Oh Christmas Tree. Oh Christmas House.

Thank you Ryan for giving me a beautiful (and wonderful-smelling) tree, lighting it up AND putting up all my childhood ornaments... while I watched from the couch. Such a sweet husband. I love it. And you. And the smell. And especially you.

The house looks great too. Mr. Wolf Vanlandingham, our fine pine tree looks especially festive. P.S. DEER!

Critical week #1 - SURPASSED! Critical week #2 - Christmas Eve, here we come!

32 Weeks and looking like I could have him any second. But 32 has always been the first critical week to reach, so we're thrilled. But we're also greedy. We're going to try our hardest to go as far as we can. My doctors (I have about 5 now) keep telling me how surprised they are that I'm still pregnant. Well take that, 50% chance! Just watch me make it to 37 weeks or more.

Here's our families' guesses for Evan's birthday and birth weight. Lisa and Brad, I hope you aren't right. :)

Ryan - January 16 - 7lb 2oz

Kendra - January 15 - 6lb 13oz

Arlin - February 6 - 7 lb

Beckie - January 1 - 5lb

Kathryn - January 7 - 5lb 3oz

Dustin - January 13 - 4lb 14oz (sorry, Budens. I'll never forget you again.)

Lisa - December 25 - 5lb 8oz

Curtis - December 31 - 5lb 5oz

Laura - January 11 - 6lb 3oz

Brad - December 25 - 7lb 11oz

Sylvia - January 4 - 5lb 14oz

Joni - January 21 - 8lb 3oz

Jodi - January 4 - 4lb 4oz

Nikki - January 14 - 5lb 6oz

I finished Evan's blanket! I was actually a little worried I wouldn't get it done in time, but bedrest means you can spend nearly 100 hours crocheting in a 2 month period. What else was I supposed to do in the middle of the day when TV choices are limited to an array of soaps and court dramas? Anyway, I like the way it turned out.

The day before the turkey day where I ate turkey

Love Thanksgiving.  It's a good day!  Football, Kendra gets to come home, football, eat turkey, football, eat cheescake, football, pie is disgusting, football, you heard me, football, there is no such thing as good pie.  But the Kendra gets to come home!

Yes, you guessed it.  Kendra is still in the hospital!  In this picture that is.  But rest assured she is in reality home and she came home with a goal that she has kept up to 30 weeks so far!

So, this past week between work, driving to the hospital and back again, I have been painting Evan's room.  I think it looks pretty good!  And I must thank my mother and sisters for helping out with the project.  Especially Nikki aka the "pinenut" who rendered and helped draw up the plan for the stripes.  We still have to put up the border but hopefully we can get that done this weekend.

Step 1 the top half of the walls.

Step 2  The first stripe

Step 3 the red

Step 4 the room! without the border of course...

And here is a fun picture of The Sticker box taping up the wall.  I must say it takes a long time to do all this stuff.  Sorry rest of my kids.  You can all sleep under the stairs like Harry Potter.  I'm tired. Of paint.  Happy Thanksgiving one and all and to all eat a lot of Turkey.  And pie is gross.

My New Home: St Marks Hospital

Ahh the hospital. Adjustable bed, tiny tv, complimentary water mug. Yep, it's just about the most expensive hotel room we could hope for. Add in the every-four-hours blood pressure check and pill and it's the perfect vacation home. Who doesn't like getting woken up at 2:00 every morning?

But at least I'm still pregnant, right? Thanks to everyone for your concern and your visits. We'll get through this yet, and we'll have a beautiful baby boy to show for it.

Mmmm. Hospital food. So nice to have a weekly rotating menu of the same options. Luckily as a "long-term" patient, the nurses sneak me their cafeteria menu and I can write in whatever I want. Can you have a hamburger, fries and ice cream every meal of the day? I can. If I want to be horribly sick, that is.

At least they gave me the room with the good view. Last time I was here, my window faced the parking garage. There's supposed to be a big snow storm tomorrow that will be quite nice to watch knowing I won't be driving in it.

And here's Ryan's chair/bed. He's all wrapped up in his warm fleece blanket because I like to keep it the temperature of ice in this room.

Evan's first blanket from me unfortunately had to come from Walmart. I wanted to make his crib set, but since I can't we ordered it online. Ryan and I looked for about 2 hours on about 30 different sites for a wallpaper border and crib set we liked and where did we find it? Walmart. Weird how that worked out.

I am working on crocheting him a blanket and his grandmas I'm sure will give him more than he can use. Unless he's a spitter-upper and then I'm sure he'll go through them like crazy.

Belly Pictures

Ah the infamous belly pictures. Of course the belly feels a lot bigger than it looks. We've yet to see if I'll get as big as my sister did with her babies or if little Evan decides to come long before I get to that point.

The creation of a kid means the creation of a blog

According to my sister-in-law that is. Thanks Kathryn. Let's see how much we actually do this blog thing. Anyway, congratulations to us! We be havin' a baby. Sweet. I'm in the picture too. That's Awesome.