Movies and Dating

Ryan and I have recently been trying to spend as much time together as possible while we are still a family of 2. Yesterday we decided to watch a few movies together, Star Trek (in the theater) and Benjamin Button (rental).

So I admit that I really wasn’t too excited to see Star Trek. Growing up I occasionally watched the Star Trek show and I thought it was ridiculously cheesy (sorry if you liked it, it just wasn’t my thing). Any ways, I agreed to go to the show because so many people had said it was good…they were right. I was really surprised at how good the movie was; definitely worth seeing. My favorite part – the little kid Jim Kirk driving the car and singing the Beastie Boys song Sabotage “wahhhhha…. I can’t stand it, I know you planned it….” made me want to go speeding down the street in my car listening to that CD (yes I have the Beastie Boys Greatest hits CD…go ahead take in the shock).

Now Benjamin Button, wow I should have NEVER watched that movie while pregnant – those of you who have seen it probably know why. The movie I thought had great acting and a decent story line but it moved super slow. Ryan didn’t like it. I thought it was sad, Ryan thought it was depressing. We both agreed it moved very slow. I think if you want a sad love story and you have a lot of time on your hands it is great, otherwise probably not a movie I would suggest. I don’t suggest this movie for anyone who is pregnant.

14 Days and Counting….

It seems like just yesterday I found out I was pregnant, boy did that make me nervous and excited. Then we found out we were having a boy and we told pretty much everyone…again nervous and excited. Now that we are in the home stretch as my doctor likes to call it I can’t help but feeling an overwhelming sense of, you guessed it, nervous excitement!

I have been busy washing baby stuff, setting up his room, acquiring baby stuff (man this kid is going to have an awesome birthday), and I think attempting to eat my way into labor (I am so hungry…can’t eat all that much at once but boy do I like to eat, well at least most days lately).

Here’s a picture of my ever growing belly….yes it is HUGE but I guess that is what happens when you stick a bun in a 4 foot 11 oven….the only place it has to “rise” is out. Thankfully I have gained very little weight during my pregnancy, so hopefully my “massive bump” will recede quickly.
I have also planted a garden on our back porch recently…yes I know I am pregnant like I need anything else to take care of other than a baby. I have always wanted to try and grow veggies as well as some herbs and now that we have a place that actually gets sunlight where we are “allowed” to plant according to our lease, I thought I would try it out.

I planted:
Tomatoes
Zucchini
Basil
Cilantro
Banana Peppers
Green Bell Peppers
Paris Island Romaine Lettuce
Chocolate Bell Peppers (these are supposed to be sweet and gourmet quality…they are all the rage on the internet)

Of course right after I planted my little garden it started raining for weeks on end….argh. Good thing I planted in well drained containers. I did have to have Ryan drill into one of the potters to create more drainage (tomatoes) because the plant was being finicky. All the rain also brought bugs (only on two of the plants) and fungus (just on the tomatoes)…so I have had to learn a lot about natural ways to combat fungus and buggies from invading my garden. Hopefully the sun will decide to stay for a while…we had our first 3 days in a row with no rain this week (stopped today…it rained this morning – 3 days is a lot considering it has been raining every day for a month).

Here are some pictures of my meager garden; hopefully I can manage to grow something worth eating!
I also thought I would include a picture of what we see from our back porch, you can see the mountains in the background and some of the south-west part of the Salt Lake Valley as well as the Northern part of the Utah Valley. Out our front door we have mountains that are much closer, I will have to take a picture of those. We also have the mountain we live on that you can see the side of that has the hang gliding park on it if you turn the other direction from our porch or walk out our front door.
It also rained the other day (big surprise) and the clouds were pretty low, I missed the best pictures but I thought I would share a bit of the view from our window after the storm.

Let the Countdown Begin!

As of today I have 30 days left until my due date, I can hardly believe it! It is hard to really picture myself as a parent; perhaps it takes some time to get used to the idea that I will be someone’s mommy. I know this sounds weird but I just don’t feel old enough to be someone’s mom. Yes, I do know how absolutely ridiculous it sounds when I say I don’t feel old enough – I am plenty old enough to be a mom…of a few kids.
Well I am excited to see what this new adventure brings and I am very excited to start preparing more for Bean’s arrival.

Also worth mentioning, I have been taking this pre-natal water aerobics class and I love it! I highly recommend swimming and water aerobics to anyone who is pregnant! I feel so much lighter and like I am floating on air in the pool. Even on days when my back hurts, the baby is “on my nerves” literally, and I feel gross, I get in that warm pool and I feel like I can do anything! It is also super cool to feel the baby moving around while swimming, it is like he is trying to swim with me.

Crib!

