How 'bout now?

What about the text color now? Easier to read, same, or worse?

Bittersweet

My belly is getting in the way of my favorite way to sit in my computer chair while playing on the computer.

Hmmm....

I'm toying with my blog design....obviously. I'm not sure what I think about this look and there's more I want to do with my header, but I can't figure out what or how. I think I'll live with this a while and see how I feel about it. What do you think? Too much? What about the colors? Any suggestions?

Sugar and spice

Everyone knows our news now. And I'm so glad. It wasn't that I was bursting to tell people, I just wanted to be able to talk about ideas and plans we had been thinking about. Like the bedding I like. Or the swing that is so frivilous but just.so.cute. Or the fact that I might like to try a co-sleeper this time around. It's just good to be able discuss things normally. After we finally spilled the beans, I kept feeling like I was saying too much.

So. We're having a girl! Her name will be Genevieve, and we will call her Evie (I'd tell you her middle name, but it's a family name with a unique spelling and I don't feel good about announcing it on the blog...if you know me well enough to know my first name, it's also going to be her middle name). We're all over the moon about it. Sweet Hubby is elated. He keeps talking about "our little girl" and about how we're going to have a daughter. He even bought her her first dress and shoes. She'll be wearing them home from the hospital. A couple times a day, Stephen will stop what he's doing to come over and tell me, "I just can't wait to have a baby sister." I can't keep myself away from the dresses and bows and tights and Mary Janes whenever we go to the store.

It's a whole new adventure for us. I just can't wait to meet our little girl.

The new ornament on our tree

Soooo...? How's it going??

Merry Christmas everyone! I know that these days life can be very busy, but I've noticed that many of my favorite bloggers aren't around much. I'm really interested in how the holiday plans are going and what your plans are for the next two days (or a week if you're the New Year's kinda partier). I'm used to getting little glimpses into your daily lives and not knowing how things are going during the holidays is making me miss you.

So. Leave a comment on my blog to let me know how your holidays are shaping up or you know, BLOG about it and leave your link in the comment section. ;)

Love all around.

The gift that starts giving before you even open it

I feel safe in posting this here right now because Sweet Hubby never reads my blog. Ever. And I'm not bitter. *ahem*

Anyway, last night as I was finally dozing off wayyyy past my bedtime, I woke up to Stephen calling to me from across the hall. "Mom. Mom!"

"What is it, Stephen?" I respond, slightly annoyed.

"THAT!"

I then realize "THAT" is some sort of noise coming from somewhere in the house. And in my fog of sleep I can't figure what the heck it is. So I lay there for a second hoping it will stop on its own trying to figure out what it is. When I figure that it's some sort of alarm and probably a watch alarm, I haul myself out of bed to investigate. This is when I remember that I've bought Sweet Hubby a watch for Christmas. Standing at the watches in the Walmart, I vacillated between an analog and a digital and finally decided on a digital. A decision I was cursing at about 11:52pm last night. And oh yeah, I've already wrapped all the presents, so the thing is under the tree WRAPPED. Among about 30 other presents. In the dark. So I crawl under the tree, dig for the tiny box in which the watch is wrapped and finally lay my hands on it. Thank goodness I didn't wrap the watch in another box, or else I wouldn't have been able to desperately start pushing the buttons THROUGH the wrapping paper to get the darn thing to stop. Something I did worked and it shut off. I crawl back to bed and try to go back to sleep.

Except about 3.5 minutes later, it starts going off again. I go through the same process, and the third time it goes off, I was actually asleep again. This is when I decide to bring the thing to bed with me in case it does it again. Which it does. At which point I tear the wrapping paper off and inspect the darn thing by its own little light which stays on for about 2 and one quarter seconds. Just long enough for me to accomplish nothing. So I flip open my cell phone for some light and begin trying to methodically push buttons to figure out how to turn the alarm (which seems to be set for every 3.5 minutes, a function of which I don't understand the usefullness) off. When it starts beeping in my hands, I realize that I'm going to have to actually OPEN one of Sweet Hubby's Christmas present, which makes me very sad. I finally got the instructions out and figured out how to turn the alarm off.

