I am 24 weeks now, and I look huge.  I have pictures, and I hope they do not shock you too much b/c “pregnant April” is back.  I have now gained a full 20 pounds.  I even pulled out some of my bigger pregnancy clothes today and put them in my closet.  I have decided to make peace with the whole being huge thing, vowing constantly that this is the last time!

  So today was my birthday, and it was a good one.  The boys drew me adorable pictures.  Alan bought me gifts, a cake, and flowers.  He gave me two of the Willow Tree figurines that I like so much.  Plus, my new tablet was also a birthday gift.  Thank you to all of you for the well wishes, birthday cards, and gifts!

   I had to retire my second work-out routine of the pregnancy this week.  First, I gave up running at 20 weeks.  Now I’m giving up “Super Fit Mama”.  It gives me this strained muscle in my right upper back every time I do it!  So for now I am sticking with Denise Austin dance DVD, walking, and my Fit Pregnancy workout DVDs.

We spent most of the day rearranging storage and cleaning out closets, in preparation for “the baby.”  Isn’t it funny how much time is spent preparing room for a person that is literally the size of a large pot roast!?  And yet, it is necessary.  They have so much gear in the beginning!  All in the name of parenthood survival, of course!

This is our first almost 2 year old we’ve ever had that knows exactly what to do with a baseball mitt.  This boy is ready to play some ball!

Again, this is the basement playroom, where we allow complete untidy-ness….

 

my birthday cake….after we’d had a little…  I did love how girly it was!

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.  24 weeks, and yes, I get much bigger than this….

Obviously, this was a very posed picture of me with my birthday bouquet. Alan put together three different bouquets to make this uniquely lovely one.  He kept making fun of my fake “picture smile.”  He had me laughing pretty hard as he tried to get a photograph of my “real smile.”  Ha!  Well, it’s hard!

Daniel’s version of a photo fake smile is actually pretty awesome!

another box of things we had failed to unpack in three moves….

They have this toy lizard.  It’s not real, but it looks SO REAL, and they know it freaks me out.  Therefore, Alan and Caleb both use it to freak me out on a regular basis.  Oh, and when I vacuum I don’t even move the thing b/c I dislike it so much that I refuse to touch the thing.  Even worse, do you know where it came from, suddenly into our lives???  Alan found it in a parking lot, abandoned!  Yuck!

Yeah, all that packing paper was a huge hit with Dan.

Look what else I found!!!  My college ID card.

Over the years photo.  Unintentionally, I have taken an endless amount of pictures of the boys sitting in this recliner together.  I know I probably only have a few more years of them doing this, but you know I will insist they pose like this until they are 18….  ; )  Of course, this was not posed.  This is everyone’s favorite chair b/c leather furniture is COLD (bleh).  They were eating popcorn and watching Toy Story, a timeless classic.

I also found this sampler, stitched by my ‘Maw-Maw’ and reframed it.   I was surprised to see that it was actually just done in 1984, which I thought to be rather recent, but then I realized how “old” my children will think that that is!!!

Daniel, with his favorite hobby:  duplo blocks.  He just got a whole bunch of new ones from our neighbors, when they cleaned out their basement.  He is loving it!

We never actually got to play in the snow b/c we had a wintery mix all day long, and now most of it is melted.  Oh well.  It was nice to have everyone home today.