Christmas 2016!

ALL THE HEART EYES FOR CHRISTMAS!

I'm so in love with Christmas. I've never understood when people say their favorite holiday is like, Halloween or Valentine's Day or whatever. How can anything top Christmas?? It's the perfect blend of old and new, sentiment and surprise. Sliding into crisp new jammies, baking the same old family recipes, looking up Santa's location online, waking up to beautiful bright presents, and of course, celebrating the birth of our Savior. It was especially poignant this year with Christmas falling on a Sunday! We loved attending church and listening to the wonderful music and messages about Christ. 

We busted out some untraditional pjs at the Huish home this year! Outdoor Voices sweats and hoodies for the non pregnant girlies, Madewell sweats and button down top for me (gotta keep things nursing friendly in preparation for a few months from now!), and some coordinating pants and a tee for the only boy. And Elf Lydia!

Star cake courtesy of Livi. 

And everyone matched at the Christensen's!!

So every Christmas Eve at Michael's house there is a cookie decorating contest! And Michael always gets pretty intense ;). In some alter life he would be an architect slash designer or something. He's so good at this kind of stuff! This year didn't disappoint as he literally used tweezers to place hundreds of sprinkles on his cactus - haha! It was pretty epic. Of course his won. My punk rock angel took third behind the tree! 

Three pregnant sisters!! Michael's sister Rachel is due April 12 with a boy, Paige is due March 1 with a girl, and I'm March 9 with a boy! PARTY! This summer is going to be loco with all these new babes. 

Christmas morning!

And the one and only pic I got with Lydia on Christmas... HA. Oops. Bad mom.

Attempted matching cousin pic!

And closing out with my favorite people. I am so blessed with the two best families! We were totally spoiled with an awesome Christmas surrounded by loved ones. I hope everyone had a great Christmas! Now Michael and I are just soaking up this last week of break. This is the most time we'll have together until June since this upcoming semester will be busy and then he takes his board exam!! So ya, definitely trying to make the most of this week :).

Lights, Gingerbread Houses, Parks, Party!

It's always so fun coming back to AZ for Christmas. Michael and I lucked out and grew up 5 minutes away from each other, which means every holiday is down in Mesa! We get double the fun every year since we can usually hit all the traditions and parties of both families. Scheduling can be tricky but it always works out in the end. I have soooo many pictures from all the fun events leading up to Christmas so it will take a few posts to get everything up - but for now here's batch one of photos! 

We always go to the Mesa Temple lights with Michael's family, and this year was especially fun since Lydia could appreciate them! She was in heaven running around such a beautiful place. And she's a total goofball - she kept doing this thing where she'd full on sprint for 10 seconds and then just lay down in the middle of the cement (and right where everyone was walking!) and take a 1 minute rest. Ha! Then she'd jump up and run run run again and then sprawl out on the ground! It was hilarious. 

So this gingerbread house was actually still back in Salt Lake the day before we left. How cute is this Trader Joe's kit? And the best part was that it already came with decorated people so no matter how little we did it looked semi legit ;).

Annual Christensen hike! Which has sort of turned into more of a nature walk with all these kiddos.

And pretty sure we're going to have to make Shake Shack part of the tradition, too ;).Yum.

Another Christensen tradition is to let all the grandkids run around at this awesome Riverview Park in Mesa! It's only a few years old and has tons of fun activities for all ages. 

Lydia's personal favorites were the slides and a giant swing.

(I wasn't a huge fan of the concrete slide though ;). I mean really - how comfy can that be?)

Said swing! Please note the pure joy on that little face. Lydia loves nothing more than playing with her daddy!

And many tears may or may not have been shed when us mean parents forced her to finally get off, haha. A nice little foreshadowing of terrible twos I suppose!

Also let's all appreciate the short sleeves and sunshine in these pics!! I get that white Christmases are beautiful, but man it's hard to beat 68 degrees every day!

Snickerdoodles

'Tis the season for...baking!

I used to make these snickerdoodles in high school every month to try and win over my CP chemistry teacher. Apparently he loved them and my grade needed a little help so... win win! ;)

They're super simple to make and a fun shake up from our typical chocolate chip. 

Roll 'em up!

Coat 'em with cinnamon sugar!

Let Lydia pretend like she is helping by stirring a random straw.

(Ignore our mess...)

And tada!

Snickerdoodles

Ingredients: 

- 1 cup butter

- 1 1/2 cups sugar

- 2 eggs

- 2 tsp vanilla

- 2 3/4 cups flour

- 2 tsp cream of tartar 

- 1 tsp baking soda

- 1/4 tsp salt 

- 3 tbsp white sugar 

- 3 tsp cinnamon 

Directions: 

- Preheat oven to 400* 

- Cream together butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla

- Blend in flour, cream of tartar, soda, salt

- Shape dough into balls

- Mix remaining sugar & cinnamon 

- Roll balls in sugar mixture

- Bake at 400* for 7 minutes - do not over bake!

- Enjoy :)

Bumpdate: Week 28

It's been a rough couple of weeks. 

For starters, I failed my glucose test! Well kind of. I drank the lemon lime (highly recommend this flavor - not bad!) and then had an awesome doctors appointment across the hall. About 20 minutes till my blood draw time I was in the waiting room and started getting reeeeeally dizzy and hot and sweaty. Literal beads of sweat falling off my face. The nurse came over and told me to take deep breaths but I still felt awful. Then all of a sudden I felt it coming. I lunged back into the doctors area and threw up in the first trash can I saw. Don't worry, only every single person could hear me! I traumatized the whole waiting room - ha. Poor people. And Lydia was so scared and crying! The nurses were darling and played with Lydia and took good care of me, but the blood testers are sticklers and said I have to re do it! Even though by this point there was only 10 minutes left! So ya, super fun Friday morning.

