5 Weeks to Go!

I can't believe how little time left I have of this pregnancy. It really seems like it has flown by. I don't know if it is because this is my 2nd pregnancy, or if it's because life with a toddler sometimes seems like a blur. Either way, the end is very near and very quickly approaching.
It's a strange feeling being 35 weeks pregnant, not on bed rest and no complications in site. It's a wonderful feeling. I feel free! I had my regular visit with my OB on Monday. Everything looks great and she is just thrilled that this has been a completely uneventful pregnancy. We are so close to being in the clear that if any unfortunate event happened in the next week and a half, I am confident that the little miss would be just fine.
My next OB visit is on January 29th where I will have a precautionary ultrasound to check on the placenta and be sure that it is still in tact and functioning properly. We'll also get another look at the little miss which is always a treat. They should be able to tell me her weight as well, which will give me a good idea of what to expect when I deliver.
I can't believe how soon she will be here. It's surreal, as most wonderful things in life are.

In other exciting news, Rachel found at that she is also having a baby girl! It's pretty safe to say that they will be automatic friends. They'll grow up together and get to spend so much of their lives together. What a blessing!
Rachel and I did a little celebrating today by heading up to the outlets in Marysville to buy some clothes for our little ladies. We hit up The Children's Place, Osh Kosk, Gymboree and of course Carter's. Carter's, of course, got most of our money. They have the cutest clothes on the planet. I had the hardest time choosing what to buy. I really try to be practical, but when all is said and done, I wish I had bought one of the cute little summer dresses. Oh they were just adorable! Good thing she has two wonderful grandmas who will probably never say no to going clothes shopping for her.

Before all the excitement of labor and delivery, I get to have a baby shower next weekend. Erica has put together what sounds like a fabulous party for me and my closest family and friends (minus my mom and sister :-/). We will be having the shower at a day spa where myself and all of my guests will be getting manicures and pedicures. It's going to be so wonderful! I can't think of a better way to make me feel special and pampered.
Can't wait!

And the Holidays have come and gone!

Christmas and New Years have come and gone!
I don't feel like they flew by as quickly as they have in years past. I really do feel like I thoroughly got to enjoy everything about Christmas.
This year we went to several family and work Christmas get togethers. I think every weekend of December was spent with family or friends. Our little house was so cozy with all the lights and decorations. Judah just loved looking at them every day. When he would get up in the morning and come downstairs, he would practically beg me to turn on the Christmas lights.
We had a nice Christmas Eve at Andrew's parents' house. We basically just hung out together and had a yummy Italian dinner. Cheryl made zeppole and pizzelle, which are traditional Christmas treats in her family. Then we had her famous lasagna, which is always a hit.
Christmas morning was wonderful at home. Andrew and I could barely sleep and ended up getting out of bed around 5 am. We had to wait for Judah to wake up, which was really difficult, but he finally decided he was ready for Christmas around 7:30. We had some amazing french toast for breakfast (a recipe that I attribute to my mom) and opened our presents around the tree. I must say that my favorite present were my yellow gold diamond hoops from Andrew. He out does himself every year. I cried, of course. The gift just made me feel so special. I think his favorite present from me was his 12 year bottle of McCallan. He has been enjoying it on occasion ever since.
Judah wasn't too interested in tearing open his presents. He kind of just liked to watch us do it for him. He loved his new books and especially the toy I picked out for him. Let's just say it has a bunch of balls that you bang with a hammer. Enough said. The kid loves balls of all shapes and sizes.
After our morning together, we headed back to Andrew's parents' for our giant Michels' family gift exchange. Every member of our huge family opens one present at a time. It takes forever, but it is a lot of fun. Their living room looks like a war zone when everything is said and done.
We headed home with our loot in tow so that Judah could get a good nap in before heading to my parents' house for Christmas dinner.
Dinner at my parents was nice and low key after our hectic morning. It was the five of us, plus Jacob and Megan. We had some nice appetizers and wine while we finished making dinner. Then my mom served a beautiful prime rib with a green peppercorn sauce. It was so delicious! I think she needs to make that every year. We exchanged gifts while we nibbled on Christmas cookies. Judah enjoyed his new train/block set and his new tool set. We gave my parents a framed photo canvas of pictures of them and Judah together over the last 16 months. I thought it was a really special gift and so did they.
We made it home shortly there after and pretty much just crashed for the rest of the weekend. We gobbled up what was left of our Christmas cookies and I even had Cheryl make me another batch of her peanut butter balls. I could not get enough of them!
I think this year, we had the best Christmas thus far. I know they are only going to get better and better as the years go by. I love my husband and I am so happy to have him in my life. This was our 4th Christmas married. Kinda makes me feel like an old timer! Next year will be even better!

