some Christmas pictures

Dec. 9 - Olive and her buddy Bohdan at Chris' company Christmas party.

Dec. 19 - Olive enjoying every minute of sitting on Santa's lap.

Dec. 20 - Olive in her Christmas dress.

Dec. 24 - Santa (Chris) trying to wake up Anna on Christmas Eve. She wanted nothing to do with him.

Dec. 25 - Olive's first Christmas morning.

Dec. 25 - Happy 33rd Birthday to Chris!

slammed

packing, cleaning, putting the furnished house back the way it was when we found it, moving boxes, being a relief society singer, furniture shopping, christmas not-shopping but needing to, baking, laundry, planning trips, chasing olive, and feeling more pregnant and pooped than usual

Our Thanksgiving trip

started on Monday because Chris had to work in Henderson for 2 days. That meant 2 days of fun with Amber which I loved and needed. We drove to Jimmy's on Tuesday night, me driving the whole way while Chris read The Lightning Thief aloud (which by the way, we can only give 3 stars to...a few too many Harry Potter rip-offs to not get irritated during the otherwise compelling story).

On Wednesday morning, we got to be the lucky ones to pick my mom up from the airport. I love picking people up from the airport, it's always such a delightful thing, especially when it's my mom. She doted on Olive while we drove over to the Gateway to see Ashley try on bridal gowns. I won't post the picture of the one Ash chose, just in case Paul is peeking, and I also won't post the one of her in her underclothes. What do you take me for? That was a sweet sweet thing; she looked lovely and all of us sisters cried. Naturally, lunch was in order after that and so many of us met at some burger place by Thanksgiving Point. The rest of that day was spent relaxing at Jimmy's and making last-minute Thanksgiving dinner preparations. And then Jimmy said we should go to the Mayan for dinner. So his family, us, and my mom met there and ate, hoping to be dazzled by the supposed facelift the place had undergone. Yeah, I should've gone with my instincts on that one. I've always hated the Mayan, and that night wasn't very different. Our server sucked. Seriously sucked. Chris' order was wrong too. Oh, and when the guy brought the bill over, he literally threw it into my mom's lap. That last part pushed me over the edge, and I took the whole thing up with management. I will say that they took pretty good care of the bill, which made me feel somewhat better, but I think I would've needed to see our server fall off one of the highest rocks into the shallow pool in order to feel totally recompensed. Anyway, I've learned my lesson and I won't be giving it another chance.

Thanksgiving Day for me started out with the hard work of making 5 batches of homemade rolls. I also made some homemade stuffing, my aunt Dawn's recipe, which turned out to be a hit. Jenny had all 45 of us over at her house (yes, 45...and that was without Scot's and Lisa's families!) She's always such a great hostess - so laid back about all the kids running a muck and wanting everyone to be together no matter what. We managed enough sane time to go around and have everyone name what they were thankful for. I love hearing what my nieces and nephews have to say, and everyone else for that matter. These are the people that matter most to me, and having them bear a bit of their souls is precious to me. It was a really nice time and dinner was good too.

Friday morning many of us met at the Draper temple and did baptisms and confirmations for some family names my dad had compiled. It was a sweet experience, being Maddie and Gessie and Ethan's first time, and doing the work for family members who we know and love. I especially loved being baptized by Chris, that was neat for us. (By the way, you should've seen his whites...I didn't know they made capri versions of those). Shane watched Olive for us. She's his special friend, and we love Shane to death. We had him with us for the rest of the day, so we were happy. We did a little Black Friday shopping, emphasis on little, and ate chicken sandwiches at Chick-Fil-A. That evening a bunch of the boys were in a football tournament down in Provo, so we went to watch and cheer. They played hard, and Chris made the winning point in the second game they played! I was so excited. Jenny and I both were running up and down the field with the action, it was fun and probably pretty funny to see 2 pregnant girls doing that. The boys ended up coming in 3rd place out of 8 teams. Not bad! Everyone got pizza and hung out at Jimmy's after that. Ash and I had a conversation about the temple, and that was a favorite moment. I'm so happy and excited for her.

Saturday Chris and Olive and I ran errands with my mom, and then we ditched Chris and Olive and headed to Ashley's bridal shower. That was a good time. We laughed (cackled, really) and cried and Ashley scored with gifts. The rest of the night was spent grilling and watching BYU beat Utah (yay!) on tv. We called it a relatively early night that night so we could get some rest and head home early the next day.

I came away with a ferocious cold, but I will say it was worth it. Chris read aloud again on the way home on Sunday, which made the 8 hours go by fast. We're glad to be home, but had such a lovely time with my family. Miss them and love them. And so thankful for them. And for you.

What do we live for

if not to make life less difficult for each other?

Here's a picture of George Eliot, the lady who penned this line. That wasn't her real name, by the way; she used a male name figuring people would take her more seriously that way. Interesting, huh?

I digress.

This month is a pick-your-own visiting teaching message, and I'm curious what you chose. I picked President Monson's talk What Have I Done for Someone Today. When Chris and I first got married we had this vision of doing or being "something for someone somewhere" each day. I'll admit I've been less than perfect at remembering that vision, but reading this quote and this talk gave me a strengthened resolve about it. I can honestly say I'm way less wound up and stressed about stuff when I stop worrying about my own life and start thinking about making someone else's life easier. Today when I visited two of my girls, I asked why this is an important principle. One of them said, "Because it's not about us." I ponder that seemingly simple response, and I'm very affected by it.

So anyway, what did you choose?

I know, I can't tell them apart either.

Birfday with an F

We get to see Craig and the Pionkes almost any time we want to these days. So when Craig's birfday came around, and Karly planned a little surprise, we got to go. Amber and Karly put up decorations, and then we all watched for Craig out the window and argued over how we would jump out to surprise him. The picture of his feet is the one I took when we yelled "surprise" - guess I wasn't looking. He didn't know Karly was going to be there, so that was a sweet little reunion to witness. It was a fun night. I'm happy to have such good friends kinda nearby.

That Intelligender's Full of S, Man!

You may remember that I took the gender prediction test and it said I was having a boy. But we had our ultrasound this morning, and it's definitely a girl! The anatomical evidence of her femininity is in this first picture. The second one is just so you can see her lovely face.

Chris and I both got all teary when Dr. Urso told us the news. We had been feeling pretty sure it was a boy, mostly because of the gender test. We had even settled on a name. But every time I said out loud, "I think it's a boy," there was a little tugging in the back of my mind. I even said to Chris on the way to the appointment this morning, "You know, there's still a good chance it's a girl." And the other day I came across a girl name I really like. I guess somewhere I still had a feeling it was going to be a girl. And it is. I'm delighted that Olive will have a sister so close in age. It's still weird to think there's more to life than Olive, but I'm sure we'll like our next girl a little bit. Anyway, that's our big news. Chris is sorely outnumbered!