Birth story {Part 1}

I have decided that I need to tackle some of my Pinterest projects and will be doing one per week. So tonight I will decide on my project and begin working on it and upload how I did it and the outcome!

I have read many blogs that have posted their birth stories and I absolutely love reading them! So I thought I would post my own for my own purposes of having it written down so I don't forget and for anyone else who loves to read these kind of stories!

It all began on Memorial Day weekend. My husband's cousin had just graduated from high school and we were attending the graduation in grand forks. I remember everyone sitting around the table talking about when they were expecting my sister in law and I to have our babies. I was just about 36 weeks pregnant that day. We laughed for awhile talking about it landing on special occasions and who was going to be right. It's always fun to guess the birthdays of babies. We packed up our stuff and headed back to Ada for the weekend.

Aaron and I were living in Fargo at the time but we decided to visit Aaron's family for our long weekend since we both had Monday off. We also wanted to work on the "Polly house" which was a house we were planning on staying in come the first of June until we bought a house in Ada. Aaron's parents owned that house and it wasn't in great shape at all. I wish I had a picture of the house but I can't seem to find one. This is where we really started realizing DIY was made for us. We decided to work hard on that house all weekend! I wasn't exactly small in my eyes (many people let me know I was a tiny pregnant women but I didn't feel it). This was one of the last pictures I took before having Carson.

 

My clothes were starting to fit funny, haha. So I had just finished hand mopping the floor and I was getting pretty soar and tired so we decided to head back to Aaron's parents house for the night for supper and watch a movie together. After eating supper and watching the movie for maybe 30 minutes, I told Aaron I wasn't feeling the greatest and wanted to go to bed. We went to bed for a few hours and right around midnight, I woke up feeling strange. I was having cramps and felt like I may have peed my pants. I went to the bathroom where I had found I was bleeding and still having cramps. I wasn't sure what was going on. I was scared. I woke up Aaron and told him what was going on and he asked if that was supposed to happen. I didn't know. So we woke up Shelly (Aaron's mom) and let her know what was going on. I was only 36 weeks pregnant. This seemed to early.

 



We thought it was best to call the doctor and let him know what was going on and asked what we should be. My contractions were about 8 minutes apart and they told us to wait an hour and see how its going but what the doctor didn't realize was that we lived an hour away from the doctor. We waited about a half hour or so after the doctor call and around 1:00 in the morning, we thought it was best to head into the doctor.

My contractions were staying right around the 8 minutes apart all the way to the doctor. We walked in to get checked in and the front desk receptionist had recognized me from my work and just seemed to want to chat about it. I didn't want to chat.

We were put into a room where they would monitor me for an hour to see how my contractions were going. After finding out I was at 4 centimeters already, they decided to admit me into the labor room. It was now around 4 in the morning and my contractions were getting closer and more painful. I had to wait until I was at 6 centimeters before getting an epidural and that finally came around 6:00 in the morning. After that, life was great. I felt zero pain. We watched the news, Regis and Kelly and just really waited until I moved farther along. Right around 9:30 the doctor came in to check how far I was dilated. She said I was at 9.5 centimeters and by the time they got the doctor and everything set up, I was ready to have a baby. The nurse had me do a practice push to see how fast the doctor had to come in. She said push like you're having a bowl movement. I couldn't feel anything below my waist so I just basically held my breath and squeezed. The nurse yelled to stop after 3 seconds and said this baby is coming out now!!

I was in shock! I couldn't feel anything. No pain, no pressure. My midwife came in at 9:45 in the morning and told me to start pushing and at 9:59, Carson Aaron Kappes was here. There he was, laying on my chest once the doctors placed him there. I took a quick look at him and noticed his nose was squished sideways. I instantly asked if this was going to stay that way and they said no, he was probably just being squished against something and it would go back to normal.

 

Carson weighed in at 5 pounds, 12 ounces. He was perfect. It was one of the easiest things I had ever done in my life. Our lives had changed in such a short amount of time. We were truly blessed. We had many family and friends stop by to welcome our new baby boy into our lives.



 

Nobody could believe how little Carson was.

 



Aaron was so proud.

As was I.

 

Life is beautiful.

