Update

Time kind of flies in relation to this blog.  I think about updating it all the time, but just never quite do it.  Anywho, here are a few pics of my belly from the last month.  The first one is at about 21 weeks.  Yes I know I am ginormous.  Apparently I am carrying quads.  (Yes, someone did ask me that.) With my gestational diabetes and being somewhat short, I tend to show very plainly that I am with child.

 This picture is from today. I am almost 27 weeks.  Third trimester is almost here!!!!  

This pregnancy has been pretty uneventful aside from those things already stated.  I feel a lot more lazy this time.  With both of the other pregnancies I was working full time so I was moving a lot.  With this pregnancy I only work about 1 hour out of the day and the other 23 hours I think I am either sitting on my couch or sleeping somewhere. Seriously, I have been so exhausted with this pregnancy.  I take at least one nap a day and once in awhile two.  The hard thing is I get insomnia when it is bed time and don't feel tired.  But about 10 am I am ready for bed.  I hope this does not mean bad things for this baby's sleeping habits.  Surprisingly, not finding out the gender for this new little one has been pretty easy.  I haven't felt the need to know that I did with Lincoln and Mercedes.  I am just content with waiting until June 7th or before;) 

And just for some comparison for me here are some side by sides from all 3 pregnancies. 

 Around 21-22 weeks with all three.

Around 27 weeks with all three. Lincoln was definitely sitting the lowest and Mercedes the highest.  Funny because I always felt like Lincoln was on a personal mission to break my ribs and Mercedes was always kicking my pelvic bone.

Thankful

As I have been going through this pregnancy I have had a lot of emotions.  It has been a lot more hormonal than I remember the other two being.  However, as I sit here listening to the interesting conversations of middle school students I have become increasingly grateful for certain things.
Number 1 - I am grateful that I no longer care so much about what everyone else thinks about me.  I can admit that I am different and actually enjoy it.  I don't squint at the board because I am too embarrassed to get glasses.
Number 2 - I am grateful that I no longer care so much about what is going on with everyone else.  I don't worry about if my teachers like me better than someone else.  If someone thinks I am really annoying.  I mean I guess I do in some sense, but not to the point that it is all I can think/talk about.
Number 3 - I am glad that I have a loving family who cares for me.  I increasingly hear about families where people don't care about each other or degrade one another.  It really makes me sad to think of the low percentage of kids in this school who have two biological parents that are married to one another still.
Number 4 - I am equally grateful for loving friends who care about me for me.  I don't have to make fun of others so that my friends will like me.  I don't have to make stupid noises for others to like me. I have great friends who I can count on even though I don't get to see all of them everyday.
Number 5 - I like me.  I can be my silly, stupid, dance in the car, snort while I laugh self whenever I want.  I like who I am and I like who I am becoming.
I don't necessarily think any of these are profound or new, but something I just felt like writing down.  Junior High was fun at the time, but I am extremely grateful that I do not have that mind set anymore.  Hope you all are enjoying your day.

Fun and other shenanigans

Sometimes we have a lot of fun dressing up in costumes.  This particular night was full of funnies.  Mercedes has this fun witch costume that she likes to wear.  On this night Lincoln decided to put it on.  The missionaries were at our house and I am sure he was trying to show off.  I was laughing so hard and tried to run to get the camera.  Before I could get it out to take a picture he had decided that he was getting out of that costume in a hurry.  I am so sad I missed that moment.

Then Mercedes comes out with Lincoln's Darth Vader costume on with the helmet upside down.  Oh, my kids make me laugh so much sometimes.  I still giggle when I look at this picture.

 My kids love Alvin and the Chipmunks.  They request everyday to listen to them in the car.  We have one soundtrack of them and Mommy is quite tired of it so I often say "later".  Sometimes we even get to listen to it at home and have dance parties.  It wouldn't be so bad if we got to listen to other things as well, but as soon as the soundtrack is over I get bombarded to start it again.  Cedes has gotten so bad that she will request to watch the movie or listen to the music about 25 times a day. "I watch Chipmunks, Mommy." 

