A little bit of baby and some spring break

One of the greatest blessings of working for a school is having holidays and long breaks off. This month has been incredibly stressful for me because I have had triple the amount of IEP meetings, kids to test, and data to collect than I normally do in any given month. I told myself I was not even going to think about work over Spring Break-I needed a mental break. And....not an ounce of work was thought about :) (At least work relating to my job)

On Tuesday, I had my second ultrasound. On our first ultrasound, the doctor and technician could not detect the presence of a nasal bone. They said this was an indicator for Down's and suggested I do some bloodwork and possibly an amnio to decrease the probability of the baby having Down's. As you can imagine, I was worried sick. After listening to many stories about women having the same feedback as I had and having normal babies, I decided that I would leave my worries in the Lord's hand. I also had a blessing from family members. The bloodwork came back normal! The second ultrasound indicated the presence of a very small but nonetheless present nasal bone. I was absolutely ecstastic. The doctor said the heart and all other organs look good but I will have yet another ultrasound in a month. Below is a picture of our first ultrasound where we learned our little monkey is in fact going to be a BOY!

On Wednesday, my family got together at Freestone park and had corned beef, cabbage and potatoes. I had all day to myself so I decided to make some flower shaped cake balls for the get together. Below is a picture of the yummy dessert before they were dipped in white and green colored chocolate (I forgot to take pictures of the final product).

On Thursday evening and Friday evening, my family wanted to do some backyard camping. As camping is not my thing, we only joined in for the dinner and s'more making activities. Thursday night we ate cowboy dinners and Friday we made dutch over chicken pot pie and dutch oven peach cobbler. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures but all meals were absolutely delicious!

On Friday, David and I had pondered what we would do together since he also had the day off. I had wanted to watch a Spring training game but all the tickets left were in non-shaded areas of the stadium and being outside in the heat for 5 minutes was killing me! (I realize it was only 85-90 degrees and that I am completely doomed once the 110 degree summer weather hits). So we decided to do what we have been doing the last few breaks and paint the baby's room. In the midst of peeling up the carpet to paint the baseboards, we realized how nasty the carpet was and on the spur of the moment decided to have carpet installed. We learned to never get carpet at Lowe's (it would have cost us almost 400$). Instead we went with a family owned company that my relatives have all used and the carpet cost 1/2 the price-it turned out beautifully! So with a little jungle themed decorating and some furniture, the baby's room will be ready to go!

On another good note, over the last two weeks, I have started feeling the baby move. What an incredible feeling this is! I am always anxious to feel him move everyday for reassurance that he is still alive and "kickin" ;) I can't wait for the day when David will be able to feel him as well. I feel bad that the kicks aren't strong enough for him to feel.

February 2011

This past month has been filled with all kinds of fun things and new adventures!

Adventure #1:

While I was sleeping, I received a call around 10p.m. Wednesday a few weeks ago. It was David, calling me and telling me that he thought he had broken his arm. It was extremely swollen (like an orange sitting on top of his wrist) and he couldn't move it. He had decided to go play basketball with his cousins and some singles ward members. While trying to get a re-bound high in the air, some guy knocked his legs out from under him. This caused David to spin and fall down head first. Thanks be to the heavens he was able to turn his body somewhat so that he crushed his arm and hurt his ribs rather than landing on his head. I'll take the broken arm over a broken neck/paralyzation any day. Here's a more recent photo of my adorable husband-he gets his cast off in about 4 weeks.

Adventure #2:

Last Friday, we went to get my first ultrasound. I guess part of me thought all I would see was a blob (since that is what I saw at 8 weeks). I was floored and I am pretty sure David was too-to see an actual baby! Unfortunately grandpa bunzell has our ultrasound disc with all our pictures, so I can't post anything now. We decided to reveal the gender to our families Sunday night-and boy was it fun making everyone, friends and family, wait just a little longer to see what we were having. I found this idea on the internet and thought it would be fun----

Each person in our family got a piece of chocolate that looked like the above picture. If the chocolate candy bar was plain, it was a girl. If the chocolate candy bar underneath had nuts in it....it was a boy. Guess what? The chocolate had almonds in it! We are so excited to have a little boy in our home once August rolls around!

Adventure #3
Hobby Lobby has some pretty adorable Spring decorations-just what I needed to finish my spare bathroom! David painted the shelf white, we threw the decorations on it, and wah-lah! The spare bathroom is now fully decorated-it's pretty cute if I say so myself :) (Yes, I still need to find a picture/cute saying in the frame)

I think it's safe to say....

David and I are expecting a little one this coming August! We are so excited. I am a worry wart so I didn't want to say anything until I safely passed my first trimester. I am officially 14 weeks as of today! We will be finding out the baby's gender here in the next few weeks....any guesses as to what we are having?

I am contemplating having a gender revealing party. My wonderful friend Heidi at http://hjrcherryblossoms.blogspot.com gave me the idea as we attended our friends baby shower this past weekend. She is the queen of cute party/decoration ideas. Any thoughts?

