Cole Owen is finally here!  And we are all totally in love with him. He was born at 8:45 on the 23rd of September weighing in at 7 pounds 6 ounces (the biggest baby Mabry yet!).  We’re home and doing great and the girls are loving having a baby in the house.

If you want to go and see more pictures, you can click on the flickr link to the right. 

My oven didn’t preheat for long enough. Apparently.  Because I am still pregnant.  Yes, a week over my due date.  And yes, I’m sure of my dates.  3 ultrasounds in 2 countries both confirmed a due date of the 14th of September.

If you don’t want to listen to complaining about pregnancy, then you might want to click to somewhere else. 

This isn’t my first time around the overdue bush… Nora was a week late as well.  Although it would seem that Cole is going to outlast her.

So, in honor of being overdue, I thought I would do a top 10 list.  Actually, 2 top 10 lists.  We’ll start with the more positive top ten list.  If you have anything to add to either list, feel free to drop it in the comments!

Top 10 encouraging words for pregnant women who are overdue (in no particular order):

1. “I’m so sorry that you are uncomfortable.”

2. “I’m praying for you.” (And then actual do pray, don’t just say that you are)

3. “I hope he comes soon,” or, “I can’t wait for him to be here!”  Thanks, me too!

4.

Um, sorry, turns out this is going to be a top 3 list, because I can’t think of anything else.

Now for the more cathartic top 10 list.

Top 10 things NOT to say to a pregnant woman who is overdue (from least offensive to most grievous)* **:

1.  “Well, you look great.” Compared to what???  The biggest waddling peguin that you’ve ever seen??? Someone so pumped full of water that it looks like they are going to explode??

It makes me wonder what I look like on a normal basis if this looks good.

2.  “What does your doctor/ midwife say?”  Um, she says that the baby is still in there and obviously doesn’t want to come out.

3.  “Eat spicy food.”  Seriously, who ever ate spicy food and went into labor immediately after?  Bring on the tums, please.

4.  “There’s only one way for the baby to come out.” Helpful… can we just get it over with already?

5. “What’s the rush?”  Um, my pubic bone that feels like it is going to snap in half or the itchy rash developing in my ever increasing stretch marks that’stherush.

6. “Are you having any contractions?”  I love my husband dearly and he has been SO incredibly helpful recently, but if he asks me one more time if I’m having contractions, so help me…

7.  Something to the effect of, “You’ll wish you were just pregnant when the baby is 6 months old, or keeping you up at night, etc.”  Just don’t go there, k?

8. “It’s all in the Lord’s timing.”  Yes, in my heart of hearts, I know this to be true, but please refer to pubic bone and stretch mark rash comment in number 5.

9. “You’ll miss being pregnant.”  You know, I have even said this to someone who was overdue a baby. And I repent in sackcloth and ashes.

10. “Is the baby here yet?” NO.  Seriously, if you ask again, the baby is going to be 2 years old until we tell you he has been born.

*Now, all that to say, I am SO excited for this baby to get here.  And I realize that it is a BLESSING that I can even get pregnant in the first place and carry a baby to full term and ultimately get to deliver a fat healthy baby.

As well:

**This is (somewhat, haha) all in jest and I appreciate any attempt at being kind that has been made to me personally in the past week, even if what was something from my top 10 list.

For those of you wondering, why haven’t they induced you?  Well, they don’t really do that here in Scotland unless medically neccessary, or unless you are 2 weeks past your due date.  Which, honestly, as much complaining as I’ve been doing, is fine by me.  I’d rather the baby decide when he’s ready to come out, and I think pitocin is from the pit of hades.  And I can say that, because I had it with my labor with Alanna.

Hopefully Cole will arrive soon, but if not, he’ll get his final eviction on Thursday, which is when I have an induction date.  My midwife was generous and allowed me to set a date for 10 days past my due date.  Which is about as far as I’d like to leave it since they don’t do ultrasounds for women that are overdue.

Seriously, I hope my next post is a baby post.  Confetti may pop out of your computer screen when the birth announcement is made. 

Alanna: ” Once upon a time,

there was caterpillars.

