"And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." --Abraham Lincoln --

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged anything and I’m getting in trouble with my nieces for being a slacker, so I’ve decided I better do something before I really get it from them. :) These past couple weeks have been busy and at the same time not busy. It’s also been pretty stressful and chaotic. This semester is coming to an end (only a week and a half of classes left!!!!! YAY!) so finals are slowly creeping up on us. Mark is stressing about his classes and I’m just done with mine and want to be done with finals asap. My motivation has been severely lax this semester so this isn’t going to be my best efforts. Don’t worry, I’ll still pass! :)

We’ve also been dealing with finding housing because we decided we really don’t want to stay where we are for the remaining months we’re here. First of all, it’s freezing in the winter cuz the furnace doesn’t heat the bedrooms so I don’t think that would be a too good idea to have a baby down there. And although it’s a decent sized place but we weren’t really planning on having a baby when we chose it so it’s going to be a wee bit crowded with all the baby stuff…for such little things, babies sure take up a lot of room. :) Plus I miss having windows and sunshine and I miss my sleep! The house isn’t very well insulated at all so we can kinda hear everything our neighbors do. I figured I don’t sleep well when I’m not pregnant, I’m not sleeping well while I am, and I’m definitely not going to sleep well after the baby comes, so I don’t need them bothering me on top of all that. :)

I don’t do well with neighbors I’m finding out. I can’t wait for the day when we’ll have our own house, out in the country, with no neighbors directly next to us! It’ll be heaven! But, after a small struggle with one apt, we finally found a great place with a great price and a great landlord so we’re pretty excited about it. It’s an upstairs of a house and the landlord has recently remodeled the bathroom and kitchen (they look so nice) and is remodeling the basement so she can live in it. We also sold our contract for our place now so we’ve got everything taken care of for that, we just have to wait until finals are over before we can move!

We did get a chance to go to the temple the other day which was a very nice break from everything. I just love going there and being in such a beautiful, amazing, spiritual place and feeling so peaceful and happy afterwards! It truly is a great blessing. My niece Sierra is coming to visit us for a month this summer (eek! :) and we’re going to take her to the Oquirrh (pronounced Oaker) Mountain Temple Open House up in the Salt Lake Valley so that should be a fun thing to do with her. The Draper Temple just got dedicated last month; unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to go to the open house but hopefully will get to go there before we leave Utah. I’ve heard it’s supposed to be GORGEOUS, which all temples are of course. :) Anywho, things are starting to go a bit more smoothly since we went to the temple. I’m trying not to stress over everything and still trying to be patient!!! It comes and goes lately.
We still haven’t anything definitive from the Navy, although his recruiter did tell us the other day that the committee is in the final stages of deciding and so far it’s looking good for Mark…yay! We’re hoping Monday or Tuesday they’ll be DONE and we’ll be done waiting!

Let’s see…my pregnancy is going pretty good so far. I’m not really showing yet but I figured I wouldn’t show too early, this being my first pregnancy and me being tall and long-torsoed and such. I am starting to tell a little bit but it’s not very visible. Mark’s trying to be nice and doesn’t want to say that I look like I’m gaining anything because he thinks that I’ll get mad at him for saying that, but I was just like, whatever, I’m ok with gaining weight right now- I’m pregnant! That’s what’s supposed to happen! Now maybe later on when I’m about to pop, I probably won’t appreciate him telling me I’ve gained a lot but for now I’m ok with it. It actually makes me feel like I’m pregnant cuz right now I’m over any morning sickness and the only thing bothering me is my back and my lack of sleep.

I go to my second appointment on Tuesday but I’m not sure there will be much news from it cuz it’s just a regular appointment. Next month we’ll get to find out what it is though!! :) Yay! I can’t wait! Pretty much everyone is thinking it’s a girl so far, even my old roomie, Maria (who just sent me a letter from the Ukraine. She’s doing fabulous and loves her mission! She even sent me a picture, see below, and she’s very excited that I’m prego…especially the part where she doesn’t have to be around me during this “hormonal” time…that girl…you gotta love her though. If her letter wasn’t so long I would share it with you, it’s HIGHLY entertaining).

I sure hope it’s a girl cuz I’m still getting lots of girl stuff from my fam! :) I can’t wait to take pictures of her and scrapbook it all cuz I’m getting some way cute girl scrapbook stuff. Fun, fun! I’ll tell you one thing though, you definitely won’t be lacking in pics of my kids (like some people I know…you know who you are…although I know you take pics, you just don’t share them much :). I’m going to have so many pics and I promise to do tons of blogs! They’ll be so much better cuz they’ll have a cute baby in it, so much more interesting than things about me.

Well, so far I’ve tried not to do too many things for the baby cuz I’ll have lots of time to do stuff in the summer but I admit I did buy fabric for a baby quilt a while back and I did cut it up and then I had lots of free time at work so I sewed it all together and now I’m done. I do have to say that this is one of the cutest baby blankets ever! :) I love it. I did it all by hand too! Although I’m going to go back and reinforce a few spots cuz my freehand stitching probably isn’t all that strong (it did make it through the wash though, that’s pretty good right?). Here’s some pics though…I know brown and blue (well this is turquoise) is probably more boy but I think this could totally go either way and it’s gonna cuz that’s what I’m doing either way. I love that color combination.

(Front, edges are fringed)

(Back, it's smooth)

(Upclose front)

So yeah…what else…I think that’s pretty much the catch up with us. We’re just going to spend a nice relaxing day watching conference tomorrow (yay! I love Conference! It’s so great). Mark was supposed to work (he works the first Sunday every month) but for some reason he didn’t get scheduled tomorrow so we get to spend all day together tomorrow, although I think we might try to hook up with Amy and Calvin and do something. If I think of anything else to tell you all I’ll do another blog but for now I’m done! I hope this appeases my dear nieces and that they’ve enjoyed me babbling about my life. I think I should bother them more to tell me what’s going on with them. Every time I ask Carmen how things are she says, nm u? She doesn’t even type the words out completely, just uses those three letters, and yet she’s always telling me I need to blog more. What’s up with that? You should blog Carmen! :) haha…anyway, enjoy!