CHOCOLATE!

Two chocolate related items.
Today Brighton walks out of my closet with a sheepish grin and says "I didn't eat anything." I said "What didn't you eat?" " I didn't eat the chocolate from Jesus." She had destroyed our advent calendar and eaten all the chocolate. But these pictures are from the brownie batter I gave her. :)

It's a Boy!

Yeah, sorry that the only picture Aaron scanned is of his "proof" of gender. LOL. Anyway, Weird! We're having a boy! It's still hard to get used to the idea that all my cute girl clothes and things aren't going to get re-used (at least this time around) but it's going to be a fun change! We had the ultrasound yesterday and the second the bottom-area came up on the screen we KNEW it was a boy, LOL. Today the doctor said, "you're obviously having a boy!" I've thought we were going to have a boy next since before we conceived and at 12 weeks the ultrasound nurse said she thought it would be a boy, so it wasn't a big shock.

Brighton did a little pout when we said it was a boy but she's still convinced that "maybe it's a girl." I tried to explain boy and girl anatomy but there's only so much a 2 year old can understand. :) She is also CONVINCED that the baby will be named Jokala. pronounced like Joke a lot but without the T. She came up with this name before we even conceived and she gets full-0n angry when we talk about names. She says "NO! My baby is Jokala!!!" So now we just refer to him as Jokala around her. She might call him that for his entire life.

So serious honesty here... I need to get excited about the idea of having a boy. There's nothing adverse about boys to me, but I just always think about what would be the most fun for the kids and for me, I just wish Brighton could have a sister to play with. BUT- I had tons of fun with my brother Gregg (but we were less than 2 years apart) This baby will be about the same age span as me and my sister Lynzi, so I just kept picturing that. But it's ok... brothers and sisters have a special bond too and I need to remember that. I just think about all the fun girl things I do now with my sisters and I just want that for Brighton. So that's the deal! Aaron is really excited though. Now he'll have a real "boy scout" and won't have to try to petition to take Brighton on father-son campouts. I'm sure Brighty will be a real outdoorsy girl too though. They can all go on their campouts while I go on spa-weekends (in my fantasies). Here are the names currently in consideration: (in order of popularity in our house)

Oakley Aaron

Jett (Aaron or Reuel or Joseph Thomas as middle names... )

Talmage

Deacon

Gavin

Jonah (my fave, so I have to include it even though Aaron doesn't like it.)

Here are my issues: Oakley is also a girl name, which is a little bothersome. Jett sounds like a "wild child". Talmage is just a little weird, but sounds like a serious, successful person. Gavin is good.. Aaron doesn't like Jonah. If I had my way Edward would also be on the list but that's not even up for consideration. :)

Time for another episode of... things I'd never do.

Before I was a mom I SWORE I would never let my kids say a word wrong, and even encourage it, because it was cute. No way, I thought! Teach the kid the right way to say it. I remember my nephew Haydn saying ice cream in a cute way but I can't remember what it was because I was so bothered that his mom didn't correct him! But now... I have to repent. Brighton says skeleton "scare-eton" and it cracks me up! On Halloween she was talking about scaretons and then heard Aaron call them skeletons and corrected herself and I was seriously mad/sad! It IS super cute sometimes when kids say words wrong and I can admit that I was wrong. I do however try to get her to say regular words that she doesn't pronounce right.. like sometimes she doesn't pronounce s's at the front of words like sky and scooter. And she says yellow "rewow" which is weird because she can say Y's... she just refuses to say yellow. And this has been another episode of... things I swore I'd never do!
Oh and here are some pictures of ward trunk or treat and Halloween. Yes, I am wearing a gigantic rabbit fut coat and a poofy slip. We were both totally sweating all night because I bundled us up way too warm!

Pumpkins

Aaron wanted me to get the pictures of our pumpkin carving up here, so here they are! We have carved pumpkins with our friends Ryan and Natalie for the last three years, since Natalie and I were both pregnant with our first babies!

Here we were back then.... (super embarrassing picture of me.)


Here are this years! It was super funny because Brighton looked at me for a second and said, "mommy you look pretty!" which was weird because I didn't... and so I said "thanks... ?" and she said "You look pretty in your pumpkin making dress!" So funny. I was wearing an apron circa 1950 that my grandma gave me!

Natalie is making a "Twilight-New Moon" pumpkin. I made a Snow White one for Brighton and a regular jack-o-lantern for me. Aaron free-styled his and it was the awesomest!

