Baby Name Change...

We've thought long and hard about it, even spent some time on bended knee.

We feel pretty confident that this was meant to happen.

We've decided to change the baby's name, in honor of this man.

Why such a late change you ask?  Here's a little school house lesson...

Can't wait to meet our little Jimmer Demars!

On Jason Mraz and Marriage.

Every once in a while I check out Jason Mraz' blog, I don't know why, probably cause I'm just bored and he's an interesting read.  He's a super strange little man, but I sure love his music.

Apparently Jason was once addicted to Pibb also.  Now he only drinks filtered water in his pretty little metal water bottles with designs on them, made to make the owner feel like they are doing their part in ridding the world of toxic plastic bottles and helping reduce the waste going into landfills.  If nothing else, they are nice until you put drink in them and they freeze your hands or you accidentally leave a drink in them and then they are ruined forever cause the smell stain never comes out.

Anyway.

He's engaged and stuff (to Tristan Prettyman, which is cool and I like her music) and has this whole schpeal about them and their cosmic ties to the number 23... their birthdays, the day they met, the day he proposed, with a 2.3 carat ring including 46 diamonds- 23 for both him and her... and how they want to get married in 2.3 years blah blah blah.  Weird.

But apparently they won't get married until it's legal for ALL to marry.  You know, they are like, the new Brangelina, all into that stuff.

To me, it sounds like a cop out on marriage.  I mean, why put a ring on it if you aren't ready to get married now?  They are jumping on this ridiculous celeb bandwagon (along with Stephanie from full house, they just announced the same intention) putting the life "you can't wait to begin with So-and-So" on hold until this whole thing happens, or doesn't happen...  I guess if you are already living together and intimate together, it really doesn't matter though. I guess postponing your wedding like this is one way to avoid a divorce a couple years (or less) down the road.  My bet is that 2 of these 3 couples will be off before marriage is legal for everybody.

Why would you want to postpone this?

In other music.  I've been obsessed with this song for like 2 years now. I don't know why I love it so much, I just do.  1:30, 3:04, my heart stops...

Awkward Awesome

so i read this blog pretty regularly (ie i check it sometimes twice a day to look for updates and last week i spent 3 days reading it from the very first post) and it makes me want to a. blog better b. dress better c. fix my hair once in a while d. be a little more witty.... you know, lots of things. i don't know if i should give you the link, you may get hooked like me. or maybe nobody will cause my stay-at-home-wife-with-no-kids life is the only one conducive to this level of blog stalking. anyway, it's The Daybook and i love it.  she does the 'awkward/awesome' post every thursday, and though her life is much more happenin' than mine is, i thought i'd put up a few here on this cold but sunny monday, whilst my mac and cheese cooks.

Awkward.

-when your socks come off with your boots. i hate that so much. especially when you are taking your boots off in somebody's house. it's one of my least favorite things about winter.

-speaking of, when you get your boots off and you're walking around in your socks and you step in the snow tracks left by the boots on the carpet.  and then you are just left in cold wet socks.  

-parking the car right outside the door to our birthing class thinking we are super smart and then realizing that it's saturday and that door is locked from the outside, so we actually have to spend 10 minutes going into another part of  the hospital to find the skywalk to walk all the way back to the building where the classroom is... 30 feet from our car. 

-taking an extra juice bottle here and there from said class... only to get in the car after and find that we have taken 11 bottles of complimentary class juice. and be the kind of people who make swag out of hospital paraphernalia. 

-scratching off all your nail polish in church. and then having maroon chips stuck to your skirt, shirt, fingers (and then being transfered to your face) for the next 2 hours of church. 

-raising your hand to 'oppose' somebody being sustained to a calling in church, because you weren't paying attention when they asked for your vote of sustain...ment.  and so you raise your hand late. and people laugh at you. (ps, not me.)

-people who put sappy/cliche inspirational/love quotes as their facebook status. almost as bad as the ones who try to get sympathy from everybody through their facebook status. i only keep these people as friends to make fun of their status with my husband. is that mean?

-trying to push your way out of a door instead of pulling, like the sign clearly says. 

-the squirrel i used to feed on our balcony almost daily.  the facet that he still comes every day and looks on the balcony, and i hide behind the blinds ashamed that i don't feed him anymore. some days he even comes all the way to the sliding glass door to peer inside...

Awesome.

