I've only known I'm pregnant for a little over a week, but already it's so much different than the first time around. I know I'll be showing earlier since my body "remembers" what to do, but I hadn't expected how completely different everything would be.

I had a pretty easy pregnancy with Abby. I was naseous for about a month total, and only really got sick for about a week. After that, I felt great. One of the first things I remember happening was around 6 or 7 weeks my jeans being way too uncomfortable, especially when I sat. At the time, I had a desk job working for my grandpa Ed, so it was grueling until I bought a couple pairs that were about 3 sizes too big. I wore those until about 4-ish months when I switced to maternity jeans. This time, I felt uncomfortable in my jeans the day after I found out! They're not too tight yet, just painful when I sit down because they put pressure right where I'm feeling crampy and bloated. I already bought a pair of maternity pants on clearance at Target because I'm nowhere near ready for my old jeans with the big panel.

It's not just my clothes that already don't feel right. For the most part, I feel pretty good but not as good as I did the first time. I'm living with constant heartburn, sometimes it's worse than others, but it's always there. When my in-laws were here, I was constantly having to stop and sit for a bit while cooking or cleaning because the crampiness and heartburn gets worse when I moved around too much. I have to take a break after showering and drying my hair! I even got sick one afternoon already while they were here. We'd just eaten, and my mother in-law and I were cleaning up the kitchen. All the bending and squatting while putting things away really got to me.

And the cravings! With Abby, the only thing I really had to have was fruit punch Powerade. I had to be Powerade, and it had to be fruit punch. We bought that stuff by the case every week! And I normally really don't like those types of drinks. This time, the biggest thing is that I'm not really interested in sweets. Everyone who knows me "in real life" just dropped dead from shock. I normally don't have just a sweet tooth, I have an entire sweet mouth. I would happily live on dessert if I could. Now, nothing dessert sounds good at all. We have a house full of cakes and candy, and I've hardly touched it. For awhile, I was craving salads and healthy food. I only ever eat salads if it comes with my meal at a restaurant, and I've never ordered just a salad ever. Right now, the baby's crying for pizza from this local restaurant. I must have it now!

My brain has already left me too. I'd heard of pregnancy brain, but it wasn't something I really experienced before. This time, I feel like I'm going crazy! Before our company came, I tore apart every closet looking for the bath towels that match the hand towels in the guest bathroom. It wasn't until the next day that I remembered that I never actually bought the towels! It was one of those things I meant to pick up, but moved on to something else and forgot about. I was certain they were somewhere in the house, though. I'm constantly setting things down and completely forgetting where I put them 2 minutes later. The other day, I put some potatoes in the oven to bake, and forgot all about them. My mother in-law happened to ask me about them a couple hours later. Oops!

Birthday and Christmas with Damon's Parents

Since they weren't here for Abby's birthday the week before, we bought her a birthday cake and celebrated her birthday with Damon's parents over the weekend. Abby's loving having a December birthday because she'll have celebrated 4 times (including Thanksgiving in Iowa) by the time we're done!

Merry (few days after) Christmas!

Abby was awesome with Santa this year. She went right up to him and started talking while I paid for the picture. She had no problem sitting on his lap to take the picture. I had no idea that I could bring my own camera and take a picture myself! Definitely next year. When she was done, she asked if it was time to go home and open presents now since she already saw Santa.

Big News!

Happy Birthday Abby!

I can't believe my baby's 3 already!



Birthday breakfast.

Thanksgiving pictures are up

And before Christmas even! You can see them all here.

Abby's First Recital

Abby had her first dance recital this evening. I so wish I would've recorded the whole thing instead of trying to take pictures too. None of my pictures turned out well. After the girls came out and lined up, they stood quietly looking around wondering what was going on before the music started. In the silence, one of the girls screamed "HI DADDY!" That's my girl! I'm so sad I didn't record it.



Abby's First Recital from Brandi on Vimeo.

I hereby do solemnly swear to be back next week with pictures from our Thanksgiving trip. I'm at the finish line with my class, so I have a term paper due Monday and a final exam I have to take sometime next week and a chapter quiz next week. The earlier I take my tests next week, the sooner I'll be free! Then I can take the time to post pictures. On top of that stress, we're having a birthday party for Abby this Sunday so I have to clean the house, get supplies bought, fill goodie bags, cook, and bake about 3 dozen ice cream cone cupcakes because I'm crazy and thought they would be more fun than a store-bought cake. This was before it dawned on me that Monday is the due date for my paper and I kind of forgot I had to clean my house for the party. Someday I'll break myself of my evil procrastinating ways.

