2013 Ward Mongolian Grill

On the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, we had the now annual ward Mongolian Grill at our house.  You'd think that with it being on a holiday weekend, the turnout would be small.  Not to worry!  We had a lot more people at the party on Saturday than who showed up at church the next morning.  We even had a family who left their camping trip, came to the party, and went back to camping.

Leading up to the party is a lot of work for Dode.  He spends hours trying to get our yard to look more park like and less overgrown jungle like.  Then, there's all the little repairs to our big outdoor toys.  Then, the set up and clean up of the party.  We rented a port-a-potty again to try to protect the septic drain field from 150+ people using the bathroom.

What is this you ask?  It's the beginning of the snow cone sauce we made.  To all this sugar, we added water, and boiled it into syrup.  Then, we stirred kool-aid mix into 2 cups at a time to make a tasty thick topping for the snow cones.  By the end of the party, most of it was gone.

Our snack station, popcorn and snow cones. 

Not shown was the kettle corn machine.

Our water slide/pool set up for the young crowd.

Everyone brought cut up veggies or sauces for the feast. 

The church provided the chicken and beef.

Cooking up two different plates of goodness.

Even with five grills running, the line took about 45 minutes to get through.

Our new bouncy house.

A friend also brought over her bouncy house.  We ended up having one on either side of the yard, one for big kids and one for little ones

We've always got to have the laundry baskets out for some fun!

The hot tub early in the party before it was really discovered.
By the end of the day, the water was brown, yuck!

Heading down the slip and slide

View of the crowd

Lots of children in the pool

The tallest man in the ward ended up sitting at our little kid picnic table.

I can't wait for next year and Dode is already dreading it.  He's wondering, "What will Stephanie think up next for me to do?"  "Will our yard hold them all?"

We did a time lapse video of our day.  We missed some of the action in the yard with the food line, but you get an idea of how our day started, from before dark with produce to after dark with clean up.

21 weeks along

21 weeks along, wearing a size large maternity shirt, not sure how many more weeks this one will work!

The past two weeks have been rough.  I had a big freak out for a few days dwelling on all the things that could go wrong.  Thankfully, I talked it over with a friend and just being able to verbalize with someone where I didn't have to worry about adding to their stress level helped me sort things out.  So, while I'm still nervous about what the next months might bring, I'm no longer finding myself in tears.  It's a merciful thing that I was able to get my fears under control because last week I had an episode of spotting, which could be related to the placenta previa.  I was able to deal with it emotionally without falling apart.

I had another ultrasound which shows the babies are going strong inside, moving a lot, with good heart rates and plenty of fluid.  I still have a complete previa.  In another two weeks, I will have another ultrasound where they will measure the babies, check the previa, and check the front of my uterus to make sure Baby A's placenta is behaving itself and staying inside my uterus, not reaching through my scar.

Now that we know we're getting a boy and a girl, the name suggestions have been pouring in from friends and family.  Some people tell us we HAVE to name the boy Abraham since we already have Isaac and Jacob, giving us all the great patriarchs.  Isaac has suggested Nimrod and Dorcas.  Luke and Leah have by far the greatest following and my Mom is lobbying for Paul.  I'm not calling them anything yet in my mind.  When I think of them it's "baby boy" and "baby girl".

The exhaustion I've been feeling for a long time has lifted a bit and hooray for that!  I've managed to gain 13 pounds.  I still get nauseous from time to time and last week I even threw up (I haven't done that in a long time!).  I think I'm finally entering the honeymoon time of pregnancy.  I'm enjoying it while it lasts because I'm sure before long I will be uncomfortably huge.  Right now I get lots of comments from people that I have a very cute belly.  Will they still be saying that when I'm 38 weeks pregnant?  I think it will go from "cute" to "unbelievable".

Isaac wanted in on the bump photos, he's sticking his stomach out as far as he can

Miriam had to have a photo too.