Disappear much??

Yeah...I know, right?

You guys. I think about all kinds of things to write about all the time. I just need to discipline myself to make short quality posts on a regular basis. Because, you know, my 10 followers might be missing out on my important inner thoughts.

Well, here are a few inner thoughts to hopefully get me started on here again.

This new part of my life has been pretty amazing. Bubba has stolen our hearts and she has taught us so much of her wisdom in her short 10 months of life.

And wouldn't ya know...a second sweet bundle of joy is on the way! Which was certainly a surprise, and a very welcomed one! We are so excited for our family to continue growing.

The last 10 months have been a blur! A blur of craziness and immense blessings. Our cup truly runneth over and we are so grateful.


Like I said, I'm hoping to be at least a little better at regular blog posting. Even if it's not that often. If for no other reason, so that I can have a record of goings on around here and keep up with other friends and family.

Have a great one!

Reading Review :: All you need is love...

Harry Potter Series
I made some random connections on my latest journey with Harry. Throughout the entire time Harry is figuring out his purpose and what his future holds, Dumbledore mentions multiple times that "love" is what sets him apart from He Who Must Not Be Named. In the ending bits, Harry kind of scoffs at the idea that all it might take to defeat Voldemort is "love." However, in the end, love truly was a main factor in saving those he loved.

As I was doing some personal scripture study a day or two after finishing the series, I read the scripture from John 15:13 that says, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." And seriously - Harry did that! It was just a connection I randomly came across and thought it was interesting. I'm not sure how I never noticed it before.

Also, I was finally sorted into a house, and I am officially a Hufflepuff! Hufflepuff proud!!


A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Let me start by telling you a short story. This book is the book that made me hate reading when I was young. I had to ready it in like 4th grade...I think. Maybe 6th? I can't really remember. But for some reason I hated this book and it spurred my hatred for reading/comprehension for most of the rest of my middle school experience. When I got to high school, I realized if I found a book I liked that reading wasn't all that bad. So then I kind of liked reading. But it wasn't until college/getting married that I really discovered how wonderful reading is.

As I have uncovered this new and exciting part of my life, I decided to re-read a few of the books I hated when I was younger to see how I feel about them now, many years later. This book wasn't too bad. Still not my favorite, but I think I'll read the books that come next her Time Quintet series. So I guess there is a little bit of attachment there.

This book was interesting, and a super-fast read. I read it in one day...it was pretty slow at work that day. I think the reason I didn't like it when first reading it was because I didn't understand what was happening. Even though it's technically a children's book, it deals with some complicated topics, like "wrinkling"time and space. I know for a fact I didn't understand that as a child.

However, now knowing that L'Engle is Christian and that she probably slips in Christian themes (which she did pretty obviously in this book), I read it with a different mind. Not to mention I'm many moons older than when I first read it. And surprisingly enough, I made a similar connection here with Meg Murry and her adventure through time and space as I did with Harry Potter. Whaaa?? I know. [This might be a spoiler!] She has to figure out for herself about love, what it truly means, and how that sets her apart. Maybe that gives away the whole book. But I really enjoyed the ending. Not sure about the Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which yet. But perhaps they'll grow on me as I ponder it again and again.

Sacrament hymn lullabies

I'm not sure why, but I've always felt weird singing to the Bubs. It's silly! Because I love singing! If you ask me to sing at church or something, I'll gladly say "yes!" And she doesn't know how good my singing is. She just likes how it sounds, and she likes the smiles we share when I sing to her.

I finally broke out of my comfort zone and truly sang to her yesterday because she was fussy, and we were just trying to make it until Steve got home. The hymn book on my piano was open to the sacrament hymns and I just started singing what it was open to. As I sang about our Savior's sacrifice and love for us, the spirit spoke so much peace to my heart. I think because it was a different setting than where I usually sing these songs, I really listened to the words as I sang and remembered the meaning of Christ's atonement for all of us.

Even though she still fussed a little bit, I know we could both feel the calm and peace that entered the room as I sang these beautiful songs of love. She has already taught me so much about how much our Heavenly Father loves us, and I'm so grateful for all that we're learning on this journey.

Here is the last verse of my favorite sacrament hymn, As Now We Take the Sacrament.

