"On this our anniversary, we may not have wealth, but we do have each other and that is worth more than all the money in the world."

This weekend was SO busy! It was great, but busy. Friday night Mark and I went up to SLC to meet his family for dinner to celebrate Amy graduating. It was us, Amy, Calvin, JoAnn, Dennis, and Aunt Janet. We went to Red Robin which is Always delicious...so good...and just talked and ate and enjoyed each other's company. Afterwards Mark, Calvin, and I went to where Amy's car was parked cuz it stopped working and Mark was going to look at it for her. Unfortunately after checking it out he decided he didn't know what was wrong and couldn't fix it. So we left SLC and went home.

Saturday was also extremely busy. We had to get up at 7:00 to be at the Mt. Timpanogos Temple before 8:30 because that is when/where Amy was going through the temple. There were SO many people there! Saturdays are busy though and it's such a gorgeous temple, a lot of people go there. I saw at least 5 brides when we left! The session was great though, as always, and being there with Amy was especially great. Going to the temple is just so amazing! It's so beautiful and peaceful inside and I just love going with my family. I feel so lucky to have gone with my parents one day this week and Mark's family another! A lot of Mark and Amy's family and Calvin's family were there which was great. Going through the temple for the first time is an exciting, spiritual and somewhat overwhelming experience and it sure does help to have lots of support with you!

(I just LOVE all the tulips around the temples! They are so pretty!)

(these are the only pics I have from Mt. Timpanogos because my camera died like right away...Chris and Angie took pics and are gonna send them to me so don't forget guys!!! :)

When we were done at the temple, we went out to lunch with Amy and Mark's fam, this time to Chili's, which is also really good. This time Amy and Mark's cousin Chris and his wife Angie came and ate with us. They are pretty awesome and fun to hang out with. Unfortunately we don't see them too much cuz they live up in Ogden which is quite a drive. They have two adorable children, Lucy and Porter (as seen in one of my Thanksgiving posts), and are expecting a little girl in July(?). They're going to name her Sophie Olivia which I think is adorable.

After lunch we all wandered around Best Buy for a bit before going to see the new "Star Trek". JoAnn and Dennis wanted to take us out to see a movie and that's the one we ended up seeing. I've never really seen Star Trek before but the movie was pretty good. When that was over Mark and I decided to spend a little bit of time together since it was our first anniversary and all. :) We were with family almost all day so I think we'll do something later this week to celebrate on our own. We spend almost an hour wandering around Temple Square, reminiscing and taking pics. Reminiscing was kinda fun, we tried to think of random things we did or that happened when we were dating and with our wedding and after. It was kinda hard sometimes cuz my memory seriously sucks, especially now, but it was fun!



We don't have too many pics of us so we took a bunch just for fun and to waste time. I have to say I'm getting pretty good at taking pics of the two of us...it's hard to do sometimes! My long arms do come in handy though. :) Here's a sampling of some we took. I was more focused on getting a good one so I'm always smiling but since Mark was usually behind me I couldn't see what he was doing...funny boy. :)




(I told him to pose like a bride and this is what he came up with...)




(Isn't he So sweet?)

When we were done there we met up with the fam again plus some of Calvin's fam and had dinner at Chuck-Arama, which is a buffet place and is pretty good. Mark's cousin Kathleen (she was at our wedding with her parents) came and ate there with us too so that was fun seeing her. Overall it was a pretty awesome day, filled with lots of fam and lots of food...we ate so much those two days! It was crazy, but great, it meant less cooking for me to do!

So even though we spent almost all of our first anniversary with family, it was still pretty great. We didn't have too much planned anyway since we knew his parents would be in town. We did get to spend the whole day together which doesn't happen much so that was a big plus. He kinda felt bad that we didn't do much but I told him he could make up for it and do something for me later :) Why limit celebrating to one day right? The whole week was kind of a celebration anyway with finding out that we're having a girl, seeing both of our parents and other family, Amy's graduation and endowment and then Mother's Day...I don't think we missed out on anything by celebrating with family instead of by ourselves! I am pretty darn worn out though...we got up early and went to bed late so much, I really need to catch up on sleep! Luckily this week is going to be pretty slow so I can relax.