Here are some things she did for her party (I am so jealous of her creativity!)

MLK Day Weekend

This weekend has absolutely been a blast-tiring, but SO fun!

Saturday I got to go to my friend Jill's baby shower. I got to see many friends whom I haven't seen in quite some time....and I found out my best friend is expecting baby #4! To top it off I won 2 out of 3 games that we played. One game we had 14 bags filled with white and or cream substances such as sugar, flour, baby powder, garlic salt, and formula. The bags were labeled with numbers and we had to guess (without smelling/tasting) what was in each bag. I ended up getting 7 out of 14 correct. The other game was we had to cut a string to the size we thought Jill's belly was around. Here is a picture of the girls (not sure who the random girl on the top left is or why she wanted to be in our picture).

Saturday night, I had a girls night out with some of my best friends from work (in the schools). These girls are the ones you can share anything with. It's amazing to me how over a two year span, we all bonded so closely-love those girls!

And now....it is MLK day. I decided it would be fun to take my roller blades and go to Skateland roller skating rink with my mom and some siblings. My husband told me that I shouldn't bring my roller blades because you can roll in them....its more like walking with a small glide. I didn't listen and brought them anyways. After two laps around the rink, I decided to take a break and look at my skates (because I wasn't able to roll hardly at all). One of the wheels had a huge crack all the way around it. I thought "oh great" and prayed I'd make it without the wheels shredding and me crashing. Another two laps and my skate stopped rolling. I looked behind me and noticed chunks of my wheels on the rink. I was so embarassed! Luckily my little sister had to go to work and leave the rink early so she gave me her roller skates. Thanks for saving my day Heidi! Here is a picture of my demolished skates---and mind you, not just one wheel had fallen apart, but TWO! Guess I should have listened to David!

Lastly.....My husband has tried the last few years to get me to sit down and write some goals for the year. I never have and groan when he asks. I am not sure why it is so hard to think about what I want to accomplish. And over the last week, I've realized that I have let a lot of precious time slip away because I haven't set goals. I am going to make my best attempt to get some goals written down and hopefully share some of them with you in my next post. Here's to a new year!

Christmas 2010

Christmas this year was slightly different than those in the past-to me, less magical. I am not sure what the difference was-whether its just me growing up or lacky of "Christmasy" service projects. This year we didn't make goodies, leave them on doorsteps and run. And we didn't do any Christmas Angels. Next year I am going to make it a goal to do more service and see if that heightens my Christmas spirit. David and I were spoiled with several wonderful gift. Some included a real bow with arrows, a new headboard/footboard, a lawn mower (thanks mom!), and tickets to Les Miserables (Thanks mom and dad Bunzell!). David and I gave our niece Kiara and nephew Dallin the "pout pout fish" book. A guy in our ward made a song to go with the book and Kiara always asks me to play the song for her-now she has a book to remember it by!

Here are some pictures from the day:

David graduated December 17th with his bachelors degree-great job honey! To celebrate, I got him an ASU shirt (no one can graduate from ASU and not ever have an ASU shirt, right?)

That's right, Stacey has all four Glee CD's!

This weekend we also celebrated my niece Aria's 3rd birthday. Happy Birthday Aria!

(Thanks for the pictures Kristi!) Aria was pretending to blow out her candles. The windy was too strong that no matter how many times her mom attempted to light the candles, they immediately blew out!

The birthday crowd

Bridal Showers and Zoo lights

This month has been full of wonderful holiday parties, bridal parties, movies, and Christmas lights. I offered to do a bridal shower for my sister in law who is getting married in one week (she got engaged around the first week of November). I thank my lucky stars for two wonderful sister in laws and a mother in law who helped me pull it all off. The only unfortunate part about the whole thing was that I had started coming down with a nasty bug and my throat hurt so bad that it killed to swallow. We had a chocolate fountain with bananas, pretzels, wafers, and marshmellows to dip, salsa, seven layer bean dip, rolls, oriental slaw salad, red velvet cupcakes, oreos, and twizzlers pull and peels. We played "guess the bridal phrase" where there was one word given and we all filled out the second part of the phrase...we then compared our answers to the bride-to-be's. Then it was present opening time! Here are some pictures from the party.

Rose got a nice black velvet blanket

Then, on Wednesday, my sister Stacey went to perform with her flute choir at the Phoenix Zoo where they were having Zoolights. We had a buy one get one free pass with our SRP bill so most of my family went as well. There is a section of the zoo where there is a talking giraffe and there must be a hidden camera because he makes comments based off of what the children around it were saying. My favorite part was section of the zoo that had trees and light boards whose lights all danced to the music that was being played (like the Transiberian Orchestra). It was amazing!



(Under the "love" tree, or so I call it!)
And...of course, we made our traditional journey down to the Mesa Temple Lights. We went with my brother and his family as well as my parents and other siblings. My wonderful sister law brought yummy hot chocolate and creamers. Mmmm!

