A little update from the Bannings

It's been almost a month since my last update on things. I was going to wait until Friday but decided to go ahead.

We've been to two beautiful weddings, had two doctor's appointments, sheet rocked a couple of walls, painted, had lovely rain, had a wonderful long night of fun with friends and LOTS of movies since I last updated.

Last weekend was our county's annual chili cook-off, pie bake-off and bread baking contest. I meant to enter the bread baking contest last year and it totally skipped my mind. So this year I marked it down and actually prepared for it. I was trying to get some help from my MIL who has won several awards (official and unofficial) for bread baking, but unfortunately she is also a judge each year for the event. So my coaching was quite limited. I made a Spiced Lemon Cranberry Danish, Healthy Homemade Bread, and Wheat Biscuits. The biscuits were in a different category than my other entries and they took second place. My danish took second place to my loaf of bread in their category. Then my loaf bread got first place overall. I didn't expect to do that well, but there weren't many entries either. After that we all got to eat a smorgasbord of chili, pie and bread! That was the best part!

Jerrad finished my car and it looks great! 4 days after I was able to drive it, the accelerator started sticking. J thought it was because the car has sat for a while. So he took a can of brake clean to the throttle housing. A simple 2 minute task backfired when the straw from the can came off mid-stream and went into the intake. So he took it all apart and got the straw out then had to go to town the next day and order a replacement gasket. There were complications getting it so we had to go to Garden to get that. Once he got that put back together he said I still couldn't drive it because he dropped a wrench and it never hit the ground. The poor guy couldn't win! So the next day he put it up on ramps and the wrench came tumbling down. THEN I got to drive my car again! So a simple 2 minute task ended up taking almost a week because of a big dose of misfortune! But my car is really nice and drives great now!

If we ever get some sunny weather, I'll hopefully give Darci a call and do some maternity pictures. My SIL, Trina, sent me some clothes she found at their discount store that will work BEAUTIFULLY for pictures! I am so excited to see Darci in action! I've been waiting for something big enough to come along so I could hire her.

Jerrad and I took our childbirth classes and are now much more educated. I could probably stand to take all of them again before I deliver, but I will just have to rely on my awesome husband and failing memory!

It is hard to believe that I am almost 31 weeks! I could have a baby in as little as 7 more weeks! Eeek! I still need to paint the stripes on the walls, shampoo carpets and set up furniture. I started taping stripes today and realized why I had Jessalyn's help when we did it at Matthias' house! I got two pieces of tape down in one hour, then gave up! However, Jerrad and I have made great strides in the last few weeks. Rebekah and Malcolm came and helped sheet rock a couple weekends ago. That was a major help! Thanks Bekah!!!

I do have to get my house all spiffied up for my cousin and her husband and her mom to come for the baby shower. I am getting excited for my shower! It's like a big surprise for me. I know it's happening, but don't know much else. So I'm excited about how it will turn out!

Well, I'm probably forgetting something, but oh well! I should be posting more regularly soon so I can tuck some tid bits in those posts.