Belly Shots

I wanted to surprise Mike with some maternity pictures for Christmas. He knew that I wanted to get some really good pictures done to document my big belly. My cousin Allie, who is absolutely amazing and even did our engagement pictures, came over with Missy (sisters) and they did a photo shoot while Mike was at work. It was lots of fun. I told them they had to edit the pictures really good to get rid of the train-track stretch marks. They ended up doing like 250 pictures!!! I picked a few of them out and had them printed for Mike. They are still working on editing the rest of them. Here are a few of the pics....

  

Getting close!!!

I will be full term on Tuesday, December 23...37 weeks! yay! 

My birthday was on Tuesday. I'm 22 now....and feeling old...oh, wait, no that's just the extra weight I'm carrying that makes it so hard to move around...and forget about going up any stairs! yikes! Gma Mert took us out to dinner for my birthday. We went to Olive Garden and had dinner with Amanda, Josh and Rykkar, Spencer, Andrew and Gma. It was nice to see everyone. I feel like all I do is work...and then when I get home from work I just want to sleep because I'm sooo exhausted, so I really don't ever see anyone. I rarely see Mike as it is. The day before my birthday I took my nursing final. I officially finished my degree in Nursing when I was 22. Now I just gotta come up with $300 to pay for my NCLEX so I can take it and get my RN and then make a little more moolah.

The nursery is well on it's way. We decided we are going to make a canopy to go over the crib...for our little princess. So we're trying to figure out exactly how to do it with the stuff we bought. Mike's been going to craft stores with me and helping me find flowers to use to make baby gifts for other people and more little "big" flower clips for headbands. We have one more thing to sell, a chair to wrap and store and a plastic file cabinet to empty and throw away (it's collapsing on itself.) and the nursery will be nothing but a nursery. I still need to get some Dreft and wash Lilly's clothes and her little blankets. Speaking of things to do. I need to pack my hospital bag and have all that stuff ready to go, just in case. We got the stroller/car seat from Mike's parents last night and Mike put it all together as soon as we got home. Now we have to figure out which car we want to put the base in...until we get another base. There's still one more baby shower on the 30th...so then we'll have to find room for all of that stuff.

Mike tells me everyday that it still hasn't sunk in that we are having a baby in 3 weeks (I really hope I don't go over. I told him it probably won't hit until we get home from the hospital with her. I am so looking forward to having her in our lives and we are already very grateful for the opportunity we have been given by Heavenly Father to bring one of His children into this world and nurture and care for her.

We want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!

Recently...

So, it's been a crazy few weeks. The week of Thanksgiving was insane. My family was here from Colorado. They drove here on the 21 and then my mom threw me a baby shower with my gma, aunt and cousin. We got lots and lots of stuff (meaning mostly clothes). It was way fun! Afterwards, we all went to see Twilight. Mike had to work so he didn't go, and he said that he didn't care. I dunno if that's true or not. Despite what everyone else thinks....I really liked the movie. I thought they did a good job with it.

I had to take that Saturday off of work which meant that I had to work Monday instead...which also meant that I would be working Mon-Sat, 5:30am-2pm. It pretty much sucked! I was soooo stinkin exhausted. On Thanksgiving I was supposed to leave at 1:30 and say I didn't take a lunch (which I didn't) but we had an emergency and I had to go with someone to the ER about 20-30 min before I was supposed to be off. Of course I was stressed and upset and exhausted. I got back to work around 3 and left from there...the person was still at the ER but someone that had just gotten to work came and relieved me and the other girl. What a day! When I got home I broke down. It didn't help that my mom kept asking if I even wanted to go up to Mt Pleasant to eat....plus being pregnant and sleep deprived and ever since we got married...if I cry once in a day, then I cry all day and can't stop! I hate it!...The food was good though.

