Christmas Recap

We had a good Christmas this year and it's been fun to think about how different next Christmas will be. Baby Brueckmann already got a little taste of Christmas though (no, I don't mean all the food I ate yesterday) - as he received a few Christmas gifts.
One notable gift is his first Cardinals shirt - I knew it wouldn't take long for us to receive that -- but I didn't expect it to have so much attitude. :) He also received an outfit, an afghan made by Grandma Lesinger, and a quilt made by Great Grandma Nagel many years ago.
We have a week off until we return to work on January 4 and it looks like it will be a busy week. Our Christmas continues with a trip to Indianapolis in the morning. We'll try not to be jealous when all the Emsleys are sporting their Jamaican tans! Other plans this week include catching up with friends from out-of-town and registering at Babies 'R Us. Last week we finished the nursery and I'll eventually post pictures of that.

2009 Christmas Baking

Today, my mom and I continued our annual tradition of spending an entire day baking cookies. By the end, we were both whining about back pain and ready to be done. But before that we had fun and we did get a lot of cookies made. This year's new recipe (Peanut Butter Cup Cookies) was a flop, but we made 6 favorites as well.

7 hours yielded 7 different batches of cookies/bars/brownies, a ton of cookies, and probably about a trillion calories. We did good by only sampling a few so far, but the holiday season is just getting started!

And the gender is...

BOY!

Now if you are one of the many people who was waiting until December 1, you now know that we told you a little white lie. This is week 20 of my pregnancy so we anticipating telling our families on Thanksgiving. However, we ended up off schedule and our "big" ultrasound was actually November 10. So for the past two weeks, we've been keeping the secret, or at least trying to. I have had a few close encounters and one time I did slip and say "he".

Comments for you to avoid:
"Are you happy (or disappointed) it's a boy?" We're happy it's a baby and thrilled to now know exactly what we're having.
"Sometimes ultrasound technicians make mistakes..." This baby is definitely a boy and we have good photographic proof. We'll avoid posting that specific body part though.

By the way, welcome to the blog! I've been thinking about starting one for awhile and now I have someone to talk about besides myself. Check back!