I'm still pregnant. Bah humbug. ;)

I wanted this baby to come two weeks ago. And she's still in there. It's making me cranky. Which is silly, because she's not even due for another 9 days. But when I was dilating and effacing the first week of December, I thought for sure she would come soon and I've been expecting her every day for weeks now and it's stressing me out.

We did end up decorating our tree on my birthday and it turned out beautiful. I love our decorations collected from my grandparents, different memories over the years, our kids' school projects, and our tradition of painting an ornament as a family night activity each year before Christmas. Plus ribbon I thrifted the day after Christmas and some dollar store stars and balls and we've got a tree that's just full enough.

I also repainted parts and pieces of my nativity that week. I painted it originally the first year I got married to Kirk back in 2000 and my tastes and decorating have changed. Since it's not glazed, I can change it whenever I like and that's kind of fun. I wanted the pieces to be brighter instead of muted like they've been.

I finished all my Christmas shopping, all my decorating and wrapping, redid a wreath (I love how it turned out), finally got around to the pile of mending that's been sitting on my bedroom floor for months, rearranged my bedroom to fit the pack-n-play where the baby will sleep and a small bookshelf to hold her clothes, bought nursing bras and took Cecily to the mall playground, completed the second draft of my memoir, took the girls shopping for gifts for each other (at Dollar Tree and DI), made two kinds of Christmas cookies, and made two gifts--which I can't elaborate on because if Steve or Emilia reads the blog, they'll know what I made them.

The wreath on the left is the wreath before I redid it.

This is after. I reused all the pieces except the striped burlap and only added the white berries and one red flower.

Last Tuesday for family night, we painted our ornaments for this year. I forgot to take a picture of the finished products. Since we were painting though, it reminded me that I got a big bin of acrylic paint from my mom that she'd gotten free from Megan who'd gotten it free from some other lady. Nobody knew if the paint was even any good and at first glance, it looked like there weren't a ton of good colors. The original owner of the bin REALLY liked "rose" and "deep green," neither of which are on my list of favorite colors. But after shaking all 140 or so bottles, separating them by color group, and painting each one on a paper so I could see swatches, I ended up keeping about 50 colors and giving away over 80 to the neighbor kid who likes making slime with it.

This is the paint I gave away:

I've been keeping myself very busy nesting. lol

Last week I came down with a cold--nothing too bad, just tired and a bit of a sore throat for 3 or 4 days. But I didn't make it to church, which made lots of people wonder if I'd had the baby. :)

We'll see how this week goes, but I have no plans except having a baby.

(Cecily wanted me to take pictures of her when we were at the mall.)

(One day while I was showering, Cecily scavenged a toilet paper roll and made an octopus by taping pipe-cleaners to it and drawing on a face. I love her creativity.)