The "twin" bumps

There you have it - Brooke, me and 4 little boys. 30 weeks and counting. We still argue over who is bigger. I grew a ton in the last month (no doubt thanks to the holidays and staying at my mom's house), but I am now officially bigger than I ever was with Cash. Love to see where this goes in the next two months....

The holiday season in photos

One of my favorite pictures. I love baby bed-head.


















Cash really hasn't been too pleased with the snow. I think it's the marshmallow feeling.




































Gingerbread houses and tree decorating.


















The Christmas eve party with Santa. Cash was pretty much a deer in the headlights.




















Christmas morning. It is against my better judgement that I put this enormous belly picture of myself on here. :)






























Cash obviously doesn't get Christmas. We had to fight him all morning to get him to go in to see his presents. He much preferred sitting on the stairs and racing down the hallway. Who knew it would take so little to make Christmas morning a success?

So then we sort of had to force him into it. The many faces of Christmas morning:







































My family (minus a few).






































Good times. We love coming home to Utah for Christmas. It will be hard to live in the real world where we don't get to come home for a good chunk of time around the holidays every year. And then it's always hard going back to reality!

Happy Anniversary!!

Today is our 4 year anniversary. We'll be celebrating starting off the day with a pair of massages, going to the temple later on, and then possibly finishing with a movie. It's pretty nice when your husband has the day off! (The ski medicine month has been as good as we thought it would. Actually better). Here we are though, 4 years, 2 moves and 1 and 2 half babies later! And still enjoying the ride. Love you Ryan!

Deals, deals, deals

My husband is an obsessor. He must have a current obsession to keep him occupied and constantly searching for something. His most common (and current) obsession revolves around getting deals. If anything is ever free - we must have it. Even if we have no use for it. Even if we would have no use for it in seven lifetimes, we still must have it - because it's free.

Take, for example, a few years ago when Ryan decided he should enter every online contest he could find just to get free stuff. Along came an autographed football from someone we'd never heard of. Then some seriously lame hat from an insurance company or something of that nature. The clencher for me was when we got the DVD Shiloh: a movie about a boy and his dog. I put my foot down. No more online contests.

Fast forward a few years and enter slickdeals.net.

Ryan found this website a few months ago, and my how his world has changed. He wakes up eager to go check the computer for the latest find. I hardly get a "Hello, lovely wife," when he gets home as he brushes by me to rush to the computer. The first thing out of his mouth every time he sees me is, "Do you think we should get a...??" His passions have been seriously awakened: he is full of elation as he finds fabulous bargains we can't live without; he feels more strain and stress as he agonizes for hours over whether or not we should get something else; he mourns we we find we were too late and missed the best deal of the century. It's really something else.

BUT. He now has fallen victim to what I call shopping mall syndrome. He has eternally made fun of me and all other women in the world for how we go shopping and buy so much stuff just because it was such a "great deal." He didn't see it happening until I pointed it out - he doesn't really need this stuff, it's just such a great deal that he can't pass it up. It's a hard thing to judge, really. Because this website really does have legitimately good deals. Like one day I came in and he asked if we needed some Calphalon pans that were on a really great deal. So Calphalon really is great, and they were good prices, but I hadn't recently been thinking, hmm, I wish I had more cookware. So what to do?

Well, I think our resolve is that we're pretty ok with getting the free stuff. We try to limit anything that we weren't already wanting or looking for. But if you need another website to regularly check out, you should try it. They've got deals on anything and everything. Toys, clothes, kitchenware, and definitely techy stuff - our most common purchase. Here's a few examples of the great deals Ryan has gotten over the last few months:

-Cordless phone with three handsets and answering machine - $20

-2gb SD card - $4 (memory card for our camera)

-1 gb SD card - free

-Web Camera for our computer - free

-Microphone/speaker for the computer - free

-Victoria's Secret set of scarf/mittens and hat along with 5 lip glosses for my birthday- free

-31-piece screwdriver set - free

- FM radio tuner (not sure if that's what you call it, but basically anything with a headphone jack, like a i-pod, you can plug into your car and it will play through the radio) - free

-Found the deal on our Garmin GPS on there

-Leap Frog ABCs video - $3

-Coupons for Juicy Juice - I'm not sure what it was but you ended up getting a whole bunch of Juicy Juice for free.

Not a bad list.