Well, I think that's all I'm going to write for now, this is a pretty long post already and I still haven't even done Sunday! :) I'll just have to do another later and talk about that. I'm too tired to think of what else to say anyway...I'm definitely taking a nap when I get done with work!

"Moms are like a box of chocolates. Good thing I didn't get a nut."

This has been a pretty busy week so far and I'm only half way through all the busyness! But that's ok. I'd rather be busy than bored :) Tuesday night my parents came into town on there way back home to Missouri and stayed til this morning. It was SO great to have them here! I miss them so much! Unfortunately I had to work almost all Wednesday so I didn't see them much then but I had yesterday off completely so we went up to the new Draper Temple to do a session. It was so great! It really is a beautiful temple. It's set up right on the hill looking over the Salt Lake Valley, which is pretty cool.

After we were done at the temple, we ate lunch and then my mom wanted to go to Ikea to see what all the fuss was about. We walked around a bit and went back to Provo and went out to eat with Mark and just talked and such for the rest of the night. It was pretty great though. I love my parents so much! They are simply the greatest ever. :) I'm so glad they came to visit!

Another thing we did yesterday was go to my regular doctor's appointment. Mom went with me of course which was nice. It wasn't a very long appointment, he just checked the baby's heartbeat and such and then talked about the ultrasound. He said that since all my measurements and everything and the baby's measurements are all around the 18 week mark, he was gonna have to change the due date. So now I'm due October 7th! oh well...better that they caught it now instead of later right? I'll have to go do another ultrasound at 28 weeks though since I was earlier than they thought but that's ok with me too! Just another chance to look at her before she comes :)

Tonight Mark and I are headed up to SLC because his sister Amy is graduating from the University of Utah today and we're going to celebrate with her and their parents. It's going to be a very parent filled week for us! :) It'll be fun though, I'm sure Mark is as excited to see his parents as I was to see mine! It's no fun when you only see them once or twice a year so you have to make the most of it when you do see them!

Well I guess that's pretty much it for now, sorry no pictures today. They're on my home computer and I'm at work right now. I'll just have to post some later! I'll post later about this weekend and our anniversary! We'll be married one year tomorrow! How crazy is that??? So much has happened this year and I can't believe how fast it went! Luckily it was a great year for us and we're looking forward to this next one even more! :)

A baby girl...one of the most beautiful miracles in life, one of the greatest joys we can ever know.

It's official!!! We're having a girl! Well, pretty much we're sure it's a girl...the ultrasound lady right away asked if we thought we had the right timing or whatever, which we aren't really sure if our timing is right or not so I'm not surprised it's off. So she said she thinks we're about 18 weeks along instead of 20 but she said my doctor would talk to me about it more on Thursday at my regular appointment. This also will probably change my due date to the beginning of October but I'll talk more about that after I talk to my doc. Anyway, right now she said she's 90% sure it's a girl so we're stinking with it!!! We're SO excited too!!!!! Mark's pretty happy that he was right but I don't really care, I really wanted a girl so I'm so excited it's happening!!!! SOOOOO EXCITED!!!! Now we can actually start getting things for her and making decisions and such. Fun stuff!

Here's some pictures from today. Since we're earlier than we thought the pics of the baby aren't as defined or whatever but when I go back at 20 weeks (they said I have to do another ultrasound then to check vitals or something, I don't know) I'll try to get at least one good pic from that. It was SO COOL to see our baby though! She was moving around a bit during the ultrasound (we got a DVD of it, although it's pretty short) so we got to see her. It is so amazing though! And so weird to think that I have a living little tiny person inside of me...eek! She has been moving around a lot lately so I've been enjoying that a lot. Anyway, here's some pics!!!

(Here's a belly pic from today...sorry there's not much there but I'm probably not gonna really "show" for a little bit :)

(This is Mark before our appointment, he had just gotten off work and was tired!!!)

(The baby's legs!)

(Her wee lil arms)

(And her cute lil face!!!)

(The profile shot!)

(This shot is where she was saying, it's a girl, but it's not very apparent to me, but she's the pro right? I guess I'll just trust her...)

(The proud papa to be!!! He is SO happy to be having a girl! Or it could be the ice cream....)

