Easter 2011

Friday night we left Zion's and made our way to Manti to my grandparents for Easter. We celebrated everything basically on Saturday. We started off early with the Manti Egg Hunt. 

Afterwards we went home and the guys all got busy doing yard work getting the garden, the fruit trees, and the whole yard ready for summer and planting! Now that it is finally warming up a little bit. The rest of us went  inside and colored eggs. I love all of the fun colors that they have for coloring eggs now! Such beautiful eggs.

After egg coloring we went outside for the family egg hunt. In the hunt we integrated the real reason we celebrate easter. Each egg has a number that corresponds with a picture from the Easter story so whoever got that number got to tell the story that goes with that picture. It was the perfect way to remind the kids why we really celebrate Easter. That it is so much more than the egg hunts and baskets. After heading back home to Orem Sunday afternoon Jake and I watched this video to help us remember what he did. Elder Holland is one of my favorite apostles to listen to not only because of his powerful talks, but because of the feeling and emotion that he puts into his talks. You can honestly feel what he feels just by listening to his tender voice. This excerpt from one of his talks was the perfect way to refocus our attention on Easter to our Saviors atonement. I am so grateful for the sacrifice that was made for us, so that we can return to our Heavenly Father. Ultimately I am most grateful for the opportunity that we have to repent, be sealed to our families forever, and live with them through eternity. I am so grateful that Jake and I are able to be sealed to each other, and to our sweet baby that we love so much! (and are SO excited to meet!) I hope you all had a wonderful Easter and are welcoming spring with open arms like we are! To me there is no season easier to see the hand of God at work in the world than Spring. It is so beautiful! 

Anniversary Trip

I can hardly believe it but in just 2 short weeks Jake and I will have been married for 1 year! Crazy how time flies...But due to Jake's crazy school schedule we will not have time to go anywhere for our anniversary. So we decided that since Jake got about 5 days off in between Winter Semester and Spring Semester last week it would be the perfect time to go! The only problem was that it fell right over Easter weekend so we couldn't go far so that we could be with our family for Easter. St. George seemed like the perfect spot for us to get away together, have fun, and get some sunshine! Jake had never been to Southern Utah before so that made it even better. So with a little help from my *awesome* cousin Mindy's husband in getting a hotel room we headed to St. George Wednesday morning as soon as Jake finished his last final!

After we got to St. George, got checked in, and relaxed at the hotel for a bit we headed to our family's favorite Mexican Restaurant in St. George...Pancho and Lefty's...soooo yummy. Then we headed off to do some mini golfing and the batting cages. Afterwards we spent the rest of the night at the pool! Felt sooo good to be able to outside, after dark, in a swimming pool, and it was still warm! 

The next morning we got up early for breakfast. I'm pretty sure my very favorite part of staying in a hotel is the continental breakfast...no clue why, that and the swimming pool will get me to just about any hotel. After that we headed to the temple and to look around the visitors center. I love the St. George temple, it is so beautiful!

We spent the morning walking around town, seeing the sights, and had lunch and TwentyFive Main. Then it was back to the pool :) We spent about 3 hours just lounging out, me reading my book, Jake sleeping and watching his Cubs play. It was perfect, except for the few weird places that I somehow managed to miss getting sunscreen on... I ended up with some terrible sunburn lines and even worse pain! A quick trip to the store for some Aloe cleared that up nicely though. Afterwards we went to one of my favorites Nielsen's Frozen Custard, got some Bumbleberry Custard and went for a drive. I took Jake to see the softball fields that I spent many hours playing at back in the day and just saw some sights. That night we went to the Mongolian Barbecue for dinner, Jake had been dying to go since he learned that St. George had one. It was my first time, but it was pretty good! We spent the rest of the evening walking around the outlets and buying baby stuff :) I couldn't help myself :)

After breakfast on Friday morning we went to Zions National Park to do a little biking. We thought this early in the season we'd have the park mostly to ourselves...we were very wrong. Turns out it was "Free National Park weekend" and EVERYONE thought it would be a good weekend to go...There were so many people I couldn't believe it! But we still had a lot of fun, we were lucky to find a parking spot in the park and got on our bikes down at the bottom and rode up the Canyon. It was so much fun! I get tired a lot easier carrying this little baby around with me, so we didn't get to go up a lot of the hills I know Jake would have liked to go on but it was still good. He doesn't complain :)

Overall we had the perfect mini vacay before heading back to Manti to spend Easter weekend with the family. It was so nice to get away from work, school, and everything else and just have a weekend to ourselves to celebrate our anniversary a little bit early. Now if only that awesome St. George 70-80 degree weather would move it's way north and warm us Northerners up a little bit!! 

Marry Me

If this song had come out about 1 year earlier this would have been our first dance song at our wedding...I love it!

Pregnancy...thus far

Well as most everyone knows now we are having a baby this October. We really are so excited we don't know how we are going to wait for 6 more months...Ahhh!! It'll be good though. I am just over 13 weeks along right now, it's my last week in the first trimester! Which I will happily say good bye to :) I started off feeling terrible right from the start...We found out at about 6 weeks, due to the fact that I had been so sick for 3 days straight, with no fever, nothing...I was confused...Then the thought crossed my mind....maybe...And we were thrilled to find out our suspicions were true! After about 2 weeks of constant either feeling like I was going to throw up at any second or actually throwing everything up I gave up and called my doctor and got me some Zofran. And it has made life about 10x better! I still get nauseated, but at least the Zofran allows me to eat and keep it down! I can tell that I am getting better though, I can even go some days without taking the Zofran sometimes, I am still nauseated when I don't, but it is tolerable. It all just depends on the day! Some days are better than others and if it is a days that I work, I always take the medicine because there is no way I can work and feel like that. As far as cravings go I haven't really had anything weird. Mostly I just LOVE milk for some reason. It is all I ever want to drink, I go through 2-3 gallons a week. Jake just laughs. But other than that there hasn't been one thing that I always want....I will get different random cravings. I have pretty much completely lost my sweet tooth. Nothing sweet or desserty sounds good at all. Only sour things! I love my sour patch kids now! It is pretty sad that a box of girl scout cookies and a bag of Mini Cadbury Eggs have sat in our pantry for about 2 months now... I think almost worse than the nausea is the constant feeling of hunger...It's never ending! I have come to hate food! I dread eating because it usually doesn't taste good and I am usually still hungry afterwards. I feel like I just eat constantly. I thought for sure I would go to last doctors appointment and I would've gained like 10 pounds but turns out I had lost weight...So the doctor says I need to eat more and this months goal is to gain weight...So I am trying.  Overall there is no way I could do any of this if it wasn't for Jake, to say he has been wonderful would be an understatement. He has cooked himself countless meals, gone to school and work all day to come home and do the dishes, clean the house, everything...because if I even thought about moving it better have just been to go to the bathroom to throw up... He's made 11:00 runs to Arby's because all I can think about is a Roast Beef Sandwich, or to Wal-Mart at 10 PM to get the stuff for 7 layer bean dip, and come home and made it because that is my momentary craving...And after I finish eating all these things he goes and gets for me he just sits there patiently rubbing my back as I throw it all back up...We have grown closer together as a couple more in the last 3 months than we ever had in the year and a half before that. No way I could do it without him. But mostly we are just thrilled to welcome this little peanut into our family and can hardly wait!!