video monday.

youtube is probably one of the greatest internet offerings ever. along with etsy. 

here are some things that are...

awesome (made me cry)

hilarious (made me cry)


sweet (cried really hard. i thought of Joe and John and how they would bake bread together. :tear: ha)


inspirational (i'm sure you get the idea)


finally. a new Zac Brown Band single. i'm obsessed with zbb. i don't even care who knows it. i love country. and banjoes and fiddles. and beards. so obviously adding a great voice/band in the mix is idea. plus, an Alan Jackson collaboration. they are definitely my artist of 2010.  they might be next year too.
doesn't Zac look like he has a man crush on AJ?  well, who wouldn't....


other music obsession of the moment: Mindy Gledhill. i was morally opposed to her (ok not morally, obviously) because of how rampant she was on sunday afternoons at BYU.  her church music was everywhere. and i don't do rampant (ie wicked, glee, etc...) but she's moved into a new phase and i love her music now. i've already put up "all about your heart" on here before, but this new one is great, and the video is dreamy.


well, i just ate a whole box of macaroni and had some rootbear to get rid of my headache. i think it worked. so maybe i'll do something productive?

brain dump

i finished Baby Catcher today, it was so good. all the stories in it are refreshing and the plight of midwives everywhere and women seeking homebirths is really inspiring

basically all i've eaten lately is ramen and noodles of other varieties. i just am out of lunch ideas. and sick of shopping.

seriously i feel like i grocery shop 4 times a week. i feel like i do a good job of meal planning but then breakfast comes around and all there is is cereal, or i can't think of something different to make for lunch. i am starting to hate the grocery store.

why are teenage girls so dramatic?

why are women so dramatic?

i have nothing to wear and a closet full of clothing.

people really annoy me sometimes, and i probably shouldn't get so annoyed, and usually do a pretty good job of just minding my own business- but i just want to scream sometimes.

i almost miss pcs. mostly just the coworkers part of it. hanging out with other people all day. the girls i hate. but the social interaction with others my age on a daily basis... i miss it.

i feel like i've been to church more in the last month than in the last few years. having a calling in young men's/young women's is like having an instant list of calendar events. lessons on sunday and presidency meetings and planning meetings and mutual every wednesday night and any activity that the young women are in charge of/in attenence/even think about, i have to be there. it's fun, but holy cow, it feels like it's been a lot lately. add regular sunday church hours and visiting teaching/damon leaving to do home teaching, and wow. i love this quote from elder maxwell though, on why we don't have any paid clergy (or paid anything) in the church:
      Neil A. Maxwell a Church Apostle put it best: "The Lord does not ask about our ability or inability, but only about our availability. If we prove our dependability, the Lord takes care of our capability". 


so apparently i can do it. haha, i know i can, and it's nice to be in a good ward family again, and having a calling with the youth is definitely the best place to be...


i never thought there was so much research to be put into children's products... cribs with adjustable sides are unsafe now, carseats with a gajillion features and safety aspects (i want a britax) and glass bottles ... if the world just lived like... well, the rest of the world. with the family bed and no cars and a simpler life, all this stuff would be so unnecessary. 


how do you narrow down a name for your first son? i have about 8 men that i want to name this kid after. as if i never will have another. will i have another? what if i don't? do i give him 8 names? 


i love damien rice.

(thanks for the intro, pat)

my husband looks really hot when he wears his glasses.

since we moved in here we had a lot of boxelder bugs in the apartment. (ok, i'd find like 4 a day crawling around) which is gross. and apparently you can't do anything about. but i haven't seen a live one in days now, i hope they're gone for good.

not having a washer and dryer is really sucky. having an old washer and dryer down the hall that barely clean and also costs $2 for one little load of laundry is probably worse than having to go to a laundromat. it's going to be hell with a newborn.

i almost bought a baby crested gecko today.

i miss utah. and the people in utah. and the restaurants and even (never thought i'd say this) the mountains a little bit.

a week ago today people i care about had the worst day of their lives. and this week i watched ellen and loaded the diswasher and made a purse out of duct tape. how does that happen? how is it that time can move so relentlessly forward when it feels like maybe at least 10 seconds should feel like 20, or 2 hours should feel like half a day?  i have a picture of rod surrounded by us youth from almost a decade ago, on the front steps of our church, about to start a missionary activity. i need to find a scanner.

an actual pickle in there?

