July into August...

After a pretty busy stretch there, we have been sticking around home, working on the basement and other random projects the past few weeks.

A few weekends ago, Ashley went mountain biking in the coast range on Saturday with his buddy Dakota and another friend while I caught up around the house (aka chase construction dust all over), made plum wine, canned some tuna, preserved more cherries, etc. That night was also Bryce's fiance Heather's bachelorette party (I tagged along for the nice dinner but skipped out on the late night dancing : )

 

The start of a batch of plum wine - our neighbors have two trees and gave us a big basket of them. After that dandelion wine from a few years ago actually turned out pretty well, I decided to try another random wine recipe from an old wine recipe book Susanne gave me a while back.

Flat of blueberries for freezing

Heather Letha and I at Heather's bachelorette dinner

On Sunday Ashley worked his butt off in the basement - these are a few basement photos from over the past few weeks:

Building the concrete forms for the window well around the egress window

Bathroom plumbing installed

Insulation in bedroom (with new window installed)

Fireplace room insulated

All the drywall is now up, taped, sanded etc so its really starting to come together!

The next weekend we met some friends out for happy hour Friday night, went out to dinner near our house, and had an early night. I've been going to a prenatal yoga class the past few Saturdays and then generally catching up on chores, cooking, etc. We picked out basement bathroom tile, carpet, bar countertop, hardware, trim, fireplace tile, etc at a design center, and then Ashley went for a loooong trail run with Josh in Forest Park before we headed to a bbq at Nick and Haylie's Saturday night. Sunday was more basement work, moving junk around down there, organizing, cleaning. 

Carmen relaxing with Ashley on a Friday after a looong week : )

Last weekend I finally picked up the rocker Mom and Dad bought us for the "nursery"! LOVE it. Will post a photo once we have that little corner of our bedroom organized. Ashley went mountain biking with our friend Jonny, I went to yoga, and cleaned, shopped and cooked because on Sunday I co-hosted a small baby shower for a girlfriend (Haylie) which was really fun. 

Part of our group getting pedicures at The Barefoot Sage by our house

We then had a picnic in the park by our place

The whole group, plus Arlo, Jami's new baby. Haylie took these great photos.

Ashley is playing softball tonite, and we're hoping to get out the door early tomorrow morning to camp so Ashley can hit up some more mountain biking trails (clearly he's obsessed : ) The next few weekends are busy - next weekend is Bryce and Heather's wedding (so Hector, Juanita, etc. are in town b/c Bryce and Ashley are in the wedding), then my friend Colette's wedding the following weekend, then Fritz and Susanne are in town and then we're in Wisconsin. Phew! And after that is all done, I have only a month left until the baby arrives - assuming all goes as planned. Yikes!