Recently we moved into a larger place (right down the street from our last townhome). After moving in we decided to set up the crib, to see what it looks like and to make sure we had all the parts. We couldn’t have been more pleased with the way it turned out! We are excited to start putting the baby’s room together (now that we have a room for him).

Here some pictures of our crib assembly adventure.

Missionary Madness

For those of you who may not be aware I am in my ward’s primary presidency, probably one of the best callings I can remember having so far. In June we are planning on encouraging the kiddos to participate in missionary work and look forward to someday serving a mission through a formal activity as well as weekly little activities at church.

Right now we are planning on having members speak about their missions on Sunday during primary to the kids – showing pictures, telling stories, teaching them new words, etc. For the activity (during the week) we are planning on having the kids “come to the MTC” and “board a plane” on a mission tour. We are planning to have 4-6 speakers in different “country” rooms tell the kids about their missions and engage them in experiencing some of the things the member did on his or her mission. At the end of the activity we are planning to have the kids write letters to themselves at age 19 boys/21 girls about why they want to serve missions. At the beginning of the activity we plan on playing “Mission President Says” – like Simon Says, Missionary Charades, and a Where in the World is this Mission game (kids pair the number of Missionaries, places, etc with the mission on a map).

If you have any ideas that maybe are “cooler” or sound fun and have to do with missionary work or efforts please feel free to share them, I am open to getting all the suggestions I can.

Taken

Last night we rented the movie “Taken” (new release). WOW! It was a terrific movie, action packed, had a story line, and every little girl’s dream of what would happen if she was taken (at any age). Guys this movie is for you too – plenty of action and lots of guy moments. I don’t suggest the movie for kiddos unless you plan on giving them a reality check. Those over 16 could probably handle it as well as those 13-16 possessing maturity and someone to explain some of the plot line. For me this is a must see.

Watch a trailer if you have no clue what movie I am talking about.....

Adventures in Birthing….

For the past 2 Saturdays Ryan and I have been taking an all day natural birthing preparation class. The class was a fun adventure, and the instructor was very nice and extremely well informed. Our instructor had given birth 6 times and has 5 kids – 2 were born C-section, 2 with drugs, and 2 completely naturally; in other words she had a lot of experience to share with us and a pretty unique perspective. The instructor also had the very unfortunate luck of having a baby die shortly after birth due to a birth defect (her only boy). The class was pretty small which was nice, we met a few nice couples….and some strange couples too. My favorite strange couple was a girl, I am pretty sure she was unmarried, in her 8th month that brought her co-worker with her as a birth partner (girl). The partner was very hung over, the pregnant mom at lunch was talking about working in a bar, smoking, and drinking…ummm during pregnancy nonetheless and during the class her and her “partner” didn’t do anything together. So usually you go to a birth preparation class with someone who will be there to help you through labor, especially if you want a drug free (natural) birth. I was quite confused at the end of the day….why would doing all kinds of “drugs” during pregnancy be just fine but getting medicated pain relief was not desirable for labor? This is why I dubbed this “couple” the strange people from class.


We did meet a really neat couple; they are from the Caribbean, Antigua to be exact. This was the couple’s first child and they were planning to return to the islands a few weeks after giving birth. The poor mom had almost every complication you can think of with her pregnancy – she never got rid of the pukey monster and has to take the cancer drugs that help you gain weight, she got gestational diabetes, and tons of other undesirable complications…to say the least she made me feel like I have had a rockstar pregnancy!


During our first class a power transformer across the street blew up….there was a marathon that was running right in-front of the hospital (icky traffic that day) and just as the marathon was finishing we heard this huge explosion, the windows and floor shook, and the power went out. Apparently the explosion knocked out a few of the hospital’s back-up generators (to the classrooms and offices…nowhere else) so now the hospital is installing all new back-up systems. We completed the afternoon portion of the class with just the sunlight to light the way.


The second class was much less eventful, but the partners did give moms a massage…thank YOU! Let me just say, I really enjoyed the massage part! We also got to see the babies in the nursery (fun) and Labor and Delivery floor. The room you labor in seems pretty nice and more than half the rooms have a Jacuzzi tub in the bathroom...which is private. Apparently you can’t deliver in the tub for insurance reasons but you can labor in the tub which is awesome (in my opinion). The hospital also allows the baby to room in with mom if she wants, which is pretty cool – so baby doesn’t really have to leave your side.


Oh and the kind of cool thing from our class….we were the only couple having a boy! Yep, everyone else in the class was having a girl, so Bean was the birthing class “mac-daddy”.


