Lately

I figured I should post again one last time before this baby makes her debut in what seems like a scarily short amount of time. I can't even believe I'm so close even though I feel like I've been pregnant forever and physically I am feeling done. But I know that we will probably try for a third and that I'll long for these kicks and discomfort again because of what it means.

Anyway, jumping back a few months I had a birthday and not just any birthday... the big one. The big 3-0. That's a little strange to wrap my head around but no matter how old you are you always feel like yourself. I had just barely gotten completely over my horrible intestinal infection and we went out to eat and then to a Pumpkin Patch with our friends the Mannings. I've probably said it before but birthdays are pretty simple when you're an adult.

I was looking forward to the three crazy holiday months to move my pregnancy along faster and keep me busy and man did they ever keep me busy! To the point where now I'm wondering where all the time went and feeling like there is still so much to do! Halloween came and went-- Luke was Harry Potter and we went to our ward Trunk or Treat. On the day of my parents were in town looking at houses because they had decided to move here so they stayed at our house and handed out candy so Bryan and I could both go out with Luke. We took him out last year but he was more in to it (if not a little stubborn due to his age) this year and understood the whole knocking and getting candy thing. Around this same time we transferred him to his new Outer Space big boy room so we could start transforming his old room into a girly nursery (still in progress).

Bryan also had his big birthday and had to stop calling me a cougar for the one month he gets to each year. I honestly can't remember what we did the day of other than going to his new favorite Thai restuarant, Thai Delight, but I made him a couple different birthday cakes because his dad came in to town a few days before so we celebrated with him and then again a few days after with his mom. I also decided to host Thanksgiving (am I a maniac?) so I had the whole turkey and everything to do. It actually wasn't too bad (I was not as big then as I am now...) and the turkey, while it took a little while longer to cook than I'd planned, was great!

Then we celebrated our favorite (to that point) birthday in our family-- our sweet Luke turned 3! It's so hard to believe that he was my little baby and now he runs around and has full on conversations with us-- mostly sweet ones but some definitely stubborn ones as well. I have pictures from all these things but am currently too lazy to post them and pretty much all the people reading this are my Facebook friends and can and probably have already seen them. I had been planning on throwing him a real party this year and doing all kinds of fun holiday stuff with him since it's his last year alone with us and I wanted to make a big deal for him but... I didn't take into account that I wouldn't have the energy I normally have while getting bigger every day. I hope he had fun, anyway. My parents were in town again to close on a house they had decided on so they were able to celebrate with us. I took Luke to McDonald's for lunch and invited some of his little friends to join us at the play place and then we all went out to dinner later. My parents got Luke a train table and we got him a train set and he was so excited! Later we had another birthday party with his Grandma Sandi and Uncle Mike and she got him a neat Codepillar so he can learn to be a programmer like his dad! Whereas I had made Bryan's cakes from scratch I just didn't have the energy anymore and let Luke pick out a couple of box cakes for the different parties.

The day after Luke's birthday I took him to the pediatrician here for the first time and while I was sitting in the waiting room to go in I got a call from Bryan, which is odd since we generally only text while he is at work. He told me that, due to changes in his department, the Church would not be renewing his contract. Panic attacks immediately set in and worries about having to sell our brand new home while pregnant and feeling soooo not able to do that... I was so frustrated because we had moved our entire lives from Boise for this job. I wondered if we had made a mistake in accepting it. I felt the contracting agency had not been totally forthcoming with us about everything. Bryan knew the contract was technically for just one year but the agency really minimized that and said things to the affect that he'd definitely be renewed for a second year and likely be hired on full time after that. When Bryan first started it became apparent that getting hired on full time was a very difficult thing to do at the church due to their having a pension plan and other things. I think from the moment I learned that I started to feel an anxiety at the back of my heart. So we kind of knew that we'd have to be looking for another job but still thought we had two years. Luckily Bryan was still able to finish his contract while looking for other jobs so we didn't have a gap between jobs. He put out several resumes and had one phone interview and another scheduled but a recruiter coincidentally contacted him at the exact time he was looking and set up an in-person interview with him. That went really well and they ended up offering him a position soon after. The compensation and benefits were great and ended up being a better situation than we'd had before (for instance, as a contract worker we had to get our own private insurance which was quite costly). We decided to accept and finally realized that this could be a blessing in disguise. Bryan had never been truly happy with his job at the church-- mostly because of being a contract employee. He felt kind of disposable and not truly valued, which I think he needs in order to thrive in a job. I've decided that what really happened with our move from Boise is that Heavenly Father knew we needed to be in Utah but a job working for the Church was the only way to get us to move here. I very adamantly did not want to move to Utah but Bryan had had a dream of working for the Church since his mission so I couldn't ignore that. It was a really hard move at the time but we are happy to be here now. Bryan started his new job at Workfront last week and has already been really impressed with it and feels valued (yay!). He's been quite happy there, which makes me happy and I think I feel a lot less stressed now that "the worst" has happened and we've made it through. We were actually really blessed because the period of time between finding out we wouldn't have a job and getting a new one was pretty short. I'm grateful for that!

