The last 2 weekends

Mike and I have been pretty busy the last 2 weekends, mostly thanks to the increased energy that I have been feeling lately. I am 17 weeks today, so here's a new picture (the baby really seems to be growing a lot lately...)

The baby has also been moving like crazy, I feel him or her several times throughout the day, and Mike even got to feel the baby move for the first time on Sunday night--he was pretty excited about it!

Mike gave me one of my Christmas presents this past weekend--it's from a web comic called Sheldon Comics, and it is one that Mike and I both enjoy to read. This comic is a flow chart about whether or not to eat a cookie, and the end result for all the answers is to just eat a cookie!

On Saturday, we had the Schimmel Family Christmas in Ankeny. In Schimmel tradition, the gifts were hidden throughout the house, and we had clues that we needed to follow to find our gifts. This year the clues were in word scrambles and codes, so things got interesting... turns out I'm better at word scrambles than Mike ;)

We also had a delicious dinner! Bruce made prime rib and baked potatoes for dinner and creme brulee for dessert--it was absolutely AMAZING!

Before we left Ankeny, Mike and I stopped by Kohls. My mom had sent me a gift card to buy myself some maternity clothes, and holy cow, you can get a lot of stuff at Kohls for $50! I got a long sleeve black t-shirt, a button sweater, and some new socks.... and we still had $8 left over, so we picked out some onesies for the baby :)

Here's a random picture of Meatloaf looking very relaxed while Mike petted her.


As I am getting more of my energy back, I am also getting more of my appetite back. I can finally say that I have gained weight for the first time in this pregnancy--I weighed myself this morning, and I have gained half a pound :/ Its not much, but it's a start. So as I was saying, food is finally looking and sounding good... not all foods yet, but some foods, which is more than what it had been in the past. Mike got a HyVee gift card a few weeks ago from work, so we treated ourselves to some crab legs--and expensive beer for Mike, sparkling grape juice for me--and we had ourselves a little stay-at-home date during the snowstorm last Saturday. We watched National Lampoons Christmas Vacation, and just relaxed... it was nice.

On Sunday, I made my mom's beef stew for the first time.... something about snowstorms gives me the urge to make soups, so I called my mom and got the recipe. It tasted just like my mom's!