Nursery Progress

We have started nursery progress and it feels great to have some of the more tedious  parts of the makeover done. We decided on the pink room because it gets the best natural light and it's on the opposite side of the house from the TVs and entertaining rooms. It's looked like this for the past 3 years....pink with a bed and a couple nightstands. It worked perfectly for an extra sleeping spot and we never bothered to paint it assuming it would get turned into a nursery someday anyway. 

The closet is a pretty basic wall closet with one long shelf across the top so we decided to see what we could do to maximize that space as well. The long, high bar doesn't bode well for a small kid hopefully putting his own clothes away one day.

Boy or girl the room was going to get painted. We went with a light grey called Fog and it has the slightest blue tint that I think will work well with the crib. For the closet, we decided to have a little fun and picked a subtle lime green called Lettuce Alone.

Here's the room as it currently stands. That's the crib in the box on the right. 

 

I think it turned out great and I like that it's a little more light than our other grey rooms. It feels more nursery to me. 

And here is the closet! We explored some of those fancy Elfa built-in systems for closets but they were several hundred dollars before installation. Not something we wanted to spend that much dough on. While at Lowes this past week I saw a flash sale on the rubbermaid closet system for our size closet so for only $89 plus the cost of two drawers we got this whole system. 

It was really easy to install and customize and Alison helped me with the layout and install. It was a tad tedious but I LOVE it and I'm really excited to have a more functional closet.

The crib and dresser are here in boxes and some of the art has arrived as well. Now that the bones of the room are ready I think the rest is going to come together pretty quickly. Good thing too because we're down to 4 months before go-time. 

Fun Friday

Lots of random updates today. First off, HUGE news in the Marcey household. No...I'm not pregnant again, this is even bigger. Our fridge has water! Ever since we moved in we've had a trickle out of our in-door fridge water. You can stand there for 5 minutes and get half a glass if you're lucky.  We've gotten used to tap water and it's fine but when our ice maker died a couple weeks ago we had the appliance guys out to fix both. Best $$ I've ever spent! I love having fridge water!!

Week 20 is here! We are halfway through this pregnancy and that makes it feel really real. We've been feeling him a lot this week and I'm hopeful Derrick will get to feel him more consistently soon. He's still hit or miss on whether or not he can feel him but my stomach moved on it's own a couple nights ago so he's definitely getting stronger.

Here, I look bigger without legs and you can read the sign better. I realize that sign is kind of hard to see.....the hashtag is #whoawere1/2waythere . We'll have to try to zoom that in for future weeks.

Next update, this is a pretty awesome article by our friend Hart Matthews on ultiworld. It's about his perspective on nationals and he gave a nice little shout out to Jack, and me! I had goosebumps reading the entire thing.

https://ultiworld.com/2017/06/16/scenes-college-nationals-drama-heartbreak-joy/

Finally, I started nesting a little backwards but it's definitely happening I think. I woke up yesterday with an empty calendar and decided to give the yellow room a one-day makeover. The yellow room is our least used room and should be pretty low on the priority list. We decided that instead of losing a guest bed we'd just put two beds in the yellow room. You'd be amazed how often all three guestbeds are full and we figured, with Furnace on the way, we needed room to sleep family when they came to visit.

Here's a picture on moving day. It's a bright yellow but the room only has one window so it doesn't get much light and the light fixture shade is also dark. It evolved to have a bed and nightstands but was also mostly storage.

I had no intention of touching this room until it needed to house #2 but yesterday it got a makeover on a whim.  We moved the pink room bed into here and rotated both beds against the back wall with a nightstand in between. Everything got a coat of Rocky Bluffs which is the same color in our dining room and I got matching bedding for both beds.

There is no art on the walls and that may or may not change but it's a much better second guest room then the yellow with mismatched bedding was. In my head, this had to come before we could move out of the pink room which will be the nursery....so it counts as nesting I think.

Next up, nursery, hall bathroom, and craft room. The craft room just needs to get safe because it's currently a death trap. The bathroom has really only ever been used for Crosby baths so I just want to freshen that up and, if I can do the yellow room in a day I feel like the bathroom will be easy.

Dining Room Update

The dining room got a bit of a spruce up in the past month. There is a matching hutch for the dining room table that we've discussed bringing up but I've always been more of a fan of the gathered over time look then the matching set look so I've been casually looking for something to add storage to the back wall. With Furnace on the way....have I mentioned that's what we call the baby?...I knew we needed to clear out some cabinet space to make room for baby stuff so I started looking a bit harder. 

I found these gorgeous cabinets at Target! I don't always trust Target furniture but they were pretty, sturdy, and had great reviews! I bought two to go side by side and I love how they look. 

Ignore the giant 5000 piece puzzle on the dining room table....we recently finished it up so it's in the glory stage where we leave it up for a few weeks and admire our hard work.

For above the shelf I threw together a really quick photo ledge with some nice scrap wood I had.  The wood is really pretty so I chose to keep the ledge narrower and have the thicker piece visible on the wall...it made it tougher to lean photos and find things for the ledge but I still really like the look.

For now, most of the art is stuff I had on hand like that Wowza print is a notecard and that horse drawing is one of mine I did in highschool. The only thing I ordered was the "you can't sit with us" print that I thought was hilarious for a dining room. Mean Girls anyone?

Furnace even made an appearance for now. I want something that kind of falls off that side of the shelf so he's probably just a placeholder for now but I like seeing him up there.

The best part is my Grandma's china finally has a place to shine along with all of the other fancy things we don't use.

I'm loving the update and the cabinets although they have a pretty weird smell. I've left the doors open to help them air out and lose that factory finish that I think we're smelling. Next up is the nursery. Derrick and I have paint samples on the wall and we're starting the clear-out process tonight.

