New Shower!!

We finally did it! We accomplished our goal to redo the shower/tub/floor in our bathroom before the baby gets here!!

Before-

Our nasty, moldy, grimy, plastic tub/shower. Eeeew.

After demolition, we found out it was actually only 4 years old! Oh well, it was time for it to go!

During-

4 full days with one plumber, two tile guys, and a bunch of dust. We don't have a second shower, so Jeremy used the gym (once!) and I showered at the neighbors (thank you Barry and Lisa!!).

After-

12X16 Porcelain shower tiles with decorative glass tile. Neat alcove for soap/shampoo, brushed nickel hardware. Ameri-cast Porcelain coated tub. 12X12 Porcelain tile floor. The granite counter top was already there.

We celebrated the successful week by going out to eat. Jeremy had to take a pic of me before we left 34 weeks, 6 days. Woohoo!!

Now that I am so wise on the subject (ha!) here is another one of my lists!

Things I learned about remodeling something in my house:

• Whenever someone is giving you a bid, make sure they include ALL material fees in the bid.
• Don't waste your time getting 5, 6, and 7 different bids. The price really isn't going to change that much. Rather, make your decision based on referrals and how you FEEL about the person doing the work.
• It's probably best to go with the same person for the entire project. We used two different people to save $300, but now I'm not so sure it was worth it. It just took too much time to coordinate between everyone.
• It's worth paying money if it means that you don't have to do it.
• Dust gets everywhere. Not just in and around the room being worked on. I mean EVERYWHERE!! A thin layer of dust will collect on every bookshelf or solid surface in the house, in closets, on the bedding, on the couch, in the kitchen, on the bread bag and fruit bowl, on pictures, everywhere!!
• Don't bother reorganizing things anytime near when your remodel happens because everything will be moved around anyway. (yes, meaning my weeks of nesting were all for naught!) Plumber had to move our baby room stuff around to get to the pipes, tile guys had to take doors off and put them in bedroom and family room, piles of organized pictures all messed up, toilet in the hallway, etc.
• Clear everything out of the room that is being worked on. Just because you put things inside a cabinet does not mean it will be safe.
• Expect extra scuffs and scrapes on your walls throughout the house.
• Don't offer your nice towels to the workers, even if it's to cover things up that they aren't working on.
• Make sure that pathways used by workers are covered with drop clothes and paper during the ENTIRE project.
• Speak up if you think something isn't right. I did a good job about this 98% of the time. It's the one time I didn't say anything that ended up costing us an extra $155 to have another guy come and fix.
• Arrange a plan with your workers to dispose of demo materials and garbage before settling a price and committing to a deal.
• Pray for guidance, and then follow promptings. There are several key decisions I made based on spiritual promptings that I know made a difference in the project. (i.e. go with the licensed plumber instead of the tile guy's friend; go to Lowe's before buying tub at Home Depot; don't decrease order on number of bullnose pieces; pay the tile guy with a check-not cash- and pay him at the very end of the project).
• Shopping for tile is like shopping for clothes. The first item you like is going to be the one you end up with. So don't make it more difficult than it has to be!
• It's probably better to remodel an entire room instead of doing it in pieces. For example, the paint and counter top was upgraded before we moved in, then we upgraded the toilet and fixtures last year, then the shower this year. But now lots of the paint is all messed up, the toilet was removed and got scratched, and tools were all over that beautiful granite, and we still have old cabinetry. So now I can see that it's better to just gut the whole thing and start from scratch. Otherwise, you end up doing double the work, double the time, and you probably don't save much money in the long run anyway.
• (This one is mostly for Jeremy) Budgets are a good thing to give you some framework, but you can't freak out when you go over budget. It's a part of life.
• (This one is mostly for SarahLynn) If you put forth the effort, you can make it happen. Sometimes, you will have to leave work early and call people when you don't feel like it, and be available when you're not used to it. But you CAN organize a remodel project, and it CAN get done! You DID IT!!

Lake Arrowhead

Last weekend we took the afternoon to drive up to Lake Arrowhead. It's a place in the mountains about 1.5 hours from Huntington Beach. It was foggy on our way up, but soon everything cleared up and we were able to enjoy the nature!

