Some crappy phone pictures!

Last Saturday night Paul and I went and saw Frozen. It really did live up to all the hype! I loooooved it. Paul liked it too. I will be owning that movie. And Tonya I am waiting for you to send me a copy of the soundtrack! 

The theater we went to is AMAZING. It's an AMC theater down in Layton and just look at how ALL of the seats are in the theater:

Yes. They are all leather RECLINERS. You have a little button on the side of your chair that you can adjust it to however you want. It's amazing and pretty much the only theater I'm going to go to in the future. (By the way, Paul laughed at how he looks in this picture. He looks like he's gained 50 pounds! He wants you all to know he has not. Ha ha. )

I also painted this night stand to match the dresser for the little nugget's bedroom. I really like how it turned out.

And I guess that's all the crappy phone pictures I've taken lately. 

I'm down to the last week of doing my job on my own-next week I start training my replacement! That is weird to me. I'm excited to be done, but a little sad to be leaving thins job. Change is weird, especially knowing this will be a BIG change, meaning, I will soon have a child I will be responsible for the rest of my life pretty much. 

Pregnancy Update. . . I guess

I haven't blogged much about this pregnancy, like you have already noticed. I think mainly because I don't know what to say! I feel like I should document some stuff. . . . but I don't have any pictures of the bump so if that's all you are reading this post for, you might as well stop reading.

For the most part things have been going really well. I really have no major complaints. The only things that really aren't ideal is the hip pain I experience every night when trying to sleep. Even that has lessened a bit. Probably helps that I have a foam pad on my side of the bed and also use a body pillow. Now it's just getting to the point that whenever I change positions I automatically feel like I have to pee so I am making multiple trips a night to the bathroom. Oh well. I also feel like my nose has been constantly stuffy the past few months and apparently that is normal. . .all the extra blood flow can cause your membranes to swell. Awesome.

One other thing that really isn't super fun is just getting all the annoying comments. Especially the ones about how big my belly is. Gee, thanks. As if I hadn't noticed that it gets in the way of everything too! I feel like I popped out way early and I know everyone is different but some comments I've gotten (that I'm sure someday when I'm not full of hormones I will find funny) are things like "I think you're going to have a BIG baby!" or "I think you're going to have to have a c-section your baby is going to be so big." Or the classic "when are you due?" and after I respond end of February I get the "oh wow, you look like you're ready to go to me!" Hearing all these things have helped me to mentally remember to never EVER say those things to pregnant women. Let's just stick with the "you look so good!" ones, ok people? But whatever. I know people mean well and just don't realize how it sounds when it comes out of their mouths.

I thankfully passed the glucose tolerance test with no problems. It really wasn't as bad as I was expecting;. It helped that my doctor said I could eat before the test, as long as it's not anything high in sugar. I set that appointment for early in the day so I just had some eggs for breakfast. The drink wasn't that bad either. I got a fruit punch flavored one and it tasted just like Hawaiian Punch and brought me back to my childhood days. The only thing I wasn't a fan of was having to chug it within a few minutes. But everything went smoothly. I scheduled out the rest of my appointments which was so weird for me! These weeks are flying by and before I know it I will have given birth and will be a stay-at-home Mom. So. Weird.

Other Happenings

First, the following weekend after the baby shower I got to see most of my family AGAIN because little brother Cory was invited to be a guest organist on Temple Square! This is so amazing and not really surprising that he made it past the audition process. He really is amazing at the organ and it was great to be able to support him at his first recital.

The only picture we snapped was this sneaky one since photography during the performance isn't really allowed.

He's walking up to the organ if you squint and look closely!

It was fun to hear him play and to once again catch up with family. The next time I see any of them I will have a baby! This is getting more and more real.

Something else Paul and I have been up to-re-vamping our date nights. We kinda got out of the habit of planning our weekly date nights. We were busy with summer stuff, then I was sick during that first trimester stuff, and we just stopped doing them. We feebly tried to plan a few from pulling date ideas out of our jar, but both of us kind of lost interest in any of the ones we had come up with! It was turning into a chore to plan these dates and that is NOT the point. They are supposed to be something fun to look forward to, not dreaded and put on a to do list. So for now we are leaving the date jar alone and came up with some other ideas.

Since we both work full time and are pretty much homebodies, we decided that Friday nights will still be date nights, just a little different. One of us will take a turn coming up with something for dinner. We're going to rotate through three categories: Iron chef style (where we randomly draw out two ingredients from a bag and come up with a dish that way), International Style (where we pick a letter from a bag and find a culture that starts with that letter and make a dish from that culture), and Recipe book style (where we draw a name of one of the recipe books we have and make a new dish out of that). The other person is in charge of drawing a letter out of a bag and picking a movie that we own that starts with that letter.

 We figured we should make good use of the movies we own and get around to watching them. So far it's really been great. These types of dates are just what we want. Laid back with a little bit of planning. They have been going great.