Well anyway, another huge thing that happened is that my parents officially moved here about a week before Christmas! It was crazy fast but has been so nice already to just be a half an hour drive away from them. One scary thing that happened, though, was that my dad had a heart attack scare on New Year's Day and had to be rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. We were all really on edge and emotional. He's had a major heart attack before and had to have surgeries. We were very lucky to find out that he was able to get nitroglycerin soon enough to stop it from being a full on heart attack. He ended up not needing to have any further surgeries this time and we were all so grateful for that. We need him in our lives for a long, long time. He is a stable, kind, thoughtful and loving father and I couldn't have asked for more.

Going back a bit, though, we had our first Christmas in our new house and had a nice, small morning with just the three of us before heading to church. After we were able to go spend the evening at my parents' house and have Christmas dinner. It was so nice to be there! We were unable to see Sandi because of a recent intense knee replacement she'd had but we got to go up and spend the following weekend with her. This Christmas was scary because right in the midst of present buying we had our job scare so everything was put on hold for a couple weeks until we accepted our new offer. Thanks for saving Christmas Workfront!

And now we are down to the final stretch of pregnancy before the baby is born. I am so ready/not ready. I don't know the last time I made so many Google Sheets trying to be organized for freezer meals, hospital bag, house cleaning, thank you notes, etc etc etc. There is so much left to be done and I really doubt everything on our list will actually get there but I'll try to do the most essential, at least. Everyone asks me how I'm feeling and I generally say I have no energy or patience (two things you really need with a three year old). I also feel enormous, she moves around all the time (amazing and uncomfortable at the same time), my heartburn is killing me, I have to change sides constantly at night for hip pain and of course I constantly have to pee. To reiterate from earlier, my body is feeling done sharing with another human being. This time my doctor plans to induce me at 39 weeks if I'm at all dilated at 37 weeks because of how quickly Luke came (or would have if we hadn't been able to slow things down with an epidural). I am always so scared of not making it to the hospital (20 minutes away) in time and having the baby in the car. Luke came at 38 weeks 6 days so as long as I can make it to 39 hopefully we'll be okay. It'll be strange to experience a full on labor instead of having my water break and already be dilated to a 9! Who knows what to expect? It's kind of terrifying. One thing I'm certain of, though, is that the next time I'm writing in this blog I'll be a mom of two and I'll be telling exactly how it all did happen. For now, I'm signing off.

Halloween 2015

Fall is just the best time of year, in my opinion.The weather starts to cool down and the trees turn beautiful shades of red and orange. It's my birthday month and I get to wear boots over my jeans and cardigans. My second favorite holiday also happens to land in the fall and there is the excitement of other holidays around the corner. This year we started off the festivities by going to Linder Farms with our friends the Mannings. Luke had so much fun climbing on hay bales and running through hay bale mazes, riding tractors and Go Karts with dad and playing in the corn pit with his buddy Jackson. We also took a hay ride out to several huge pumpkin patches to choose our pumpkins.

