Jay Graduated!

So, I said this blog update was coming and I finally got a second this weekend to put up some pictures! Last weekend, we headed to Laramie, Wyoming to the University of Wyoming where our beautiful JJ (Leslie) was going to be graduating that Saturday! It was a pretty long (6 hours), very BORING drive getting there, but a GREAT weekend once we got there! We left on Friday, the 8th of May. Waz and Chez were nice enough to get us a hotel room which we shared with our cute Kates! We checked in to the hotel and had a big family dinner including Kali (cousin who was sweet enough to fly in from Arizona for the graduation) and Abbie and Tony (2 of Jay's bffs!). It was a great night out to pre-celebrate the big day to come!

Waz put together a photo album of many of Jay's greatest moments and some great pictures of our very bright girl!

We were very proud of her! Gregg and I have a tendency to forget we now own a video camera, but we were sure to get a portion of her graduation on video! She graduated with a degree in Secondary Education- English! She is going to be an AMAZING teacher! Her only goal and worry of her life, currently, is finding the right job. We continue to pray the right job with find her.

The proud family with the graduate!! It was a long ceremony, but well worth the wait!

Saturday, after graduation, Jay threw a BBQ at her house in Laramie with lots of yummy food! Cherie made lots of delish dishes and I brought the spinach dip! Gregg, as you can see from above, was the sexy, grilling chef! And turned out some excellent burgers! Most of my burger managed to make it onto my sweatshirt... that giant preggo belly I have doesn't work so great as a table!

It was such a good weekend! We wish we would've made it out to Laramie to visit Jay sooner, but we were very happy to make it to the big event! We're also very glad that Kaylen cooperated with our plan to go and didn't try to come into the world early! We had the car seat and diaper bag in the car just in case, but were very happy to not have to use them! Congratulations, JJ! We are so very proud of you! This is only the beginning of wonderful new adventures to come!

Busy Month!

The month of April brought the last of our baby showers! Above is a picture of my wonderful work friends that threw my work shower. Judy, Kim, Kris, Me, and Ruth. They did a wonderful job and I although I always knew I worked with a lot of great people, all the people that showed up, the wonderful gifts they spoiled us with, made me realize just how lucky I am. There was great company, yummy food and I came home with a car FULL of gifts; Judy came home with me just to help me get them all in the apartment!

You can see above just a tad of my being spoiled! Really, it's baby who's spoiled, but again, it helps us out so much. We could just never imagine if we had to have bought all these wonderful things for the baby all by ourselves. I really do work with some amazing people! Thank you!

Speaking of working with some amazing people, the VA ER threw Gregg a little shindig as well. His friend, Mark, is about to move to South Carolina to finally be with his wife: He finally got a job! One of the nurses, Toni (pictured on the left above) is also pregnant, about 2 weeks ahead of us. So, the ER threw them a "triple" party for the pregnancy and Mark's going away. It was a really good time! Gregg finally got to open some presents himself! I was happy to let him basque in the limelight! He is a more entertaining than I am, so I think the people watching definitely got a better show! His friends and coworkers were also very generous to us. We are both very lucky to work with such wonderful people! Toni will probably end up being induced here in the next week or two and Mark is leaving us shortly, so we wish them both the BEST of luck! :-)

I also turned 28 on the 28th of April! My Golden Birthday! Apparently, this is a Minnesota thing because nobody in Utah seemed to know what the heck I was talking about! But hey, it was a once in a lifetime thing (turning the age of your birthday), so I enjoyed it while it lasted! Tuesday, the day of my birthday, wasn't super exciting, but Gregg did come home after his late softball game so we could have a little time together on my actual day. I opened all my presents. We (for Gregg and my birthday) got a Wii from my parents! We had been wanting one for a while, so it will be nice for Gregg and I to have something fun to do when we can catch a spare minute... which might not be too often here soon! Gregg bought me a Wii Fit along with a workout game. So, hopefully, I can get back into some kind of shape after the baby comes... you know... again, when I have a spare minute! I got other wonderful gifts from my siblings, friends, as well as Gregg's Grandparents in Australia... but I don't want to brag :-) Needless to say, I was spoiled, as seems to be a common theme these days. Gregg planned a dinner out with friends and baked me the super yummy cake you see above! And it was VERY good! Talented man I have! My friends Ryan and Judy also took me out for a birthday dinner! Again, spoiled, spoiled, spoiled!