A mommy caterpillar, a baby caterpillar, and a daddy caterpillar.

And they were walking. They lay down on their bellies and slide.

Really slow.  That’s what they did.”

Me:  “What else?”

Alanna: “Nope.  That’s the end.”

(Edited to fix pictures and to say, no the baby has not arrived yet!)

Okay, seriously, this is the longest craftiest post ever. I’ll be impressed with you if you actually make it all the way through.

I thought I would show you some of the projects that I’ve been working on for the past few months.  Now, keep in mind, I usually don’t do this much crafty stuff on a regular basis.  Once I finished the nesting process during the pregnancy (which I. love.  I love cleaning out stuff, organizing, etc.), I decided that I needed some projects to put my hands to.  Most of them were done when the girls were sleeping, some were done on days off that Adam gave me.

All that to say:  no children were neglected in the making of these crafty items.

First off.  I made a baby gift consisting of a onesie dress, 2 bibs, and some baby shoes.  The tutorial I got for the onesie dress can be found here. The bibs I just made up on my own using bibs I already have as a pattern, and the shoes came from a pattern found in this book. I got the book at hobby lobby the last time we were in the states.

I’m not gonna lie.  The shoes were difficult to make (big shout out to Mirandi who helped me make them while she was here visiting!), even though the book says that they are only a difficulty level of 3.  I can’t imagine some of the projects that are rated at a 5.  I’ve made these shoes a lot.  More than I’m going to admit.

More on the shoes later.

Next up:  baby Cole’s room.  It was already blue (the girls crib bedding had a blue background with pink and red flowers on it).  I made the bumper pads, the crib skirt, and the trim on the curtains.  What I did for the bumper pads was just make slip covers for the ones we already have.  It sounds more complicated than it is, but it really wasn’t that hard.

Although, I’m really proud of my cording, lol.

(The cording wasn’t difficult either.)

The canvas boards on the wall there… I covered those with leftover fabric and will spray mount his newborn portraits onto them if he’ll ever just go ahead and be born.

Adam gave me that red chair (he bought it at the goodwill for like $15 and then my mom paid to have it recovered if I’m rememebering correctly) when I was preggers with Alanna.  I’m so glad that I chose to have it covered in red, because it works well for a girl or a boy.  The little storage cube next to it was bought at Wal-Mart right before we moved to Scotland.  We bought 4 of them at the time, and had one sitting in the garage that hasn’t been in use for awhile.  So, I recovered it using a hot glue gun.

Seriously, ya’ll, I can make anything with a hot glue gun.  No lie.

The sheers were already in the room, I just added the boy bit to the bottom.

Funny story, when I was in college, I bought this HUGE bolt of sheer fabric for like $60 (it was being sold for so cheep, because it had a teeny tiny little flaw on the edge that went all the way through- you couldn’t even see it once the sides were hemmed).  I sat in my college apartment and made all of the sheer curtains for our first home when me and Adam were engaged.  I even still have some of that fabric left on the bolt there was so much of it!

Anyway, that sheer curtain came from that bolt of fabric and was in the girlie nursery.

My mom and I bought this changing table when I was pregnant with Alanna for $15 dollars at a consignment sale.

We’re all about the deals.

Oh yeah, I made the quilt too.  I didn’t use a pattern for this, just kind of sewed the squares together and then did one solid color on the back that wraps around the edges.  It’s kind of wonky (yes, that is a real word), but it doesn’t bother me!

Inside the crib.  I did not make the sheet. I purchased it off of someone on etsy.com.  It just seemed way out of my league for my sewing capabilities.

The outside of the bumper:

The inside of the bumper:

Check out that cording… lol, it’s SO not hard to do!!

Annnnndddddd, the crib skirt.

Whew. That wraps up the baby’s room!

So remember the baby shoes?  I decided to try and make some for Cole.  The first pair came out alright.

He’ll match his room, HA!

The second pair, I tried to make with elastic and in a smaller size, thinking that with elastic, they’d have a better chance of staying on.

Clearly, I don’t understand how elastic works.

I got a better understanding of elastic when I made these shirts for the girls:

The tutorial can be found here.  And seriously, these are SO easy to make.  The first one took a bit longer, but the second one only took me an hour to make.

