An eventful Christmas morning!

Where do I begin?! I'm going to have to go back a little further than Christmas so bare with me.

So I am officially NOT working anymore, but that hasn't meant I've been able to slow down! I was quite busy leading up to Christmas trying to get the house cleaned up and decorated and getting all the last minute baby gear I thought we needed (I had a bunch of coupons that expired on Christmas Eve) and trying to make our first Christmas away from family not so "hard" on us. For those who might not know, because of being preggo with twins I was told not to travel after 27 weeks gestation, meaning we were going to be spending Christmas in North Carolina. It was a first for both of us, but we knew why we were doing it and weren't upset. As long as the girls stay healthy and growing, and we want to keep them in utero for as long as possible. Which brings me to another point, when you are right around 31 weeks with twins, don't try to make over 2 dozen gingerbread men from scratch...it might put you in labor! Don't worry I'm about to go into detail. ;)

Let me start with all of the events that led up to my eventful Christmas morning...

So Christmas Eve I decided I wanted to make Christmas cookies. And what is more Christmas than gingerbread men? I had bought two rolls of gingerbread cookie dough thinking that it would cut down on a majority of the work and that it would be a breeze for me to roll out and use my cookie cutter to make the men and bake them. Well, I was wrong. I think I spent three hours trying to roll out the dough and cut out the men, but they kept sticking to the counter or breaking. When it was all said and done I ended up with around 30 little men when there should've been closer to 40. Luckily I gave myself plenty of time to bake them before I needed to get dressed for Christmas Eve service.
Service was nice (different (for me) since it was Methodist) but I still enjoyed it and they sang some of my Christmas hymns and had the candle light vigil at the end where we sang Silent Night.
Once we got home I made a batch of Mom's individual cheesecakes and a loaf of pumpkin bread all for Christmas day breakfast and lunch. Well while the cheesecakes were baking I made Rush take who-knows-how-many pictures with me in front of the tree because we were dressed nice from church. Lets just say we both were pretty frustrated by the time we got one that was satisfactory to me. By now it is getting very close to midnight and my pumpkin bread is still baking and I noticed that my lower back was starting to really hurt. I tried laying on the couch while I waited, but it didn't really relieve any of the ache. Somewhere in the back of my head I heard some small warning bells, but I didn't want to jump to conclusions so once the bread was out, I went to bed.
That only lasted an hour and a half before the ache and smaller bladder woke me up. Knowing I am always at risk for preterm labor and that a lower back ache is a sign of preterm labor (and after talking to my sis-in-law earlier that day about a friend of hers who had her baby at 31 weeks because she had ignored the signs of preterm labor) I decided to call the Labor & Delivery and asked them what they thought. After a few minutes on the phone they decided I should come in just to be on the safe side. So at 3:30 Christmas morning I drove myself to the hospital. Before anyone gets on to Rush for not driving me, I did tell him where I was going but told him to go back to bed. I wanted one of us to get a full night's rest because I still planned on eating breakfast with his aunt, uncle, and cousins that morning.
So once at the hospital they hooked me up to monitors to follow my contractions and the girls' heartbeats. I couldn't feel the contractions but they said they were more like labor contractions than Braxton-Hicks so around 5:30 they gave me a shot to stop them, and were going to watch me for another hour before they sent me home. The contractions stopped, but one of the side effects is that it made me feel jittery and my heart race. BUT on the very bright side, I didn't ignore any preterm labor signs (that could've meant Christmas babies for us) and they were able to stop what little labor I was in. On a side note: I did get to hear Camp Lejeune's first Christmas baby crying! It was very sweet to hear that healthy cry.

So I happily left still large and pregnant, and I have one heck of a Christmas morning story for those girls when they are older! :)

*Since this post ended up so long I will be posting later about how the rest of Christmas day went down, and all the other events that have happened up to today. :) I hope everyone has a safe and Happy New Year!

You could call it the end of a chapter...

Well it's been a week since I've last posted, but I've got an excuse! (Who doesn't?) ;) Anyways, I finally have a new assistant to train to take my place at Furniture Fair, and teaching her seems to keep me pretty busy for the most part. But in about a week I will probably no longer be a working woman, but a stay-at-home-and-rest-up-to-delay-being-a-mom-too-soon woman. :) Either way I am looking forward to having time during the day to do what still needs to be done to prepare. There just isn't enough time between when I get home, cook (pick up) dinner, and when I want to go to bed to get everything done.

