One Month Left!

Yesterday I had some pregnancy pictures taken by the amazing James Fullmer, who also did my pregnancy pics with Sawyer (you can click on his name link to get to his pregnancy photo gallery with some of my old pregnancy pics in it if you want). It was a little sad because I'm so much thinner in my other pics... BUT, having pics taken of each pregnancy is priceless! Thank you SO MUCH, Jay!

Only 30 days to go! C-section is officially scheduled for 7am on Friday, January 30th!

Christmas Catch Up!

This is very late, but still thought I'd post some of our Christmas fun.

Here is the gingerbread house the Kindt kids and myself worked on on Christmas Eve (I did the front of the house). Fun fun!

Joe got a harmonica from his parents (he'd asked for it). He's been talking about wanting to learn the harmonica for the last few years, and has been playing it quite a bit since getting it (and getting good)!

Sawyer helping Joe open one of his gifts from me (titanium cuff links; they match his titanium wedding band).

One of Joe's first gifts he opened at my parents' place was a new Scout shirt. Sawyer loved it and wore it.

Sawyer with Grandma and Kindle (dog). He just opened a Hot Wheels city from his uncle J.P., and he LOVES IT. I think uncle J.P. won for Sawyer's favorite Christmas gift this year.

Sawyer with uncle J.P., checking out the new Hot Wheels items.

Christmas evening we gather with all of my extended family. It's tradition that we have a big dinner, then in the evening have a "Yankee Exchange" with a $5 limit (also known as white elephant). Here we are, gathering for the exchange, with all the gifts in the center.

I wouldn't have thought, but Sawyer was pretty good at playing the Rock'em Sock'em Robots! Here he's playing with Bubba (his mother is engaged to my cousin Joel, so they're about to be new to the family), and my cousin-once-removed, Drew.

Sawyer sure loves Jack, my parents' Schipperke. Jack doesn't love him as much. It's an awkward relationship.

About a foot of the snow melted off, so it was finally low enough to use the snowmobile. Joe went out a few times, and even took Sawyer out twice.

Snowy Christmas Eve

There was a little bit of snow in Oshkosh for Christmas this year... The snow bank the boys are in is about 6 feet high in front of Joe's parents' place. I'd guess it was generally around 2 feet deep across the flat areas. It was beautiful to be snowed in for Christmas, though.

For Christmas Eve dinner, there wasn't enough room for everyone at the dining room table, so the two boys sat at a mini table next to us, and I couldn't resist getting a picture of them.

The family gathered for a small Christmas Eve "program" where we sang Christmas hymns, read the story of the Savior's birth from the scriptures, and shared personal favorite Christmas experiences.

We hold to the tradition of opening new Christmas jammies on Christmas Eve (the one gift to be opened early). Sawyer of course was VERY happy to open his first present!

Here are my boys with their new Christmas pajamas! I made them matching flannel penguin pants, because I think they both love it when they match. :) Joe's very favorite pajama pants he'd had for years were red penguin pants, and they finally had to be thrown out last winter. I couldn't find any replacement penguin pants for him, so instead I found some fabric and made them!

Pre-Christmas Activities!

Grandma bought us some train cookie cutters, so I couldn't resist breaking them out to make Christmas cookies. Sawyer was so excited to finally use them, as he'd been looking at them in the kitchen drawer for weeks.

Here are Daddy & Sawyer with some of the cookies they'd decorated (we made sure Sawyer didn't slobber on any of the ones for other people, don't worry). We made up plates of them and went Christmas carolling last night. Sawyer is really good at the chorus of "Jingle Bells"! It's wicked cute. And he jingled some bells as we sang. Good memories!

Tonight we decorated individual graham cracker "gingerbread" houses that I'd put together this afternoon during Sawyer's nap. I figured Sawyer was too little to work on building & waiting for it to dry, but would probably enjoy the decorating! He did... for about 4 minutes... then just ate the candy for the other 45 minutes while Joe and I worked on our houses.

Our finished products (left to right: Sawyer, Joe, Carrie):

Fun fun Christmas stuff! We love having Joe off school to play with us!

Santa in South Bend!

Downtown at the College Football Hall of Fame, the city put on a free "Santa's Workshop" event. Sawyer was excited to see Santa, even though I'm sure he's till too young to get it. I'm glad he's still too young to "get it" though, because Joe and I haven't quite decided how much we're going to push the whole Santa thing anyway.

