Saturday, December 30, 2017

Merry Christmas!

Can you guys believe Christmas is over? It always seems so crazy to me that you have this entire month (or more) or decorating and shopping and planning and celebrating and all of the sudden, in one quick day, it's just over. Most years the weeks following Christmas leave me in a bit of a funk, a Christmas hangover, but this year is a little different. Now that Christmas is over we are officially in baby countdown mode, so while I am still a little sad about my favorite time of year being over, we defiantly have something big to look forward too!

Anyway, our Christmas was wonderful. S got a full week off surrounding the holiday so not only did we get a chance to get things done beforehand, we also had a few days to spend together and recover after. On Christmas Eve we had our friends A and J, and their kiddos as well as her parents over for brunch. It was nice to let the kids play and burn some energy while the adults hung out and ate all the yummy food. (the other, not pregnant, adults also got to drink all the yummy drinks. I missed my eggnog and rum this year!) After a day of playing the kids were worn out enough to go to bed without too much of a fuss, so we did our usual traditions. First the obligatory posed pictures of the boys in front of the Christmas tree.



Don't be fooled by the few cute pictures we managed to get.... most of them looked like this!


Then we put out our milk, cookies, and carrots for Santa and his reindeer and read our Christmas stories in front of the tree. 



(This is a really good angle and the book is helping to hide my enormous baby bump!)

And one of my favorite parts was taking a moment to take in our beautiful tree in our beautiful new house. I"m just so happy here and so happy that we get to call this place ours.





After we got the boys settled S and I (mostly me!) finished wrapping some last gifts and put out our stockings and headed to bed too. We told the boys they were not allowed to go downstairs in the morning until we were all up and could go down as a family, and amazingly they listened and even let us sleep in all the way until 6:30!







The boys opened stocking while S and I got settled and got some coffee going for ourselves, and then came all the gifts. I've gotten much better over the years about being mindful of my spending and not just buying stuff to have stuff, but to buy meaningful things, but I admit love watching them open presents that I have put so much time and thought into. They were all grateful, and S was very grateful over the box full of beer and the new beer fridge that Santa brought him!

And can you see the them we had going with some of our gifts? These were only two of the four coffee making apparatuses we received! They are much appreciated and I am grateful that we are going to be adequately caffeinated when we have a newborn in the house!


Our house looked like a bomb went off in it when all was said and done, but a happy and festive bomb! And if there is one good things about being a million months pregnant at Christmas, it's that nesting is kicking in pretty hard and every trace of Christmas was cleaned up and packed away on the 26th!



Oh, and one last thing before I close out this post..... would you believe we managed to catch Santa on my phone camera again this year!!


Sunday, December 24, 2017

almost 35 weeks!

A quick pregnancy update! I'll be 35 weeks in two days, and I am definitely at the point in this pregnancy where I no longer feel cute, I just feel huge and uncomfortable! Overall, things are good though. The baby is still sitting really high, which makes the whole breathing thing really difficult at times! But he or she is head down and ready to go! I've finally started switching to some maternity clothes when I'm not wearing my workout clothes (which is most of this time!) and I"m wondering why I waited so long.... can we all just agree that all pants should be made with stretchy waistbands? I'm still sitting at about a 10-13 pound weight gain, which I am happy about, but the last few weeks of pregnancy are always where I tend to pack on some pounds so we will see. Whether that is due to the baby putting on weight quickly at the end, or me giving up and eating lots of sugary cereal I"m not totally sure!

We still do not have a name for this baby, boy or girl, but we have at a least written a list down so if I do go into labor before we officially decided at least we have a running list to choose from! I also have done very little to prepare, which shows that this is my fourth kiddo! I did finally wash some newborn clothes and separated them into gender neutral and boy, but I realized that this baby is going to be born into much colder weather than any of the other three, so either way we are going to need to pick up some new outfits. We bought on pack of diapers and some wipes, and a few nursing essentials. I also made playlist of music to listen to during labor, because obviously that is a top priority! Once Christmas is over I am going to get on buying the last few necessities that we need, like a boppy nursing pillow and a dock a tot and some bassinet sheets. I also really need to pack a hospital bag, because if I go into labor without one packed I do not completely trust S to get together everything I need. In theory I would probably have some time once labor started, but since R came so fast and furious I am under strict instructions to head to the hospital the minute we feel things starting. I"m actually starting to get nervous about that, especially if this baby decides to come before my parents get here and I have to scramble to find someone to watch the kids. I"m also worried about if ti happens in the middle of the day since S works 45 minutes away. And I also have a somewhat irrational fear of going into labor when I"m in the carpool pickup line at L's school. I know that sounds a little ridiculous, but that parking lot gets crazy and can take 30 minutes to get out of!

So, in a recap, I am uncomfortable and a little nervous, but also getting really excited to meet this baby! Especially the anticipation of finding out if he or she is a he or she!!!


Meeting Santa!

Late (per usual) but I just had to share out sweet Santa photo from a few weeks ago! We've been seeing the same Santa for a few years now and I"m always really happy with them. There is never a line, they don't get crazy if you snap a few cell phone photos, and he spends a good amount of time with the kids so we don't feel rushed at all. This year both L and L2 were completely unafraid and ready to meet him, but R still gets a bit nervous and insisted we be in the picture. I always complain about having to be in it, but truthfully it's a perfect little family photo and I"ll probably be really sad the day he doesn't want me and S in it with him!

So here's our Christmas 2017 family Santa Photo!




Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Christmas tree and Christmas baking!

Well, it's five days until Christmas, and we have been busy! We finally got our tree up a few weeks ago, and I am so excited to have our first Christmas tree in our new house! Not only do we have the perfect front room and front window for it, we have taller ceilings in this house so we were able to get the big tree that I want to get every year and we never can! 



We actually ended up being a little overzealous and the tree was too tall for this room. We thought about leaving it in the entry way, but in the end I really wanted it in front of the window so S had to get out the saw and bring it down to size a bit!

Decorating the tree is a tradition I look forward to  every year. I love going through our old ornaments and explaining their meaning to the kids. With that being said, as much as I love it, giving young children fragile ornaments to hang on tree branches stresses me out, and add in that our new floors our all tile...... well, I think we are lucky that we got out of it with only three broken balls!








I also managed to get all of our Christmas baking done, despite being a million months pregnant. It took me two days of baking and I exhausted, but we ended up with lots of yummy treats to give to all of our friends and neighbors... not to mention plenty of leftover for this pregnant mama to snack on!





And now I"m going to try and spend the next five days relaxing and soaking up the end of the season!

Saturday, December 9, 2017

Maternity/Family Photos

OK, huge picture post ahead! We went back and forth on whether or not we wanted to do any sort of maternity pictures this time around. Originally I decided we wouldn't, we would just take some of our own pictures to announce the baby on our Christmas cards. (Obviously, most people know at this point, but we never made any sort of social media announcement so our Christmas cards will be our way of telling people we don't talk to on a super regular basis). Anyway, as we got closer I started seconding guessing myself and decided to put out some feelers for a new photographer and see if we could find someone. We ended up finding an amazing girl who came highly recommended (and didn't cost a fortune!) and I. Am. Obsessed. Seriously, I could not be happier with the way our photos turned out. The setting was beautiful and I think she got such amazing shots of our family. And being eight months pregnant and basically feeling like a whale, it's saying a lot that I love the way we all look in these!

Like I said, I am in love and can't wait to put our favorites on Christmas Cards and then print a bunch to hang in our home!