On the hay ride

This pumpkin gets so much bigger every year

We have a tradition of carving pumpkins the Monday before Halloween for FHE. This year Luke wasn't able to carve his own but he was so much more involved in the whole process, which was fun to see. We ran around the driveway and "helped" us scoop out our pumpkins and draw on them. The designs we chose are indicative of our interests.

Yuck, guts!

Bryan: Protoss symbol from Starcraft

Me: Deathly Hallows...

...and a snitch, because I had room

Luke: Daniel Tiger

Also this past weekend we had Bryan's cousin Laura and two guy friends come for a visit (they were the 11th Doctor, Amy Pond and Rory in the last Centurion form.... so awesome). Laura's newlywed sister lives nearby in Nampa and their parents happened to be visiting them that weekend as well so we had a big Halloween party! We had mummy french bread pizza and bone shaped bread sticks. We played a lot of games and they held down the fort and handed out candy while we took Luke trick or treating.

I just love coming up with ideas for costumes. Seriously like five months ago I was like, "Halloween is coming up-- I better think of a good costume for Luke!" Five months ago. To be fair, I had his Link costume picked out for his first Halloween before he was ever born. I've become quite the crafter in the past few years so I love making his costume. Though we don't necessarily always plan to have family costumes, Bryan and I decided to go along with Luke's theme. I decided to go with a Hobbit this year because Bryan got really into the movies this year and watched each other them several times with different commentaries. I would often come downstairs on Saturday morning to find him and Luke watching one of them. And, since Hobbits are short and, lets be honest, kind of cute, I decided that's what Luke should be! Bryan and I decided to be simple version of Gandalf and Arwen (chosen only because I have brown hair like her rather than Galadriel). Someone pressed us on which Hobbit Luke was and I really didn't have one in mind. If I had to choose I'd say he probably most resembles Samwise Gamgee.

Our little Lord of the Rings family

My adorable Hobbit!

Gandalf and a Hobbit on their way to Isengard... er trick or treating

Luke had so much fun trick or treating! We did a big loop around our neighborhood but it wasn't too many houses because a lot of people had their lights off, no doubt trick or treating themselves. He didn't know how to say "trick or treat" yet but he did know how to reach out his hand after someone answered the door. He loved collecting the candy and putting it in his bag and was so well behaved as well. I just love my little family. I hope everyone else had a Happy Halloween too!

Christmas 2014...

I literally cringed as I wrote that title. I feel incapable of moving forward and writing more blog posts until I acknowledge and account for our Christmas.

This should be short, as we didn't go anywhere this year and hadn't just barely had a baby.

The Sunday before Christmas I got food poisoning. 😷 It was seriously not fun and I think it'll be a while before I can look at, much less eat, Thai food again. I'm sorry, Bryan. He served his mission there and loves the food. Well anyway, luckily for me Bryan took the whole week off so I had the help I needed with Luke. Unluckily for Bryan (and me) our Christmas break week wasn't all we hoped for. In fact, I was determined to have Luke see Santa and get a picture on his lap but was unable to. I was feeling better but not great so we went to The Village a couple days before to find a TWO HOUR WAIT... in the winter cold!! Horrible. So we left and it was an altogether miserable experience.

I was feeling like 95% myself on Christmas Eve and our friends invited us over to enjoy a little dinner and Christ centered program. That was so nice, especially since we don't have any family in town. It really made the evening special and we even got some Christmas Eve snow!

The next morning we got up and opened presents with our one year old little boy! He didn't really get what was going on but it was still fun. We had our traditional Eggs Benedict breakfast followed by a lazy day enjoying new presents and resting. We then had our traditional Ham dinner... and that was that!

So now that St. Patrick's Day is upon us... Woops. Anyway, at least now I'll feel resolved about that. Here are some Christmas videos we took (I totally forgot about pictures! Uh oh!) I hope the YouTube links work. Enjoy!

