Thanksgiving Break 2011

This year for Thanksgiving Ben and I were able to go to Chicago and spend the holiday with Ben's family! We were there with Ben's parents, Brian, and Claire and Aaron were able to come as well. We had a great time! It was nice to be around people for a change. :-)
We left our apartment around 6:45 AM and drove 3 hours to Pittsburgh. It was raining the whole way, but luckily I slept through a lot of it. We then had 2 flights before we finally made it to Chicago. We pretty much just relaxed the rest of the day. On Thanksgiving morning Ben, his dad, Brian, and Aaron went and played in a Turkey Bowl with the ward. Claire and I helped in the kitchen. We even made my mom's turkey rolls! They were delicious but didn't turn out looking the best. We also didn't take that many pictures, but here are a few from the day.

Friday Ben's dad gave the boys haircuts (minus Brian), and Claire gave Cody a haircut! Then in the afternoon we ventured out into the shopping world. We went to the biggest mall I ever been in, and got some Christmas gifts. I even got our baby his little coming home outfit. It is soooo cute, and I can't wait for him to wear it :-) It felt like we walked about 10 miles in that mall, it was so huge! We also went to Old Navy and I was able to get some maternity yoga pants (which I now wear everyday). It was fun, but also very tiring! When we got back we did a video chat with Grant and Cassy, and Andrew and Kristen. It was a very fun day!

On Saturday we went to downtown Chicago. Unfortunately it was raining hard the whole time. We tried walking around a little bit, but it was just too wet. We did go to the John Hancock building though. They had a cool train set inside which was fun to look at. We then went to Giordano's for some deep dish pizza! It was really good, and everyone was full for the rest of the day!

Ben accidentally flicked a chunk of pizza into his dad's glass of water, which Brian is displaying here.

Throughout our visit we watched lots of movies, played some games, and just enjoyed each other! It was a great break!

Oh, and a few weeks ago Ben and I went to a place called 2000 Degrees where we painted some ceramic pieces. Ben did a puppy, and I did an elephant piggy bank (both for baby of course).

26 Weeks

I am now 26 Weeks along! I kinda feel like each week is the same in the 20's. I will be like "whoa-this baby is coming!" when I get into the 30's... Which is in 4 weeks. Cool. As you will see in the pictures, I have gotten even bigger! I now feel like I am running out of extra space in there, particularly when I try to bend over or lean forwards. I do more grunting these days :-) I cannot believe how much this baby moves! I don't think he EVER sleeps. It's been fun though. I can pretty much look down at my stomach at anytime and see it doing the wave. It feels like he is trying to stretch more too. I will feel both sides of my stomach being pushed at the same time (if that makes sense). Ben and I enjoy watching baby's acrobatics. He moves the most when I laying in bed taking a nap, or going to bed. We love him so much and can't wait to meet him!

I think I look really tired in today's pictures. Which makes sense because I am. I rearranged our bedroom to make more room for baby. I should have waited for Ben to get home from school, but I wanted to surprise him. It's amazing how much your body really does change when you are pregnant! The hormones loosening all my joints/strain of carrying extra weight (baby weighs about 2 pounds now!) really wears you out a lot faster.
Anyways, Ben is still chugging along with school. I'm going to take a moment and brag about him. His first memo he did really well on. The teacher graded them by splitting them into the top third, middle third, and lower third of the class and Ben was in the top third! I love my little smarty-lawyer pants husband. We celebrated by going to Wendy's for dinner.
As for me, I am trying to be productive every day, but most of the time I fail at that and take a nap instead. Oh well! Just getting all the sleep I can get now before baby comes right?
We are excited to go to Chicago for Thanksgiving in a few weeks! Wahoo!

Trunk or Treat

Tonight was our ward's Trunk or Treat/Halloween party. It was supposed to be on Saturday, but got cancelled because of the snow. So tonight we got to eat lots of yummy soup and homemade bread! We also got to see some cute little kid costumes :-) Ben passed out the candy, and we put the fake spider-web stuff on him like a beard... and it totally freaked out some of the little kids. It was pretty funny. After a while Ben took it off so we could have more trunk or treaters.