With the money that Gregg's parents gave me for my birthday, I bought the Shawn White Snowboarding game and above is a picture of Gregg showing off while Colby and Ginny came over to play!

We had a wonderful month! Our biggest event in May was JJ's Graduation on May 9th!! It was a wonderful road trip which will be my next post! I'm a little behind, but I have to head out the door to go pick up my Mom from the airport for her visit! So, JJ's Graduation pictures coming soon!

Baby Update and Easter Weekend

From these pictures, it's obvious that we had another ultrasound! Because I tested positive for a blood clot dealy, my Dr. had me go to a 32 week ultrasound today. We're nearing the end of the 32nd week, Monday will be the start of our 33rd. We got ALL GOOD news! She is definitely a GIRL! For whatever reason, my brain just wanted one more confirmation as the nursery is all green and pink, all her clothes are pink and her name is stenciled on the closet door! One of the first things we got to see was a little white line past the exterior of her cranium and they told us that it's hair! Our little baby girl already has a little hair! That was fun to learn! Her heartbeat is perfect and she's 4.5 lbs. They're predicting her to be 7-8 lbs and even if 8 is on the big side, I'll take is as long as she doesn't come out the 10.8 lbs that Gregg did!

The above pictures are of her face. The one of the top was the last one they took with the 3D camera. It looks like she has lots of bumps on her face, but we were told that it's all umbilical cord, so no worries! You can see where her little eyes, nose and mouth are! Gregg said he's happy it looks like she got my chin... we'll see about that! :-)

The above pictures here aren't as clear. The top picture is of her foot (heel on the right). You can really only see her big toe on the left and her second one is almost hidden. We're just hoping the other 3 are also hidden! :-) The bottom picture is the hardest to see and even I can't really tell now that it's printed out. It seemed a lot clearer when we were there. Her head is on the left and she's holding up her hand. It's kind of hard to tell how her hand is configured, so I would say that's the hardest picture. So, it was LOTS of fun! The only other thing she told us is that I'll have to stop taking the Aspirin at 37 weeks so that I am able to get an epidural. Other than that, everything looks really good! :-)

We went home to Wyoming over Easter weekend and a friend had a Baby Shower for me. There was a great turnout and LOTS of generosity. We feel so lucky for all of the extra help! It's so fun to get to share this with all our friends and family!

That's a picture of all of us on Easter! We had a great Easter with the Joneses getting our Easter bag of goodies and going on the Easter Egg Hunt! Gregg played the Easter Bunny (on Chez's dime) and hid all the eggs filled with chocolate! It was a great weekend. The family even had a little jam session. Gregg's been into playing the guitar lately. He has an old guitar of his Dad's and has been learning to play a few of his favorite Christian songs. He says he's getting ready to play them for Kaylen! Awww!

Well, that's it for the updates! We're going to Sears tomorrow to get a few pictures taken of Baby still in the womb! I have our last Baby Shower on Monday with all the ladies from the Court. Sounds like it's going to be a great turnout! Should be lots of fun! Other than that, we're still just doing all we can to get ready!

Visit from Mom and Updated Nursery

So, can I just say how much I LOVE my mother!? A wonderful friend of our offered to give us their rocker/ glider. When we went over there to have a night of Wii playing and pick up the chair, Camille was mortified that while trying to clean the cushions for us, she managed to ruin them! We felt grateful to even get the chair, so we tried to reassure her all we could that we were just thankful and we would figure something out with the cushions. My mom is quite the handy woman and when I told her the cushions were ruined, she sent us out to pick out fabric, told me to send her pictures of the cushions and told me that one way or another, we would get them fixed. A few days later, she told me she was going to come out to Salt Lake, bring her sewing machine (what!?) and re-do them all for us! And that she did!

I tried to get a couple more pictures on here including one of her working her little tail off, but I can apparently only put this many. I wasn't feeling very well while she was here, so I got a couple more hours with her while laying on the couch holding my belly, but she worked hard from the night she got here until the night before she left! She did all of the cushions and even though we told her not to worry about the arm rests since she couldn't do them quite the way they were, she went with a couple options, so now we have a couple to chose from... one with a pocket and one without! She is very cute! Below is the finished product. It was originally blue and as mentioned before, had torn, stained cushions, so it's come a LONG way!

