40 weeks and due

Today is the official due date. This is officially my longest pregnancy. I am so ready to have her, to hold her, to let Tyrone have his time with her before his deployment! I never dreamed that my fourth pregnancy would be the longest, it's rather unexpected.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, however. One way or another, there will NOT be a 41 week post. Next Wed., Jan. 6th, if she is not here, we will induce. I hope it happens before then, but either way, she's got no more then 6 days in there!! I promise I will update asap when things happen! Please say a little prayer for my patience in the mean time, because there is somewhere around an 8 1/2 lb baby in there, and she is squishing me from the inside out!

Happy New Year's Eve!

snow, snow, snow

I took pictures at Christmas, that my camera completely ate. I ended up with only 2 pics, and so it looks like Gabe and Shiloh were the only people present Christmas morning :( Apparently my camera is picky about batteries...now I know.

We did have a wonderful Christmas, however. On Christmas Eve, we made oatmeal cookies for Santa, read our stories (the bible story, the Polar Express, Alabaster, and The Night Before Christmas), ate cookies and drank hot chocolate, and watched the Santa tracker on Norad. Christmas morning, we had a great time opening presents and playing. Then, Christmas night, we went to our friends Tosha and Tim's house for dinner. It was a fantastic time. They have kids around our kids' ages, and we had good food and good conversation.

Today we are getting the tail end of the blizzard that whooped the entire midwest this week, so, since Santa brought the kids snow gloves in the sizes they need this year, it seemed like the perfect time to let everyone out to play. They stayed out for a good hour, and had lots of fun.

Christmas Eve Gift!

Just some pictures to commemorate Christmas Eve!







The best of the group pictures....that was a total fake pout on Shiloh

And then it devolved into this...

39 weeks

So, here we are! Only 7 days left until her due date! It really is down to the wire, I've been making steady progress. At this point in each of my other pregnancies, I had 1 day until Gabe was born, 2 until Kaleb, and 7 until Shiloh. We're good with whenever, but are hoping that she holds off at least until tomorrow afternoon, so that we can have Christmas on Christmas as a family!

My next appointment with my midwife is Wednesday, but I would be okay with not making it that far! Funny story, though, she is the midwife that delivered Shiloh, and I started seeing her again several appointments ago. She was so excited to see us again, and to see how much Shiloh has grown! She told me to make my appointment for next week with the receptionist, and I did, but Judy didn't have any openings. She stuck her head out to tell me everything looked good on the non stress test we had just done on the baby, and I told her I had made my appointment with another midwife.

She said "NO!" and ran over the the receptionist and had her change her schedule around and make room for me! I love knowing that the person taking care of us knows and loves us! She is also on call at the hospital on Christmas and Sunday, so she told the baby that one of those days would work out really well! :)

30% chance of snow with no accumulation...

Riiiiiight. Sorry, weather channel, you got it wrong today!

The boys are really supposed to be in school today, the last day before their break. However, Gabe had a very scary asthma episode during the night, one that had my hand on the phone to call 911. We were able to get it under control with Xopenex and Albuterol at home, and he seems none the worse for the wear. But, literally, he was gasping for breath and panicking, and came to our bedside barely able to wheeze out a "mommy!", retracting from his collar bone to his ribs. I really can't believe that we were able to tame this episode ourselves, but we were. Still, it shook all of us up, we had Gabe sleep in our room, and we decided to have the boys stay home with us, where we can keep a close eye on him, although he is now acting like he feels 100%.

So, for a couple of days, the weather channel, which I keep a close eye on because of our potential for severe lake effect weather in the blink of an eye, has been saying that today we have a 30% chance of light snow with no accumulation. So imagine my surprise when we rolled out of bed VERY late this morning to find that we couldn't see the road, the snow plows were running, and we were being steadily snowed on. It isn't a ton, but I'd say about 2-3 inches. So the boys are out playing!


Kaleb's snow angel
Gabe's snow angel

Playing, complete with the scarf his Grandmother made for me several Christmases ago, since he can't remember what he did with his!

Gotcha!

38 weeks

Please, please excuse the streaks on the mirror. I didn't realize that some boy of mine had gotten stuff on the mirror when they were brushing their teeth until I was looking at this pic on the computer, and I'm really tired to go take more :)

Anyway, I am officially 38 weeks, with 14 days to go. I KNOW that she dropped more last night, other then that, I'll have a better idea of any progress that I have made after my appointment tomorrow. I'm tired and achy and all of those other things, but am happy to have such a beautiful, growing family. I'll update tomorrow if I find out anything uber exciting at my appointment!

Kaleb's Christmas Concert!

Kaleb's Christmas concert was last night! Shiloh was having a monumentally bad night, and Gabe wasn't having a great one, either, so I stayed home with them and Tyrone and Kaleb went and had special Daddy time! Tyrone took lots of videos for me, and the kids did so well!!! It was hard to pick a favorite, but this song was soooo cute! :) Good job, K!