Christmas is Coming!!!

I love Christmas.

I love the excitement people have.  I love the first snow fall.  I love seeing Christmas lights up.  I love the extra joy that people tend to have.  I love hot cocoa.  I love Christmas music. I love trying to find gifts for people.  I love watching Christmas movies.  I love taking extra time to think about Jesus Christ.  I love hearing about stories of kindness and generosity that take place this time of year.

I just love Christmas.

Here are some Christmasy things we've done thus far:

Enjoyed our first big Minnesota snow storm

This is our view of the parking lot in our complex

1 foot of snow

 Our awesome snowman

I made a Christmas craft

A wreath for our door using a paper rose tutorial and the help of my friend Cami.  We started to make these wreaths a couple months ago...I just barely finished :)

We made reindeer cookies

Martin and I teach the 16-18 year olds in our church youth group and we wanted to give them a little Christmas treat :)

 

We watched Christmas movies in our sweet footy PJ's

Annnnd I took a festive pregnancy weekly update picture

Tausha, these are for you.  Please wear your matching outfit for me this Christmas :) 

Week 21

 

20 Weeks

I am amazed at how much my belly is growing!  

I have literally felt it significantly grow over the last 4 or so days.  Some days it's itchy, some days it's sore, and other days I feel like my stomach is about to pop!  

Yet, I still have about half the pregnancy to go...oh my.  

On the bright side, cocoa butter and I have become fantastic friends and the only symptoms I've had over the last couple of weeks are tiredness, being extra hungry, and a growing belly!

We forgot to take pictures from week 19 but here are weeks 18 and 20

Week 18

We painted my tummy for week 18

(this was before we knew we're having a boy and a girl)

*After I posted this I realized that I forgot to include a link to my sister-in-law's photography blog where she originally came up with the idea of painting on a pregnant belly.  She is a fantastic photographer and SO creative!

Here's a post from when she was pregnant and let her kids finger paint her tummy:
http://www.blog.fishyfacephotography.com/2011/08/finger-painting-with-my-boys-seminole.html

Week 20

Proud Parents of....

It's official!  Martin and I are pleased to announce that our little babies are a

BOY 

and a 

GIRL!!!

The best of both worlds!

I can't stop smiling :) 

Some info from the ultrasound:

• Both babies look healthy and strong
• They are in my tummy as if they were laying in bunk beds
• Our little boy is on the bottom bunk with his head above my left leg and feet above my right leg
• Our little girl is on the top bunk with her head above my right leg and feet above my left leg - so basically they give each other little kicks and nudges in the face a lot
• They are (obviously) fraternal twins; they have separate gestational sacs but share a placenta
• They currently weigh about 12 oz and 13 oz
• This puts them to be about 20 weeks and 3 days along, but I'm only supposed to be 19 weeks and 3 days along.  Basically, they are either growing really well or my due date may change to earlier than April 23rd as the pregnancy progresses.

 I'm feeling great and Martin and I are SOOOO excited!!!  It is such a blessing to be able to see our babies moving around inside of me...and it's pretty surreal.  I'm so thankful to know that they are developing well and are strong.

Thank you to everyone who has been excited with us!  It sure is fun to share our joy :)

Thoughts on Pregnancy

I am currently 17 weeks along in my pregnancy.  Almost at the halfway mark and just 2 weeks away from finding out the genders of our sweet little babies.  Ahhhh I am SO excited for that day!

Here's a picture from when I was 16 weeks along

And a picture from my 17 week mark

 I just want to jot down some of my thoughts on and experiences with pregnancy/being a mom as these babies keep on growing.  In no way is this comprehensive and, please, have mercy on me and remember that I am a hormonal pregnant lady :)

