Thanksgiving in Columbia

When Jeff was offered a residency interview at Columbia, MO the Monday after Thanksgiving we were very excited, because that would give us an excuse to drive to Columbia and spend a week at my sister's for Thanksgiving.

The drive was long (14 hours!) but Christine did amazing. During the month before I prepared little games and activities for the "Big Trip." I ended up over-preparing and not using a third of the stuff I had put together, but that's okay because it makes great activities for church). The big purchase was a portable DVD player and Dora's Mermaid Adventure on DVD. Christine was so excited for the big trip, and couldn't stop talking about it. "Big trip... drive allllll day... watch Dora Mermaid!"

On the way up we had a flat tire. Luckily, an older gentleman pulled over to help us out, which was fortunate when a drunk guy stumbled up to "help" us out too (not sure if he came over to help or if we had just distracted him from his fishing at the pond- yep fishing with just his hands). Thank you, thank you to the older gentleman who did the talking with the drunk guy and convinced him to continue meandering down the road.

Christine had a blast playing with her cousins. The kids loved playing restaurant, where they would "cook" food for each other and then "eat" the food by shoving the plastic food down their shirts (hence the lumps in Trevor's red shirt!)

 Christine's favorite part was probably helping with the chickens.

You might recognize this backyard in our Christmas card picture this year!

 Don't worry she's had a hair trim since this picture was taken (remember, I was just coming out of my 3 month coma)
The chickens were always mentioned in Christine's prayers. "Thank you chickens. Thank you chickens eat Thanksgiving dinner" (for some reason Christine thinks the chickens got to eat Thanksgiving dinner too)

I will admit, one of the reasons I was most excited for this trip was the amazing food we would get to eat! My sister is a fantastic cook. I get all my recipes from her. The Thanksgiving meal did not disappoint.

Christine's nap landed perfectly during meal time, so Jeff and I were able to enjoy the meal together (what a luxury!)

My sister made cranberries from scratch (I've only ever had them from a can) and they were delicious!  If you're wondering, in the red dish is honey butter, in the country crock tub is cinnamon butter (store bought- for shame!) and on the plate is raspberry butter. All to put on the wonderful, light flaky homemade rolls. YUM

The praline yams were my favorite. Seriously, they tasted like a praline pie. Amazing! They were Christine's favorite. She kept asking for more yams.

 Jeff and I made the cornbread stuffing (a Hamaker tradition) it turned out perfectly

Not pictured is the frozen cranberry salad, the turkey (what? how did I not get a picture of the turkey?) the gravy, and the six pies. Oh the pies. I am getting hungry just remembering this amazing meal, and the wonderful leftovers we enjoyed afterwords.

As you might know, this year Walmart and several other stores began their Black Friday sales Thursday evening. My sister is a HARD CORE Black Friday shopper and took us out that night. Yes, we went to Walmart at 9 pm with all the crazies. It was a little chaotic, but also fun, there was a lot of energy in the air from all the excitement. The next morning my sister tried to convince me to get up at 4 am to hit the stores. I told you she was hard core! I somehow convinced her to let us sleep in until 8. When you hit the store after all the crazies have finished up, it's more calm, and usually most things are still in stock except for the big items like TVs and Wii's.

For the rest of the week we enjoyed playing board games, watching Christmas movies, and helping Jessica put up her Christmas tree while listening to Christmas music. Thank you Jessica and Bill for having us!

It's a boy!

I have photos of Thanksgiving to post on here, but we have big news! I went to my anatomy ultrasound yesterday and found out the gender of our baby. We are having a boy! What?! I will admit I was SHOCKED. I really thought it was a girl, I am still wrapping my head around the idea of having a boy. I don't know how to have a boy! I know how to have a girl. I have boxes of girl clothes, and pink nursery bedding!

Jeff and I were so confident we were having a girl that we already picked out a girl name, Madeline, that we have been calling the baby (poor little boy). Christine has become very attached to calling the baby Madeline (big mommy mistake!) but luckily I was able to talk to Christine and explain that new baby tricked us and Madeline is actually a baby doll that Santa Claus will bring us for Christmas! Christine was okay with that.

Jeff was in San Antonio at a residency interview when I went to my appointment so Jeff didn't know until last night when he got home. Christine and I made a puzzle for him to figure out. Jeff was so shocked, it was fun to watch him digest the information. At night when we were going to bed he was saying good night to baby and stopped himself, "Oh Crap!" it's a boy! I can't talk to him like this! How do I talk to a boy?!"

