11 days.

I am so ready to meet this baby. I've definitely slipped into the last days of pregnancy, and my body is about 11 days from giving up. I had my OB appointment on Monday and everything looks great. I go back this Monday for my "last" appointment. I'll have one more trip up before the big day for labs at the hospital and a final ultrasound.

I still have a few things to do around here and will probably spend some of this morning trying to get a little done.  It's just very, very hard for me to do more than one thing at this point, and I'll be so happy when I can put a full day of activity on the calendar again.

The girls are so, so, so excited about finding out who's in there! Lucy is just about to burst with impatience and Molly is just dying to help the baby, change the baby, sit on the baby, carry the baby, cuddle the baby, feed the baby, bathe the baby, rock the baby, bite the baby, you get the picture. We already know that Lucy may very well be the most gentle and nurturing 3-year-old walking the Earth, so I'm not worried about her. But when I look at Mo, I see a big sister who will definitely surprise everyone with her mothering. She's a great listener and her little heart is just so full of love. I know she'll be great with the baby and I can't wait to finally get whomever this is into her hot little hands!

We have a full weekend of Easter plans ahead of us. Tomorrow the girls and I will be going to the Stations of the Cross for children in the morning, and then we'll be coming home for a very quiet day. We try to keep Good Friday quiet and reflective, so while I was debating even doing that, I think we'll just make a morning trip out and then come home.

On Saturday, we have our last meeting with the engaged couple we're sponsoring, and then we're going to come home for a family day. We'll be cleaning the house for our Easter dinner and getting a few more pre-baby projects done, and in the evening we're going to watch Veggietales' The Night Before Easter with the girls. Grandma C sent it for Easter and we're keeping it a surprise until then - the girls love having popcorn and ice cream in the living room and Lucy thinks it's so great when "the whole famiwwy" watches a movie together.

We'll do Mass very, very early on Sunday. We have a huge parish (25,000ish) and holiday Masses are a little crazy. Easter Vigil is 100% out of the question just because of the time, the length and the fact that people very rarely seem to care that a massively pregnant woman is standing in the aisle without a seat, about to expire. Pregnancy really overheats me, and any Mass that uses incense tends to make me very dizzy, so when you combine that with a super-long Mass, there's a major potential for me to just pass right out. The "mid-morning" Sunday Masses are usually very full, but on Easter Sunday they go from full to just heaving. You have to get there an hour early and actually be walking into the pew as other people are getting up for Communion. It's just nuts. We usually have about 1500 people at a Mass, and on Easter it's at least double that. So we've decided to hit the 7am Mass on Sunday morning. This has major implications everry which way for us, most important being the whiny husband I'm going to have to wake up at 5am, but it'll be so worth it to be able to sit during Mass AND to see the sunrise on the most special day the Church celebrates. We'll need to leave the house at 5:45 at the latest, so I'm going to pack a little breakfast for the girls and just have everything ready to go for them ahead of time. They're troopers - I have no doubt that it'll be lovely.

We're having friends for Easter dinner on Sunday afternoon/evening and that should be just lovely. I'm going to make a big ham and Grandma Susie's Potatoes Romanoff. And that dinner will be our jumping off point for BabyWatch2011! Once Easter is over, we'll be jumping into a very busy week of shopping, last-minute doctor and dentist appointments, finishing up projects, the remainder of our home-improvement stuff and packing for the hospital. We are just so excited to become a family of 5!

Well, I'm getting dangerously close to hearing little voices down the hall as the sun rises. It's 6:51 now and the fact that we all got an uninterrupted night of sleep is already a sign that these girls are going to have plenty of energy for their mama. They usually get up right at 7 (because Mama won't let them run the house before 7 on the dot!) and drag their big fleece blankets out to the couch. They each get a little bowl of dry Cheerios and a sippy of juice while they wake up to a cartoon or kid show. It's about the cutest thing you've ever seen, these two sweeties cuddled up together, chatting about what they're going to do with their day. I really can't say what today will hold, but I do know that it will involve a trip to the carwash to vacuum the car, as is our usual Thursday morning activity. After that...the world is our oyster!