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We had our 20 week ultrasound today. Everything looked great! We saw the heart and it looked perfect. We also saw the brain, face, spine, and all those other important body parts. Oh, and, drum roll please, we’re having….. A BABY! Yes, we decided to not find out the gender of the baby so Steve and I looked away whenever the tech was checking down in the pelvic/leg region. My mom watched but said she didn’t see anything that gave her a good idea. So, either she really didn’t see anything or she’s going to be good at denying it for the next few months. It was a lot of fun to watch the baby moving around. It’s approximately 14 ounces right now which is exactly where it should be. While we were looking at it’s face we could see it “chewing”. The tech commented on how it looked like it was chewing gum. It was so exciting! I definitely feel the little one moving around now. Often it’s a swishing feeling but I also get these little pokes and kicks too. We have to get the photos scanned in so when we do we’ll post a couple of them.

Our snow storm finally ended last Friday. We ended up with 12 inches of snow on our patio table and that doesn’t include the occasional melting or blowing that happened over time. The second storm we had on Christmas Eve finally dropped the right kind of snow for us to build a snowman. We’d like to introduce you to the newest member of our family, “Mim”. (That’s what Josie calls him.)

Unfortunately he didn’t last long. By Christmas morning he was curving terribly to the side. As our neighbor pointed out, he had “snowliosis”. By that evening, he’d lost his head. I think he’d gotten into the egg nog when we weren’t looking. Most of the snow is gone now. We have nothing left in the backyard. We have maybe 2 inches in the front yard in spots and some of the piles are left from Steve’s shoveling. There’s also a thick lane divider in the middle of our street. I’m not sure what Josie’s going to do when she wakes up the first morning and looks outside for snow and there isn’t any. It was a wonderful white Christmas!

Which is why I’m glad I married someone who knows how to deal with it! It’s been a few years but Steve picked up that snow shovel with a lot of expertise. He has a lot of experience with it, after all he grew up in upstate New York. He cleared our walkway and cars in no time. It took a little longer to get the driveway to a point where we could actually get out but he did it a lot faster than I thought possible. As of Monday afternoon, we had 10 inches of snow on the ground. I’m sure a little melted yesterday although it didn’t get warm enough to do much. It’s been snowing all morning again and we’re expecting more tonight and into tomorrow morning before it finally starts to let up. This will truly be a magical Christmas. I always dream of a white Christmas and it looks like this year I’m finally getting one. A special thanks to my wonderful in-laws, Bob and Sandy. I guess your offer of sending me snow every year finally worked!

Here are a couple of new pictures to give you an idea of how much fun we’ve been having. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love snow and that I can’t get enough of it. I’m still enjoying watching it come down!

10 inch measurement:

Our happy shoveler:

A cleared path:

Snow family:

Our house in lights:

Backyard under snow:

We did have snow last year. Enough to take Josie out for the obligatory “first snowfall” pictures. But there really wasn’t enough to play in. This year is a bit different. We’ve had some arctic air over the last week and several snow storms moved in. Of course, we missed the first one last weekend. We barely got a dusting. And Wednesday’s brought just another dusting. But by Thursday we had actually gotten close to half an inch. (I know, that’s still a dusting to some of you.) We took a nice family walk around the neighborhood to visit my folks. Josie absolutely loved walking in the snow. She wouldn’t let us carry her there at all. Some of it did melt so it wasn’t looking like all that much by Thursday evening but by Friday morning we had almost an inch! This was very exciting for us. More snow fell off and on throughout the morning so I took Josie out to play in the front yard around lunch time. She really enjoyed “throwing” snowballs and picking snow up off the ground. I even helped her make her first snow angel. She put up with it until I wanted to take a picture and set her back down. As you can see, she wasn’t so happy at that point.

But don’t worry, the smiles came back as soon as I stood her back up and dusted her off. The good news is, it’s been snowing since last night and we now have around 7 or 8 inches. We took her out again this afternoon in hopes of building a snowman but our expert snowman-maker (Steve) said it was just too powdery to stick together. Maybe that’s why I haven’t seen any other snowmen. We tried to make another snow angel but she was most unhappy with that experience again. The snow angel looked better today though since there was more snow.

We are expecting even more snow over the evening with it supposedly changing to freezing rain sometime tomorrow. Hopefully it will warm up slowly so we can have a “white” Christmas even if it doesn’t actually snow on Christmas Day.

On a sad note, Josie fell down in the house last night and split her lip open. She also must have hit her top left front tooth because it was bleeding at the gum. There was a lot of blood and tears. After sucking on a washcloth with an ice cube in it for a bit the bleeding stopped and so did the crying (from all of us). She has a bruised and fat lip today and is eating more on the right side of her mouth but otherwise seems to be ok. As you can see, she was still all smiles this morning.

And on a very happy note, it’s almost Christmas and we are definitely ready. Josie has been enjoying her advent calendars every day, especially the chocolate one. She has also tried to get into the presents under the tree a couple of times and really enjoys looking (aka pulling on) the ornaments on the tree. She has several favorite Christmas carols, including the Little Drummer boy (“pum pum”) and Deck the Halls (“ya ya”). And she is loving all of the Christmas books I’ve had for years and years. She even made her visit to Santa a few weeks ago. She was a bit shy but she did warm up to him when he brought out his book to read and gave her a candy cane.

Merry Christmas everyone!!