20 Weeks- It's a GIRL!!!

Hurray!  Half way there!  We had our ultrasound and she is indeed a GIRL!  So soon the fun can really begin when we start picking things out for her!  We're leaning towards the name Keira.  What do ya think?  She's doing great!  She is now about 6.8 inches (the size of a grapefruit) and weighs 10.6 ish oz.  She seems to be growing well and our due date is still right on with 9-9-09, but we're not holding our breath for that date.

Our baby girl snug as a bug and curled up!

I think they did this one 3D pic of her face.

Great picture of another baby girl at 20 weeks.

It's still been an amazing pregnancy!  If it weren't for my inconveniently growing belly, having to use the bathroom much more often, not being able do mountain bike (why all of the sudden I want to- I don't know), and running even slower, I wouldn't even know I was pregnant!  Definitely a girl, hope she stays this easy and well behaved!  ;-)  I haven't felt nauseous in probably about a month, not that it was ever bad or something to even mention.  I still feel a little tired but that may just be because of my work schedule and everything else we have going on.  It's been a busy spring! 

Here are a couple of pictures of the belly.  I feel like I'm at an inconvenient stage, still.  Today was a glorious spring day and I was excited to wear one of the skirts I had bought during the end of summer sales.  I bought them 1-2 sizes too big hoping I'd be preggo the next time I wore them.  Well my favorite was two sizes too big and I have to practically wear it at my belly button and it's still a bit snug for my taste.  Needless to say, I was quite bummed.

20 weeks- Awkward, it still doesn't look like I'm pregnant, just voluptuous.

These were actually closer to 19 weeks, but it shows the little baby bump better.

The Bathroom Project

Well, slowly but surely it's coming along.  We got a lot done this snowy weekend.  Everything seems to take much longer than I expect.  I miss my bathroom.  But it will be soooo worth it when it's done!  It seems like it will be too glamorous for me to take a shower in.  How exciting!  It'll be like I'm staying in a hotel!  We had to get new mortar for the last 1/8th of the wall and this kind is taking forever to dry.  But once it does, all we have left is the grout!  Chris thinks we'll work on it again this weekend!  I can't wait!!!

Chris is admiring all of his hard work!

I'm Out

Okay, I feel really bad about it, but it's such a relief.  I got out of Civil Air Patrol.  It's a great organization, but I just don't have time.  Meetings are twice a month; the drive is 40 minutes to sit with mostly retired men listening to things that really don't interest me and that I've heard several times before for at least an hour and a half, and then drive home 40 minutes.  Not to mention I get about four e-mails a day and suggestions and opportunities to further my training, which I really don't want to do now either.  I haven't even been to a meeting this year because I've had to work ALMOST every Thursday night when we have the meetings.  And when we have our bundle of joy I certainly won't want to pay a babysitter not for Chris and I to go on a date, but to Civil Air Patrol.  

The bummer is that I was a first lieutenant and Chris was only a second lieutenant!  :o)  He would've had to salute me!  But did he?  No.

Back at Home

A lot was happening here while we were gone too.  My sister Laura had been living with us since September and she found a place to rent and moved in the same day.  My mom came up to help her with the move so they were both staying at our house and watching the pets.

I was looking forward to having a nice, relaxing day off to unpack and get all caught up before heading back to work which never happens- we always stay away as long as we possibly can.  We had dinner with Laura and my mom and finally I walked into my bathroom and much to our amazement and excitement it was painted!  The ugly wallpaper was gone and it was the perfect shade!  A new shampoo and etc. holder that was big enough for everything was hanging and a new curtain rack was waiting to be hung also.  She had scrubbed the tile in the shower and on the floor.  I was thrilled and amazed!  It looked soooooo awesome!!!!  And all while we were on vacation!  It doesn't get better than that!

But within about 20 minutes Chris ruined our joy.  ;-)  (Just joking Sweetie!)  He decided to take off one of the tiles because we had suspected there might be some leakage since the grout had worn off in a few places.  And that started yet another disaster.  Once again in this house we found soaked drywall and mold.  Hopefully this is it!  And then began the distruction of the entire shower wall.  I didn't even get to enjoy a shower or get ready for bed in our beautifully painted bathroom.My mom and sister started us on a cleaning and organizing splurge.  For over two and a half years I have been so overwhelmed with the clutter in our house and everything we have to do and nothing being done.  Despite my mom only being here a few short times, she's been a bit disgusted by it also.  So she inspired us!  She started by buying us closet doors for the baby's room and the computer.  Why we never paid $120 to do the doors in both rooms, I don't know.  But having doors on the closets makes a HUGE difference!  We're still working on it, but we're also cleaning the disastrous mess in the computer room.
Chris has been working everyday since we got back from our trip and I've been busy too, but we're hopefully going to retile the bathroom this weekend.  And then we might do some other improvements to it.  And we're working on organizing everything else too.  Not to mention, the downstairs family room is still only partially dry walled.  Yup, we have a lot to do!  But at least things are getting done!!!

It's finally been snowing a lot here!  April showers bring May flowers!  We desperately need the moisture!  It's been a bit frustrating though, once we got almost a foot of snow and most of it melted the next day making our yard a muddy mess, and making it a pain in the butt to clean Jason's paws every time he wants to go outside.  Which is the other major project we need to do soon this spring, re-seed the backyard and everything that's associated with a nice, thick, grassy yard.  It would be nice to have an automatic sprinkler system, but I think with everything else we have going on we can't afford that right now.

And I guess that's about it.  March just flew by between having company, working to make up for days off, and our trip.  I'm about a month behind on reading, e-mails, my blog, and other blogs.  But I'm getting caught up!!!

Happy Spring!!!

Happy April!!!

The Rest of Our Trip

While in California we got to get together with all of Chris' cousins for two of their kids' birthday parties.  It was great seeing everyone and being with all of the kids.

