Weeks 36-38: Cute boy, Surprises, Graduation, Christmas, Sushi, Family, Practice Contractions, and a New Year!

 I've had my baby!

So I'm going to catch up on the last few weeks so that I can then put up a blog about my darling baby boy!

Here is week 36!

December 14, 2014

I got to go to church in two places this day. We went to J's cousin's homecoming talk at 9, hung out for a few hours at their house, and then went to our 3rd hour responsibilities in our ward. It was a pretty long Sunday! I'm also pretty sure that I asked J to take a picture not including my feet...

At my OB appointment that week, she said I was dilated to a fingertip/1 cm and he was still not down far enough. Bummer.

I was getting more and more ready to have this baby and be done being pregnant.

I love this picture. He was lining his toys up and taking pictures with his phone. So awesome.

C loves listening to baby's heartbeat and putting his hands on my tummy. Here, he's giving baby kisses

Taking pictures

Love this boy

When pictures like this happen, I need to go back and look at pictures like the previous one...

He was mad at me for making him put away his toys before exiting the bathroom. Mean mommy.

I love that he's trying to see the card on his forehead

Not sure what it is, but it seems like a cute little playground to me.

I love this.

He's a cutie pie

I think he said it was an apple.

Thursday, we went to dinner at J's parents' place. We were going to spend the night and then he would travel to Rexburg with them early the next morning for Kristin's graduation from BYU-I.

I showed up with C at about 5 and TJ answered the door! Jolyn, Todd, and TJ (J's sister and her hubby and 4 year old) had come to Boise for Christmas and surprised us all! 

I burst into tears when I saw them and J kinda acted surprised... silly guy...silly pregnant responses!

So they were all going to go to Rexburg and I was going to sit around at home...

I changed that pretty quickly...

We all packed into 2 cars and headed on our 5 hour drive. They were awesome and made sure that I didn't need to drive at all, since driving was awful for me with the kiddo kicking me the whole time. Sitting wasn't too bad, though.

So here's our car on the way over.

Surprising Kristin was fun. Then we moved her stuff to the new place, helped with white glove cleaning, hung out, and then got ready for graduation.

I let the photographer take all of the graduation photos, so I have some of the boys playing.

C took this one of Auntie Jo and the next few as well.

Watching a movie while we cleaned. C would sit how TJ sat. It was really cute.

Saturday afternoon, we shuffled cars and people and went home. I was lucky enough to go in a car without C. Poor J and his dad dealt with angry, non-napping C the whole way home while I got to sing Disney songs and chat with Kristin and Linda.  

On to week 37!

My sweet boy smiling with his bottom teeth on the outside... (it doesn't bug me.... it doesn't bug me... it doesn't bug me... it doesn't bug me...) <- lies... lol

December 21, 2014

It was fun to wear this dress while so pregnant. I felt somewhat skinny again. :)

This was the day of our Christmas choir program. We did several numbers and I actually played my clarinet on 2 of them! I took the flute descant, transposed it to clarinet, wrote out the music/entered it in note by note to my computer, and practiced it for months. It went great!! I only messed up once, and I don't think many people noticed!

J's family decided to all come to it, which was awesome. I was happy that I got to perform on the clarinet that they bought for me. Kind of a cool "thank you."

This week's OB appointment, I had progressed to a 1 for sure... darn. Whatever, though. I'd been a fingertip when I went to the hospital for C.

While J and I went to the rest of church, his family crashed for nap time at our house. We had dinner and then went to Caldwell to see their Christmas light display. It is pretty spectacular. 

It was raining and quite cold, but it was still amazing!

The ornaments on this tree? Tumbleweed covered in lights... *shakes head*

And thus begins our many treks to and from Eagle where J's parents live.

I (like most people, I think) am most comfortable in my own bed. It gives me space, I sleep better, and I'm a happier woman that way. So we went over most days that week but I still wanted to go home for bed time. I think it was very smart for me.

We played games, chatted, watched movies... it was great!

Tuesday night, we played Dungeons and Dragons with his family. They really liked it, I think. With J's "adjusted" system, you can be pretty much what you want. It's neat. We had quite a hodgepodge of characters and abilities. 

Wednesday was Christmas Eve. At lunch time, we all went to J's uncle's place for sushi. In the past, it's been his signature sushi of Spam and mango with personal pan pizzas. But this time, it was just sushi, so we had a lot more variety. My favorite part was that I got to roll some! I may or may not have cheated a little and had some raw fish.... I was MOSTLY good, though... :) There were some awesome rolls. I loved it!

This was on the way home. The picture doesn't do it justice because it was a lot of snow and a lot was sticking to the roads.

This was Christmas morning! It snowed a lot and was just beautiful!

Our Christmas morning was really nice. 

We got a shower in before C got up which turned out to be very smart.

C opened his stocking gifts-hot wheels, crayons, teddy grahams, and a Kung Fu Panda shirt.

J and I opened ours-we shared a stocking this year.

We made french toast, bacon, and sausage.

We called my family and opened presents together.

Our Skype call with Tyler on his mission was awesome. He is so strong and faithful. He's quite an example! Jolyn then pulled out a camera, had us all get lined up for a photo, turned it on, joined us and said "say 'Jolyn's pregnant!'" we all took a second to register and ask her if it was true and it is!! She's expecting the baby due at the end of July! Such awesome news! We are just thrilled!!!!

