I will never take for granted my right index finger again! 😉 Splint is finally off and it’s almost healed. So thankful!

As for what else has been happening…

I’ve been making lists like crazy for the holidays and Nathan has decided this must be the new thing to do. He told me the other night he was going to draw a picture of Daddy holding Nathan on the list instead of writing.

Love this. 🙂 My favorite part is that his name is now spelled NAHTAN. 😉

We got to FaceTime in to some dear, dear friends’ gender reveal!! SO excited for Jen, Greg, big brother Noah and precious baby girl coming soon!!!

The weather man was predicting snow all weekend and when Saturday came and went without anything except freezing temperatures, we had a sad boy on our hand. So, we did the next best thing. Christmas shopping and lunch and ice cream at CFA!

Apparently the anticipation was too much. Jon found this when he went to check on a super quiet Nathan later that day. 😉 I loved it though. I went in to wake him up, he fell over against me still totally conked out, so I just scooted around and held him in his tiny chair for the next twenty or so minutes while he slept. I can’t even remember the last time I got to hold him that long! Precious moments while baby brother kicked at him continuously. 😉

And then… Sunday morning dawned and…

SNOW!! (Kind of!! Ha!) Note that both boys were still in their jammies. Nathan was in our room at the CRACK OF DAWN yelling about it having snowed, he ran out and came back in less than twenty seconds later with his hat on and holding his coat. What can we say? He comes by it naturally. 😉 So he got to play for a few minutes before breakfast in his jammies.

He did not quite understand that I put the towel on the floor to gather snow boots and such. 😉

After the fastest breakfast of all time and a forced change into actual snow clothes (it stinks having a mom who cares about you sometimes!), it was time for more snow play in our barely-snowed-in yard. 😉

The boys scraped up enough snow for a tiny little snowman…

Oh how I love this shot!! Someone ADORES their daddy with all his heart.

Ta-da!! He lasted about two hours. 😉

Caught this little evil grin right before he nailed me with a snowball while I was sacrificing myself in the frigid air – in my bathrobe!! – to get some of these pictures. Oh that boy.

I am LOVING this season. It’s so busy and crazy and hectic but I love, love, love finally settling down at the end of a very long day in front of this:

FOUR stockings, friends. I can’t get over it. Oh, we are so very blessed!!

If you follow me on Facebook, you hopefully saw the reason for my super long absence online lately:

Ugh. I was in a hurry making dinner Monday night and sliced right through my knuckle on a can of refried beans. 🙁 We butterfly-bandaged it back together but it was still bleeding pretty good Tuesday morning. Thankfully I was able to avoid stitches and got to have it glued back together instead but I had to keep it in a splint for the past four days, which has made it incredibly difficult to type! (Someone had some sympathy pain, can you tell?) 😉

I slept without the splint for the first time last night and my finger appears to be doing much better! It’s still pretty tender and the cut is still semi-open, so I’m trying to be very careful about how much I bend or use my finger right now since I do NOT want to get an infection!

Praying you guys all had a great week! Hopefully I will be back Monday with a fully-healed finger and a more fun post. 😉

I haven’t taken too many pictures this week for some reason. We’ve had a great week filled with lots of visits with great friends but apparently I just didn’t feel the need to capture it. 😉

My boys love their cookie dough. I swear Nathan can hear the thought of making cookies running through my head and he comes running. 😉

He was very proud of this Lincoln Log tower he made!

My bean at Cubbies when we came to pick him up. He was so intent on the story he didn’t even see us. Ha! Also, this is his favorite way to wear his hat and he adjusts it back down this low every time we try to raise it up a bit. The hat is disgusting but he loves it.

I am seriously really wanting an oatmeal cookie right now. If anyone would like to start a cookie delivery service to my house, I could be on board with this. 😉 Typically, I’m not the biggest oatmeal cookie fan but I had one last night that was amazing at Starbucks. What is your favorite cookie?

Don’t forget that Paige Torn and Paige Rewritten are on sale for a limited time only in my bookstore!!

Right now you can get autographed copies of Paige Torn and Paige Rewritten together for $30 (including shipping!) in my bookstore!!

Be sure to order quickly! This is only available for a limited time! 🙂

Oh what a wonderful, wonderful week!!

We ran a MILLION errands on Saturday and so we treated Nathan to lunch with us at CFA. He even convinced us he was old enough to trade in his kids meal toy for ice cream by himself. Other than being a little too short (the CFA staff didn’t even see him standing there at first – ha!), he did so good! He even said thank you. I’m in a little bit of denial he’s this big.

Waiting for our ultrasound!! Can you tell we were a little excited?? 😉

Sweet Big Brother holding Baby Brother’s balloons.

Wednesday, our dear friends Clint and Leigh Ann had another precious girl! It is KILLING ME that we are so far away from them right now. I’ve been constantly looking at pictures this whole week! Honestly, you’d think someone would have invented some sort of instantaneous travel by this point in time. Love how beautiful Leigh Ann looks and how precious is that baby??! So very excited for them and big sister Hayley Grace! We are snuggling those girls from a few miles away. 🙂

Nathan decided that Baby Brother needed a sticker too one night. Not sure why we have DARE stickers but like my brother Bryant said, he’s probably going to be saying that word to his little brother a lot. “I dare you to…”

Little pirate. Jon came home and built Nathan a pirate ship and then the two of them played in it the rest of the night. Nathan was, of course, Jake from Jake and the Neverland Pirates.

