Bump Pictures!

Our Blessing!

As most of you know, Kyle and I have been trying to get pregnant for some time.  We were blessed to find out we were pregnant back in January 2013, but lost that baby shortly after.  We were again blessed to find out we were pregnant September 2014. After two years and one miscarriage, we were elated, to say the least.

The first trimester was a fun new experience, and I say that without any sarcasm.  My biggest complaint was that I often felt lightheaded and dizzy.  In fact, this was my first indicator that I was pregnant. Other than dizziness, I haven't really been sick. I've had nausea every once in a while, and my gag reflex was on over-drive, but again I can't complain.  I did suddenly notice just how stinky my middle school students were, and a very accommodating administration worked things out that several of my student would shower before class or leave my class to shower if I couldn't handle it. 

I went to see my doctor right around my 9 week mark.  Since I had miscarried before, they offered to let me have an early ultrasound to get some peace of mind.  I was scheduled for an ultrasound the very next morning.  Kyle went with me, and it was the first time we got to see our tiny baby. At that point our baby was about 1 cm big, but with a healthy heartbeat.  The technician measured me at 7 weeks instead of the 9 weeks that I thought I was. That was a tiny bit of a let down, but seeing our baby was worth it.

I had another ultrasound at 11 weeks when they couldn't find the heartbeat.  I wasn't too worried, I had been told by my ultrasound technician that my uterus is tilted back, so it may be hard to find a heartbeat early on.  With that in mind, I was just excited that they pulled in an ultrasound machine.  Again, I cried with joy when I saw my tiny baby kicking and punching.  Such an amazing sight!

On Wednesday, Jan 7th, we had our gender ultrasound. I have felt from early on that we were having a girl. I always pictured a girl in my head and was so excited to pick out little girl clothes.  Kyle and I had even agreed on two girl names!  Kyle had always teased me about our baby being a boy, since I felt so strongly it was a girl.  We decided to bet on it.  Girl  meant Kyle would clean both our cars, Boy, I would.  When we went into the ultrasound, the technician told us that at 18 weeks it may be too early to accurately tell what we are having. I was instantly let down, I had been so excited.  But when she started looking, within just a few seconds, she was able to announce that we are having a BOY!  I was so shocked.  (Kyle informed that I better clean the cars before I got too big. Funny boy) I think I am just now getting used to the idea.  What was more amazing was to see our little bouncing boy! He was so active. Moving constantly, kicking his legs and moving his arms.  What an amazing technology we have today.   My technician also measured me closer to 19 weeks, which was why it was so easy to see the gender.

This pregnancy has been fairly easy (knock on wood), and it never felt quite real to me.  But after our ultrasound, and my ever increasing belly, I finally feel like we have a baby on the way.  Which means that I want to shop!  I also finally shared the news on Facebook, which was a big step for me, but also so much fun. Our tiny bundle of Joy is due around June 10th! 

Our baby boy!  Kyle joked that he's already taking after me with the lip rub in the picture on the right. We couldn't be more excited!

October!

We had a busy start to the school year and October kept pace with September.  Early in October we went down to Salt Lake City for an Anberlin concert.  Anberlin is one of Kyle's favorite bands. In fact for our very first Valentine's Day together, I got him an Anberlin t-shirt.  Which he proudly wore at the concert.  We invited Katelyn to come with us, so that was a lot of fun.  The concert itself was interesting.  I am not a huge fan of big crowds, and once those big crowds start jumping around and pushing on you, then I become absolutely terrified.  We were right up front by the stage, but as soon as Anberlin came on and the pushing and crowding started, I ditch Kyle and Katelyn and headed back to a safer location.  Overall, it was fun.  Kyle and Katelyn really enjoyed themselves. I just ended up feeling old because it was too loud and too crowded.  Here are a few pics!

Waiting in line outside.

Oh my, look at all the people!

Kyle and I also had the opportunity to go to a dinner theater. Several of his classmates in his program worked at an event and they were given tickets for their work. We got to see a local theater perform the play Les Miserables.  The food was yummy and it was a lot of fun.

And the last event to blog about... We had a Niatec Fall/Halloween party.  I helped to organize it.  I had found online that there is a pumpkin patch/corn maze close by.  We ended up having dinner in a church near the corn maze, then heading over together.  The corn maze was a ton of fun.  It was the type of maze where it gives you questions to choose your path.  There was also a huge pumpkin patch where we picked out pumpkins.  It would have been better if we had gone a tiny bit earlier so we could have some sun, but it still worked out great and I'm glad we got to do it.

Crazy start to the school year!