(Us with our nephew Dallin)

Bones and Children

I posted something on facebook a week and a half ago about the bones in our backyard. For those who have no clue, here's the story. David came in from the backyard on Veteran's Day and asked me if I had killed anyone recently. I said "no, not recently" (jokingly) "why"? He said he was out in the yard and kicked what he thought was a "rock" and for some reason decided to look at it. It turned out it was a bone! So he started looking around, and in the middle of our yard found another bone, this one looking like a leg bone. I went outside and together we uncovered several bones that totally looked like rocks (due to decay) scattered all over various parts of our yard. Still not sure what kind of bones they are and how they got there. Here are some pictures of most, not all, of the bones.

Veteran's Day weekend, David and I had the pleasure of watching two of our many cute nieces and nephews. I have never watched children over night, other than my own siblings, so there are many things David and I learned.

1. At the end of a long day, it's going to be dad (David) who fixes us dinner. David was so sweet and fixed me and Hailey and Dylan Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwhiches with Bananas for dinner. I was so tired I could hardly see straight.

2. Campfires are only cool to little kids for 5 minutes.

3. After having children, we will never get sleep again. The kids must have woken up ten times during the night (understandably as they were in an unfamiliar setting), so by the time Sunday rolled around, we felt like zombies.

4. Reading stories around naptime will make the little ones fall right to sleep

Can you tell how tired we all were around 12:30?

Here are some pictures of the munchkins. Hailey was so good about helping me make lunch on Sunday!

Halloween 2010

Originally David and I weren't going to dress up this year-lame, I know. But we never go to any parties other than the ones put on by our ward. David mentioned a week ago that he needed to dress up as a guy from the 50's for work this past Friday. It dawned on me that my mom still had the poodle skirt she made for me when I was 12/13ish, and I thought, "surely I haven't grown that much". Ha! I really had to suck in to get the skirt over my legs but I did it! (I just wasn't able to get the zipper more than half way up :)) We ended up going to David's parents ward party, then our ward party, and by then we were exhausted! So at 8:30, we rented Shutter Island (it's been scary movie bonanza this month) and headed home.

On another note, I am glad that Halloween is over and I can bring out my cute Thanksgiving decorations. AND.....this year I am going to attempt making my own pumpkin pie.

Today in my speech therapy sessions, I had my kids write something they were thankful for on a maple leaf die cut. I then took each thing they said and put it on the board so that the next set of kids could not say they were thankful for those things. (Trying to get them to think outside the box). It is amazing that each year that I do this, fewer kids understand the meaning of being thankful and have a much harder time expressing their gratitude for anything in their lives. I contemplate where I was last year and where I am this year. Among many other things, how grateful I am to live in my own home. David and I have been blessed in so many ways this year. What are you thankful for this year?

Painting, Painting, and more Painting!

This Fall Break, we had thought of doing a variety of things. We desperately wanted to have a vacation (as we haven't been anywhere outside of the East Valley in a year and a half), and head out East to New York/Vermont/Maine area. We looked at tickets at the end of August and a week later checked again and they had gone up over 100$, way too expensive. I have been dying to see the New England area during the Fall, and vow I will get there someday!

So instead, we decided to paint our living room and kitchen (which is about half of our house area wise). The kitchen we painted a cranberry red and the rest of the living room area/hallway was painted yellow. After about a day, we decided the entire living looked way to washed out (we were used to having a darker orange/brown living room, so yellow was a stark contrast)....so we took our leftover paint and had the Lowe's guy try to add a little of this and that to try to change it into a greenish sage color so that we wouldn't have to buy another gallon. We ended up with a greenish/blue color which we LOVE! Here are the before pictures:

Here are the after pictures: (we are still trying to get used to the stark changes in color)

We are SO glad we are finished with the painting for awhile. Here are a few pictures of a farm we visited over the break with my family....

When life throws ya lemons...

This weekend was quite the letdown for both David and I. You see for all the year since we've been married and some before, David has wanted to become a Physician's Assistant. So he applied to the only Arizona schools that offered such a program. On Sunday, I collected the mail and ran in the house excitedly screaming to David that a letter from A.T. Still had arrived. We read the letter and our hearts sank as we read that he did not get an interview. It's just crazy how many people are applying for PA school this year. David finds a new classmate who is applying just about everyweek.So after 4 years of college....what next. He will try to find a job doing something in the medical field (entry level) and try to build up some experience and then re-apply. And next time, he will apply out of state.

You must understand that I truly truly despise change. I don't want to be away from my family. I don't want to have to rely on the faith that I would get a job in another state (having to go through trying to get another Speech Therapist license) or try to find a babysitter that I could trust once we start having kids. I-Am-Worried. And then there is my house....my amazing house that David and I worked so long to get. It would have to be sold or rented out.

It's funny that just when you feel life is going great and smooth, a lemon gets thrown at you. And it doesn't feel great. So we've decided to take those lemons and throw them back at life. We are going to move forward and trust that as this one door has closed, others will open to bigger and better things.