Last Week of Summer Vacation, Sniffle

Today is the beginning of my 27th week, the last week of the second trimester.  Almost in the home stretch (sort of)!  I had a good check up and have gained 16 pounds total so far.  The baby girl appears to be growing at the right rate and everything looked good.  She's eating very well -

We've been enjoying explosions of tomatoes, some beans and potatoes, lots of zucchini (and zucchini bread), a second round of raspberries and have just started to pick some peppers.  I pulled up my onions to cure and soon we will be able to enjoy some deeeelicious homemade salsa with all the ingredients coming from the garden.  Mmmm mmm. There are some cute little melons growing nicely as well.

The man of the house has been a busy little bee putting the destruction, I mean construction zone back together.  I can't believe how much more space it feels like we have with wider and taller door frames and no chimney in the way anymore.  I helped with some framing by running the chop saw (that's right) and did some painting.  Showing our good sides below.

Not quite finished but it has come along way since just a couple of weeks ago!  My last post shows me standing in front of the former chimney area.  The unfinished area you see below will be the home to some new built in shelves for the kitchen.  What a treat.

And the belly grows.

Making Room

We've been enjoying summer in all it's Portland glory so I haven't spent much time on the computer.  It cooled down a little bit this week after a really steamy weekend.  We cooled off by spending some time at the river doing a little white water tubing.  Since bashing into rocks in white water on a small inflatable object is probably not good for my pregnancy, I rode in a raft instead.  My belly is getting quite large these days and it's hard to imagine how big it will be in three months.

Sleeping has started to be a little more of a challenge.  The sides of my hips really hurt I assume from the extra weight and sleeping on my sides.  Other than that, I'm still feeling really great and it's been crazy to feel and watch the little girl move around in my belly.  She has been very active. 

Last week, I helped Doug a little bit on the baby's room.  We built the framework for a bench that will run along the window and also serve as the headboards for the two twin beds.  Doug also framed in some closet and storage space.  The next step is the electrical work.

In order to run new wiring upstairs, the chimney had to come all the way out through the main floor and basement.  Yikes.  Doug decided that this was the week to take the chimney all the way out.  It happened yesterday while I was conveniently out of the house babysitting all day.  In my pregnant belly picture above, I'm standing in front of the framed in chimney.  Here are some shots of the demolition.

Doug's nephew and his buddy came over to help.  The second to last picture shows what it looks like now.  The framing will come out and be replaced to create two large door frames running perpendicular to each other.  We will also create some built in shelves to add more storage to the kitchen area.  When it's all complete (hopefully in the next week!), it should look really nice.  As you can see from the plastic hanging up, moving around the house has been interesting.  To watch some Olympics last night, we had to go out the back door and around to the front door.  Then if you need to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water while watching the Olympics, you have to go around the house again.  Like I said, hopefully it will be done in the next week.