Christmas 2012

Can't believe this Christmas has come and gone. And I still have a baby in my belly! Even though it was hard to plan anything, and we ended up changing things at the last minute and being flexible, we had a really nice Christmas with our families.

Early Saturday morning I woke up with regular contractions, so we went to the hospital. We were being cautious because it's our third and we knew we had a 30 minute drive down to Pomerado. We got down there around 2:30 and the contractions stopped. We walked for an hour and still nothing so we went home. 

Here we are walking around on trip #1 to the hospital. Don't you just love the gowns?

The next day we mostly hung around the house, thinking labor would start back up any minute. We napped, played with the boys and took a walk around the ranch. 

The next day (Sunday), we had Christmas with my family. We had a delicious brunch and opened roughly one million presents. 

Eric whacking Jake's new trike with his light saber.

Racing

The boys have a Christmas book where the boy gets a big orange in his stocking and they thought that was the coolest thing ever. My mom put one in each of their stockings and they were so excited!

Chocolate before bed. Must be Christmas.

That night around 6:30 I started having contractions (I had been having lots of Braxton Hicks contractions since Saturday) that were uncomfortable and regular again. Still thinking it was all going to get started and go fast, we headed back down again thinking it was time. Nope. Home again. Not before a drive-thru cheese burger at 1:30am.

Trip #2 to the hospital. I opted out of the gown this time.

Next day was Christmas Eve and we decided to do our own family Christmas then, again, not knowing when baby was coming.

Eric chose these Angry Birds jammies for Christian

I guess I didn't take any other pictures of this...

After presents we went into town for brunch at Denny's.

At Denny's

The boys got to use umbrellas, which they thought was pretty awesome.

For the record, I had an adorable pink and black outfit for Lela which would have gone perfectly with these Christmas Eve outfits... Ah well, she'll wear it soon!

That evening we went to my Gramma's for Christmas Eve dinner. Let me just interject here and say my mom is amazing! She has been doing the work of 3 or 4 different people all at once the past couple weeks. She cleaned my house and has been keeping the boys a lot. Then had to come to our house at 2am, then stayed the next night since we were expecting labor any second. Then she cooked the brunch for all of us, came back the next night and she was also in charge of all the cooking for Christmas Eve at my Gramma's! She's the best!

After dinner, a bunch of us went with Gramma to her church for Candlelit service, and it was so nice! Then we came back for dessert and presents.

Kiddos playing with Angela and Trixie

Time for a sing-along!

The next afternoon we headed to Oma and Poppa's. We had a yummy prime rib dinner and a really fun time.

Eric played with Gracie's princess game.

We had a wonderful, crazy Christmas this year and we are so thankful for people to spend it with.

As for the baby situation, we are actually scheduled for an induction this evening. I had an appointment this morning and we decided to go ahead with it. I have had the other two kids naturally, so this is definitely a different approach than I would prefer, but quite frankly, we really need this baby to come in 2012 (insurance deductible, taxes, etc.). We are so excited to meet our sweet Lela tonight or tomorrow!