• The fact that there are TWO babies inside of me blows my mind!!!  TWO.  Wow and woo hoo!
• My stomach just keeps growing, and growing, and growing, and growing...I'm 4 months along and a little nervous for how big I'm going to get!
• It is such a cool feeling to feel things moving around inside of me!
• Maternity pants are quite comfortable!
• There are lots of things that go unsaid about pregnancy...probably because they aren't terribly enjoyable.  I'll keep them unsaid and just say that I'm learning a lot about various bodily functions. Thank goodness for the internet and good friends who don't mind if something is TMI.
• I wonder what "normal" feels like and if I will recognize it when it comes back?  Meaning, for 9 months I'll have aches, pains, a belly, constantly be thinking about the babies, etc. and that makes me wonder what my new "normal" will be.
• Baby clothes are ridiculously adorable!
• 2nd trimester has been wonderful! I really don't think I've had a difficult pregnancy overall (HUGE blessing) but it has been fantastic to enjoy the tastes of food again, be able to open our fridge without gagging, and to have energy back!
• I quickly learned that EVERY single woman has a different experience with pregnancy. When you are pregnant, many people have insights and stories and suggestions on every aspect of pregnancy.  It can be overwhelming sometimes.  But I've come to realize that people share their stories because their stories mean so much to them and we care about helping each other out!  
• A good friend gave me great advice regarding being bombarded with different perspectives: 
• 1) Research as much is a reasonable amount about a topic
• 2) Pray for guidance in making a wise decision but don't expect angelic chorus' to give you answers
• 3) Make your decision on what to do
• 4) Pray that your decision will have the best possible outcome
• 5) Confidently learn and move forward.  There is SO much information and there are countless perspectives on every little aspect of having a child.  I know that I want what is best for my babies and so do millions of other women.  What is right for me may be wrong for someone else.  But I will always try my best to do what is right for me and my babies.
• I LOVE seeing Marty with little kids.  He is one AMAZING husband and he is going to be an AMAZING dad.  It is so sweet to see and hear his excitement for our babies.  I am beyond excited to see him holding them :)
• I cry much more easily than before being pregnant.  I was watching a commercial the other day and started crying because it was so sweet.  This is the commercial that got me good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_gtD5U9Bck
• The more I think about being a mom the more I realize that my mom is Super Woman.
• I'm nervous to be a mom.  My confidence outweighs my nerves, but still, it's not an easy job!  As a nanny I get a taste of what it's like to be surrounded by boogers, poopy diapers, crying, messes, etc.  It's not always fun.
• I am really really excited to be a mom.  I believe that motherhood is truly a divine role.  Although there are many tough parts to motherhood that I've seen as a nanny, there are also incredibly tender moments.  Like when they snuggle up to you right after waking up, or when you see the kids playing with each other and teaching each other, or when they get uncontrollable giggles when you tickle them, or when they kiss you two times on the belly to make sure each twin gets loves.  These experiences melt my heart and I imagine motherhood being similar.

That's all for now.  I simply want to get my thoughts down so I can look back on this once the babies are here.  Here are a few more photos from 17 weeks.  Taking the usual "one hand on top and one hand beneath your belly" photo gets boring.

Feeling the power of the belly

The Carney Ninja pose for my dad :)

Practicing my balance...the belly certainly changes things

Thank Goodness for Kind People

There is SO much good in the world.  There truly is!  Last Friday, I was reminded of that over and over again.

Every Friday I go to a prenatal yoga class with one of my good friends, Cami.  

(Side note: Not only do I love having great friends, but I LOVE having great pregnant friends!)

After yoga we went to get some yummy hot chocolate at Caribou Coffee.  After ordering our yumminess we headed back to the car so we could go back to her place and chat, have lunch, and work on a craft.  Well...I went for my keys to unlock the door aaaand...my pockets were empty.  

No keys, no phone.

To make a LONG story short, we walked 2 miles back to Cami's house to get her car.  

THEN Cami drove me to Marty's work (about 25 min away) and, after lots of phone calls and using security to finally track down my husband, I was able to get our 2nd set of keys from Marty.  

THEN Cami drove me to work because I was supposed to be at my nanny job 15 min earlier.  

THEN Cami took our car keys because she and her husband are super nice and offered to drive our car down to us later that night so we could make a date night out of it.  

THEN, after I was done working, the family I nanny for drove me to pick up Marty from work and drove us home.  

THEN we went to dinner with Cami and James and a bunch of friends and I somehow managed to fling an A1 Steak Sauce cap across the restaurant and get steak sauce running down a woman's forehead as the cap barely missed her head and she simply laughed and shrugged the whole incident off!

Whew!!!  It was an eventful day.