Anyway, I the Monday before Thanksgiving my family helped us paint the nursery and then a couple of days later Mike and my Dad put up the chair rail. My mom and dad bought us a crib at my request (instead of a glider) and then mike put it up on Saturday night. He read all the instructions and everything! He's such a good hubby! I'm so thankful to have him in my life!

Now I'm 34 weeks and starting to feel like it. I'm definately glad to be done in 6 weeks!

Dining Out

Dining out was on Saturday, Nov 1. for those of you don't know what dining out is, it's a formal dinner where it's pretty much required to have a date for ROTC. there are rules of the mess that the cadets MUST follow and if their date is doing something really bad, then they may suffer the penalties for him/her. by penalties i mean being sent to the grog which is a toilet on a table filled with nasty drink (whatever they wanted to put in it) or they might have to do something embarrassing in front of everyone. here are the actual rules of the mess.......

Thou shalt enjoy thyself to the fullest!

Thou shalt not be late.

Thou shalt make every effort to meet all guest.

When the mess is formed thou shalt remain standing until seated by the President.

Thou shalt not leave the mess whilst convened. Military protocol overrides all calls of nature. (they made an extra announcement for this one...it didn't apply for anyone who was pregnant...i'm the furthest along by far)

Thou shalt participate in toasts unless thyself or thy group is being honored.

Thou shalt ensure that thy glass is always charged.

Thou shalt not murder the Queen's English or any other language.

Thou shalt always use proper toasting procedure.

Thou shalt not laugh at ridiculously funny comments unless Mister President first shows approval by laughing.

Thou shalt not question the decisions of Mister President or Mister Vice.

Thou shalt express thy approval by tapping thy spoon on the table. Clapping thy hands will not be tolerated.

Thou shalt not begin eating a course of the meal before members of the head table.

Thy reputaion shall be placed at risk if thy bow tie rides and an obvious list.

Thou shalt not grog members of the head table.

Other rules included always escorting your date and dates always had to be on the left. Very hard for us to do because i move fairly slowly. anyway, BYU catering did the event, and the food was not that good. there was this huge cake that was gorgeous and it tasted sugar free to top it all off.

 

i searched all over for a dress and shoes and all that and finally lucked out like 2 days before the event. mike's sister did my hair and everything was great. i worked 8 hours that morning and was fairly swollen and could barely move my knees, ankles, and toes. there was a dance afterward and you can imagine how great i felt...haha..to top that off, mike stepped on the top of my left foot with his heel which is horse-shoed. it still hurts. we had fun at the dance though. i was the only prego that stayed for the dance. we were neglectful and only took a couple of pics though......

One of the speakers at the dinner was Col. John M. McCain, the commander of all of Air Force ROTC. mike was excited to have him there....

ALASKA

Alaska is absolutely gorgeous! Its been a nice getaway and its also been nice to be able to see Mike for more than 5 minutes at a time since ROTC thinks they are the world. To start our trip off we flew to Seattle and had a layover for about 2 hours and our "cruise parents" who live there came and saw us in the air port. It's always fun to catch up!

Then as we landed in Fairbanks, Aaska, we went down to the one little baggage claim conveyor belt and we got our bags pretty fast. So then Mike had me believing that we landed fairly early and pretended to go outside and call the Tippetts to tell them that we had landed early. He came back inside and told me they'd be there in a few minutes. So, after a couple of minutes he went back out to "flag them down" if he saw them...actually he was looking for something else. He came back inside for a few minutes and then said "k, let's go" and led me outside where he proceeded to load the suitcases into a shuttle. I still had no idea what was going on, maybe we were going to take a shuttle to their house...I was totally at a loss. The we pulled up to this hotel/lodge place and got our bags and went inside. Mike suprized me with a two night stay at Pike's. We had a room with a king size bed and a fireplace (unfortunately we couldn't get a room with a jacuzzi because they are off limits for a couple more months). Mike had arranged to have a bottle of "champagne" in the room on ice, rose petals and chocolates on the bed and the lady he was working with also had put a really cute teddy bear on the bed for me. It was a pleasant suprise. He's been feeling bad about not being able to spend time together and wanted to have a little bit of a romantic escape.