Thanksgiving 2014

On this, Luke's very first Thanksgiving, we actually had two Thanksgivings. My parents were in Utah on company business and I begged them to come to Boise and so they did and we decided we'd have our own, small Thanksgiving. I don't get to see my parents often, though this year has most definitely been an above average count for visits with them. I'll take every minute I can get! It's always fun to have them in our home. I was very excited to cook my first turkey ever. Our pre-Thanksgiving actually landed on a Friday. On Thursday we went shopping for everything we'd need the next day. My mom put her part of the meal together that night. We were also able to take them to see The Village at Meridian, which has such a nice ambiance. The next day I slaved away in the kitchen making turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, potatoes and gravy. It sounded pretty simple beforehand but it was a lot of work. I will always appreciate the work that goes in to Thanksgiving from now on. My dad made all his pie crusts from scratch. He made a pie with pumpkin pie filling and another he made from real pumpkins so we could compare tastes. The homemade pie definitely won out but it was so, so much work I'm not sure he'll make the endeavor again.

Luke really enjoyed these sweet potatoes-- my mom's classic recipe.

He got a bath immediately following this picture.

On Friday we mostly relaxed before my parents had to get their flight back to Maryland. We gave them their Christmas presents and they gave Luke his birthday present early. It was a V Tech Sit to Stand Learning Walker. He loves it-- the way is lights up and makes noises and all the different things there are to do. It was so fun to see him playing with it for the first time.

He can also push it around from the back but mostly enjoys the front.

"Playing" with Callie.

Then it was time to say goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa. Luke was so smiley all weekend but when it came time for them to go he wouldn't smile for a picture. I'm guessing this is because he was very sad to see them go, as were we. We had such a good time with them!

The next week we packed up our car and drove down to Utah for actual Thanksgiving. This year we had it at Shelley's house rather than at Bryan's mom's house.

Whitney cousins enjoying some play time together before dinner.

Bryan heading up the turkey fryer with a little help from Grandpa Vern and Dustin.

Bryan fried the turkey and it was delectable-- as was the rest of the meal. Though, I do have to say that I'm ready for a break from turkey for a while after this. Bryan's mom asked me to be in charge of decorating the table this year and it was so fun to do. We had a simple centerpiece-- a wooden bowl with candles and fall berries. I even made a table runner from burlap and used my Silhouette Cameo to make leaf stencils and spray painted those on. I used my Cameo again to make place cards, though they can't really be seen. We also made place mats from art paper with the words "I am thankful for:" on them.

Here is the table setting all together.

Of course to finish the evening off we had some delicious pumpkin pie with whipped cream.

Dessert for Luke.

We had some other festivities as well but they will follow in a coming blog post. We had a fun Thanksgiving and now we are so excited to bust out all the Christmas decorations and music we want. This won't be Luke's first Christmas but he'll be able to be more a part of the traditions this time (and I won't be so out of it!). I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving as well!

Halloween 2014

This is the Halloween I've been waiting for for many years-- the first one I have with my own child. Of course, Luke is a little young for most of the festivities but we were still able to start some of our traditions-- going to a pumpkin patch, carving pumpkins, getting excited about costumes and even a ward trunk or treat. I love Halloween-- I'd say it ranks second in my favorite holidays list (next to Christmas, of course). I love the excitement in the air and I, of course, love the season in which it falls (seriously, no pun intended). I love the decorations and the preparations. I've been planning this Halloween since before I was pregnant. I knew that if I had a boy that I would dress him up as Link, from Bryan's favorite and beloved childhood video game The Legend of Zelda. I like doing things that are special to Bryan-- Luke's dinosaur nursery was also in homage to Bryan's childhood. Now we're just hoping for our next to be a girl so we can dress them up as Luke and Leia. :)

First things first, we went to a pumpkin patch in the earlier part of the month. Apparently some of my pictures are automatically being made into GIFs, so I thought I'd post some of those. You can see from below that Luke and Dada were having a lot of fun!

Classic shot of baby at the pumpkin patch.

On the Saturday before Halloween, we were able to participate in our very first ward Trunk or Treat. We ate chili and all the little kids from our ward made the rounds getting their candy. We got to show off our costumes for the first time, though we had to explain it to most people.

Another family tradition we have is carving pumpkins on the Monday before Halloween-- it's one Family Home Evening each year that is a given. Luke only stayed for the beginning. All he wanted to do was push his little pumpkin off this tray. So we snapped a couple of pictures and put him to bed.

