Christmas at Our House

I feel like I have officially become an adult because we hosted all the Christmas festivities at our house. However, while I did some preparation, my mother and mother in law still got the food together. There is only so much energy left on my end. :) So, I guess I become an official hostess when I do the cooking! Christmas was a great experience and the time with the family was good for the soul. We have never had the Winns and Sanders together for any holiday so it felt very complete...for us anyway. The only people missing were my brother and family, but they came later, which was fun to spread out the holidays over a few days.

Keegan was an absolute blast this Christmas! Jonathan and I almost forgot about opening our gifts because it was exciting to see him rip through paper and seeing the excitement in his eyes. I know he does not get "Christmas", but he sure did like his new things! I am pretty sure that we now own every possible toddler toy just by the way our playroom has tripled.

Opening his first stocking...


Paper stuck to his bottom...


Posing in his Christmas outfit...



One of my favorite presents...our fireplace mantel custom made! (Thank you Granny J!) Just needs to be painted!


The Sanders Men...


Keeg's with G-Bob (my dad), his constant holiday entertainment.


Brad and Brianna


G-Bob and Jacey


Keegan with Granny J and GiGi

For your amusement...

Comfy Jack

I wish I could say that Jack has made his grand entrance, but he is still comfy in my belly! Tomorrow I will have one more week to go before my due date, January 2, and he might just make it until then. Just wanted to give an update! To all that have gone full term, I realize now it is not for the weak at heart. I tip my hat to you all.

On a happier note, this Christmas was so awesome! Keegan was so much fun and I can not wait to post about it! Time with the family was (and is still) so sweet...we are loving every bit of it.

Christmas Baby?

I went to my doctors appointment today and she walks in laughing that I am still pregnant. She says, "I bet you make it to your due date". I wanted to throw my torn up, page missing, crumpled magazine at her. She then does "the exam" and says, "hmmmm...actually you might not make it to your next appointment and you will have him within the next week". I am 90% effaced and 2 centimeters dilated. Hopefully there is no underlying false hope there, but I have to admit that I am really, REALLY, excited. Anyone have bets for a Christmas baby?

My Smelly Rain Cloud and the Smelly Dogs

For this Christmas I have been interested in getting new perfume. The last perfume that I wore was Romance by Ralph Lauren and now I am tired of that scent. He bought me DKNY Apple when I was 2 months pregnant with Keegan and unfortunately I had morning sickness at the same time. That perfume was passed on to Christine and I still gag a little when I smell it.

Today I decided to go smell the world of perfume at Macys. My first observation was that I have literally lived in a bubble for 2 years and was overwhelmed by the number of perfumes. My second observation was that every perfume consultant that I talked to acted as if there was no time in the world for a pregnant woman wearing crocs. I realized walking in that I did not match at all, but it was because I was chasing my neighbors dogs trying to get them to go back to their yard. (story below)

I finally find a woman with way too much make-up, and she starts spraying perfumes on every bit of my arm. I am trying mentally to take notes on what perfume is on what arm and walk out smelling like a rainbow of scents. The one on my right hand smells wonderful, but I have no idea what it is! I came home and Jonathan almost falls over with how bad I smell. He likens it to having a rain cloud above me that never leaves and not so much a rainbow.

**I need your help. Please pass on a few names of your favorite perfume.**

Back to the story of my neighbor's dogs...
Last night, we were cleaning out our fridge and Jonathan insists on taking our roast beef fat gunk left over in our casserole dish and tosses it behind the garage by the fence. This grosses me out, but he says it is good for the earth. Insert my immediate thought: "whatever!" Later we hear Keegan pointing out the back door and saying "Dawg". Low and behold, his favorite friends were now in our back yard. I asked Jonathan sweetly, "Babe, where exactly did you dump that?" Our eyes met with a laugh and realized that it is where the dogs dug a hole under the fence and now the big white dog can't get back. His chihuahua companion is going back and forth from yard to yard teasing the fire out of him. We rang our neighbor's doorbell over and over realizing that they are out of town. (Thus why the dogs were so interested in the roast smell...they were hungry!)

Fast forward to this morning, and they are still in our back yard. We thought that maybe someone would be checking on the dogs to feed them, but no one ever did. Jonathan tries to go in the back and the dog just growls at him. He decides that after being bit by a big dog when he was little, that he really did not want to get chomped on again. So, that leaves me in my crocs. The dog responds to my leftover hamburger patties, and I grab a shovel to help the poor dog back to his home. The hole under the fence was deep enough on the neighbors side, but not on ours. The silly dog could not figure out how to dig back over. I kept laughing how funny it must of looked for the husband watching over the fence as his a 9 month pregnant wife is shoveling dirt.