It was then that I realized what a sorry little watch this is. And I feel bad for that. I guess it's not too late to take it back. At least that would ensure that we don't go through a night like that again.

Anybody watch Friends? I felt like Phoebe.

Squirt Baby

I ran across this while looking at baby stuff online and thought it was so funny! What will they come up with (for lazy parents) next?

Elfed

My parents "Elfed" the kids. Here's the result. The kids were laughing so loud and hard that I couldn't even hear the music.

Have you heard this?

I heard this the first time yesterday on the radio and was cracking up....but listen to the end! It's GREAT! Be sure to gather the kids.

Christmas Food

I'm really excited about our Christmas menu. It doesn't seem to be too much work, but we're also going to be eating very well Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. My plan is that we'll have our nice big meal on Christmas Eve and then take it easy Christmas Day. So here are the menus:

Christmas Eve Dinner
Herb Roasted Pork Roast
Sweet Potato Souffle (from Honey Baked Ham Co)
Lemon Pepper Green Beans
Some kind of white potatoes (MIL is bringing those, I'm not quite sure yet what she's planning)
Cornbread dressing
Cranberry sauce

Dessert:
Cobbler and ice cream
Pumpkin Pie
Spiced Cider
Hot Chocolate


Christmas Day Menu
Breakfast:
Tater tot casserole (tater tots, bacon, green onions, eggs and cheese--layered in that order)
fruit medley (berries and peaches)
sausage and gravy
biscuits
muffins ("cupcakes" for kids to decorate)

Lunch:
Leftover Christmas Eve dinner
Leftover Spaghetti from Tuesday night (the night before Christmas Eve


Snacks (for snacking on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day)
Chocolate chip cookies
Peanut butter fudge
Rice crispie treats
Chex peanut buddies
sausage balls (mmmmm....)
fiesta crescents (some more mmmmmm...)
chips and dips


I'm so hungry.

So what do you think? Am I missing anything? Got any more ideas for me?

Perfection

Well, we had our ultrasound yesterday afternoon. The tech lady told me to drink lots of water and I did (over 30 oz!) and then she was 30 minutes late for my appointment. I felt like going postal on the waiting room full people just so I could get the ultrasound and go to the bathroom already! Just as I was threatening whining to the receptionist, the tech came out to take me back. She told me she just needed to get a few good pictures and then I could go empty my bladder. But a few minutes in to the ultrasound, she announced that I was too small to be able to get good pictures, so I needed to keep the full bladder. Another 30 minutes later (let's count this...pregnant lady needing to use the bathroom for over an HOUR now), she was finally done and and I waddled and danced to the bathroom, afraid to run. It made it really hard to enjoy all the awesome looks we were getting at the baby when I all I could think about was that I might wet myself if she pressed just a little harder with that wand thingy.

But all in all, it was great. It was such a relief to see this little child and he or she is absolutely perfect. All the little parts are there and Baby looks just like the older brothers did at this point. I forgot to scan the pictures while I was at my parents' house yesterday evening, so I don't have any to share here. But take my word for it, Baby is precious and I can't wait to meet this little person.

And no, I'm not telling pink or blue yet. We're waiting to be able to tell our parents and kids at the same time at Christmas. I'm really looking forward to that. It'll be great to have everyone together to find out at the same time.

Comedic relief

Earlier this evening, Sweet Hubby had to run into the Wal*mart for a few things while the kids and I stayed in the car (brrrr...baby, it's cold outside). Stephen started to tell me something, then asked me to turn the radio down so he could concentrate. I did and he said, "Toads have dry, rough skin and frogs have smooth, wet skin." I told him he was exactly right.

He immediately followed up with, "And did Jesus have teeth?"

I would rather throw a tantrum, but instead I'll write this short post

Just a quick note to say that in case you were wondering, I do not and will not have any good news to report at this time like I had hoped I would in yesterday's post. Things didn't exactly come through.