 

After the birth of Carson, I told everyone it was the easiest thing ever. I could have kids all day long if that's how is always goes. Well, then I was pregnant again and things were a little different the second time around. Until tomorrow....

Our to do list updated!!

I thought I would fill in everyone on where we are in our house updates. Some things haven't changed at all and some things have changed a lot! I will go through each room and cross off our things that have been accomplished and add a picture of the before and after!!  

Kitchen

 

This was our kitchen when we moved in

This is our current kitchen. We have done nothing in here since the last to-do post.

 

 

• We are contemplating the ceiling right now. We are thinking about actually wallpapering it a bead board pattern. Either way, it needs to be fixed and painted or wallpapered.
• Finish the toe kick ( you can't see it in the picture)
• Finish putting up trim as soon as the ceiling is done
• End cap counter
• Organize some of the cupboards with built ins

 

Stairs Wall

This was the stairs wall when we moved in.

This is the stairs wall from the previous post.





 

And this is the current stairs wall. Other than a little different decorating, it also hasn't changed much.

 

 

• Cut the wall in half and open up the stairs. Build a ledge on top. I want the ledge high enough so kids can not climb on top and fall. We were thinking right above the light switch.

 

 

Desk Area

 

This was the desk area when we moved into the house. A simple closet. 



 

This picture was from the previous update post.

 

And this is the current state. We got to cross of two of the tasks that needed to be done. We removed the old window and added a door and we also took out the basement door (which you can not see in this picture) and put in a DIY gate that we made! I also painted the desk, the chair and cleaned up the mess! I also painted the paneling gray.

 

 

 

 



•  I thought having a desk in this little area would be great with me having my business at home. As you can see, it's not. It collects junk and I hate junk collectors. So this will be a pantry. I am thinking something like this .
• Finish trim 
• Add a door where the window is so it will lead to our patio.
• Take out basement door when we cut the wall in half.

Dining Room

 This is what our living room looked like when we moved in.

 

 

This was previous post.



 

I had to take this picture from instagram because my phone wouldn't give enough light to take a decent picture. But we sold our beautiful farm house table and Aaron will be making us a new one as soon as the Junk Market is over! So this is acting as our dining room table right now and we did paint the walls gray.

 

 

 

 

• Paint the walls gray
• make a valance to cover the curtain rod.
• Aaron is going to make us a new farm table for our dining table.

Front Entrance

This was move in front entrance.

Previous post front entrance.



 

Current front entrance. Again, the sun was to bright for my phone to take a decent picture so I had to steal this from Instagram. I painted an old dresser I bought from a flea market for $20 and decided to use that as our storage area. I just hate those cubbies you can buy from Target. They are not durable at all. We also got a new front door! I love this one ((: We painted the walls gray and I went over the windows with a bright white one more time. We still need trim around the door, decent storage and fixing up the closet!

 

 

• Replace door with a new one and a much smaller window. I hate feeling like someone is looking at me at night. I also hate curtains on windows and I need that to not feel like I am being watched. A door like this would be awesome. Little or no window. We don't ever use this door but maybe we will start later down the road.
• paint walls gray
• turn closet into a more functional closet. Lots of storage space
• Have Kappes Concepts build me a nice storage bench for where the cubby storage is now.

 Living Room

Living room when we moved in.

 

Living room from previous post.

 

 

 

This is our current living room. I just about have it all painted gray except where our T.V. currently is but I was thinking about doing something fun their and possibly getting rid of the fireplace all together.

 

 

• Paint walls gray.
• Possibly get lighter furniture and move this furniture downstairs.
• New windows
• Update fireplace surround. Maybe do some sort of built in like this.
• Build a breakfast bar where the window is into the kitchen. Add a few bar stools and eliminate one of the couches for space.

Small Hallway

This is the only picture I can find of what our small hallway looked like when we moved in. You can see there was a bi-fold door on the bedroom.

 

This was the previous post.

 



 

I am really realizing how crappy my phone is starting to take pictures, but this is our current hallway. I started a little gallery shelf and hope to get more pictures and frames on the wall. I also need to finish painting the rest of the wall. We built a little gate for carson's room and I painted an old mirror I had lying around blue.