The first actual day we were there in Fairbanks, we just went downtown and walked around a bit. It was a bit nippy...especially since I can't zip anything up anymore and my belly just sticks out, however, everytime we'd go into a store or anything I would start to die from the heat and I'd have to start stripping off layers. It was sorta annoying. The cool air felt great though. After about 30 minutes we'd seen most of downtown and also discovered that Fairbanks is similar to Vegas and Europe in that everyone and their dog smokes. Very disgusting!

The next day after Sam came and picked us up at the hotel, she took us to North Pole, Alaska to the Santa Claus House. It is FULL of Christmas decorations to buy and that's pretty much it. It was way fun to walk through. Outside they have a huge pole that says "NORTH POLE" and also some reindeer. As you can see, I got tired of wearing my coat again cause I was too hot inside.

Date Night

i think anyone who is married can justify that lots of different things can cou

nt as date night. here's an example....mike hurt his back really bad on saturday helping someone move a gun safe. the worst part is that we don't even know the people. he's basically been in agony the past few days, which also involves keeping me

 up at night cause he moans and groans and tosses

 and turns...valium is in the plan for tonight. anyway, the Legacy Center "aquatic center" has a good sized hot tub so we decided to go so he could sit in it and hoped that it would help his back. while he got to play in the hot water and relax, i just dangled my feet in. that's one thing i miss about not being pregnant...hot tubs! anyway, he also likes the slide because it is pitch black inside, which makes it pretty dang fun. mike had fun taking pictures in the slide. during the swim break we got some nachos, a pretzel and a cookie with some loose change from home. then we went back to swimmin

g. we finished the night by playing around in the kid area with the camera....p.s. it's waterproof.

Baby Girl

here's a few pics from 4 weeks ago, when we found out we were having a girl. i'm slow at getting them up, i know. but last night/this morning i had a dream that i had the baby and it turned out to be quadruplets and they were all boys! ahhh! we had no clothes or anything like that...and i was never big enough to have quads in my belly. it was crazy. anyway. this is our baby girl. at my 20 week appointment everything checked out great. all of her organs look good. spine looks good. no cleft lip/palate. the only problem was that she was being a stinker and wouldn't let us see that she was a girl. first she had one hand down in the way. so we decided to finish checking other things and then go back and look again. this time she had her legs crossed way too tight and we couldn't see. so the tech was bouncing the ultrasound on my belly. (keep in mind that i had downed 24oz in the last hour and my bladder was very big on the ultrasound). this wasn't working so she had me go to the bathroom and come back and she tried again. the stinker still wouldn't uncross her legs! i tried rolling around, she tried having me lay on my side and doing the ultrasound. eventually we just gave up for a bit and i went to my doctors' visit and drank some apple juice (my fav). i kept trying to move the dang baby around during this little break. so we went back into the ultrasound and nada! she was being such a stinker! she would NOT move! finally, we got her bouncing enough that her legs parted just a bit and we saw that it was a girl!!! hooooray! i had been hoping it was a girl but we thought it was going to be a boy. my family on the other hand were positive that it was a girl, so much so that my mom and mike had a war going that it was a girl/boy. my mom bought mike pink onsies for his b-day which was the day before the ultrasound. so mike had to call her and break the news. his parents were also positive that it was a boy, so he had to tell them they were wrong too! hahaha! so now we have lots of pink stuff. it's way fun and we're way excited. here's a couple pics.....

It's a GIRL!

Profile.

I think she has her daddy's nose!

One foot.....

.....Two feet!

