carpet and laid them out downstairs in our basement and that is where all the toys will go.  I wish we had a finished basement or at least the family room but we'll make do.  James likes to go downstairs and play but only with one of us so with moving his toys down there we may just be hanging out down in our unfinished basement most of the day!  We'll see how that goes.

Pictures

During our crazy week last week, we had professional pictures of the Cullimore grandkids done.  They turned out so cute!  Here's a few that James was in: