Lots of celebrating!

We celebrated the weekend before Christmas with my family in Lilburn. We celebrated Darrell's 30th birthday and had Christmas. Jasper kind of learned about opening gifts...

Dixie still needed a lot of help opening gifts.

A caterpillar truck from Granddaddy

And a caterpillar hard hat

Playing the Wii with Aunt ChristyDarrell and I went to Brasstown Valley resort to celebrate our 6th anniversary - it was wonderful!

We ate an amazing dinner and breakfast in the dining room there - here was a wonderful creme brulee dessert.

We spent Christmas Eve at home and did presents with Darrell's parents and sister. Here is Jasper ready to leave for 4 p.m. church service wearing Daddy's hat.

Jasper was very excited about his train table and train from Grandie & Grandpa!

He also went crazy over the basketball goal from Aunt Liz.

He played so much basketball he got very sweaty! He has not been this sweaty since humid summertime! This also prompted a second haircut which Darrell gave him the other day - unfortunately, it is a little too short now and will be another 6 months until it grows back!

Here is Jasper discovering his presents on Christmas morning -

We went to Knoxville with Darrell's extended family - and Jasper got to play more basketball on another new basketball goal! The Skogman extended family are big basketball players - and you'll see below that Jasper is the tallest of the bunch! He's destined to play college hoops like Aunt Liz and several of the cousins!

Jasper sat and played with playdough for 45 minutes today - we made lots of shapes then he loaded them into the tractor shovel and then into the dump truck and then he dumped them out - again and again!

Jasper and Santa Claus 2008

And last year's photo...

Dang, he is SOOOO cute!!!!!!!!!

Jasper talks about his photo with Santa

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Almost Christmas!

Jasper in front of the Christmas tree this year...
and last year...

I took him to have his picture with Santa today - once again, he did AWESOME. I will get D to scan it and I"ll post it later. SOOOo cute. Don't think we can beat last year's picture but it is another good one.

Jasper with Darrell's Brio train set

The train set has been at Grandie & Grandpa's and we brought it to our house now. Jasper loves trains.

Mommy's nativity is on the top shelf and Jasper's is on the bottom. Jasper is so cute playing with his as he feeds the animals and has the wise men give gifts to baby Jesus. He even took my cup of water the other day and poured the water into the tiny feeding trough. I didn't realize what he was doing until after it happened - he said he was feeding water to the animals. It was pretty much water all over the floor and table but it was cute!

On another note, overall I am feeling great with this pregnancy! I only had a few rough weeks in the beginning. There are still some yucky days and I am very tired but overall, it is totally different and good. I still take Zofran usually just once a day but still hope that won't be necessary for much longer. We were suppose to have our big ultrasound today but I postponed it until Jan 2nd to save money (haven't paid any on my deductible this year, might as well wait til next year). I'm 18 weeks now and will be at the end of 20 weeks when we have the ultrasound. I was so excited about seeing the baby but in order to save a good bit of money, I can wait 2.5 weeks. We are not finding out the gender anyway - another surprise!

Christmas Parade

Here are a few quick photos from the past week...
The Old-Fashioned Christmas Parade in town - Hi Santa!

It was so cold and Jasper would not wear a hat or mittens. He is getting gloves for Christmas - maybe he'll wear those? We will see! I got to visit college friends in S.C. last Friday - much fun!

Thanksgiving at the Beach

We had a really great Thanksgiving at Panama City Beach with my family. We had a lot of fun playing the Wii, too.

Dixie goes retro with a Members Only jacket!

We also got to see Mallory in Atlanta over the weekend - here are 2 kids on the chick-fil-a playground!
The weekend before Thanksgiving we went to Birmingham to visit some of my aunts & uncles and stay with Darrell's college friends. It was a fun trip. Jasper especially liked the Riddles' dog Ella - and her crate. He wanted Ella to get in the crate with him but we decided that was not a good idea.

Here we are at my aunt & uncle's house.

Uncle Don got Jasper a singing Elmo - very amusing!

Jasper enjoyed being loved on by his great-great-Aunt Frances & Uncle John.

1 down, 49 to go

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TOTY

Darrell got elected Teacher of the Year at his school for 2009-2010! Congrats D! They said, "Congratulations now fill out this 19 page application due next week!" (And he went on a 4 night backpacking trip that weekend/next week). They also said, "you'll get a special parking space next year" (which is farther from the school than his current space). Really, just a small monetary award would have been our preference :) He also got Teacher of the Month from some other committee at school - and found out a special parking space goes with that recognition as well. And that parking space is next to the TOTY space. He asked if he could double park. But they said no since oh yeah, he is not really the TOTY until next school year. But I thought that was funny.

Here are my attempts at getting a picture of Jasper in this adorable sweater and hat set. He doesn't stay still for pictures these days! He does say a million words and is putting together some great phrases. He'll say "push button - open door - garage door - Mommys car - door up." Today when we drove past the fire station (which he totally knows where it is!) he said, "fire truck - woo woo - garage doors - closed - fire truck." Today when I put his shoes on he said, "brown shoes - outside - hold hands." He added the hold hands really quickly; I usually ask him if he wants Mommy to pick him up or if he wants to hold hands (to go down the stairs). He almost always says hold hands and today I didn't even get a chance to ask!Below are the only two pictures I have taken at the First Monday Cafe. The blurry one I took at Nov's cafe - and was about to take another but got sidetracked by somebody and never got a chance.

And this was our first customer ever at the cafe in October - here you can see the table with crock pots of soup and cornbread. Drinks and desserts are in the back. And I'm feeling a bit better. And as always, it is still heaps better than last time so I'm trying not to complain. Still very tired and pretty yucky on most days but it is getting so much better.

Announcing...

On September 5th, I took a home pregnancy test for the third time in my life. And for the second time, it was positive! I am now 12 weeks and due May 25th. We are very excited - especially since it was planned this time around :) Jasper would like to announce his news that he will be a big brother...

though he is not too sure about it (raisins in his mouth).

I am even more excited because I am feeling MUCH better than my last pregnancy. There have been some days when I have told Darrell I feel really bad. And he says, "really bad?" He is right because I know what really bad feels like and even though some days are quite yucky, this is not the really bad I know and remember.

In fact I am pretty convinced that I am going to be a normal pregnant person this time around and only be sick during the first trimester. I have been very tired for a while but that is normal. I have been nauseous and throwing up for about 3 weeks now. But hey, that is much much better than last time - plus it is not even every day let alone multiple times a day. Last pregnancy I started throwing up around 5-6 weeks and it lasted until 25 weeks....then I remained nauseous until he was born. It was very debilitating to me. However, this time I did not start throwing up until 8-9 weeks and it is just so much better. In fact I haven't thrown up since 3:30 a.m. last Thursday...almost a week puke-free. Amazing. I am just so hopeful that the nausea will go away within the next few weeks! Maybe I'm done with it now? Hmmm, I'm not sure if I"m that optimistic yet. Thank goodness for Zofran the miracle drug and for popsicles. I am 12 weeks now and I hear 'normal' pregnant people are done with the yuckiness typically by 14 or 15 weeks. That will be me this time around, I just know it!!!

Jasper as a train conductor for Halloween - trying to get a decent pic of a very active toddler is challenging. Plus he would not wear the hat.

At our church's Trunk-or-Treat festival last Friday -

Jasper & Gigi

Other exciting news: The second First Monday Cafe was an even bigger success! We had around 80 people and raised over $400!!!!! Soup was pretty much gone by 12:45. The cafe goes from 11-1 and we were done with clean-up by 1:30. And I thought last month went well. It did of course, but everything went so much smoother and quicker as would be expected. The cafe is so much fun - a really great social time and it just grew by leaps and bounds in one month. Wow. We were running out of seats at times - we'll try to set up more tables next month.