That and December has just been plain crazy! This month (as of today) I have: 6 dr appts (most will take half of my day), 4 events (5/10 wives gatherings and Christmas parties), too many little things around the house to do to count (decorating for Christmas and getting organized for babies), and 1 very special someone's birthday! On top of it all I am officially nesting because I am wanting to CLEAN everything! And those who know me, know that that IS unusual for me. :)

But during all of this Rush and I were able to get "adult" living-room furniture (no more mix matched pieces from college!) And I LOVE it! I will try and get a picture up soon so everyone can oooh and aaahh over it. I also took some time out to bake and decorate 48 sugar cookies for a cookie exchange with some other wives. I plan on shipping a majority of what I brought home out to the guys I know in Afghanistan who won't get to be home for Christmas this year. If anyone else feels the desire to do the same let me know and I will email you the address for the guys. Two are other Marine Lts we met here at Lejeune and the other is my older cousin Ryan.

Well until next time, take care and God Bless! (My sis decided that she was going to give me a deadline to get my hospital bag together by this coming weekend and some of the stuff I need is online so I need to hurry up and order it!) :)

The REAL shower invite!

So my sneaky family and friends managed to surprise me! I had no clue that my baby shower was going to be in the King William district of San Antonio in a bed & breakfast! It was gorgeous and really fun. Thank you to everyone who helped make it such a special day for me, especially Jess, Liesl, and Robin. Y'all are awesome! So here's what my REAL invite looked like...

The reason I keep saying "real" invite is because my brother Garrett, who designed them, sent me a copy of one in an email and told me not to say anything because he wasn't supposed to send it to me. Of course he edited the location to be at the Baptist Church in Somerset. Either way, no harm done and I still LOVE my invites! :)

I LOVE coming home from Dr visits with pictures!

Today was my most recent MFM (Maternal Fetal Medicine aka my specialist Dr) appt was this morning and I must say it was one of the best! Not only are all three of us doing very well, but I left with quite a few ultrasounds of the girls' profiles! :) I didn't gain too much Thanksgiving weight, my blood pressure is great, and my cervix is doing excellent for my "condition" (meaning twins). The girls are now weighing in around 2.5 lbs each (meaning the Thanksgiving weight went mostly to me!) and the Dr. said that they have a overall difference of only 3%! Which in his eyes is nothing, so my identical girls are truly identical right now. I would say one is more active than the other but apparently one is facing inwards towards her sister and so when she moves (besides kicking) I don't really feel her. The other one seems to never stop moving now, I am constantly facinated by my dancing belly from her. One of these days I'm hoping to get it on video because everytime I call Rush to look she stops! Little toot. She does that on purpose (and I'm starting to think she has quite a bit of her momma in her.) Mom, Dad, for all those times I was a pain in the neck, I'm sorry. And rest assured that these two are going to be my payback! lol! I am wondering if they are going to be as picky as I was with how their socks and shoes feel or if they have to go to the restroom at every single store/restraunt/building that we walk into. At least I know Rush was a pretty easy going baby and toddler...right, Jean? I sure hope so.
Oh and another milestone is I've started to feel Braxton-Hicks contractions! Well I don't feel them around my belly really, it's more of I can tell something is different and when I press on my belly it's rock hard. It's kind of scary knowing that I'm almost to the third trimester, I don't feel like we are ready for them to be here! (That's probably because we aren't. We don't exactly have a place for them to sleep or even a way to get them both home yet!) But this weekend that will change, because this momma is going shopping! ;) And once I'm done shopping I'm hoping to be able to sit down and put a good dent into getting my Thank You cards out for all of the wonderful gifts we received. Who knows, maybe I can convince Rush to help... ;)
Well without further ado, here are the most recent "pictures" of the girls!

I know they are pretty repetitive in nature, but I couldn't resist putting them all up! Baby B is blurry and kind of hard to see because of "shadowing" caused by them being more developed and the fact that there are two in there. Apparently as their bones become more dense they cast shadows everywhere making it harder to see everything the Drs are looking for.
I hope you enjoy these "pictures" as much as I do! And be watching for a Thanksgiving and Baby Shower update, I'm hoping to post those once I get more pictures. :)