I'm 19 weeks today.  Which is scary- basically halfway!  Am I ready for this?  I'm ready for a baby to hold and smell (in the good times at least) and rock and sing to, but am I ready for the no sleep and the costs and all the big stuff?  I guess there's only one way to find out..  I'm not actually super worried, mostly I just think there's still so much stuff we need and want to do.

I've been garage sale-ing the last month or so, and we've been able to pick up some decent stuff really cheap- an awesome stroller, a swing (that, as soon as i can get this sewing machine to work all the time instead of just half way, i'll be recovering) kids books, and some cute baby clothes. Bonus to living outside of utah: baby items aren't used to death by a family and then passed on to ward members to destroy.  People here have one or two kids and give away stuff practically brand new.  Here are the clothes I bought last weekend, the first time I could actually buy boy stuff- finally!

(excuse the crappy pictures, i just use the mac's photobooth cause i'm too lazy to get out my camera and then transfer pictures and all that jazz)

Our Stats:

Size:  According to babycenter, the baby is about the size of an heirloom tomato from head to rear end... 6 inches long and around 8 oz... when you add in the length of his legs, it's crazy to think that I have like 10 inches of baby lounging around in there.  

What he does all day:  urinates.  weird?  apparently he does this about every hour and so not only do I eat for 2, I make a lot of bathroom trips for us both.  He's also growing hair- though if he follows in my footsteps, it won't make an appearance till he's well over a year old.  He's also developing his 5 senses- and may be able to hear me now, which means I better start watching what I say.  Also, I read that he's growing a coating on his skin so that he doesn't get pickled by the amniotic fluid. How graphic...

Awesome babycenter pic of him: 

That can't be comfortable.  Though I don't think Jr. is contorted like that, I usually have a bigger lump on one side and kicking on the other, and during the ultrasound he was also laying across me, usually facing my spine. 

My own weight gain and changes:  apparently still nada.  though I think it's because I probably lost some of that newlywed weight and maybe gained it in my stomach.  I'm actually pretty happy to NOT see the scale moving upwards, though my midwife may start to disagree if it's the same at my next appointment. But if I do the whole 'pound a week" from here on out, I'll be happy.  I feel a lot better these days, my energy is normal and I am just trying to stay hydrated.  Water is NOT my thing. I long for sonic and vanilla dr. peper.  I haven't had one in so long (though I did share a pib with Damon at a baby expo last week) and I'm trying to drink better stuff... but plain water is so gross. Also, I still don't really crave much- maybe something random here or there (taco bell nachos, and when I see Olive Garden's never ending pasta commercial, I start planning when we can go), but mostly I just eat boring stuff like macaroni or... ramen. ha I'm trying to get into the swing of eating better. 

Movement: lots!!!  It's so cool to feel him turning and kicking in there.  Yesterday I was laying on my side and feeling him kick a ton in one spot really hard, so I laid on my back and was able to feel the kick from the outside!  I was so excited and made Damon sit watching TV all night with his hands pressed there to see if he would feel it.  But.  Didn't happen.  Hopefully in the next week or 2 he will, cause it is so awesome. 

Me:

sorry for the lovely hair in my face- haven't cut my hair in probably a year and I haven't found anybody here that I trust to not cut 4 inchs off when I say 'a trim'. Also, sorry it's a crappy picture- again, the mac. 

Sunday Will Come

This morning my baby kicked me hard, from the inside. Maybe telling me he was hungry, or maybe angry at how much I tossed and turned through the night and in staying awake myself, kept him up too. Or to bring me back to earth while still reminding me that there is so much more to earth than what we see.

Yesterday afternoon a dear friend from home was taken in a horrible accident while with his daughter on a flood-driven 'creek'. This was the kind of man who the young men I grew up with aspired to be, the young women hoped to marry, and other adults looked to as an example. He was the kind of man who would find you in the halls at church to tell you that you were beautiful at the same time squeezing you so hard in a hug that you knew his strength and love came from somewhere deeper than what was seen. He led missionary efforts, especially among our teens, and I'm happy to say that his fellowship gave me strength in a new church that I didn't always understand and tried to tread with just my younger sister, among families and groups that I didn't know. He opened his house to us always, asked about our family, and made us feel welcome among his. He took youth out on his boat every chance he could, and their friends whom he didn't know- he'd set up an entire wakeboarding trip based on some kid he'd never met. He taught me to wakeboard (though I admit, I never became much in that area) and showed me what I could have to look forward to in a family led by a strong priesthood leader, if I remained worthy and kept my standards high. He taught me to 'taste the cheese' in dating...

Brother Dial, I'm proud to say I figured out what kind I liked and didn't like, before I settled down with my perfect man.

