Happy December!

And Happy First Day Of Maternity Leave! It wasn't a super productive day but any means. I "slept in" until about 8:00ish and played on the computer most of the day. I did make sugar cookies - from scratch (first time I've ever started with home made dough, usually I buy the already made kind). The first batch was a tad over done:

but the rest of them looked pretty good!
I don't much care for them - not "sugary" enough for me - but Nick thinks they're fantastic. :-)

I have been productive other days of this week, though. I couldn't make myself go to work on Monday so I bailed on them yet again and stayed home. I cleaned out the freezer, organized my beef (my parents and I went halfsies on a 1/4 of a beef cow - we each got about 100 or so pounds of different cuts of beef) and then cooked. I made a tamale casserole, a tuna noodle casserole and a lasagna.
I also made some freezer jam with some of the berries I found in the freezer. I made two tubs of strawberry and one tub of blueberry. I put some of the strawberry jam on my sugar cookies today and it's SUPER good!

I've been working on filling out the baby book that Susan got me. I've pretty much got all the entries done that I can do before he's born. I need to fill it up with some photos. I'm also working on a family frame collage for his room. I'm waiting for my brothers family to shoot me over some pictures of them (as I was going through my pictures I found I don't have anything of just them since the 90s! and I realized I hardly took any photos at Thanksgiving, so I don't even really have anything terribly recent of their kids) and then I can order my prints up from Snapfish and get the collage put together and hung up:

Got the car seat all installed and the diaper bag stowed away. We're just waiting for him to arrive.


Had my weekly appointment on Monday and unfortunately I hadn't made much progress. Last Monday I was dilated to barely a 2 and this Monday I was dilated to a full two. The sound you hear is me banging my head in frustration. I gained one pound since last Monday - probably due to my intense appetite recently. I feel like I'm starving all the time. But other than that, doctor notice my blood pressure has been steadily increasing. It's certainly not in the danger zone but she wants to keep an eye on it. So I decided to start my maternity leave a little early. I went to work on Tuesday, cleared up my loose ends and officially started leave today. Plan right now is for me to go back on March 1st. I have enough vacation to pay me through almost all of January so we'll test the waters in February and see if we really can survive on Nick's check alone. If so, then I'll push back going back to work for the full 3 months FMLA says I get (so going back in May). If not, then March 1st it is.

Nick started his winter quarter on Monday. He finished last quarter with all B's. Not that B's are bad - I'm thrilled he's doing so well - but I have noticed his concentration in school has been decreasing since we found out we were having a baby. I hope that Ben's arrival doesn't make his grades dip. It's important to us both that he do well - I mean....this is a freakish amount of money we're shelling out for his schooling, so we want him to do well at it.

So, baby pool. So far we've knocked out:
Emma - 12/02
My mom - 12/03
Heidi - 12/04
Carin - 12/06
Jamie (brother), Dad & Tara - 12/07
Stephen, Tiffany & Connor - 12/08

Unless this baby comes tonight (and so far it doesn't look like it) we'll also knock out Victor who guessed today.

And that's my stellar update. :-)