Being Pregnant

I basically knew right away that I was pregnant way before the test told me I was. I remember feeling tired for no reason and getting nauseous every time I got hungry. I also had a couple serious crying spells for no reason so I just knew something was up. I wanted to surprise Curtis with the pregnancy test for Christmas but when I went to take the test on Christmas Eve it was negative. I was really confused and a little disappointed but I just knew I was pregnant even though the test told me I wasn't. I told Curtis about it and we waited another week and I took the test again and BOOM! Pregnant.

This is me in Moses Lake back when me and Curtis were the only ones who knew.

The first thing I wanted to do was go to the doctors and get a test done just so that I could be one hundred percent positive. That meant telling my mom and dad so I could go to his office. I remember going to my mom's room and telling her that I had something to tell her. She instantly got very serious like I was about to break some terrible news so when I told her that I was pregnant I kind of expected her to be very excited that it wasn't bad news. I felt like she reacted the same way that she would have reacted had I told her this same news back in high school. Mostly shocked and quiet and instantly asking if it was planned. My dad congratulated me and eventually my mom came around to being excited. I took a test at my dad's office and then called all of my brothers and sisters to tell them the news.

Up to this point I was feeling pretty good about being pregnant because the symptoms weren't really too bad. Once I got back to St George everything changed. I was so tired that I could hardly get up off the couch. I fell asleep almost every day on the poor girl I nanny for. I was super nauseous unless I was eating every half hour but nothing ever sounded good to eat because I was nauseous. I got migraines half of the time when I was trying to teach dance. I remember feeling so miserable. After a while I got used to the misery but I do remember thinking that pregnancy was harder than I ever thought it would be and that I didn't want to be pregnant anymore.

Then lo and behold, the 13th week came around and I remember one day that I thought I was starting to feel a little better. From that time on, I wasn't nauseous anymore and I could actually make it through most of the day with enough energy to do what needed to get done. The second trimester was a breeze because I didn't feel sick and I was hardly getting any bigger. I could feel the baby moving all the time and it always made me feel so happy to know that my baby was doing ok. I remember wishing that I would start showing more so that strangers knew I was pregnant and not just on the chubby side. Be careful what you wish for.

Here is part of our announcement photo shoot. Kylie took the pictures for us. Mom didn't approve of our announcement but we thought it was pretty funny.

At 20 weeks we had our main ultrasound that would measure our baby and tell us whether we were having a boy or a girl! Up until this point, I just knew that it was going to be a boy. I wasn't positive or anything but I remember having a dream that it was going to be a boy and every time I thought of baby names I would think of a boys name and I just knew we would probably have a boy. So I'm laying on the ultrasound table and watching the screen and we had told our technician that we wanted to know the sex. I had always imagined this big moment where they would stop and say "It's a...(Drumroll) Boy!" I think some people actually get that from their technicians. Ours was more like "here is the arm, here is the heart, here are the boy parts, here is the leg..." Wait a minute! I was freaking out in my head and I looked over at Curtis who was shocked too! The technician had zero reaction to it but that didn't really matter at the moment. I was so overwhelmed by it that I was crying my eyes out and still no response at all from the technician. She didn't even offer me a tissue. So it was a great moment but it was also a little lack luster.

At the beginning of the ultrasound she had told me that my placenta looked good. Whatever that means. Right towards the end, her exact words were "remember when I said your placenta looked good? Well it's not. Its actually low." So of course both me and Curtis ask, "what does that mean?" She quickly said "you have to wait to hear from the doctor." We went out to the waiting room and had to wait about 30 minutes to see the doctor. I was dying! I was so worried about what it meant that I was crying and Curtis was on his phone trying to look up what it meant on the internet. Once we finally saw our doctor he explained it to us. Apparently it's super common and about nine times out of ten the problem fixes itself. The worst thing that would happen is it wouldn't get higher and I would have to have a c section. So nothing as bad as I was thinking. Also, his kidneys were enlarged which is apparently common in boys. He said they start to worry once the measurements reached a 1 and our boy was only at like a .5. He is a great doctor and made me feel really calm and ok about everything. Which is the exact opposite of what that ultrasound tech did. She was really kind of awful.

Here is mine and Jules first baby bump picture that we took together. I love that I got to share this experience with her!