Today it's cold and rainy here in Iowa, and maybe a drive to Texas would be better than laying in bed all day. I don't think I'll get out quite yet. I hope his wife and children know (I'm sure they have been bombarded with love from our church and local community) how much we all love them, and can feel the prayers being offered on their behalf. I hope they are remembering that Sunday will come.

It's A...

(Kristi was the first person I thought of when I saw the profile. Not Damon or I)

Sup Dudes.

There you have it...

We are SO excited!  We wanted a boy, and woohooo!  All Damon's girl dreams were wrong!  I'm super happy too cause I'm not a fan of pastels and pinks and purples...  

                                                 

I wanted to put some pics up for my dad to see that we were able to figure out how to put the shelves on the wall. well Damon did. but they are staying up there ad holding all our little trinkets....  here are a few shots of our living room/dining room area.  the pictures don't show how huge it really is, we could run a yoga class in here.  and it smells great cause our scentsy is always going (thanks jenn! haha), which helps cause the halls smell like crazy old maurice downstairs who smokes.

This is our 'travel wall' with all our stuff we've (or friends have) collected from this old globe.  represented are africa, china, india, mexico... etc etc etc. and the clock.

opposite wall in dining area, the 'church section' and the 'family section' as you can see we need some more pics printed but i'm waiting for one of my entire family (including jake and morgan) from kristi's wedding... and i tried to paint our family proclamation frame the same gold as the table, and the paint didn't stick, so i need another (odd shaped) frame for that.  and the table we painted. my mom gave us this and it was once raw oak and then painted maroon and then white on top of that and then crackled... it was kinda crazy, but i love it now...

the least decorated wall, probably a good respite from the 20+ frames in here. and our 'centerpiece' is a group of vases from our wedding (flea market finds)

Living room area- they built this place with NO overhead light in the huge living room. it's ridiculous. so we got our gorgeous floor lamp from walmart.  and the matting was warped from the move in that big frame. so until i figure that out, it's empty. i'm thinking of putting another frame within it. we'll see.

The ugly corner. wires abound. the awkward end table. oh well.

on an unrelated note, this is what i look down to every morning. the baby likes to smoosh over to one side, and it looks pretty goofy.  to give more (weird) perspective, my navel is right between the top and middle of the 3 creases. everything is still going on below that point.

RIP

let's all take a moment.




and relive our tween years. or our abercrombie years. or our frosted tips/puka shell years. or just summer.


rip rich.

fall fall fall

oh man, i miss fall in utah...  i miss utah.

if i were in utah today i would go for a drive up the alpine loop. i'd take a limeade from the burger shack up canyon road.  then i'd drive back down and drive over to the lake. and then i'd stop at the shave ice place across from helaman halls (the blue shack- Hokulia's... if you haven't been there, i don't know why you are still reading this. get yourself over there and get a half pina colada half coconut with ice cream and a snowcap. sheesh). and then i'd go to sammy's for a burger. and then i'd go to a byu football game in the stadium. (mind you, it's my perfect day, so there's a football game on a thursday) and then i'd drive in the evening and find a good pile of leaves.

yeah, that sounds good.

instead i'm in good ol' west des moines. though the high today is only 74, it doesn't feel the same. i walk out of a building into crispy fall-ish air, and look for the mountains (with their gold leaf lava starting to pour down) and think about driving around downtown provo, down to my orchard...  i don't see students walking everywhere south of campus and i can't subdue the desire to walk around byu's grounds and maybe stop for some cinnamon bears in the bookstore. instead the only students i know are my husband's friends and they stay on campus  and in ward activities. i need to live in a college town.  where am i going to see what girls are wearing for fall?  what color boots and how high?  will scarves still be big?  are jeggings really going to be huge?  what jacket is everyone wearing?  and what kind of jacket to you get when you have a watermelon residing under your shirt?

also, i miss nordstrom. bad. there's not one in the entire state. in fact the closest one is in the Mall of America 3 and a half hours away. guess who may be taking a day trip, just to roam the floors?  (forget the rest of the mall)

there are farmer's markets here like you wouldn't believe though. tonight we'll pick up another watermelon and some more sweet corn.  and maybe start some canning.

i guess it's not all lost.

post edit: if i were in provo, especially if i were tomorrow night, i'd be going to the (FREE!) rooftop concert series downtown.  you know why?  cause benton paul is headlining. and he is a dreamboat.  and 'i only see you' was my first dance song, and i'm listening to it now, and it's taking me back to a string light lit ranch last november...