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Homemade potpourri

Well, it's not really potpourri cause it doesnt have a smell. Except for the slight hint of pine. Maybe I'll ad some cinnamon sticks or something! Anyway, on our walk today, Jaylee and I so many beautiful leaves and branches and things, we had to go home and get a bag so we could collect stuff! I can't believe how beautifully nature fits into the holidays. Just look at all the amazing colors! It was a gorgeous day.

Ho ho ho

Welllll it's been forever. We got rid of our Internet cause we both have it on our phones and to cut costs a bit. But as nice as having an iPhone is, typing on it just isn't the same. So that's why I have not been posting. Also, nothing too exciting has been happening... So ya know. :)

Except that Jaylee turned two! That was traumatizing for momma. I can't believe how big she is. I wish I could make her stop growing. She's at such an amazing stage. She's so smart and sweet and funny and gorgeous. I don't want her to get any bigger! I guess that's why people have more babies. And speaking of babies, only 6 more weeks! Yesterday was 34 weeks! (or so we think based on her development when we got the ultrasound.) The whole conception/last period thing is really a guess. We suck at paying attention to that. So we only have her development and my measurement to go by, which both aren't very reliable sources. So that's kind of frustrating! Cause I'd REALLY love to know how much longer I really have... But oh well. Nothing to do but be patient! I am sooo excited for her to get here!! I love having kids. I can't believe I'm gonna have two! So exciting :) We've ordered our birth kit and are starting to assemble all the stuff we need. I'm so excited to be doing it at home. My midwife is awesome and I love that I don't have to go anywhere and that I'll be so comfortable in my own home. I hope she comes soon :)

Thanksgiving was great! I made pies for the first time and they were superb. Super super yummy. In fact, I wish I had some pumpkin pie right now!! Mmmmm. The entire meal was soo good, as usual. And my family is awesome. We stayed at my mom's all week and we had a blast.

I'm super proud of myself this pregnancy. I've gained HALF of the weight I did last time. Which was my main goal. Besides being healthy and growing a healthy baby, obviously. :) Our regular diet is really low carb. We don't eat processed foods or bready stuff, so I just stayed with that diet while pregnant. It's been hard because carbs are really what keep you full, so I have to eat a lot and more often. We pretty much only eat fruits, veggies and proteins. It's super healthy way to eat and I've felt so great this pregnancy. So much better than last time. Well, once I got past the horrible 5 months of sickness, of course. :) Also, my midwife told me that eating less carbs and sugars really helps with tearing during labor. So that's good!

Winter finally came and holy moly is it here! Thanksgiving was beautiful weather and then the weekend after, it got cold! It's 34 degrees today and feels like 28. Can you believe that? I was definitely not ready. Especially cause my clothes suck. The warmest thing I have is a light fleece-ish hoodie. I thought that was gonna last me most of the month ok, but not anymore! Crazy Texas weather!

We made Christmas cookies last week and they were SO good!! I finally found a good sugar cookie recipe. They were so delicious and chewy, even the next day! I've probably tried 5 different recipes over the years and they've all sucked. So yay for good recipes! We put our tree and decorations up the Sunday after Thanksgiving cause I couldn't wait anymore! I'm usually the one that hates anything Christmas before Thanksgiving, but not this year. I think I was just so excited for fall and winter this year because of how sucky the summer was that I didn't want to wait! I love our little tree and decorations! Our house is so cozy. Yay Christmas!! :)

Yay for the weekend! Boo for Monday.

We had such a good weekend! It started with a great BYU win Friday night, and then we headed to my parent's house for the rest of the weekend. I love spending time with my family so much! I'm lucky that Brandon is so awesome and is fine doing it so often :)

The weather was absolutely BEAUTIFUL this weekend! In between the Saturday sessions of conference, Brandon, Miri, Dad and I went to a little craft fair/car show that was going on in downtown. It was so fun to just be outside and spend time together! There wasn't much to see at the fair, but the car show was fun. Well, unless you like homemade crafts and gadgets made by, what looked like at least, 10 year olds.... :) Especially exciting was the part at the car show where Miri, without knowing the car's owner was right behind her, said 'this Porsche reminds me of Grandmother!' You should've seen the guy's face. I'm sure that's exactly what every man that owns a 50s classic sports car wants to hear. It was great :)

Then last night Miri, Mike, Brandon and I met up with Katie and her husband for frozen yogurt after priesthood session. It was so much fun to see her! She's just as fabulous as always, of course. :) And it was really fun for me to hang out with another prego! I've never done that before, so it was great to hang with someone who knows how fat and crazy I feel :) There will definitely be plans made for more hang outs in the near future!

The rest of the weekend was filled with delicious food (as usual), my fantastic family and the awesome bits and pieces of conference that we were able to watch with our tantrum-throwing toddler. Seriously, that was apparently her favorite thing to do this weekend. So, I'm pretty exhausted. It's about 9pm now and I'm pressing publish and then hitting the sack. I'm pregnant. I can do that without being made fun of. :)

Xoxo

We're getting rain again!