-the fact that this weekend we finally bought a metal bed frame. and therefore have graduated from college kinds who have their mattresses on the floor, to adults. kinda. if we ever get like, a headboard, we'll be really up there.

-because of said bed frame, being able to roll off the bed instead of having to get up off the bed. makes a huge difference.

-since kraft macaroni, along with a bajillion other food items, has made their boxes and amount of noodles smaller, i don't feel as bad eating the whole box myself. 

-knowing our baby can come at anytime now. you hear that, baby? you're full term! get out here!  (but can you wait till about next wednesday, that's about the perfect time i think)

-the great deal we got on a glider on craigslist, and how much better it looks now that we have painted it white instead of the wood color it was before. 

-the dance damon does to the theme music for grey's anatomy, which we've been watching from the beginning.
-QT. also known as QuickTrip.  the gas station.  and their philosophy on The Fountain Drink.  this place is a little piece of heaven on earth. really, did you read all the ways they make the average fountain superb?  best of all, there is one right down the road. sonic, you are so last year. until you start carbonating your drink mixers (vanilla!), don't even bother.

sin.

tonight we made Pioneer Woman's

fettucini alfredo.

it is sin on a plate. 1 cup cream, 1 cup butter, 2 cups parm. that's all it takes, folks.  it makes the thought of buying this stuff at a restaurant complete rubbish. my heart actually hurts a little.

(not my pic, hers)

i had to. i bought a half gallon of cream at costco. what else was i gonna do with it? 

i'll knock off a couple years of life to eat this every now and then. 

we're carb loading for our 7 hour hospital 'express birth class' tomorrow. not that we'll probably stay the whole time. i'm not much into hearing about hospital tactics and scare stories about birth. tend to tune them right out and keep my positive thoughts going for the next 3.5 (hopefully less) weeks. we're really mostly going for the tour. 

whew.

well changing the blog around only took me almost 3 hours. and i don't even love it. i just realized that even though it told me the blog was 1000 pixles and even though that's how wide i made my header, it still cut it off. rude. now that's all i can see.  i'll have to re design it, but it took so long that i can't open photoshop again or i'll go crazy... but at least it's different, and now i can go watch teen mom 2 in peace. that crazy janelle, what a fool.

i wish i had a pizza right now. i could eat pizza for every single meal. yummm.

been a slacker updating with pictures lately, i'll try to do better, hopefully a new post later today with a new picture and something funny to say. maybe, maybe not, but hopefully.

Women

"Women of God cannot be like women of the world.  The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender.  There are enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind.  There are enough women who are rude; we need women who are refined.  We have enough women of fame and fortune; we need more women of faith.  We have enough greed; we need more goodness.  We have enough vanity; we need more virtue.  We have enough popularity; we need more purity." 

Margaret D. Nadauld

"You were not created to be the same as men.  Your natural attributes, affections, and personalities are entirely different from these of a man.  They consist of faithfulness, benevolence, kindness, and charity.  They also balance the more aggressive and competitive nature of man.  The business world is competitive and sometimes ruthless.  We do not doubt that women have both he brain power and the skills to compete with men.  But by competing they must of necessity, become aggressive and competitive.  Thus their godly attributes are diminished and they acquire a quality of sameness with man.  The conventional wisdom of the day would have you be equal with men.  We say, we would not have you descend to that level."

President Ezra Taft Benson

So cute...

My wonderful sisters in law and mother in law made us baby bedding- it turned out so cute!  I put it on the crib as soon as i got the boxes.  It turned out great, I love it cause it isn't pastel and doesn't have animals or sports paraphernalia on it- which is about all you can buy in the stores for boy's bedding, and it's the colors I am using- gray, golden yellow, and deep blue!  Here are a few pictures...

(latest painting, hello little owl...)

Thanks Sharee and Jean and Heidi!!!

just a few random things...

i wish Hy-Vee delivered. cause in their deli section they have all this food and a big salad and soup bar and a fountain drink machine with...  Pibb. Xtra.  on tap.  but it's snowing (a little) and i don't feel like driving the 1/3 block drive next door to Hy-Vee right now.  plus Damon is at home studying at the moment.  he would be disappointed in my sub-standard drinking choices.  but i would have them deliver me their biggest size Pibb.

this is what we did this weekend:

we went to the library on Saturday for a few hours.  Damon studied.  i loaded cd's into my itunes... maybe some tim mcgraw and george strait (yum).  maybe a bob marley lullaby album.  maybe the Ratatouille soundtrack for when i cook. and maybe an n'sync album. just sayin'. 

tonight i'm making Pioneer Woman's chicken parmigiana.  if you haven't started cooking from PW, i don't know why you are still here and not at thepioneerwoman.com  for reals.  if i only made her meals from here on out, we would both die blissful. 

