Announcing the Baby Name!

After a lot of thought, asking for lots of opinions, and writing out names over and over again on paper, I think Todd is really sick of me debating over the name and spelling of the name for our little girl.  We have finally made a decision!

Alise Harper Levreault

and we plan to call her Ali

(FYI: Alise is pronounced like Elise, not to be confused with Alice)

I liked Elise, and Todd thought it should be spelled with an "A."  I really like the name Ali, so spelling Elise with an "A" was a perfect solution since we could name her Alise and call her Ali.  We toyed around with just naming her Ali, but I've always liked the idea of having a formal name and a nickname.  The origin of Alise is German meaning noble, light.  Harper is just a name that I like, and we thought it went well with Alise.  I don't think we went too crazy with the name, and we made sure her initials didn't spell out something embarrassing. 

Whew... one thing off the checklist!

24 Week Belly Shots: Tired of Just Feeling Fat...

Do I look pregnant yet?  Sometimes I feel like I just look fat.  Several of you have been giving me a hard time wanting to see more pictures.  I planned on taking pictures every four weeks, because honestly, I didn't think you guys would be excited to see them any more frequently.  I'll try to take more pictures when we're out in general so you can see me in maternity clothes.  Here is a link to 20 weeks if you want a comparison.

Here I am at 24 weeks....

And here's a close-up...

Loving My New Kitchen!

After two and a half weeks, we now have full use of our kitchen again... and I'm loving it!  Phase one of our remodel project was the kitchen, the fireplace and the tile in the half bath.  Living in a house during a remodel with all the dust and everything a mess was no fun.  I'm so glad to have my house back to normal!  If you're looking to do some remodel, I really like our general contractors.  It's a husband and wife team, Jeanna and Patrick, and their company is New Creation Group.  They were awesome with both design help and construction details AND on-time!  Everyone told me to double the estimated time to complete the project, and we finished as scheduled.

Here are some before pictures of our kitchen.  The cabinets were a honey oak color, and the tile was a white ceramic tile with dark grout.

We stained the cabinets a dark espresso color and put in 20x20 travertine-like porcelain tile in a brick pattern.  I learned that real travertine is not very durable and is harder to clean.  With a chocolate lab and a baby on the way, durability was a huge consideration.  We also repainted the baseboards to give it a nice clean touch.  Here's the after...

Here's a glimpse of the old fireplace.  I tried to hide it as much as possible since I hated the navy blue tile.  Really?  Who would want blue tile on their fireplace surround?

We replaced the blue tile with a natural travertine stone... So much better.  Here's the after!

And now we're on to tackle the wood floors.  We had originally thought we could sand down our existing wood floors and refinish them, but we found out when the wood floor guys came out that our floors are actually a thin piece of real wood on top and a cheap material underneath.  There is no way to save these, so we are having to do all new wood floors.  We've picked out a dark stranded bamboo... going green, something different... and we found out that bamboo is one of the hardest woods making it very durable.  I can't wait to see it, but we're waiting until we head to Colorado to get it installed while we're out of town.

Fun Weekend with Lots of Food!

Last weekend, we went down to Austin to have dinner with my sister to celebrate her birthday and hang out with Chelsey and Ryan.  Chelsey and Ryan were going to come to Dallas for a visit, but since our house is in shambles from the remodel, we told them we would go to them.  So, Chelsey and Ryan decided to throw a BBQ Party while we were there.  OMG... I was thinking we would grill burgers and hot dogs and have a few sides to go with it.  Wrong!  I should have known.  Chelsey always goes ALL out!  We pulled up to their house on Friday night to see a HUGE grilling station trailer attached to the back of Ryan's huge truck.  Apparently, that's where the meat grilling was going to take place.  I wish I would have gotten a picture of this thing.  I need to be "blog thinking" more often!

Chelsey and I went to the store on Saturday morning to buy 15 pounds of hamburger meat and 8 packages of fajita meat to go with all of the pounds of venison and wild boar sausage that they had brought back from the ranch.  With all this food, we also had 4 pounds of Art Klebba's Beans, Bacon Ranch Potato Salad, Cole Slaw, Guacamole, Homemade Salsa, Yummy Queso, Deviled Eggs, Green Chile Cheese Balls, Black Bean and Corn Salsa, Buckeyes, Brownie Bites and TONS of beverages.  I was eating ALL day long starting with kolaches for breakfast.  Guess how much weight I gained?  Four pounds!  Even for a pregnant girl, I don't think it's normal or healthy to gain four pounds in a weekend.