Fall fun

Part of me loves fall because I love the colors, my birthday and getting to pull out fall clothes. Shallow, huh. ;) But I dread it because it means winter is coming! And now that I don't do much snowboarding, winter is just a drag! But fall is great, while it lasts.
We took Brighton to Linder Farms which is this huge, awesome pumpkin patch. Brighton went through the hay maze like five times and we had fun picking out pumpkins. Lately it is a total challenge to get her to look at the camera for pictures. She is openly rebellious about it. I guess almost three years of constant picture taking is wearing on her!

This past weekend our friends hosted a Halloween carnival where each family did a booth. Aaron has recently discovered a talent, nay, a passion, for balloon tying. He spent all of Saturday looking up different techniques for making balloon creations and he was a hit at the party!

Brighton was a Superhero Princess... a costume I envisioned in my sleep one night. She had silver superhero arm and leg cuffs and a belt and a cape and a princess skirt and a crown and her favorite part was getting to wear the makeup mask.

I've totally become the nosy neighbor

Aaron talks about this neighbor they had that they loved to provoke because she was always watching them and would periodically call the police on them. He and his brothers have some funny stories about her..sister.. someone.
Anyway, that's totally me. There used to be two teenage boys living across the street and now one is graduated and one is living with his mom. So today I come home around lunchtime and there are four boys sitting in the bed of a truck, hanging out in front of the house and I totally gave them the stare-down... the stink-eye if you will. Now I keep looking out the window to see if they're still there because I know they should be in school! LOL. Why do I have nothing better to do? A while ago they had a party while their dad was out of town and I kept watching to see if they were bringing in keggers or something. How lame am I?

But I guess I would want neighbors watching out for my kids... Growing up I could never figure out how I ALWAYS got busted for stuff when my parents were out of town. Did they have surveillance cameras watching our comings and goings? How did they find out when I took the car for a drive around the block before I had my license? Well I know now, it was Brother Fillmore. LOL. Then there was the time that was so coincidental it was not funny. My brother Gregg had his license but I didn't. After school I begged him to let me drive and he finally said I could drive for like 5 seconds in the mall parking lot. So I got in the driver's seat and drove up ONE row of cars and who do you think pulls up behind me? MY DAD!!! How he just happened to be in the mall parking lot at 4:00 in the afternoon at the same time is still beyond me but I was SO BUSTED! It's funny to think about all the things I never got away with when I was a teenager. I'm sure I'm in for a handful if there is such thing as karma!
P.S. I love Halloween because I love those little boxes of DOTS so much!

Gum Recycling Can? What?

What? Is this.

I am all for being environmentally concious. In fact, you would have thought it was my birthday yesterday how excited I got over our new great big co-mingled recycling bins in Meridian. But a gum recycling can is just going too far! LOL.

Ok. Starting.... NOW.

I know I said on Thursday that I wanted to blog every day for two weeks and now it's Monday. But I have a good excuse, for realsies. Thursday after I blogged I was feeling spontaneous and Brighton wanted to go to the zoo, so we went! It was way fun. Then I was still feeling spontaneous so I decided to drive to Idaho Falls. We were planning a girls weekend at the cabin and it kind of fell apart but Heather was still flying in from Las Vegas, so I decided to drive over and Tami and Autym came and we all went to the cabin and chilled all weekend. I scrapbooked the entire time and got tons done and it was basically really relaxing. I left Bright with Aaron for the weekend and I think they had way too much fun with balloons. So now I'm back!

Here is Brighton at the zoo. She is OBSESSED with that yellow dress. "Mountain Grandma" (Aaron's mom) sent it to her and she loves it. She fishes it out of the dirty clothes to wear it and wants to wear it every day. It is her "rerow dress". So she spotted it in the laundry pile and said "My rerow dress!" but it was only like in the 50's that day but she was so determined to wear it I had to put long sleeves and tights under it. :) Still super cute. I really didn't know a two-year-old could be SO obsessed with clothes!

Back to blogging the basics

Blogging feels like so much pressure to me, which I know isn't the way it's supposed to be. It's like "blah-ging". Especially if I'm going to blog about my family life, I just need to keep it to the simple memories I want to remember. SO- I have a new goal. I want to blog at least a sentence a day for at least two weeks. It will get me in the habit of thinking of things to blog about and hopefully will help me see the shining spots in my day.

Aaron and I were talking about what it's like to stay home with Bright and although I love it, the days can be monotonous. So this will help me find humour in everyday life... I hope.

Also, sweet Aaron bought me a camera for my birthday. He has a big-honkin' digital SLR and every time I want to take a pic of something during the day I have to drag it out. So he bought me a tiny Kodak easyshare, which is perfect. I keep it right on the kitchen bar so I can whip it out and take pictures.

