Brown and Blue Baby Shower

Last Friday my sweet friends Darby and Stephanie threw me a baby shower. When I walked in and saw all the brown and blue decorations I was seriously giddy. LITTLE BOY STUFF IS SOOOO CUTE!!! At least it is to me, after being surrounded by pink ponies, mermaids, fairies and princesses the last 5 years. ; )

Darby made this adorable diaper wreath. It's so dang cute I couldn't bear to take it apart so for now it's hanging up in baby boy's room.

Stephanie made this awesome diaper cake with all kinds of goodies like binkies, bottles, tiny shoesies and little socks hidden in there.

BLUE-berry cupcakes to go along with the breakfast food theme

And an amazing spread of breakfast foods like homemade scones, an egg and sausage casserole, fresh fruit, sticky cinnamon buns, and candied bacon. So yummy!

The two amazing hostesses, Stephanie on the left and Darby on the right. (and Big Baby proudly featured in the middle ; )

It was a great night of food and friends, and so much fun opening little boy presents.

My friend Laura made him the coolest little pirate blanket that was wrapped in this box. Referring to my Halloween costume she wrote, "Fer the buried treasure within the pirates booty! argh!" So awesome, cute and creative!

Group shot of my wonderful friends and supportive ward family.

When I came home with all the little man clothes and boy stuff (hello first Tonka truck!!) Taber was SO excited. Every time he'd see an outfit that was particularly "manly" he would say, "Now THAT'S what I'm talking about!"

I'm so happy our little guy decided to stay in so I could go to my baby shower. Today I saw my doctor and I was dilated to 4cm and 80% effaced. She said this baby is ready to come and he'll probably come fast. She scheduled an induction for Thursday morning so in 3 days or less, we'll finally get to meet him! Can't wait!

Almost Done

I'm in the home stretch of this pregnancy and excited about the fact that I'm almost done!! 2 weeks ago I was 2 cm dilated, 60% effaced and the baby was at a +1 station. I haven't been checked since then but I've been having a good amount of contractions and baby is LOW (as in my poor bladder and sciatic nerve are in a constant state of distress from all the pressure he's causing down there.)

Since my labor with Brinley was so fast my doctor has decided to induce me next week to avoid me giving birth in the car on the way to the hospital. I've never been induced before but the idea sounds heavenly! No middle of the night panicking or waiting for someone to come watch the kids. We could get all our ducks in a row and then calmly head to the hospital to have a baby. Sounds great to me!

Now if I can just keep this kid in here until next Thursday we'll be good. I swear he really really wants to come out. Yesterday I was having contractions every 10 minutes for a good hour. I finally took a nap and they stopped. But they started up again last night and I was having a little anxiety because I'm still not ready!! My baby shower is tomorrow night and I want to make it to that, also my mother-in-law gets here on the 15th and it'd be nice to have her help closer to the time of his birth.

Anyway, here's a fun little belly comparison of me at 12 weeks and yesterday at 38 weeks. Since the first picture I've lost my tan and gained 42 lbs. : ) Pregnancy really does a number on your body but man is it worth it! Can't wait to see this little guy and soak in all his newborn cuddliness.

How we spent our Christmas vacation

Having Taber off of work for a week and a half was the best Christmas present ever. Besides spending countless hours in the snow, here are some other highlights from our week.

GAME NIGHT WITH FRIENDS:

I was really happy when my friend Becca organized a game night because that's something we always love to do with our family over the holidays so it was nice to feel like we still got our game fix.

We played Scum (or Capitalism) and I drew upon my mad gaming skills to reign as the King for all 4 rounds. : )

Meanwhile the kids played on the Wii downstairs. When I went to check on them I was dying laughing watching Teya try to keep up with the big girls. Her face was in such deep concentration I had to take a video. During the first song she's in concentration mode, but once they hit "Who let the Dogs out!" She really gets giggly and into it. She was having so much fun, almost makes me want to buy a Wii.

BOSTON CHILDREN'S MUSEUM

We wrapped up the week with a trip to the Children's museum down in Boston

The kids were in heaven. They loved it so much we bought a year pass for the whole family.

Little monkies definitely wore themselves out. (p.s. what young celebrity does Teya look like in this picture? I think she looks like the girl from iCarly, maybe a little?)

New Year's Eve:

We had a super fun spontaneous get together on New Year's Eve. I was planning on crashing early since I'm not much of a party animal these days. But then our friends called and asked if they could come over and cook Japanese food for us. Um..heck yeah!! They made sushi, tempura shrimp & vegetables, and pot stickers. We ate SOOOO much food it was awesome!

After gorging ourselves on Japanese food we played some games and then went for another round of food. Miraculously I was able to stay up passed midnight and officially ring in the New Year! Spontaneous get-togethers rule!

So that's it for our Christmas break. We were all so sad when Taber had to go back to work yesterday. Good thing he has a 2 week paternity leave to look forward to in the VERY near future! Yippee!

SNOW, SNOW, AND MORE SNOW!!

We got our first big snowfall the day after Christmas and Taber and the girls spent the majority of the week in their snow gear. It got to the point where I stopped putting their stuff away when they'd come back in the house because I knew once it was dry they'd be right back in it.