I took some pictures with finished pictures the next day. Luke is checking out this weird thing-- we carved his for him as a very classic Halloween Jack O'Lantern. Bryan, in keeping with the Zelda theme, carved a Hyrule crest and I tried to do an owl in honor of Hedwig.

Finally Halloween arrived! Honestly there isn't much to do with a baby but I took him downtown to Dada's work and we went out for lunch. Everyone is the restaurant, including the owner, were oohing and ahhing over my adorable baby. A couple older ladies kept calling him the Jolly Green Giant. I didn't have to heart to correct them. The owner insisted on giving Luke some free ice cream at the end, which was cute. Bryan's coworkers (also software developers and more likely to be aware of video game characters...) were mostly all able to appreciate Luke's costume right off the bat. It was so fun to take him there and show him off. If you want to make a mom feel happy, tell her how adorable her baby is. I live for that when we're out in public. Anyway, that evening we took a little photo shoot to get the full effect of the costumes and then Luke was in bed before most of the trick or treaters were out. We'll see about next year!

He didn't want to keep his hat on.

Bryan isn't really in to the whole dressing up thing and initially all he was going to do was wear his Zelda t-shirt but after playing Hyrule Warriors he really wanted me to make him Link's scarf.

Scarf detailing.

I knew I wanted to do something to go along with Luke but I wanted to be something simple so he'd get most of the attention. There is a very well known little fairy named Navi in one of the games that is a ball of blue light with white wings. She says, "Hey! Listen!" to Link all the time. As his mom, I thought that seemed very fitting.

Spooooky Halloween dinner.

Well, it's sad that Halloween has come and gone but there are plenty of exciting things to come this month and next. They can be very full and slightly stressful months but they are oh so fun! Coming up we have Bryan's birthday, a little pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving with my parents, actual Thanksgiving in Utah, Luke's first birthday (!!!) and of course Christmas. It's time to go blog crazy!

Independence Day + Life

Oh, do I have a blog? Sometimes its been weeks months since I've written and then all the sudden I'll remember that I have one. Especially now that we have our sweet little boy, I want so much to document life. I was looking through my personal hand written journal the other day and realized that I haven't written in it since I found out I was having a boy. Wow, Alyssa. Way to take note of the important things in life. Aaaaanyway, I'm here now, writing about not writing... so I should probably get onto the meat of the post.

Well, the 4th of July was a couple of weeks ago and we had a great day. I just love any reason to celebrate. Recently, I've started a craft group with some other ladies in my ward/neighborhood and I've really enjoyed it because I love crafting. We meet just once a month but I craft myself nearly every day. Anyway, at our first craft group I made these:

I saw them on Pinterest and couldn't stop thinking about them. They aren't perfect but I really like them. I just put little flags in them this year but maybe next year I'll get some flowers or something for them.

Since the 4th was a Friday we decided to use the long weekend and go to Utah. This was Luke's first long trip ever! The car ride was the worst of it. We left after Bryan got home from work and I assumed that would be perfect and he'd sleep in the car. Sometimes when we're out and about and it's getting close to nap time as we are driving home Luke will fall asleep in his car seat (which I hate because then it's hard to transfer him without disrupting the nap process) so I thought it'd be like that. I'm not sure if it was because it was bedtime instead of nap time or because Bryan's car is brighter than the one Luke and I drive around in (it has better gas mileage) but it was not what I was expecting. He did take a little nap in the late afternoon of the car ride and that went okay. I snapped a picture of him sleeping. So cute:

To grandmother's house we go!

Anyway, he was a tired boy on the trip but did pretty well with naps once we were actually there. On the 4th we went a little carnival in Morgan, where Bryan's mom lives. It was so so hot and I was reminded of why I'm not a fan of summer. I hadn't realized this until then because I spend most of my time a.) in the house in air conditioning b.) in the car in air conditioning c.) in a store in air conditioning... basically I would die without air conditioning. I mostly lurked in the shadows (i.e. shade of anything I could find). It was a cute little fair with a lot of fun things for kids to do. Cousin Ella got her face painted. She asked for a "unicorn looking at an American flag" and the face paint's eyes widened dramatically with each word. In the end she just got a unicorn-- she's a funny girl. There were also some fun ring toss, etc games to play for free. Bryan, Luke, Shelley, Ella and Ethan took a cute little train ride around a field.