When my parents were here the last time, we went out to Salt Lake Pizza and Pasta and my mom thought it was pretty great pizza for the price, so we took her there again to treat her for being so wonderful to us for a few days. I mean, who comes all the way out here with a sewing machine in their carry-on bag (only bag she could bring!) to reupholster cushions! We had a wonderful time and got to spend a couple hours chatting. Gregg ended up getting a bad headache after dinner, but with some of his meds, he was able to hang out pretty late on her last night here.

There was a window valance that came with the bedding set that we brought, but with the "fancy" student apartment windows, we weren't quite sure how we were going to get it up, but with my genius husband and creative mother, they came up with a plan and it couldn't have turned out better! Below is Gregg painting the paint portion of their project.

They did so good and the nursery is coming along SO well! The picture below shows the valance they put up. It took some creativity, but as my mom said, it takes some of the "industrial" look away from the window. It is VERY cute! The only things left we have to do in the nursery is do some stenciling and painting on the closet doors. Again, I haven't been feeling very well the last few days, but we're going to try to work on it a little tonight. I'm not really able to go out to eat today and we're poor so we're going to eat here and hopefully work on that a bit.

My mom left this morning and other than the fact that TSA took the heavy duty stapler away from her (yep, the same one they let her fly with from Minnesota), it was a wonderful trip. We made out with a pretty chair, a new valance, sloppy joes and rice krispy bars! We were very lucky to have her help. It was nice of her to come out so quick so it's one less thing for us to worry about. Gregg has been super excited to get the finishing touches done on the nursery!

Gregg's family (minus JJ) will be in town tomorrow night to stay with us for the night as they're leaving for Disney World Monday morning! My mom helped us put together some lasagna for the occasion since I don't know how to cook much of anything! It will be nice to spend a night with them before they take off for a week in one of the best places on earth!

It's been a while since I updated, so I'll try to get better. I'll be 30 weeks on Monday and the OB said everything looked good when we were there yesterday! We're rounding the final leg of this! We'll get a 32 week ultrasound on the 17th of April, so we're looking forward to our one last chance to get a look at her before she's really here!

Minnesota and Baby Shower

Well, last weekend, I went home from March 5-8th and it was so nice to go! I got there on my Mom's birthday, the 5th and got to spend the first part of the day with her! We did a little shopping and I treated her to a pedicure, at which time, I also treated myself! So, it was very nice. My brother got a job just recently with a 2 hour commute each way, so we waited until he got home from work and all went out to a very nice dinner which was on my Dad and brother! What gents! We were able to go to lunch with one of my cousins, his wife and daughter, who we haven't seen in a long time and hadn't even met their daughter Emma! It was so nice to see them! That's everyone below, my Mom, Jeff, Me, my Dad, Ryan, Emma and Stacy!

I had my very first baby shower on Saturday and it was so nice! My Mom's friend, Carol (the woman on the right in the picture above), threw the shower for me and she did great! I realize I'm not huge on being the center of attention, but I think it went wonderfully! It was so hard to get to try to talk to everyone as much as I would've liked as I don't get to see many of them often. But the baby is one very spoiled little girl! We are very grateful for everyone's generosity! It is so nice to have the help of family and friends.

Again, as you can see from the picture above, very spoiled little girl! But so are we for getting all the help! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

My Mom tried to make us swear that when I got home at midnight on Sunday night from my flight that we wouldn't go through all the gifts to show Gregg, but we figured, could we really wait until the following weekend? Um, no! And he gets home from work at midnight during the week, so it would've happened another night that week if it didn't that night! He loved looking through all the presents and this one was made just for him! It was from my family to him. It was a tool belt full of all things Daddy would need: all the necessities along with tongs for the dirty diapers, a medical mask to avoid the smell of the dirty diapers, goggles to avoid all the flying mess, etc. Gregg mentioned that little did everyone know that it is going to be me that has a harder time with all the "messy" stuff than he will be! He's the medical guy, I'm the wimp! He liked it so much, he doesn't want to take it apart! Thanks Mom and Dad! He was shocked to see how much could fit in the duffel bag my Dad gave me to bring everything home. It was obvious how lucky we were.

It was a great trip home! It was very short but wonderful! We are truly blessed for the friends and family that continues to care for us in Minnesota and are apart of this big adventure of ours!

Officially Moved!

