January a la Instagram

In an effort to document this crazy life of ours, my goal for January (I've got one for every month of 2013!) was to take part in the photo-a-day challenge on Instagram with Fat Mum Slim. It went well! I added a couple of extra pics in this collage, and of course, it only has 25 pics and there were 31 days in Jan, but the point was to be able to look back and see that our lives are full. Full of love, fun, silliness, and so SO much goodness.

{ Pics include a day at the beach, an afternoon at the pool, volunteering at a farm, a mock gymnastics meet, my growing belly, a bed full of legos, a trip to the farmers market, 
and lots of little snippets of life. }

On Not Finding Out

This child will be the first and last time we don't find out whether it's a boy or a girl.

It's driving me crazy. I don't like this feeling at all!

I'm not really the super controlling type who has to know and plan for everything, really I'm not. So I'm surprised that I don't enjoy the suspense. I'd say 90% of people look at my belly and say, "Oh, that's a boy for sure!" And at first I was mildly disappointed since I really wanted another girl and for Reese to have a sister. My boys LOVE their daddy and so sometimes it's sad that they don't want to cuddle with me. They go to sleep every night asking for their dad and wake up asking for their dad.

But it's okay! Reese and I have our own thing. And so I came to terms with having 3 crazy little boys. Legos, dinosaurs, dump trucks and dirt. My house is already covered with all of those. And I *think* we finally settled on a name. And my dreams of what my house would look like adding another boy began to take shape. Where he'd sleep, if his hand-me-down clothes would be the right season, if he'd look JUST LIKE his older brothers.

But then a few people have recently tried to convince me they think it's a GIRL.

And it's almost like I'm defensive of my little guy now and the strange thought of losing (the idea) of him feels strange! Basically, it feels like unnecessary drama that I didn't expect. *sigh* At least I've only got 8ish more weeks left. And who knows. Maybe when that little babe comes out, that feeling will be amazing (!!!) and I'll be writing another post titled, "Why Everyone Should NOT Find Out"!

Christmas 2012

What a fun Christmas we had!

We traveled to Iowa for a week just in time for a big snowy blizzard. And it was fabulous. :)

The kids' first plane ride and they were SO EXCITED! They loved it :)

While we were in Iowa the roads were just awful, but we had places to go and people to see, so we had no choice but to hit the pavement. Slowly.

At Grandma and Granpa's house!

I know, Jasper looks miserable, but he kept begging to go back out in the snow!

Once it stopped snowing, it really was gorgeous out. It felt like we were in a different country considering the past weekend we were chillin' on the beach in Clearwater.

Wade's cousin Darin graciously brought over his snowmobiles which were a HIT with the kids (and Wade) and they couldn't wait to tell all their friends back in Florida that they drove a snowmobile!!!!

We spent half the time at Wade's parents and half at mine. Both were a ton of fun and the kids got a bunch of great presents. They are so blessed to have such great grandparents!!