At about 25-26 weeks is when I really started getting bigger. It was like waking up with a new stomach every day and it just wouldn't stop growing. I was all of the sudden very limited to what clothes still fit me. Towards the beginning it still wasn't too bad though.It was always a little shocking to pass a mirror because I would forget how big I was. I would try to squeeze between people and chairs and realize that I just couldn't do that anymore.

At this point we were in Portland so we had to find another doctor. We went to Brea's doctor named Doctor Linn and she was a very tiny and funny Asian lady. We liked her right away. Unfortunately, we only got to see her for that one appointment because she had a family emergency that took her away. Doctor Tan at her office took over her patients for the time being. I was a little disappointed at first but from the very first visit I loved Doctor Tan too! He is a small, young looking Asian man and he really is just the nicest. I saw him for the last two months of my pregnancy and I was really sad that he wouldn't be the one to deliver our baby.

Here I am at about 6 months. I was in Moses Lake teaching dance while Curtis was home studying for the mcat.

Here we are at our one year anniversary at Multnomah Falls!

Here we are at 32 and 25 weeks in Seaside!

Uncle Bryan's last family hurrah.

Last picture together!

One of our last Sunday's in portland.

We knew that we would be making the move back to St George a week before my due date. People told me I was crazy but there wasn't really any way around it with Curtis' school schedule. Doctor Tan just told me to make sure that I went in for my checkup right before I left so that way he could tell me whether I would be safe to travel. The last month was mostly just full of me worrying about going into labor before the move. I had checkups every Friday the whole last month and luckily for me they would tell me that I was still closed every time. I would be so relieved when they told me this and they would always laugh at me because that is not the typical response of most pregnant women.

We made it back to St George in record time. We only had to make two stops the whole way and I was pretty impressed with myself. We found out later that I should have taken walking breaks every two hours because you can develop blood clots. Oops! Oh well. Then I preceded to wait another two weeks for our little guy to come. I was pretty huge at this point but I still walked around the neighborhood for a couple of miles every day so that the baby would come sooner.

Here is the final belly shot.

Here I am the night before I was scheduled for my induction.

The Year of Basketball

It is easy to call this year the "year of basketball" because that is really what our lives revolved around. Curtis came home tired every day from practice and was gone every other weekend for games. While it wasn't the choicest of circumstances, I loved it because that meant that I got to watch Curtis play basketball which is one of my very favorite things to do! All of these pictures are from the UNLV game thanks to my awesome mother! I was really bad at taking pictures this year.

The year started off super exciting when we beat UNLV in the preseason opener at UNLV! My family got to come and watch and it was such a fun game! Curtis hit some great shots and then eventually fouled out. I secretly love it when he fouls out because I feel like it makes him look like a bad A. Here is the final score shot!

Here is an awesome picture sequence of Curtis shooting!

What a Stud!
They went on to win their next 12 games in a row and were ranked 7th in the Nation! It was shaping up to be a really great season!

This guy is just about 1000 times scarier looking than Curtis is.

Unfortunately their winning streak kinda left them as we started losing game after game. They always kept it exciting though. One game against BYU- Hawaii we were down by 8 points with 1:30 left and we managed to take them to overtime and win! Another highlight was when Curtis had a perfect game which just means that he made every shot that he took. Plus he got a double-double so he was in the double digits for points and rebounds. It was an awesome game for him and he even got this nice picture on the website.

So despite our losses there were still good times.

My dad, Bryan, Brad and I all found a way to make it to San Diego to watch their tournament. We were super excited for a basketball filled weekend. We were ahead in our first game and it was looking like it was going to be an easy win for us. Unfortunately we ended up losing (because they took Curtis out) and so the team all went home the next morning. So the rest of the weekend it was just me and the boys. They went golfing while I relaxed at the hotel and we had a pretty good weekend despite being seriously bummed about the tournament.

Here is my favorite picture of the dads watching Curtis play.

Throughout the year I got to become really good friends with all of the basketball players wives and it really saved me. Whenever Curtis was gone I could always call them to hang out because I knew their husbands were gone too. It was a really sweet deal. We took some trips to watch games together and I had the greatest time getting to know them.

The year also ended with Curtis getting the Male Scholar Athlete of the Year Award! It was a tiring year but I am going to miss watching Curits play basketball a lot.

Here is another picture sequence of Curtis taking a charge and falling pretty hard. I don't remember if he got the call or not so we will just say he did.

Here is a picture of Curtis calling Dalton out.

Here is a funny one of Curtis obviously not paying attention to his coach. 

