Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! We hope you had as much fun as we did this year. :)

The weekend before Christmas we went to the Harbeck's annual Christmas party. This year they decked out the trailer and took us all on a "sleigh ride". It was so fun, except that Gage kept trying to jump off while we were moving (he's not a big fan of sitting still).

Every Christmas Eve we get together with my extended family from my dad's side for dinner and a little nativity reinactment by the cousins. This year they asked Gage to be a sheep. As you may remember from my Halloween post, Gage does NOT like to wear costumes. So he wouldn't wear the sheep costume, but he carried a stuffed sheep for a few seconds before running up and kidnapping the baby Jesus doll. Unfortunately, I was too busy trying to keep Gage from completely destroying the nativity play that I wasn't able to take any pics. So you will just have to use your imagination. :)


When we came home, we let Gage open his Christmas jammies. He was pretty excited about the little snowman on the shirt.

Christmas morning we let Gage come downstairs and open his presents while the rest of us sat on the couch and tried to wake up. Gage came running downstairs and completely bypassed the Christmas tree as he excitedly shouted "backey"!!! ("backey"= Gagespeak for "vacuum"). I had left the vacuum out the night before and he was more thrilled about that than the new tricycle or any of the other things Santa left him. But we diverted his attention to the gifts and he was pretty excited once Grandpa taught him how to pedal his new bike and how to use the very loud microphone on his little electronic toy. He wowed us with his natural talent for the piano and had a great time opening presents once he realized that there were toys inside of all that wrapping paper.

We had Kyle's family over for Christmas brunch and I was too busy getting the food ready and chasing Gage to take any pictures, so I didn't even get any of the cousins together. But we had a great time spending the morning with them.

And of course, no important day would be complete without some kind of facial injury sustained by Gage. I put an extra leaf in the dining table to accomodate our large group for brunch and Gage misjudged the new location of the table leg as he was running outside to help Kyle feed the dog. Blood everywhere!

That night my brother, Brock and his wife, Tara spent the evening with us. Brock made some amazing homemade raviolis and his awesome pasta sauce for dinner. He finally gave me the pasta sauce recipe! Merry Christmas to me. :) And of course I didn't take any pics of our time with them either. Bummer.

We had a wonderful holiday spending time with our families, but most importantly, we had the opportunity this past week to reflect on the birth of our Savior and give thanks for the incredible gift of the Atonement. We are making a goal this new year to keep our focus on Christ even as life gets crazy and we wonder how we are going to survive two little boys.

The Belly

Here's a belly pic for my many family members who live far away and don't believe me when I say it's HUGE. But I feel fine (aside from the zillions of contractions I have every day) and I am not really freaked out about how big I am. I figure there's no point in worrying about it now so I might as well just be happy, eat what I want and plan on working out like crazy after the baby comes. :)

Let's Go to the ZOO!

My little bro, Andrew came into town last week to visit and we went to the zoo. Gage loved the animals but has a very short attention span so we spent most of the day running from one exhibit to the next. I think we made almost the full six mile loop by the time we left (a huge feat for a very pregnant woman). My brothers were good sports to help me chase Gage around all day.

Do I really have to do THAT???

We went to our first childbirth education class last night. I was enlightened and terrified. I found out that effacement actually has something to do with the thinning of the cervix, not the direction the baby is facing as I had previously thought. Am I a complete idiot?? We were supposed to name all the parts we knew on an anatomy sheet and Kyle and I could only figure out three of them. No wonder it took us five years to get pregnant. Then, during the childbirth video I got mad at Kyle for acting grossed out and looking away when the baby was born so he tried to tell me he wasn't disgusted by the childbirth, but by how unattractive the mother was. I think I need a new childbirth coach. Any volunteers?

On another note, the doc did a 3D/4D ultrasound on baby Brigg and he looks kind of like a really cute alien version of me. We'll see if he still looks like me when he comes out. He opened and closed his eyes a few times while we were watching him. It was kind of freaky but cool. He is a stubborn baby though. We tried for 5 minutes to get him to move his hand away from his face but he was not about to cooperate for the picture. And yeah, I know that as his mother, I am probably the only person who can actually tell that this picture is of a baby...but I am sharing it anyway because when I look at it I am almost convinced that the horrors of childbirth will actually be worth it. :)