I am so happy to have a little boy, but I was a little disappointed when I realized that I don't get to make hair bows and ruffle diaper covers! I had BIG crafting plans for this little one, and I might have already made a car seat cover out of this floral fabric.

Um, I think I need to make a new one.

Return to Normal

I am happy to tell you all that the nausea is gone!  I was slowly having more good days than bad days, then one Monday morning (November 12th, 15 weeks prego) I woke up and felt amazing, no queasiness, no yellow bowl right by my side, no nausea bracelets, no prego pops, no zofran... it was definitely a strange feeling.  I had heard of people's nausea suddenly disappearing, but with Christine it was a slow and long, drawn-out process so I was expecting the same again. Given the choice, I would definitely choose the "here one day, gone the next" option.

Jeff took this picture about a month ago. At the time I was thinking, "SERIOUSLY Jeff? You are taking pictures right now? I am dying here. Put away that camera and go get a knife so you can remove all my internal organs." But now, I am grateful that Jeff captured this sweet moment.  Every time I threw up, Christine would tell Jeff "Mommy sick" and she would rush to my side bringing me my comfort items like watermelon sour patch candies, preggo pops, and lemon water. Then she would read me stories.

Man, I am sooooooo glad those miserable three months are over. Lucky for pregnancy brain I am already forgetting it all. Speaking of pregnancy brain, it is BAD! I forgot how bad it is! A few days ago Jeff dropped me off at Hobby Lobby while he got his hair cut across the street. I buckled Christine into the cart and walked down a couple aisles and tried to remember what I was planning to buy. I couldn't come up with a single thing. I had to call Jeff. "Hi honey.... uh do you remember what I wanted to get at the store?" If I remember right, I won't get my old brain back until this baby is 6 months old.

Christine pulled this basked out from under her crib, removed the blankets it was holding, dragged it to the living room and put in a pillow from the couch. Ha ha! She loves to pretend to read the Anne books. I read the entire series while I was sick. (I also watched all 6 seasons of How I Met Your Mother on Netflix and rewatched all 3 seasons of Modern Family- luckily morning sickness gave me the excuse to buy the 3rd season)

The second day of being nausea free, I celebrated by making homemade bread sticks and spaghetti (I used this recipe for Olive Garden bread sticks- yum!). It was the first meal I had cooked in three months. I am sure that Jeff is excited to finally be off kitchen duty.

I am excited to be back! It really feels like I was in a coma for the last three months. As I have been cleaning up around the house I have been doing things like wiping my dry-erase calendar that had notes and plans for August, take down menu plans off the fridge from August, change the date on my calendar blocks from September to December (at least I updated my calendar once in September). Put away sewing projects I was in the middle of when I got sick. (for those of you following my sewing adventures, I was in the middle of designing a Princess Kate Burberry Coat knock-off for Project Run and Play. I was soooo close to finishing it too, I just had to sew on the belt loops!) It feels soooo strange to pick up all the pieces of my old life.

I know a lot of you will want to know, have the contractions started? Yes, they have. They started about this time for Christine too. Right now they are small and not very painful, and very infrequent. I have a new OB this time, and he is MUCH better than my old one, and he has a completely different philosophy on my "irritable uterus" so I don't think he will put me on bed rest this round. (crossing my fingers!!)

Trunk or Treat

For Halloween this year our costumes were inspired by one of Christine's favorite books, Fancy Nancy. When we went to the ward Trunk or Treat on Saturday, we were surprised by how many people had never heard of Fancy Nancy.

Fancy Nancy is a girl who loves to dress up. Her favorite color is fuchsia (that's a fancy way of saying purple she says). She teaches her family how to be fancy.

 So Fancy Nancy helps her mom and dad dress up

 Then they all go out for dinner at the King's Crown

Nancy says: "When we arrive at the King's Crown, everyone looks up. They probably think we're movie stars."

Everyone looked up to see US, and thought we were movie stars too! Actually they thought Christine was a princess fairy, and that Jeff and I were 20s flappers.

 We had planned to do ballet ribbons on Christine's legs like in the book, but it was freezing here in Texas (the freezing point in Texas is below 72 degrees) so we had to put pants on her instead.

For our ward trunk or treat, the Primary wanted to do a few carnival games. We did a balance beam through a web of spiders. Some little kids were terrified of the spiders, others tried to stuff them in their trick or treat bags. Overall it was an easy game to put together and was a huge success. 

I made Christine's trick or treat bag the night before. I felt bad that I didn't make our costumes this year, so at least I had a cute bag for Christine to put her candy in. She loves to haul it around the house and peak in to look at all her candy.