One thing I realized taking the class was that a lot of people really do not know much about labor, delivery, or pregnancy. I think I have taken for granted that I kind of know what to expect (maybe it was those sex ed classes I took in school?) but wow – some people are really clueless. We had people surprised about how babies are born (the process), how long it can take, that you don’t need to go to the hospital the second labor starts, that babies come head first (usually), that if the placenta separates from the uterine wall that could cause your baby to die (oh my baby gets all his nutrients and oxygen from the placenta, really? – ahhh where did you think it came from?), all kinds of stuff that I thought was common sense, some people just really didn’t know. My thought….well I guess there is no time like the present or during labor to find out…although I think I would want to know some of that stuff before my body started freaking out and giving me pain like no other. Like with everything else I guess some people are just more informed naturally than others. For those that are uninformed, I suggest a few afternoons of watching Discovery Health or TLC…you will catch on pretty quick.

Random thoughts from a cold preggie

April Showers – Sure are cold….

So today is April 15th, most people I talk to think April, oh tax season and rain. Well not in Utah, today it is snowing! Yes, I did say snowing – as in the white fluffy junk that falls from the sky (you can tell I love winter). It started snowing here in mid-October, it fell, it melted, and it didn’t come back until November. Now the weather is taunting us, it will get nice (low 50s) then snow. To be honest I am really sick of snow. Some of the snow has started to melt because of all the rain we have been getting (all day and all night) but it is supposed to snow and rain tonight and tomorrow (oh joy) and maybe on Friday. For those of you basking in the warm weather outside of Utah – enjoy what you have, feel lucky to be “hot”. Also, here’s a little gem for those of you who grew up without seasons “April showers bring May flowers” – for some reason that makes showers in April sound warm…why doesn’t Mother Nature get this?


I aspire to be a pirate….
Okay so I am sure if you watch the news or have an email account that has a news feed on it that you have been hearing about the awful acts of piracy around Africa. Okay, so Johnny Depp made being a pirate look super fun, why are these guys trashing up the image? Don’t they know that Disney has already gotten a lock on the “pirate” life? I mean if they keep trashing up the image who will want to go on the pirate ride at Disney or watch the pirate shows? Clinton says that governments and shippers need to work together to stop pirates, I say let Disney set up a “Cragen” (the sea monster from one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies) and unleash it on their butts. Yes, I do know this is a goofy thought and that it is totally and utterly impractical, but come on, admit that it is a funny idea – even if it is completely unrealistic.


What in the world were you thinking…
As you may have noticed I like to share stories from teaching every once and a while…because let’s face it if I get a really good laugh I should be kind and share the cause of my laughter. So this past week I have a student who turns in a discussion question response, it totally looks like something an instructor would write, not a student (it was summarizing a discussion students had, not taking part in the discussion). So immediately I stop and say “what in the world is this” – then I look at the student’s name. The student is a girl, the author of the post was written as if the author is a guy. The student has 1 kid, age 2 and supposedly just gave birth last week to kid #2 (nuts).

The author of the post claims to have no kids. So we have different vocabulary, different voice, different gender, and apparently no kids. So I email the student and tell her I don’t allow cheating and that students are expected to do their own work and I give her the opportunity to remove the post and post her own original work. The student then proceeds to argue with me that she just took “extra time” while in the hospital recovering from her labor to do “an extra good job”…ah did that “extra good job include getting a sex change, selling off your kids, and taking my job? Of course I didn’t ask this, I told her if she felt the work was hers she could explain to me why it didn’t look like her work. Needless to say faced with being charged with plagiarism, an offense that would get her an F for the class and quite possibly expelled from school, she opted to re-write her answer, it was considerably different to say the least. My thought – if you are going to be lazy enough to cheat, at least look at what you are trying to pass off as your own, I mean come on, this is a freshmen level class and a super easy assignment.

Counting down to baby…
So 86 days left of pregnancy, it doesn’t seem like that long of a time to be honest. This weekend and next weekend we are taking our birth education class. I am kind of excited to take the class, not because it is a class on birthing but because it just makes it seem like the little guy is coming soon. I have also started collecting advice about birth and baby care/feeding. If you have advice that you want to share please feel free, I am open to suggestions and in-put.

So far the third trimester has been good, I can tell that Bean is getting bigger, he loves to move around and take up space. I have noticed that I am always hungry but feel like I can’t eat that much (oh how I long for some good fish tacos – this has been a craving for a long time, I even satisfied it last time we visited AZ). I also would love to have some yummy homemade salsa or pico and some guacamole (mmmm….Mexican food). So far we have yet to find any place in Utah that makes decent Mexican food, it has been quite disappointing and I think that makes the cravings even worse. As you can see from the blog, I do resort to making Mexican food at home, not that I am a bad cook, but I can’t duplicate Baja Fresh’s or Rubios’ fish tacos, trust me I keep trying and I keep failing, some day I will find their secret…just you wait. Maybe I could bribe a kid who cooks there or something.