Currently Listening Where To Begin By Jared Anderson see related

Jared Anderson was a guest worship leader at our church today - I was SO excited! I love his songs; what a blessing to have him there.

Ok, for those of you that are pregnant or already mommas, you will appreciate this...

I think I need to start keeping a log of how many times I go to the bathroom in a day. I swear, sometimes I've only been out for 5 minutes before I honestly have to go again. It's going to be another long 4 months...

Currently Gaming Snood By Destination Software see related

So Christmas has flown by for another year. It's hard to believe it's not only come and gone, but it's now 2007.

There were a couple lowlights this year:

• Alyssa (Amy's youngest) ended up in the hospital while we were in Duluth, because she couldn't keep anything down for a couple of days. Poor thing hooked up to the IV looked so little!
• I got an icky cold last week that is still lingering. Blech.
• Some family things. Won't elaborate too much more.

But more importantly, here are only some of the highlights (there were many, many more!):

• The Christmas decorations - I love decorating my house for Christmas!
• Christmas Eve's Sunday service at church.
• Hosting my family for Christmas Eve. I managed to cook the roast for a second year in a row without completely wrecking it!
• Seeing Dena's excitement at receiving a FoodSaver, and talking about how you really know she's crossed over from being a 'kid' to being an adult when she is excited about getting appliances as gifts. Ha!
• Relaxing when we went to visit Jamie's family in Duluth. With the exception of how crazy it gets at his parent's house with all of the kids there...
• Seeing The Pursuit of Happyness with Jamie for date night.
• Going to a really fun New Year's Eve party with some of Jamie's work friends. I haven't laughed that much in a while.

Now it's back to the normal routine. Work is going to slow down a little bit, thank goodness, but hopefully not too much. It's nice to have a good balance of having enough to do at a normal pace.

Looking forward to a relaxing weekend, and the ultrasound next Tuesday!! It's hard to believe that I'm more than halfway through my pregnancy already. "They" really know what they mean when "they" say time flies, don't they?!

Currently Listening Joy By Avalon see related OUCH! So last night, I made krumkake (with Jamie's help) for him to bring to school today. They split everyone alphabetically into two days at his school where they have a treat smorgasboard - since he's the back half of the alphabet, today was his day. So I thought "I'll make krumkake! I haven't used my new krumkake iron that I got from my parents last year for Christmas!". We weren't sure how it would work, since our stove has a smooth top, and the iron is the kind that is supposed to sit on the burner coil. Well, it worked out just fine, until I was flipping one of the cookies and noticed a little crumb had fallen onto the burner, and was on fire! So I started to freak out, and without thinking (clearly without thinking, in hindsight) went to move the whole iron away from the burner. The one problem? The handle is metal as well, and I hadn't thought to put a hot pad thingy on the handle. So I burned my thumb and pointer finger pretty bad, and got just a little part of my middle finger. Now, at least it was my left hand, although I'm now realizing how much I use BOTH hands, and at least I didn't grab it with my palm as well. That would have been WAY worse. At any rate, it was interesting making the rest of the cookies, since I was pretty much one handed. Jamie became way more involved in the process than we had intended! What a good egg. Oh, and it wasn't like it was a fire to burn the house down, just a tiny little flame. So the house is still standing too. No new baby news - things are still going well, and I am feeling very blessed and fortunate to be in good health. The ultrasound is scheduled for January 9, so that is very exciting! But we are still not going to find out if it's a boy or girl. I'm still anxiously waiting to "pop" instead of looking like I'm just putting on a little extra weight... Since we are hosting my family for Christmas Eve (dinner for 13, anyone?!), I probably won't be online until after Christmas, when we get back from visiting Jamie's family in Duluth. So blessings to everyone during the CHRISTmas season!

Currently Listening Wintersong By Sarah McLachlan see related

Sometimes I catch myself doing the strangest things...for example, I counted 206 steps to get from the building to my car in the ramp at work today. ?!?

Currently Listening Joy By Avalon see related Where does time go these days?! I cannot believe it's already Wednesday night. We've had a busy week so far: Monday night: Jamie had a math league meet (yes, he coaches the mathletes ), and I was getting caught up on work stuff until about 9pm from being gone last week Tuesday: I had a doctor's appointment in the afternoon (everything looks good so far!), then we went to a Christmas concert at our church with my parents which was great. It's really different to go to a church that has a whole orchestra, a big band, over 100 person choir, just all of those resources. Plus Steve Green was the special guest. Now, I'm not exactly a huge Steve Green fan, but he was actually really good in concert. Tonight: Bible study - our second to last Revelation class for this semester. Tomorrow night we have a breather, then Friday night it's over to hang out with some friends. Saturday - no plans as of yet! VERY exciting. I have to call to schedule the ultrasound for the first week or two in January. The doctor said yesterday that I could probably try to sneak it in within the next couple of weeks, but since we're not going to find out the sex of the baby, it's not as big of a deal. It is still exciting, though! Sometimes I have to remind myself that I'm pregnant - it's all very strange to me. When I see babies, I get so excited to meet MY baby. In the meantime, I'm going to follow all of the advice that I've been getting about sleep, enjoying my flexible time/schedule, and doing what I want...

Currently Listening iWorship Christmas Offering Offering (Christmas Version) - Paul Baloche see related I'm so excited - I'm going out of town for the weekend. I will not think about work (after I get offline) until Monday! The cabin is in the Brainerd area, and totally outfitted for scrapbooking...we'll see how productive I can be. I went last year and worked on a project not even for myself, so I'm hoping this year I can get my Africa album done and then some! I'm bummed that Deby's not going this year, but my mom is actually coming with, so I'm looking forward to spending some time with her. As of right now, we don't have any plans for next Saturday, which I'm kind of excited about, because I love lazy days. But we'll see - things always seem to pop up. At least we have 95% of our Christmas shopping done! And the gifts we have yet to pick up don't require setting foot in the mall, which is nice. It's actually allowing me to focus on Christ a little earlier than usual. What's your favorite Christmas song or CD? Mine (CD) is a toss-up - either Go Fish's More Than a Story, or this great CD I got at Target one year, Christmas with the Stars. Song - it changes almost daily.

Currently Listening WOW Christmas By Various Artists see related Well, I don't have any pictures from the sweater party last night, but it was a blast! My cheeks hurt from smiling (genuinely) so much, and my stomach from laughing so much. I should really maybe take a photo of the sweaters, just to remember how bad they were! What a nice weekend - it was a great blend of being relaxing, productive and restful all in one. We picked up our Christmas cards today, now I just have to get at addressing and mailing them all...we'll see how long that takes. Here's our photo for this year's card (if you've been to our house before, you can see the new green paint color in the family room!): So, after the sweater party, which was a 2nd annual, it got me thinking. What other type of themed parties would there be to have as annual occurrences? Such as the apple tasting party, which I believe we will continue on with every fall. Or what is the best themed party you've been to?