Christmas 2012

We had a wonderful Christmas and enjoyed spending so much time with family!  On Saturday the 22nd, all of John's brothers, their wives, kids and Don and Cherri were able to make it to our house.  We had a great time opening presents, hanging out and watching the kids run around (except Addison...she'll be running around before we know it). 

John had to work on the 23rd and 25th, so we did Christmas with Santa's gifts on the morning of the 24th.  Jocelyn got her new Minnie Bicycle, just like she asked for, a set of Princess dolls and a few other fun gifts.  That night we attended Christmas Eve service with my family at our church, Peace Lutheran Church.  After church we all headed home, although it felt like we should be going to Grandma's house to have sausage balls, wassel, peanut butter cookies with Hershey kisses on top and shrimp cocktail.  I miss that tradition and the kids are a little young to be staying up that late anyways, but we'll be making our own traditions soon enough.

Christmas Day we went over to Jennifer's house and Jocelyn got to play with Thaden and Owen and all of their new toys.  Then that afternoon we went to Ya Ya's house for more presents and a Christmas dinner.  Jocelyn got a new Princess Castle for all her dolls and Cinderella's carriage for her new Cinderella doll to arrive to the castle in style.  She had so much fun with it.  She also loved jumping on her new trampoline from Grandma!

Hard to believe that next Christmas there will be two more little ones in our house!  Can't wait!

10 Year Anniversary

On Friday, December 21st, John and I celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary.  Hard to believe that it has been that long, since it seems like yesterday that we were graduating from college and just starting this life journey together.  In the past 10 years we've had a lot of milestones....(1) John graduated from the fire academy and has been working as a firefighter for over 8 years now, (2) I graduated from law school and became an attorney, (3) we moved into our "starter home" and then into our home we plan to raise our family in, (4) traveled all over Europe for 3 weeks, (5) we had our first child and she is absolutely perfect and (6) although we hit a bump in the road trying to expand our family, with a little persistence and a tiny bit of medical intervention we are now expecting 2 more little bundles of joy!  Of course there have also been the tough times....we've lost many family members, John's grandmother, both of my grandmothers, two of my aunts, and my uncle.   On the other hand we've gained 4 nephews and a niece between the two sides of our families.  Oh, and in the last 10 years I've been to Disney World 8 times, a Disney Cruise once and Disneyland for the first time...do you think I'm a little obsessed?  I didn't think so either!

 

John had a very special anniversary planned and kept it a complete surprise for me.  Friday morning started with a doctor's appointment (always nice to see our little kiddos on the big screen growing right on track) and then we headed over to our hotel for the evening - the Houstonian.  We had 2 adorable gift baskets waiting for us in the room, one for each twin.   Then we had a couples massage (mine of course was modified for the pregnancy) and I had a pedicure since in a month or so I won't be able to even see my feet.  Then we had dinner at Brenner's and went to go see "This is 40."  In the morning we had a nice breakfast and then headed back home to get ready for family to arrive for Christmas.  We watched a little bit of cable while in the hotel room, since we don't have that at home, but realized we're not really missing much there....still glad we got rid of it.

 

When we got home, Jocelyn saw my pretty painted toe nails and of course wanted hers painted as well.  For those that know me, know that I do not typically paint my nails and so I don't have a lot of nail polish around the house.  I looked through the house and was able to track down a bottle of polish and so I painted Jocelyn's toes.  She loved it!

 

Pregnancy Update

I know I haven't mentioned my pregnancy much on this blog, so I figured I'd give a quick update in case anyone was interested. 

 

I'm just about 16 weeks along with fraternal twins.  Each are in their own sac and have their own placenta, which is a really good thing and makes this pregnancy less risky than other twins that share a placenta.  I do have marginal placenta previa with Baby A (the one closest to the cervix), but, just like with Jocelyn, it will likely resolve itself as I get bigger and bigger and bigger.  I already feel huge, but I'm trying not to be too concerned with the numbers just as long as the babies are healthy and develop like they're supposed to.  I can lose the weight once they're here.  I had a lot to lose after Jocelyn but I was able to do that (it took quite a while though).

 

In the beginning I had really bad nausea and took some medication to help with that and over the past few weeks it has gotten better but not completely gone.  I have my good days and have my bad days.  I try to rest and relax as much as possible.  I would really like to start feeling the babies move more since I always felt reassured with Jocelyn when I could feel her wiggling around.

 

My next appointment is this Friday, the 21st and I can't wait to see my babies again and hear their heartbeats.   From then on, I'll have a doctor's appointment every 2 weeks, alternating between my regular OB/GYN and my multiples specialist, which I'm sure will change to once a week as I get closer to the due date.  I'll try to get a decent ultrasound picture that I can scan in and share. 

Church Christmas Program

For this first time, Jocelyn participated in the Christmas Program at our church, Peace Lutheran.  Her Sunday School class (2 - 3 year olds), were the animals in the manger and Jocelyn got to be a cow.  She was so cute in her little costume.  She did pretty well up at the front of the church and listened for the most part. 

Santa Clause

Jocelyn is very aware that Santa brings presents to the good little boys and girls and has being saying for weeks that she is on the "nice list."  We wrote a letter to Santa with 4 things that Jocelyn wants for Christmas.  Any time she gets in trouble or thinks she is in trouble she'll say "but I want Santa to bring me a Minnie Mouse bicycle" since she thinks that if she's in trouble she'll get on the naughty list.  We went to Bass Pro Shop and met Santa and Jocelyn did so well.  She took her list with her and told Santa everything she wanted.  Completely different from last year where she wouldn't get 3 feet of Santa.