Sandgren Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving with the Sandgren's, we spent the entire Saturday before Thanksgiving day hanging out and having fun. We first went to Chuck-A-Rama to eat. It was nice to have such a big variety of food that was all you can eat, including dessert! Then we went to BYU to go bowling. I love bowling, and even though I was 28 weeks pregnant, I had just as much fun! After bowling, we went back to Vance's mom's house and watched the BYU vs Utah game and ate more food! Then we watched old home videos that were hilarious and quite entertaining! It was a fun day. So fun, in fact, that we didn't leave until almost 2am!

Before it Snowed...

Vance wanted to go for a drive and take pictures somewhere, so I quickly took the opportunity to have some alone time (since it's a rare occasion these days), and volunteered Mason to go with him. This satisfied all of us since Vance and Mason don't get "father and son" time very often either. He ended up going to the Bird Refuge in Farmington. If any of you have ever been out there, you know it's not the prettiest place on the planet. But with some of these pictures, you might just think otherwise... Okay, so after posting these pictures, I realized that they really aren't doing justice on how pretty they really are. So if you want to see a better view, just click on any of them to blow them up...it makes a difference. I was quite impressed with these pictures when he brought them home, so later that week he took me out there, and I was quite disapointed. I don't know where these pictures came from or how he made that place look so good. I guess that's a sign of a good photographer! I love these pictures of Mason he took! These are the pictures he took when he took me back there a few days later. I know this is a lot of pics, that are probably boring to all of you but I think they're gorgeous! Sorry :)

36 Weeks

Your baby is still packing on the pounds — at the rate of about an ounce a day. She now weighs almost 6 pounds (like a crenshaw melon) and is more than 18 1/2 inches long. She's shedding most of the downy covering of hair that covered her body as well as the vernix caseosa, the waxy substance that covered and protected her skin during her nine-month amniotic bath. Your baby swallows both of these substances, along with other secretions, resulting in a blackish mixture, called meconium, will form the contents of her first bowel movement.

35 Weeks

Your baby doesn't have much room to maneuver now that he's over 18 inches long and tips the scales at 5 1/4 pounds (pick up a honeydew melon). Because it's so snug in your womb, he isn't likely to be doing somersaults anymore, but the number of times he kicks should remain about the same. His kidneys are fully developed now, and his liver can process some waste products. Most of his basic physical development is now complete — he'll spend the next few weeks putting on weight.

34 Weeks

Your baby now weighs about 4 3/4 pounds (like your average cantaloupe) and is almost 18 inches long. Her fat layers — which will help regulate her body temperature once she's born — are filling her out, making her rounder. Her skin is also smoother than ever. Her central nervous system is maturing and her lungs are continuing to mature as well. If you've been nervous about preterm labor, you'll be happy to know that babies born between 34 and 37 weeks who have no other health problems generally do fine. They may need a short stay in the neonatal nursery and may have a few short-term health issues, but in the long run, they usually do as well as full-term babies.

33 Weeks

This week your baby weighs a little over 4 pounds (heft a pineapple) and has passed the 17-inch mark. He's rapidly losing that wrinkled, alien look and his skeleton is hardening. The bones in his skull aren't fused together, which allows them to move and slightly overlap, thus making it easier for him to fit through the birth canal. (The pressure on the head during birth is so intense that many babies are born with a conehead-like appearance.) These bones don't entirely fuse until early adulthood, so they can grow as his brain and other tissue expands during infancy and childhood.