Merry Christmas!!!

I've been so neglectful of this blog lately... and weird. I'd think I was weird if I was solely a reader of my life.

Anywho, I have some wonderful and exciting news to share! YES! It is what you are thinking! We are expecting a baby in July! We found out just after Thanksgiving and kept it on the DL until we saw a heartbeat the day before yesterday, so Merry Christmas to us! We have a viable bun in the oven! My Midwife says with that strong of a heartbeat it's highly unlikely we'll miscarry this one, but that we won't be out of the woods for another 3 weeks. So, keep us in your prayers and your fingers crossed! We are both elated at our news!

Today, my heart is swelling with gratitude for so many things, but most of all for the Love our Savior and Heavenly Father have for us. This Christmas brought about many emotions for me. BJ might be leaving in as little as a few weeks, He may not be here when the baby is born, I'm hormonal, I'm an emotional, sick as a dog, pregnant woman, and I was super homesick for my family this Christmas.

BJ and I were able to have our very first ever Christmas at home with just us this year. I have many traditions that I'd like to keep going from my youth and we did pretty much everything. I loved how my parents handled Santa and captured the true meaning of Christmas in everything they did. We start with our big (yet, quiet) dinner Christmas Eve, Then we have our Christmas Family Home Evening where we, of course talk about the story of the Nativity, Then we watched "The Nativity" (on the same disc as Mr. Krueger's Christmas), Which never ceases to leave me feeling so full of the spirit, and then we sang Christmas carols. We don't plan on doing the following every year, but we got them some Christmas Eve jammies this year (Dr. Suess themed-super cute!)and had them open those up, then we had some pumpkin squares, hung up stockings, sprinkled the reindeer food on the lawn (Thanks Tiffany for that last year! What a fun idea!), put cookies and chocolate rice milk out for Santa and went to bed. I stayed up till about 5 in the morning because I still had one more stocking to make and of course we had a little elf work to do. BJ had to work today, so he went to bed around 2 and I stayed up to put the finishing touches on everything. I really wanted our first Christmas at home to be perfect and it WAS! It was so great. I've been emotional with gratitude all afternoon thinking about the love of our Savior, we've been watching some good spiritual movies today and talking a lot about Jesus, Trains and new play kitchens.

I'm having a bit of a hard time letting go of the day, just like I did when I was young. I love it when that happens. It makes Christmas so much more special. My homesickness still lingers. I've been especially missing my mommy today. She went on a trip with my brother and sister for Christmas and I just really miss her today. I miss hanging out with my family Christmas Day and just enjoying the day. My kids are so little, and BJ had to work today, so that one didn't really pan out today, but I did get a monstrously needed nap! I hope she's having loads of fun.

I hope all your Christmas's were as magical and fun filled as ours!