Then there were deals we missed that we wanted to get:

-Canon SD 1000 digital camera, 1 gb SD card, and case, with free printer after rebate for $132

-Thomas the Tank Aquadoodle set for $16

-Xbox 360 elite with 5 games for $300 (What? He put this on here. I can assure you I was not considering this.)

- Some great deals on clothes.

- A box of 500 condoms. Ok, seriously - I had great plans for this. Had some friends getting married - how funny would that be to open up amidst boxes of toasters and dish towels??? Or, how great would that be for our white elephant gift at the anual friends Christmas party?? I'm still bummed we didn't get it in time.

Anyhow, if you're a deal searcher like us, it's definitely worth checking out. Just don't say I didn't warn you about the potential consequences.

Dream

I had the funniest dream last night.

I was looking at my stomach, post-twin delivery.

In one hand I was gathering up the excess skin.

In the other hand I had a glue stick, which I was using to try to force the skin to go back where it came from.

I have a feeling that was a serious premonition of things to come....

Santa Baby.....

Hmm, what to wish for for Christmas this year? I'm totally in love with this sweater from Anthropologie.





Or I would love to have a nice new camera:












And I already got a Garmin GPS system for "my birthday":


(Ok, truth be told, Ryan made me open it the second it came in the mail - weeks before my birthday claiming that I couldn't live one more minute without it, and honestly, I don't think it was really me he had in mind when he got it! But we do love it.)

Problems with the above wishlish though - can't fit in the sweater. Need to research the camera more to see which one I really want, and I really want a nice one, which means we can't really afford it. (You people with nice cameras - which ones do you have?) And I think our main gifts this year to each other will be getting some 72 hour kits together. Gotta be prepared for moving to hurricaine central next summer. But at least I can think about what I would want if I was rich and skinny, can't I?

Oh boy

I made an unfortunate discovery today.

Cash can unscrew things.

He was playing with my mascara.

Thanksgiving report

So Thanksgiving was, of course, fantastic. It was so fun to catch up with old friends and watch our kids run around together. And so interesting to see the diferences in our kids. Like the fact that there are toddlers in the world who will sit unrestrained and eat for an entire hour at a time! Here's a little video (sorry for the quality, it was dim), funny for those of you who know our kids. Notice how Malcom is the last one left at the table - even the adults have long since finished!

Not to say that Malcom doesn't get into his fair share of predicaments - such as getting both thumbs stuck in a woofle ball. But notice the calm face! He was like this for a good 20 minutes until we had to cut the ball off after unsuccessful crisco-ed, buttered and oiled attempts at removing the thumbs!

But it was a great time. Sarah had all the perfect decorative and homey touches, even putting up a banner for my birthday and making me a birthday cake that was not only delicious, but a work of art, as you can see.

I just noticed that Sarah also blogged about it, so for more info, check it out!

Happy birthday to me!

Ok, serious brownie points for my husband. Since I'm going out of town, I got some early birthday presents. I have to share my pride in the fact that this is Ryan's best year yet. Usually it's Christmas eve or something and he looks at me and says, "We're not getting each other anything this year - are we??" Then he sits there and asks me exactly what I want. I try to tell him to be creative, but he doesn't really like that. So I was so surprised tonight when I opened my first present and what did I get?? Nothing other than my favorite guilty pleasure!!!

Yes - I got a year subscription to US Weekly, my favorite trash magazine. Seriously, spend a couple years in a hair salon and there's no way to resist getting sucked in by these! I used to be so happy when people would leave old copies at the gym that I could confiscate, since I thought Ryan would never let me buy them (and I wasn't sure I could ever justify it myself). But yea for letting me indulge! That's exactly my kind of present - something you would never get yourself, may never even think of getting, but would totally love it if you had it! He told my that way I can have something to do - and maybe it will even encourage me - to lie around trying to keep these babies in the womb as long as possible. How sweet!

He also got me a cute hat/gloves/scarf combo from Victoria's Secret. Wow - cool that my husband thought to shop for me there!

Anyway, nice work, husband. You've redeemed yourself nicely.

Happy Thanksgiving

Not much for this week, only to wish you all a happy Thanksgiving! Cash and I will be spending it with these lovely friends from med school in Cleveland:

We're super excited! And I'm realizing it's one of the last times I can travel unassisted for a very long time - even more reason to take advantage. And I have a turkey day birthday this year too! Anyway, sorry you have to work, Ryan. Hope you find some turkey somewhere.