Joe couldn't resist chasing Sawyer around the Christmas tree in front of the Hall of Fame (and tackling him multiple times).

Inside, Sawyer got a sugar cookie and some decorating supplies. Here is the cookie decorating progression:

Beautiful!

Around the House

Since the scare of the car accident, I've caught myself taking many more pics of just the normal every day moments around the house. I really cherish all the cute little moments that make up our family life. Here are a few things we've been up to:

Sawyer made a snowman in a jar that he's SO proud of (an idea from a winter craft book we have that I'd forgotten about until last week):

Joe and Sawyer attemped to fit all of his wood blocks on top of the bin that they're stored in, creating a "city":

I finally attemped yeast bread for my very first time (whole wheat). It turned out ok, but not great. Sawyer helped me with the mixing & did a great job. It helped that Sesame Street that day had a whole sketch on kids baking bread from scratch.

Joe is such a good dad. He attemped to teach Sawyer some oragami by making frogs.

I love my family!!!

Two Rollovers by 25

Can anyone beat my record of two highway rollovers by the time they were 25?

This weekend I was going to work a craft show up in Kalamazoo Michigan with my mom and her boss. They picked me up on their way & off we went (Kalamazoo is only an hour and a half from here). Almost as soon as we entered Michigan, snow started falling. By the time we jumped on 94 East, it was starting to build up on the roads. The driver started sliding, the van turned sideways (sliding), and we went off the road, rolling several times. It was hard to count how many times, but I'd guess 2-4 rolls. Maybe the police report will show differently- they could see the tracks in the snow or something. I never stepped outside of the van after it stopped to be able to see for myself; they carried me to the ambulance on a stretcher with a neck brace on.

When the van finally stopped rolling (landing right-side up, thank goodness), I seemed to feel ok except for some pains in my neck and back starting, and noticing that I'd slid down and the seatbelt was tight right across the center of my pregnant tummy. That freaked me out, so of course I reached and undid the buckle to get it off. My mom and her boss seemed to be ok; they were moving around, and my mom even hopped out the van within a minute or two to check things out.

They took me in an ambulance to some tiny hospital in a town I'd never heard of, where they listened for the baby's heartbeat (it seemed normal, thank God), and did a CT Scan of my neck/back to check for damage. The results came back clear, so I finally got to take the uncomfortable neck brace off (this had been probably 2 hrs already), and get off of the back/body board that I was strapped to and put in a regular hospital bed (which seemed heavenly by that time).

The doctors said the baby needed to be checked more thoroughly, but this tiny hospital didn't have any OB equipment, so they had to get me to another hospital that did. Another ambulance ride later, and I was back at Memorial Hospital in South Bend. On the ride I started having contractions, which at first I tried to play off as bladder pains because I had to go to the bathroom so badly and the ride was taking forever. At the hospital I got hooked up to all the equipment and they confirmed that I was having contractions about every 3 minutes. Scary! Luckily they have a medication that can stop that, and it worked. They did an exam to make sure my water hadn't broken at all (it hadn't), and then sent me home around 10:15pm. Now I just deal with incredibly stiff and sore muscles, a banged up head and finding new bruises in random places.

Thank you so much to the Evans for taking Sawyer for the evening, so Joe could come be with me at the hospital. I don't know if I'd ever been happier than when we picked Sawyer up from their apartment, wearing his red fire truck jammies and he gave me a kiss, saying "I love you Mommy". Of course I cried and didn't want to let him go. We went straight home and all snuggled in our bed as a family, kissing and crying and saying so many "I love you"s I can't possibly count. I love my family and we are so incredibly grateful that me and the baby were protected so we could come home.

Bigger than we thought!

"This baby is bigger than we thought!" says Dr. E. "We'll have to get him out the last week of January for sure!"

So at my ultrasound when I was about 29 weeks (so we thought), the baby already weighed in at 3.5 lbs. That's normally how big a 32-34 week baby is. SO, we could've moved the c-section date up to the beginning of that last week of January, but we wanted a Friday anyway (to work with Joe's schooling), so that keeps it at Friday the 30th. I should've asked about bumping it up to the 23rd... I guess there's no rush. Chrismas time will be so busy, and then when we get back from WI in January I'll only have those few weeks to get everything ready. I'm sure I'll be freaking out plenty.

It's also kinda sad that our family will never just be me, Joe & Sawyer again. It's been wonderful, and I really think I'll miss it. Did any of you feel sad for your firstborn, how they wouldn't be your only baby anymore? It's like the end of an era! I have the feeling motherhood is going to come on full force... and only get crazier over the next 25 years or so... a little scary.