 

 

 

 

• Hang a picture of Hudson. :/ I have one, just haven't bought a frame for it yet.
• Add door for going upstairs.
• Paint walls gray
• Create a new growth chart to hang up
• Organize pictures on other side and maybe make into a whole picture wall

Carson's Room

This was Carson's room when we moved in. It was actually their laundry room.

 

The only thing that has changed in here is the bedding. So I didn't even take a new picture. 

 

• Move Carson upstairs and this would be strictly a guest/toy room.
• Create a wall full of built ins to store toys and movies in
• Re-Sheetrock the walls and update electric.
• Paint the Revere Pewter color by Benjamin Moore. Here.
• trim
• knockout Hudson's closet (which is on the other side of Carson's) and make a deeper closet for more storage.
• Add closet doors

Side of House





The only thing different here is the concrete is out and so are the steps. Next step will be getting that door out and adding new shutters.

 

• Put new siding on. We are thinking this color.
• Build a storage Area for a couple garbage cans so they don't blow away in the wind.
• Take our concrete on side of house and add grass there
• Paint foundation or maybe get a stone paneling to cover it. Something like this.



 

Front Yard 

Previous Post

 

Current picture of the front of our house. It's a little hard to tell in this picture but we trimmed up the branches on the tree. We are hoping to remove it still this summer and plant some nice bushes up front in the planting area up front.  We also updated our mailbox post, painted the new front door black and added new side lights.

 

 

Here was our previous door with the old lights and after I painted it and Aaron installed two new lights.

 

 

 

• Side house this color.
• Remove large tree in front of the yard. (It just covers the whole house and takes up a lot of the yard)
• Add pillars and a better entrance to the front of the house like this one.
• New Front Door
• Change the steps to come down in front of the door instead of sideways and add a landing to have a nice little porch. Right now the steps cover half of the window in our bedroom.
• Add a wrap around porch like this one .
• Plant some sort of plant/flowers in the front mulch bed.
• Make a brick mailbox like this 
• Level out our lawn and add grass.



 Driveway

 

Still looks the same except no concrete on the side of the house and no steps.

 

• Add a two stall garage with a room on top for Aaron's "man cave". He calls it his man mountain. This would eliminate loud noises from games and friends coming over from the basement.
• hopefully purchase the lot right next to ours to add a double garage



 Back Yard

 

Previous post.

 

This is our current back yard. Aaron started fixing the gutters and will hopefully get those done by the end of summer. We also moved Oakley's kennel and added a deck! That is what our new door walks out to now. We are thinking we will add a lower level deck maybe next summer to give our family some more room to sit.

 

 

• Excuse me while I barf. We still haven't fixed our gutters from when the tree landed on our house. That will be fixed this summer, for sure!!
• Side the house
• New windows upstairs
• Connect the roof lines so they meet each other which would make either another room upstairs or an open tall ceiling in our entrance/dining room. I am leaning towards a tall ceiling. (Kind of a dream of mine)
• Create a patio where Oakley's kennel is right now.
• Make the window on the farthest right into a door that would lead out to the patio.
• Create some storage for the boys toys.

The "Man cave"

 

This was the man cave when we first moved in.

 



This was the previous post and what it looks like right now, except no couch.

 

• Create a small hallway between this room and our room and make this into a bedroom. What is the bar right now, would be a closet. And where the jerseys are hanging would be an egress window.
• Sheetrock/ Mud/ Paint
• Add hallway
• Move into this room.

Bathroom Upstairs

 

This still looks the same.

 

• This wall where the door is will be knocked out. The bathroom will be twice as big as it will be using half of Hudson's room. The other part of Hudson's room will be our laundry room! Both boys will be moved to the two upstairs bedrooms.
• Shower will stay where it is but be a tiled walk in shower with no doors.
• Toilet will stay but we will add a double sink on the window side of the wall.
• Tile bathroom with possible in floor heat and do something fun with the walls. ( still undecided)
• Laundry room will look something like this. Actually nothing really like that, but I just wanted to find a laundry room with lots of storage space. And this was the closest I could find.

