Christmas Activities

A few things we did during the holiday season...

• Temple Square lights (twice) - once by ourselves and once with friends

Merry Christmas in Russian??  We weren't sure....Mom, is that right?

• Gingerbread house making with friends

• 

(John's masterpiece)
• Family Parties
• We ALMOST went to the Festival of Trees - but I couldn't convince John to go.  He said last year was bad enough.  Maybe we can make it a tradition every other year.

And then of course Christmas Eve and Day with family.  We spent most of Christmas Eve at the Fry's (John's sisters family) and enjoyed their annual Christmas Asian dinner.  Our brother-in-law Curtis is quite the chef and made some delicious food.  We played games, opened gifts, and read the Christmas story.  John and I drove up to the Bowen's after and spent the night.

The kids woke us up (well actually Pete woke us up :)) Christmas morning around 7 and we opened gifts from Santa.  John and I got a new video camera, which I am very excited to learn how to use.  We ate breakfast and then opened gifts from each other.  Here are just a few pictures:

We left in the afternoon and headed up to Marc and Betty's for Christmas dinner.  We opened more gifts and watched "Christmas Carol" and then headed home for the night.  It was a fun, relaxing Christmas and we are grateful to have such great families!

birthing class

We took a birthing class over the weekend. It was very helpful and informative, especially for John.

Here he is in his "what it feels like to be 9 months pregnant" suit :) 

pregnancy comments

I have gotten some interesting comments the last couple of weeks from people about being pregnant.  By interesting I mean some that are nice and some that are just rude.  John has had to convince me not to be bitter about the rude ones...but I just don't understand why people say things or what goes through their head before they say them.  I won't name any names, but wanted to share a few.

Let's start with the nice ones....

• "You are how far along?  Wow...you look great!"
• "You've only gained weight in your stomach."
• after feeling my belly...."you are all baby"
• You're such a cute pregnant lady."

Now on to the not so nice ones....(and these are all comments after people have looked me up and down)

• "Wow...you're going to have a BIG baby."
• "You look sooo ready to be done being pregnant"
• "Has your due date come and gone?"
• and my personal favorite "Are you carrying two in there?"

I'm sure I will get more in these last few weeks...and promise I won't be bitter about them.......well, at least not for too long :)

Baby Showers

Baby Shower #1 = Family

It was held at our church building because we are such a large group.

(A huge thanks to my Aunt Pat and her girls for being in charge and putting everything together....they put in a TON of work and we really appreciate it!! ) 

Baby Shower #2 = Work

My work did a combined wedding/baby shower for a co-worker and I.  We had a taco bar which was delicious and a ton of work was put into it.

Baby Shower #3 = Friends

I forgot to take pictures, but Jeannette was nice enough to host my friend shower at her house and put it all together.  It was such a fun night and great to see and catch up with everyone. 

Everyone was so nice and generous!!  We got some really cute things at every shower and are so excited to use them.  I think this little girl is pretty much set and just needs to come now! (well maybe in a few more weeks)  We cannot thank everyone enough for their generosity and are so grateful to have such wonderful family, friends, and co-workers.

Thanksgiving Weekend

We had a great Thanksgiving this year! 

We started it off the Sunday before with a dinner at Marc and Betty's (John's parents) because they headed out of town to visit family in Texas.  They were nice enough to invite all my family to join us. 

The night before Thanksgiving we made a bed in our living room, built a fire, drank hot chocolate, and put on a movie.  It was fun and cozy and we both surprisingly slept well on the floor.

We woke up Thanksgiving morning and headed up to the Turkey Trot with Rich and Misty.  This is one of my favorite Thanksgiving traditions because I always feel like I can eat more throughout the day :)  Because I am pregnant I wasn't able to run this year, so John and Misty were nice enough to walk with me. 

 Rich ran and did great!  He registered too late and the race was full, but he ran it anyway.  We think he took about 9th overall.

 These next two pictures crack me up...

John is trying to be sneaky and decide which bagel he wants to take

 He got one!  And he knows I caught him in the act :)

John couldn't help but look through all the adds and see if there were any deals worth going shopping on Black Friday for....luckily there weren't. 

We headed up to our church building around 12:30 to help finish the Thanksgiving dinner prep. 

 Hannah and I

Annie and Jeannette

We ate a great dinner and then played games and visited afterwards.  John and I later when home and took a nap and then headed out to the Bowen's to eat leftovers and play more games.

Unfortunately I didn't take any more pictures the rest of the weekend.  We did some shopping, games and dinner at the Cowden's, lunch with Aunt Claudia and Uncle Bruce, Lucy's blessing, got a few house projects done, and just relaxed.