Here's a picture of the appetizer... I wish we would have gotten a picture of the massive grill!

Tember, Chelsey and Ryan's dog, is so awesome and loves to wear clothes... this shirt said "Queen" and was very fitting!  Of course she had a cute necklace to go with it...

I was also around another Dream Baby this weekend.  Jen and Daniel brought their two month old Logan to the party.  This Dream Baby sleeps 6-7 hours at night AND can sleep through anything!  We had a roaring party going on and at one point the guys ordered the fight... you can imagine how loud a bunch of guys are during a fight!  Logan is not bothered by the noise one bit and slept through it all.  Seriously, I'm starting to think that everything will be okay if I have a dream baby... keep your fingers crossed.  Here's Dream Baby Logan... such a cutie!

Ye of Little Faith...

So we had an interesting conversation at work today about making baby food... I

Am I going to be a bad mother???

I hope this weekend isn't a reflection of what kind of mother I'm going to be.  Todd is out of town, and Coco and I went to hang out with our friends, The Carpenters - Katy, Mike and Baby Landon.  I figured I needed baby time with sweet precious Landon.  Check out how cute this kid is...

Hanging out with the Carpenters was great because I got my baby time, and Coco got to play fetch and frisbee with Mike - thanks Mike!  Guess what happened while we were there?  I LOST Coco!  What kind of mother am I?  No fears though... she was returned quickly, and I don't think she was traumatized in any way.

Here's the story:  We left Coco in the backyard to dry off since she was wet from playing in a puddle.  Their backyard is not completely fenced, but Coco has stayed in their backyard before and didn't roam off.  Well, I guess she decided to go exploring while Daddy was out of town.  Mike went out later to play with her, and he ended up walking up and down the street looking for her and calling her name.  A neighbor saw Mike and asked him if he was looking for a chocolate lab, to which he responded yes.  Then they opened their door, and Coco ran out.  Whew!  I'm so glad they were nice people and not crazy dog snatchers.  The neighbor said he had called the number on her tag, which was our home/Todd's office number and he left a message there and got Todd's cell from the message and called and left Todd a message on his cell phone.  Dang it.  I couldn't even hide it from Todd.  I'm really thankful that Mike didn't tell me she was gone until AFTER he had her back. I would have probably freaked out. 

Does this make me a bad mother?  Hopefully, I won't lose my kid.  If I do, I'll remind myself about my friends who I believe are good parents, and they locked their sleeping infant in a running BMW ourside of my house.  Maybe that will make me feel better.  I should probably just stick to trying not to lose my baby.

Let the Remodeling Begin!

I think my nesting has started!  There are so many things we (I) want to do to the house before Baby L arrives.

This may look like a ghetto cheap way for us to extend our countertop space, but I assure you, that is not our intention! 

Our oven broke in December, so we ordered a new oven in January.  We finally received our new oven in March, and we discovered that our builders used a non-standard size oven in our house.  The old broken oven is bigger than ovens on the market, so if we install the new one, there will be 2 inches of space between the oven and the cabinets.  Hence, we need to hire a carpenter to add wood and match the stain.  That's where this whole project started...

Since then, I have decided that if I am going to have to fix the cabinets, I might as well re-stain all of my cabinets.  I'm not a huge fan of the current cabinet color, so this is a great excuse for me.  That led into replacing the tile on the kitchen floor, re-doing our fireplace, re-doing our half bath, refinishing our hardwoods, replacing carpet, painting and touch-up painting all the interior walls, re-doing our master bath and more.  What a wish list!  I was hoping to have all of this done before Baby L arrives, but once we got the quotes, I quickly learned that I'm going to have to take it one project at a time... unless I win the lottery (unlikely since I don't buy lottery tickets!)

We started Phase 1 of our remodel today, which includes the kitchen, half bath and fireplace.  I'm very excited, but a little nervous at the same time....