Our Ultimate Life: Brynn's Wedding and a Beal Party

At-home church activities with the boys

I hit 13 weeks and like magic, most of my first trimester hardships disappeared. By 14 weeks I felt almost totally normal. This picture shows how big the baby was at 5 weeks compared to 12 weeks. I am just in total awe of how much a baby grows in just 7 weeks! From the size of a sesame seed to the size of a lime - pregnancy is a miracle! And no wonder women feel like garbage in the first trimester: look at what our bodies are doing!!

making more Christmas goodies to share

Emmett helped me make Travis's chocolate chip cookies. I measured out 50 grams for each dough ball and his job was to shape them nicely and put them on the pan. He was also in charge of adding all ingredients and mixing with the kitchen aid. He LOVES to help in the kitchen.

Justin's "elf on the shelf" shenanigans

We babysat for Karen Beard's daughter and the kids loved having a baby to play with all day

Logan... the sleep saga continues. He's been getting up at 5:00 since daylight savings. For the past two days we've tried axing his naps to see if he'll sleep better at night. So far we're trading off a three hour nap for just one extra hour of sleep (sleeping until 6:00)...crossing my fingers that he figures this out!

Emmett and Justin made the nativity out of legos.

The weekend of the 12th Mom and Dad offered to take Trisha and me with them to Boise for Brynn's wedding and Braden's homecoming. This worked out perfectly for me because I wasn't feeling well enough to commit to getting a hotel for my family and I didn't start feeling better until a few days before leaving for Boise. The three-hour drive goes by much better with more company. Mom had an appointment with a chiropractor and agreed to let Trisha and me observe. We ate at Zupa's for dinner (my first time!) and listened to Brie's trumpet concert over facebook live. We chilled at our hotel the rest of the night and were lucky enough to find "It's a Wonderful Life" was on.

Saturday Trisha and I spent the day with Mitzi while Mom and Dad went to Brynn's wedding. Dad got permission to seal Brynn and Kyle in the Meridian temple. What a special experience that was, I'm sure! The three of us enjoyed shopping all morning and Mitzi treated us to lunch. We chilled out at her house that afternoon and watched "Mistletones" before heading off to Hart's house for the drive-by reception. Brynn was a beautiful bride!

From there we headed to Gabe's for the after-party AKA Mom's 70th birthday surprise. He ordered empanadas for dinner with all kinds of Beal classics at the table: sherbert with 7-up, cinammon bears, and German chocolate cake. We played guesstures afterward and just enjoyed hanging out with the crew. Gabe gave everyone Beal Corp hats at the end. It was a great day! Thank you Mitzi for taking us on all day long!

The lovely couple

Sunday morning Braden gave his mission homecoming talk and did a great job! He was so funny. I suspect he and Justin might share some Central America horror stories one day. He and Jory were also part of a special musical number which made for a wonderful meeting overall. It was so nice to be in church in person again! Gabe had us over for breakfast/lunch so we could get a bite before heading home. Thank you Gabe and Christy!!!

As soon as I got home I got busy going to people's homes in our ward to do recordings for our ward Christmas program. It was killing me that our ward wasn't doing anything for Christmas Sunday and I was talking to the primary president about it (because we were discussing the pre-recorded primary program I did). I told her we could easily do something similar for Christmas so she ran the idea by the bishop and I basically volunteered to do it. So I assigned all the parts the week before and drove to their houses to record their parts. Justin is BRILLIANT and was able to turn their videos into voice-overs for different pictures showing Nephites, Shepherds, Samuel the Lamanite, etc for the whole thing. We showed it today for church and I think it turned out great!

Our friends that live in Grandma and Grandpa Beal's house invited us for dinner the Sunday night I got home from Boise - it was perfect since the last thing I felt like doing after driving all day was cook! And they fed us ribs! Yum!

We've done a lot of Christmasy things this week - one night we drove to Arco to get treats and look at lights, then we came home to make snowflakes. The library gave each of the kids a Christmas goodie bag on another day, and I started "A Christ-centered Christmas" nativity tradition with them this week. Friday night the city put on their "parade of lights" which the kids loved! Emmett had a Christmas party for his preschool, and on Saturday we even braved the wind and tried going sledding. We did NOT last long, but Teddy enjoyed getting outside with us and the kids had fun. Saturday night we assembled all the Christmas goodies we've been making and today we will deliver to everyone on Justin's list.

I love bedtime cuddles

Emmett showing me all his Christmas party favors

One of our favorite restaurants in Puyallup makes an appetizer of fried avocado wontons. Since I can't go out to eat there anytime soon I decided to make some myself - yum!