A Wisconsin Thanksgiving

We spent Thanksgiving Day with the Kindt side of the family in Milwaukee, and everything was beautiful & enjoyable. I wish I would've taken more pictures, but at least I got this one, of the ladies getting desserts ready. YUM!!!

While staying with the Kindts, they took us along to pick out and cut down their Christmas tree. Sawyer decided to lean up against one... a little photo shoot with his popcorn bag...

The family sings "O Tannenbaum" holding hands around the tree before cutting it down. Very cute tradition.

It's cut and loaded on the trailer, to be wrapped up and taken home. Christmas time is here! Yay!!!

Need Mom Advice

Happy December! How exciting that it's December 1st already! Christmas decorating time!

So, I'm needing some advice on the best books out there to teach new baby to sleep through the night. I didn't read anything with Sawyer, besides the little tips in What to Expect the First Year, and Sawyer didn't sleep through the night until nearly a year old. Very frustrating. I was hoping to have a better experience with the next baby. Any tips on books to get, or books to avoid? Thanks!

SO HAPPY!!!

We are SO happy to finally have some pictures of our baby boy! And yes, it WAS for sure a baby boy. He weighs 3.5 lbs, and we'll get the report next week checking how accurate the due date was, to work out the c-section date (it's important to get the baby out before my body goes into labor, or it gets dangerous for both of us. Sawyer came early, so that might come into play as well with what date the doc decides on). The report will also verify that nothing else was abnormal about his organs or anything.

He looks so happy already, doesn't he? It must be all the chocolate I eat.

The Last One

Well, last night was our very last ND football game (as students- I'm sure Joe will want to come back as an adult somehow). What a way to finish it off! With the wind it was 19* degrees out, and we lost to a horrible team (Syracuse). I decided to leave at halftime, and Joe joined me (as did most of our other friends who were freeeeezing). It's crazy thinking how, at the start of the season, I was so concerned about how by the last game, I'd be about 7 months pregnant & probably wouldn't want to even go out... but here we are already! The last game came and went, and I WENT. Well, for half. Only 67 days away from having this baby.

The stands were full of SNOW! You'd think there'd be some kind of snow removal system, but there wasn't. Around 10 inches fell on Friday, and it was all still there, around our feet. What did people do with it? Throw snowballs. At players, policemen, the camera men, cheerleaders... there are a lot of naughty people out there (we didn't throw any, of course). We even saw a policeman get nailed, and they pinpointed the kid who did it and hauled him out of the stadium. Kinda cool. Joe hoped he'd get charged with assault of a police officer.

Joe is part of a group called GreeND (Green ND, an environmental group), and being green week and all, their group helped promote. They got the band to spell out "GO GREEN" during the halftime show, and they handed out free GreeND beanies before the game (Joe's wearing his in the first pic- along with ALL of his other clothes being green as well).

Is That Warren Buffett??

Sure is! Joe had the opportunity to go down to Omaha (Warren's home city) to meet him on Friday. A small group of Notre Dame MBAs were invited down, where they had lunch with him and were able to discuss life & business. Joe really admires this man's humility; you know, for being the richest man in the world and all. The main things Joe shared with me that he enjoyed hearing him say were 1) How priveleged these students all were to have this education and these opportunities (compared to so much of the rest of the world), so to really appreciate what they have; and 2) "Sure, I could buy houses all over the world, but then I'd feel obligated to visit all of them all of the time. I only need one house."

Baby Knitting Craze!

Well, I think I pinpointed one of the reasons I put on extra weight last month. Aside from: 1- it got cold out, so we're not playing outside anymore; 2- we went to WI for fall break and ate out nearly every day; 3- I got super emotional out of the blue and most anything that could be interpreted as sad/upsetting would make me cry (and I'm an emotional eater, so do the math there); 4- I started feeling REALLY pregnant/big physically, so stopped being as active as I had been.

But the NEW reason I just pinpointed is THIS: The knitting. It seems that in the course of one month I knit the entire baby blanket, and about 4 different hats... I wonder if anyone's invented a knitting project timer yet, so you can actually time how long it took to make each project... I'm guessing this was practically part-time-job-type-hours of just sitting on the cushy couch.

