Think you have something planned?

Think again.

We are SUPPOSED to be in Kauai right now. We aren't.

Yet.

Christmas Eve morning I woke up and started getting ready and started to have some pain - about where my cyst supposedly is. I sat down and hoped it would just go away in a minute. We were supposed to leave within in the hour for Hawaii!

After a few minutes I was curled up on the bed in pain, I could barely talk. Zach helped me finished getting dressed, my dad gave me a blessing and those two rushed me to the hospital. My mom stayed here with Naomi. She was soooo sweet. She

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

So I'm still here, just been busy with all things "family." We've been in Utah since Tuesday and it SNOWED! Tons. We got in my parents hot tub while it snowed big fat, fluffy snowflakes. Naomi thought that was the coolest. She kept on eating the accumulating snow off the side of the hot tub! The next day I played in the snow with Naomi and my nephew Matthew until we were all too cold to play anymore. Naomi's been hanging out with all her little boy cousins and it's a little bit rougher than she's used to but she's hanging in there:) Yesterday she got to hold baby Henry, Erica and Dave's little one. She didn't want to let go of him, it was soooo sweet. She kept telling him sweetly "no crying" when he fussed and then patted his head and tummy and stroked his cheeks. I just hope she's that excited about our new baby when he gets here:)
I'll post pictures as soon as I figure out the easiest way to load them onto my parents computer.
And also, tomorrow we are leaving for Hawaii! I'll be thinking about all of you here in the cold while I hang out on the beach.
Have a Very Merry Christmas!

Baby Jesus?

Naomi was playing in the kitchen with her Little People Christmas Story nativity while I got breakfast ready for us. Cereal and milk and blueberries on top:)
I told her to go climb into her chair so we could eat. Then she said THE cutest thing I've ever heard her say!
She had the little baby Jesus in both hands up by her cheek in a little hug and asked me:
"Baby Jesus come to breakfast too?"
I started laughing it was so sweet, and she used 6 words all together! It was just the funniest little question. I of course said yes and he joined us at the table, watching Naomi eat her chex and blueberries.

Festive Chocolate Bark

Festive Chocolate Bark

1 C shelled pistachios (1/2 lb in shell) salted & roasted
12 oz semisweet chocolate, chips or bar broken into small pieces
8 oz white chocolate, chips or bar broken into small pieces
¾ C dried, sweetened cranberries

-Melt the semisweet chocolate in microwave for 1-2 minutes until melted, stirring every 30 seconds. When some lumps remain, remove from microwave and stir until smooth. Melt the white chocolate following the same directions in a separate bowl.
-In a small bowl, combine nuts and cranberries.
-Stir ½ of the nut-berry mixture into the semisweet chocolate.
-Using a rubber spatula, spread the mixture about ½ thick onto a large lightly greased cookie sheet.
-It will not fill the whole pan.
-Drop the white chocolate by spoonfuls over the dark. With a spoon or butter knife, swirl the chocolates together to create a marbled effect.
-Sprinkle the remaining nut-berry mixture over the top of chocolate.
-Refrigerate the bark for about 1 hour or until firm, then break into pieces. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to a month.
-Bark can get soft/melty at room temp, keep refrigerated.
ENJOY!

This is one of my (relativly new) favorite holiday goody recipe. A friend gave me the recipe a few years ago. It's simple, easy to make, hard to ruin, and DELICIOUS!

Random Things

This has been a busy last week and this week will be even busier! It's mostly good busy stuff, things I am happy to be doing, it just seems to all fall on the same week. Could be because I'm leaving next week for Utah.

Naomi and I are flying out on Tuesday and Zach will be coming next Friday after his last final. Just his luck to have a final on the very last day possible.

I put Naomi's hair up in pigtails, it was too cute to not take a picture of. She likes having her hair done and it makes her look sooo much older! But I'm all for letting it go wild for now too, for as long as I can get away with not having to pull her hair up/back the better. That would be the ONE benifit of having a super-bald baby.

Last week was our ward Christmas party, it was fun, and good food of course. Naomi pushed her way up to see Santa Claus. I'm proud of her for getting in there with all the big kids! She was totally stone-faced for the picture. We stopped to see Santa at the mall today too. She was thrilled to sit next to him and tell him about things. I'm glad she's not afraid of him, it makes it all a little more fun.

Naomi played the piano a little too after the party, it's her new favorite thing. Hopefully one day soon we will own a piano!

In these pictures I'm 25 weeks pregnant, nearly 26. I have almost exactly 3 months left. This pregnancy seems to be flying by lately! I'm not sure I'm going to be ready for this baby so soon!

And one more fun thing. I bought Naomi some water color paints and we tried them out for the first time. She loved, loved, loved it. The water bowl was by far the best part. Her paper ended up soaking and all kinda grayish green. So did all the paints. She's a budding Picasso! We'll have to work on the get the paint onto the paper thing. And she only tasted the paint once. I guess that was enough to convince her I was right, it's yucky.

That's all for now, I'm off to do some laundry!

OH, one more thing I wanted to mention. Yahoo has groups as you all may know but the coolest ones by far are the FreeCycle groups. Check out yahoo.com or Google 'freecycle' to see if you can find your local group. It's like craigslist but all free. I'm in love.

Faith In America

Zach and I are Mitt Romney supporters. We have been following his campaign closely and last Thursday Mitt delivered a speech addressing how faith, specifically how his faith would influince his leadership. But that was not the half of it. He did a fantastic job. I was very impressed and I don't think he could have said it any better. (pause music on player below before pushing play.)

Edited to add: um. Couldn't get the video to post, so here's the link!
http://mitt-tv.mittromney.com/?showid=718280

Is she cute or what!

I picked up Naomi's portraits from JC Penney today and they turned out super cute. I scanned them and played with color a little and cropped too. The photographer must have been new because she was struggling with centering the pictures!

I think Naomi looks adorable if I do say so myself. I just had to share her cute new pics!

(don't you just love her little curls! I need to "do" her hair more often!)

SNOW!

It snowed today!!!! This is the first snow of the season and the first one Naomi can probably remember. She LOVED it. We had appointments and other things all morning so she had to wait all day to go out and play in it but it was worth the wait:)

First thing she did was eat it, of course. I think children are hard-wired to eat snow.

I tried to show her that some snow is "yucky" and told her only the "white" snow is ok. We'll see how long it takes to learn that lesson!

She helped me build a "Frosty Snowman!" It turned out cute- although I couldn't find any pebbles for buttons or eyes!

Out where we were playing there is a big Holly TREE. It looked so pretty with it's green leaves, bright red berries and now snow!

Snowpants....check, boots....check.

"Ready go, outside, 2 minutes" That is what Naomi says when she wants to go outside. I guess I tell her "in two minutes, ok?" a little too often.

Tasting and eating the snow.....

mmmmm, yummy.

"Frosty Snowman!"

Ok, Ok. Here's a "belly" shot.

This one's for Erica.

After this I swear I'm going to talk about something else other than pregnancy!

I'm 24 weeks and change in this picture. And I know my hair is just lovely:)

My goal is to take a new pregnant profile picture every other week until the end of this pregnancy. I only took a few with Naomi, right at the end. Now I'm thinking it would have been fun to compare as I go.

This pregnancy has been different for a few marked reasons:

I was sick much sooner and a little longer.

I started "showing" earlier.

I have heartburn!

I can stomach meat.

I sometimes forget what week I'm in of pregnancy.

People keep telling me "good luck" when they hear I'm having a boy.......

I am much calmer about being pregnant:)