December Days

I apologize that it’s almost halfway through January before I even got around to posting my December updates, but things have been crazy since we got home from Christmas! We had a super busy and fun December like I expected! Between Christmas activities and being pregnant, I’ve been one exhausted mama. We had a great month though, and we are looking forward to all the exciting things happening for our family very soon!

We had lots of fun little activities or events all through December, such as…

Kinsie’s first Kindergarten Field Trip

She was mostly excited about riding a school bus for the first time. Since she attends a charter school, they do not use buses as transportation, but instead parents drop off and pick up. Kinsie loved her first bus experience, and the field trip itself was fun too! I came along as a parent chaperone. First we went to a theater to watch a really neat Christmas lights show. After the show, we ate lunch and the kids all played at a nearby park.

First BB Gun

Ryan has been anxiously awaiting this day for a long time now. He bought the kids their first BB gun! He found a great deal and couldn’t pass it up, and the kids were super excited to try it out. They went outside to practice right away. They did great for their first time! You’ll see later that the BB gun played a key role in our gender reveal!

Santa at Bass Pro

This has become one of our new favorite traditions. We already love Bass Pro, but it’s even better at Christmas time. We loved Santa’s Workshop where the kids could play and make crafts. The kids did great meeting Santa again!

Brax meeting Santa again!

Lucky little guy got to see Santa for another time at his school. He was really excited and loved telling us about it when he got home.

Brax’s Christmas Program

Ryan and I both got to see Brax perform in his Christmas program at his school. He was shy and a little nervous, but he did great! He’s come a long way since the Baby Shark incident at Kinsie’s graduation last year!

EM Christmas Party

Another one of our favorite events from the past few years. Every year, we go to the Christmas Party for the UAMS Emergency Medicine program. There’s always a great dinner, desserts, and the department coordinator’s wife buys amazing gifts for all the kids in the program. The kids were super excited about their gifts! We are so sad we won’t have this tradition once Ryan’s done with residency. We LOVE our UAMS residency family!

Christmas Cookies

The kids and I enjoyed making Christmas cookies together one weekend day. It keeps them busy for a while, sparks their creativity, and then of course there are cookies to eat when we’re done! It’s become one of my favorite things to do with them for holidays.

Dinner at All Aboard

Ryan was on an elective this month, and he chose to do a rural medicine rotation, where he had to do 10 shifts at a rural hospital up in northwest Arkansas. He did a few shifts before Christmas, then finished the rest when we got home. Since he would be gone for almost a week, and with me being halfway through my pregnancy, his mom flew down for the week to help me with the kids. We loved having Grandma visit, and we tried to do fun things like have dinner at their favorite restaurant, All Aboard!

Indiana Travels

Once Ryan was home and Kinsie was officially on winter break, we hit the road! We had Bev with us to help drive, and loaded up our gifts and dogs to spend Christmas with family.

We got to Indiana just in time to celebrate my mom’s birthday. She was in her happy place to get to celebrate with all her grand babies! We also took this opportunity to do our gender reveal with our families! But I’ll get to that soon…

It had snowed several days before we arrived, and the kids were SO excited that there was still snow on the ground. Every time we went outside, they ran around in it with no regard. They were super bummed when it eventually melted. I kept reminding them that we’re moving back and they will get PLENTY of snow soon!

Something we’ve done every year for the past few years is get together with Ryan’s Aunt Rita’s family and decorate cookies and let the kids play. They are all around the same age, so they always have a blast together!

Christmas Eve

Every year we attend the Christmas Eve church service with my family. The kids get to join their cousins in their classes, and we always love visiting our old church and listening to our old pastor’s sermons. After church, we headed to Aunt Renata’s for Christmas with the Matthews side. The kids loved sorting gifts for everyone and playing with their cousin, Griffin.

Christmas Day

On Christmas day, the kids were SO excited to wake up and see what Santa brought them. All Kinsie asked for this year was a Fiona calendar (her favorite hippo from the Cincinnati Zoo). Brax asked for something different every time we asked, so it was pretty much a free-for-all for him. They both seemed very excited about their gifts and loved playing with everything right away.

After opening gifts for just our immediate family, we ate a big breakfast that my dad made. After a while, my sister’s family came and we all did our presents together. While the kids helped pass out everyone’s gift, I went upstairs and got a time-lapse of the chaos!

The kids all had a great day together, and it was funny because they all showed up wearing very similar pajamas! Of course we had to get a picture!

After playing inside for a while with all their new stuff, we realized how beautiful it was outside, so we all went outside for a while and let the kids play. Later on, we visited some of Ryan’s mom’s side of the family. When we got back, Brax was SO tired, but he refused to go to bed. Instead, he ended up passing out right on the couch in the middle of the chaos!

We had a great visit with family and friends. It’s always tough traveling 10 hours with 2 kids and 2 dogs and a car FULL of Christmas gifts, but it is completely worth it. On the way home, we even stopped in Paducah, KY to visit some of our old residency friends. It’s been a good ride, but we are excited and relieved that this was our last “traveling” Christmas, since we’ll be back in Indiana next year.

New Year’s Eve

For New Year’s Eve, we were back home and trying to catch up on sleep and get settled again. Since we didn’t have a great reason to, we didn’t have the kids stay up until midnight, so we did an early countdown/celebration with them like we have the last couple of years. We made our own pizzas, had a dance party, drank fizzy drinks and ate cookies, and enjoyed our family night together.

Baby Updates: Month 4 (Weeks 16-20)

I can’t believe I’m already halfway done with this pregnancy. It has definitely flown by, and this little one will be here before we know it!

This month’s pregnancy symptoms include but are not limited to:

Really strong waves of fatigue again…but that could be partially due to the holidays and all the events and activities that came with it. We were very busy so I was very tired!
Appetite has decreased…which is probably a good thing because it was a bit out of control during the first trimester.
Hiccups…like huge, obnoxious hiccups.
Back pain…now that my belly is getting bigger, my back is getting out of whack, especially when trying to sleep. Fun times!
Baby kicks…ALL the time. And I could not love it more! I’ve already mentally accepted the fact that I will probably never have a chill child…this one will most likely be a wild child like the other two!

This photo was taken at 18 weeks – baby is the size of a grapefruit

Boy or Girl?

We knew we would be really close to that time where we could find out the gender of the baby by the time we came home for Christmas, so we asked our doctor if we could find out before we go. I wasn’t quite due for my full anatomy scan yet, but because my doctor is amazing, she gave me a quick freebie ultrasound at my next appointment so we could find out. My appointment was early in the morning, so we let Kinsie be a little late to school and brought both her and Brax along with us so we could all find out together. At first, the umbilical cord was right in the way…so the doctor kept wiggling the ultrasound wand around to see if she could get a good angle. Finally the baby moved a little, and voila….there it was! Baby Matthews #3 is a BOY!!

We had to keep the secret for about a week before we headed home to Indiana to tell everyone. I didn’t let the kids talk on the phone to anyone during that time!

When we got to Indiana, we invited all our immediate family over for my mom’s birthday, and our gender reveal. We had a paint-filled balloon pinned to a canvas, and Kinsie would shoot her BB gun to pop the balloon and reveal the color. However, things didn’t exact go as planned! As you’ll see in the video, Kinsie hit the balloon TWICE, and the BB just bounced right off! Ryan eventually had to shoot it point blank for it to finally pop!