Happy (Week After) Halloween

This is how behind I've gotten...

Damon's parents came to visit in SEPTEMBER and I just now got the pictures uploaded. I have no excuse. We had a great time while they were here. Rita and I had some power shopping trips, and Abby loved tagging along. For the most part.

Hawaii

I finally got all the (good) Hawaii pictures uploaded to Flickr! It only took me 2-ish months. Oops! I'll be back with a real post soon. In the meantime, here are a bunch of pictures to make the grandparents happy.

A few of my favorites:

Abby-isms

When Abby wakes up in the morning, she crawls into bed with us and we cuddle for a while before getting up. One day, Damon and I were talking about having another baby (yes we're trying, no I'm not pregnant), and I asked Abby if she wanted a brother or sister.

Abby: Stares blankly at me.
Me: Do you want a baby boy or girl.
Abby: A baby boy!
Me: So you want a brother?
Abby: Yes! I want a boy brother. From Target!

Some kids think the stork brings their siblings; mine thinks we buy them at Target. I'm so proud!

5am

5am
Originally uploaded by Brandi_

Abbys been up since 3am Hawaii time. That is 7am her time after all.

Finally

Finally
Originally uploaded by Brandi_

No time to breathe at airport. Made it to gate with only minutes to spare. Abbys already grumpy.

Ready to go

Ready to go
Originally uploaded by Brandi_

It's 4am and I can't sleep. I laid in bed for an hour tossing and turning before I gave up. What ultimately got me up was that I can't find the charger to the dvd player! Uh-oh. At least we'll be able to use the laptop if I can't find it. On the bright side it'll be one less thing to lug around. I finally got up because I remembered that we used it quite a bit at our last house. When we'd rent a movie, I'd plug the portable dvd player into the tv, so I know it's around here somewhere...

I'm mostly packed. There are a few last-minute things I still need to throw in the suitcases and I need to pack my backpack with all the carry-on stuff. I packed Abby's backpack full of toys for the plane last night, but it weighs as much as she does! I'll have to take some things out and add them to my backpack.

I love my backpack. I've had it since my freshman year in high school, and it's been everywhere with me since. I don't think I've ever taken a trip without it. It's been my only suitcase on some trips. I still remember going shopping with my mom to buy it. Remember that, kids. When buying a backpack for your teenager, it's best to spend a little more and buy a good quality one. It'll last a lifetime. Well, at least half a lifetime. This may be one of its last trips since the seams where the straps meet the actual pack are starting to show signs of wear. Why am I writing an ode to my backpack?

I'm going to be so tired on the plane!

I programmed the flickr email address into my cell phone, so I can upload pictures directly to the blog through flickr. Be prepared for a lot of mundane airport pictures taken with my phone tomorrow this afternoon.

Please don't tell me they don't allow me to bring food on the plane

Did you know they no longer serve meals even really long flights? For $5, we can buy either a sandwich or a salad--none of which Damon or Abby would eat--that come with chips or fruit? Everytime I think of SEVEN HOURS on a plane with Abby with no food, it sends me back to the store to buy more snacks.



From left to right: 2 kinds of dried fruit, wheat crackers, granola bars and raisins, mini Teddy Grahams, fruity Cheerios, and Goldfish. I hope that's enough food for us for SEVEN HOURS.

Oh yeah, and Bubble Yum as a special treat to be chewed during take-off and landing in the hopes that the pressure won't bother Abby too much.

Not pictured: Benadryl since it was the first thing I packed.

Hawaii-bound

Last October, during the annual conference for Damon's work, he received an all-expenses trip for 2 to Hawaii for exceeding his budget goals for the year. They pay for airfare, 7-nights at a gorgeous hotel, and $100/day for food! All we had to do was buy a ticket for Abby. Damon's birthday (Thursday) seemed like the perfect time to take it now that we're settled in the house, and Damon has filled some key positions at work. We leave Friday for paradise!

