Maternity Dress Alteration

     Austin has VERY FEW options for maternity clothes.  It's Motherhood Maternity and then tiny tiny corners of department stores that specialize in selling clothes that are black and grey.  It's so hard to find color!  Oh and stripes.  Black, grey, and stripes.  Ugh.  So depressing for Spring!  I found a thrift store that buys clothes from people and re-sells them.  So it's the Plato's Closet of maternity and kid clothing.  I have found quite a few things there, shorts/pants are usually about $7 each and dresses are between $10 and $15.  Shirts are about $8.  Definitely more doable than $25-$30 shirts at Motherhood Maternity.  Well anyway, I bought this thrifted dress a while back.  It's from GAP Maternity, so pretty good quality and a great dark purple color (the lighting was being difficult for these pictures!)

But, the length was pretty borderline.  I hate worrying about dresses and skirts and keeping them down in Church (or anywhere), while I'm walking, and especially while I'm sitting.

      Please excuse the self portraits in our bathroom mirror.  I needed a before shot.  Anyway,  I went to Jo-Anne's and found the perfect fabric to add to the bottom.  I excitedly went to work and spent an entire evening sewing 6 inches to the bottom of the dress.  My first idea and instinct was to just make a layered look.  But, for some reason I chose to go for a ruffle.  I'd seen it on a blog and thought it looked fine.  Well, I finished the ruffle and tried on the dress.  It was hideous.  The ruffle looked SO BAD.  I was heartbroken.  I'd just spent lots of time and energy making a dress ugly.  I wish I had taken a picture, you would shudder if you saw it.  So, I pushed the project aside and took time to calm my troubled heart (as is often necessary during sewing projects gone wrong).  Soon after, I took a seam ripper to all my hard work and removed the ruffle, removed the gathers, and then put the dress in the closet for a few weeks.  Well, last night I finally got up the motivation to try again.  This time, I went with my original idea.  It really didn't take long at all to do and when I finished and tried it on I was so pleased!
     Here's a close up of the fabric that I added to the bottom, it was the perfect shade of yellow to go with the dark purple.

     I added a belt to the waist to give it a bit of style and oila, a rather plain border-line length dress was transformed into a trendy dress that made this pregnant woman very happy! 

Pun-Off World Championship

     So Austin hosts the Pun-Off World Championship each year.  Not sure if they've actually ever had internationals compete, but it does attract people from around the United States to compete.  I discovered this event months ago and instantly became excited.  Jackson was equally excited and we've been anticipating this forever.  What can we say, we have a punny sense of humor.  Anyway, last weekend the day finally arrived.  We drove downtown, claimed a spot on the lawn and settled in for some great entertainment.

     It was set up in a bracket competition.  3 competitors would be on stage at a time and they went in a line spouting off puns related to the current category.  Some categories were: condiments, pregnancy, winged animals, movie stars, documents, and fairy tales.  If you repeated a pun word that was already used (for example using tinker bell in a pun when she had already been used) then you would receive a strike.  You would also receive a strike if your pun wasn't actually a pun.  3 strikes and you're out.  You had 10 seconds to come up with a pun otherwise you were eliminated regardless of how many strikes you had.  So, they would just take turns spouting off clever statements.  It's amazing that people can do that on the spot with a surprise category!  

    Jackson was actually pretty good at it and came up with quite a few of his own during each round.  Here are some examples:  

    Category:  Condiment.   "Olive to die another day" 

    Category:  Winged creatures:  "When I got here there was a bird robbin' a bank"  

    Category: Television:  "I was feeling kind of dirty so I went to the soap opera" 

    Category:  Winged creatures:  "Sometimes it's a peng to win" 

     

    Anyway, those are just some that I wrote down.  I couldn't think of any!  Here we are enjoying the show, despite the heat (an umbrella really helped to cool us down!) 

     It was a pretty hippie atmosphere.  Austin is such a different city from San Antonio!  But I love it.  Very active, educated, and of course weird.  

     I also saw one of the most beautiful dogs I've ever seen.  I loved it.  And that's saying a lot coming from me. 

     Cute right?  Anyway, after some good laughs and impressive performances we clapped for the winner and headed home.  I didn't know that suggesting we go to the pun off included Jackson speaking in puns for the rest of the evening.  On the way home he used every exit name in a pun.  All through dinner I wasn't allowed to speak unless it was a pun.  It did force me to come up with puns and some were actually quite decent!  Jackson is impressively good at them though.  

