Christmas

Here are a few of the pictures we took on Christmas morning. Todd filled my stocking with lots of goodies. Sewing scissors, skittles, markers, a game, etc.
Todd and I both got Phase 10 dice for each other, it was pretty funny.
These are the presents from my parents.
For this picture I made Todd open up his eyes as much as possible. As we all know when the Dow boys smile, they tend to close their eyes. This was as good as it gets.

Todd and I had a good Christmas this year. Because we bought a video camera for ourselves this year, we decided that our budget for presents would be pretty small. Even with the tight budget we found some pretty good presents that were great for each other. We also got some good gifts from others. My mom and Dad got us a Book of Mormon for Latter-day Saint Families and Catch Phrase. Mum and Dad got us a gift card to Amazon which we bought the Lord of the Rings trilogy with. Gram bought us a board book for the baby. Between the two of us we got 12 puzzles - I'm very serious. Todd bought me a collection that has 10 puzzles in it.

Month Number 4

Todd took this picture of my on December 18. I was exactly 18 weeks along that day. My bump is getting bigger and bigger. I am glad to say that all the nausea and most of the pains from my first trimester are gone. I've been feeling much better and this truly is the best time of pregnancy for me.

Visitors

These are a few of our visitors over the Thanksgiving holiday. The top one is our nephew Brody.
This is Ian. I can't believe how big he has grown since I've seen him last.
This is our little SPOILED princess Gracee. She is way more tough than her older brother.
This is my mom and our niece McKenna. We were so excited because we all got to see her crawl over Thanksgiving.

My Awesome Husband

Sometimes I take Todd for granted and how great he is to me. But in the past few weeks since I've been sick and I can't do as much cooking and other things as I used to, I've really seen how lucky I am that we found each other. Even though I get frustrated with him sometimes because he doesn't think exactly like I do, I really am grateful for all he does for me. He cleans the house the majority of the time, he brings me things when I feel like I can't move, and he even cooks now. When before he always told me he didn't know how. He has taken on quite a few different cooking experiences. I guess all in all I really just want to say how much I love him and how much I've appreciated his attitude during this pregnancy. I'm so blessed to have him in my life.

A Short Visit

Well my dad came for the weekend. He was at a conference in Las Vegas and decided to make a detour on the way home. McKenna, just like all the other grandchildren, has Papa wrapped around her finger and he is totally enthralled by her. She is getting so big and gets closer and closer to crawling every day. She fell asleep in that position by the way. After we got her up and put her in a bed my dad looked like he had ran a marathon. Kenna sweats really bad when she sleeps so my dad looked like he needed a little deodarant.

News

Well I'm pregnant. I announced it today in Relief Society because I thought I could only hide it for a little longer. At least this way it was a surprise to everyone. I usually don't wear tight shirts and this is why. I was talking to Mandy a few weeks ago (before anyone knew I was pregnant) and I was telling her how unfair it was that she was like 6 months pregnant and still not very big. I told her then that it wasn't going to be like that for me. Knowing my family history and also my own body shape, I knew that I would start showing long before she had. I mean being this short, where else would the baby have any room to grow but out. I do have solace in the fact that I haven't gained very much weight though. Hopefully all of the weight that I do gain will be concentrated in a very small area and it will be easy enough to lose. Even if it is not, Todd and I are very excited for the outcome of the weight gain. The due date as of now is May 21, 2008. We'll see when the baby really comes. Everyone I teach with compliments me on the perfectness of our timing. I get out of school on the 23rd so I won't really have to miss too much school. We also get to hear the heartbeat on Tuesday. We've been looking forward to this and feel like it will make it seem even more real to the both of us.

SEPs

Well for all of those who don't know, SEP stands for Student Education Plan - basically a parent/teacher conference. This week I had my first of the year. I am so dead tired because of this that I had to lay down in my classroom at lunch today. They did go relatively well so that I am glad of. But being on the road and at school for 13 hours two days in a row wasn't exactly my favorite thing to do. I hope all of you parents out there realize the time we teachers put in sometimes...I'm sure you do. Anyway so I'm very excited that this is conference weekend and I get to relax and watch conference at home. Hope you all are doing well and know that we love ya.