 

 

So some things have changed and some are still the way they were the last time you may have seen them. This summer we accomplished;  Painting the paneling, taking out a window and adding a door, building a deck, new gutters, taking out old concrete, new front door and painted, new outside light fixtures, two new gates and lots of decorating updates. I am learning what my decorating style actually is and trying to incorporate that into our house! I can't wait for my updates!! Until then....

Body Image

I can not believe some of the rude and hurtful comments people make towards skinny women. If you are skinny because you worked out to get that way, it's "Maybe you should step back a bit". If you are skinny naturally it's because "You have an eating disorder". It's hardly EVER that you just get a nice comment like, "You look so great after having 2 kids!!". People are mean. People think that if you are skinny, you have no feelings. Well news flash people, those comments hurt just as much as if we were to come up to a larger person and call them fat. If we would accuse them of being "Fat" because they over eat. Society sucks and I just wish people could be happy.

So, I decided to do something that I am pretty uncomfortable with. I decided to take a picture of myself. I have flaws. I have many many things that I wish were different. And I know that the only way to change them, is to change myself. I don't work out. I consider taking care of 5 kids all under the age of 3 to be a pretty good workout for me. Is it enough? Probably not. Do I eat healthy? No. Do I envy those that do? Yes. I am picky. I hate the taste and texture of many foods. I have forced myself to gag down many salads in my life just to try and get myself to like lettuce. It doesn't work. I don't like veggies and I can't really live off of fruit for the rest of my life. But here we go....

 

This is what I look like in a swimsuit. My thighs don't touch, my ribs stick out. I have little arms and small ankles. But I also have a hard time keeping a swimsuit top on. I have a hard time finding one! I get mean looks when I am on the beach, I get accused of having an eating disorder. For many years in high school, I was accused of not eating. It hurt so bad because no one knew how I felt. No one knew what I did at home.

 

 

My hip bones stick out and so do my ribs. It isn't lovely. I run into more counter corners with my hips than anyone I'm sure! I have wanted to go on the Paleo diet more times than I can count, but seriously, I don't like anything. I live for my breads and cereals. I have learned that milk has upset my stomach after I quit drinking it for awhile so I try to stay away from dairy as much as possible. I know what is good for me and what is bad for me. When I see a really thin mannequin at a store, I get excited because something might fit me well. I don't look at it as distasteful nor do I look at plus size mannequins as that either. We are women of many different shapes and sizes.

 

 

I am small. I am beautiful. Your words will not ruin my day. But if I can some how try to help you think before you speak, I will. I am the most self conscious person you will ever meet. I dread going out into public in a swimsuit. So this is me saying, it's okay how you look. If you want to change, that is all on you. If you love the way you look, embrace it. You are beautiful. And so am I.....

 

Until tomorrow....





A splash of color

First off, I had a wonderful Mother's Day weekend! My husband doesn't like to just celebrate days, he usually gives a whole weekend which is always so wonderful. On Saturday, I styled my sister's hair for her very last prom. Believe it or not, it was pretty bittersweet for me. I don't mind doing hair for prom, I actually enjoy it. But this was not only her last prom, but a signal to me that she will be leaving soon. I have grown pretty close to her over the last few years and I begin to tear up thinking that she won't just be next door anymore. That we won't be getting a random guest at any given minute just so she can hang out. And our boys really adore her. So I will be holding onto her this summer before she leaves me!

 

Anyway, after I did her prom hair, I met Aaron in Fargo and we went to Home Goods! Oh my goodness. I fell in love and was all overwhelmed at the same time. The prices were amazing and I fell into basket heaven all over again. If you ever want to buy me a gift, buy me some sort of basket. Ugh, I love them like a dog loves peanut butter sandwiches. On Sunday, we went out to eat with my parents and then Aaron brought me back to Fargo because we bought an umbrella for our patio set and it had a big hole in it. This didn't surprise me because almost everything that we buy over $50 is broken, missing a piece or ripped. It's pretty annoying but it's just our luck. But either way, I had a great weekend!

 

 

I always like to add a little color to our rooms. I like to stick to a neutral paint scheme and add pops of colors here and there. So this weekend, I picked up letters to paint and hang in the kitchen from Hobby Lobby.