Other things going on: I'm going to start training the lady taking my place in a few weeks. After some debating I've decided to go part time my last month at work. Mainly because I realized Paul's health insurance benefits are better than mine. Also, my company will be going through the open enrollment process during the month of March and it was just confusing to me how my benefits would play out since I wasn't planning on staying past March. . it was just easier to quit being full time so that I could qualify to be on Paul's benefits.The deductible is a lot lower so that will be nice. And I'm actually really looking forward to having a few days off a week to finalize and get everything ready! As long as she doesn't come early. . .which I have a feeling she won't. Well, I also had a "feeling" that she was a boy, so I could be totally wrong. We'll see I guess!

Not much else is going on in our lives right now! I can't complain, we are really blessed. I'm trying to remember all that we have and do my best to give back. Heavenly Father blesses me beyond comprehension every day.

Muggle-Born

Two days after Christmas we headed up to my parents for a baby shower my sisters were throwing me. I knew it was going to be Harry Potter themed but that's about it. They really did an AWESOME job. Well, anything Harry Potter related is awesome in my opinion. And seriously, what else is more me anyways? Shows how much my family loves me and embraces me and my nerdiness to decided to do a theme like that!

I snapped a few pictures of all the amazingness.

Platform 9 3/4! 

Andrea even dressed up for me!

The ladies who put it all together! (And mom, but she took the picture.) Tonya even let me draw a lightening scar on her forehead. She looked just like a female Harry! Ha ha.

It was so nice of them to do that for me. There were fun games like guess what baby item was in the brown bag, "hot potato baby" where you had to share an embarrassing parenting moment if you got stuck with the baby, and a word scramble. It was fun to have family and friends there. Can't believe that this little nugget will be here in a matter of weeks!

The rest of the weekend was filled with games and laughing, like usual when we are visiting with family. It was weird to realize that was the last time I will ever be at my parents house without a child. I am growing up!

A Siddoway Christmas

Christmas this year was spent with Paul's family. It was very enjoyable. Last time we were with his family, me, along with his Dad and a niece or two had some sort of stomach bug all of Christmas Eve day. I remember only having the appetite to nibble on some green jello. So being able to enjoy everything this time around was great!

Totally forgot the camera, but Paul snapped some pictures for us. Mostly of his nieces. Because let's be real, gatherings with families are usually about the little ones.

I had to work on Christmas Eve until the early afternoon. Paul had about 8 paid vacation days he "had" to use before the end of the year or else he would just lose them so he took about 2 weeks off around the holidays! No fair. I had a list of projects for him to do so I guess it turned out ok. And he thought he was going to just be able to relax the whole time. . muahahaha.

Anyways, when I got off we packed up the presents and headed to his parents. We helped prep stuff and then had a tasty dinner full of mashed potatoes, ham, jello wreaths, rolls, etc. You get the idea. Here are some pictures that were snapped during the occasion:

Elena. . . so full of personality.

Looking pretty, like usual!

The whole reason for this picture is Camilla's AWESOME face on the right. I'm dying laughing.

After dinner we of course did the Nativity play! Paul and I were Mary and Joseph. I fit the part pretty well being great with child and all. . . The nieces were the angels. Brothers in law David and Alvaro and Dad Siddoway were the shepards/wise men.

It was really fun to do the nativity with his family. We would stop and sing hymns during the story and I really enjoyed it. Really brought to light again the true meaning of celebrating this holiday.

Aaaand those are pretty much all the pictures I took. Pathetic, I know.

After the Nativity we had a wonderful Norwegian dessert that is like rice pudding and really really REALLY good. Paul's Dad served his mission in Norway so he grew up having it and we've had it a few times and it is so tasty! It's tradition to put an almond in the batch and whoever has the almond in their bowl while eating gets a prize. Paul's dad made sure to put one in each of the little girls' bowls. But they were all so excited/full that they didn't really even finish. Ha ha it was funny.

The girls went home and Paul, his brother David and sister Janet and I all went up and watched a non-Christmas movie. I guess that's another tradition of theirs that started who knows when. . so we watched "Pirates! A Band of Misfits". One of the most hilarious cartoons I've seen.

Paul and I then headed home. It was our first Christmas Eve night on our own! We planned on going back to his parents late the next morning. We decided to do our own gifts for each other and the ones from my family that morning with just the two of us. We didn't own any stockings (I bought some the day after Christmas)  so we unceremoniously exchanged our stocking stuffers in the plastic grocery bags we bought them in. Ha ha. It was really fun to have just the two of us and I'm not going to lie, even though I love spending holidays with family, I'm excited to start doing our own family holiday traditions.

We headed back to his parents for the rest of gift opening and just relaxed. His parents were very generous and got us a crib for the little nugget. After the festivities wound down we headed back up to our place and his parents followed to help set it up. We then went and saw the movie "Saving Mr. Banks". It was good, but I wasn't blown away by it. . .there were plenty of good parts but it's not a movie I'll ever think about buying.

That was pretty much our Christmas! It was a great holiday and I am so blessed to have married into such a wonderful family. We really enjoyed the holiday.