Thanksgiving Weekend

Success!
This weekend went very smoothly and I would say that our family had a great time.
Wednesday was a little chaotic for me. I was finishing up some of my cooking that I had promised my mom I would do for dinner that night. It's a little hectic when you have a 15 month old running between your feet. That trickiest part was getting the pies in the oven, transferring them from rack to rack as I adjusted the temperature and their place in the oven. Baking two pies at once can be challenging. My oven didn't do such a great job last year. I think it took me almost twice as long as it was supposed to take. This year was different, thankfully! My pies turned out beautifully in the proper amount of time!
Andrew made it home from work just in time for the three of us to pile in the car, load it up with all the food I had made, games and other essentials and head to my parents house for the Kefgen Thanksgiving dinner.
Jacob and Megan were there along with my Grandma as well. We did some finishing touches on the dishes we had all prepared and sat down to a beautiful and delicious meal. Everything tasted fantastic.
Judah refused his dinner as he has been doing lately. He's not into it for some reason and I'm not sure why. He loves breakfast and usually eats a good amount at lunch. He has two snacks during the day and drinks a lot of milk as well. I'm wondering if he is eating too much at his other meals and is too full by dinner...
Anyway, Judah was ready for bed at about 6:30. I went ahead and gave him his bath and put him down at about 7. He slept great over there! Us adults were able to play this fun game that my parents got at some 2nd hand store for about 50 cents. It was really entertaining! Megan's delicious pumpkin pie followed and then we kind of just sat back and let our tummies digest everything we had put into them.
I was getting so tired by about 9:30 since I had gotten up with Judah around 5:45 that morning. We decided we had better head out since we had to take my Grandma home too. We got everything loaded up into the car and I think we made it home by around 10:30 or 11.
Thanksgiving day was spent with Andrew's family. We headed over to Rick and Cheryl's after Judah got up from his nap around 2 pm. Andrew's Grandparents, his aunt and uncle and Erica and Paul were over there as well. We were missing a few family members of course, but we had a nice afternoon and evening. Football was watched, turkey was eaten (over and over), boys played together, boys fell asleep super easy. All in all, it was a nice Thanksgiving. We were pooped again around 9 so we headed out.

On Friday we started our Christmas decorating. We spent the morning listening to Christmas music and putting up a few of our decorations. Judah liked the addition of the garland and string of lights in the living room. Andrew and I had a chance to have some alone time together in honor of our anniversary. Judah was dropped off at Rick and Cheryl's in the early afternoon. Andrew and I went to see A Christmas Carol in 3D. It was a fun Christmas movie. We walked around the Everett Mall a little bit too and it was very surprisingly not busy at all! It was probably like any other "busy" Saturday for them. We spent the rest of the evening relaxing at home, ordered a pizza from our favorite place - Romio's, and watched Four Christmases. I got to sleep in the next morning which hasn't happened in ages! We decided to get a little Christmas shopping done before we went to pick up the boy. We decided to go to Target first to get some Christmas lights and ended up doing all of our shopping there. No need for the crazy mall! Once again, we shopped in Everett and therefore Target was hardly busy at all and very easy to navigate. Picked up the boy in the late afternoon and spent the rest of the evening straightening up the house and putting some Christmas lights outside on our patio. Now there is a warm glow outside. Can't wait to have that same glow inside the house when we get our tree put up next weekend!

Today was a rough day for me. We made it to church finally!! It's so frustrating to me how few and far between our trips to church are. Life is just so much more complicated when a person has a child.
I was so uncomfortable today! It literally felt like Audrey was dancing on my bladder. I kept having to go to the bathroom but when I would go I really didn't have to go at all. My pants felt way too tight and it hurt me to sit in church for as long as I did. I was squirming the whole time and I was really tired too, so I kept having to pry my eyes open. I couldn't wait to get out of there, which is ridiculous because we haven't been in weeks and weeks! When we got home, Judah was ready for a nap so I decided to take advantage of that and take a nap at the same time. I ended up sleeping for 3 hours! I must say that the nap was the highlight of my day. It felt amazing to sleep that well. When I got up it was time to head over to Rick and Cheryl's again for Josh's birthday party. I still wasn't feeling great. Just uncomfortable and yucky in general. The thought of trying to put on something other than my pj pants sounded terrible so Andrew told me to stay home. I didn't really want to miss out on hanging out with the family, but staying home just sounded like the best thing. So I did. I couldn't stop thinking about chocolate so I decided that for dinner I would go get myself a blizzard from DQ. Oh the things you can do while still wearing your pjs! The drive thru is one of them!
It was a long weekend, which was very nice. I like having time with both Andrew and Judah together. Tomorrow it's back to the daily grind!

