Christmas 2018

This Christmas was pretty great with the new babies. There really is something special about having newborns during Christmas to help remind us of the Savior as a newborn.

We came home from the hospital the day before Christmas Eve. Hallelujah! I was so glad that wasn't in the hospital on Christmas. For the last three years we have spent Christmas Eve with the Bednars and the Noonans. This year I still felt like we should spend Christmas Eve with them but they had to come to our house. 

We did a night in Bethlehem again and had chicken, pita bread, veggies, and fruit. We also acted out the nativity story again which was complete chaos with 18 kids. It was totally hilarious. As Jack was reading the story we had basically 3 nativity stories all acting out at the same time. It lasted all of about 5 minutes. 

Poor Gracie did not feel well at all. She had a terrible cough/cold that had moved into her eyes. You can see in the pictures how awful she feels. She looked more like the angel of death than one proclaiming the Savior was born....

Ruby was one of the cutest shepherds I have ever seen...

Afterwards, the pajama fairy dropped off Christmas pajamas for everyone. However, right before this picture was taken we did have an incident that made everyone pretty grumpy, especially me.

The Noonans had given us a glass Christmas ornament of the leg lamp from a Christmas story. Benny had found the gift bag and opened it up. When Jack saw it he tried to pull it away from Benny and Benny held on. This resulted in the glass ornament being torn in half. Kind of funny if you think about the how it ended for the leg lamp in the Christmas story...

Anyway...I was pretty upset and they both felt bad. So, needless to say, those smiley faces are not quite genuine as everyone was a little bit uptight right before bed. Now I look back on it and it is a funny story but I was not happy that night. Shad is still convinced that he can fix it, so it is currently sitting in our laundry room awaiting a repair.

Haken and Jack's Santa haul

Ruby's Santa gifts

Benny's Santa gifts

Gracie's Santa haul

I didn't get many pictures of Christmas morning because I was still pretty sore and just wanted to sit there and enjoy the day. It was a great relaxing Christmas really. I didn't worry much about cleaning up (mostly because I couldn't bend over to pick stuff up) and we stayed in our PJ's all day. We didn't have anywhere to go and it was awesome.

No gifts for these boys. They got diapers I guess :)

The best gifts we got were these two sweet boys!

This year each of the kids drew a name of one of their siblings and got a gift for them with their own money. It was really sweet to see the things that they picked out for them. They were very thoughtful. Most notable were the twin babies that Haken got for Ruby. She treated them like our twin babies.

Jack also picked out a mermaid and princess drawing book and gel pens for Gracie. They were a total hit. I think she drew for most of the day.

Our big gift for the kids was telling them about a dinner cruise that we are going to do on a riverboat up the Mississippi sometime in the spring or summer. We decided last year after doing Lion Kind tickets that we would do an experience for the kids rather than getting lots of gifts. They loved it, so we did it again this year.

My mom actually spoiled us with most of our gifts this year. All of the presents under the tree were from her. Most notable were the Amazon Echo and dots for everyone's room. They have been so awesome to have. Now all of th kids listen to music in their rooms and we can use them as an intercom throughout the house. It was such a great gift! We really love it when Grandma Lori spoils us.

Gingerbread houses

With Grandma in town this week we are doing some things that I wouldn't attempt doing without an additional adult. Gingerbread houses usually aren't my thing, but my friend had an idea of taking all of our Halloween and parade candy that the kids collected and use them for gingerbread houses. It worked brilliantly.

I made the royal icing and we just used graham crackers to make the houses. I thought they turned out pretty cute and the kids were actually really good about not gorging on candy in the process. They are pretty excited to eat them in the near future though.

Ruby was obsessed with collecting suckers.
She didn't really care much about decorating the houses.

We seriously had SO much candy!

The start of Haken's Wrigley field

Daddy made a lean-to shed. He wants an exact
 replica in our backyard.

Grandma saved the day helping Jack with his house.
The roof kept falling down but she found a way to make it work.

Haken's Wrigley field

Gracie's pink house

Daddy's shed

The other side of Daddy's shed. (The chewed up starburst didn't hold
up the sucker trees as well as he had hoped).

Benny's masterpiece

Jack's 2 story house with a detached garage.

Coming up on the finish line- 36 weeks

Here I am sitting at 36 weeks and 4 days. I thought for sure these babies would be here by now. Today is my grandma Mildred's 81st birthday. I thought it would be pretty special if these babies were born on her birthday as we are naming one of them after her father. 

In my picture on Thursday (Dec 13th, Jack's birthday as well as my great grandpa Alfred Tennyson), I didn't see a lot of difference, I almost feel like I look smaller. A lot of people have said that they think I have dropped so the babies are ready to go. The problem is there isn't a baby head down pushing on my cervix to get things moving.

When I went to my doctor appointment with Shad on Friday we thought we were really going to be able to convince the doctor to take me before my December 26th C-section date, but we didn't. He said that babies just do better if they are taken when they decide to come on their own. Their lungs are developed and they are less likely to have NICU time. This convinced us enough to leave them be for a while. In the ultrasound on Thursday they were measuring 6lbs and 6lbs 2oz. No wonder I am sore by the end of the day, I am carrying around 12lbs of baby!

The hardest reality this week is that my mom flew in the day after my doctor appointment and is staying for a week, hoping that maybe she can catch the babies. I was super convinced that they would come while she is here, but now I am not so sure. Every day I feel like today might be the day and then the day passes without a hint of labor. I've been walking in the mornings and doing all of my normal routine cleaning and that hasn't stirred anything up at all. When the doctor checked my cervix on Friday I was only a 1.5cm and not effaced at all.

We just might have some Christmas babies on our hands... Although I'm not holding out hope that they come before grandma leaves on Friday.

I am just really blessed to have made it this far without any complications and bed rest. I am definitely counting my blessings and hoping that the C-section and recovery goes as well as the rest of the pregnancy has.