Me & My sister Mary
My sister and I spent Saturday afternoon and evening baking cookies and making candy. It was so much fun. It's been a couple of years since I have done it, so I wanted to do it this year. We made Pinwheel cookies, toffee, caramels, & peanut butter truffles. Yea for baking. It really helped me get into the Christmas spirit (as weird as that may sound).
Trinity, Paige & MaKady
My sister Mary and her daughter Trinity came down for the weekend. We celebrated Paiges birthday with some homemade pizza, cake, and a trip to Jumpin Jacks. The girls had a blast. Paige picked out the topping for her cake. She is still at that age where she thinks it's fun to mix Christmas and her birthday. I'm sure that will change. 
Today Paige is 6 years old. I can't believe how the time has flown. Six years ago today, it was a Thursday, I had just finished finals on December 15 and I was on my Christmas break. MaKady had her Kindergarten Christmas concert, and my brother Shane was due to fly in from Alaska for the holidays. I didn't feel well during the concert, but I wasn't due to have Paige until the middle of January. So I sat uncomfortably for 2 hours. Then we all congratulated MaKady on how well she did. I asked my parents to take MaKady home for a sleepover and Jared and I headed for the hospital. I was having contractions, they were very painful but they weren't regular. I thought they would just check me and send me home, but we got to the hospital and the contractions kept coming. They gave me a shot to stop the contractions and that didn't work. They gave me the shot twice more and still nothing. I never dialated past a 2, but my dr. came in and said they would do a c-section anyway. So around 10:30 we had our little Paige. I was so nervous because she was so early but even 4 weeks early she was a 6 lb, healthy little girl. She has brought such a great spirit to our family. She is full of jokes and always has something funny to say. This morning she woke up and said "guess what, I'm 6 today and I looked in the mirror and I grew, I am so tall." Happy Birthday Bunny!!!
Last night the girls had their winter dance recital. They have both improved so much since their last recital. They did great and it was fun to watch all of the girls perform.
We have a family tradition of making candy trains every year. I use to make them with my mom when I was little and then when MaKady started school we started making them. This is her last year in Elementary, but she has decided that she can still do it every year. The only difference will be that we will only have to make a few of them for her friends instead of 30 for her whole class. Paige isn't sure she wants in on this tradition just yet, but maybe we can convince her to do it next year.
Here is the belly at 30 weeks. And here is the update: The dr. says I am out of room. I know that I am. I can't sit, stand, or lay down in any comfortable position. This is what happened with both of the girls. I will be lucky to make it to 36 or 37 weeks. I've been having contractions since about 27 weeks. Also very normal for me. But everything is going good. We are still cleaning out the office to make room for baby and we have a list of about 15 names. Sometimes we sit around and toss out names. MaKady likes names like Edward and Noah. Paige wants us to name him something off of the t.v. shows she watches. She votes for Freddy (from ICarly) and Manny (from Handy Manny). The other day I mentioned the name "Nash" and Paige said "why don't we just call him hash brown, it rhymes with Nash." I couldn't stop laughing. I'm glad to have these little girls to point out the horrible things that kids could tease him with at school because of his name, so to say the least "Nash" is off the table. We will just keep thinking of names. I'm sure we won't decide until we see his face.
Friday we had our ward Christmas party. We had a nice dinner and then Santa surprised the kids by showing up. MaKady thought she was too big to sit on Santa's lap, but still had to tell him what she wanted. Paige and her friend Hannah went together. Paige said they were brave.
Paige & Hannah
Saturday we had a family Christmas party. My aunt made all the kids these cute drums and the kids sang "Little Drummer Boy".
Paige and my mom
My dad is so cute. He is always making faces at the kids. 
It's no secret that this time of year is my very favorite. Starting about now through Christmas, our weekends are full of fun stuff. This weekend to start it off we took the girls to one of our favorite restaurants "Red Lobster". It was so good. Jared always gets an enormous plate of crab legs and I usually get some kind of fish, but considering my condition, I opted for the cajun chicken linguini alfredo. It was so yummy. Of course the best part of Red Lobster are the garlic cheese rolls that they bring out. I could eat those all day long. After lunch we took the girls to ToysRus, just to look (we didn't buy anything) but this way we get a good idea of what they are into and they can start writing their letters to Santa. It was so much fun.
The girls had a dance recital over the weekend at the city building. They did such a good job. Paige was a little mad at first because she didn't want to wear the headband but once we got there and she saw that the other girls were wearing theirs she was fine. MaKady did a really good job in her dance. She was a little nervous because at the end they had to do this little pyramid thing and she was afraid she would fall, but it all turned out really good. 
On Saturday we went to Jared's parents house in Levan. We got to meet our new little nephew who came into the family through the miracle of adoption. His name is Adam. The girls just loved him. Paige couldn't get enough of him and she wanted to hold him the entire time. He is just so adorable. Look at all that hair and he's already had 1 haircut. Too cute!!!
Our ward had their Halloween party last night. We ate chilli and lots of yummy treats, and they had games, a spook alley, and trunk or treat for the kids. I think everyone in our ward did such great jobs on their costumes. They were all really creative and so cute.
Last week was a little hectic for us and we found on a couple of occasions that Jared and I needed to be someplace without the kids (hospital to visit a friend, dinner with Jared's boss, etc). We had talked about it several times before, and MaKady had been begging us for a long time, so we finally agreed to let her babysit Paige. I was very nervous at first, but we came home both times and Paige was in bed, MaKady was reading, and the house was spotless. MaKady did such a good job. I'm not sure that she is completely ready to watch other people's children yet, but maybe soon.
Last week we took the girls to the Red Barn. We went on a hayride to the pumpkin patch and then we picked pumpkins for Halloween. The girls had so much fun. MaKady wanted to pick a big pumpkin, but I told her she could only get one as big as she could carry. It was funny to see her hauling around the enormous pumpkin, but she managed to get the one she wanted. Paige was more interested in riding on the wagon and the ice cream we got afterwards. It was a really fun family activity.