Baby girl is a crazy active one. I don't remember feeling this much movement so early with Jaylee. Because I knew what to look for this time around, I started feeling little movements as early as 10 weeks. But she's been doing some intense practicing for the Nutcracker the past couple weeks! My tummy is almost constantly moving and you can see everything from the outside. I bet it looks pretty crazy. And she's also sitting really REALLY low. So that's fun :)

I think we've decided on a name! It's been really hard finding any names we like. To start, we were completely surprised that it was a girl. So we had no names picked out. And then I had total brain blockage on coming up with ANYTHING. All the names we looked at on the Internet were totally common and boring. Or weird. Nothing felt right! Brandon suggested a name a few weeks ago that we'd had picked for Jaylee and I didn't like it. But he brought it up again today and it felt really good! So. For now, I think we've decided on one! And I love it! Yay!

In other news, I had to stop myself from getting Christmas decorations out today...... I want it to be winter and Christmas SO BAD!! I can't believe it's already October this weekend and we're still in the 90s. Booooo :(

My sisters, mother and I have started a tradition for which I am very excited! We'e started going to brunch together once a month! I know it may not sound that exciting, but we never get to hang out just the girls. So it's super fun to talk and eat yummy food altogether! I love it! This month we'll be taking a picnic to the arboretum! Eeee so fun!! :)

Anyway, writing from my phone is a pain, so I'm going to bed!

Xoxo

Falllllllll. PLEASE???

I have THE hardest time coming up with titles for my posts!! WTC?! (What-the-crap. Not World Trade Center....Just FYI). I wish I could disable that feature. I know I can just not use it, but that empty box annoys me! Blargh.

Anyways! I'm sure all two of you that read this already saw my post on FB, but I'll write it here, too. Baby #2 is a little girl!! I'm soooo excited!!! :) Jaylee needs a sister. Don't get me wrong, I would've been just as happy with a boy and a boy will be so fun when he comes. But a girl right now is perfect for us. Even if you just look at the financial aspects. We'll have to buy a LOT less stuff now that we can reuse. Although we still will need to buy a lot. We borrowed a TON of stuff from Brandon's awesome cousins when Jaylee was little. Bumbo, boppy, carrier, bouncer, jumper, TONS of clothes, etc. The list goes on. So there's still a lot that we'll have to get for this baby, but at least it's minimized some.

On another fun note, my sisters and Mom are gonna throw me a baby shower! Yay!! I'm super excited cause they didn't get to be at the one for Jaylee (it was in Utah). So that will be really fun! And also cause we seriously need some stuff for buba #2. Thanks for the idea, Miri!! :)

We finally, finally got some rain this week! We've been in the worst drought Texas has seen for yeeaaarrrs and it has really sucked! Everything is totally brown and dead and ugly. And we have NO water. The lakes and rivers are sooo low. And the wildfires! Geez. This summer has been a horrible one. Anyway, there's a thunderstorm outside and it sounds fabulous! Let's hope it drops 15 inches on us!

I'm so excited for fall, I can hardly stand it. I want it to be cool already! I want to make yummy pumpkin dishes and to wear sweaters and drink hot chocolate! Mmmm fall is so yummy. It makes me feel so good thinking about it! I can't wait! I already brought up the discussion of Thanksgiving dish assignments at Mom's yesterday. I'm making pies and rolls this year. YUMMMMM. CAN'T WAIT!!!! Fall is almost here. I can feel it.


Ps. Goose talks in her sleep. Brandon heard her in the middle of the night last night say "No! No! *something inaudible* Uh oh!" Hehe I wonder what she was dreaming about!

the art of doing nothing

I believe that is a book title. Or something. It is also something that I, in fact, have perfected. I feel like I don't do ANYTHING. It's been a rough summer for us. I've been super sick with this pregnancy, up until pretty recently. And the weather has been TERRIBLE. Seriously, it's been the summer from hell. Meaning, we stole the weather from there. So so hot. We've set national records. Ridiculous! So the sickness and heat has turned me into a homebody and I hate it. I miss having energy and feeling well enough to do things! I gained a TON (literally, a ton.) of weight when I was pregnant with Jaylee, despite my healthy eating habits and that is something that I wanted to try to avoid with this pregnancy.

I've always had a serious complex about my weight. I've always felt like I was fat. Even during my skinny times. Which really, I was skinny. And I can see that now looking back at pictures, but at the time all I saw was fat. Growing up in a family of beanpoles played a major role in this, I'm sure. I was the only one with any sort of chub to me our whole childhood. Only once my sisters reached college age (maybe a little younger) did they start getting any sort of curves. But I was a little chub chub kid. I was adorable, don't get me wrong. But my self confidence was definitely affected by that. Anyway. Long story short. I really didn't want to gain so much weight this time around. It's really hard for me to get big. So much that I get really depressed. Really. We eat fruit, veggies, meat and grains 95% of the time. Of course we have our bad days and junky times, but we eat super healthy. No carbs, no processed foods. All WHOLE foods. But with how sick I've been, I've just had to eat whatever I could manage to get down and not be picky. Which has been a lot of crap compared to what I usually eat. So, everything together, I've gained a lot already.

I'm halfway done next week! So exciting! I'm going to try really hard from here until the end to DO things. The weather is finally getting nice so we'll be going on walks. A lot. And I'm gonna try and pick Zumba back up a little bit. The Wii game (which is what I have) is definitely not as hard as the Dvds or classes. So I think it'll be good for me. I love dancing, so it's a really fun way for me to work out! I'm trying really hard to channel all of the emotions and energy I have about getting big into something positive, instead of getting more depressed. It's hard, but I'm trying hard. Wish me luck.