A Holly Jolly Christmas

Lance and I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas! Here is a picture of us from Christmas. As you can see, Jenna is growing rapidly!


On Christmas Eve, we went to Lance's parents house and celebrated the holiday. In the holiday tradition we took a family photo. This is the whole group of us.

As for Jenna (and any future siblings she may have), she had a big Christmas. Grandpa and Grandma Rentchler (Christa's mom & dad) bought the Hofmann grand kids a petal tractor. Yes, there are two tractors in the picture, the Schenk's got their petal tractor too. Ciara seed to enjoy hers, though her feet were a little short to reach the petals just yet.

Ultrasound & Dr. Appointment

Yesterday, we had our 31 week doctor appointment. This appointment was preceded with an ultrasound. We had a 3D/4D ultrasound and it was amazing! We reconfirmed the fact that we are having a little girl. She was sucking her thumb and had her hands at her face a good while, then she moved her hand and put her foot up in her face.

Her heart rate was 142 and she was weighing in at 4 pounds 2 ounces (putting her in the 61st percentile). This time the lady guessed my due date to be February 10. I will stick to the original date, February 13, since it’s only an estimate anyway.

The doctor said the baby is still measuring big. At 31 weeks I am measuring 33. Meanwhile, we are getting the baby’s room ready, finishing up things for Christmas, and getting ready for the baby shower. Our next appointment is on December 29, we will have another appointment 2 weeks later, then we start the weekly visits. She’ll be here before we know it!

Afghan

I received a beautiful afghan from a cooperator's wife on Wednesday and thought I would share a photo of it.

For those of you who don't know about my work, I will explain. I work with ~35 farming operations with financial & tax planning. I prepare Balance Sheets, Income Statements, Cash Flow analysis, track grain production and sales, and use the information to create comparative analysis. So, I can tell the "cooperator" (a fancy word for farmer or farming operation) how his farm income and expenses (per acre) compare to the county average, the area average, the state average, or compare based on size (acres) of the farm. Then we take this information, analyze it one-on-one, and make farming decisions for upcoming crop years. Anyway, these folks pay a fee (anywhere from $750 to $2500) for this service.

A cooperator's wife brought this afghan out and gave it to me during a farm "tax planning" visit Wednesday. She said she made it especially for me and the heart pattern was because my baby was due so close to Valentine's day. It brought tears to my eyes, that someone who pays to have me around their farm would think that much of me to make a blanket for my baby.

Baby Class

Our class for birthing and baby care turned out to be pretty good. If nothing else it has sparked lots of conversations.

We have started counting down and up now, instead of just counting up. It seems like the last 30 weeks have just flew by, I bet the next ~10 will go even faster....especially with the holidays.

We finally have our tree up over the weekend. So I guess one could say, "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas." Lance and I were commenting that next year we will likely have a crawling toddler that is pulling herself up, which should make Christmas a lot more interesting next year!

Past 2 Weeks

It's been quite a while since the last post and for that, I appologize. Here is an update on the happenings during that time...

We had our Dr. Appointment on November 26. Jenna checked out well. Dr. measured my belly and said she is measuring big. He wants to do a second ultrasound to see how she is doing and if we are going to stick with our original due date. I will let you all know how that turns out on the 15th of December.

Lance and I had a nice evening on our anniversary. We went out to eat and then went to shopping to finsish spending gift card money from our wedding. That was lots of fun!

Thanksgiving was kinda quiet this year due to quite a few sicknesses in the Hofmann Family. Lance decided to plug in the VHS player at his parents and we started watching videos of Lance and Ivan from the mid 80's. It was quite comical.

Lance had a nice birthday.

The baby showers on Saturday and Sunday were very nice. We took lots of pictures. The three young ladies that were due within 2 weeks of each other finally go together. They are sitting in the order their daughters were born. The little sisters are in reverse order of due dates, all within 9 days of each other.
Front Row (L to R) Carla & Ciara, Barbara & Aubrey, April & Kate
Second Row (L to R) Christa (girl), Lisa (unknown), and Bonnie (girl).

We keep telling Lisa she has to have a girl too, just because she has to be like the rest of us. I guess we will find out in February.

New exciting news, Lance and I are taking birthing and child care class this weekend. I will let you know how it goes when we get done this evening.

Until next time...which hopefully won't be so long.