It's Thanksgiving Time!

I was so excited to get started on my Thanksgiving baking and shopping this year! I love making pumpkin pie. It's one of the highlights of the holidays for me. This year, since we are celebrating Thanksgiving with my family on Wednesday and Thanksgiving day with the Michels, I will be making several dishes. I am taking a cranberry orange chutney, candied yams, and mashed potatoes to my parents' house on Wednesday. Thursday I will be bringing two delicious pumpkin pies to the Michels' house.
With all of this cooking, I had to start early. This afternoon, while Judah was taking his nap, I started on my pie crusts. I am so happy because I came up with two new techniques that proved to make the job much easier and more efficient.
I used my food processor to blend the flour mixture with the shortening and butter instead of doing it by hand. The dough ended up being much more evenly blended and there wasn't a pile of flour at the bottom of the bowl when I was done mixing the rest of the ingredients together. Then I rolled the dough out on a sheet of wax paper which kept my counter top from getting too messy. To place the dough into the pie plate, I simply inverted the wax paper and pushed the dough into the plate. Quite simple and much less mess!
Now my crusts are freezing until Wednesday when I will assemble the pie fillings and bake the pies.
Tomorrow I will make the chutney and the yams so that I have minimal work to do on Wednesday.
I love holiday cooking and baking!

Tomorrow is also mine and Andrew's 3rd anniversary. At times it feels like much more time has passed than just 3 years, only because so much has happened. These 3 years have been the best of my life. I wouldn't trade them for anything. I can't wait to see what the future holds for Andrew and I and our little family.

Richly Blessed

I feel so blessed in life. Sometimes I can't believe how much God has given me. I was scanning through some old pictures of our family tonight. Every day I am filled with more and more gratitude for my little boy. He brings so much joy and delight to my life and to my husband's life as well. Every day that I get to spend with him is such a blessing. He brings a smile to my face and it is impossible not to be happy when he is around. He is such a sweetheart.
I am of course saying all of these things as a biased mother. I just can't help but feel so grateful to God that He gave Andrew and I this precious, healthy, happy, smart, lively little boy to take care of. The most joyous part of being a parent is having the opportunity to watch your child grow and develop. These past few months have been so much fun with Judah. He learns new words all the time and I just love hearing him practice. Right now he has learned to say "God!" and "car". He has been saying "ball" for about 4 months now. That is by far is favorite word. He also loves to say up. He loves to go UP the stairs, he loves to climb UP onto the ottoman, and most of all he loves to run to me, wrap his arms around my legs and say UP! It just melts my heart. He is working hard on saying kitty, but when he can't get the full word out, he calls our cat "Dee" for short.
He really has his own little language that he uses to communicate his point to us when he is trying to tell us something. It's so funny to hear him jumble together words and sounds when he is telling us that he wants more of a particular food. It's so obvious what he is trying to say, but he just doesn't know how to put it together.
I could go on and on.
I just feel so blessed and so thankful to God for my son. He is a light in my life. He is living proof that God loves me. He is evidence of God's grace, mercy and blessing. I feel so privileged that Judah has been entrusted to my care.
I was thinking tonight as I noted my ever increasing belly that this baby girl is going to be just as precious as Judah. It's so hard to imagine my baby when she is inside the womb. I don't know her personality or her face or her likes and dislikes. I just know that I love her and that she too is a gift. One day soon she will be doing all of the same things that Judah is doing now, but with her own style and grace of course. When she arrives, our world is going to change again so drastically. It is hard to remember what life was like before Judah arrived. Everything will be turned upside down when our sweet little Audrey June comes into the world. We won't remember much of what it was like to just be the three of us. It's going to feel like we are really a little family with four members.
I have less than 90 days to go! I will be holding her and loving her sweet little self before I even know it.

Exercise - it's good for the body!