PERFECT!- As I was writing Brighton came in the room and said, "watch this!" She was attempting to pat her head and rub her tummy at the same time and actually doing a pretty good job, so I snapped a picture. (Yes, she's still in pajamas, but aren't those the cutest PJ's ever?)

Yesterday's picture was of her sleeping on the couch, but you'll notice she's wearing a diaper over her pants. She wanted to play baby and so I put a diaper on her, lol... And the funniest thing she said yesterday was at Costco. We had just had a sample of soy milk (I could write a whole blog post about Costco)... Anyway then I went to buy milk and Bright says "but you just had milk." Me: "This milk is for our house." Bright: "But I thought houses couldn't drink milk." :)

Also, I promise every day won't be solely about the funny things Brighton says. Actually, I can't promise that. Maybe nothing else funny will happen. But I'll try. Promise.

Prediction for the next 9 months

One of the best things about pregnancy is that it's like a "get me out of everything" or "get me into anything" card. It rocked with Bright. Once like a week before I gave birth I got pulled over for speeding. The officer walks up and I had left my license in Aaron's car for some reason and didn't have proof of insurance or registration or anything. The cop walks back to his car to call in my plates and I got my DL# from Aaron. So I get out of my car and waddle on the icy road back to the cop wearing my HUGE Deseret Industries coat to read it to him. He gives me this pathetic laugh and tells me that I'm off the hook. He said he knew he could find me later if there was a problem. (As if my huge body were detectable by police radar or something.) It was sweet.

HOWEVER- I don't see this pregnancy being quite the same, at least not at home. Here are predictions of words sure to be uttered by me and the response sure to be garnered by Aaron.

Me: "I'm going to barf."
Aaron: "Don't complain, at least you're pregnant!"

Me: "I'm SO tired!"
Aaron: "Yeah, but be happy that you're pregnant!"

Me: "Holy cow, my ankles are the size of Maine."
Aaron: "But wouldn't you rather have fat ankles than not be pregnant!"

You get the picture. True, it's hard to feel bad about the fact that at 5 weeks I already look 12 weeks pregnant, when I'm just so GLAD I actually am pregnant! I am just disappointed that I'm not going to get as much sympathy from Aaron simply due to the fact that my gratitude should outweigh any negative side effects of pregnancy. And there are many!

Also, I am not a cute pregnant person. My face gets all puffy, I get acne, cankles, not to mention that the progress of my pregnancy can be measured by the size of my nose. Can I say how grateful I am that I'm not on TV anymore! That was NOT attractive. Ratings were probably high that period because I was the side-show freak that people liked to see. "Hey Vern, let's see how big this anchor's nose is this week!" Like those squishy rubber bugs you put in jars of water and they grow 1000%. But maybe this time I can actually answer "yes" when people in public say "You MUST be having twins." or "You must be due ANY day." (No, I'm 7 months along.)
But hey, at least I'm pregnant!

They attached! (Well at least one of them.)

Most people already know that we found out Saturday that we are pregnant!!! I think I am still in shock. I'm like "technically" pregnant but it doesn't feel real until I'm barfing! We were walking through the Boise farmer's market and I gave my phone to Aaron because I wanted him to answer it because I was too scared. The nurse told him to put her on speaker and then said our numbers were great and that we are pregnant! My first "beta" count, which is my HCG levels was 15 on day 8. She said they look for it to double every two days and on day 10 it was at 80! Then two days later (yesterday) I was at 565, so I am definitely pregnant! yee-haw!

Attach Feti, Attach!

The feti are in me! (Feti, being plural of fetus) Although I know they aren't even fetuses yet, but we still call them "the feti". Anyway, just wanted to post the cool pics we got of the embryos before they did the transfer. I did a blood test today and they'll do another one Saturday and then will be able to tell me if my eggo is preggo. I'm SO tempted to go take a pregnancy test, but I don't even know if it would work and don't want to get the wrong answer. So I'll be patient. Maybe.

49 shots!

I counted on my calendar today and today marks the 49th shot I've given myself. And I just found out yesterday that these horrible progesterone shots I just started continue for months after I get pregnant! I'm trying not to think about that because they kill!
So everything went well with the egg retrieval. They put me under for the surgery and they said they got 15 eggs. He said 60% will fertilize and then half of those will be "good". So we're looking at having about 5 embryos when all is said and done. Hopefully we'll implant two and freeze the rest. :) Science is so crazy, right? My future children are chillin' in a petrie dish right now. What a trip! ha ha.
They plan to do the transfer tomorrow around 1:00, which I won't be put under for, but I'll be given some Valium, which I'm stoked about. ;) I'm just glad it's almost over and I know the two-week wait will be horrible waiting to see if it worked, but we're just really confident that it WILL! I have felt all your prayers, which I am so grateful for!