ANYWAY, here is the new baby's blanket I knit! Since Sawyer's blanket is so baby blue and white, I thought I'd do something less traditional than normal baby hues. I imagined up this little number instead (it's about 3x3 feet):

Go Irish! Navy and gold (well, the goldest gold tone I could find in yarn) baby beanie with curlies on top (I just made that word up... I don't know what they're called).

And one classic fuzzy blue and cream newborn sized hat:

I'm addicted to knitting!

Actually, 10 More Days...

*Tear*

Either my doctor is a liar, or I misunderstood: the ultrasound wasn't today. We did SCHEDULE the ultrasound today for ANOTHER day, though. Wierd. Why would they make two separate appointments, instead of just combining it with my regular, boring appointment? That's what my other clinic did when I had Sawyer. Thank goodness we have a very willing/available babysitter to watch Sawyer for all of these appointments (thanks Christina!)!!!

SO, the new, UNMISTAKABLE, ultrasound date (I have a sheet of paper printed out for me and everything) is going to be Monday the 24th. 10 days. I've waited this long to see my baby boy's face, I can wait 10 more days!

IT WORKS!

The used, $10 full sized pc monitor, hooked up to our old laptop WORKS!

On our laptop, the problem was that the screen went completely out (it would just fade in and out of splotchy white patches). We took it into the on campus IT guys & he said that's typical for Dells when they get old (a tip if you're buying a new laptop soon). He said the computer itself isn't broken, just the monitor, so we could pick up a used monitor to hook up to it and it should work.

Ten dollars later.... I'm back online! Thanks to Shanda for taking me to the store where they had around 75 used monitors lined up on shelves for $10-$20. You know it's a real friend when they realize the importance of SAHMs having their own computer & do whatever it takes to help out.

Now we just have a huge monitor to deal with... we don't even own a desk... and we probably shouldn't keep it on the kitchen table like I have it now... plus in about 60 days we'll be setting up a bunch more big baby stuff all over the apartment... this apartment will get real small, real fast!

ANYWAY, some fun news: We have the second, more detailed ultrasound tomorrow morning! I can't wait to finally come home with some little pics of our baby! My favorites are the little face profile shots. It'll also feel good to CONFIRM in a more detailed ultrasound that it's a boy. You know, now that I've completed the baby boy blanket...

Addiction

I love being a member of the LDS church for so many reasons, and one of them is that we've been instructed by current and past prophets not to use harmful substances: alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs, etc... How beautiful it is to never have to worry about dealing with a very real addiction to something like that!

We still find things to get addicted to.

Our computer stopped working yesterday afternoon. It's been less than 24 hours, and I have completely been freaking out, not being able to get on the internet. My brain and body are seriously feeling physical symptoms of panic, nervousness, anxiety- isn't that insane?!

I want to check my mail, I have 2 e-mails I need to send, I have something I was bidding on on Ebay, I had to order something on Amazon, I want to check comcast tv listings to see if House is new tonight, I want to find a recipe, I want to find a knitting pattern... so much of my life revolves around being able to jump on our computer! It's hard to believe that we didn't even HAVE internet for 2 years of our marriage, only around a year ago.

SO, that's why I won't be online for awhile. If ever. I guess I can come to the community center more often... I'll miss you, blog!

Bonjovi & Sprinklers Hahahaha

Well, our last ND football game together was very memorable!

It started off with a fantastically beautiful fall day. The trees around the main building were particularly stunning (great memory #1):

While there is one more home game, this was Joe's last game because he'll be out of town for the last one for a GE conference weekend. I may use his ticket to go with Sawyer to the last game, assuming it's not horrible blizzard weather by then (the 21st).

These dudes in green spandex just popped up in the student section, dancing wildly. It was extremely entertaining (great memory #2)!

During halftime JON BONJOVI showed up to visit! It's tradition that the students love to sing out his song "Living on a Prayer" at the games (the band plays it & everyone sings along). So of course we did that for him when he was there, listening on the sidelines (great memory #3):

The 4th quarter ended with the game tied, and we went into overtime. During overtime, the sprinkler system came on (great memory #4). Hahahhahaa everyone cracked up and there were thousands of camera flashes going off all over the stadium, like it was the superbowl or something.

The game went into QUADRUPLE overtime, the longest ever in Notre Dame stadium's history (great memory #5). We ended up losing by 3. Oh well.

We stayed for the entire thing (thank you, generous babysitters, the Ponces!), and watched the band perform their slow, game ending song, while everyone (including the football team, down on the field) swayed back and forth in love: