Thanksgiving and Other Updates

I have some serious catching up to do so we'll start with Thanksgiving. Don's sister, Ruth, and her family came down for a week. The entire week we went to grandma and grandpa's and played with cousins. Carol and Gary put up a swing set in their yard and that's all my kids did all week. They always had big cousins to push them so it was an even bigger bonus ;) Carter and Ava are just a couple weeks apart. They were little buddies. Everytime they saw each other they gave each other a big hug and kiss. 

Princess Ava telling Carter to shoot the bad guys that were coming after her.

Peter and Ruth came over to play games one night. Thanksgiving was delicious. I made a turkey, green beans, and a sweet potato casserole with candied pecans and mini marshmallows that I will make every year from now on! It was sooo good. We had leftovers for days and somehow I ended up losing a pound that week. We went to go see The Good Dinosaur in theaters. My kids are hilarious to take to the movies, but I don't think we'll take Jax again till he's older. He was a bit of a handful. We loved having Ruth, Peter, and their girls here all week. Sophie and Phil were here too so we snuck in a game night with them too.

The weekend of Thanksgiving we always start decorating for Christmas. Carter had been dying to decorate for Christmas all of November and I had to keep telling him he had to wait until AFTER Thanksgiving. That boy has the best Christmas spirit I've ever seen. He might even rival with Don and I! I wish I could capture his excitement in a bottle and keep it forever. 

Shooting with my Christmas tree collection. With boys everything's a gun.

I was paranoid about putting up our tree because the lid of the tub it was in had been busted. Turns out I let a mouse in the house when I brought the tub in. Guess my paranoia wasn't for nothing! We have 5 traps and it has yet to die. Ugg.

My tree is definitely decorated by little kids. I don't even bother rearranging it because they do it for me everyday anyways :)

I caught Carter making faces at his reflection in one of the Christmas balls. He's a crack up!

As we were eating dinner the other night Carter was asking me all sorts of questions about June's birthday i.e what kind of cake she wanted, what we were going to get her, etc. He asked if she was going to be here for Christmas and I said no, not till after Christmas. He comes up to my stomach and whispers, "Baby June, after Christmas we'll get to open your birthday presents!" He gets so excited when anyone has a birthday so it looks like we'll be having a party when she comes home!

30 weeks! I'm so ready to have her here.

So Thursday I was feeling pretty nauseous. I didn't have an appetite which is so not like me. That evening the kids and I went to visit Don at work and I was having braxton hicks. On the way home I told Carter I wasn't feeling well. I asked him if he would be my big helper when we got home and he said, "Yes! I'll be your helper. It's my job to kiss you and make you feel better." Melted me into a puddle.

I ate a little dinner, put the kids in bed, and watched tv for awhile. At 10 pm I was having a horrible chest pain. I thought it was bad heart burn so I took some tums. When I went to bed I propped myself up and continued to take tylenol and tums throughout the night until I exceeded my limit. I could hardly sleep. The pain would not go away even 12 hours later so I told Don I needed to see a doctor even if it was just acid reflux or something. 

Don had a feeling he should go to the doctor with me and I'm so glad he did because it was a lot worse than we thought. They immediately ruled out acid reflux with my symptoms so Don and I were stumped. We spent the whole day at the doctor's/hospital. My pulse was high so they did an EKG which turned out to be normal. Then I got a CT scan (don't worry, they covered my tummy) to check for blood clots on my lungs which is pretty common in pregnancy. No blood clots, but my doctor did diagnose me with pleurisy. An inflammation of the tissue between the rib cage and lungs. I get a stabbing pain when I take deep breaths and I get out of breath really easy. You either get it from bacteria, cancer or a virus. In my case a virus, whew! Don't google it. It'll freak you out. I just have to rest and take ibuprofen and it should take care of itself. I hate resting. I have a huge list of things I would like to get done before baby June gets here. Doesn't my body get that? ;) My in laws have taken Carter and Jax everyday. They have been so incredibly wonderful. I'm counting down the days till June gets here to feel like a normal person again. And apparently June is going to be a feisty one because she kicks harder than my other kids. I've never hurt from a baby kicking me, but this one is painful. Yep, I'm having a fun time over here, but I'm still counting my blessings because it all could be so much worse. I'd gladly take this over vomiting my whole pregnancy. Plus, I have so many people around me willing to help. I'm slowly learning to overcome my pride and let people help me. I'm usually one of those people that takes care of everything myself even if it might kill me, but through this experience I'm learning to ask and accept help because I can't do everything like I wish I could.

Saturday I sat on a lawn chair at my in laws while the kids helped Papa put up Christmas lights and jump in leaf piles.