Danielle and Aaron and three of four of their darling kids.

Mike and Megan

Ani with their sweet baby Kate, and Danielle & Aaron's littlest, Carter, who is not so little.

Ani and Matt with Kate, and Chris with Carter (he's going to be a wonderful daddy!)

This was supposed to be our last day in California and the first day it was nice enough to go to the beach so we went to our favorite, Shaw's Cove in Lagana Beach.

After exploring several coves it was nice enough to tan!  We found Chris a great spot in the shade and me a great one in the sun!  Just as I had worked up the courage to say we could leave, I saw another dolphin!  So we saw dolphins on three different occasions on this trip!  It was soooo awesome!  You can see Catalina Island in the background.

We got to go to the best fast food restaurant ever, In-n-Out!  It puts all others to shame.  Maybe it's a good thing we don't live in Cali, we would probably start eating fast food much more.  We also got to try two other delicious Californian places, Golden Spoon and Mojo Yogurt.  They're both frozen yogurt places and are up their with Cold Stone, yummy and much healthier!

I guess I didn't take any pictures but we also got to spend an evening with Chris' good friends from high school, Marco and Angie and their two kids.  They were playing song wars trying to guess the song name and artist first from music back in their high school days.  Chris and Angie were both amazing at it!  Then being in a musical spirit we decided to karaoke.  Once you get Chris started, you can't get him off, he LOVES it!!!  I on the other hand avoid it!

Because the weather in Colorado wasn't looking good, we decided to stay in California one extra day and not go to Las Vegas or to see my dad in Tucson.  We had a delicious breakfast at the Beach Garden Cafe in San Clemente.  I'm not one to get omelets or have large breakfasts, so I don't have much to compare it to, but they make the best omelet ever!  They load it with tons of crispy bacon, just like I love!  And it comes with tons of potatoes and toast too making it plenty for at least two meals!
The most exciting thing we did on our trip was getting an ultrasound!  I haven't looked into it here, but in California and Utah you can have cheap ultrasounds done for early gender detection.  And since we didn't have much else to do that day, and they finally had an opening we figured we'd take the opportunity.  Our cousins were able to find out at 13 weeks and I was 16 weeks.  So for $30 we got a 15 minute DVD, ten U/S pictures, and found out that WE'RE HAVING A GIRL!!!  Chris and I honestly had no preference whether we had a boy or a girl, but I was SUPER excited and almost relieved to hear that it's a girl!  I think she will be absolutely perfect for us!!!  We'll have our regular 20 week U/S in a few weeks which will confirm it.  The ultrasound was so cool!  At this point she was a little over four inches and still has plenty of room in there.  She was moving all over and sucking her thumb.

I have really begun to realize how totally uncreative, unartistic, and unstylish I am.  And I really want that to change, especially so I can be an awesome mom.  Chris' cousin Ani inspired me to do a craft and it was terrific!  It was really easy to put a cute decoration on these little onesies.  I even sewed on a button!  Probably the first one I've sewed since when I learned in Girl Scouts too many years ago to count.  I'm glad I was able to make something for our girl!

After a quite turbulent flight back, we beat the storm by several hours!  Good thing we came home a day early.  And a good reason for other reasons...

Happy Four Year Anniversary

March 21st, 2005

Sometimes four years seems so long and I can't believe we've been marrried for that long.  But other times it seems like we've been together much longer than that!  We've had so many wonderful times together!  My love for Chris continues to grow everyday and has already reached a level I thought I was unattainable.  Imagine what it's going to be 60-70 years from now!

Since we had celebrated our anniversary on Catalina, we had a bit of a low key day.  I started it by going to the beautiful Newport Beach Temple with Chris' wonderful Aunt Sherri.

Chris and I split a fantastic lunch in San Clemente at the "Beachfire Bar & Grill."  We then walked over to the pier and saw two more sets of dolphins!  What an awesome anniversary gift that was!

Happily Married for Four Years!

Catalina Island

Not only was this trip to get away, see the ocean, and visit family, it was also to celebrate our four year wedding anniversary!  We did this by spending a few days at Catalina Island.  Just a warning:  you will probably see an almost ridiculous amount of couple pics from our trip.  We got a great deal on the ferry trip there and back and two nights in a hotel, total it was only about $30 more than just the ferry price.

Amazingly we saw a whole pod of dolphins!  Everyone guessed about 1oo!  It was a dream come true!  The only thing that could've made it even better is if the captain slowed down so we could admire them for a little longer.

I must admit, the weather was a tad bit disappointing.  For some silly reason I had planned on tropical weather.  It would've been a little closer to that if we had stayed in Colorado since it was nicer there than on Catalina.  We stayed in a quaint LITTLE hotel and thought it had a full kitchen because we planned on buying food rather than eating out.  But we had to get creative as we realized it had no oven or microwave after buying some food back to cook.

View of part of Avalon at sunset.  The weather was the nicest on our first day there.

We went for a nice exploration hike around the island and found a cute little park.

It was cool and foggy our second day there so we cancelled our plan to kayak for the day.  Instead we walked two miles up a hill on a "locals only" road to a residential area.  

They had a nice little beach called "Hamilton Cove."  We explored and read for a little while overlooking the beautiful ocean.  I made it down a little rocky section to the water but after getting back up I cut my foot which somewhat limited our activities for the rest of the day.

Because of the weather and being somewhat limited as to what we could do since we didn't want to spend $45 an hour to rent a golf cart and I didn't have hiking shoes, Chris was patient enough to go shopping with me.  We found some really cute things and great deals!

Our last day was the coolest and foggiest.  We were going to try to walk around to the south side of the island but it was closed to pedestrians because of falling rocks.  We had wished you could enter at your own risk.