35 weeks tomorrow. crazy... and amazon has almost as good prices as costco on diapers.  anyone else notice that costco doesn't carry size 1's?  how annoying.  

yesterday my Bishop told me that i DID NOT look like i was about to pop.  what a nice man.  i knew i liked that guy.  and not just cause him and his wife had us over for brazillian food a while back or because when we played human-hungry-hungry-hippos with the youth he was super competitive and yelling and shoving young people on skateboards towards the cluster of bodies in the middle of the gym... i knew i liked him for other reasons, like, he flatters me. 

are you ready for a NEW year?

2011

This is going to be a big year.

Sometimes lately I've been wondering if we should have waited longer to start a family.  Mostly because we've been having so much fun together the last few months (how is that even possible, with med school?) that I wonder how it will be when we have a little person demanding attention and time and more.  I don't know if it was pregnancy or being out here in Des Moines away from family and all our old friends and familiar places, or being completely poor or just that we've gotten into our marriage groove (oh, I hope it's that!), but the second half of our first year(ish) was way better than our first.

Don't get me wrong, our first was great, but there is a lot of growing and learning that comes in the first little bit of being married, living together, learning to work/fight/eat/play/travel/finance together, and it wasn't always the easiest.

But now?  Now we are havin' a ball.  We know each other so  much better and know what the other wants (Damon is especially good at this) without always having to ask.  We know what makes each other tick and tock and go crazy and laugh.  Damon is the coolest person I know.  He is always happy, I don't even know how.  He's giving and kind and hilarious.  He won't throw away his ugly sweater (a wafflecone, red sweater vest, nonetheless) and wears it around the house.  He breaks into dance and loves the 'Cool TV' channel that plays the world's worst music videos that we sometimes have dance parties to.

He also does more for me than necessary.  Last night he got my toothbrush ready for me. And put it in my mouth.  and then we brushed out teeth together but laughing the whole time and my face leaked from my eyes, my nose, and my mouth.  It was funny, I don't know why.  He offers to carry me to bed even though I'm quickly catching up to him in weight. The other day he made me breakfast in bed even though it was fast Sunday and he couldn't even eat with me.  He just sat there and talked to me while I ate and even put peanut butter on my waffles for me.

Hey, sorry about the time I sneezed on you while we were kissing for photos...

Knowing Damon, I know I have nothing to worry about.  We are going to have so much fun together, the 3 of us. We are getting so excited for the baby to get here, and can't believe there are less than 6 weeks left!  I know the apprehension will be gone as soon as he arrives, and I get to see Damon be a dad.  And luckily, it's a boy, so I'll still be his #1 girl...

And I'll always get the first flight. 

In other news, I'm gonna work on changing the blog up a bit. I don't really like the way it looks anymore.  Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze it into my super busy schedule of laying on the couch and netflixing and blogging. 

2011

Whew, we are still alive!  We spent the last 2 weeks in Texas doing nothing and everything, and we didn't bring our computers, or cameras, for that matter!  We had an amazing time and especially enjoyed the 75 degree plus weather every day.  We have lots of stories to tell and a few pics from here and there that we'll try to get up, but for now, I thought I'd put up the best pictures we got of the whole trip...

My parents got us a 3d ultrasound- something I'd wanted but wasn't willing to pay for, and it was awesome!  The little guy has hair (not the dark stuff you see in the picture yet, that's just from the imaging) and big cheeks and great lips.  It was so cool to 'see' him... can't wait to really see him in the next 6 weeks!

apparently he has a puppy paw. 

eyes wide open

just hanging out, leg crossed over his knee

and then kicking himself in the forehead...

When we first started, he had both his legs and his arms crossed in front of his face, it took some shaking and moving around to get him to unfold for a few minutes...

I'm at 34 weeks, and we have an appointment tomorrow, so we'll see how everything's going, time is flying by, and I feel like we have so much to do (aka buy) before February, but we are both so excited!  I'm especially excited not only to have him here, but to get my body back!  I didn't think it was possible to be so uncomfortable all the time, but it's worth it...