They had a blast sledding in the front yard

Teya eased into it by riding with Daddy but Brinley (aka Miss independent) went straight for a solo ride on her first time down. Didn't take long for Teya to follow suit.

The girls also convinced their Daddy to build them a little snow cave by the mailbox.

Brinley LOVED the worm hole and it was almost impossible to get her out of there.

On one particularly sunny day we also joined up with some friends at a nearby park to take on the big sledding hill there.

Taber went down first with Teya. It looked so fun that Brinley begged me to take her too. The hill was huge but how could I say no to that sweet little face? Without really thinking I sat my giant pregnant bum down on the sled and off we went. When we got to the bottom Taber was staring at me in total shock. He just kept shaking his head in disbelief and then he banished me to the bottom of the hill. I guess Taber's mom broke a rib skiing when she was 9 months pregnant with him so I can't blame him for feeling a little protective ; )

No sledding adventure is complete without some hot cocoa to finish it off.

I'm happy that we finally got some snow and even happier that my kids love it so much.

Just look at Brinley's face. Snow angel ecstasy : )

Igloo in New England

Weeks before we ever saw a single snowflake, Taber got an itching to build an igloo. I don't know where it came from, perhaps his Alaskan roots? All I know is he started researching igloos on the internet and couldn't wait for it to snow so he could build one. Luckily for him our first big snowfall came during his Christmas break. With plenty of snow and time on his hands he got to work.

The first night he was all on his own and the work was slow moving. He got a few blocks done but I told him he should probably recruit some helpers if he wanted to finish it before he had to go back to work.

The next day Garrett, one of the young men from church came over to help. With an extra set of hands it started moving a little faster.

The girls were "helping" too, and LOVED being out in the snow with their Daddy.

After an hour or so our friend Jeremy and his son McKay joined the effort and that's when things really started picking up. They were packing three snow cubes at a time and the walls started coming up.

Garrett worked on the inside, smoothing out the sides with a machete and packing the blocks in tight after they were stacked on.

Meanwhile Taber, Jeremy and McKay were cranking out snow cubes. They put a little water in the bottom of the bins to make the snow stick better, then they packed it in tight.

Once the blocks were molded they stacked them on top of each other moving them in a little closer each time to narrow the igloo out towards the top.

Here's a nice action shot of Taber and Jeremy hefting one of the snow blocks on.

With about an hour to go Garrett's three younger brothers joined the effort. It was exciting to see it so close to being finished.

With some help from a stool they packed the last cubes of snow on top.

Finally after 5 hours of hard work, the boys (and Teya) had finished their snow-tacular igloo.

I think we were all amazed at how awesome it turned out. Definitely exceeded my expectations!

When they were done everyone crammed inside.

All 9 of them fit in there, it was pretty impressive.

It looked so cool that even I decided to squeeze my big belly through the tiny entryway to check it out.

Once it was finished the true test was to sleep inside.

Taber and McKay braved the 17 degree weather and earned bragging rights as the first people to sleep in the igloo. I'm sure they won't be the last though, Taber can't wait to get out there and do it again.

The girls haven't slept in there yet but I'm sure they will at some point. Taber did bring them out there last night and they LOVED it. Teya was especially excited about wearing the head lamp.

While I had my doubts at first I'm pretty happy about the fact that there is now an igloo in my backyard. It's made our first snowfall especially memorable and I'm sure it will be a fun thing to keep the girls entertained all winter.

Christmas Magic

Christmas is absolutely magical when you have children who believe in Santa. When the girls woke up on Christmas morning they were giddy with excitement. When they saw that Santa had come every word that came out of their mouths was followed by an exclamation point! It was so fun to watch them discover the magic of Christmas morning.

The first big surprise was a pop up tent with a tunnel. They didn't waste any time crawling in to explore.

Then they dumped out their stockings and it's a good thing Santa put some apples in there because that was all we could get them to eat before they jumped into present opening.

Teya was thrilled with everything she got. Brinley was too but I think she liked Teya's stuff a little more. Good thing Teya is good at sharing.

My sister Naomi made this awesome plaque to hold our running medals. And I made Taber a running collage by scanning in all his bibs and putting them together with race pictures to make this cool running frame. Definitely made me excited about the prospect of getting back into running after baby gets here.

I also put together another Blog book for our family. It was interesting to see how my blogging habits have evolved. The first book I made covered 8 months and was 82 pages long. This book only covered 6 months but was 184 pages long! I'm glad I've preserved our memories and have a fun way to look back on our family history. Now I just need to make books to cover 2010!

After all the presents had been opened our living room looked like a bomb had exploded in there. It was pretty awesome. Here's a before and after shot.

The girls spent the morning playing with their presents.

They also spent plenty of time playing in the boxes, which makes me think next year we should buy less toys and just wrap a bunch of boxes!

I also got to use one of my new presents to make us waffles for breakfast! I LOVE my new waffle maker and seriously want to make waffles every morning now. : )

All in all it was a wonderful Christmas, even though it was our first ever without any extended family. I thought it would feel lonely but the girls made it special with all their excitement.

I'll leave you with a cute video of Teya's first reaction to Christmas morning. I just love how she is so excited about everything and literally follows every sentence with an exclamation!