We had the kids open presents then, and sent them to bed for a nap. It was a short nap, but it was much needed for C.

Then we played, had dinner, and played. :)

I made 7 layer jello and I FINALLY did it right. The white layer needs to come JUST to a boil and I had been letting it boil too much. I was very proud of my jello this year.

 The only problem was that I put a hot layer on too soon, so it melted the lower layers a little... meh, not a big deal.

 Thursday, we gathered together again. We took family pictures in the freezing morning and then hung out for a while. 

This quilt is an AMAZING quilt that my mom made for J.

I think I'll dedicate an entire blog to this mind-blowing quilt.

For now, I'll tell you it's a beautiful quilt for playing with cars and planes. There are roads, shops, houses, a hospital, etc. I love how much it was played with!! So awesome!

That afternoon, we left the kids with J's parents and went on a double date with a fifth wheel. ;)

We went to see The Hobbit and ate sushi at IOU Sushi II. It was really cool. We had a great time, ate until we were going to explode, and enjoyed time away and just as kids.

That night, we played games and I made baked brie. It was scrumptious.

The next morning, C wanted a bath. He's a cutie.

During his bath, he blew me away by spelling his name out. It's backwards, but he picked them up and put them on the wall in the right order. Wow.

Love this.

Here are those family photos I mentioned!

C loves doing yoga. His favorite poses are:

Abundance

and Tree.

I have a cute family.

And a hunk of a husband. ;)

That weekend, J's parents, Kristin, Jolyn and family went to Utah for an extended family Christmas party. I figured it was too close to the due date to drive 7 hours... I was ok with 5 a week earlier, though... eh, you pick your battles, right?

I love this. I was getting ready for church Sunday, and C pulled out daddy's deodorant and knew exactly what to do with it.

Here's 38 weeks!

December 28, 2014

I look tired here. (I am...)

Sunday night, Brady and Amanda came over and Brady helped J put a new handle on my car door. The door handle just stopped working one day, so we had to open the door from inside. Since we would be using both doors when the baby arrived, we needed it fixed pronto.

They attempted to jimmy-rig it a few weeks earlier, but it didn't work, so we ordered a new handle.

Thankfully, they were successful at installing it and my door works! Yay!

While the guys were outside working on the door, the kids played and Amanda was awesome and rubbed my feet (to get a few pressure points...) and then painted my toenails! It was lovely!

Monday, we went over and hung out. I'd decided I was ready to jump start this labor, so I bought a pineapple with my WIC voucher. I ate most of it that evening. I got a few medium contractions, but mostly just a raw tongue...

Tuesday, I went crazy working. I packed the hospital bag (got it all laid out), vacuumed the car, switched C's carseat to the other side, put in the baby's carseat, wiped the door, cleaned out the papers and extra stuff from the car, did dishes, straightened inside, and did laundry.

Here's my picture showing the huge change comin' my way!

I tracked my contractions throughout the day, but most weren't very intense and they refused to get consistent. I'd get them about 5 minutes apart for 30 minutes and then they'd stop for 30 minutes.

 So all I got that day was tired.

I sent pictures to J of my contractions because I was worried about having him around and wanted to update him. Kinda a cool thing to have documented, though.

That evening, Linda did "Footzone" on my feet and we got Hawaiian food and frozen custard with J's parents and Kristin.

Here's my chocolatey boy :)

Wednesday, I had an OB appointment and after all of my contractions Tuesday, I'd gone up to a 2 cm...

Ugh.

I was so discouraged! I just wanted a baby and I wanted Kristin to be around to meet him and I wanted Jolyn to take pictures! Was that too much to ask??

I guess it was.

Wednesday evening, we went to J's parents' place and watched football, ate junk food and veggies and dip, watched an episode of Sherlock, set off fireworks at midnight, and had some sparkling cider. It was laid back, but fun.

New Years' Day, we took it easy for a while and then had Brady and Amanda over again. They are re-vamping J's DND variant, so we worked on that and played a game. Amanda rubbed my feet again. (I figured it wouldn't hurt and might get the baby to come, so I enjoyed all of my foot rubbing I got that week!)

Friday, we had the Bishop and his family over for games. The bishopric had done a planning meeting with the youth earlier that day and had tons of leftover food, so we ate dinner together and then played Lego Rock Band.

They had never done it before, so it was a learning experience (and they claim to not be musically inclined at all, so that made it interesting, too. lol)

Bishop said afterward that his 11 year old looked up the game online to see what it would take to buy it within 10 minutes of getting home that night.

It was a really fun evening. We enjoyed it.

Ever since then, C has been singing "We will rock you" even in the middle of singing "I Love to See the Temple." (YIKES!)

Saturday, we ran some errands. We took down the Christmas tree, went to the grocery store, went to Burger King, hung out at home, FaceTimed with my sister, and I think we watched a movie or something.

This big boy ate his entire burger at Burger King and LOVES his crown.

Black Eyed Pea Soup! Brings good luck for the year!

And kisses from your 2 year old definitely brings good luck as well! ;)

 I love that he thinks he's hidden there. So cute.

The next day, I had a baby! SO! More blogs on the way!!