Spring? Is that you?

I'm in disbelief. While we don't have roses and grass popping up yet, it is a balmy 41 degrees right now on the Iron Range. Can you believe that!?!? The snow on the roads is starting to melt, and I can actually see blacktop out there. One thing I'm not prepared for though: all that mud. We've had tons of snow this year, which means my dirt driveway is going to be a muddy river when everything actually starts to melt. Travis is currently outside trying to take snow off the roof of our garage. It didn't look like that much, but I think it's actually like 2 feet of snow up there. Holy moly! Look out river towns: this spring is going to be flood city.

A lot has changed at work since my last post. The former CEO's daughter has stepped into his place and is now running the company. She is a mother of two and so much easier to talk to, so I let her know right away that I was pregnant. All she said was "oh congrats! That is so exciting!" So that's a big weight lifted off my shoulders.

Since Travis has to be at work much later that I do, we began driving separately. This led to spending around $140 a week in gas. A week!!! Any increase we saw in our net income from my raise went straight into the gas tank. So I asked our new CEO on Friday how she felt about me working from home again, and she said yes! As of Monday, I'm a work-from-homer again! That will save us $280 a month, hooray! Travis is also going to start doing some office work as well. He had gotten to the point where he was only working 4 hrs a day, which, in my opinion, is a waste of time for the drive time and gas money spent. So we talked to the new boss and she was more than willing to give him some more hours, plus they need the help!

This week we also got the second piece of our nursery furniture: our dresser/changer combo! It's basically a dresser that you can attach a changing pad to on top. We also have a hutch to go on top of the dresser when baby is out of diapers. It came assembled though, so I have no clue what to do with it for the next 2+ years. It is currently sitting in our living room, just hanging out.

Since our options are somewhat limited up here (Target or Wal-mart) we decided to look at JCPenny online. We have a Penny's here, so we could ship to the store and return easily if need be. We got this set on sale from Penny's, and let me tell you: best decision ever. Penny's customer service is awesome! We had the crib and the conversion rails sent to the store so we didn't have to pay for shipping. They called us to let us know it had arrived, so we went Saturday morning to pick it all up. When we got there, the little old lady at the register had Travis help her get the box out of the back, but when he brought it out the box was bigger than me! There was just no way we were getting it in or on top of Trav's Dodge Neon or my Kia. The lady at Penny's even offered for us to use her car! We ended up going back the next day with Trav's mom's SUV, and he strapped it to the top. Travis put it together that evening, and after only a few bumps, it was all set up!

The dresser was being shipped on a truck to our house. I called a few times to check on it's ETA, and got really excited when they said it was at our local UPS. It took another week to get here, which started to make me anxious. Come to find out, they had to coordinate with a moving company to deliver it. The moving company called us to confirm delivery, and delivered it fully assembled. They even brought it up to the nursery and squeezed it through our narrow hallway!

So long story short: I would repeat this entire process again in a heartbeat. Couldn't be happier.

Here's a progress picture for you too!
17 weeks and there is no hiding that I'm pregnant! I still just feel fat at this point. I'm ready to start feeling baby move!