The only thing I'm absolutely dreading is the flight there. We fly from Denver to Honolulu NONSTOP. SEVEN hours. With a 2-year-old. Who's suddenly become a typical "terrible two" year-old. At least the flight leaves at noon, which is around naptime, so hopefully she'll sleep for part of the flight. And she's old enough now that she'll actually enjoy being on a plane and be able to take it all in. I'm just know the novelty will eventually wear off when she realizes that she's stuck in her carseat for seven hours! I've been stock-piling provisions from the dollar store to hopefully buy us an hour. Seven hours with nowhere to hide! I'm having nightmares just thinking about it.

The flight home? RED EYE!

We're back!

We finally have internet access! The developer of our neighborhood talked to some higher-ups at Qwest to get things moving along, so we were finally able to get DSL. Comcast is now saying that they wait until a certain percentage of homes in the neighborhood before they even bother setting up service, so it'll be at least 4-5 months before cable and cable internet are available here. They're not going to have many subscribers since no one is going to wait that long! I'll be back soon with tons of pictures before the grandmas attack!

First Haircut

Still no internet access at home. It'll be the middle of next month (hopefully!) before QWEST will be available in our neighborhood. Cable internet won't be available for 2 months! Thank goodness for a laptop and coffee shops! Anyway, here are some pictures of Abby's first haircut. A month ago. I'll post some better "after" pictures next time I can sneak out to get online. It's really a cute bob. She didn't lose the curl; it just gives it a cute flip. Click on the pictures to see more.

BEFORE:


AFTER:

We're still here

We still don't have internet access at home thanks to a mix-up with Qwest. We'd decided to go with them instead of the cable company because we'd be hooked up by now. Unfortunately, they weren't able to hook our phone up today since they refused to believe that everthing was already in place for them. Everyone else in the neighborhood has phone service but us. Hopefully we'll have internet soon, so I can post a bunch of pictures.

Anyway, we're fine. We're getting settled. Having John at the house with us has been a huge help. We have pictures on the walls already! My mom, sisters, and aunt came for a visit last weekend. It was so great seeing them again! I can't believe it's been a year. Abby got her first haircut a couple weeks ago. She looks like such a little girl now!

Our walk-through yesterday went really well. Most of what we found were just paint touch-ups. I love that we got to do this a week before we close, so they have time to fix as much as they can before we move in. The project manager we met with told us they already have a lot of their subcontractors scheduled to come in today to get started. Despite taking more than a year from the initial contract-signing, we've had a terrific experience with our builder. Everyone has been very helpful, and they've treated us as if we're they're only clients. Now, we are definitely anxious to move in and finally get settled. This coming Thursday is the big day! We have another walk-through in the morning to check the stuff that was supposed to get fixed and go over how to use things like the thermostat, and we close in the afternoon. We'll be loading up the car with as much as we can and spending the night in the empty house that night. John will be here Friday to help us move our things out of our current home, so we'll at least have beds and a couch for the weekend.

They mentioned to us yesterday that the Air Force Academy's head football coach, a neurosurgeon (McDreamy!), and a head guy for Comcast are all building houses in our neighborhood! We're going to have some very impressive neighbors. If only someone would buy a lot on our street already! Damon jokes that it's going to be like living on an acreage for a while.

Let there be light!

Our house is done! The city turned the electricity on to the neighborhood May 30 (right on schedule!), and the electrician hooked up circuit breakers and all that last week. We finally have electricity!! All that was left was carpet and the driveway, and both went in last week too. Our walk-through is scheduled for Thursday, and we close next week. The next 10 days are going to fly by!

He was a little early, but my Gumpa came for a short visit last week. It's too bad we weren't in the house yet, but we had a nice visit anyway.



And a bonus picture because I haven't posted Abby pictures in a long time.

The official end of babyhood

Something amazing has happened in the past week. I've been a little hesitant to blog about it because I was afraid of jinxing it. It's now been a week, though, so it's time I come clean. I still can't believe it's happened so easily and quickly.

Abby's potty-trained.

We've been pretty lazy about it the last couple months, but last Tuesday I realized we were down to 6 diapers. I vowed then that I wouldn't buy diapers again. Abby spent the rest of the day in panties, only having one accident at home. That afternoon, I decided to try to overcome my fear of Abby having an accident in public. We had an errand to run about 5 minutes from home, so it was a good first step. I spent the entire drive telling Abby over and over that she needed to tell me if she had to go, and that she wasn't to go in the car. It turned out my fear was unwarranted. We spent about an hour away from home, and she did fine in her panties. No accidents!

