Things I have overheard or that have been said to me lately (all, by the way, from perfect strangers):

"When are you due?"
"4 1/2 weeks"
"No honey, they miscalculated. You're overdue."

At Carls Jr. waiting to order there were about 4 or 5 workers talking in Spanish and one says to me "are you having a girl or a boy?"
I said "both"
They all started clapping and one guy says "I told you" to the others.
Later I get up to get a straw and the same guy says to me "Don't you get up to get anything. If you need something you yell for Miguel!"

"Are you due yesterday?"

"How many babies do you have in there?"

Overheard.
"Look at that poor thing."
"Oh my, she can't have much longer."

"When is your due date?"
"February 10th"
"Are you serious? You are huge!"

"Can you breathe?"

I get gawked at everywhere I go and hear these kinds of things. It's funny to me because you know, I am huge and I paid a lot of money to be huge. So bring it on. At least it's not a fast food gut.

In case anyone is wondering, I am currently measuring 46 cm for my uterus (six weeks overdue for one baby), and I have a 50 inch waist around. I have also gained a whopping 37 pounds. My next pictures should be much cuter than these as they will hopefully be of two sweet little babies. That is, if they ever decide to come out...

So Christmas has come and gone and no one got hurt. Which is, in my opinion, the most accurate assessment of a successful gathering these days.

It was fun having family come in from Minnesota. It is a rare treat to have the whole family together as my brother and family live quite a ways away. We only get together once a year (if that) and our time together is filled with boundless enjoyment... There were only a few near disasters coupled with a couple of misses in the communication field, but overall I think it was a success.

But this isn't what I REALLY want to blog about.

Check out this family picture. Do you see the hottie on the far left? No, not me (I know that was what you are all thinking), but the smoking hot babe in the black? So Jenny is 100 weeks pregnant and I am amazed at how amazing she looks. When she is walking away from me, I still think "dang" and it is only when she turns and knocks over the glasses on the table with her ginormous belly do I even realize she is pregnant! She is truly a beautiful, pregnant woman and I can't believe how lucky I am to have her forever. She is very aware of her "robustness", but as everyone can see in this picture, she is, simply put, a smoking hot babe!

Big truly is beautiful! (I have been trying to tell people that regarding my size FOREVER!)

Thanks for being mine, baby, and thanks for suffering through this difficult pregnancy for our family.

Isaac: "Mom, where is the jail?"

Mom: "It's at the point of the mountain on the way to Thanksgiving Point"

Isaac: "Can we go there?"

Mom: "Why?"

Isaac: "I just want to see what a real live bad guy looks like!"

Mom: "It's not like a zoo where you go and look at all the bad guys in cages."

Isaac: "I thought they were all locked up".

Mom: "They are."

Isaac: "So can we go and look at them?"

OK, here's the latest profile.
To the left is my latest and to the right is one month ago. I am now 7 months pregnant. My waist is 45 inches around at the biggest point! Wow, now that's something to be proud of! (I guess)
Matt has informed me I breathe rather loudly now and I suppose that might be because I have two babies taking up all the room where my lungs (and stomach and intestines) used to reside.
Another photo next month!

Note** I know my face looks quite red in the first pic but that would be due to Matt taking the photo from a laying down position. He had decided it would be fun to take some pics from underneath my belly looking up. No one will EVER see those ones, seriously, it's wrong...

Our Christmas tree will never be in a Parade of Homes. It will never win any contests. It will never be the awe-inspiring tree "the whole neighborhood talks about", but it is MY favorite and here's why.
When Alex was a baby I took him to get his picture taken (about every week or so- hey he was my first), and they gave me an ornament to put his picture in. So I did and I put in on our tree.
The next year we went to Germany and I bought an ornament there and put in on our tree. The next year I had Alex at the store and we were looking at Christmas decorations. This year he was totally into Tigger so I bought him a Tigger ornament for the tree. That's when the inspiration finally hit: I was going to buy my kids their own ornament each year that they picked out. Something they were into or liked. I thought it would be a fun tradition, but I had no idea how much my kids would love it.
Every year they start thinking about their ornament early. It has to be perfect. It has to be exactly what they're looking for. Then when it's time to decorate the tree they each get out their ornaments and line them up to look at. Each is labeled with Isaac 2004, Alex 2001.... They get such a kick out of looking back and remembering how much they loved that ornmaent that year and how much they've changed in the recent years. We also have to tell the stories that go with the ornaments. Like the time we had the people in the condo under us complain about Alex jumping around like Tigger all the time when we were in Hawaii or the way Isaac decided he loved Boba Fett before he'd seen any of the Star Wars movies.
Then it's a continual hanging and rehanging of the ornaments to make sure each is in the perfect spot for their viewing pleasure. And there will be no moving of said ornaments, this would constitute the gravest of sins.
So there you have it. Not a huge tradition, but one we love nonetheless. My kids are growing up but we still have little reminders of the past to decorate our tree and remind us of all the fun memories we've made so far.Here is random Boba Fett. We still have no idea where this Isaac fetish came from. Isaac 2005.

Though he is way too grownup for superheroes now, there was a time Alex was rarely seen not in costume. He loved Batman the most, but since he already had a Batman ornament, this was the year of Spidey. Alex 2004.
You have no idea how hard it is to find a shark ornament unless you've tried. We almost had to talk Isaac into something else when I randomly found this bad boy on Ebay. Isaac 2006.
This is a representation of how Isaac's Halloween fetish was born. Two years ago we went to Disneyland and they had the Haunted Mansion all "Nightmare before Christmas". A year later, he wanted a spooky ornament. I want you to know I had to buy a whole package of toys and make this one into an ornament because there wasn't an already made one to be found anywhere. Isaac 2007.
Alex's current (and 3 years running thus far) BYU obsession. I wouldn't call it brainwashing. Really. Alex 2006.This is Alex's ornament for this year. He chose the colors because... I forget. The football guy is him. This was his first year playing tackle football. He loved it.
Here is Isaac's ornament for this year. As mentioned before, my son LOVES Halloween. We found this in October and snatched it up so we wouldn't be scrambling to find something spooky in December.