Christmas Tree, Birthday & Baby's Ultrasound | WITL Nov 26-Dec 2 |

Saturday marked my 20th week of pregnancy for this little chipmunk!

Apparently baby is about the size of a banana! How cute!

Baby has been so active and just kicking/punching up a storm...but you really can't feel it from the outside yet, unless you're pushing down on my stomach and really feeling for it.

The big kids worked on putting together a bedside stand for Mahri's room. I'll be posting a separte blog post about that little skill-building adventure!

Antonio and I went out on Date Night to one of our favorite steak places. We had a lot of fun laughing and just talking shop (work, kids, life)...and the night got even better when the waiter surprised us with a free brownie and ice cream!! It was specatular!!

Sunday we picked out a Christmas tree!

This will be our first year having a real tree...not even Antonio or I had one growing up. (My family always had an artificial tree)

We picked an almost 7 foot Douglas fir.

Poor Christian caught a bit of friendly fire when Antonio was swinging the tree up onto the roof of the van. He wasn't too happy about that.

Aussie helping Daddy tie the tree to the roof rack.

I think we may have run over someone in the parking lot, though...

We picked up some dinner to take home with us so we could put up the tree.

Antonio got some of the lights strung up.

So pretty!!! And it smells great, too!!

Monday was just getting stuff done around the house and ordering last minute things for Aussie's birthday party. He has requested a Shopkins party and I needed to order some party decor. Even though his birthday is tomorrow, we'll be having his official party on Sunday.

Tuesday was AUSSIEBEAR'S 6th BIRTHDAY!!!

Antonio brought home a surprise birthday cake on his way home from work.

We had waffles, bacon and chicken for dinner!

We watched the new Pete's Dragon while we ate cake!

Wednesday

We had our ultrasound appointment!!

I found it very ironic that the famous Gladys Knight's Chicken and Waffles restaurant was right across the street from the doctor. (anyone remember that FB post about my craving chicken wings on the night I made waffles? hahaha)

I did a video talking about my appointment:

Here are just some random pictures of our visit...I am waiting for the doctor's office to email me my actual ultrasound pictures, though.

The office is waaay up high in midtown Atlanta! And Mahri took a few pics of the view.

Check out this rooftop garden! How awesome is that?!

This is an informative poster in the doctor's waiting room. Keep this in mind: he delivers babies in hospitals. He does not do home births, though he definitely supports home birth! He just wants everyone to make informed choices and to know the risks.

I believe that is baby's leg bone! (Mahri took a picture of the u/s tv screen while they were doing my u/s)

On the way home, there was even MORE action, as our phone alarms started going off with the words "TORNADO WARNING IN YOUR AREA...TAKE COVER IMMEDIATELY!!"

I cannot express how scared I was. When I checked the weather channel to see where they had seen the funnel cloud, they said that they had seen it literally less than one minute from our house!! And Gypsy was outside in the yard while we were at the appointment!! (we have about 2 acres of fenced in yard that she can hang out in, with a carport and a covered patio...she likes chilling outside when we go, weather permitting, more than being stuck in her crate) I was terrified!! I didn't want to leave her outside, we needed to take cover immediately....but we were nowhere near anywhere safe to take shelter! We ended up pulling over and warning some people waiting at a bus stop, so that they could maybe get home in time.

All 6 of us were watching out the van windows but we didn't even really see any clouds. The sky was just solid light gray. The wind wasn't blowing that hard (we were just a few minutes from home at the time). We passed the CBS newscrew with their cameras aimed at the sky...they were about a minute away from our house. We sped on home....and made it without seeing anything that worried us further. The wind was starting to pick up, as was the rain, but we pulled into the driveway and parked (Gypsy was beyond thrilled to see us and ran right into the house with the rest of us). I swear that I felt an actual calm take over me when I stepped into the house. I love my house!!

The storms passed within a few hours and no more warnings went off, thank God!

Dinner was an easy peasy frozen Stauffer's lasagna (can you believe that my family can polish off a 'party size' one in one night?!! That's life with a teen boy, eh?) and breadsticks.

Thursday I edited and posted a couple of videos (the ultrasound video and the cloth diaper unboxing/haul video that you can see over on my youtube channel) after breakfast.

Mahri and I made something akin to Reese's PB Cup Muffins for breakfast. We used this recipe...but after reading the reviews, I added an extra 1/3 cup brown sugar for more flavor and instead of using one whole bag of chocolate chips, I split a bag of chocolate chips and a bag of Reese's peanut butter chips.

Amazon delivered the party supplies for Austin's birthday party on Sunday. I can't wait to show you guys how cute it all is!

We are also getting ready for a little road trip that we'll be taking this coming weekend. But by the time I post this WITL, we'll already be back! Behold the magic of technology! haha!

I cooked a huge chuck roast in my slow cooker all day in order to make beef n noodles for dinner. I used this recipe, except that I used the liquid from the roast and made it into a gravy to mix everything into.

FRIDAY

I feel like I need the title "Monica and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" stamped to my forehead today.

And one thing that always gets me confused is: is this really a bad day...or are my pregnancy hormones just making it out to be worse than it actually is?

I was going to go into detail with all that's gone wrong, but I feel that it would violate the privacy of my kids and family...it's not bad, it's just that I'm sure that none of us would want our wrongdoings blasted out on the internet, would we? I'm sure my kids feel the same way and I am going to respect that. In this blog post anyway. hahahaha

Let's just pray that Mama gets some chocolate and good vibes going on here or this is going to be a really....long....weekend.

Oh!! Wait!! The ultrasound place sent my pictures!! Want to see the baby?? They all pretty much looked the same, so I'm only inserting one pic...but s/he's a cutie!!! That's Antonio's nose! Here ya go:

Peace out, guys!! See ya next week! xoxo