A few days later, on Thursday, she completely shocked me. I had a doctor's appointment, which turned into 4 hours of errands. I put her in a Pull-Up and didn't push the whole "potty" thing at all. I completely expected her to go in the Pull-Up. While we were in the waiting room, she excitedly told me she had to go! We made 5 trips to public bathrooms that afternoon, and only 2 of them were false alarms. She went every other time, and her Pull-Up stayed completely dry!

After a couple days of going out in public wearing Pull-Ups, only for Abby to stay dry, we bit the bullet and let her wear panties out on Sunday while we ran some errands. We've been fortunate that the few accidents she's had this week have all been at home. We've already had to stop at a gas station only 5 minutes after leaving home a couple times, but for the most part she's been great about only telling us when she actually needs to go. We're still using Pull-Ups during naps and at bedtime, but she's even been staying dry at naptime as well.

June 21st

Finally! June 21st will be THE DAY. They were supposed to pave the roads this coming week, but they got a foot of snow out there last week so it got pushed back. We're having the most perfect weather this weekend, it's hard to believe we had a big snowstorm just a few days ago. The electricity won't get turned on by the city until May 30, so they need a couple weeks after that to do final inspections. We'll do our final walk-through on June 14 and close on the 21st. This is actually perfect timing for us; we were hoping to move in that week if it was going to have to be June. The Yankees are in Denver that week, so that'll entice John to come out and help us! They'll be able to go to a couple games before the work begins. It's been so long since we saw most of our furniture I don't remember what anything looks like anymore. Abby will think it's Christmas!

We still don't have a closing date...

But it's not slowing them down at all. Thankfully, it's been warm enough for a good month now that they've been able to keep working. Of course, now that the city is finally working on our end to get utilities up and running, the weather's been awful for outside construction work. We did find out that once the city's done in the neighborhood, they're going to start paving on our end. There's one other house that they started about a week before ours, and it's on the corner of our cul-de-sac, so they want to keep us happy. We're at the fun stuff now! We finally get to see everything we picked out almost a year ago.

The exterior is pretty much done with the exception of the stone accent. They need water for that.


The interior walls are all painted now. The hardwood floors are also in. The tile floors were supposed to be in in the bathrooms, but it was too cold Friday, so they're going to work on that Monday. All the prep work is done for that, so they're ready to go. The linoleum flooring is in the laundry room now as well. Cabinets are supposed to be in this week!

Where did Spring go?

Last night, we were in a BLIZZARD watch for tonight through tomorrow! They're now saying that the worst of it is supposed to be south of us. The weather man just gave the updated snow totals for tonight and tomorrow because the snow is "letting up." Yeah, we're DOWN to 5-10 inches for tomorrow! Last weekend, we got hit with icy rain and some snow. I blame it on the new time change. It screwed up spring, so now we're back to winter. We got spoiled with a good month of gorgeous weather while the rest of the country was finally experiencing winter weather.

Friday's high: 30. Saturday's high: 55.

Happy Easter!

I'm cheating. This picture is actually from last Monday. It's 25 degrees and icy this weekend, so we won't be going anywhere!

(be sure to click on the picture for a link to last year's Easter at the park)

Where did my baby go?

Damon's been working a lot of "manager on duty" weekends, so he took Wednesday off last week to do fun family stuff. One thing on the list was take Abby to the park. I've been going on and on about all the things I've been amazed she can do there, so Damon wanted to see it too. The first thing she went to as soon as we got there was the "rock wall." Damon was completely shocked to see how easily she was able to climb all the way up. It hit him like a ton of bricks that she's no longer a baby, but a ful-fledged little girl. The most difficult lesson we have to learn as parents is to let her try despite our fears. We know she may fall, but all we can do is try to support her without getting in her way while she learns. We can no longer protect her from everything, but have to let her try on her own. Abby is fearless so it's such a hard lesson for us to see her accomplish something we never thought she'd be able to do. We so want to tell her she can't climb that because we're afraid to watch, but we let her try because we don't want her to take on our fears. We don't want her to learn to be afraid, to think she can't do it. I love that she doesn't think she can't do something, but is willing to try new things despite the challenges, and hope she will always be that way.

Busy Busy

I've been really busy lately, so here's a quick update on things I keep meaning to write about.