Also I have so much more anxiety this pregnancy than I did with Lydia! I worry daily about Baby Boy. Did I feel enough kicks, is he growing, what if he just stops growing, how will I know? I haven't felt him move for an hour. Babe go get me some orange juice. I'm cramping. Is that a cramp? Maybe it's just normal stretching. I don't know! Should I call? I call too much. Ahhhhh! My mind just won't stop racing with worry. I've heard of so many scary/sad stories recently and so I'm extra paranoid, and since Lydia was IUGR (intrauterine growth restriction - basically she just stopped growing), I keep worrying about when/if that might happen again. On top of that I've just been generally really uncomfortable. Go figure - 20 extra pounds will do that to you ;). I'm not sleeping great, I frequently have to stop walking because of the Braxton Hicks contractions, I pee my pants just at random times, all lovely stuff. And then I feel guilty - I really am so grateful to be pregnant, but it can kind of suck sometimes! 

ANYWAYS. Bumpdate! 28(1/2) weeks comin atcha!

How far along: 28 weeks

Fruit size: Butternut squash. Or a roller blade, if we're going off the "fun and games" size comparison on one of my apps.

Weight gain: 21 pounds. If I gain the typical pound a week third trimester this will put me at 33 pounds total. Woot woot!

Maternity clothes: Oh yes. I think the only non-maternity stuff I can squeeze into are some extremely stretchy maxi dresses. And luckily oversized sweaters are a thing, so I've been able to wear a few of those too.

Sleep: Alright. Occasional insomnia, definitely lots of shifting and repositioning happening all through the night. The drugs make me really tired all the time. I busted out my pregnancy pillow a few weeks ago so that helps! 

Symptoms: Leg cramps! SO painful. These are different than the middle of the night charlie horses I had with Lydia though, these start around 2pm and then gradually get worse till about 8pm they are unbearable. Also the nausea has gotten worse the last week. I don't know if it's just baby getting bigger and taking up more tummy room or what. I've only thrown up a handful of times in the last couple weeks, it's mainly just feeling like I'm going to throw up, haha. But thank goodness for those drugs! When I didn't take them it was horrible, so they're apparently doing their job.

Food cravings: Hmm.. not much by way of cravings, it's more that a lot of things sound gross. But I'm pretty much always game for apples, popcorn, pretzels, kind of bland things. Also I made this kale salad a few nights ago that totally hit the spot! So so so good. Kale and wild rice and a lemony dressing - it was awesome. I want it right now actually. (Recipe  here.)

Food aversions: Fast food is grossing me out lately (and probably always should? haha). The smell of all that grease just does me in. Also there was this chicken I made a few nights ago that I couldn't touch.

Gender: We cannot wait for a little boy! And officially taking all name suggestions?!

Bump: Just humongous, of course. Again at church today someone was like, "Wow, you've really grown a lot this week! You look a ton bigger!" Hahaha. Thanks. I know. I keep asking my doctor if it's normal to look this big this early but he keeps reassuring me that I'm measuring only about a week early and that my weight gain is normal and everything. Okay, thanks nice man. Even if you're slightly lying to me I'll take it. 

Belly button in or out: Shockingly it's going flatter!

Thoughts: We're getting there! I can't believe in another week and a half I'll be in the 30s. That makes it sound so much closer. I can't wait to get back from break and then have something to look forward to - prepping for Baby Boy! I'll need to get some baby clothes (I seriously have like 4 total onesies for him), new binkies, a few non-pink blankets  (we have like 4000 pink ones if anyone wants one!), and I want to paint two walls in the nursery! So that's a pretty exciting list of things to do at the start of 2017 :). Can't wait to meet you little guy! 

Temple Lights

I was totally spoiled growing up in Mesa, AZ where every Christmas we would drive 10 minutes and see the beautiful Mesa temple lights! I didn't realize (until a few months ago, actually) that there are only a handful of temples around the world that do lights. And surprisingly both Michael and I had never seen the Salt Lake lights! So Sunday night we bundled up and blasted Christmas music and headed downtown, along with 3 million other people! Haha. It was packed but so gorgeous.

How many hours do you think it takes to put all these lights up?? Literally every branch is covered!

Speaking of the temple, a friend in our ward is going through for the first time on Saturday! We are so happy for him and can't wait to leave Lydia with a sitter for a few hours and worship in the temple :). Michael and I used to be so good about going frequently, but since having Lydia it's been tough to get sitters and school schedules lined up, but selfishly I need to go more often! I always love the joy and clarity I find there, and I leave feeling so much peace. To learn more about our temples, see  here. 

One of the four different cultural representations of the nativity!

My favorites. 

Thanks random stranger who took our picture! We rarely get shots of all of us together, so it's fun to have a few. Speaking of photos, I'm starting the hunt for a newborn/family photographer for a week or so after this little guy is born, and possibly a birth photographer? Part of me would love to have really high quality pictures in the hospital to look back on, but another part of me still thinks that having some stranger in the room with you and taking pictures of one of the messiest and simultaneously most sacred experiences of your life is a little weird. Ha. But I'm sure I'd get over that pretty quickly! Basically I only have a handful of shots from Lydia's birth and I regret not having more. And I definitely don't want Michael to have to worry about taking pictures, and I don't want to slap that responsibility on my parents either, so hiring someone sounds like a good way to go. Thoughts? Has anyone had a photographer in the hospital before, and did you like it? Any great (and decently priced!) Utah photographers you'd recommend??

Jacket: Target, old

Denim: AG maternity 

Boots: H&M, old

Beanie: Anthropologie 

Lydia's Jacket: Gap

Lydia's Beanie: Target