Well, if you didn't figure it out from the last post, I broke my foot.  We had just gotten home from our trip to D.C.(literally home for maybe 30 minutes).  Kyle had gotten up in the loft to get down our fans (it was so hot!) and he asked me to throw some bags of stuff up to him.  In a perfect combination of events.  I jumped, threw the bag, landed wrong on the cement/carpet in my flip-flop, my foot twisted to the side and I heard something pop.  I wasn't in too much pain, really just astounded at finding myself sitting on the ground. I had scrapped up my knee and the top of my foot in the process.  Kyle, of course, looked dumbfounded at my blunder.  I stood up and hobbled up the stairs to the kitchen. As soon as I stood in the light from the kitchen (the garage light had burned out while we were gone), I could tell that a bone was sticking out in a way that it shouldn't be.  It was at that point that I told Kyle that I had thought that I had broken my foot.  He seemed slightly panicky as he rushed down from the loft. I just went into the kitchen to sit down. Again, not much pain.  So we debated whether or not I needed to be taken in.  Kyle decided to feel my foot to see where it hurt.  I registered no pain as he pushed on the bone, but in the process almost passed out and had to lay on the floor. I think that was the scariest part for me.  I hate the passing out feeling and obviously my body was registering that something was wrong.  Well, we decided to go into an urgent care clinic. They x-rayed my foot and it was broken.  The doctor also proved what I had been telling Kyle for years, that I had a high pain tolerance. He said that it's been scientifically proven that red-heads have a higher pain tolerance.  That's what I thought!  Anyway, I went home with a nice big boot. It was hard to sleep because of the boot but also because my foot hurt. I took ibuprofen to help with the pain.  That happened on a Sunday evening, and I started school on the following Thursday.  My students came back on the next Tuesday, so I started the school year hobbling around on my boot.  That afternoon, I had an appointment with a podiatrist.  He x-rayed my foot again, and since there were two small breaks, connected to a tendon, it turned out that I actually needed a cast.  I got a nice purple cast, and a scooter to get around on.  Of course, my kids loved it.  They wanted to put a motor on it and bling it out.  Luckily for me, I was only on the scooter for two weeks.  But that two weeks sure made me grateful for having two feet that work.  After two weeks, I went back to the podiatrist. My foot was healing nicely, so I was put back in the boot for two weeks.  It's been two weeks since I got the boot off.  My foot is still sore sometimes, but it seems to have healed nicely.  So that was the start to my school year!

I was not excited about getting a cast!  But at least I got to choose a nice purple color!

Trying out the scooter for the first time.  It was amazing how fast I could get down the halls at school. 

Kyle had a good time on the scooter, too!

Since we've been home...

And then this happened no more than 30 minutes after we got home.

This is my artistic way of showing my crutches and the only foot I'll be wearing shoes on for a while.

Iowa Visit!

We spend a week in Iowa visiting family before heading back to Idaho. While visiting my family in Chillicothe, I was still in the sight-seeing mode, so I asked at dinner one day what we could go see in the area.  Dad mentioned some pyramids, so we loaded up to go check them out.

We headed out in Dan's minivan to see to the pyramids that are in a cemetery

The biggest one has a tomb on one side that is open.  Mom was the first to go down to look in.

Dan and Kyle also went down to poke their heads in.  Right after this picture was taken, Mom, standing behind us, screamed. We all jumped, you should have seen the look on Kyle's face, while mom giggled.  We're used to her shenanigans, but Kyle's not yet.  

Examining the pyramid.

Selfie in front of the cool pyramids!

After we stayed a few days with my family, we headed to Cedar Rapids to see friends, Casey and Amber.  We stayed with them one night then went to Galena, IL the next day.  Kyle has always talked about Galena to me, so we decided to take a day and visit.

We had lunch at a funny place called Durty Gurt's.  

We went to the Grant Museum.  This is General/President Grant at a pretty young age.

Outside the Grant Museum. I got the coolest owl coloring book ever!

Outside the Grant House, but it was closed, so we didn't actually get to tour it.

So cute! Love these guys!

Climbing on a canon.  Proud moment.

We also went to a park.  The weather was gorgeous, this picture is from a bridge overlooking the main tourist strip in Galena.

After Galena we headed to Manchester to see Kyle's family.  Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures from that visit.  We enjoyed our time there celebrating Terry and Teresa's wedding anniversary. We went kayaking and ate lots of sweet corn, well Kyle did.

Instead of heading home on Friday like originally planned, Kyle had a surprise for me.  On Friday morning we headed up to Dodgeville, WI to see The House on the Rock.  This guy named, Alex Jordan, built his crazy house up on a cliff.  He didn't do much planning, just built how he felt it should go.  The house was cool, but weird.  But then we also got to see his many collections.

Beautiful gardens at The House on the Rock.

He built a room that extends out of the house, called the Infinity Room.

Obviously, it looks like the room keeps going forever.  Really neat.

He had a lot of collections, but my favorite was his collection of doll houses.

They were so beautiful and perfect.  With tiny furniture and everything looked so real, just miniature.

Part of his Circus collection.  A pyramid of elephants.

A doll castle!

Jordan also has the world's largest carousel, a collection of model boats and ships with a giant replica of a whale.  There was one room that was huge and dimly lit with all sorts of stuff in it.  Like giant bells, parts from a steam boat and a giant chandelier made out of smaller chandeliers.  There were music machines, actual instruments that he made mechanisms for to play them. Pretty cool. I'm glad we took the time to go see it.
Here's a video of one of the huge music machines.  Sorry the camera doesn't focus very well, it was pretty dark in there.

Katelyn!

At the last minute, we decided to have Katelyn come and visit too!  She flew in on a Monday and then drove home with us on Saturday.  We had done a marathon tour with Kyle and Jess so we decided to take it easy and see a few things everyday she was there.  This was a pretty big deal for me, since I learned to conquer the D.C. metro.  I rode by myself to collect her from the airport, and then we would catch a bus and head downtown while Kyle was working. If he could, he'd meet up with us at the Mall.  Here's some pics!

First stop, Great Falls!

Kyle is dedicated to getting a really good picture.  Here we are outside the D.C. Temple.

Inside the Capitol Building Rotunda

We also met Washington and some Native Americans at the Native American Heritage Smithsonian.

Meeting the Wright Brothers outside their house at the Air and Space Museum.

Outside the Smithsonian Castle

 We are so glad Katelyn could come hang out with us.  We saw new and different sights with her, including the National Art Museum. So Fun!