We took a boat tour on the little Queen Arrowhead. The lake is completely private, so this was our only chance to be on the water. We saw tons of mansions and rich people's homes, including Shirley Temple's old home, a guy from the Beach Boys' home, and the owner of In&Out Burger's home. Some of the places were on sale for 14.5 million dollars and up!

Here is the awesome view from the road to Lake Arrowhead. You can see all of San Bernardino County and into Orange County and beyond!

More things I love about pregnancy!

Here is a little tradition we are starting with some family members. At 32 weeks of pregnancy, we wear this blue shirt, stand in the ocean, and get our picture taken. I'm the third one to do this so far!

10 more things I like about being pregnant:

• I started taking DHA/Omega 3 fatty acids with my prenatal vitamins back in January. Within 5 days, I noticed a HUGE difference in my facial skin. No acne of any kind, no blemishes, everything is beautiful and smooth. And I know it's from the DHA pills because if I forget to take them 2-3 days in a row, I start getting pimples. Without being pregnant, I never would have discovered this!
• Today at church I discovered that I have a good excuse to get up during the church service and walk around the halls. Honestly, my feet kept falling asleep because things are getting harder to circulate, but once I stand up, I feel great. So I got to have a little "wake-up call" during church without looking evil.
• I have a really good excuse for being emotional. For example, I bawled like a baby while watching Steven Carrell's last episode of The Office. And it wasn't just at the end. I was bawling through most of the show. How embarrassing, but since I'm prego, I don't appear insane to others.
• On the emotional note, I feel more and more in love with Jeremy EVERY day. He has noticed that I've been saying "I love you" about 3 times more often than usual. I dream about us on romantic adventures and about us taking care of Little One. Some days, this isn't so good because it makes it harder to say goodbye when we have to go to work. But for the most part, it is so neat to be extremely in love with him.
• Okay, last romantic perk (sorry to bore you!). Jeremy has more frequently been saying that I look beautiful--especially when I look like a ragamuffin! He also wants to take random pictures of me walking around the house or wherever we go. I think the pregnancy is making him more in love, too.
• Being pregnant makes eating SO much fun! Everything tastes so amazing. I guess some women have a hard time with extreme flavors while they're pregnant, but for me, the more flavor the better!

• There are other eating privileges. I can eat whenever I want and people don't get mad. I've been eating little snacks about every 1.5-2 hours and drinking TONS. (It seems like I can never get enough water in my system). Also, at parties or socials, people let me take food first! Being pregnant is awesome!
• Being hungry all the time, I've come to appreciate our Foreman Grill. I've been cooking chicken, pork, steak, veggies and even fruit with it. It's a good thing Jeremy didn't let me throw it away each time we moved. We just needed to wait for a good pregnant lady to use it!

• I get to shop for baby things! Well, not really shop, but register! Last night, Jeremy and I spent hours at Baby's R Us. My favorite area was the toys and books. So many neat things to do with Little One!
• Today is my 34 week mark, and I have had a surprisingly easy pregnancy. I am SO grateful for this!! It’s only been in the last few days that I have felt my energy weaken and started to experience a few side effects of pregnancy like swollen feet and shortness of breath. Part of that might have been because I directed the Kindergarten music show on Wed. Finally, I am all done with shows for the year, so I can relax!!! Only 4 more weeks of teaching, and I will be on maternity leave to have my baby sometime around June 25.

Venting

I am sick and tired of people telling me that "When you have your own kids, you'll understand, you'll think differently." And "Believe me, as a parent, I'm telling you this is the way it is." As if my opinions/feelings/beliefs aren't valid until I have children! As if I'm less capable as a teaching professional because I'm not a parent yet.

I know I have a lot to learn in the realm of parenthood, and I know that some of my ideas about things will change. But I do work with 570 children 9 months out of the year, I've been teaching professionally for over 4 years, nannied for multiple families, worked with children all over the world in various circumstances, etc. etc, so I don't think I will be too surprised about things, esp certain issues that have come up lately. And I don't think my opinions on those certain issues will change much.