Here's the Dinner Group

(Cami and James are the couple closest to the camera on the left)

And here is the lovely steak sauce cap that went on a little adventure

I felt SO incredibly thankful for all of the kindness that surrounded me that day.  Cami was so willing to help and spend at least 2 hours with me trying to work everything out.  She had a smile on her face the whole time too.  

And the family I nanny for was completely understanding and willing to help when I called and said I'd be late for work and that I wouldn't have a car.  They offered to help in anyway they could.

Then the woman at the restaurant decided to handle the situation of being nailed in the forehead with steak sauce in a very nice manner.  She could have flipped out but she just laughed and said, "Well, I gotta admit that's the first time that's happened while eating out!"

It pays to be nice.  You never know what someone is going through and you never know who needs a little bit of kindness.  I am so thankful for the kind people in my life and feel so blessed to know that I am surrounded by so many wonderful people.

Colorado Surprise

My family has a tradition that started about 7 years ago when I was a sophomore in high school.  If you know me and my family, you know that running is a big part of our lives.  

A BIG part.  

Each one of the kids tried out different sports to find our own "niche" but for some

reason we all came back to running. 

This post is all about my fantastic family, especially my little brother Bradley, but I want to give some background info first.

Story time: here's how the tradition started...

I'm pretty close with each of my 3 brothers, but during high school I was especially close with Kyle (my older brother).  When I was a freshman he was a senior and that year was a blast.  We both got to run cross country together and we both made it to state and it was so cool to experience that! He went to college in Utah the next year but stayed in tune to how running was going for me and my team. We made it to state again and I knew my brother wasn't going to be able to come home to support me but it was OK because I had lots of family, friends, and a great team there.  Well the morning of the state race I was up early to catch the team bus to Colorado Springs where the race was.  As I was getting my things together I heard a knock on my bedroom door and somebody say, "Bug??" (That's my nickname).  I stopped, turned around as the door opened and there stood my big brother!!!  I was shocked and immediately fell on the floor and started crying!  Haha, he got a really good reaction from me.  I was sooo surprised.  He made a huge effort to be able to make it to my race and it meant so much to me to have my whole family there!

Fast forward over the years and...

for each year that one of the kids makes it to state in cross country the kids who aren't at home anymore have found a way to make it home for the race.  It's such a great way to support each other and it's a blast to all be together again.

Here's a pic from a year we came back and watched Danny race

Bradley is such an awesome person.  I LOVE being able to just talk with him.  He and I always have really easy and great conversations.  He's always been my little buddy.  He is so funny. He seriously knows how to make people laugh!  And he is quite the trooper.  He's endured a lot of hard things in life.  I wish everyone could see the amazing young man he is, because he definitely isn't the type of person to go out and say,"Guess what? I'm awesome!"  He has great leadership qualities too.  He gets things done and will pick up any slack.  

The bottom line is, I love my little brother and I am so proud of him.

This is from several years ago when we played in the rain

I'm sure he'd appreciate me pointing out that he's a lot taller now :)

This year, Bradley is the only child at home.  Danny and Kyle are in Utah and I'm in Minnesota.  The prospects of me being able to make it home for state were very very slim.  This was so hard to accept because Bradley has been the one who has been there for ALL of his older siblings through ALL the many years of running.  He's had to sit through countless races, awards ceremonies, and who knows what else for each sibling.

My wonderful mama had some inspiration though and using sky miles we were able to book a flight to Colorado for me!  I was SOOO excited to surprise Bradley.  The day finally came when I flew to Colorado and got to surprise my little brother!  I got him good.  It was awesome.

Here are some pictures from the weekend

 My amazing parents :)

I sure do love my Papa

The star of the weekend - Go Bradley!

Mine and Danny's weak attempt at dressing up for the Ward Halloween Party

(He's wearing a bear hat and I'm wearing cat ears)

The kids - minus Martin

The Family (minus Marty)

Bradley did GREAT at state (even though he said he was disappointed at his race - the goober).  He placed 63rd out of 200 people.  And that's just the 200 people that even MADE it to the state championships out of the entire state of Colorado! This boy can run a 5k (3.1 miles) in 16 minutes and 11 seconds!  That's so fast!

I LOVED being able to just hang out and talk with my family.  All of the kids were there except for my handsome husband who we all missed so much and kept saying, "We wish Marty were here!" But he had to work and we're saving for twins :)

Speaking of which...here is my 15 week photo!  I was busy packing and getting ready to go to Colorado last week so, unfortunately, I didn't get a 14 week photo.  But it's fun to see the change in my size since my last post!