As now we praise thy name with song, The blessings of this day
Will linger in our thankful hearts, And silently we pray
For courage to accept they will, To listen and obey.
We love thee, Lord; our hearts are full. We'll walk thy chosen way.

February 2015 Valentine Date

For the third year running, I made Hubs a date night booklet for one of his Christmas presents. Because we had the baby in December, I decided all the dates for 2015 better be very easy and at-home. There's only one where we could go out - our anniversary. And she'll be 8 months by then, so she could stay with someone for a couple hours. :)

This is one of our favorite traditions, and I'm so glad we do it every year. February's date this year was obviously for Valentine's Day. We made s'mores and watched a movie. We also continued our other Valentine's tradition of getting a heart-shaped pizza from Papa Murphy's. Yum!

I used picmonkey.com to make all the little descriptions for each of the dates. They all look just about the same, just using different colors. When I finished all of them, I printed them all on white cardstock. I still haven't connected them together...y'know how babies take up a lot of your time and energy? So I've yet to do that, but I'm just going to punch a hole in the top left corner and put some ribbon through to tie them all together.

Here's my really awesome phone picture of all our s'mores ingredients. We'll obviously have the ability to make s'mores for days considering there's only two of us. :) We ended up watching a movie I'd never heard of before called Stardust. If you haven't seen it, it's really fun and interesting. It's running on Netflix Instant right now. It was a pretty great romantic Valentine's movie without being too incredibly mushy.

We are so lucky our little Bubba is such a good sleeper. We were able to put her down for bed and have our date without interruption. And here she is wishing you a Happy Valentine's Day!! We hope you had a good one!

Baby came early! :: The Abridged Version

I was pregnant.

Now I'm not.

Our sweet little Bubba Gump wiggled her way deeper into our hearts on December 12, 2014. We love her and have had such joy in watching her grow and learn so far. We can't wait for what the rest of our lives as a family has in store for us!


If you're interested in reading the long version of Bubba's arrival, here is the story.

Baby came early!

The baby came early. As with anything that happens early, we did not expect this to happen! So here's the story.

On December 10, my doctor told me I was dilated to a 3. (WOO!) But I was still feeling normal and didn't feel like the baby was coming any time soon. He did mention that my blood pressure was a tiny bit high enough that he was going to induce me on my 39 week mark. (This was also a bonus because he was going out of town over my actual due date.)

On December 11, I'd been having contractions all day, but they were random and they didn't hurt, so I was just trying to ignore them and relax. The main reason I was trying to ignore them was because that night was supposed to be our last date night out without a baby. But they started hurting right before dinner, even though they were still random and far apart. So I downloaded a contraction tracking app on the way to dinner so I could have a record to know what to do! But I knew that the hospital was a ways away - maybe even the next day.

When we got home, I decided we better take our 38 week pregnancy picture (just in case). But I wasn't going to the hospital. The baby wasn't coming yet...

We then decided to make some cookies to take my mind off the contractions. We did. And the contractions got stronger and quite close together all of a sudden. My tracker app was showing they were generally about 6 or 7 minutes apart. But there were times when they were 3 minutes apart. At this point I started to wonder if we needed to get ready to leave for the hospital, but I wasn't convinced quite yet.

After the cookies were done at about 10 P.M., I decided I'd just go to bed and see if relaxing helped slow the contractions down. Then I would know that I was right and the baby wasn't coming yet. (I have to mention that my true reasoning for putting off going to the hospital for so long was because I did NOT want to get sent home! The hospital is a good 20-25 minutes away, so coming home was not an option for me.)

Off to bed we went. Steve was soon snoozing away and I was at least relaxed. My contractions did slow down to about one every 20-30 minutes. And I only know this because I frantically looked at the clock whenever I felt one.

Suddenly at midnight I sat straight up in bed with an enormous contraction! Without waiting for another to come along, I woke up Steve and we got to packing the last minute things in our hospital bag. Contractions were coming along at a steady 4-5 minutes as we were getting everything ready.

We got to the hospital at 1 A.M. and they checked me. I was still only dilated to a 3 at this point, and my doctor wanted me to walk for an hour to make sure I was progressing. After walking around that hospital floor for the longest hour of my life (as contractions were coming every 2-3 minutes) I was dilated to a 4! We fist pumped all the way to the delivery room because we weren't going home!!!