 On this particular day, Cedes was dancing so funny and of course as soon as I got out the camera to record it she wanted to come see the camera instead of dance.  I did get some video of Lincoln though.  My kids love to dance.

About Time

 Well I just wanted to put this picture in because I thought it was cute of the two of us.  We don't have many of these and we should have more. Anyway baby #3 is on the way!  We are pretty excited, but I haven't been as anxious about this pregnancy.  The picture below is actually from a few weeks ago when I was 16 weeks along.  I've grown a bit, but no new pictures.  We have our ultrasound tomorrow, but aren't finding out the gender.  Thought it would be fun to have a total surprise at the delivery.  I am due June 7th and am super excited to be pregnant at the same time as my sister Megan.  (due end of April) I do have Gestational Diabetes again with this one and so have been having fun trying to manage that.  It's hard to be pregnant and not be able to eat all the things you want to when you want to.  Other than lots of nausea my first trimester and some interesting pains throughout the whole time, this pregnancy hasn't been too horrible;)

Quickly Christmas

Just thought I'd share a little about Christmas...only like a month late.

 Lincoln had a Christmas concert at the school and sung a few cute songs. One of them was "Countdown to Christmas" and the other I can't remember the name of.  He had been doing the actions for these songs for weeks.  At the concert he did the actions for half of the first song and then just sung like this the rest of the songs.  At least he was singing.

 I took a few pictures of their Christmas outfits.  These are two of my favorites.  I can't believe how grown up they look.

 Christmas jammies on Christmas Eve. This is one of my favorite traditions.

 Each of the kids with their loot.

More Catch Up

Todd's birthday was on October 24.  He turned 28 this year.  My mom made a small cake because that is not really what he likes, but we needed something for the pictures.  We also had some cheesecake with cherries.

 These two wanted me to take pictures of them with their animals one night.

 Todd reads the kids a story at night about 75% of the time.  I do the other 25%.  The kids love story time and always ask for a story if we forget.

 For Halloween this year Mercedes was a bumblebee and Lincoln was Darth Vader.  We had fun trick or treating around the neighborhood and got way too much candy.  I think we threw away half of it about 2 weeks ago.

 Lincoln really loves to play board games right now and we had fun playing Cootie Bug one night.

 These are about the only pictures I took during Thanksgiving.  Megan and Bri and their families came out and we had a fabulous time.  We stayed up too late, we played a lot of games, and of course we went Black Friday shopping.  Fun, fun.

 This little girl is a Daddy's girl to a T.  She loves to give him all of her snuggles.

 One day I decided to have the kids help me bake bread.  I don't do this kind of fun stuff with them very often, but we can always improve right.  I am too afraid of messes and also it takes about 3 times as long as just doing it myself.  They had a lot of fun though, and it was neat when we ate it to be able to say that they helped to make it.

Figured it out!

After thinking about it for a little while and not wanting to pay for space on Google (yet anyway) I realized that I could probably sign in as Todd and use his space from his Google accounts.  So although these posts for the next little while will have his name they are all still being created by Katie.  Anyway I wanted to put some of these pictures up and I know it has been awhile since I took them, but I am one of those people that  can't move on until I've done each piece of the timeline.

 In October we had a lot of gorgeous and very warm weather.  We used one of those afternoons to rake up some leaves and have some fun jumping in them.  Well the kids jumped, Todd and I raked.

 They have a little swingset out front of our house that has given us many hours of entertainment.

 My two little cowboys.  Mercedes will not be called a cowgirl, whenever you try to tell her that she is a cowgirl she will exclaim "No, I a COWBOY!"

 Trying to take more pictures of myself with the kids.  I don't want to always miss out being in pictures because I don't have my hair done or I want to "lose a little weight".  I want my kids to see that we had fun when they were little and that I loved them.

 Another great day in October when we went hiking on the Loess Hill's Trails.