                       15 Weeks                                                                                13 Weeks

2 Weeks in a Nut Shell

Its been a while and there is a lot to update!  Things that have gone on over the 

past couple of weeks:

Martin went to California for a business trip and got to do a little surfing

I always miss him so much whenever he goes out of town.  I miss snuggling with him the most, especially on cold mornings!  But I have awesome friends who let me hang out with them while he's gone and I always try to find ways to distract myself.  This time I got to do fun crafty things with Becky like finishing a baby room...ta da!

Next, Marty organized an event for his work that was a huge success!  Every year his company participates in something called Girls & Science.  It's a day at the Minnesota Science museum (which is SO cool!) devoted to encouraging young girls to pursue science careers.  Marty was even on the news!  I don't have the video and I forgot my camera but a friend of ours recorded the video so I'm going to try to find a way to get it on my computer.

Another fun thing we got to do was take maternity pictures of our friends, Becky and Jesus!  This is the same friend who I helped finish the baby room for.  It's been really fun to have other prego friends to talk with.  Here's a cute picture of them...

AND they were ridiculously nice and took some maternity pictures of us too!

 We're holding lemons in the below picture because that's about what size the twins were that week.

 I LOVE Martin's smile in the below picture.

And last but not least...my belly has certainly been growing over the past couple of weeks!

Week 12 

(with the cute shirt Marty bought me while he was in CA)

Week 13

It's crazy to me how quickly my belly is growing.  There are lots of friends of mine who are pregnant right now and some are way further along than I am and I'm already bigger than them!  BUT, I'm perfectly OK with that because 1) there are 2 babies inside of me and 2) I'm pretty sure I'd be huge with one baby too because I'm a whopping 5 ft. 3 in. so the only place for babies to go is out.  Haha bring on the babies and bring on the belly!

The Belly is a Growin'

First off, THANK YOU THANK YOU for all of the love, support, and congratulations on our exciting news that we will be parents of twins!  We have seriously felt so loved and blessed.  It is amazing.

On my 10 week mark Martin had a special surprise planned for me.  I came home to a romantic dinner on our porch.  Complete with candles, a beautiful pot of mums, snickers (my all time favorite candy), pizza (about the only food I haven't been picky about lately), apples and cheese (a treat I love combined together), and a warm fuzzy blanket to curl up in because I'm always cold.  Martin is SO thoughtful and it was a great way to celebrate our 10 week mark.

Today I am officially 11 weeks along and things are going pretty well!  I haven't had too many crazy symptoms, but there are definitely some weird ones.

Symptoms:

• My gag reflex is up the wazoo!!!  Smells get me, thinking about smells gets me, talking about yucky things gets me, and it's just bad.  Really bad.
• My sense of smell is outrageously sensitive.  Seriously.  There was literally a week where I did not even go near the fridge and freezer because for some reason they smelled AWFUL to me.
• Very, very, very, very tired.  I fall asleep around 9:30 or 10pm usually.
• Waking up every few hours.  I usually wake up 2 times a night either to go to the bathroom, because I'm hungry/thirsty, or I just need to re-adjust. 
• Headaches - not a ton, but when I get them, they hurt real bad.
• Nausea - just for a couple of weeks towards the beginning, but now it isn't bad at all.
• Mood swings - there have only been a couple, but thank goodness for a caring, patient husband is all I need to say.
• Cravings and pickyness - I've really only noticed 2 things that I wanted really bad.  Potato salad and baked potatoes.  We documented the potato salad craving (see below) because it was my first one :) More foods sound bad than they do good to me, so that's been an adjustment.
• And a growing belly!  I started noticing changes at about 8-9 weeks and was so surprised because I felt like that was sooo early to be showing...but then again, I'm having twins.  The doctor said that my bump will be getting big really quickly!

Honestly, it hasn't been too bad!  The puking because of nausea and gagging isn't any fun, but I have never been happier to feel so cruddy!  As I'm getting near the 2nd trimester things have calmed down a bit, which is a good break to enjoy.  Here are the lovely pics of my baby bump!!!

9 Weeks Along

11 Weeks Along

My first craving