Things that are BIG

i haven't posted in a long time, i know. i hate posting without pictures and someone stole our camera out of our car when we were on our way home from baltimore and were stopped in colorado at my parents'. but this saturday we were able to replace the camera....yay! so, along with replacing the camera, we replaced our couch! haha...kinda on accident. we went to the RC Willey Outlet tent sale and saw this sectional and we got an awesome deal on it...so yeah, now we have a bunch of furniture to sell. it's sooo comfy and so big and we love it soo much! unfortunately we sold our kitchen table and chairs before we went to baltimore because we never sat at it to eat (the kitchen lighting stinks). we always just ate on the couch and now we don't want to eat on the new one, so we just sit on the floor. great fun when you're pregnant! haha...

we actually planned ahead for sunday and we took fixin's over to Teri and Sean's to make shishkabob skewers complete with chicken, steak, shrimp, onions, zucchini, and peppers. gma Toddy came too and provided a yummy salad. we made SOOOOO much food! it was crazy! it was so yummy though. everyone kept eating and eating and eating. i'm pretty sure there are still like 3 skewers in the fridge. oh yeah, and we had Harward corn on the cob too. yeah buddy!

Thanks for maning the grill Teri!!!!

in other news...i'm am 24 weeks tomorrow. our baby girl is constantly kicking my bladder, making my days nothing but trips to the bathroom. she's our little wiggle-worm and she has even moved a few times for her daddy to feel it. i think she knows when he puts his hand on my belly to feel, because she stops moving when he does. mike says it's because she's already a daddy's girl and she just wants him close and then she calms down. i think it's because she already takes after him, which means she's a stinker. i'm definately starting to look like i'm not just fat, which is nice for me. haha. none of my normal clothes fit, including shirts, unless i want the bottom of my belly to hang out. thanks again to Aunt Teri for lending me her maternity clothes!

The Dumbest Day Ever...

last month all the guys mike works with sold over 500 accounts and that meant that they got a trip to a theme park, wives include. well, there just so happens to be like 4 theme parks within 3 hours of where we live right now. Hershey Park, 6 Flags America, King's Dominion, and Busch Gardens. well, the first three are the closest, cheaper and all have a water park in the park...which you don't have to pay extra for. but did the two managers pick any of those or listen to anything anyone else had to say??? of course not. they decided that we were going to Busch Gardens which has the fewest rides out of all of the parks and is an hour further away than any of the others, and didn't have a water park. they didn't care that the one person who is FROM the baltimore area said that King's Dominion was the better park. they didn't care that tickets were $20 more per person. they didn't care that i couldn't ride the rides but that i could at least go to the water park.
we went on wed. it SUCKED! mike had a good time riding the rides. he rode one of the roller coasters 11 times! i on the other hand rode one thing between 10:30am and 6pm. i wore mike's aviator sunglasses for the first half of the day because when he would leave me outside of the ride to wait the 30 min-1 hour for him to go through the line and ride, i would just sit there and cry (the added emotionality is soooo much fun! not!) all in all i was able to ride three rides (the rapids, the big splash ride, and a 4-D sit in a chair that moves ride.....BORING) we didn't leave until like 10pm, then we had to drive home 3 hours.....omigoodnes!
and to make things worse, the managers also decided to have a bbq the night before we went to the park....and by night i mean it started after 10pm and then the guys played volleyball. no one went home till after 1am and everyone had to be ready to leave by 7am! then at least one of the managers complained about being tired and since he was driving FORCED the people who rode in his car to leave when HE was ready. maybe they should think things through a bit???? an on top of all of this...apparently no one understood that there was a water park at the other parks. they just took the manager's word that busch gardens was the best, only one of them having even been to it.....when he was freakin 13 years old!!!!!! what the HECK!?

p.s. i'll put pics up later...they won't load right now for some reason

new york

alyssa, my best friend from high school just so happens to live in bath, NY, a charming little podunk town in southern NY. it's about 4 hours from us in baltimore. so we decided to go for a visit during the weekend of the 4th because mike had it off. it was a bit of a drive and we didn't get there until 4am, but it was way fun and a good escape from our boring life. alyssa's family has a really nice house and a fairly big pool, so we had fun just relaxing by the pool a lot. we also got to meet a few of alyssa's friends and a bunch of her extended family that i didn't know before.