1. Not last weekend but the weekend before, we took Abby to a Wiggles concert in Denver. SO. MUCH. FUN.
2. We ended up making a little vacation out of it and spent the night in this really cool new hotel right in the heart of downtown. Every floor was decorated in a different genre. Ours was the television floor. The 13th is the horror floor.
3. The next day, we went to the aquarium. They have a restaurant with a huge tank that takes up one wall. We got quite the surprise when a diver swam by waving at all the kids!
4. The weather has been fantastic here, so we've been to a different park every day this week with our playgroup friends.
5. Abby was sick all last week, so she ended up sleeping in bed with us. It's so nice that she can just crawl into bed with us and go right back to sleep instead of dealing with trying to get her back to sleep for an hour.
6. This makes travelling so much easier. We had 2 queen beds in the hotel, and she stayed up until 9:30 when she climbed into bed with me and was asleep within minutes while Damon and I watched a movie.
7. I've been made an assistant organizer for our moms group. We have almost 200 members, so I've been put in charge of making sure everyone actually shows up to the events they agreed to come to. This has been taking up every spare minute of my time.

I remembered some things.
8. The house: outside is stuccoed, and the deck is being worked on today. Inside, the walls are all sheetrocked and they're going to start doing the rest of the wall stuff early next week. We lucked out that the weather has been so gorgeous. The fact that there's no power or heat (which was the big since it was so cold) isn't slowing them down much.
9. The residents here put on a St. Patrick's Day golf-cart parade. Damon, Abby, and I got to ride in the front cart with the "grand marshalls." Everyone decorated their golf carts with St. Pat's green. There was one couple who dressed as a bride and groom. She wore white pants and top, tiara and green veil, and carried a bouquet of fake flowers. They even attached toilet paper rolls and empty plastic containers to the back of their golf cart! A local news station even came out to film the parade.

I'm sure there's a bunch more I forgot right now. Pictures are here.

What her hair looks like when it's fixed up

I swear one day she didn't have any hair, and the next she suddenly had too much! I'm still not-so-patiently waiting for the sides to catch up with the rest of it. (As always, there are a bunch more pictures on flickr.)

Potty Training Revisited

Abby's doing a great job of training herself. Seriously, all we do is praise her when she goes and she does the rest. A couple weeks ago, she was playing in her room naked after having just taken a bath when she went running to the bathroom. The entire time I'm in there with her she's chanting, "Peepee woom, peepee woom." I could clearly hear her peeing in the toilet, so I was confused and asked her to show me when we were done. Sure enough, she takes me right to a spot on the floor. Apparently, she'd started to have an accident but stopped herself and went to the bathroom instead, so there were just a few drops on the floor! That's the last accident she's had.

We've now graduated from walking around completely bottomless to wearing panties accident-free in the last few weeks. When we're home, she spends about half her time in just panties and the other half in a diaper and pants, but she's spending more and more time in panties. I usually put her in panties until she decides she no longer wants to wear them and brings me a "big girl diaper" (Pull-Up). As long as she's not wearing pants, she can work the Pull-Ups in the bathroom too. She now insists on being changed the second she pees in a diaper, so it's much easier to put some panties on and let her use the toilet.

I did try to put her in pants and panties last week once, and she did well for awhile. Until I had to change her clothes twice in a half-hour period. Then it was back to diapers. I tried again this morning, and it went much better. No accidents! When she wakes up from her nap, we'll try again. I'm still terrified of taking her in public without a diaper on. We'll wait until she can comfortably wear pants without accidents for awhile before trying that. Until then, she's pretty much house-trained already.

Bed Head

House Update

For safety reasons, the workers have to stop working whenever we're there to see the house, so we hadn't been in yet. They've been working every weekend we've been out there. Finally this past Saturday, we were able to go inside the house and walk around, so I took a ton of pictures. You can see them here if you're into that sort of thing.

We have our framing walk-through with the project manager tomorrow. When we first met with him shortly after they broke ground, he said he'd be able to give us a closing date at the framing walk-through. Back then, it seemed so far away. It's hard to believe we're already at this point! After this walk-through, they'll start sheetrocking the walls and it'll look more like home.



A little something for the grandparents

I got in trouble for not posting pictures...

So here you go. I had these up on flickr from our trip to the zoo last week, but I haven't taken any others recently, so this will have to do. Abby had such a great time that day, and kept talking about feeding the giraffes crackers, the "beezas" (zebras), and the ephants that we took her back a few days later, on Saturday.

She's a big girl now!

When we were in Iowa over Thanksgiving, we discovered that Abby could easily climb out of the Pack & Play. She's such a good kid, though, that all we had to do was tell her she wasn't allowed to climb out and she wouldn't. When she'd wake up from a nap, she'd just stand there and holler until someone went in and got her.

