Christmas 2010

I hope that everyone out there had a great weekend and a fabulous Christmas. We sure did.

We spent Christmas Eve with the Grover side of Paul's family. Cousin Jane and her husband Greg always host dinner for everyone. It's so nice to see everyone and to see how much all the kids have grown over the year.

We stayed the night at Mom and Dad's house Christmas Eve so that we wouldn't have to drive all the way back the next morning. Mom and Erin made a great breakfast and then we opened presents. We didn't go as overboard as we have in the past but everyone still got lots of good stuff. Will most of all. We tried to space them out a bit so that he would get a chance to play with everything.

Will got a cool doctors set from Erin. It has interchangeable X-Rays, an IV line, and a doctors bag full of equipment. He took the time to sit down and check Paul's heartbeat, his temperature, and his ears.

The next item was a remote control car from Grandma and Grandpa Noble. It was built for little kids, so all it has is 4 buttons; one that makes it go forward, one that makes it back up, one the makes the horn beep, and one that revs the engine. He loved that! He drove it around for hours, menacing the poor dogs. I tried to get some pictures but he was moving around so much that they came out blurry.

The last big thing was an artist easel from Grandma and Grandpa Noble. One side has a chalk board and the other side has a white marker board. There is also a roll of paper through the middle so that he can color with crayons. He loved the marker board because he could draw as much as he wanted and then erase it and start over.

Later in the morning we brought out his finger paints and taped some paper up so that he could paint. He likes this because it's messy.

In the afternoon Nina and Paul's brothers came over for dinner. Mom and Erin made a fabulous turkey dinner with all the trimmings. We were so stuffed that we could barely move.

Once everything got settled again we got William ready for bed in another set of Christmas PJ's. I think he got about 6 different sets this year. The fun part is now he can wear them until Spring!

Paul had to work yesterday so William and I spent the day back at Mom and Dad's. William played with Grandpa while us girls went shopping. (Yes, we are just about that crazy.)

In the evening we went to Nina's for Sunday dinner. She made her traditional Christmas Prime Rib dinner with all the fixin's. After we ate we opened packages with the brothers. Nina gave everyone ZuZu Pets. For those of you who don't know, ZuZu Pets are little electronic hamsters. Each of us got one pet and a piece of their habitat. So, we spent about an hour setting up a huge hamster run in Nina's front room and sending the little guys scurrying through it. By the time that we left last night it looked like toys had taken over the front room!

After all of the excitement of the weekend it is hard to come back to work and focus. Mostly I keep thinking about all of the toys and gifts that are piled up in my living room waiting to find a home somewhere in the house.

Oh well... Hopefully the cats aren't having too much fun playing doctor.

Snowmen and Christmas Trees

We spent time playing at Grandma and Grandpa's over the weekend. Grandpa helped Will make his first snowman in the yard. Will kept putting big handfuls of snow on the front to give him a big belly.

On Saturday we went to the annual Festival of Trees. As usual they had a ton of stuff to look at. Most of it was pretty standard Christmas fair. I have posted some pictures of some of the more unique displays.

This one was called "That 70's Christmas". There was a big sculpture made out of bike tire rims with flowers and lights. The tree itself was covered in peace signs and more flowers.

This one was all done in dinosaurs (my favorite). I couldn't get a wide enough shot to get everything that was laid out around the tree. There was a small army of plastic dinosaurs on the floor around the tree. I would totally have bought this tree, no matter how much it cost, but it was already sold.

This one was called "A Rockin' Christmas". It was all done in old albums.

Besides the trees they always have great gingerbread displays. The biggest one this year was a candy carnival. It was so big that I had a hard time getting a good picture of it.

This was Noah's Ark.

This was a train station.

This one was a cool idea. It was done as a suitcase that had opened up to show a village inside. They even had painted all of these little travel stickers on the outside of the trunk.