I lengthened the pattern on the tutorial since it is for babies.  I wish that Alanna’s were a tad longer, but that’s okay, because Nora can wear it when she out grows it!

Speaking of Nora, she didn’t like her shirt… she thought it was too tight, because of all the elastic.

I said, “You will wear the shirt kid, because I made it with my own bare hands.”

And I think she was okay with that.

And then, because they had peasant shirts, I made them go and harvest the fields for potatoes.

Not really.

So, remember the blurb book?  I thought I’d show it to you, even though I made it back in like April or something.

Here’s the cover:

They give you the option of printing your own image on the cover that wraps all the way around the front and back (which, I did).

The print quality is awesome.  I just copied and pasted my blog entries either right onto the images or onto the pages.  The templates were super easy to use.

I particularly like the page templates that you can put a bunch of pictures on… you know, the snapshots that you just want to pile all onto one page.

All in all, I heart my blurb book, and plan on getting one made a year for our family adventures and holidays and stuff.

One of my main goals before the baby was born (not that he’s been born yet or anything) was to get all caught up on my scrapbooking.  I decided that I could no longer maintain a scrapbook for our family stuff and each child, so hence the blurb book.  I do scrapbooks for the kids that pertain to events or pictures just of them.  My goal is to only have like 2-3 layouts a month per book so that I can actually keep up with it.

You may be wondering why I do the scrapbooks instead of just getting everything printed in the blurb book.  Well, I like to have my handwriting in their books as well as putting little pictures, or whatever in there. I really just enjoy making them for the kids when it all comes down to it though.  I find it therapeutic to go upstairs when they are in bed and sit at my desk and make something with my hands for them.

You probably think I am some kind of freak, but that’s okay. 

One more sewing project that I did recently.  The girls have these little pigs from a tv show here called, “Peppa Pig,” so when I came across this tutorial, I thought, wow, it would be fun to make a house for the girls for their peppa pigs.

There’s a character on the show named, “George,” that Nora insists on saying with a British accent.  Anytime we say his name, she corrects us as to its proper pronunciation.  I have video of that I think that I probably won’t ever post, so I don’t even know why I told you that.

And they open up to this:

Yes, those are mud puddles for the pigs to play in. 

I had fun with this project, because I used a lot of stuff I had around to make them.  The blue fabric I bought a couple of years ago to cover some of those storage cubes from Wal-Mart, the brown fabric came from a tweed skirt that I was going to give away, but decided to keep for the fabric.  I had the buttons, the button loops were hair bands (which is recommended in the tutorial).  I just bought a bit of green and yellow fabric, and some felt.

And yes, I used the hot glue gun to attach all felt pieces.

So, I really like this site for sewing project if you find yourself needing to take your mind off of a big gargantuan massive huge growth hanging off the front of you.

Ahem, I mean, if there is a sweet baby growing inside of you that you can’t wait to meet.

So, the past few days, being really desperate and having nothing else to sew, scrap, or glue, I borrowed this little beauty from some friends of ours.

It has a gazillion pieces I swear.

I’m not sure how many pieces it actually has because it was given to me in a big plastic bag with a fold out picture for reference. Thank goodness for that picture.

It was kind of touch and go there for a bit, as to whether or not it was actually making me more frustrated and irritable, but all in all, I had a good distracting time doing it.

So, now that I have done alllllllllllll of these little projects AND built a sadistic puzzle, AND this post brings me up to date with my blogging, there’s only one way for this pregnancy to go.  And that is for the baby to GETOUTGETOUTGETOUTGETOUT.

NoIhaven’thadthebabyyet.

argh.

These blog posts are probably kind of boring.  I’m sorry.  I mostly do these little blog posts so that I can make a blurb book at the end of the year.  I made one and got it printed at the beginning of this year and was really pleased at the quality.  I’ve been meaning to take a picture of the book, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.  But really, you should go and check out the website:   www.blurb.com.

Anyway.