Jake even was kind enough to join us for dinner. And he informed us that next Halloween, Nathan was going to be Jake, Jon was going to be Captain Hook, I was going to be Wendy and Baby Brother was going to be… Smee. Poor kid.

In all the excitement, I was WAY late drawing a winner!

Tonya, email me your info and I will have a Paige Rewritten in the mail for you soon! It was so fun to see all of your predictions!!

In other news, someone has been singing High School Musical all day. 😉 This kid cracks me up.

Get Your Head in the Game from Erynn Mangum on Vimeo.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful Thursday!

Oh my – I think we are still coming off the adrenaline drop that hit about twenty or so minutes after we finally found out what we are having! 😉 I have been so dying to know and last night’s party was the perfect way to find out!!

We had our ultrasound yesterday afternoon. LOVED seeing our precious sweetheart on the screen! Baby is measuring even a little bit big, which is wonderful news!

We had the ultrasound tech write the gender down and put it in an envelope. And then I had to just stare at it for the next hour during our follow-up doctor’s appointment and on the drive to drop it off at the party store. It killed me!

Our party!! LOVED sharing it with my wonderful family and some of our closest friends. These people have prayed for us, cried with us, loved on us and celebrated with us. It was perfect having them all there to find out! We had people wear what color they thought the baby was.

Obviously the three of us were off. 😉

Our dear friends across the miles!! We were so blessed to have so many people who have moved or live far away be able to join us for this! I love technology!!

And it is….

Blue!! We were (and still are a little bit – ha!) in shock! I am SO thankful for another healthy, beautiful baby boy and I honestly couldn’t have told you which way I felt really strongly about, but I guess in the back of my mind I was always thinking girl! Such a wonderful surprise!

This one has no idea what is coming his way. 😉

I love that our dear friend Calvin captured this moment – both of us were just kind of sitting there like, “Wow…another BOY…” 😉

So thankful for these dear friends!!

My precious family!!

Oh goodness, friends. Another boy… I’m so blessed. I just sat on my couch and cried for about two hours today over it. God is so very good to us!!

We could not be more excited!!! Little boy looks perfect and healthy. I have been crying all day from just this overwhelming thankfulness. Thank you so much for your prayers for our precious SON!!!

I couldn’t resist. 😉

So
who is up for a little contest?? Leave a comment with whether you think we are having a boy or a girl and I’ll draw a random winner on Wednesday! You can win your
choice of an autographed Paige Torn or Paige Rewritten. And I will be sure to update you all with what we are having Tuesday night after we find out!!

A few fun facts about this pregnancy compared with Nathan’s:

* With Nathan, I couldn’t stand chicken or eggs. I haven’t been bothered at all by either one this time around!

*
I threw up once every day or so with Nathan until about 14 or so weeks.
With this one, I’m just now going a week without being sick (and I was
twenty weeks yesterday!) and I was sick at least 3-4 times a day in the
beginning.

* Nathan’s heartbeat was always around 140, this one has averaged in the high 140s to the low 150s.

* I think I’m carrying the same, though I definitely started showing earlier this time around!

*
Nathan was a lot more active than this one. I feel kicks occasionally,
but nothing like the ninja attacks Nathan was famous for (maybe we are
going to have a slightly calmer child this time??)

* I have no idea whether it’s a he or a she and I also am not really hoping one way or the other. Having a boy has been so much fun and I honestly think it would be so wonderful to have two crazies running around here in their over-sized football helmets! But I also think a girl would be so fun because it would be so different than what we are used to right now. 🙂

I’m so so so overwhelmed with thankfulness – God has blessed us so much! My heart is spilling over. 🙂 Continuing to pray for you, dear friends!!

Behold. Clark Kent. Or, as Nathan proudly told someone at trunk or treat last night, “I am John Kent.”

Close enough. 😉

Ha! We had such a great time last night! Nathan’s costume has been classified top secret for awhile now so it’s fun to finally share pictures! The top two are from the fall festival at Jon’s school that we went to last week.

Let me tell you – someone MADE OUT last night. We have an entire grocery bag full of candy because his little bucket we brought was not big enough and one of the ladies at trunk or treat had a grocery sack in her car. We will be eating this candy for YEARS.

Cayce and the serious Clark on our way to the church’s trunk or treating. 

Best costume we saw trunk or treating – Mike Wazowski! All of the little kids seriously thought it was Mike. Nathan grabbed his hand and said, “Quick, Mom, take my picture!” and then posed real fast. Love my quick-thinking boy. 😉

After trunk or treating, we headed to Gammy and Pops’ house to trick or treat and they met him at the door like this:

Ha! It took him a few minutes to recognize them!! Then they gave him bags of donuts and he was good there. 😉

Next up was Uncle Bryant and Soon-to-Be-Auntie Nicole – don’t they look adorable? Bryant was so cute to save some candy for Nathan.

Nathan and Jon. We didn’t get home until late so he was done by this point and coming into a sugar crash after the suckers he’d talked us into letting him eat in the car.

And then it was time to put Superman in bed and dig through his candy haul. Because really, what’s the joy of parenting if you can’t steal a few pieces of Halloween candy??

Today, I’ve been doing some errands with this goofy kid and Gammy for our gender reveal – goodness, it’s only four days away!! Keep posted because I imagine there might be a contest coming up this weekend. 😉