32 Weeks, Maternity Pictures & Our Christmas...Oh My!

Not quite lions, tigers and bears, but I have a lot of pictures to share!

First things first...

I am: 32 weeks pregnant
Size of Baby: Large jicama ~ 3.75 pounds and about 16.7" long
Total Weight Gained: 12 pounds
Maternity Clothes: I am wearing maternity jeans and a non-maternity top in this picture. I'm also wearing the new hooded jacket Santa brought me for Christmas. (more on that later)
Gender: It's a BOY!
Name: Parker Holt
Movement: I feel lots of movement daily ~ he's quite the little gymnast. I am starting to be able to look down at my stomach and see it moving and things protruding out from time to time.
Sleep: Overall, I am sleeping fairly good (still love my body pillow). I have occasional struggles ~ good nights and bad. I find it hard to get comfortable and turn over sometimes, but not too much to complain about. I know it could be so much worse.
What I Miss: I still miss the same things that I have all along. Oh I can't wait to have a caesar salad, raw cookie dough samples, feta cheese, lunch meat, occasional caffeine, fried eggs ... among other things! But it's been so worth it and hasn't been that hard.
Cravings: No cravings ... just craving what I can't have.
How I'm Feeling: I'm feeling really good and have been very blessed these past 32 weeks! I never thought I would be one of those women who said they "enjoyed being pregnant", but I have enjoyed being pregnant - hah! I've had a few not so fun moments over the past several months, but I've had a very good pregnancy. I am starting to feel bigger each week. I'm having more difficulty bending over, turning over in bed, squating down and getting back up, moving as quick as I used to, putting my shoes on...things like that. The other day, I actually had to have John tie my shoes because I just couldn't get in the right position and bend over far enough on that particular day.
Best Moment last Week: Celebrating our Christmas together and having a fun New Year's weekend! We took a picture before dinner on New Year's Eve.
Here I am 10 weeks ago ~ 22 weeks...

As I mentioned last week, our sister-in-law Heidi took some maternity pictures of us while we were in Fredericksburg for Christmas. A CD of pictures arrived in the mail yesterday from Heidi so I was anxious to see them and share with our family and friends. She did a wonderful job capturing this special time in our lives. We had a lot of fun taking them. It was SO cold outside, so we had to pretend we weren't freezing to death.

This sign we are holding hangs in our entry way under our wedding picture.

The next two is of us with an outfit hanging from a tree (one is focused on us and one is focused on the outfit). This is the outfit we plan to bring Parker home from the hospital in. It is a pair of pants and hooded jacket with a white onesie underneath. We thought "Rookie" fit in nicely with our sports them plus a rookie is someone new and just starting out. Also perfectly fitting is the fact that the number on the outfit is 28 -our anniversary 2/8. It was meant to be!

We are doing a Snoopy sports theme in Parker's room so we wanted to include that in a couple of pictures. These items were used at Parker's shower too. You may recognize these letters, they were made by Aunt Carianne and used on the sign-in table at Parker's shower.

This is one of my favorites of them all. We each used one of our hands to form a heart on my belly.

Our wedding rings with a few of Parker's things in the background.

Just a few of Parker's Mommy...

A few of Parker's Mommy and Daddy ~ being silly, playing in the leaves and having fun.

There were two pictures that I never could upload so I will try to share them another time. They are of us sitting on the ground actually posed and looking at the camera. So thankful for these pictures! My beloved husband and I, deeply in love and about to embark on parenthood. Ready or not, here we come.

Over the weekend, we celebrated our Christmas together. From the first year of our marriage, we have always opened our gifts to each other by ourselves. No offense to our families, but we enjoy having a special time alone to celebrate and open gifts together. We've done it at different times over the years, the weekend before Christmas, the weekend after New Year's, New Year's weekend ... it has varied based on all of our travel plans, but the past couple of years, we have celebrated over New Year's and it has worked out well.

Unfortunately, John was sick last week with a cold and sinus infection so he didn't feel his best, but he was a trooper and we had a great time. Luckily it hit him early last week so he was feeling a tad better by the weekend. Saturday night, we went out to dinner and it was YUMMY!! After dinner we made a trip to Target and bought a new vacuum cleaner. We really know how to party on New Year's Eve! After we were back home we had some dessert pizza that I had made earlier on Saturday, played a game and watched some tv. We did make it until midnight to ring in the New Year. Shortly after that we hit the hay to get some rest before opening presents New Year's Day morning.

Santa came and left something for all of us...

I woke up bright and early and was ever so anxious to start opening gifts. I got John's permission the night before to wake him up when I woke up - hee hee. So here we are in all of our morning glory and beauty opening presents from one another.

Mmmm...yummy smelling new perfume.

We are "iCarly" fans in our house. Yes, it is a "tween" show and we are in our 30s, but it's good, clean family fun and FUNNY!! I blame my nephew Isaac, haha (not really Isaac). I watched a couple of episodes with him one time and found myself laughing and enjoying it right along with him. I had John watch an episode and we've been hooked since then. This is a calendar for John's office and a David Crowder band CD.

A Bible cover for my larger Bible ~ Yah! There was also a Nichole Nordeman CD zipped up inside.

"The Resoultion" from the movie "Courageous" - AWESOME MOVIE! John will sign this and it'll hang in his office. It will serve as a reminder as to the man, husband and father he wants to be for our family. He's currently reading "The Resolution for Men" too. I'm so grateful to be married to such a Godly man and Parker is going to have the best example for a father. Also a squirrel frame for his desk. I am nuts about him!

Paula Deen's Southern Cooking Bible ~ we have big plans together! Fried chicken was already on the menu for our New Year's Day meal so I tried her recipe - yummy to our tummies.

I have new recipe cards that I've been writing out a lot of my recipes on and John got me the 3-ring recipe book that matches the cards so now I can put them all in here by category. Now if I can just finish writing them all on the cards. I love it!

One of John's old favorites.

This beautiful frame will go in Parker's room. Until he arrives and we have a good picture of him, we plan to put one of our maternity pictures in here. When I opened it, John had taped one of Parker's sonogram pictures to the glass ~ pure sweetness.

Go Rangers! Funny how we both got each other a Rangers jacket of some sort.

Calvin loved his new blanket from Santa. This dog LOVES his fleece blankets. He won't touch a toy, but loves the fleece. He's wrapped up in a blanket on the couch as I type this.

All of the wonderful gifts and stocking stuffers minus the candy. Calvin was sniffing around the candy so we had to put it out of reach.

We spent the rest of New Year's Day being pretty lazy around the house. I made coffee cake for breakfast and we talked to our parents. We watched football and worked on a few things, but took a nap and had a yummy dinner. It was a really nice day and weekend...just wish John would have felt better.

John was off on Monday so we spent the ENTIRE day taking down Christmas decorations, re-organizing and packing them all up and then cleaning house. John started working on the Christmas tree in the living room about 9:30 Monday morning and I started in the hallway and except for lunch, we didn't stop until about 6:00 or so Monday night. I had a dinner plan, but John relieved me of my duties and went and picked up pizza for us after a long day of hard work. We got all of the Christmas stuff packed up and then went to town deep cleaning the house and breaking in our new vacuum cleaner. He didn't just vacuum the carpet, John moved furniture in each room and vacuumed behind it and went along the baseboards with the wand. I'm a lucky lady! It felt so good to do so much cleaning and get the house back to normal after the holidays. Now we can finish up our to dos and projects and await the arrival of sweet Parker.

Have a great rest of the week!
Until we meet again...
Riley