Alanna had her first dentist appointment in August.  Get this… on the NHS dental plan, children don’t get their teeth cleaned until they are sixteen. Sixteen!!  Adam took her to this appointment and said that the dentist looked in her mouth and said, “Looks good!”  And that was it.  She did say that she could maybe get her in at age twelve to get her teeth cleaned.

Yikes.

The girls like to do make up.  A lot.  They have their very own special make up.  The Bobbi Brown make up is off limits to the kiddos.

Alanna uses her make up the way it is supposed to be used.  Lip stick on lips, eye shadow on eyes, etc.

Nora, though…

Isn’t she lovely???

Speaking of Nora, this is what happens when you tell her that Dora is in the camera:

We decided to clean the garage out on a nice day.  We had a TON of boxes that were given to us by a family that just moved here to Edinburgh.  Turns out we don’t need the boxes, so Adam made the girls an awesometastic box fortress.  They played for hours in these boxes and were really sad when the wind blew the fortress over. Unfortunately, I failed to get a picture of the entire box fortress…

Geez, I love those girls.

Grace came over and played with the girls while I cleaned and did stuff around the house.  Grace confirmed with me that there really isn’t anything else that I can throw away or give away.

Alanna had her first day of preschool (called nursery here).  She loves it.  We went and picked out her outfit for her first day of school, which of course, she picked the pinkest thing she could find.  But aren’t her boots fun?  I got them for about £7 at H&M.  Love that store.

It wasn’t a very sentimental moment, probably due to my pregnacious state, but also because I know we’ll be doing home schooling next year.  And she’s only there for 2 1/2 hours a day.

Poor Nora. She wanted to go to school too.  She even went and got her little backpack and everything!

We’ve been getting crafty around here.  I was doing really well with planning our crafts for each day.  And then I got. SO. BIG.  And I am not motivated to do anything.  At all.  Here we are with our paper boats that float.  Don’t be fooled though.  They didn’t float for long.

Hm, what’s that big white thing in between the kids???  Oh yeah, that’s my bulbous belly.

Maybe my next post will be a non bulbous belly, baby post?

Adam and I were pondering the other night what might go down if my water broke standing in say, the kitchen, with the girls nearby.

Here’s what they might say:

“Mommy, 27 year olds do not pee pee in the floor.”

“Mommy, you need to run run run to the potty quicker when need to go pee pee.”

“Mommy, you’re going to have to clean that up allllll by yourself.”

Oh how I would love for this conversation to be reality– tomorrow is the big due date and baby is not showing any signs of wanting to come out and play any time soon!

Can you tell that I’m passing time here?  To say that I’m done being pregnant would be an understatement. We’re ready to meet our baby!!! 

Anyway, here’s the rest of what happened in July.

Fun times were had by all at church.

Our church meets in a movie theater.  Apparently the oreo is a new item being sold in the UK, and they were marketing it in the theater that day.  Honestly, I didn’t really understand the whole point of it, but whatever.  They weren’t even giving out oreos.

I did like this little thingie that they had up though.  I think Rory looks nice in that one right there.

Next up… me and Mirandi went and had a day out in the city.  Too bad it was so so so rainy, but we still had fun.  We went to this little cafe called, “Loopy Lorna’s.”  It was by far, the girliest cafe I have ever been in.  I don’t think Adam would suffer to go there with me.

And with that, Mirandi and Brandon went home a few days later.

Adam’s birthday rolled around at the end of the month, and I made him a good ‘ol southern meal.  Mark and Miranda came over (she had to jet early though for work- she’s like a super nurse). 

I made him a key lime pie for desert (my mom sent me some key lime juice) and it was the richest key lime pie I have ever tasted. I think I’ll try a different recipe the next time.

I mean, lip puckering sweet.

But we still ate it all, don’t worry.

I got this view making dinner one night.  So pretty.  Before Mirandi left, she put a little note on my kitchen window that says, “You’re going to miss that rainbow when you move from Scotland.”  And I will.  More on that later, but yes, as most of my tens of readers already know, we’re moving back to America in November due to visa issues.  While I’m SO excited to moving back to the mother land, we will most definitely miss Scotland and its beauty.

