Some people rarely use molasses but at my house it is a staple  My favorite kind of cookie is molasses and my boys love them too.  In fact, my boys love molasses more than I do, they eat it straight from the jar and beg for more. This week we made Molasses cookies and we used up one jar, so I let the kids finish it off. I thought these pictures were too funny not to share.

Molly Marie Jacobson got blessed last week by her wonderful father Jeffrey. She got blessed in the same outfit I was blessed in. Luckily, my parents made a last minute trip to Wisconsin so my Dad also got to be in the blessing circle.  

On July 20th I was scheduled to be induced.  Unfortunately that morning when we called the hospital they told us they did not have room for us.  Jeffrey and I were very disappointed.  But that afternoon my doctor stripped my membranes in the hope that I would start labor on my own.  To everyone's happiness, it worked!  I was so afraid that the hospital would send me home and having never gone into labor on my own before I stayed at home till the pain got pretty unbearable (my contractions were never consistent just painful).  

Jeff and I left for the hospital at about 6:05 p.m.  And on the way there Jeffrey actually got pulled over for speeding and just like a classic movie Jeff told the policeman we were on our way to the hospital to have baby.  Luckily the nice policeman let us go even though we didn't have any identification.  Once we got to the hospital the only thing I said to anyone was "I want my epidural." They first sent me to see if I was in the labor (by this time I knew I was) and when they checked me I was at a 7.  So they sent me to the delivery room and when I got there and my doctor checked me I was at a 9.  Then my doctor told me the bad news, "You don't have time for an epidural."  I was completely crushed.  But a few minutes later I started pushing.  

I had to push for about an hour before Molly came out.  I had no idea before how much work goes into have a baby.  I thought it would just be a matter of enduring the pain.  But about halfway through pushing I realized that Molly wouldn't come out unless I pushed her out and I proceeded to have the hardest work out of my life while enduring the worst pain of my life.   Needless to say I have a much higher respect and understanding of women who have babies naturally.  Molly Marie Jacobson was born at 7:55 p.m.  And weighed 9 lbs. 12 ounces.  All the doctors were shocked when she finally came out, no one thought she would be that big and somehow I didn't tear at all (most likely because I was pushing for so long to stretch everything).  

Looking back on labor it actually wasn't that bad, especially seeing my recovery has been awesome! Jeff thinks I should have the rest naturally, I am still on the fence.  But Molly is here and healthy and we are loving having a little girl!

No, I have not had my baby yet, sadly.  But I am getting induced on Friday!  I thought I would go into labor on my own this time, but so far, nope!  But before I do have the baby I thought I would post some pictures from Jeff and I's favorite summer vacation spot, my parent's cabin/trailer.  It is a little trailer park in the middle of no-where (about a hour from our house), only open in the summer with a built in 9-hole golf course, pond, and tiny playground.  My parents, who live in Florida, only us it a few weeks out of the summer and we are very glad that they let us go up there whenever they are not using it.  We love staying up their Friday nights.  We BBQ, have a camp fire, play golf (Jeff does anyway), play at the beach, swim in the pond, ride the golf cart, and just enjoy the country.  For us it is really rejuvenating! 

So since we have moved into our badly cared for foreclosure house we have made a lot of changes.  Today I finally decided to take some after pictures (about a year late) but sadly my camera ran out of batteries.  So I have a total of 3 after pictures, and they aren't the best pictures either, sorry.  Maybe more pictures will come but seeing these are a year late, I doubt it :).  

Knightley loves all boy things but his favorite are cars, fire trucks, and farms.  He likes superheros and guns and things too but they are definitively down on his favorite list.  I don't quite know what I have done to encourage this (maybe because I don't really now how to play superhero with him, or maybe because he had only girl friends to the age of 2) but I am very happy for it.  So one of his favorite things right now are Farms and Cows.  His favorite animal is definitely a cow, with a giraffe second.  And of course Mason loves what Knightley loves.  So when I saw an advertisement for a free "hay day" at a dairy farm I knew that Knightley and Mason would love it, which they did!

They got to climb into two huge tractors, which they thought was the coolest thing ever.  We also got to see a tractor bail hay, which is actually pretty cool.

 They pet a baby cow (can you believe this cafe is only two weeks old!)

They had the coolest tractor bikes.  Knightley loved this, Mason doesn't really know how to pedal yet but he had fun with us pushing him.  

But Mason did love feeding the goats.  They just had a bucket of food for them and Mason probably feed them 20 handfuls.  

This is what is happening in our house right now and luckily we do have Allstate :), though we haven't filed our claim yet.  About two weeks ago we started hearing noises from Knightley's room.  We thought it was just a bird outside, then we thought it was coming from the gutters.  When we continued to hear it and found nothing after cleaning out our gutters, we realized it must be coming from the attic.  Creepy!   So Jeff crawled up there to discover a clump of gray baby animals huddled together right over Knightley's room.  But unfortunately our attic is so short the animals were unreachable.  We still had no idea what kind of animal they were.  We threw a bunch of rat poison in the attic and in the sleeping "nest".  Our plan was to wait for them to die and then collect the bodies; but they haven't died and in fact their noises and scratching are becoming louder and more frequent.  We also now hear them throughout the entire upstairs, not just in Knightley's room.  Finally I realized I could discover what animal they were by identifying the noise they make, and low and below a baby raccoon is the perfect match to the noise I continually hear in the house. And unfortunately rat poison doesn't work on raccoons and it is illegal for us to capture a raccoon.  So I called a professional wildlife animal catcher (I think it is crazy that there are multiple businesses based on catching animals) and they are coming out this week.  They will also quote us on how much damage the raccoons have done to our attic, and then we will see how much Allstate does cover of it.  This whole experience has not been pleasant and the noise bothers me so much at times I need to move locations in the house so I can't hear it.  But I am so glad that Knightley and Mason have not yet feared the animals in our attic which they call the "chipmunks". And once Knightley pretended to be the "Chipmunk" and would scratch at the carpet and I would try to get him because "chipmunks should live outside, not in houses".