It would just be nice to be respected enough for who I am now, rather than who I'll be later. After all, what if I never have kids? Does that mean I would be less respected by others? If so, then that is downright discrimination and is just plain wrong!

How We Celebrate Easter

Easter is my FAVORITE holiday (along with the 4th of July).

Unfortunately, Easter is horribly under-celebrated by the vast majority of Christian folk. Most of us agree that Christ's death & resurrection is the reason why Jesus came to earth in the first place, so it baffles me that people don't go more crazy for Easter than they do for Christmas, or at least give the two holidays equal importance.

Even among members in our church, I feel that the holiday does not get the attention it deserves. So I am trying to start a few special traditions that will help our future children understand that Easter marks the time when our Savior accomplished His ultimate mission on the earth: to save us from physical and spiritual death, and is therefore the MOST important Christian holiday ever.

Here's what I've come up with so far.

How the JermaLynn Zavorals will celebrate Easter:

• Play lots of Easter hymns and songs on the piano/stereo several weeks leading up to Easter. Isn't it wierd that we start playing Christmas hymns in our home in October, but we often wait until Easter Sunday to play Easter music? No more in our house! I was able to play the piano a lot this Easter season, and it changed everything!
• On Good Friday, eat hot cross buns for breakfast. These are sweet rolls with fruit and nuts inside and frosting or extra dough on the top in the shape of a cross. The rolls have been cooked for hundreds of years in Europe on Good Friday. And yes, the song "Hot Cross Buns" was a real song that children in England sang as they sold the buns on the morning of Good Friday. You could buy one large one for a penny, or two smaller ones for a penny. I found some hot cross buns at health foods store and ate 2 dozen of them throughout the week!
• On Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday, find time to enjoy nature with the family- maybe a nature walk, a walk on the beach, a picnic in the park, whatever. This year, we enjoyed the gardens at the Getty Museum on Palm Sunday. And I taught my primary class (aka Sunday school) outside on Easter Sunday so that we could enjoy the spring nature while we talked about the resurrection.
• Read the Easter story from both the Bible and Book of Mormon throughout the week leading up to Easter. I spent 2 weeks teaching my primary class about the Easter story in the Book of Mormon. These 7 & 8 year olds know their gospel doctrine really well, but when it came to telling them this story, they were clueless! We can't forget to tell our children about the miracles that took place in the Americas after Christ was resurrected.
• Have a party on Easter Eve. We have parties on Christmas Eve, so why not Easter Eve? We had an Easter Eve party with two other couples. Dinner included Hormel ham and deviled eggs. We played games, colored hard-boiled eggs, had a competition with making rice-crispie sculptures, and ate cake. YUM! Parties in the future can also include singing Easter songs.The competition was to create easter eggs out of rice-crispie treats. Jeremy made scrambeled, Sunny-side up, and deviled eggs, along with an omelette, as seen below.
• 
• Have a big dinner on Easter Day. From now on, our main dish will be Fish and Honeycomb, the food that Christ ate when he was resurrected. (Salmon with a honey glaze will be perfect! We could also have unleavened bread and salad with yummy olives). I thought of this idea too late, so we didn't actually do it this year. But I think it's a perfect way to remember Christ. It was so important that He ate food with his apostles after he was resurrected. This proved to everyone that Jesus was indeed alive again, his spirit reunited with his flesh. If He was just a spirit, he wouldn't have been able to eat.
• Also on the Easter Day feast, we will include resurrection rolls. These are your typical Pillsbury rolls, but when they are cut open, they have an empty hole in the center, like the tomb. The way you make them is by rolling the dough around a marshmallow! I'm told the marshmallow melts away in the oven.
• Keep the Easter Bunny and everything that goes with him to a minimum. I know this is a very controversial issue with some of our extended family, but to me, it makes no sense to spend time and energy on making my children believe in something that isn't real. As one of my primary students wisely said at church last week, "At our house, we don't celebrate the Easter bunny because we like to focus on the Savior. But we still eat lots of candy!!"