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!