somehow we keep "lucking out" and randomly come across anything and everything that has to do with air planes and aviation....yup, there was the 100th anniversary of the 5000 ft flight of Glen Curtiss, who happened to hold the very first pilot's license issued....and of course there was a museum about him...which i made mike go to alone. i'm sorta airplane/space/aviationed out.

anyway. it was way fun to see alyssa again since i hadn't seen her since my wedding day. she's gonna come see us one more time before we head home. her sister lives about 30 min from us, so that works out perfectly! yay for friends!!!!

belly dancer

so far it hasn't been a horrible pregnancy...not the best time of my life, but i'm still alive. i am 11 weeks today and i've only thrown up a total of three times, all within a three minute period a couple of weeks ago. other than that the worst thing has been the horrendous heartburn. i'm suprised that i actually have an esophagus left...sometimes i wish i didn't. mylanta has been fabulous and i drink it straight from the bottle. i call it my chalk cocktail. the only other thing is that i'm starving like every 2 hours but nothing ever sounds good....except ice cream, which always sounds good. i had that for lunch the other day.

i had my first OB appointment on june 16. i was 10 days off of what they thought i'd be "date-wise". my due date is jan 13. i knew ahead of time that i was going to be having a sonogra

m so i made mike play hookie for most of the day so he could come with me. the sonogram was awesome. we could easily tell where the head, arms and body were. mike says we're having a boy because it's head was so big...haha...it was really cute. the baby did some dancing for us. first we'd see the little head move and then the arms would wave around. it was awesome. of course i cried, i don't think mike or the doctor saw though. here's the first picture of our little baby...

Time Together

so these posts are a little out of order. but we've done a few fun things in the time that mike has actually had off (saturday night, sunday, and labor day).

we have the book 1000 Places to See Before You Die and in it one of the only things in Baltimore is a crab house called Obryki's. it's pretty famous. they've even been on the today show. it was pretty good. i didn't want to eat too much crab because i don't know if that counts as fish you aren't supposed to eat when you're prego. but mike, as you can see, went all out. he ate 6 whole crabs himself!!! i have to admit it was uber yummy and their crab cakes were sooooo stinkin good. it smelled a bit fishy in the place though. oh yeah, and they just dump the crabs on your table.

we went to washington DC one sunday after church. we saw the white house (which is super hard to figure out how to get to), washington monument, WWII memorial, lincoln memorial, korean war memorial, DC war memorial, saw the jefferson memorial from far away, and watched lots of air planes come in really low to land at the raegan air port. it was a gorgeous day and it was nice to just walk around together.

on memorial day we went to the Maryland zoo in baltimore. it wasn't terribly amazing, but we had fun together. it was a hot day, but there is tons of shade at the zoo, which helped. i've been wanting to go to a zoo for a long time and we finally got to go. afterwards we just went to ikea and then to the mall. we ended the day with a movie (baby mama). the movie was pretty fun and it was a good story too.

with what little time we have to spend together, it's nice to go out and have fun and do stuff. i always feel bad when i feel sick when we're together....but i can't really help that i guess.

Monster Mile

so, we decided (mike decided) on saturday night after we got back from the DC Temple (which is gorgeous!) that we were going to go to the NASCAR race on sunday. it was in Dover, DE and that's only like 1h30m from us. having never been to an actual race but falling asleep during many.

after we got there we had to find parking, always a fun thing. no matter where you parked you had to basically give them a car payment. we got lucky and found the last space at a denny's parking lot which was the closest thing to the already full track lot. of course we had to pay for being close...it was $35!!!!! what the heck?

