Elf Yourself!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Christmas day: Opening presents

Kind of sparse underneath our Christmas tree this year. I'm sure the piles of presents will continue to grow through the years as our children want bigger and better toys. But for now, Josh and I don't give each other presents (we can get what we want throughout the year anyway) and Raleigh is pretty content with a few new Thomas the Tank Engine trains.

Notice Raleigh's Christmas outfit. Another beautiful outfit knitted by Grandma Deb. We'll have more pictures of him in that outfit after Saturday when we'll celebrate Christmas over at Erika and Joel's house with the rest of the Thompson clan.

Once again, Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Oh, the anticipation. The thrill. The waiting. No, I'm not just talking about the big event that will happen for us in January. I'm talking about the way that I felt as a child growing up on this night. The eve that prepared little minds and bodies for the massacre of wrapping paper the next morning.

I'd like to say that I have some major religious connection to the way that I felt growing up, but I can't really say that. I can't say it was greed either. It is the same reason that I loved every holiday. Time with family and normally, everyone was in great spirits. We could see cousins that we didn't get to see year round. We could eat the delicious foods that mom or grandma made. There were plenty of cookies around this time of year, not just because they were good and sweet and delicious but also because running the stove helped keep the house warm on the cold cold days and nights in MN.

Tonight, more than ever, I look forward to nights that are different than these. I look forward to Christmas Eve dinners with more family members. Raleigh and I had left over lasagna tonight, while Josh ate some cookies. I look forward to Christmas days with a whole boat-load of toys under the tree and anxious kids waking Josh and I up way to early. I look forward to watching whatever Christmas parade is on, or making a trip to the skating rink.

Plenty of good things to look forward to. Plenty of good memories behind me too. I feel right now, like we are slightly disconnected from the past Christmas goodness, and we are on the brink of the future Christmas goodness. It's an interesting place to be right now. Waiting for our own family traditions to sort themselves out.

What will our children carry on from their childhood holiday traditions to their own families? It's just too exciting to think about.

I hope that all of my readers have a very blessed Christmas and that you all are surrounded by your family and loved ones. As that is the best way to spend Christmas.

Our weather as of late...

... has been crappy. Although, now we have pretty white snow everywhere.

Here's some proof.

And here are the cookies that we make indoors when the weather outside is crappy.

And here is what Raleigh likes to do with his toys.

Never-before-seen Raleigh videos...

... fresh out of the archive. Sorry I've been so bad at posting videos lately. I'll try to be better.

Can you guess what I'll be doing today?

Belly Watch: 35 weeks along

Only 5 weeks to go. I hope that it will go quickly...the five weeks and the labor. No 18 hour labor this time (cross your fingers).

We're getting pretty excited to meet this new member of our family. We've been fielding a lot of questions about the gender lately. Mostly, people are supportive of my decision not to find out the gender.

After my dream last night, my only inkling of what "it will be" is.... a cat. Seriously, I had a very disturbing dream last night that I gave birth to an adult cat. I remember vividly, the doctor handing me this...cat. I remember the dissapointment on my face and the confusion on my face. And the cat looked like my childhood cat, Bentley. It was an orange adult cat.

Gives me shudders just to think about it now. It seemed so real. I can remember, when my senses finally returned to me, how relieved I was that I was still pregnant with a human child :)

So there you have it. My creepy dream and a lovely picture of me 35 weeks pregnant.

Happy Anniversary to Erika and Joel!!

It is Erika and Joel's 3rd wedding anniversary today. If you see them, say congrats!

Big achievement for Raleigh

I'll spare you the pictoral evidence, but... Raleigh pooped and peed on his potty today!

I noticed that he was working on something, and I asked, "Raleigh do you want to poop on your potty?". We usually ask him that when we know he's doing his business, but today he said "Yah," and then he walked towards his potty.

He sat on the potty for a good 5 minutes and every time he peed, we sang the pee-pee-on-the-potty song. And then when he pooped, we sang the poo-poo-on-the-potty song.

He loved the songs, and we're just happy that he did it.

At the end, he said. "Raleigh poop on potty!" with a big smile on his face. Very cute.

Homemade pizza tonight

Thanks to Angel in the Kitchen , we made homemade pizza tonight. We used her dough recipe although we didn't get all that original in our ingredients for the actual pizza toppings. Just pepperoni tonight.

Raleigh got to help us though. He enjoyed poking the dough with a fork the most.

He helped put on the cheese. It was more of a fistfull drop in one place and then on the second pizza he decided to push the cheese around in the sauce. Kind of funny actually.

Mmmm, the finished result!

Busy bee today

So I must have had extra rest last night as I was super-productive today. Here's a list of what I did today:

• Baked a loaf of no-knead bread (it's already all eaten now)


• Made home-made-from-scratch chicken and rice broth-based soup


• Made home-made-from-scratch rasberry muffins (Raleigh wanted muffins and I just happend to notice that we had frozen raspberries in our freezer.)


• Did a load of laundry


• Swept the kitchen floor


• Finished "Twilight" - by Stephenie Meyer ( I just purchased the book late last week, now I'm hooked)


• Semi-cleaned off the table.


• Brought the x-mas boxes that contained the tree and the ornaments down stairs


• After this, I can say that I blogged :)


• Joined http://www.paperbackswap.com/ so that I can get more books that I like for less money and get rid of old books that I liked but don't need to hold on to anymore

And shockingly... I didn't take a single picture of anything today. You'll have to be content with the pictures below :)

Above: Side profile of Raleigh admiring a x-mas ornament

Below: Josh helping Raleigh hang his first ornament

Below: Raleigh in an art museum here in town. We were there for the annual family x-mas party that my employer puts on.

Belly Watch: 33 weeks along

We just barely got a picture of Raleigh too!

The other day a female coworker asked me how many days I had left. DAYS! I wanted to say, "Lady, I'm not even counting in days yet, I have a whole month and a half left." But I didn't. I was polite.

More and more people keep asking me when I'm due or similar questions to the one mentioned above. I just imagine people thinking to themselves, "geez, when is she going to pop? She's huge."

I want to say to people, "I'm not a tall woman, there's no room for the baby to grow upward...so instead it must grow out, which is probably why you look at me like I should be due tomorrow."

Anyway, enjoy the pics.