Here is Curtis being friends with the scary guy. Just more proof that everybody loves Curtis. 

His devoted fans! 

The Part Time Job Warrior

This last year was an interesting one for me because I was finally finished with school. I found myself a dance teaching position in St George but I was only teaching two to three days a week. After five years at BYU where I was in classes or practice every hour of the day, I knew I would get bored quickly if I didn't find other ways to fill up my schedule. I ended up with four different part time jobs. My schedule was different every day and I really loved it!

Part time job number 1: Dance Teacher

I taught at Desert Edge Dance Company. Their studio was definitely smaller than ones that I was used to teaching at but my boss treated me super well. I got to work with their competition team and teach some other side classes as well. Here are some memorable parts of my year.

- I had to teach an adult tap class at the first part of the year. It started out fine, with just a couple older ladies coming. Then a lot of scheduling things came up and I ended up with only one student every week. I would try to keep it light and fun but the lady I taught would act so bored if I gave her any steps she already knew how to do. Then when I tried to challenge her a little bit she would get super visibly frustrated and would not let me move on unless she had it down. Plus, she was a midwife and was always on call so we would have to stop every five minutes when her phone rang so she could make sure it wasn't important. I left every class thinking there was no way she was coming back because the class was really no fun at all. But there she was every week. We were told the class would have to be cancelled and she was devastated. She asked if she could bring her non dancing husband and daughter with her so that we could enroll them and still have the class. Luckily for me, that didn't work out.

- We had our Christmas recital in December and when I got to the theater it had started to snow. It never snows in St George so that was a nice little winter surprise for everyone. By the time the older kids show started it was snowing so hard that all the roads were blocked off and hardly anybody could make it. We had to do the recital with half of the students missing and it was a disaster. Apparently in a town like St George they don't own snow plows. There really wasn't that much snow but it still took me an extra 45 minutes to get home and church was cancelled the next day!

- Little girls are mean. At least once a day I have to remind one of my classes that "we are all friends and we need to be nice to each other!" One day, my adorable little 7 year old red head girl was upset by something her friend said so I asked her what was wrong. She told me "She said that when I get to 8th grade that people will laugh and make fun of me because of my red hair." While this is probably true because 8th graders are jerks, it still was not a very nice thing for a second grader to say to someone.

This was the group of girls that I taught the most at the studio. They were super cute and I was really sad to leave them.

Part Time Job Number 2:

I was a nanny for this little angel two days a week.

 Her name is Alayna and she really is just super adorable. With the curly blonde hair and her little vampire teeth, I had no problem pretending like she was mine when we were in public. Two year olds can definitely be difficult but since I was just watching one all day, it really wasn't too bad. The only hard part was taking her places in public because she was extremely shy. Trying to get her to play when other kids were around her and in her way was almost impossible. Most of the time she would end up just giving me this look the whole time-

I will be back to watching her in the fall after I have the baby so I will be able to practice being a part time mother of two. She really is just the cutest.

- Funny story. It had snowed a little bit and her mom was so excited for her to play in it. She bought her all new snow gear and told me to take lots of pictures because she was so sad that she was missing her first snow. I got her all decked out and took her outside and she HATED it! She would not even touch the snow with her mittens on. I tried building a little snowman and did everything I could to get her out into it. She was just not interested. I didn't want her mom to think I was a failure so I posed a couple pictures out in the snow. This picture took some serious bribing with some fruit snacks but eventually I got one where she was almost looking like she liked the snow.

Part Time Job #3: Team Dance Employee

I got to work for Kacey as a Team Dance employee in my free time. I sent out flyers, made documents, answered phone calls...basically everything Kacey didn't want to do :) I got to go to three of the events this year and I was a judge for two of them. It was such a fun time! I love getting to work with my family. I got to judge the Sacramento event this year with my mom and we had to pretend like she wasn't my mom so that we would look somewhat professional. That turned out to be impossible for me because calling my mom Peggy is just too hard for me. I might have had some people fooled though.

Part Time Job #4: Intramurals  Employee

This was one of my favorite jobs because I got to work with Curtis two nights a week. The boys would all ref the games and the girls would be scorekeepers. It really was the easiest job ever and I loved it. I got to hang out with my friends and got paid for it. The only hard sport was basketball because we had to keep individual stats the whole time. One person would be the announcer and you would have to say every time someone had taken a shot, missed or made a shot, got an assist, got a rebound...etc. It was pretty hard at first but I'm pretty sure by the end I could have made a pretty decent sports announcer,

One of the best parts about it was getting to see college girls hit on my husband firsthand. One girl in the middle of her flag football game said "You're the best ref...well at least the best looking!" My goodness, have you never heard of a ring check? It gave us some good laughs!

