October Doings - Still Waiting!

This October has been an interesting month - we've kinda just been waiting around for Baby Girl to make her appearance, so it feels a bit like we've been living in limbo for the last few weeks. We're ready to meet her, though! Can't believe that the due date is only a week away :)

We started off the month by going to the hospital to turn baby girl around. She had been breech for awhile and it was making me nervous. We didn't want to try a normal birth if she was breech when I went into labor and I would prefer to avoid a c-section if possible, so an ECV (where the doctor turns the baby around by pushing on the belly) seemed like a good option. Things went great and everything worked perfectly. Thanks, God! The actual procedure only took 2 minutes and didn't really hurt at all - just a little bit of firm pressure. I couldn't believe it when the doctor said he was finished! We were in the hospital for a total of 5 hours for monitoring the baby before the procedure and after, but all in all it wasn't a bad experience at all. Now Baby Girl is head down and ready to be born!

We were invited to a wedding for a couple at the church, and this is where the wedding was held - just beautiful!

It was a slightly rainy day, but we did get a rainbow out of it :)

In our wedding attire with a pretty rainbow, beautiful countryside and some cows in the background.

Us in a few years? In case you can't tell, Tom is under Kacey and Cambelle while Will, Baby Girl and I look on.

Sorting out gifts after my shower - thanks everyone!  Can you find both Maggie and Cloé?  They enjoyed playing with the tissue paper.  And see the pink bag on the left?  My bags are packed and I'm ready to go...

Maggie hasn't been able to get enough of me the last few weeks - she comes and sits with me wherever I happen to be.

We thought this one was funny - big pillow for Maggie!  Wonder if little girl will "know" the cats at all.  She has to have heard them purring since they do it right next to my stomach at times.

Cloé enjoying one of the new baby things - she acts like she owns the place!  In the background you can see the crib and stroller.

Baby Shower

My American friends are great and decided to throw me a baby shower last weekend. We had a great time. I invited some of my European (and one South African) friends, and for most of them it was their first baby shower ever. It was fun introducing an American tradition to them. We enjoyed ourselves by playing a few games, eating delicious food and just talking. Here are some picture highlights.

The delicious array of goodies.

Marti is loaning us her infant car seat. Her husband installed it in the car for us and wow. Either our car is really small, the seat is really big, or a combination of the two... It is in the middle and takes up a good portion of the back seat and starts to encroach on the front as well! Tom as to fight a little bit with it to get his seat back far enough so he can drive. I still have faith that our little Nissan Micra can meet our needs, but it may be tight at times! If we put the stroller in the trunk, baby girl in the middle, her diaper bag next to her and us in front, that's basically the whole car! We will just have to see how things go!

We played a game where the ladies had to cut off a piece of string in a length they thought would fit around my waist. A few were really close and then some were twice my size! I was very glad not to have as big of belly as some of them estimated :)

In other news, it was sleeting/hailing last night!! We had to scrape our car in order to drive home. The mountains are now covered with snow and the temperature has been hovering around freezing. I'm hoping that this is just a little fluke and we have at least a little more fall weather heading our way before the long winter sets in. I enjoy winter and snow, but mid-October seems a bit early!

Family Shots!

We did a photo shoot this past weekend (36 weeks) of our growing family. Thought I'd post some of the picts here for you all to enjoy.

Thanks to Tom for running back and forth between the tripod and the shot after just running an 11 mile race that morning!

Update: Here's a picture of Tom from earlier in the day. This is at the very end of the race on yet another uphill segment.

Zurich

Tom and I went to Zurich for our birthing class the 2nd weekend of September. The class was very informative (and all in English!) and helpful. It at least made me feel better about the birth, so if nothing else I'm better prepared mentally. We also took the weekend to do a little of exploring around Zurich. We only had a few hours, but got to walk around downtown a bit. It was a gorgeous day - perfect for a sausage and some ice cream from a road side stand as we walked!
The Grossmünster is on the right and the Fraumünster on the left.

A statue of Zwingli - a pastor who helped lead the reformation in Switzerland in the 1500s.

A closer shot of the Fraumunster where the stained glass windows were done by Chagall!

The Grossmunster - Zwingli was a pastor here.

Another belly shot for all of you who have been asking :)
Taken Sept 20th when I was 34 weeks.

US Visit

Tom and I had a busy two and a half weeks in the States. He went to DC to visit some friends one weekend and then to Wisconsin for a wedding the next. I went to Dothan to visit with my family and then hung out with the girls the next weekend in Atl. As usual, it was great to be home and see friends and family (and speak English to everyone we saw!). Here are some highlights from the trip.

My favorite picture from the trip - me and baby girl with my sisters :)

A family photo after church.