 

 

I have always wanted to put the word "Eat" in our kitchen and Aaron has always gave me that look like You can if you want to, but I'm not going to say I like it. Well, it was mother's day weekend so I pretty much got to do whatever I wanted. So I just did it, and Aaron said it didn't look bad! So that is always better than nothing at all!

 

 

I love it!! It's just enough color. And once I decide to paint my kitchen gray, it will be even better! I didn't do enough convincing to get my pantry done but I did draw up some plans for it, so it is in my foreseeable future. I love little updates to the house and can't wait for warm weather to get some fresh flowers throughout our house. Those pops of color are my favorite!! Until tomorrow....







A house full of boys

I first want to bring up my decision to leave Facebook. The only reason why I am holding on is because I am trying to save all my pictures to my computer. This was such a huge reason I didn't want to leave Facebook and when you have over 1000 pictures, it takes awhile )): But if you would like to continue to follow my little family and all of our home improvements, you can follow me on our blog! I will be sure to post to here every day and hope to see some comments from my friends! Don't forget to drop in a text/phone call/ letter every once in a while.

Anyway, a house full of boys. The only females I have in the house are my two dogs. So Aaron has taught the boys how to tackle him and jump on him when he isn't paying attention, so in turn, I get to experience all the wonderful rough housing, too. After being kicked off the couch by the only female I share the actual house with, thanks Chassis, I lay on the floor cuddled up in a warm blanket resting on a fluffy pillow enjoying a little ESPN when all of a sudden, 30 pounds comes barreling into me almost knocking all the wind out of me. I peek over to see what kind of monster just decided to barrel into me and I see Hudson standing looking down on me, Carson laying on top of me and Aaron laughing in the corner. This my friends, is my life.

I often wonder if men err little boys, ever get full. I will make a nice breakfast for the family only getting to eat mine cold and usually only half of it because one of the boys is eyeing it down like it may inch its way towards their plate. And so I give the single, I tell them I am full and within seconds, SECONDS, it's gone. Thirty minutes pass by, "What's for lunch?". Ugh, I am pretty sure you all just ate 2 breakfasts and are now worrying about lunch. I can not even imagine what these boys will be like in 10 years. This is why, and it's only occasionally, (occasionally being every day), do I hide in the bathroom with some sort of snack that I indulge myself into without a care in the world. Is it peaceful? No, because I have every child pounding on the door asking if I am done yet or a husband asking where the remote is. My only time to have peace and quite is literally, 10 minutes after lunch. There I may grab a blanket, lay down on the couch, perhaps shut my eyes for 2 seconds and hear a blood curdling scream! Well, I'm up!

I say this all with a smile on my face. I say this with my hair knotted and thrown into a ponytail for the last 2 days. I say this looking a little like death with no makeup on, just the moisturizer I applied in the morning. I say this with big holes in my jeans and I am probably wearing black pants and a blue shirt, which I hear is breaking all sorts of fashion rules. My back hurts and my feet are callused. my finger nails are clipped down to the skin. I wear glasses and only my wedding ring. I probably have poop wiped on me somewhere and peanut butter in my hair. I am tired and probably show it. I have lost more than 75% of my friends after having kids.

I am a mom. I am happy. I would do anything, and I mean ANYTHING for my family. I would give up anything I had to put another smile on their faces. And becoming a mom, I have realized the things that my mom had done for me and the reasoning to why she could never buy something nice for herself. I would much rather spend any amount of money on all my boys instead of something on myself. I teach my kids to say please and thank you for everything. I teach them to pray at night for the ones they love and in the morning for God giving them one more day. I have been through potty training and teeth brushing. For the next 20 or so years, I will deal with loud farts and grinning to find out who's it was. I will deal with dirty fingernails and arms full of fake tattoos. I will deal with trucks laying around the house and zero sense of pain. I will deal with tears and heartbreak. But at the end of the day, I deal with a whole lot of love. And everything that I have ever given up for these boys, is worth it. My heart is so full of love. And so is theirs.

So after I delete Facebook, those 25% of my friends that remain, well, it will probably drop down to 10%. And that's okay. Because I have never been more happy in my entire life. Until tomorrow...

 

P.S. I am going to try and talk the hubby into making our closet into a pantry this weekend! Stay tuned Monday to see if it gets done (;