I love this candid shot of everyone.

Later that day Bryan's cousin, her husband and their baby girl Dierdre came over. Dierdre and Luke are just a couple weeks younger than Luke so we thought it would be fun to get them together. It sure was! They really interacted. You can kind of see it in some of the pictures below. Dierdre is a cute girl with such a sweet disposition. I wish we could have play dates more often!

We had a delicious BBQ with hot dogs, hamburgers, potato salad, frog eye salad, corn... so many delicious things. I made a fruit pizza for dessert:

When the babies were put to sleep we decided to set off some small fireworks. I've never bought fireworks before-- just watched the big ones others set off. It was fun to do that and have sparklers. It'll be fun when Luke is old enough to appreciate these things too.

After, we just sat in Sandi's backyard and watched fireworks all over the valley. I'm not exaggerating when i say it was the best fireworks experience I have ever had. We didn't have to go anywhere or deal with crowds and we could see them going off all over. Her neighbors even set off some really good ones right in front of us that were better than the city fireworks! I can't remember which these were, though:

So fun! The next day my old roommate Alicia came up and visited all day. it was so fun to introduce her to Luke and she just loved him. Who doesn't, though? He is such an adorable, happy baby. I can't get enough of him. We played with Luke and when Luke went down for naps we played games just like old times. In the evening we ate s'mores and finished off our small fireworks.

What an amazingly fun weekend! We drove home on Sunday and that drive was probably worse than the one there. There was this huge hassle of trying to find a place to warm Luke's bottle and the only gas station for miles having the convenience store closed... seeing someone run into the pump... Luke waking up and falling asleep a million times over... Lets just say we were so happy to get home and sleep in our own beds.

Also since I last posted Bryan and I were able to celebrate Mother's Day and Fther's Day. Last year we knew we were having a baby and so we celebrated but now we really are fully fledged parents. For Mother's Day Bryan bought me a 90 minute massage and a couple other small, cute things. Oh. My. Gosh. I told him he could get me that every year! Best Mother's day present ever! Motherhood is hard work and getting to relax like that is just about the best thing I could have asked for. For Father's Day I got Bryan a few small things and we also got a grill from Target for a really good deal! We've been grilling up a storm ever since. Bryan is a grill master already.

 As I mentioned earlier, I am super into crafting and sewing right now. It's important to do something for yourself as a motehr so you aren't drawing from an empty well. This is what I do for me and I'm thriving in it. Sometimes I can't fall asleep at night for thoughts of all kinds of different projects I'm planning on doing. A lot of them are for my house but one of the things I'm doing is making these padded travel play mats for babies and selling them on Etsy. If you're interested here's the link: http://www.etsy.com/shops/TheLoveableLion

Well, last but absolutely not least is Luke. Really, I just saved the best for last. We love this little boy so much! The first three months were very hard. I loved him dearly then as well but they were very hard. I'm sure you're aware if you've been keeping up with this blog. After that the months have really seemed to fly by! I love being a mom to this smiley sweetheart. It's still hard work but he is so cute and so much fun. I love watching him grow up and go through all these different stages. He eats normal food with us and has his bottom two teeth and his top two are slowly coming in. He can roll over both ways easily and always, always immediately rolls to his tummy for sleep now. He's been in his crib for months and sleeps 11 hours most nights! We love bedtime! He enjoys having his Dada read him bedtime stories and his Mama sing to him. He still has a full head of hair and has had three haircuts already! If we set him down sitting up he stays that way easily to play with toys. Right now he is working on crawling! He army crawls pretty well but is working on getting up on his knees. He's no longer content to sit in our laps but wiggles all around to get to what he wants. He is such a cute boy and I kiss him pretty much every moment I am playing with him. Here's a video I took of him trying to crawl yesterday. Beware, it is three full minutes long.

Life is very, very good.