Painting, Swimming, Girls' Weekend, and Baby Update

I thought I'd finally let you all know what we've been up to the last month! I'm quite diligent about checking the blogs of other people, but I am lazy when it comes to updating my own. As a result, this post is quite long and I apologize. So here we go:

For my Christmas gift from Dave, I decided that I would like to paint my very non-colorful house and get a few decorations. . . if you had ever been to my house, it was like we were living in a cardboard box . . . everything was different shades of tan. I am by no means a decorator and I'm definitely scared to do anything bold, but we did paint, add a rug, and a couple of other decorations. I still want to get some curtains and lamps, so I'll save the final pictures of how things turned out until we finish, but here are some pictures from the big paint day. I spent three days previous to the actual painting taping and getting everything ready . . . then I went over to my sister-in-law's house while Dave and two of his brothers went to work. They worked hard and got everything done it one day. I'm so grateful to my brothers-in-law for all their help . . . and Dave was especially grateful! They saved him from having to paint it all alone.

Here's Dave doing some final taping on the high parts of the ceiling that I didn't dare climb up to:



Another picture of my so very good looking husband:



Jordan hard at work:



Dan hard at work . . . as I kept calling during the day to see how things were going, Jordan assured me that things were going well except for the mistakes that Dan was making. He said he'd point out all the mistakes so we could fix them later. Dan was a good sport about all of Jordan's false accusations!



A couple of weeks ago we went swimming with Jordan, Jenny, and their kids . . . okay, they went swimming while I watched and took pictures. The day we went I was thinking about how good it would feel to be in the water, but I currently am much to large to fit into my swimming suit and I didn't feel like spending $40 on a maternity swimsuit that I probably won't wear often at all . . . so I'll just save the swimming for this summer! Here's Parker wading through the water . . . the kid LOVES to be in water!



Even though this picture is kind of blurry, I had to put it in. This is a picture of my niece and nephew, Alyssa and Levi. Alyssa was dead set on planting a kiss on her brother in the midst of their swimming. I was laughing as I watched her diligent attempts . . . she is one determined little girl!



More than swimming, Parker loves to play catch! This small picture doesn't do justice to the look of pure delight on Parker's face as his cousin Logan plays catch with him:



Dave and Parker just chillin' in the water. Parker loves doing anything with his dad.



This past weekend, the Snedaker girls had a girls' weekend and I can't even explain how fun, relaxing, exciting, and great it was. We stayed in a hotel for the weekend while our husbands stayed home with the kids . . . and we had the time of our lives! I hope our husbands know how much we appreciated them letting us go and for tending the kids. Although I missed Dave and Parker while we were away, it was nice to just be a girl and hang out with my mother-in-law and sisters-in-law. I absolutely love my in-laws and I love spending time with all of them . . . and a quick message to my mom, Julie, Tina, Shellie, and Shauna: we should do something like this soon! I kept thinking how much fun it would be for all of us to get together and have some "grown up girl bonding time" (quote taken from the movie Enchanted). Anyway, here are a few of the pictures we took:

We started off the weekend attending the Draper Temple open house . . . all I can say is BEAUTIFUL. It was impossible not to feel the Spirit as we walked through that building. It was the perfect start to our weekend.



After the open house, we went downtown and ate lunch at the Joseph Smith memorial building - and then we were off to the Gateway mall! We each had $20 and had a contest to see who could get the best bargains with the money we had. Melissa came out on top with the best bargains of the day! We then went to the movie "Bride Wars" and then headed to the hotel for pizza, facials, and pedicures in the hotel room.





We all put on masks and I have pictures of each of us removing the skin-like face coverings . . . however, I made a promise that I would not post them on my blog . . . so you only get to see my picture of removing the mask!



The next day we went to this cool little museum in Provo called the Olivewood Gallery. It was so AMAZING. It was small but had some really neat things. We got to hold an original hymnbook, see the deathmasks of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, see an actual picture of the original Nauvoo Temple, just to name a few.



Here we are at Hogi Yogi enjoying lunch. After lunch we went to the musical "Thoroughly Modern Millie" at BYU. It was very well done and we enjoyed all the singing and dancing!



Here we are at the Japanese restaurant Tepanyaki, where we went for dinner that night. You order your food and then they cook it on the table right in front of you. Congrats to Jenny for being the only one to catch the shrimp in her mouth that the chef through at each of us! Seated from left to right is Jenny, Melissa, Kathryn, Jadene (Dave's sister from Arkansas), me, and Dave's mom, Nancy.



We finished up the night playing a game that Jadene put together, where we answered questions that we might not know about each other. It was fun to just talk and find out things that we didn't previously know! The next morning we headed to temple square and attended "Music and the Spoken Work", went to the visitor's center, and then attended church at a nearby chapel. It was a great day. Here we are at temple square in front of the temple and then in the visitor's center:






We ended the trip by going to see our families that had gathered at Jordan and Jenny's house. It was great to see that the kids survived and I got the best hug ever from Parker! I had to include this picture of Alyssa . . . Jordan, bless his heart, dressed her like this for church . . . wearing her older sister's shirt and some tights . . . he thought it was a dress. We all had a good laugh!



And to start off the quick baby update (quick because I had no idea how long I was going to make this post and I'm getting tired of typing) here is a picture of Kathryn, me, and Melissa. We are all expecting babies, due at the beginning of April (Melissa and I are acutally due the same day and Kathryn is due one week later!). It's been so fun to be going through pregnancy together with my sister-in-laws and so crazy that we're all due so close together. Kathryn and I are both expecting girls and Melissa is expecting a boy - and for both of them it's their first baby! I think we're all getting anxious and exicted . . . only two more months until our family increases by three members!



I have been feeling really well and I've been enjoying this new experience of chasing a toddler around while being pregnant. I had an ultrasound a few weeks ago and was told that the baby is in the 80th percentile size-wise . . . for some reason I was planning on having a petite little girl (just because Parker has always been huge and girls are supposed to be small right?), but it looks like this little girl if off to a big start! We are so excited to meet her and we're trying to get everything ready. We are grateful that she is looking healthy and we hope that everything goes well with all the new babies (including both sides of my family, there are six people expecting babies!) Congratulations if you made it to the end of this post and I think I've just been inspired to blog more often . . . I don't know how many more of these marathon posts I can handle!