Well, with the help of my amazing husband who did oh-so-much work, my parents and friends, Jason, Kat and Mark, everything was moved into the new 3 bedroom apartment on Friday! It was such a relief! It was so nice to have my parents here who made SO many trips back and forth with some of the smaller stuff and my Dad was a big help painting! They helped us clean the old apartment so we wouldn't lose money on our original security deposit and Gregg and I finished up the cleaning on Sunday. And we're happy to say, No Charges! Woo hoo!

The apartment is substantially bigger, at least for us! In our old apartment, we couldn't really use the 2nd bedroom because it was full of so much storage! So, it had our computer and Gregg's clothes, but other than that, it was an awful room! In THIS apartment, we have THREE fully usable rooms! It's great! We were able to fit all of the storage bins for ALL of the CRAP we have in all the closets! Everything has found a home (except for the books that have to make their way to the bookshelf) and we're officially in! The guys did such a great job on the painting and the baby's room is green, green, green! :-) We also got a call last weekend that the bedding set we wanted was finally in, so we went straight there and bought it! I know my Mom was not ecstatic about us spending so much on the set, but it didn't take long to realize, my heart was set on it. It's in the picture above! You can even see the green walls! So, we're working on it all. With more space, we've needed a few more things and we're working on putting on finishing touches, but I think we'll work on that slowly! My lovely sis-in-law pointed out that we are now in the double digits in the countdown... eek! Three months until baby is here! Oh so crazy!

I am SO excited to go to Minnesota tomorrow! It's my Mom's birthday tomorrow, so we're going to go get pedicures together and do dinner as a family tomorrow night. The shower is on Saturday and it will be so much fun to celebrate! It will be too short of a trip, but it will be so nice to go! And Gregg will be thoroughly entertained by his Dad and brother, the Jazz game and skiing! Minus the fact that we'll be apart, it should be a great weekend!

We're Moving!

It's been a while since I've had a chance to update our blog!! But that's because not too much has been going on since I last wrote! But we're officially moving starting today! We have from today through Sunday to get totally moved. Gregg, sad for him, lucky for me, has been in charge of most everything! Honestly, I wish I could do more. I want to be able to do as much as I can to alieviate some of his work! But I can't really move the heavy stuff and we're going to be doing a little painting (again, Gregg will be doing the painting), so he has done a GREAT job at getting the apartment ready for the move and trying to fit everything into his incredibly busy schedule!

We're only moving about 200 ft away into a 3 bedroom apartment, so that should hopefully make things a little easy. We've had lots of offers to help us move and hopefully should be covered! Gregg's friend, Jason, is a personal trainer at our gym and using their big, buff muscles, they're going to move all of the incredibly heavy stuff starting on Friday. Jason has been very kind to try to take off some work and offer to come help Gregg Friday and Saturday, being such a great friend to us! My parents are actually flying in tonight to help us move and clean the apartments as well! I'm secretly hoping they'll help with the apartment we're moving out of as much as we have time for! We've been in it for 3 years now and we want to incur as few charges as possible! They'll only be here for a couple days, but it's so nice of them to come and help!

We have another Dr. appt on Friday as well. I'm 25 weeks this week and my belly has grown! My sister-in-law, JJ, could kill me because I haven't posted any pictures yet! But I'm working on them. We've taken a few and I think I'm finally looking "officially" pregnant. I feel big and know I will get LOTS bigger, so hopefully soon, I'll be willing to post a picture!

I'm headed to Minnesota next week for 4 days as my Mom's friend, Carol, is throwing me a baby shower there, which is so nice! It gives me a chance to see my friends, a lot of my Mom's friends and celebrate being pregnant! I will get there on my Mom's birthday as well, so the timing is great! Gregg's Dad's birthday was Feb 18th and one of the presents was and IOU from us for a ticket to a Jazz game. So, while I'm gone, Warren and Ian are driving from Star Valley to come to a Jazz game that Friday night with Gregg and they're going to spend the day skiing that Saturday. Gregg has really fond memories of his Dad taking him to Jazz games growing up, so I know this will be a great weekend for them as well!

It's been stressful to say the least getting ready for this move! Gregg's schedule has been VERY crazy and he has a couple brutal classes! He has been absolutely amazing and manages to get it all done. Honestly, I'm often in awe of how he does it! He's the best and I couldn't be more proud of him. Hopefully there will be another blog to come soon of a picture... dr update...something! Thanks for hanging in there with us!