On Sunday we went back to Grandma and Grandpa's and Will helped Grandpa organize and put up Christmas lights. Mostly he was in charge of turning them on and off when Grandpa told him to, but it was a help. We had a great weekend overall.

I am starting to feel a bit better everyday. We had another ultrasound on Friday. The baby is doing fine and growing well. We are scheduled for our big ultrasound on January 7th. That's when we will find out what we are having. I will make sure and post it for everyone.

Thanksgiving and Snow

Well, we had a nice Thanksgiving, considering that Will barely ate anything and I am limited by morning sickness still. Paul helped make up for the two of us. ;-)

Nina cooked a fabulous dinner spread, as usual. Someone asked me why I don't take over the cooking duties so that Nina could have a break, but I told them that when you have a cooking master like Nina you don't mess with it. I assume that one day I will have a house big enough to hold everyone and at that point I can start taking some of the holidays on myself. But, until then I am more than happy to just help with the cleanup.

We had quite a snow storm come through last week. We ended up with about a foot of snow of the ground at our house. It was just starting to melt off a bit when another storm showed up yesterday. It snowed all day long and all last night. We now have over a foot on the ground at our house.

Driving in to work this morning was fun...

The only good part about the snow is that the roofers managed to get our new roof done before all the storms started. So, at least I am not worried that it will all melt into my attic.

Now we just need it to clear up long enough for the siding guys to come in and do their stuff.

Snow Already

Man, what happened to fall. It seems like about the time that I notice the color changing in the leaves it turns instantly cold and snow starts falling.

This morning I woke up to a front yard that looked like a bag of powdered sugar had been up ended on it.

I'm not sure that I am ready for this. This is going to delay so many things that I need done. Mainly the repair to our roof and siding.

At this rate we won't have it all done until after Christmas!

Halloween

We had a lot of fun this Halloween, despite the fact that I still feel crappy.

We took Will to a local pumpkin farm to choose a carving pumpkin. I managed to get one picture and then my camera ran out of power.

William was pumpkin crazed!


Paul helped us carve the pumpkins. Will helped by coloring.

David, Kathy, and Adam were all down visiting over the weekend. Erin took Adam out on Saturday with a big group of friends. Adam dressed as a CareBear.

Paul and Grandma Rhonda took Will trick-or-treating while I stayed behind to hand out candy.

They managed to go down one block before the rain started failing too hard to continue on. Will still ended up with a full bag of candy.

I've been trying my best to ration the candy so that he doesn't become sick.

Questions without answers...

I have been asking myself a lot of questions lately that seem to have no real answers.

The top one on the list is why does being pregnant make you so sick.

So far I have come up with a lot of sort-of answers, but nothing that seems like a finalized one. The best that I can do so far is that it is natures way of protecting a growing fetus from anything dangerous that you might eat. Of course, most of us don't run around eating raw shell fish and soft French goat cheese on a daily basis.

At this point I would be happy if plain old water didn't make me sick.

Another question that I was pondering is why hasn't western medicine come up with a better way of treating morning sickness. Right now the medicine of choice is an anti-histamine, which makes you very sleepy. As anyone who has been pregnant will tell you, being pregnant already makes you tired. This extra sedation does not help when trying to keep up with a house full of laundry and a 2 year old.

So, after much thinking I have decided that no answer is really enough for these questions. And if you come to my house in the next few weeks do not be surprised if you find dirty clothes every where, nothing to eat but soda crackers, and me asleep on the couch.

News

Well, I have news for everyone.

If you haven't already heard I am pregnant again. I am officially 6 weeks along and the projected due date is June 5th.

Now, for all of you hyperventilating into a paper bag right now, I have discussed everything with my doctor and she feels like this time we can take steps to prevent some of the problems that I had last time. So, just relax and try not to worry.

So far everything is going well. I am sick as a dog right now which is considered a sign of good growth. However, I have decided that this will be the last time that I do this, because of the sickness.