life leading up to baby

We have been living it up as a family of three as we prepare for Baby Brother's arrival.  Here are some scenes from life lately...  

We have a big container of Legos and, despite Tom's bests efforts to keep them organized, Everett dumps them out on the floor on almost a nightly basis.  This kid loves legos! And surprisingly I've only stepped on a rogue lego once. 

We have also recently discovered that there is a park within a short, 15 minute walk from our house.  It's been so great to go out for a quick nightly stroll and let Everett run around. 

We joined a small group through our church and another family from our group has a boy around Everett's age that live near the park. This makes the park a double bonus because not only is it a cool park, but we also get to play with friends! 

Everett is growing so dang much! 

Lately we have been tying to check out some of Tom's high school sporting games.  We have been to a bit of volleyball and softball, but our favorite has been to go to football games!  We can't stay very long because of E's bedtime, but it's a fun (and FREE) event for us to do as a family. 

Everett is a freebie magnet!  He totally scored at the last football game.

Lastly, we have been trying to talk to Everett a lot about baby brother's arrival.  Here he is snuggling up next to "baby brotha."  

In addition to prepping E, we have been working hard to get things around the house ready for baby boy's arrival.  His room is coming together, clothes have been sorted, and now we just need to decorate the walls.  He will be here soon!

And speaking of baby brother...I had a doctor's appointment today and they did an ultrasound to measure the baby's size since I have a history with birthing a large child (Everett was almost 10 lbs. when he was born).  The baby and I are both doing well!  I know this will be a big surprise (or not) to many...the baby is measuring a bit large in size. :)  I'm at 36 weeks and the baby is measuring 38 weeks.  This means that baby boy will either arrive sooner rather than later OR he could arrive on time above average in size.  We will see what the good Lord has in store for us!

Baby Sprinkle

Meet my sister-in-law Jen:

Jen knows how to throw one awesome party!!!  When she found out about Mini Meyer coming she wanted to host a celebration for our baby. She offered to have a "baby sprinkle."  The idea of the sprinkle is that since it's baby #2 it's not a full on "baby shower" but rather it's a smaller occasion to celebrate our newest addition.  It was so thoughtful of her and she did AN INCREDIBLE JOB of putting it together.  I am seriously so blown away by everything she did.  I will let the pics speak for themselves...

We decided that since we have already been blessed with so much with Everett we wanted to do something a bit different than a typical shower.  We partnered up with Hillcrest Transitional Housing and instead of gifts people could choose to bring books or toys to donate to the children of Hillcrest.  It turned out really great and Hillcrest is so excited to have these things for the kids in their program. 

 My favorite part of the whole event was just spending time with family.  Numerous people drove in just for the sprinkle and we felt so loved by all of the miles traveled.  Grandma Jean (on the right) won the award for farthest traveled; she and Grandpa Meyer came all the way from Oklahoma for the weekend.  (AND...oh my goodness did Everett LOVE SPENDING TIME WITH THEM!!!)  I love this picture of Mini Meyer and his two awesome grandmas!  Everett and baby brother are so blessed to have such cool ladies that love them so much. 

 Hello giant baby bump!!! The youngest party goer was our niece Clare (isn't she so cute?!).  There is a lot of potential that baby brother and Clare will share the same birthday if our little man comes early. We were pumped that Aunt Jen (Clare's momma) and Uncle Jim came in from Columbia and stayed with us all weekend.  It was great to spend time with them and it gave Everett a bit of practice having a little one around our house. 

The Sprinkle was so fun! Thanks Jen Robertson for hosting and for all who came.  

final road trip

Two weekends ago we made our final trip before Mini Meyer (aka baby brother) joins our family.  We were invited to attend the wedding of one of my old Young Life guys in Jeff City.  We drove straight from KC to the 3PM Saturday wedding and as a result Everett and I needed to change clothes.  There wasn't a good place to change before getting to the church so Everett and I decided to play it classy and change in the car in a gas station parking lot across the street from the church.

Everett did a very good job of staying quiet and being a good listener at the wedding.  Here he is with his beautiful momma.

In the down time between the wedding and reception we were able to do two things that I love to do while in JC: get ice cream at Central Dairy and see my Grandma Luebbert.  Everett had just eaten dinner because we didn't know if he would make it to 6:30PM for the reception, hence he is shirtless here.

We had to bribe Everett with ice cream (which we were going to give him anyway) to get a good smile for this pic.

After Granny's house we headed down 54 to Donita's to celebrate with the newlyweds.

Why not color under the table rather than on it?

I wish this pic wasn't blurry, silly cellphone camera.

E even got to enjoy a little soda (which never happens)

It was an awesome time and we are so happy for Brian and Taylor.  To cap off the night we headed to the house of our good friends the Fitzpatricks.  This was the first time since our lake trip this summer that E was sleeping in a big boy bed away from home.  We were a little nervous how this would go since the lake was a sleeping nightmare challenge.  It went so well and it was so good to see Kay and Craig and catch up.

To wrap up our time we headed to the Crossing (our old church in Columbia) Sunday morning.  I think we managed to run into just about everyone we could have hoped to see while we were there.  After that we had brunch with my bro and his family and then headed back to KC.  It was a full 24 hours but it was so good in so many ways.  

As of today we are 4 weeks away from Bonnie's due date.  It is crazy to think that really this little guy could be here in a matter of weeks!

life lately

The combination of school starting, a new grad school class beginning, and prepping for baby brother has meant that the blog has been neglected. Despite our social media absence, life has been very blessed lately.  Here are some photos of what we (mainly Everett) have been up to since school began. 

At the class he goes to at church they do a lot of coloring projects and Everett's coloring sheet would always come home blank.  He was so disinterested in arts and crafts.  However, coloring has been a big win lately.  It's like a switch flipped and now he can't get enough of it. I love it. 

He climbs. All. The. Time. 

This is the most sweaty and red-faced I have ever seen Everett!!! Tom's school had a "family fun night" before the first home football game and it was a hot one.  Two of Everett's friends from Miss Patti's (his daycare) were there and there was a bounce house/obstacle course thing so he had a BLAST.

Everett's daycare buddies.  They are so cute together. 

Everett still has a continued love for trains.  Almost every day he says, "Dada play choochoo." Translation: Dad, come build me an awesome track to play with (like the one you see below). 

Everett has been "helping" to prepare for baby brother's arrival too.  Tom painted the trim white in the baby's room over labor day weekend so he let E pretend to paint a bit.  Needless to say, Everett was really bummed when he realized that during nap time daddy painted without him.