    Anyway, it was a great Saturday afternoon date and we ended the evening by going to a friend's house for a Pajama movie night but ended up playing games all night with like 6 other couples.  It was great fun.  We LOVE where we live and have made such wonderful friends!  

Ankle Rolls

     My feet were pretty prone to swelling even before pregnancy.  Now, it's just out of control.  Apparently when you are pregnant your body has a 50% increase in blood volume... thanks to gravity, lots of that extra blood ends up in your feet.  So, I only fit in one pair of flats, my running shoes, and flip flops.  I wear flip flops to church (something I never did before but have no choice to do now) and even then, my flip flops leave indentations on my feet.  I put my feet up on a chair in front of me any time it's available in church, work, and at home.  I've learned that swelling includes pain, something I didn't expect.  Swelling makes the top of my feet feel bruised.  People look at me with pity and/or sympathy and always express words of comfort.  I just laugh about it.  If I didn't laugh, then I would cry and it's not worth it to cry.  And really, my feet get IMPRESSIVELY LARGE.  People talk about having cankles but I periodically develop ROLLS.

    Yes those are my feet.  Jackson likes to joke that I have baby feet.  This particular picture was taken when I was at my parents' house.  I casually pointed out my swollen feet, rather fascinated at how large they had gotten, and my mom took one look and flipped.  She banished me to the couch and in no time at all I ended up like this: 

     After about 2 hours my feet had gone down enough that I could at least drive home.  I tell you what, this baby better appreciate what I go through to get him into the world!  My little sister recently said that pregnancy is a pretty sweet deal in that you have 9 months without any menstrual cramps.  I laughed and informed her I would take cramps a few days a month any day over all the constant aches and pains that come with pregnancy!  

     Good thing I already love this little guy inside of me and good thing he makes me smile and laugh every single day as he kicks and jiggles my stomach like jello.  He's gonna be a great kid, we're so excited for him to get here.  I tell you what though, he is ACTIVE!  Now that I'm in the 3rd trimester my doctor wants me count kicks to make sure my baby's activity level stays consistent and to be aware of any decrease.  He told me that I need to count 10 kicks in 2 hours and if I don't, come to the hospital immediately.  I've been counting for 2 weeks now, at the same time each night.   It's never taken me more than 10 minutes to get to 10 kicks.  Usually it takes between one and two minutes.  Looks like he's inherited his daddy's energy! 

     Anyway,  pregnancy side effects aren't all bad.  I can't comfortably bend over and reach my toes anymore so painting my toe nails is out of the question.  Luckily, my little sister Tara was happy to fix that problem for me! 

     I can't wait to get a pedicure with my first pay check from work or for my birthday in July.  I had my first and only pedicure for my wedding and became a huge fan.  I totally get it now.  Such a simple way to be pampered but so effective.  Until then, Tara will definitely fill the need though! 

    So, don't feel bad for me.  Feel free to laugh at the ankle rolls.  I do! 

     

Easter

     For our first Easter as a married couple, we went down to San Antonio to spend it with Jackson's family.  Easter is much more fun with kids around so we flocked to the nieces and nephews.  We attended a lovely Easter church service then had a big feast at my sister-in-law's house.  There was a ton of delicious food and lots of family and friends.  After dinner, we had an Easter egg hunt for the kids and enjoyed the beautiful evening.  We both really enjoyed it but as another Holiday came and went it got me thinking about traditions.  It's been hard to even have a chance to establish our own traditions since this first year we spend all of the holidays with family.  It makes me sad that we've just gone with the flow and participated in our families' traditions rather than creating our own.  I'm determined that we make more of an effort in working in our own traditions even if we do spend the holidays with our families.  Traditions are so important and make each Holiday feel like the Holiday it is.  They are a source of happiness, joy, and excitement for me and as newlyweds it's time we figure out some of our own! Here's to future Holidays!
In the mean time though, enjoy the pictures from our Easter Sunday.

On the hunt! 

My mother-in-law got a hold of one of the kids' masks.  I love how it matches her shirt perfectly!

My nephew Boston

My 1 year old niece Anabelle.  She just loved sharing those Easter eggs! 

My nieces insisted on playing before we went back to Austin and before they had to go to bed.  So we dressed up dolls and stuffed animals and it was great fun!