My daily poke and prod

And shame on you if you think that title is dirty! (heh heh)
So not many people read this that I don't regularly communicate with, except maybe Jonathan (allegedly) but I'll update anyway about what's going on this week. Basically I have to go into the Dr. office every morning for my daily poke and prod. I get blood drawn to check my estrogen levels and I get an ultrasound to check the size of all my "follicles" which are the soon to be eggies. (And don't be fooled into thinking it's a nice ultrasound like you see pregnant women get. No, this is more "invasive" shall i say? Gal pals will get it.) This morning the tech said my uterine lining was gorgeous and I said "I get that all the time." She was not amused.
Anyway, my follicles are not developing as quickly as anyone would like, so I'm on the max dose of hormones and we're still a day or two behind for the egg retrieval. I have 14 eggs right now, so that's fair, not great, but good I guess. They said anything over a dozen is good. When she said that I pictured my eggs in a Styrofoam egg carton. So they don't know how much more hormone I need so I have to call the pharmacy in Arizona every day and have them overnight the drugs, which are like $400 a day. Yikes. So pray that these eggies start maturing quickly!
Lynzi is coming today to help me. yay! We thought the retrieval would happen Thursday or Friday so she's coming today, so we'll just get to have fun for a few days except I'm ordered to keep things at a "slow pace" which I've taken to mean, no rigorous house cleaning. I think it's starting to smell. ;)

I don't know of the hormones are making me crazy or just the waiting and stressing. I think it's just the stress. (And the dirty house, which I'm going to try to slowly clean today.) Stay tuned.

She tried to eat the remote

Oh how the little things crack me up. Brighton fell asleep as I was working at the table and she was on the couch eating a gogurt. I took the gogurt out of her hand when I noticed she was asleep. About a half hour later she wakes up and I'm peeking in on her. She reaches down and grabs the remote control and with her eyes still closed starts going to town trying to eat the remote. The entire thing was in her mouth and she was just sucking away. Then she threw it on the ground and went back to sleep. This just happened so it might not be as funny tomorrow, but it's halarious to me!

Well since I'm here I might as well do some journaling. I just got back from a fun week in Idaho Falls where my entire family was there. I LOVE that. 4th of July is seriously a close second to Christmas at our house. It's probably just that we're always together that makes it so special. Bright had SO much fun just spending time with cousins and I love that she's old enough to play with them now. When I was in labor I was trying to picture happy thoughts and three things kept popping into my mind:

1. My mom walking through the hospital door. I REALLY wanted her there and knew I'd feel a lot more calm once she got there.

2. My friend Katie and I sophmore year of college having a blast. Just random memories to make me smile.

3. A 2-year-old Brighton with my whole family at the 4th of July fireworks. Of course she looks nothing like I pictured. I pictured her with really dark, really curly pigtails. But I just couldn't wait to see my own daughter experiencing what I had loved growing up.

One highlight of the trip was doing a 5K race with Lynzi. Lynz is awesome and has lost like 85 pounds and looks incredible. She has the tiniest little waist now! So her goal was to run a 5K and I just went along for the ride. It was a rush!

Another fun thing was boating with the fam. After spending two days on the lake we were almost out of gas and ready to go but Tami and I really wanted to do a crazy tube ride. We decided we are the only two grown women who LOVE tubing. ha ha.. Or maybe just the ones who'll admit it. So we're going wild and laughing and screaming like kids when all the sudden my dad goes over the wake going Mock-10 and Tami goes FLYING off... well Lynzi and Heather were supposed to be watching but were apparently engrossed in their conversation and NO ONE saw her fly off. I start screaming (which I had been doing anyway) for like an entire minute and finally they look and I'm doing the turn-around sign and they STILL don't realize Tami was gone until I pointed to the vacant space next to me. There Tami's little head was (she actually does have a really small head) bobbing in the water just waiting for us to turn around. It's a good thing the lake was pretty empty that day or she likely would have been decapitated. It was dang funny though.

Pictures:

4th of July! God Bless Idaho! I mean America!

Brighton pondering on the consequences of our forefather's actions and our resulting independence from a far away tyrant.

Eh, life's too short:

I just had my permanent eyeliner done, so I look a tad freaky.

Oh Also, happy Anniversary to US today! 5 years! Crazy!