The big white dog eventually squeezes back over under the fence, and Jonathan barricades the opening with anything he can find. Keegan sure did have many conversations with his companions through our back door and he now has successfully learned that "ruff" is what a dog says instead of "meow".

A little this and a little that...

I can not believe how much time has passed since Thanksgiving. It is unbelievable how fast time flies and I just now realized that next week is the week before Christmas. So, if baby Jack does not arrive before next week, I have deemed it as baking week. I think every afternoon nap time, I might just grab my apron. Kraft has this incredible recipe called Chocolate Cookie Bark. I made this for my Sunday school leaders last year and they all asked for the recipe. This is always a good sign! Make some and tell me what you think! :)

My neighbor, Merry Lynn, just had her baby last Thursday and it was so exciting to hold her baby boy, Travis. He is so adorable and sweet. Both of our babies are and will be around 3 weeks apart. It is so neat to have developed a relationship with her and God giving each other as a support system.

My husband has been so awesome lately. I am at the point where I am limited on what I can do. Not only do I still have the pelvic pressure still, if I do too much contractions come back. So, he has been cleaning house, christmas shopping, running all my errands....basically taking care of my nesting urges. I am so grateful and blessed for his love language of service.

My little man is officially 17 months and he has been cracking me up. He has learned how to "meow" like a cat and I love it. However, he thinks every animal makes this noise, so I am trying to correct that. What does a dog say? "Meow" What does a monkey say? "Meow" What does a cow say? "Meow" Last week he was standing at our back door pointing, saying "meow". He was so emphatic about it that I walked over, looking for a cat, and saw a squirell. I guess that looks close enough to a cat, right?

The baby sign language is finally taking effect! The only thing is that now that he knows the sign for "hungry" he likes to do that all day. He does not quite appreciate not getting food when he asks, but what am I to do? The child is going to turn into a giant goldfish.

He has learned how to climb into chairs, on the couch, on the fireplace and his new adventure is trying to scale our gates that we just put up. All boy I tell you, all boy. The one thing that I love lately is that he is all about hugs kisses and sitting in my lap. I am soaking all this in because that could change in a few weeks.

Here are my favorite pics as of late...

No "Bobby"

Last night around 6:30 I started having contractions and decided to go to the hospital. In fact, it felt just like the morning Keegan came except that my water did not break. We get there and the nurses hook me up to watch me for a few hours. Around 1am they start getting more intense, every 4 minutes, and I get excited to think that "maybe" Jack would come. They decided to hook me up to an IV and said that if it was true labor the contractions would still intensify and I would progress. If it was false labor, they would subside and the IV should buy me at least another week. Well, they completely subsided, except for some crampiness, and at 3 pm today I was released. Now I am really confused on "when" to go to the hospital. It really felt like the real deal. I kept thinking of the Father of the Bride II where Annie has a few false alarms and walked right back in the house with only her suitcase, and no "bobby", as Frank would put it. So, will yall pray that I will just "know" next time??

36 weeks...

Well, I have made it and still have not dilated. The doctor thinks he will still come early, but we will see. (They have been wrong before..right Jenifer?) However, it might be exciting to have the first baby born in Houston/US in 2008. Today I had the wonderful opportunity to have the after 36 week exam and I am for sure not looking forward to next week. Wow...that is all I can say. (Glad that I missed those in the last pregnancy!)

Exceeding my Expectations

It has been 5 months since we have moved on this side of town and I feel like we are finally establishing relationships! It has been a lot harder than I imagined that it would be, but I am blessed by the new friendships. If you remember the neighbor that I met on a walk one morning, we keep in touch almost every day. She is having her little boy this Thursday so we will have lots of notes to compare since she has a 17 month old as well. Last Friday, a couple from Houston Northwest invited us out to dinner and we had the best time with them eating lasagna and watching our kids run all around the kitchen. Saturday night we went to a Christmas party with our new sunday school class and enjoyed the company of many couples in our exact stage of life. In fact, most of them have kids Keegan's age which is a huge blessing. I am about to head out the door to the second playdate with these ladies. Last time I left on cloud nine because Keegan has never had this many friends to hang out with. He absolutely loved it and fit right in.

On the flip side, everything in me misses HFBC. I miss the people that feel like family. I have a huge peace with the effort we are putting out and know that God wants us pursue this. In fact, community in our neighborhood is something that God has been speaking to us for a long time now. I guess God's callings are not the easiest, and for the big God we serve it shouldn't have to be. I remember when I transfered my membership from FBC Mansfield it was so hard and very emotional. I never thought that HFBC would exceed the community I felt there, and it did. So, taking a glance back there is a lesson to be learned, God can exceed my expectations once again.