My mom, sisters and I did a good bit of baby shopping while I was there. We scoured Goodwill, garages sales and 2nd hand baby stores. It was a lot of fun and we found some good stuff! I washed all the baby clothes before packing them up. They looked so adorable (and pink!) on the line that I just had to take a picture.

As per tradition, Tom and Craig dumped Matt in the river the night before the wedding. Matt got his revenge, though and pulled them in after him. Tom hadn't packed with that in mind and had to get another shirt to wear at Walmart the next day :)

The only picture I have of Tom looking all snazzy for the wedding - don't he and Craig look nice!

Remember the swan?? It has now been a part of 5 weddings - one in Alabama, one in Kansas, two in Georgia and now one in Wisconsin. Fortunately, Tom managed to stuff the thing into his suitcase and didn't have to carry it onto the airplane!

Matt with his bride, Katie.

The wedding party spent some time after the wedding just hanging out. Here's Karl flying a kite during some of their free time.

While Tom was at the wedding, I got to spend some time with Cristina and Ashley. It was great to see each other and talk each others ears off!

Since Tom didn't see my family in Dothan, we met my sisters for coffee one evening before we left. I'm glad he likes his sister-in-laws!

Tom's dad is building an airplane in his basement (and it should be done soon!). Cristina came over one day and was very excited to be able to sit in it and work some of the controls.

Cristina concentrating and me with my belly. The plane does have wings - they just aren't attached for some reason (I know there is one, just don't know what it is) at this point in time.

Ellie is doing marching band for the first time this year and we were able to attend her first game. She is the 2nd person back closest to us. Her school even won - Go North Cobb!

She's somewhere over on the left.

Home Improvements

We've (maybe I've is more correct, but we'll go with the plural :) been wanting to paint the guest room for awhile and transitioning it to the guest/baby room was just the push we needed to ahead and do it. We picked a neutral shade of brown to complement the colors currently in the room and then went to work. We moved most of the furniture out, so that for about 2 weeks, no room in our house was organized anymore. There were bed parts in the living room, baseboards and dresser drawers in the hall and bed linens and curtains draped over any surface available. Then we (mostly Tom) vacuumed, taped edges, painted, and then sanded and re-stained baseboards. Then we got started on the closets before putting the room back together, which meant we had to empty them out and find places to put all the stuff. It's finally done and we are pleased with the results. Below are all the during pictures - I'll post the after pictures once I take some.

Tom enjoys painting words and pictures during the process.

Cloé and Maggie both took to sleeping in this spot during the project.

A snapshot of the chaos we lived in for 2 weeks.

Touching up a spot by the baseboards. Before the baseboards matched the floor - we really like how the new color complements the wall color.

The insides of all the closets were painted white and look tons better.

I'm happy that we're almost done!

Tom captured a great picture of the sunset complemented by a crescent moon one night. God's creation holds so much beauty!

August 1st in Locarno

Tom had a 4 day weekend over the August 1st holiday (the Swiss national holiday like our July 4th) so we decided to take weekend trip to Locarno in the Italian part of Switzerland. We were able to go with our British friends, Richard and Emma and had a great time hanging out with them and getting away for a few days. I think my favorite part of the trip was the fabulous Italian food! We had dinner out both nights we were there and the food was absolutely fantastic - bruschetta, caprese, pesto pasta, ravioli, and molten chocolate cake were just a few of the things we tried. I'd go back again just for the restaurants!

We took the Simplon Pass over the mountains instead of taking the tunnel like we usually do. We thought something different would be nice and we wouldn't risk running into the dreadful traffic that sometimes bottlenecks at the tunnel. The pass was beautiful even though it was cloudy and not a bad drive at all. We enjoyed lunch at the top with a view of some gorgeous mountains. It was a bit chilly at the top, but it just got us more ready for the hot weather in Locarno!

We visited the Verzasca Dam again (the one which Bond jumps off of in Golden Eye) and this time saw a group of 7 guys bungee off of it! Watching them jump was scary enough for me - I don't think I'll ever "take the plunge" though both Tom and Emma seemed eager enough.There he goes...

Emma, Richard and Tom atop the medieval stone bridge just a short drive from the dam.

It was a hot day so a lot of people were swimming in the freezing cold water. You can also see a few girls preparing to jump in from the rock in the middle - a few brave souls even jumped from the bridge!

Trying to take an artsy shot...didn't work out so well :) The water was really cold - even having my foot in was hard!

The Madonna del Sasso - a well-known church in the area. It's style is very different from the cathedrals I'm used to seeing around Europe, so it was nice to see a change from the norm.

On the evening of Aug 1, we took a cruise out on Lake Maggiore to watch fireworks. The boat ride was very pleasant and the view of the fireworks was superb!

Our last morning was spent just walking along the lake. There was a great walking path and we found a quaint cafe for coffee and then another delicious restaurant for lunch before heading back to Fribourg.