Dude

We found out baby Marcey's gender about two weeks ago and it was the first time I've teared up in this process. It made it seem a lot more real. Derrick and I both had no idea what we were having...not even a guess. I know some people have a feeling or just "know" but I have no idea how they do that because I didn't have a clue. I had three dreams that were all inconclusive saying I was having a girl..no a boy!...no a girl!  Needless to say....we had no idea and no expectations going into it. 

Well.....

Dude's a dude! 

We're super excited to be having a boy. Most of our friends are having girls so I like adding a little testosterone to the mix and Derrick and I both had older brothers in our family. The biggest symptom since finding out is the inability to stop buying clothes! Boy clothes are SO cute and the clearance racks are dangerous. 

Finding out has definitely made me feel more connected to him and has definitely made me start planning a little bit. We still haven't done a whole lot but we've narrowed in on a crib and a guest room situation and I've added to the registry. When Jack was here yesterday we were talking about it and realized we have about 3.5 months to be ready because the due date is in 4.5 months and I want to be ready in case he's early. 3.5 months seems really soon!

I've been feeling movement for a few weeks but really only felt confident it was him in the last week or so. Derrick has even gotten lucky to feel a couple flutters. In the beginning I could only feel him when I was laying down but now I'll feel him throughout the day so I know he's getting stronger. 

We've been really bad about weekly pictures...mostly because I just started really showing about 2 weeks ago. We have a 7 week picture and then I prepped the boards for the other weeks and we just never took the pic. Our intentions are good....that's enough right? Anyways, here's the bump!

Still no real symptoms. I've been feeling great and sleeping even better. I'm still relatively active and haven't had any food cravings or aversions. I haven't been hit with the immense hunger I've heard is coming...in fact, I'd say I'm getting full faster than normal. I'm just trying to enjoy it because I know the discomfort is coming eventually....it's been too easy so far. 

Wednesday marks the halfway point....crazy but exciting! We're not wishing November to get here quickly because we're soaking up our baby-free life right now but we are definitely excited to meet him and start that new adventure. It's going to be fun!

College Nationals

Sorry it's been a while! Work and life have been busy around here but with very exciting things! Over Memorial Day weekend Jack played in his fifth college nationals. This is really incredible. So many players never get the chance to attend nationals and just making it is the goal of the season. Jack has been able to qualify all five years and he has played a significant role in the last four of them.

This year UNCW came in seeded 11th overall. This means they were 3rd in a pool of 5 and the road to quarters was supposed to be pretty tough. After a flight delay, I managed to make it to the fields for their first game on Friday and it went pretty smoothly. They beat the two low seeds and were scheduled to play Pitt the next morning. The UNCW vs Pitt game is notoriously a good game and always very close.

The crowd was huge for the game and Wilmington broke away early on and ended up winning by a couple points. It was awesome.

By winning all of their pool play games they set themselves up for an easy ride into quarters and had to play Washington on Sunday morning. They handled that game pretty easily as well and found themselves in the semi-finals game on ESPN U Sunday evening at 8 PM. They would be playing UNC.

Derrick had to stay in Raleigh for this trip so I was so excited that Alison and Bender came up. Bender used to play on UNCW and Alison is basically family so it was so nice to have them in our cheering section.

This next picture is not a great picture but it's a picture of our view of the Callahan ceremony. Jack was nominated by his team for the Callahan award.

"In the eyes of his or her peers, the Callahan winner is the personification of the ideal ultimate player. Like Henry himself, players who win the award are recognized not just for their on-field accomplishments, but display superior athleticism, outstanding sportsmanship, leadership and dedication. As ultimate’s oldest and most prestigious award, it is hoped players nominated for the Callahan will continue as ambassadors for the sport through superior on-field play and sportsmanship."

Not only was he his team's nominee but he was voted in the top 5 for the award. This is amazing. Seriously...such an honor! He didn't end up winning which was a crime in my eyes but just the fact that he was recognized by his peers as one of the top players and leaders in the sport is truly amazing. I hope he always remembers that.

Right after the Callahan award was his semi-finals game against UNC and this was the game that I lost my mind.

UNC came out strong and the game got to be 12-8, game to 14, with Wilmington down. Jack was playing every single point. It was obvious that Jack was not just going to give this game away and, despite being down from early on, every point I saw him on the line leading his team. At 12-8 most people, including myself, had resigned themselves to a UNC victory and that this would be Jack's last college ultimate game. A 6 point come back at this level is almost unheard of...especially when the other team only needs 2. This is when Jack single-handedly dragged his team back into the game.

I have never seen a single performance that was so amazing. He was involved in every D or score until the end and once his team felt his energy they started responding with their own intensity. He dragged the team back to a tied game of 13's. Universe point. Next point wins. He ended the game with a dime huck to a receiver in the endzone and the crowd went absolutely crazy.

https://ultiworld.com/2017/05/29/williams-fuels-unc-wilmingtons-semifinal-comeback-victory/ 

I screamed, I cried, I lost my mind with the rest of the Wilmington fans. They should be posting the game on youtube and you should all go watch it, even if you start at 12-8. That's when the magic starts.

UNCW played Carlton in the finals on Monday night and ended up losing 15-11. Jack's hamstring was shot from the night before and it was hard to see his body failing him on several plays that he usually has no problem with. Even so, second at nationals with a semi-finals performance that he had is amazing. They came in seeded 11th and made it to finals. What???!!!???

I am SO proud of him and his team! They are such nice guys.

Here's the whole family after the awards ceremony, very proud of our little Jackie-poo.

Alison, Bender, and the coaches. 

Seniors. I've enjoyed watching these guys for the last 4-5 years!