February 2015

Our trip back from Oregon included an overnight stay at Thomas' sister, Elizabeth's place in Idaho. We got to see their brand new, just-a-few-days-old, baby boy.

Thomas sent me flowers :)

I got together with a girl in our ward and made sugar cookies. Way fun!

We went to a Valentine's Day dance. I didn't do a whole lot of dancing! :)

My darling visiting teacher threw a baby shower for me.

We borrowed a slide scanner from Thomas' brother and cleaned up some old negatives we found in the box of letters I scanned in January. Thomas scanned those for me.

I crocheted a baby cardigan and beanie.

We got to attend You Can't Take it With You, directed by Thomas' cousin.

We acquired a nice little chest freezer that I've basically filled with additional homemade freezer meals! It feels like quite an accomplishment to build up our food supply in this manner while sticking to our grocery budget. Plus, it feels great knowing that if I don't want to/have time to cook this next little while (particularly after the baby comes), we can just pull out homemade pizza, lasagna, quiche, egg rolls, chimichangas, etc. and have a home-cooked meal in a fraction of the time it would take from scratch! 

Anyway, we think we're about as ready for baby as we can be... Now we are just awaiting his/her arrival!

oxox

December 2014

During November, I started to have some pretty debilitating hip/pelvic pain. Blessedly, our home teacher is in the physical therapy field and recommended a physical therapist he knows. He diagnosed a rotated pelvis (something like this) and worked on my muscles, which offered some relief the same day. He also gave me some exercises to do to help, and I am happy to report that I am repaired! :) What a relief!

Thomas' birthday was a busy day for us both. He had some Elders Quorum duties to attend to, and I went to a friend's baby shower. I also made 2 Bûches de Noël, one for the baby shower, and the other for our ward Christmas party, also on the same day. In the evening, we helped with and attended the Christmas party.

We kept the ice cream cake I made especially for Thomas' birthday to ourselves :)

I made some really yummy gingerbread cookies this year to give to some friends. The recipe I found worked really well for my Williams-Sonoma Message-In-A-Cookie cutters. It was fun coming up with Christmas sayings to stamp into my cookies.

Later in the month, we got to go to the Bradshaw Family Christmas Party. Good food, good company, a good time as always! :)

For Christmas, we had our Christmas miracle: we woke up to snow! It snowed most of the day and it was really nice to actually have a white Christmas. We stayed home and watched The Bells of St. Mary's (loved it!) before delivering some goodies & getting to work on turkey dinner. We had a couple from our ward over for dinner and ended up making a few plates up for some other friends, too. I guess we didn't get pictures of the whole ensemble, but we put together basically all the fixings (green bean casserole, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, steamed broccoli, cranberry sauce, pineapple, rolls).

After Christmas, we met up with some good friends who moved out of the ward this summer for dinner & games. They are also expecting, due 2 weeks ahead of us :) They and we had kept the news quiet for a fairly long time, so it was really exciting to find out about them!

My family came into town on the last day of the year on their way to take my sister off to college! We had a good couple of days with them but only got this picture, and technically this was January 1:

We're excited for Morgan's university experience and we're so glad they could stop and visit us on the way! They came bearing lots of gifts & hopefully enjoyed their time here. My dad worked on our car a bit and I got to talk baby stuff with my mom and sister :) It was simply nice to be together.

oxox

November 2014

In November, Elizabeth's family came down to Utah for a visit. We got to spend a little time with them at the cabin and then in Salt Lake with Samuel and Sarah.

For Thanksgiving, we got to visit Thomas' parents in Florida.

We toured old town Pensacola

We visited IHMC

I all of a sudden started looking pregnant :) My belly really popped that week.

The turkey: deep-fried & delicious!

We're glad we could spend time with family this November, especially getting to visit Thomas' parents where they live. We have much to be grateful for :)

oxox

July 2014

July was a very full month for us.

We started off with a neighborhood Independence Day block party on the 3rd. Thomas invited a friend from work and his family, and we grilled hot dogs together and enjoyed the company of our neighbors and the early-evening festivities.

On the 4th, rather than stay downtown amidst the hullabaloo that is the parade (etc.) in Provo, we left home around 7 AM to hike Y Mountain in the relative cool of the morning. We'd hiked the Y before, but this was our first time going all the way up, around the east side of the mountain, and finally to the overlook at the top. It was a challenging, steep hike, but we thoroughly enjoyed getting out in quiet, quiet nature. The greenery and wildflowers were so refreshing! Ultimately, when we made it back down the mountain, we were utterly exhausted. After some rest, we went out for Orange Julius at the mall and window-shopped a while.

On the 12th, we drove up to Salt Lake area for dinner at the Clarks'. What a cute, fun family!

On the weekend of the 19th (you know, just after Bastille Day), we took a trip up to Logan. We stayed the night Friday, and then on Saturday we attended the temple and then saw Les Miserables at the Eccles Theater.

On Pioneer Day, the 24th, we participated in the Temple-to-Temple 5K (and I beat my time from last year!). Then, in the afternoon, we packed up the car to drive to Boise to visit Elizabeth & co. for the weekend.

Pioneer Day activity!

oxox