Sunday, December 22, 2013

Spontaneous Things- Missionaries, Baby Girl, Birthdays, Christmas

One blogger I follow does this Spontaneous Five and lists five main things that went on that week. Well, I'm going to give it a shot but change it up a bit and see how it works. I'm going to use "things" instead, so I can have as many numbers as I wish :) I want to blog more, and I have all these ideas when I'm not sitting at the computer!! Then I forget by the time I get around to writing a blog post haha. Anyways, here I go:

1) Missionaries. There are the two cutest sisters serving in our ward and I just adore them. They really remind me of home (they are both from Utah) and I can't believe how comforting it is to talk with other Americans and makes me feel at home. Not that living in Sweden and talking with Swedes is bad, it's just culture differences that I miss. A lot. It helps that one of these sisters comes from a city about 30 min away from my house. One time I was talking to her about this certain wal-mart in town she knew EXACTLY what I was talking about and it felt oh so nice. Isn't it weird how talking about Wal-mart was somehow comforting to me?... haha :) Here are some pictures to show you all how cute these two are:

My mother-in-"love" told me it is an old Swedish tradition to decorate pepparkakor (gingerbread cookies), put them on the Christmas tree, then eat them on Christmas! That is what we are going to do! I figured we'll have these two over on Christmas day, so it will work out perfectly :)

I definitely did not take this.. good thing these two won't be home for another 6 months to see this ;)



After dinner one night Joel and I had to show these two how awesome the playground is outside our apartment. We might have been out there for a good hour ;)






2) Baby girl. I feel like she is starting to run out of room. She is also starting to kick my ribs... which didn't hurt as bad as I thought it would (and maybe it will get worse haha) it is just super uncomfortable right now. Usually I notice she kicks my ribs in the morning when I'm attempting to sleep in a little bit! Ya know, taking advantage of my sleep while I can. I usually sleep pretty good!! I have also started to notice when she is awake and asleep more. Which is kind of fun, except for the fact that she is usually awake between 11 and 2 am! I heard babies sometimes keep the same sleeping patterns after their born. Is that true??
I also love that I can tell how and where she is sitting. I love that her little bum is always sticking out to the top right of my stomach, which results her feet in my ribs though. I guess I just love knowing where her cute little bum is!! I'm obsessed with bums if you didn't know..
We are preeetty sure we're going to name her Emma Elaine Herrey. Who knows though? When she comes we could change her name... but we're pretty positive as of right now :) I still like to call her baby girl just because saying Emma makes it so much more official! Maybe I should start preparing myself.. haha!!
I feel really good! Other than it is getting slightly harder to do some simple things. Like putting on shoes and picking things up. Which is getting slightly annoying because I didn't realize how often I picked stuff up!

31 weeks. Don't mind my monkey pajama's, ok? :) I also love my little bump, and that it didn't grow faster or slower than my boobs. I feel like it was all pretty even ;)


3) Birthdays!! Joel turned 26 on November 28th, and I just turned 23 on December 15th. Yes our birthdays are a couple weeks apart and then followed by Christmas. And yes it is quite an expensive month for us. I think the weirdest part for me is I met Joel when he was 23, and now I am 23!! It's really weird to think that I've only known him for 2 1/2 years, and now we've been married for 1 1/2 and having a baby in a few months. Anyways, we celebrated our birthdays by exchanging a few presents and then Joel's family came over for family dinner on my birthday!! My only request was to have my in-laws make lasagna. It is DELICIOUS. My in-laws asked if we could have the dinner at our place and I didn't mind! Sure I thought it was a little funny and inconvenient that they asked... and then I found out why! They had bought Joel and I a Christmas tree for our birthdays!!!!! I might have cried a little, that's how much it meant to me. I didn't think we would be able to have one this year!



I have LOVED being pregnant at the same time with this sweet sister-in-law of mine! Crazy we have been pregnant for so long. I feel like it was just yesterday when we were talking to each other both finding out around the same time we were both pregnant and sending each other pictures of our pregnancy tests!! What a crazy and wonderful time that was to share it together!






Our little tree!! 



4) CHRISTMAS. I have been super excited for Christmas this year because I now know what to expect with the Swedish traditions and such :) It amazes me how Joel's family has such specific traditions, especially with food! I feel like my family has one tradition on the 24th, and then just relax on Christmas. It has been fun seeing how different our families are when it comes to traditions!
One thing that is hard for me is having it so dark during the winter. I didn't realize how hard last year was until the light finally started coming back in March. I told someone the other day how I felt kinda bad that we were having a baby in February and it is still dark and cold during that month. They then said, "Well I think that's a good thing! You need something to look forward to, to get you through those months." From then on I have tried to keep that positive perspective :)  The nice part about Christmas time is all the lights in the windows, they help a lot! That's what makes January and February so hard I guess!

2 notes:

Megan and Jared said...

My baby kept his sleeping pattern and he was just like yours. You just have to switch them over. It can take some time and can be hard on some days but now he's good :)

Unknown said...

I LOVE going teaching with the sister missionaries. It feels like home. It's been hard making friends here only because their culture is so much different than it is in Utah. So having them around is like a piece of home. Oh and p.s. One of them really is from Morgan. Sister Newton. But don't ask me her first name because I keep forgetting what it is. Lol