Finally an update...

So things have been great but busy for the past couple of months and consequently I've been terrible about updating our blog. We'll see if I ever get the hang of updating it regularly. Anyway, here's a brief synopsis of the past few months for us:

November:
Eric was busy with never ending school and I mainly with work. I continued to grow larger and this month I reached the milestone of buying my fourth bottle of Tums since I've been pregnant. Oh how I loathe heartburn. We drove to Washington to spend Thanksgiving with my family there, and miraculously the roads were wonderful the whole way, even through the Blue Mountains. We had a great holiday with my parents, brothers, and extended family, and with the long car drive we had lots of time to reflect on our many blessings and all the numerous things we have to be thankful for.

December:
This was a ridiculously busy month but amazingly relatively snow-free. No snow actually fell and stuck to the ground until the second week of the month, which has been unheard of as long as I've ever lived in Utah. Here's a picture from our front entry of our first real snow of the winter.
Eric stayed strong through finals and I worked hard to get my projects completed out at work before I left so hopefully the person to take my place wouldn't be completely confused by my mid-project organized chaos. I worked through mid-December and in the end it was pretty hard to say goodbye to all the awesome people I'd come to know out there. Two days after my last day of work, Eric and I said a temporary farewell to our first home together and we headed to Meridian, Idaho where we'll be living for the next semester. It took a good two weeks of nothing but packing and cleaning in our free time to get ready to leave on schedule, plus numerous trips to DI, but in the end it paid off and we actually got to leave a day early. We made it to our new home December 18th and spent a few days helping prepare everything for the arrival of family for the holidays. Things flowed pretty smoothly and we had a wonderful time talking, relaxing and playing games with family. They helped me celebrate my golden birthday on the 22nd and decorated a beautiful cake for me.
I think my favorite touch is the finger marks going up one side of the cake. Apparently Jack was real excited about the cake and when no one was looking, he climbed up on the counter and started to dig in. I think Camille and Mom (who had just finished the decorating) felt kind of bad, but I'll admit, I mainly just thought it was really funny. It still tasted great so, eh? :)

So one of my biggest Christmas surprises came in the form of a phone call from my brother Jacob who's currently serving a mission in Mesa, Arizona. I got to talk to him last year at Christmas because we were with my family in Washington, but I assumed I'd miss that chance this year and the next time I'd hear from him would be October when he gets home. Much to my surprise Eric walked up to me Christmas afternoon with the cell phone and Jacob was on the line. His mission president gave the missionaries permission to make 3 calls to family that day and lucky for me, I was one of the three. It was wonderful to hear how much he's grown and all the work he's accomplished thus far, especially since he's terrible about writing more than a sentence or two home each week so we generally have no clue what he's been up to. Along with the surprise of his phone call came his announcement that he'd sewn me a baby blanket. This blew me out of water since I'm pretty sure the only time Jacob has ever sewn anything before this was in Home Ec in middle school. Apparently he saw a sewing machine at a members house and asked if they would be willing to help him sew a baby blanket for us. They agreed to help him and he sewed two cute blankets using some deer and elk patterned fabric in remembrance of a hideous deer blanket we used to love and fight over when we were kids.
He's so amazing. :)

A couple of days after Christmas we decided to take advantage of all the snow and play a little snow football. We met up with Ben and Heather Jeppsen and a bunch of Adam's friends at a local elementary school to play and had a great time. I was pretty bummed to have to sit out the actual game this year, but Heather and I had a good time documenting the whole experience and trying not to freeze.
Christmas and New Year's with the Channers was great and it was hard to say goodbye, especially not knowing how long it'll be before we see them again.

January:
We spent the first week in Washington with my family relaxing and enjoying each other's company. Unfortunately we were only able to spend less than a week with them because we had to be back in time for Eric to start his internship with KPMG. Eric's now been working for KPMG for a little over 2 weeks and he's liked it thus far. He's done a lot of intern trainings, including a week long national intern training in San Fransisco, but now he's actually getting to start helping audit and I think he's pretty excited about that.
Things are going pretty well here at home. I'm now 36 weeks pregnant, on my 5th bottle of Tums, getting larger every day and anxious to see our baby boy. Camille, my sister-in-law, has been taking good care of me, helping me realize things like the fact I was experiencing Braxton-Hicks contractions and I had no clue. It's also been really nice to have her and little Jack as company at home to keep me from missing Eric while he's at work. Sometimes Eric and I find ourselves missing our old home, but it's nice to know we left it in the hands of good friends and we'll eventually be moving back in. Till then we're just living it up here in Idaho in Eric's parent's beautiful home, enjoying the time we get to spend with family and the break away from school.

Here are some random pictures of the amazing sugar cookies Camille made for us the other night while we were playing games.
Jack couldn't sleep so Jacob brought him down and we gave him a sugar cookie which he truly enjoyed. We thought he looked like a mix between Ronald McDonald and the Joker off of Dark Knight. Kind of creepy, but cute.
Here are the few cookies that I actually decorated. I love decorating cakes and cookies, but it takes me way too long to think up designs and I end up going all perfectionist so it takes me that much longer. It was fun though, especially with the vibrant colored frosting that Camille made.