But the ultrasound is tomorrow. I'm thinking of scanning the ultrasound pic at my parents tomorrow so I can post it here. So you can ooh and ahh over the black and white 2-D picture of my baby who looks like every other baby in those kinds of pictures.

Whatever.

Oops.

Last night, the entire family was in here in the bedroom with me while I was doing some e-mails on the computer. I glanced over and realized that Zachary had our closet door open and was peeking into the mirror that's on the inside of the closet door. I suddenly remembered that we still had a few Christmas gifts left in there that we don't plan on wrapping and immediately and loudly told him to shut the door. I startled him, which was my intention, and he quickly shut it. He then walked up to me all grins and informed that earlier in the day while Stephen had been playing on the computer, he spied a batman scooter and he said he walked up to look and saw it WAS a batman scooter. There's a batman scooter in there mama! Sweet Hubby starts telling Z to be quiet and quit talking about it like he was afraid that Z was going to let the secret go. But the secret was already gone. So I said, "Well, it's for HIM!" Zachary's eyes lit up, "The batman scooter's for ME?!"

We had a good laugh and Z didn't stop grinning and talking about it all night long. I told him that he should try to forget so that he would be surprised on Christmas morning and he said, "I AM surprised, mama!"

I'm glad he's so happy about it. I'm also glad that we weren't trying to reserve this for a Santa gift because we would be so screwed right now.

Sweet Hubby remembers when he found out about Santa--after he spied his wrestling ring playset in his parent's closet and then got it from Santa for Christmas.

Twiddling my thumbs

I'm feeling a bit anxious today. We have two big things coming up over the next two days and the pressure of waiting on them is starting to wear on me a bit. One should happen today, but I'm not quite ready to go public with that yet. If things go well, hopefully I'll be able to share some great news later this afternoon. But that's all I'll say about that.

The other thing is my should-be-20-week-but-getting-it-at-18.5 weeks ultrasound. We'll get to see the baby on Wednesday. I'm so excited. We've only had one ultrasound so far and that was 2 months ago when Baby still looked like a bean. Now it looks like a little miniature person. By this time in my previous pregnancies, I had had several ultrasounds because of some other health issues. But I've only had one so far and I'm absolutely DYING to get a glimpse at this precious little child. We'll get a glimpse of it's gender, too, but probably won't actually find out until Christmas morning with the whole family. Right now, I just want to see the baby. I'm not even really concerned with finding out boy or girl. I just want to look at it's face.

Oh and also, if you care to share some ideas for boys' names that you wouldn't mind if I ended up using, we could use some suggestions. We keep coming up with names and then deciding against them. We're clear out of good boy names. Our latest one is Grant, but I'm just not sure. It doesn't feel right. We're good on the girl name. That one's been decided for a while, and I think we'll actually stick with it.

*watching the minutes tick by*

I wonder...

...Am I the only one that gets excited when the word verification thingys that you have to do on blogger (and other places, but for me it's mainly blogger) are actual words, or could be actual words? It's fun, but when they are words or common letter combinations, I can also type them out faster. Because those .05 seconds are really important to me. *rolling eyes at self*

Mission: Christmas Food

I finally got my computer hooked back up after our illnesses (mine and the computer's). I didn't start feeling better yesterday until just a little bit before the concert, but I DID start to feel better, so we all made it. It was a great concert and we had an awesome time...if you're even a slight fan of TobyMac, I suggest seeing him if he comes to a town near you. It was a fantastic show. Even though he didn't get on stage until 9:30. And we didn't know the three acts that came before him. And the second act made me think that their music would be good punishment for someone like me. Other than that, we really did have a lot of fun. :)

So now that we've got one more holiday festivity under our belt, I've got my eyes squarely focused on Christmas Eve and Christmas day. The gears in my brain have been squeaking running all afternoon trying to sort out my food plans. I think I might be getting a little overly ambitious with it, but I'm really excited. This year, for the first time, we'll be staying home for Christmas and having my parents and my ILs over. So I'm hosting. Never thought I'd do that. But I can't wait and I want to make it really special and fun as well as relaxing and semi-stress free. One of the things I'm looking forward to most is staying in our jammies for as long as we want on Christmas day.

