The day after Thanksgiving this year, Chance and I went up into the mountains with my dad and uncles to chop down our Christmas tree. My uncle borrowed some 4 wheelers which had bad tires for snow, but we still managed to get around, and have a lot of fun! We found the perfect tree after not too long of searching. It was SO pretty with all the fresh snow, and every time I see snow like that, I'm convinced Winter is my favorite season, haha!

I also thought this would be a good time to do a little "bumpdate" since I took pictures of my actual bump haha. I've been so bad at that! However, I just feel like not a lot has changed from week to week so I have nothing to update really. But it's been almost 2 months since my last update, so there's a little I can talk about I guess haha!

At 23 weeks, I finally have a visible bump, if I'm wearing fairly tight clothes. If I'm wearing normal clothes, it still just looks like maybe I gained weight... haha. I don't ever feel sick anymore, but if I get hungry I get REALLY hungry. But I actual just feel really good! If I wasn't getting bigger, peeing in the middle of the night, and eating as often, I would never realize I was pregnant. OH BUT I DO FEEL BABY NOW! That's the best best thing ever. I loooove feeling baby kicks! Chance hasn't been able to feel them on the outside, but sometimes we can see the kicks on the outside of my tummy. That has been so fun! I can't believe we are more than half way at this point. Every day I just have this moment where it really hits me that we are going to have a baby. That we are going to be a mom and dad. And I get soooo giddy! I can't wait. My skin has gotten pretty sensitive lately. I've had some acne, but also some weird reactions. We recently painted our trailer frame with an anti rust paint, and it kind of got all over me. Since it's waterproof it wasn't coming off very well. After a while had passed and the paint had started to come off my skin, I found red itchy bumps everywhere where the paint was on my skin! That has not been nice. Itchy and ugly bumps. Luckily I wear pants and long sleeves mostly so it's all covered... Also when we went up to the mountains my hands got cold and apparently dry because my hands got all red and rough and cracky, and they have never ever been like that before! Woohoo, yay hormones. ;)

Again, overall I feel great, and I feel lucky to feel so good :)

After our tree chopping trip, we went back to Aunt Sally's to be with Chance's family. We all went downtown and while some people went ice skating, we went to get a Black Friday deal for Chance to get a new phone because his was really starting to go downhill. He got the new Google Pixel.... and it's pretty sweet. I wanted to have him wait until Christmas, but they had to activate the phone right then.... but I will still be wrapping it on Christmas Eve anyways... haha! We then went and saw the lights all together! A classic tradition!



The first day of the Christmas season was over and I was already feeling stressed that it's going by too fast! Hahaha...

This is the best time of year! We spent Thanksgiving with Chance's family this year, at his Aunt Sally's.

Chance and I wanted to think of something we could bring to our Thanksgiving celebration with his family. I told him how when my Grandma was still here and we went to her place for Thanksgiving, she would have gingerbread houses for us to decorate at the end of the night. He liked the idea so we ran with it! Instead of buying kits, we wanted the challenge of making all the gingerbread ourselves, just like Grandma did. We found a recipe online (foodnetwork) and spent all morning making the gingerbread for 6 houses and cutting out the shapes (which was a trial and error... cutting the gingerbread shapes again right after they come out of the oven is the better way!), just hoping they would work out! At the end of the night we quickly made some frosting (we were rookies and put the frosting in the bag before we put the decorative tips in the bag... haha), put them in bags and had everyone start decorating. It turned into a contest with cash prizes! We think everyone really enjoyed decorating, competing, and even eating the gingerbread scraps, so we decided it was a success! As I watched everyone decorating their houses, I felt like I got a glimpse of the joy Grandma must have had when she saw everyone really enjoying the things that she had spent a lot of time and effort doing for us. I miss her everyday, but I'm so thankful for her influence in my life. Chance and I gave ourselves the crappiest of the houses, the one we tried to cut when it had cooled, and we were thinking it wasn't going to turn out well, but we love how it turned out! It's so cute! Gingerbread houses are such a charming decoration. And I'm so happy that it will even be good enough to eat when the holiday is over.