This year Christine really "got" Halloween, and made everything so much fun.  Christine helped me put out the Halloween decorations around the house and loved all the pumpkins. Every day she would point out all the pumpkins and say "pumpkin! pumpkin!" and we would sing the song from Nightmare Before Christmas "This is Halloween, This is Halloween!" I just wish I wasn't sick so we could have done more things, like carve pumpkins and make pumpkin roll.

We are looking forward to seeing everyone else's costumes!

What have we been up to?

Well that's a pretty easy question.  Nausea, Nausea, and more Nausea.  But there are signs that it may be remitting (knock on wood).  By signs I mean that Angela made it 3 hours today without having to be  lying still with her head in a bowl. We'll take it though.

So what have Christine and I been up to with Angela out of commission-- well we play a lot of doll house (a Little People doll house with a Little People barn).  Fortunate for Christine I'm teaching her to play doll house like a boy, action-adventure style!

Dora and Christine-Doll

First, we are against gender stereotyping our dolls; we are also against species discrimination and discrimination of a doll because it may be height advantaged or disadvantaged (like Dora and Christine-Doll who are the right height for the dollhouse but don't quite fit into the little people furniture) This may be due to the fact that for a while we only had a few properly sized figurines for the doll house and they consisted of a farmer and his farm animals.  Thus we had the animals playing all the roles a normal human doll might be better suited to play. When Nana sent us a new Little People airplane which came with properly sized tourists and flight attendants, Christine fired the tourists and flight attendants on the spot. As an equal-opportunity employing agency, we were proud to hire on a sheep and a pig to be captain and copilot.  Sophie the giraffe was hired as the stewardess.  However, due to her disproportionate size (she takes up the entire cabin) she must enter into through the roof, and the pig and sheep must not fly too rambunctiously because Sophie is top heavy and will fall out.

The usual adventure goes like this.  Dora builds a Lego bridge (The big size lego blocks that are easy to put together but also fall apart very easily) from the roof of the barn to the roof of the house.  Dora is kind of a show-off and runs across the bridge, but when she gets to house roof, the bridge has inevitably collapsed.  Christine then shouts, "Uh-oh Dora roof again!" This is a signal for the rescue team to fly in.  Sheep, Christine-doll, and Sophie are dispatched and the airplane flies to get Dora off the  roof.  The airplane has a special hover feature that allows it to hover over the roof so Dora can climb in.  

Occasionally the airplane is out of commission so we must build a Lego tower.  On a recent adventure, a huge Hello-kitty doll was dispatched to the scene and used her huge pink, beach bucket to climb up to the roof.  

Lately though Christine has wanted in on the action and will attempt to climb the bridge or tower on to the roof herself.  Realizing the instability of the dollhouse, she simply places her foot on the roof, "Uh-oh Christine roof again!"  The adventure team never backs down from a challenge though, sheep was able to successfully lower Christine's foot off of the two-story doll house.

Other doll house innovations have been a lego swimming pool (complete with diving-board and slide) that turns into an elevator complete with a "computer room" compartment for pig, sheep, and Christine-doll to "play the ipad" in.

Over the last few weeks Christine has shown us how sweet and good-natured she is.  There have been a few times that I have had to leave my poor wife by herself.  When she has needed to run into the bathroom, little Christine follows in-toe bringing her her lemon water, her prego pops, and other things she thinks mommy might need.  It is so sweet how fast she has picked up on this.  We have not directly taught her any of these things, but she is quick to say, "Mommy sick. Need medicine."  She will always run in and give her Mommy a hug and prays for her every night.  We truly have the sweetest little girl.  We love her so much.  I only hope this next one will be just like her.

One other memory we want to remember from this time stems from the Little Critter book "The New Baby." Christine loves little critter, and in this book Little Critter's mom brings home the new baby. Little Critter doesn't know what to do with a new baby, he tries to show the baby his games and toys but the baby ignores him, he even tells the baby his best joke. For some reason, Christine fixated on that idea. "Tell joke!" and even made up her own joke. I had just put her in her crib for the night and she asked for some water as she does every night. She names the type of water she drinks by what cup it is in, "pink water" or "Egg water" (an Easter egg cup) or "hello kitty water" and that night when I brought her some "pink water" Christine says "HOT DOG WATER! ha ha ha ha!" she was laughing her head off at her funny joke. So now whenever we are talking about the new baby Christine always says "Christine tell new baby joke. Hot dog water! ha ha ha!" She's no Jim Gaffigan but she's on her way.