Hopefully I’ll have to skip the month of August to catch up on, and will have a baby post for you next.  He seems awfully comfy in there though…

We enjoyed one last day of weather warm enough for the kiddie pool.  We had 7 whole days that it was warm enough to be in the kiddie pool (the water was still fa-reezing) this year, whereas last year, we had 1/2 of one day.  Yes, 1/2 of one day.

Why do my kids look so concerned in these pictures?

We played pretty pretty princess as well.  Adam is gonna looooooove me for putting these next pictures in.  Needless to say, he’s happy for the boy version to be arriving soon.

I think this is a good look for me…

Yessssssssssssss.

This next picture is a shout out to my friend, Michelle.  Girlfriend loves her some tea.  She’s Scottish though, so she can get away with it…

Speaking of Michelle, she has been one of my closest friends here in Edinburgh.  Back in July, she moved to the states to do some schooling.  Some other friends of ours threw her a surprise going away party.  She was quite shocked.

I made these most awesome crafty ladybug cupcakes to take to the party.

Before you get too impressed, they really weren’t that hard to make.  I mean, I was up all night making the ladybugs from scratch, but you know…

Not really.  The ladybugs are just red m&ms.  Perfect excuse to eat all of the other colored m&ms in the bag if you ask me.

A few more pics from the party.

Michelle her very beautiful self in the front of the next one:

I’ve learned that you should never take advantage of close friends that live near to you.  Especially when you have little ones to care for, it’s easy to think, “oh, I’ll call her next week… we can hang out next month,” etc.  I wish that would have hung out more with Michelle before she left!

Speaking of close friends…

we had a couple come and visit us from Nashville in July for about 10 days.  To say that I was excited, is an understatement.  We had so.much.fun.

Mirandi and Brandon went and did a lot on their own, but we all went together one day down to the Borders.  First stop was Sweetheart Abbey.

Could the grass be any greener???

Yes, that is my husband wearing a winter hat in July.

Mirandi and Nora + Nora’s “feathah.”

Bump got a wee bit wet as the rain coat didn’t fit around at this point.

The usual shenanigans took place.

Hm, I wonder why my mouth looks smaller than it did a year ago.  Oh yeah, my cheeks are pregnant too, that’s why.

Next stop was Maxwell Castle.  We’ve been there before, but somehow, I deleted allllll of the pictures that I took there the first time we went.  I only got this one, because turns out, they wanted to charge us to be on the grounds.  So, we sat in the car.  It’s a super cool castle though– there’ even a moat!  That you can’t see in this picture, but never mind.

Next, we droveanddroveanddroveanddroveanddroveanddrove to find Hadrian’s Wall.  As you can see, the weather wasn’t awesome.

We were a little less than impressed upon our first sighting of the wall.

That’s it there to the right.  That’s also Brandon with his phone.  His other lover.  You know you know friends that love their phones.   iphone users are notorious…. ahem, Clayton.

(Wishing we’d visited Hadrian’s wall via wikipedia instead).

By this point, I had to pee.  Reallllll bad.  So, we stopped at this tourist shop/ attraction to use their bathroom.  Fortunately for us, there was another part of the wall to view.  It was a lot more impressive to view than the first bit that we saw.

So, if you thought that the pee sticks were gross.  Brace yourself.

Yes, that it was you think it is in that historic Scotland bag.

And no, it did not belong to me, that was courtesy of Alanna.

Oh, to be a dad.

Fun times.

Our last day on Lewis, we woke up, said goodbye to Andy, and then drove to the ferry.  We were pretty knackered by that time, so we didn’t do much.  However, we did see some windmills and decided that we needed to drive up close to them.  Both Auntie Julia and I have a like for the windmills.  They make a really cool “woosh woosh” sound when you get up close to them.

We drove to Stornoway, which is where the ferry left from.  We got there a bit early, so decided to go and check out this castle.  Honestly, I don’t really remember much of the importance of the castle…  I had to pee SO BAD.  And apparently baby Cole (that’s gonna be his name!) thought it would be a good idea to use my bladder as a trampoline.

But I did get a few pictures of the castle.

And thus ended our trip to the Isle of Lewis.