then it came down to finding tickets somewhere. now, at a NASCAR race it is better to sit as high as you can so you can see the whole track. scalpers try to get you with "these are good tickets...row 14 on the 3rd corner"...but mike is way too seasoned when it comes to NASCAR to fall for that. not to mention the scalper tried to sell them for face value. then dropped it like $25 after chasing us down a few minutes later. instead we continued to the ticket office where tickets were $85-$95 and they weren't really that high up. so we set off again. by this time i had sweat seriously trickling down my back and one of our 3 water bottles was just about empty. as we walked a bit more we found some people selling extra tickets they had for $40 each. we lucked out and got tickets about 10 rows from the top...the only downfall was that we couldn't see pit row. but that's ok...another race.

the race started pretty exciting. within the first 75 laps there was a BIG wreck that took out three cars which had to be towed away...after that it got pretty boring. we got ear plugs and i probably have lung cancer now from all the smokers, k, it wasn't as bad as it could be...it's just a gross habit. so, the winner lapped up to like the 7th place car, no one was gonna beat him. jeff gordon finished 5th, jimmie johnson 6th. it was a relatively good ending.

when we left the race it of course took a while to actually get going on the road. we ended up behind a few of the semi's carrying actual cars. this was fun. we drove through some tiny communities and everyone was out in the yards and in lawn chairs having BBQ's waiting to see their driver's semi go by. it was like we were on parade! we had fun...mike honked a lot.

by far the coolest thing though was the amish families!!! on the way we saw TWO amish buggies on the road, and we saw a bunch of kids out by the road when we were on parade. so fun!!!! anyway, we had a good time. and we even got our baby-to-be a onsie that says "chevy baby". good times!!!

Good morning BALTIMORE!!!

we're here! we made it! (ok, so i'm a little slow with the blogging thing) Baltimore is nice. it's is completely covered in trees and highways/freeways. we actually had to buy a GPS in order to find our way anywhere. there are no big signs for things....i have yet to actually see "golden arches" that are not on the side of the building! there's not even a wally world sign on a big pole! its sooo weird and confusing! but "velveeta" (i named the GPS that so it didn't sound like mike was talking about an actual girl...and because her voice is smooth and cheesey) treats us well.

we brought a lot from home, but also forgot a lot...like silverware. as you can see. thankfully we live in the good ol USofA and we figured we'd just buy a lot after we got out here. unfortunately nothing is open 24 like it is in utah. not even wally world! its pretty annoying.

we like our apartment. it is much more open than our house and we can actually both fit in the bathroom at the same time. i'd put pics up but i'm too lazy to clean really fast to take them. but it's newly remodeled and was gay and had no microwave...so we have used the costco rental program for a few things. so far so good though.

My eggo is preggo!!!

Holy cow! What can I say!? We're super excited right now. We're both really looking forward to expanding our family and being parents. We found out Sat, May 10. I actually took a test while Mike was out working. My friend and I went and bought a box of 5 pregnancy tests for me to have for then and future use. When we got home I needed to pee...so I took a test with me, thinking it would be negative for sure....before the toilet was finished flushing I was walking to the living room, test in hand, huge eyes, mouth wide open. After some very excited jumping and screaming, we headed back to Wally-World to buy some onesies and binkies to decorate the bedroom with.

Unfortunately, Mike was late getting home and I was very anxious. He actually called me from another apartment in our complex and I was ready to wring his neck cause I just wanted him to get home!...so his manager helped by going and getting him for me. Funnily enough, after he was home, we could not get Mike to go into the bedroom where everything was set up for him....after everything we could think of, he finally went back and just stopped dead in his tracks...stunned. It was pretty awesome. I had to really hold it in to not cry, but I did good. We're looking forward to being mommy and daddy and all that comes with it.

SUMMER! ! ! !

Finals are finally over! And Mike is officially a PILOT, and I am an LPN! Now its time for a little trip before we go to work. We are heading to France to visit our Grandma Gisele. one week later we are flying back and then the next day, starting our cross country Road trip to Baltimore. 

We did it!!

We did it!!! We finally got a blog going, thanks to my aunt "cheri". We're the M&Ms of the family, mike and maddie, hence the m&m adventures!!! woohooo!