Yesterday I decided that I had gone long enough without exercising. For fear of becoming a total lard butt during this pregnancy, I made the decision to get my body moving. When I was pregnant with Judah, I went to the gym about 3 times a week doing cardio and weights. It was great for me. I felt like my body was in really good shape.
Needless to say, I don't have a lot of time to exercise at the gym these days. I can get out and push the stroller around, but I find it to be less satisfying than going to the gym. With the morning sickness and fatigue I was having for the first 4 months of pregnancy, I pretty much didn't feel like doing anything at all.
Anyway, yesterday I looked up the on demand workouts on our cable menu and found a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader workout. It ended up being pretty great. At first I thought it would be too intense for me and my growing belly, but I really liked it. I was feeling sore when I got up this morning which is always a good sign. Then I decided that I should get out and take a walk with Judah. Getting out of the house in the morning seems to help the day move a little more quickly and I know that Judah and I are both happier when we get out of the house.
I went to McCollum Park and walked around their track 3 times. I think I went about 2 miles! (The track is bigger than a standard track and field track.) I am planning on doing this more often so that I can keep moving. I really don't want to be out of shape, gasping for air when I'm in labor. They say that the better shape you're in before you have your baby, the easier labor will be on you. Gotta keep moving!

Other than that, I've been having a tough time with Judah lately. It seems like as soon as Andrew walks in the door and I start making dinner, Judah needs all of my attention. He doesn't want to be with Andrew, he wants me and me only. The second I start chopping vegetables and getting dinner ready, he pretty much turns into one giant meltdown. It's been very trying for me in a lot of ways. I just don't understand it, because I spend all day with him. We do everything together. Why is it that as soon as I am unavailable to his every need, he becomes hysterical? It makes me feel like I'm not doing enough for him as it is. I wish I understood the toddler mind a little bit better. Lately from dinner time until bed time it has been really stressful in our house. Andrew and I are both burned out from a long day, Judah is in tears barely able to eat his dinner because he's so hysterical, and the night turns into a sobfest for me because I feel so overwhelmed. It has honestly felt like it did when Judah was 2 or 3 months old when all he wanted to do was nurse and be held by me and didn't want anything to do with anything else.
Oh the joys of motherhood. I know this is a phase, but whenever I'm in a "phase", it seems like the phase is going to last forever. Just praying for some wisdom on how to deal with this situation and how to best parent Judah through this time. I'll probably wish for this time back, just like I wish for those times back when Judah was that little. It would just make it a whole lot easier if this little boy came with some sort of a guide so that I knew what I was doing.

Well, Andrew is leaving town again tomorrow. Company retreat in Leavenworth until Friday, then Judah and I are going over to meet up with him and his family. Not looking forward to him being away again, but such is life. The weekend will be fun! Supposed to be snow in the pass this week, so praying that we'll have a safe drive.

And now it REALLY feels like fall

We had such a beautiful summer this year. I must say that this week I haven't minded the weather forecast at all. We have been without much rain for a good part of this year. I haven't minded that one bit. It's been absolutely fantastic to wake up with the sun shining these last few months.
Now that fall is in full swing, we are into our rainy season and I feel that I'm ready for it. The trees are swaying, beginning to lose their leaves. It's beautiful!
Makes me want to cozy up in our warm house with a nice warm blanket and keep the house full of lit candles so that everything feels like it's glowing.

I am looking forward to spending a weekend in Leavenworth with Andrew's family in a few weeks. The company is going to be having their annual retreat at a cabin east of the mountains and they have it reserved through the weekend of Halloween. This is the nice thing about a family business. We get to have little treats like this every now and then. So after all of the non family employees leave, everyone's spouse (and child, if applicable) is welcome to come to Leavenworth and spend the weekend. It's going to be fun!
We did the same thing last year when Judah was just an itty bitty 2 month old. It was fun then, so I'm sure it will be even more fun this time. We are thinking of taking Judah trick or treating in town on Halloween. I'll need to get him a costume of course.

Today Judah and I had to miss Bible study. I really hate when that happens, but he's had a bad cough the last few days and I still can't seem to get over my cold either. I thought it had passed, but then I had a killer soar throat yesterday and have been fighting other symptoms today. So we stayed in all day.
I was able to take a nap with him, which is always nice. I made a delicious dinner too - scalloped potatoes and bratwurst. Then I finally made the pumpkin cream cheese muffins I've been eyeing from someone else's blog that I have been following. They were absolutely divine. Andrew and I both had 2 muffins each after dinner. So sinful!

I'm hoping that we are both feeling better tomorrow and can actually get out of the house. I need to take a gift to my best friend. Surprise, Rachel is pregnant! I am so excited! This is something we've talked about for years - having babies together. Now we actually get to do it! She is due in early June - the 7th, I believe. Our little ones will be about 4 months apart. I'm so happy to be able to share this time in life with her! What a blessing!