Our Spontaneous St. George Trip

Steve and I decided to take a mini vacation to St. George over Spring Break.  We were celebrating my birthday, our anniversary, and Steve's promotion.  In other words, we had a good excuse to spend some well earned moola.  Here are the highlights of our trip.  I am 28 weeks preggo in these pics!  Now I'm 31....ahhhhh!! Anyway, on with the pics!

This photo was fun to take.  I put the camera on the hood of the car with a little tripod.  I really didn't think about the distance I was going to have to run in the ten seconds before it took the picture.  I'm not uploading THAT picture, but here is the one Steve clicked and ran for.  Steve had a good laugh at my waddle-run for awhile afterwards.

If anybody can tell me what in the world this is, I will give you a.....high five!  It appears to be some sort of caterpillar nest.  Not too sure whether they turn into butterflies or moths.  There were quite a few in the trees...so weird!

 These next two are from the Weeping Wall Trail.  I was miserable...I waited for ever for the porta potty, went in and no toilet paper, so I decided to wait for the other one to open.  Well about 10 minutes later (or at least it seemed) the little girl was still not out.  I wanted to send in a search party, but decided to hoof it up the trail with an enormously full bladder instead.  When we got back down, there was a line of about 5 women and another line of 3 men.  The toilets were for either sex, so I stood in the men's line!  hahaha They still took a lot longer than I thought men should take.  Luckily this one had toilet paper, and the line of 5 women was down to about 2 by the time I came out.  (They all kept coming out saying, "There's no toilet paper!") hehehe

This is me driving the tram.  You can't drive yourself around this part of Zion, but you can sit in the back half of the tram and pretend!

We had to stop for a whole family of goats to cross the road and climb the mountain.  I think there were three babies...Oh I love babies!!

This was called Checkerboard Mountain or something to that effect.  Look closely and you'll see why.

This is a pic from inside the tunnel looking out of one of the peep holes.  Okay, let's take a poll...how many of you know it is common courtesy to honk inside a tunnel???  I mean come on!  I even tried the whole "Bum, Budda, Bum, Bum" thing and nobody replied with "Bum, Bum".  GEEEEZ!!!!  HELLO???

This next one was originally three pics, now they are stitched together.  Pretty awesome!

The Court of the Patriarchs

Zion was our biggest thing we did while in St. George, but we also went to The Gun Barrel Restaurant, Pancho and Lefty's Mexican (on my birthday of course!), and swam in our hotel pool.  We really only had one full day there.  On the way back home, I was feeling nauseous, decided to take an anti-nausea pill, choked on the diet coke I was using to swallow the pill, and ended up barfing in the car!  Uggg!!!  That has never happened before!  Steve had to endure me "having a moment" (that is a phrase I use a lot now days) which included many tears and tissues!  Thankfully I had on two shirts and could take the top layer off.  Unfortunately, it was a blizzard a good majority of the way home and we couldn't roll down the windows!  Oh, the joys of pregnancy!  I think it's preparing me for the "joys of motherhood"!

The Best Two Years of My Life!

Steve and I celebrated our 2nd Wedding Anniversary this past Sunday, April 10th.  To commemorate the best two years of our lives, here are some pics from the last two years.  Please don't pay attention to how much weight we've gained!!!  It's happy weight...right?

These first two pics are from our wedding.  In the 2nd one I was super excited to kiss my new husband!!

This is from the deck of our cruise ship on our honeymoon.  We went on a 15 day cruise that started in Florida and ended in California...traveling through the Panama Canal.

This is a pic from Garden of the Gods in Colorado.  In this picture, we had just run down a major cliff!  See us running?  (Ok, my mom missed the part where we were actually running so we had to stage the picture.  I'm sure you couldn't tell!  Right?)  We were in Colorado Springs for my cousin Jennifer's wedding.

This is Steve and I at the Rocky Mountain Raceway.  We had free tickets, it was fun to see all the weird people and the cars too!

This is Steve's graduation!  University of Phoenix was being stupid and said he didn't have enough credits to walk when he really did...so he missed it.  We made up for that in a front yard graduation ceremony!  I'm pretty sure Steve kept hitting on the lady handing out the diplomas.

The tragic events of Tomato Days!  Steve was hit by a para-plane (A motor operated parachute).  Do you see his nice swollen head?  That bandage is covering a huge gash on his arm that had to have stitches inside  and on the outside.  He still has the scar today.

This is a trip to Colorado, up over Grand Mesa.  It was a little windy, but the view and company were awesome!

 

OHHHHH isn't he sooo cute???  The little black doggy is kind of cute too!  This is Optimus Prime's house.  He was born on September 4th.  This pic was taken just before Halloween.

Steve and I went to Yellowstone of UEA break.  There were about 10 shots of this photo, I was trying to get the smoking holes behind us, plus all of our heads, plus a good smile!  That's hard to do!

