Our newest addition is almost here!!!

I had my last doctor's appointment today before I have this little girl. I'm getting really excited and really sick of being pregnant! I'm scheduled to go in for a c-section on Monday morning. Woo hoo! I may not have any posts until after the baby - but we'll see. Don't people just want to see baby pictures anyway?

My little Abby is 5!

Abby just had her fifth birthday yesterday. It's hard to believe I have a 5 year old, but she's a pretty great one to have. She started the day off with breakfast in bed. Abby made me breakfast in bed once with Tom and now she thinks it is the ultimate treat. It was pretty funny when she requested it! She had a pretty fancy breakfast with eggs, sausages, juice, and blueberry muffins. I'm a little worried she might request breakfast in bed with every special occasion! She and Sophie decided to have more muffins in Abby's bed later. It's a good thing she doesn't seem to notice crumbs in her bed!


Abby got her first bicycle for her birthday. She was SUPER excited about it and has since gone outside several times to practice. It's just a bummer that it's so cold outside.


Here's Abby contemplating her cake and Sophie trying her best to blow out the candles from 4 feet away. Abby had fun helping me decorate the cake. She pretended she was an expert baking fairy called in to help me.


We ended the day with dinner with both sets of Abby's grandparents. We sure are lucky to have them close by! Abby even got to meet Cosmo at the restaurant. Abby gave him 5 and Sophie gave a small reluctant wave.


Abby had a pretty fun day - and she still has another party coming up on Saturday with her little girl friends. I keep hoping I'll go into labor and have the baby before then so Tom can deal with 10 little girls instead of me! Pray for contractions everyone!!!

Ward Christmas Party

I know this is a little late in coming, but I just got a good picture from our Ward Christmas party that I thought I should post. Our little Abby is quite the ham. We discovered just how she is willing to go at the Christmas party this last December. The primary did an adorable adaptation of the Nativity for our party. The sunbeams were all sheep. Abby decided to really get into her role as a sheep. While the rest of the primary kids were sweetly singing various Christmas songs Abby was belting out her own version in fluent "sheep". (Imagine a series of Bah baaaah baah bahs . . .)

Everyone at the party was laughing SO hard - I started crying I was laughing so hard. Abby kept up her sheep songs and most of the other sunbeams decided to join in. I wish I had some video to post of it - I'll have to see if anyone in the ward will share.

Enough snow already!

Okay, so I posted last month about not getting much snow. Well, the last few weeks have totally made up for it and I'm ready for it to stop. It's WAY too early for me to be getting anxious for Springtime - since it's still a long way off. The roads are just yucky and it's too cold outside. I don't want to go shopping with the girls because I'd have to trudge through the snow with them, and I don't want to go in the evening because that's when the roads are all icy and the parking lots are too treacherous. We keep running out of basic food items. I'm going to have to start making my own bread just to avoid going to the store. Ack! Enough already! I know lots of other people have way more snow than we do, but I'm complaining anyway. Here are some pictures I took yesterday of our snow. It kept going ALL day long. It's been snowing all day today too. :(

Here's the view from our front porch.

Here's my view looking down while still on the front porch. Nice belly, eh?

New Year's Eve

We went up to Payson Canyon and stayed at a Boy Scout camp lodge with family and friends again this year for New Year's Eve. We had tons of food and fun chatting and playing games. The girls had a blast running all over the lodge. I was especially excited to find that the floors weren't covered with Box Elder bugs this year. We slept on air mattresses and actually got a fair amount of sleep considering it wasn't our usual accomodations. We were lucky enough to put Sophie in one of the two side rooms for her sleeping. Otherwise NOBODY would have gotten any sleep that night.


We had a gigantic breakfast of pancakes, eggs, bacon, hashbrowns, breakfast burritos, cereal, and any leftovers you could pass of as breakfast food in the morning. Then everybody suited up for some time in the snow. They get a TON of snow in the canyon and it hasn't been used much so far this winter. (The Klondikes all start next month or so.) So there was a lot of powder to trip us up as well. I got a few pictures of the kids sledding - but it's a little tricky since they won't ever just sled slowly for the picture.

Sophie seemed pretty hesitant to walk in the deep snow. Here is where she was abandoned - don't worry, I went and got her.

Sophie didn't really enjoy her fun sled ride down the hill with daddy.

Luckily, she got over it by the time they made it back up the hill.

Abby did a little sledding, but it seemed like she spent a lot of time off on the side of the sled track eating snow.

Sophie and Tyler felt more comfortable lounging in the sled eating the snow off their gloves. Whatever keeps them happy, right?

Well, that was our New Year's Eve. We were glad to get home and sleep in our comfy beds. Being 8 months pregnant and attempting to get off of an air mattress doesn't really seem to mix well.

Christmas

I have put off posting about Christmas because I didn't feel like taking the time to do Christmastime justice. Now it's been about a week and a half and I've probably forgotten all the stuff I wanted to say. I was so grateful to be able to take the whole week off work - the time off was really nice. I got the house nice and clean and felt like I was at least sort of prepared when Christmas came.


We attempted to get some nice pictures of the girls in their Christmas dresses, but we don't seem to be getting any better at the whole picture thing. Oh well! We did get a couple of pictures with Tom and I in them, which tends to be a rare feat.



We put Abby off for about an hour Christmas morning so we could sleep a little more and let Sophie sleep as well. I was surprised at how patient she was! Here is a picture of Abby and Sophie running out to the living room to see if Santa had come. Abby had looked down the hallway earlier and couldn't see that anything was different and was seriously worried that Santa had skipped us.

Christmas morning was lots of fun and we blew through all of our presents really quickly. It's hard to put a damper on Abby's enthusiasm!

We had a pretty relaxing morning and played with our new toys for a while. We then had a delicious brunch at my parents' house followed by a visit to Tom's parents' house where Santa had been tricked into filling another stocking for him. I need to figure out how to get Santa to fill two stockings for me too! We ended the day with a yummy frozen pizza dinner and more playing with new toys.

Christmas Eve

We spent Christmas Eve with Tom's family. We had a delicious and very filling dinner followed by our second annual Nativity re-enactment. Our Joseph didn't want to participate and Sophie was quite possibly the worst "angel" ever. But at least Mary had a fun donkey ride to Bethlehem! (Special thanks to Uncle Scott, who may end up being the donkey forever because he does such a good job.) We ended the evening with lots of presents and exhausted children. Christmastime is lots of fun and I'm glad to have lots of family to spend it with!

Here are the angels proclaiming Christ's birth. Abby kept her arms up pretty much the whole time!

"Mary" had a really fun donkey ride, while "Joseph" seems to be giving a prayer of thanks that it is over.

Here is the saddest/naughtiest little angel attempting to kidnap baby Jesus to add to her baby collection.

Our cute little nativity cast.