Oh, except for one more funny story.  While we were on the ferry, we were sitting across from this older gentleman that apparently reminded Auntie Julia of her dad.  So she took a picture of him while he was sleeping.  I thought that was kind of funny.

On a side note, Alanna just named her stuffed kitty, “Hosawosa.”

Here are a few snaps of the kids from July… they are getting SO big.

I got a fun new point and shoot camera for my birthday, which I took this next one with.  The wide angle cracks me up.  And yes, that is my belly…

which, was getting quite large by this point.  Though the size doesn’t hold a candle to the size of my belly these days.  For real, ya’ll… it’s big.

The wide angle doesn’t help on the depiction of its size.  Or maybe that’s just my excuse.

So, I bet you’re thinking, “Hope probably hasn’t updated her blog, because she’s had her baby.”

No, the baby is still taking up residence in my body.  I’m thinking labor day would be a great day for him to be born.

So, I our last day, we decided to go to the sandy beach that we took pictures of on the first day (they’re down there… the ones with the hole in the clouds).  The weather was most definitely more Scottish the day we decided to go.  But we were determined so we did it.

Let’s just say we got a little exfoliation from the sand. It was very windy and quite rainy.

It was still pretty though… I knew that I’d want these to be black and white before I even got them off of my card.

All black and white, except for these.  I got a few more shells to add to my collection at home (I’ve got some from all of the beaches that I’ve visited in Scotland).

The name of the beach is called “Uig.”  Prounced, “Ew-ig.”  Kinda funny.

Apparently there were some viking chessmen that were found here.  Pretty cool if you ask me. Here’s a replica.

A slightly larger replica.

Somewhere around here, I got some peat for Auntie Julia.  She was still talking about it.  Still. Don’t worry, I was starting to make fun of her for it.  While we were at the B&B, she was talking with Andy (the owner), about, you guessed it, peat.  Only to discover that each person on Lewis that buys a house also gets an little bit of land with peat to dig and burn for the winter.  Julia was THRILLED.

So, you can only imagine her delight when Andy offered to take her up to his peat bank and dig some of her own.

Unfortunately, time did not allow for peat digging.  Darn. I haven’t been able to sleep well since we left, knowing that I’ll never have the opportunity to watch Auntie Julia dig peat.

Anyway, we were driving along and she was talking about peat.

(No lie, we talked SO MUCH ABOUT DIRT).

I happened to see a big pile of peat on the side of the road, so I actually got out of the car and got her a clump of it to take home.  So yes, we drove around with a clump of dirt in the car.  And yes, Auntie Julia actually took it back to Florida with her.

I told her that she was probably going to have to smuggle it across the border in her bra.  You know, I think she would have really done it if the need had presented itself.

Anyway

We stopped off at this lovely little spot before our next stop.

Our next stop was the Calanais standing stones.  There were a lot of standing stones.  I’m glad that we went on the day we did, because the day following was the summer solstice.  When all of the crazies come out.

By crazies I mean the celtic worshiping people.  Some of them were already there, camping in tents on the hill with the standing stones.  You’ll never guess what they were burning…

PEAT.  Auntie Julia quite liked the smell.  I said, “Auntie Julia, that smells like burning people.” Yuck.

As well, I heard my first Scottish conversation in Gaelic.  Like, for real, they were just talking in Gaelic.

Our next stop was the Broch of Carloway.

This may have been my favorite place that we saw. To get to walk in something that old (built 1st century BC!!!) and imagine people living there, was so cool.

We were cold up there (yes, cold in June), so we were happy to take shelter in the Broch.  There were a few rooms only accessible by doors about 3 feet high.  Yes, I did squeeze my pregnant bum into said doors.  And yes, Auntie Julia did get a picture of that. And yes, I’m quite afraid of where those pictures may end up after all of the teasing about Auntie Julia’s fascination with peat.

The view up there was beautiful.

The view of the broch from the bottom of the hill was also quite nice.

That night, as very typical for this fair land, the sun came out right at sunset.  It’s like the sun likes to tease you and come out just before it gets dark, after it has been rainy and windy all day long.

But, it was gorgeous.  These were taken just outside of our B&B at around 11:00 I believe.

Only a little bit more of Lewis to come!!