However. To be able to be relaxed on a day when one is usually frenzied about food and guests and such, it takes some serious planning. Which is why I'm starting to really get things planned 12 days out.

So, after I hit publish here, I'm off to find the recipes I want to use for our special Christmas Eve dinner, Christmas Day breakfast and all the little treats and snacks I hope to have. Once I get everything figured out, I'll post it here for those of you nosy enough to care. ;)

Have a great rest of the weekend, everyone!

Ick.

Well, I've finally been able to crawl off the couch long enough to come update you (I'm pretending you care). Things were NOT pretty for a while here (at one point, Marc-Adam, who also started throwing up, was laying up against me while I was laying up against the toilet....we were a sad sight). It must be something we ate. Zachary dodged this altogether, thank goodness. The rest of us were not so lucky. The last time someone threw up was about noon (it was me....I wasn't able to even keep water down) and we all had some peanut butter toast for dinner. So far, so good.

So, if we can keep getting better, it looks like we're go for our concert tomorrow night. Can't wait!

No, no, no!!!

Great news: Dad located the problem with our computer (it was exactly what I suspected), got the part ordered, and now the ol' 'puter and I are on speaking terms again.

Not so great news: Stephen woke up throwing up last night and I've felt queasy (and not in a normal pregnancy way) for several hours now. I threw up once, but I can't tell if it was illness related or not. Apparently there's a nasty tummy bug that's been going around the area, and until now, I thought we dodged it. I called Sweet Hubby at work and he's not feeling so hot either. So now I'm panicked about tomorrow night. We HAVE to go to that concert. And we have to be the ones to use the tickets. They have our names on them and the tickets say that they may ask for ID at the door to make sure the names match, so if we don't go, my mother-in-law's sweet Christmas present will be a waste.

*thinking healthy thoughts*thinking healthy thoughts*thinking healthy thoughts*

The Last Christmas

I heard this song for the first time the other day and was a puddle of tears by the end of it. I'm sure it's largely due to my current state of affairs, but seriously, this has got to be the sweetest song I've heard in forever.

Cousin Kelli helped me (thanks!), so here goes this try to make it easier.



And don't tell me about it if you were steel enough to not at least get a little moisture in your eye.

Just so you know

We're having issues with our computer and tomorrow I'm taking it to the repair shop, also known as Dad's. Hopefully he can get it back in working condition. Until then, I'll be out of touch on my computer, so if you know me in real life and need to get in touch, you'll have to actually pick up the phone! :) Otherwise, I'll be back ASAP! Have a great weekend!

Proof there's fun and excitement at our house

Marc-Adam's got a new word: WOO-HOO!

Done!

As of this past Sunday, we are done with our Christmas shopping for the boys. From what I hear, Sweet Hubby is done for me, and as soon as he gets paid again, I'll be done with him. And then, we'll be done!

We failed miserably this year in our attempt to only get 3 gifts per child. But the good news is that I still stayed within our budget. I got some really good deals and they each got a couple of books and workbooks and such. They won't be excited about those come Christmas morning, but they're something the kids will enjoy later on. We got the "biggies" that we intended for the kids....Zachary got the Batman Imaginext Batcave, Marc-Adam got the little grocery cart (although, that really can't count as a biggie, but I think it was the most expensive thing we got him) and Stephen got some new wheels. I had intended to get him a Razor scooter, but he told me that he wanted a new bike instead (the $29 blitz ad bike at Wal*mart!). The bike I got him looks huge, and I'm really dreading Christmas morning when he gets on it and I realize that it's just the right size for him.

Everything else they got were little things...a magic kit, play-doh, clearance action figures, fancy-schmancy coloring books. I think Christmas morning is going to be a lot of fun.