I decided to get the epidural much sooner than I anticipated - because ummm...OW. Contractions hurt, guys! ;) Although, I felt like I was handling them pretty well. The anethesiologist, anasthesialogist, guy with the heavenly epidural came in around 3:30 A.M. and I got the epidural going. Note: That hurt more than anticipated. Everyone says it's mostly pressure, but mine was mostly pain. Not to mention that he had to do it twice because the little tube was kinked the first time so it wasn't flowing right. Ouch times 2.

After the epidural was going, it was neat to focus on my contractions and the baby's heart rate. I thought that this would be the longest part - waiting for the baby to descend. However, every time a nurse came in to check my progression, I was more and more dilated. They kept commenting incredulously, "This is your first baby??" Yes! My baby knows what's going on, yo!

At about 10 A.M. they started talking about pushing and making sure the doctor was on his way. The nurse said, "If you can, try to take a 10 or 15 minute power nap so you can be relaxed and rested when we start pushing." HA. That's funny. I just sat there and listened to the baby's heart rate.

I was also a little nervous about pushing because you hear all those stories of women that push for hours before the baby comes, or they push for hours and then end up needing a C-section. Nothing against C-sections -- that just seems like a lot of work, and then suddenly you need a C-section.

However, I got lucky once again and this baby knew what to do. We probably pushed for about 15 minutes before she started coming. I actually had to sit and wait for a moment for the doctor to get ready to deliver her. After he was ready, a couple more pushes and our little bug was here!

Bubba was born on December 12 at 10:50 A.M. She was 6 pounds 13 ounces, and she was 19 inches long. I got to do skin-to-skin with her right after she was born and she was so sweet. She even reached out and touched my face a couple times. My first thought was, My body just pushed this enormous baby out of me! I know she's not enormous, but when you compare her to the opening she came through, she's enormous. The body and this miracle of life still amazes me. There are moments I still can't believe my body helped host this sweet little one, helped her grow, and then bring her into the world.

For most women, that first moment with their little one is the most precious and emotional. Like I said, I was still amazed at what my body had just done.

THIS was my favorite moment...

Seeing him be such a proud papa and look at her with such love was unbelievable. I love this guy!

The part of this whole experience that seemed the longest and most drawn out was the next 48 hours in the hospital. I mean, it was clean, the staff were all amazing and friendly, we could bring in whatever food we wanted, etc. But I just wanted to be at home in my own bed.

Here we are finally getting ready to go home!

She is so teeny tiny in that giant carseat!!

We got home and were reminded of what amazing neighbors we have. We have been so blessed in our neighborhood. They've all shown so much love and care as they've brought us dinners, offered to help watch her if I needed a nap, and just plain shown such interest in our lives. I love our ward and neighborhood more than I thought possible!

And here is our sweet little Christmas present waiting for Santa on Christmas Eve. :)

Overall, the experience was was great and was smooth sailing. So for all the horror stories you hear about labor and giving birth, know that there is probably a normal, run-of-the-mill story like mine where things go well and just as great as anyone could hope for.

We love our little girl and all that she has helped us learn in the short time she's been here so far. She has been such a challenge and such a blessing. We can't wait to keep learning as she grows and shows more of her personality!

36 weeks :: Belly Progress

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope your holiday was filled with loved ones, yummy food, treats, and lots of relaxing. Ours was certainly low key, which baby girl and I greatly appreciated.

Here is the progress belly picture for 36 weeks. I wore a different outfit than usual, but you can still see that the belly is bigger. I can tell I'm growing, and I'm happy to announce that I'm not completely miserable yet. My back is stiffer and I'm slower, but I'm still feeling good!

The time table is starting to feel crazy! We can't believe that in just a month (or less, eeps!) we will have a cute little dino hanging out in our house with us. We've got all the clothes washed and put away, and all the gear is just hanging out in her room. We just need to do some organizing and rearranging and we'll be ready for her to join us.

The doctor is starting to check my progress and my body is starting to recognize what's going on. Hooray for my body not being completely clueless. And the baby is in optimal position for being born...as she has been for the past few months. Our shy little dinosaur hasn't looked at us for months. Oh well - I'm glad she's getting ready to come join our little family.

I hope you have a great Thanksgiving weekend!