Here is one of our pics from Christmas.  This one didn't make the Christmas card, but it sure was funny.  Optimus was having a grand ol' time just starring at Dammitt.  Poor little Dammy was freaked out...she had to zap Optimus with her cyborg eye!  We really miss our kitty, she passed away in the beginning of February.

My brother Elias works for CR England trucking company and his boss had bought a table at a fancy dinner at the Grand America Hotel. It was for the Giant in Our City award banquet; he had extra seats and offered them to us.  So it was a fun day to get dressed up and do something out of the ordinary.  

This is Colorado again.  This time we are at Colorado National Monument.  Once again, I was trying to get our heads and the background in the picture. 

We went camping a few times.  This time around we went with the Moultries, Steve's parents, and my parents.  Lots of fun!

This is our most awesomest faces ever!  Basically we just told ourselves to look normal and then I took the picture.

We had a BBQ/Water Balloon Party at my house with Steve's family.  This is about the only shot of us together. 

Steve's brother John got married to Bethany and Steve was a groomsman. This is on the roof of the Wight House in Bountiful!

We experimented with canning.  In this picture we made peach jam and peach pie filling.  We also made salsa and canned tomatoes. Go us!

Steve is the best husband.  He created an Amazing Date for me.  It was like the Amazing Race only better!  I had clues to open, money to use, and places to travel.  We ended up at a bed and breakfast.  Thanks Carolyn for coming up with some clues so Steve wouldn't know all the places we went to. 

This picture is hard to see, but we made square foot garden boxes.  We thought we were being cute by posing inside them.  I'm in the red, Steve is in white, Optimus is in black!  I think you can click on the picture to make it bigger.  We didn't actually get to use them last fall, but we will be hopefully planting in them this weekend. 

Halloween!  Don't we look comfortable?  If you can't tell we are cowboys...Steve's more of a motorcycle cowboy with his black leather chaps and vest.  Hot!!  This is also the night before we found out we were pregnant!

Here is Optimus' costume.  He was a bull.  I just love the cowboy on his back.  SO adorable!

And here is the next day, November 1st.  I got up with Steve super early in the morning and told him we should take the pregnancy test.  Mainly just for my peace of mind then I could go back to bed.  haha That didn't happen.  We were trying to get pregnant, but I didn't actually think it had worked!  I guess all that practice paid off!  ;-) 

This is Thanksgiving.  We hosted it at our house.  It was mostly Steve's family with my mom too. 

This is our entry in the Adams Family gingerbread (but really graham cracker) house building contest.  It is a garage with car on the left and dog on the right.  The car could also turn into a convertible. 

And this final picture was taken last week over Spring Break when we went to Zion National Park.  Watch for an upcoming post on that trip.  

Fondue Fun

Steve and I made an impulse buy at Target the other day.  It was a fondue pot!  Now most of you probably think of doing cheese or chocolate in a fondue pot, but you might not have heard of actually cooking your food in it.  A few weeks ago we went to The Melting Pot in Salt Lake.  There are 4 courses, first is your cheese fondue where you dip veggies, bread, and apples.  Then comes your salad...no dipping involved here. Then your main course where you dip meats in either broth or oil.  And last of all is your chocolate dessert fondue where you dip fruits, marshmallows, and cakes.  

We decided to try out the main course fondue at home.  So we found a recipe for the broth we had at the Melting Pot restaurant and made that at home.  The restaurant also gives you about a million different sauces to dip your food in.  In this picture you can see we had a million too!  I labeled them all so we could tell what was what.  Down on the end was my favorite dipping sauce...KETCHUP!

 The night before Steve started marinating steak and chicken in different sauces.  We had teriyaki chicken and steak, pepper steak, and lemon herb chicken.  Plus we had shrimp and cheese ravioli.  

 Here is our set-up.  We ate at the bar so we could keep the pot boiling.

 Another view!

 Oh we also had some apple sausages...my favorite!

 Here are our veggies and raviolis.  

 Cookin' some stuff!

 We are officially stuffed!  The biggest part of fondue is the prep work.  We had so much left over we should have done it again the next night, but didn't.  So a lot of the stuff went to waste.  Oh well, we will know for next time.

It's a GIRL...Still!