A Dumpster Couch and Two TVs

Moving into our first apartment was quite an adventure. When looking for an apartment, my only criteria was that it was cheap. We found an apartment that was close to the school with a great view of the freeway.

This was the first apartment I had ever moved into that came unfurnished. I knew that we wouldn't be living her for a very long time so I didn't want to have to buy any furniture that was nice and expensive because I didn't want to have to move it around with me for the next couple years. The first week that we moved here we went to DI at least once a day and would check craigslist at least five times a day. The first thing we needed was a couch. We kept seeing cheap ones come up on craigslist but they were pretty terrible even for a cheap price. I just knew we could find a better deal. After about a week of searching, we were driving past our apartment complex and I saw a full couch in the dumpster! I wish I would have taken a picture of this couch but it looked something like this.

Needless to say, I made Curtis pull over to check out the couch. Not only was it in the dumpster but someone had also recently dumped their grass trimmings all over it. Did that deter me? Not a chance. It was a FREE couch! I couldn't believe our luck! We quickly pulled it out and started carrying it to our apartment. I'm not exactly a weakling but my upper body strength gave out pretty quickly carrying that huge couch up and down stairs. I kept wanting to take breaks but Curtis realized that if the couch was in our dumpster then that probably meant that someone from our complex threw it away. He was really nervous that they would see how ghetto we were taking their couch from the dumpster so he made me keep going even though my arms felt like they were going to fall off. Eventually we got the couch into our second floor apartment and I vacuumed off all of the grass. After the excitement of the free couch wore off, Curtis was a little skeptical about why it was in the dumpster in the first place. I was totally fine relaxing on the couch but he borrowed a couch cover from a friend before he would really sit on it. We really only had the couch for about a week before a friend of ours lent us some free couches. So the dumpster couch went back to it's home and we ended up with these beauties.

The rest of the apartment ended up coming together pretty nicely. We borrowed a table for dining from some friends and borrowed some folding chairs to make up our dining area.

We found a king size mattress and a bed frame at DI for super cheap! It didn't have any box springs so we spent a couple days looking around for some. One day curtis was driving and saw a ton of box springs in the dumpster of the apartment complex next to us. Manna from heaven!! They got all new beds for their apartments so we scored free box springs. Curtis had to load them one at a time in the open trunk of his car and drive slowly and haul them up to our apartment.

We were all lined up with a TV that we were going to borrow from a friend. We went over to his place one day to check it out and I knew after looking at it for one second that we would be buying a new TV. Yes, I am willing to dumpster dive for a couch but am unwilling to watch TV on a terrible screen. You now know exactly where my priorities are. It was the morning of Curtis' birthday and he had been watching different TVs on Ebay. He told me he was about to win one and he was super excited. He pressed that button and was so excited that we won our first TV. His buyer's remorse then immediately kicked in while he was looking at the price he paid vs the regular buying price. He was convinced that another TV he was watching was a way better deal and that he needed to have that one. He quickly sent an email to the seller explaining that he bought the first TV but that he really wanted the other TV that he was bidding on. He wanted to bid on the second TV and return the first TV only if he won. Amazingly enough, the seller was willing to do that so Curtis went and bid on the second TV of the day and won that one too. So we bought two TVs that day but luckily only ended up getting one very nice TV that is the pride and joy of our home.

We will be moving out of this apartment at the end of the month and we are so sad to let it go. It has been the perfect apartment for us. Here is a quick list of the pros and cons so I don't forget what it was like living here.

Pros:                                                                    
- Even when it looks like a huge mess it really only takes 20 minutes to clean the whole house        

-We had two closets which was a great blessing      
                                                                              
- We didn't have to use the air conditioning ever because you could cool the whole apartment down  
by opening the windows

Cons:
- If our trash can ever smells bad then the smell fills upour whole apartment very quickly

- You couldn't get ready in the morning without turning on the lights and waking the other person up

- If the windows were open then you couldn't hear theTV or sleep very well because of the freeway noise

Some of you may be appalled by how cheap and ghetto I am. I like to think of myself as being frugal and easy to please. We will miss you Terrace Apartments.