Recently, we realized that Abby's getting too big for her crib. Back in May, we tried to convert her crib into a toddler bed because she'd been trying to climb out. It so did not work! We never did put the front rail back on, and just put the open side up against the wall. For months after, we'd hear her crash into the wall in her sleep! It never woke her up, and she didn't wake up covered in bruises, so we just let her be. At least that setup lasted almost a year.

Now, however, she's so tall that the shorter part of the side rail (where the front rail attaches) hits her at lower chest-level. I've gotten so worried that one of these days, she's going to flip right over. She's made a few half-hearted attempts to climb out, but she's never gotten as far as she did back in May.

As an aside, Abby's suddenly very much into being a "big girl" these days. She loves to go "peepee pie" because that's what big girls do (I bought her an "I'm a big girl, so I go to the Potty" book recently), although she doesn't want to go all the time. A few months ago, I accidentally bought a pack of Pull-Ups while searching for overnight diapers. They've been sitting in a drawer since. The other day, I needed to get a diaper back on her for her nap, but she was having none of it, so I conned her into wearing "big girl" diapers. Now, all she wants to wear are Pull-Ups when she's not running around bottomless. Also, I had my annual mole check at the dermatologist's office yesterday, so I sat her down before we left and explained where we were going and why. I told her that she needed to sit in the chair like a big girl while the doctor was looking at Mommy, and it worked! The whole way there, she kept saying "mole sick" (she has an Sesame Street DVD she loves where Elmo gets sick and goes to the doctor) and "big guhl chair." She was a crazy kid in the waiting room, but as soon as we got into the exam room, she sat herself down in the chair and didn't move until we were done. I had to grab a toy out of my purse occasionally, but she didn't get up from that chair once. I was so proud of her, I took her to play in McDonald's afterward.

What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, her crib. We'd already agreed to flip her crib around this weekend, but I tend to be too excitable and impatient. I couldn't wait! I told her all about the big girl bed while she watched as I flipped it around. Also, I kept her up later than usual before her nap, so she'd be good and tired. She was pretty nervous about it, so I tried staying in with her until she fell asleep thinking it would make her feel better, but after awhile it was clear I was keeping her up so I left and told her not to get out of bed. I could hear her talking to herself for a few minutes, and whine a little for a few minutes more, but she's now sleeping peacefully in her very own big girl bed.


Waking up.

It's been a long time since she's let me do anything with her hair. Occasionally, I've been able to sneak a barrette in if she's properly distracted, but pigtails have been unheard of. I finally figured out if I bribe her with a lollipop, she'll sit still long enough for me to put her hair up (I bought a bag of Dum-Dums as reward for potty training since there's less risk I'd eat the bag myself than if I would've bought M&Ms). By threatening to take the candy away once her hair's done, I've finally gotten her to leave it alone. It only takes a few threats before she's completely forgotten about the pigtails and moved on to something else.


Her hair's gotten so much longer since I first put it up in pigtails!

Abby loves to come up to me while I'm reading a book and have me point out letters on the front cover. Since she's become so interested in the alphabet, I bought her some spongy bath letters a couple weeks ago. Between the two, she's suddenly picking up so many letters. She can now recognize F, H, K, O, Q, T, and W. She gets a little confused with letters that sound the same, like B and P, and she struggles with M since it's just an upside-down W. She loves to imitate our excitement whenever we coach her on a letter. If we give her the answer, she'll repeat it back and squeal like I do when she gets one right.

She finally listens when I tell her to smile!

Just in time for some more snow

I went out to the house today since the weather's supposed to get bad again tomorrow. It's amazing how much progress they've been able to make this week!

Our house is never going to be finished

NO MORE SNOW!!! We are now in the middle of the third snow storm in as many weeks. We were only supposed to get 1-3 inches with this one (to add to the FEET of snow they've gotten in our new neighborhood), but it's only 8:30 and we already have 3 inches on the ground. This doesn't bode well for our house. I drove by yesterday since we had a playgroup in the mall near there, and they were finally starting to frame. They were supposed to have started framing 3 weeks ago, but the weather slowed everything down. I didn't take any pictures because I didn't trust the dirt road that leads me to my house (they weren't able to pave the streets before the weather turned bad). We'll be lucky if we're in our house by next Christmas!