Yay!  We had another ultrasound the other day and thankfully our sweet little girl is healthy, right on track, and wait for it...still a girl!  Our doc suggested we have another ultrasound because he said my stomach had grown 9 centimeters in 4 weeks!  Wowza!!!  Your stomach is supposed to be about in line with how many weeks pregnant you are.  So if you are 30 weeks pregnant it should measure somewhere close to 30 centimeters from your pubic bone to the top of your uterus.  When I went in for my 21 week appointment I measured 22 which wasn't bad especially since I was 21 1/2 weeks pregnant.  Well when I went in for my 25 week appointment I measured 31 centimeters!  Yikes!  Dr. Joseph said there could be a number of reasons why it was such a big increase.  He said the baby might just be big (okay, no problem), there might be too much amniotic fluid (uh, what does that mean?), and/or I might have gestational diabetes (which would make the baby big).  He said don't worry, yeah right!  Hello, that is all I do!  So I went and looked up "too much amniotic fluid" on the internet...bad idea!  I won't even get into all the reasons there might be too much fluid, but to name a few...heart defects, hasn't developed swallowing reflex, gestational diabetes...etc.
Well after a week of worry and anxiousness, we went for our appointment on Friday.  The tech told us everything was great!   No more fluid than there should be, she weighs 1 lb 14 oz, and everything looked "textbook".  What a relief!
I am still worried a little about gestational diabetes, I have my test next week to check for that.  After some talking to my mom, we kind of think she had gestational diabetes when she had Elias and me, but they didn't check for that sort of thing back then.  Elias weighed in at 10 lbs 11 oz and I was 9 lbs 5 oz.  So we probably have a family history, I'm overweight and such, so that just adds to the risk factors.  So I will keep you updated on that!
We were very thankful for this ultrasound to ease our minds about anything wrong with our little one and to reaffirm that we are having a girl.  I just don't know what I would do if she turned out a he.  The ultrasound tech told us if she comes out a boy, to tell them it isn't mine and to go find my baby girl!  hahaha So I think she is pretty darn sure our cutie is a girl!
Here are some ultrasound pics from this appointment:

This one is of her face, her mouth is slightly open.  

 This is another of her face, now her mouth is closed.

 Here is her little bottom with a hamburger bun in between the legs! ;-)

Here is a profile of her face.  Her mouth is open a little and that is an arm or hand near her mouth.

And last but not least her leg with a foot!

The tech said she was head down, bum in the air, and legs in front of her face.  So she was folded in half with he little tooshie in the air....CUTE!!!

This little girl is going to be SPOILED!

Steve and I have a disease...it's called Can'tstopbuyingcutestuffitis.  If you've ever suffered from this disease, you know what we are going through: constantly out of money, running out of closet space already for the baby, can't go through ANY store without buying something for her, the list goes on. 
Our very first purchase was a high chair...I know, I know, why did we choose that first when she won't even be able to use it till she is like 5-6 months old?  I DON'T KNOW, it's part of the disease!  Here is our cute high chair.  We bought it before knowing she was a girl, but it was the one we liked best and it doesn't matter anyway.  My favorite color is blue, why can't our cutie like blue too?!?!  The high chair also comes apart to be just a booster seat.

Since that first purchase, it's all gone down hill.  We originally thought the disease was just an acute problem.  We were so wrong!  It has spiralled into a chronic illness!
This is our new dresser.  We absolutely love it!  Any ideas on how to get the smell out of the drawers?  Dryer sheets???

All of these clothes are sorted by size and type.  We have a sock/hat/bib drawer, white onsies drawer, newborn drawer, 0-3 and 3 month drawer, jammies drawer, 3-6 and 6 month drawer, and blanket/bedding drawer!  I don't think we need any more newborn size and possibly 0-3 month size.

Here is the closet.  Clothes are sorted by size in here also.  The big poofy purplish black thing is a tutu I bought off of etsy.  Now that I see how simple it was to make...in the future if I want a bigger one, I'll make it myself.  (Oh, and now I have an obsession with etsy!  I've bought a ton more things from there, but they are still being made or are being delivered!)

Here is her crib and hamper.  If you look closely through the handle on the hamper, you can see it is filled with more baby clothes that need washing.  It's a disease I tell ya!  And do you just love the bedding?  Not too girly, but then again we don't want to raise a princess...we want an independent kind of gal!  We bought this crib at JC Penny's.  We ended up only having to pay $73 for it!  We had $135 in gift cards from Christmas and it was already 50% off, plus we had a promotional code.  (Did you know you can just find those on the internet?)  This crib can eventually be a toddler bed, day bed, and headboard/foot board for a full size bed.

One of Steve's coworkers was selling some of their old baby stuff they had for their grandchildren.  So we bought everything in the next picture for $80.  There is a bassinet that will be used in our room before we introduce our cutie to her crib, a bouncer with vibrations, and a swing.  I think it was a pretty good deal!

Now I have to let you know, this disease is contagious!  My mother has caught it in a very bad way.  You might want to keep a safe distance from her if you see her.  She has bought numerous outfits from the closet/dresser shots, a crib mattress, and these:

Oh Mom!  We love you!  Thank you for the stroller/car seat, 2 bases for our cars, Pack n' Play, and crib mattress!
Wow, after looking at all this, I have a sudden urge to go to Babies 'R Us....who's with me?  Anyone?  Anyone?