Oh Baby

I am now 3/4 of the way before before I get to meet my tiny girl. Despite the fact that I've felt sometimes extreme exhaustion (two little boys'll do that to you), mild insomnia (yeah, based on my afore mentioned problem, I don't get it either), typical pregnancy aches and pains, moodiness (this word doesn't do it justice), anemia (first time), *ahem* gas (we'll stop here), despite it all, I have enjoyed this pregnancy.

This baby girl is very active and always has some body part poking through my belly. Sometimes if I'm lying on my back I can feel her entire body. I can literally give her a massage because she is so close to the surface. This is so different from my boys so we mentioned it to my doctor. He said that my placenta is posterior this time which means it's in my back. There is nothing blocking me or anyone else from feeling every little thing she does. Its fun but the drawback is that any kicks to my ribs are felt more acutely. Something I never suffered with my boys.

She has had and will have a few extra ultrasounds because she has a little more fluid on her kidneys than is normal but my doctor isn't at all concerned. So we will just enjoy being able to see our girl a few more times before she is born.

She is measuring right on so it will be fun to see how big she ends up. Kyle and Noah both measured about two weeks big. They were both big boys.e still have a lot to do to prepare for her to come but we are waiting for the craziness of Christmas to end before we start the craziness of Megan. I'm looking forward to it.

WhAt'S uP wItH tHe ShIfLeTt'S

...Last week I hit 30 weeks. "Only" 10 more weeks to go. It feels like forever away but I know its going to cruise. We still have a lot to do in preparation for our baby girl's arrival.

...Wishing the mucky skies would go away and give us some sunshine and breathable air! The upside to this nastiness is the "rime" (frost) that covers the bare trees and shrubbery. Its beautiful!

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...Temple Square with Grandma and Grandpa (for Grandpa's birthday). And a Christmas party with Cheryl's side of the family. It's always good to see everyone since it only happens once or twice a year.

...Kyle sang in his first Christmas performance of many more to come, I hope. His preschool class sang at Legacy Retirement Home. He did a really good job and sang out so we could hear him above others. He's his Daddy's boy. :) His favorite song, not surprisingly, was "We FISH you a HARRY Christ-MOOSE and a HIPPO New Year."

Kyle and his buddy rubbing Rudolph noses...hmmmmmm....

...Adam and I got ALL the Christmas presents wrapped BEFORE Christmas Eve! This is quite the feat!

Merry Christmas, Everyone!!

Adam 3.0

Well I'm finally there. I am at the point where I have to leave all the excuses, justifications and straight out lies... I am getting older. 30 is the age when I used to look at other guys and say "they are old". Well now that is me. According to my younger self by this time I'm supposed to have conquered the world and made billions of dollars while thinking about retirement.

I'm sure if you would have told 12-year-old-Adam that by 30 he would not live in a mansion, be a baseball and football hall of famer (breaking every record for every position), invented flying cars, traveled around the world twice and been to space (sorry 12-year-old-Adam if I missed something) he would be pretty disappointed. 30-year-old-Adam sees things differently. Celebrating my birthday yesterday at my party with my wife, beautiful boys, baby in belly, family and friends is exactly where I wanted to be. Forget about all that other junk.

The "big" birthday did not really do anything to me as far as aging. I still have all my teeth (although some of them are crowns), but it does make me pause to think about my life to this point and what is ahead. I feel I've lived a good life. I may not have done everything perfectly (like the time I threw up on my piano teacher's piano and she had to have it completely dismantled for cleaning), but I am very happy with the outcome to this point. I am amazingly blessed with a wonderful, growing family, have a good job and great friends. I don't know if anyone could ask for more.

Enough with the sappy stuff here's an overview of the Party:

My wife threw me an "Ugly Christmas Sweater" party. It was a blast. Along with being the birthday boy, I was also the official judge of the worst sweater. Here are some of the contestants


Here is my beautiful family. Happy to be sharing our holidays with friends. Yes, my sweater has lights. They had to be plugged in so I did not have much range during the party. My wife is sporting a lovely denim vest with snowmen enjoying a winter day.

Here are my in-laws. Dad won for the worst Christmas expression.

Whitney and Ryan Wall. Whitney's bear vest was very fetching. Meanwhile Ryan stopped by a sweater factory picked up the scraps and pieced them together (or at least that's what it looks like).

Ethan and Amy were sporting sweaters from the Richard Hind collection. Hand made and preserved by Richard Hind himself. If they look too happy to be wearing really itchy sweaters its because they are newly weds.

Mindy and Emily came perfectly match and are definitely the winners of the best mother/daughter combination.

Mary and Von. You may be confused why we have two Christmas trees in our front room, but to clarify one of the Christmas trees is actually part of Mary's sweater (the sweater is the one that is more heavily decorated). Don't feel bad if you were confused, I was too.

And so was Von. Apparently someone told him this was a totally awesome sweater party. He accidentally wore his favorite BYU sweater. Von is the Y's biggest fan, even though he graduated from the U. You should have seen him when Max Hall (his favorite player) hit George for the touchdown. I have never seen anyone happier. Moments later Max Hall's comments created paralyzing inner struggle within himself, since Von graduated from the U and therefore was called classless and hated by his favorite football player... It's okay Von, Max hates a lot of people. I don't think it is anything personal.

And the winner of the worst sweater... Mary Anderson.

Ryan takes the runner up prize and probably would have won if his sweater had more of a Christmas theme.


To finish off this post I had to add my favorite photo of the day.

"We join our hero as the masked crusader waits impatiently for the Christmas sweater party."

********See November 22nd to view my "October" post*********