(We celebrated by going to Macey's which has these awesome ice cream cones for ridiculously cheap! It's great...these are what they look like after we walked around the store for a minute, and they're still big!!! :)

I do want to apologize to my dear sisters today (well mainly Monie and Emily). I am extremely forgetful and I was so excited today that it made it even worse...I completely forgot to call them!!! Well with Emily I had called Mellisa and was on speaker for all the nieces and I thought she was there so that's my excuse there. I did completely forget to call Monie though, I'm such a horrible sister!!! So I'm deeply sorry and hope you will forgive me :) As for anyone else who's not family and I didn't call, I'm sorry as well but I was on the phone so much, there's just too many people for me to call. :) I love you all though! :)

"Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better." --Richard Hooker--

Well here's some updates for you all. First of all, Grandma. So my mom, dad, and two sisters made it out to CA and have been out there for a week now almost (well Mellisa and Emily flew home early this week, my parents are still there). Grandma still wasn't doing all that well when they got there, she would be conscious sometimes and talk to them but wasn't very aware of what was going on. She did have another small stroke but the docs got her stable and hooked to some stuff to keep her that way. They gave my gramps two options- either take her off and see what happens or they would have to put a trach and permanent feeding tube in, which is what he chose to do. (sorry if I'm getting this all wrong...my memory is quite shot at the moment!).

He's been very adamant in having the docs do everything to keep her going, he said that he thought they should give her a week for a miracle to happen, which he didn't have to even wait that long for cuz a day or so later my mom got a call from my aunt at the hospital saying that Grandma was awake, alert, and sitting on the edge of her bed. She still needed to the trach and everything but she seems to be doing better. It's still going to be a long time for her to recover if she does continue to do better but we're all grateful that she's fully awake and alert. She's going to need 24 hour care no matter what happens though or where she ends up going so things are still undecided about what they're going to do.

My mom and dad have pretty much just been hanging out in CA with my dad's fam, they get to go to the hospital for a little while each day but other than that there's not too much else to do. My mom's getting a little antsy and might fly home early if my dad stays too much longer. She's definitely more of a homebody than a traveler! If they drive back they're going to come through Utah and see me so I hope they do!!! I miss my Momma!!! :)

This week or two has been pretty busy for me and Mark. We finished up our winter semester, packed, moved, unpacked, and now Mark is starting spring term! Poor thing. He's only taking two classes but they're hard upper level engineering ones so they'll take up a lot of his time. As for me, I've been focusing on getting our new apt organized (I finished Thursday except hanging a couple things), and it looks great so far! I really like it a lot. I promise I'll post pics soon, I just haven't taken any yet. Other than that I've just been working a lot this week (my bosses wife took her daughter, who works here as well and just graduated from BYU to Spain so I've been picking up a few more hours than usual). I've already read two full books while I've been working and need to head to the library for some more. So any suggestions on good books to read would be great!!! I've got lots of time to read this summer.

This next week will be fairly busy for us. On top of school and work we're going to (hopefully) have my parents visit, two doctor appointments, one regular and one sonogram!!! Yay!!! That one is one Tuesday so be sure to look here for the news if I don't happen to call (I have a ton of people to call so be patient! It takes awhile sometimes to get through everybody...). Mark still thinks it's gonna be a girl but I'm kinda thinking a boy...I don't know why, I haven't had any strong feelings towards either and I'm not just saying boy cuz he says girl, I just would have to say boy if someone made me pick (as much as I would LOVE a girl first!!!). It's only a few days til we find out and I don't really care which it is as long as it's healthy! Right? :) I'm just excited to be having a baby and I'll love it whether it's a boy or a girl! (Girl stuff is just so much cuter though... :) haha...anywho...I have been feeling him/her moving a lot more lately so that is interesting, somewhat weird, and very cool at the same time! I'm sure later I'll be tired of it but for now it's great. :)

The other busyness of the week is Mark's parents are coming to town for Amy's graduation (next Friday) and she's going through the temple for her endowment (on my anniversary! How's that for a nice romantic thing to do on your 1st anniversary? joking!!! I'm excited for her and love going to the temple so I'm fine with going any day she chooses! Mark and I will celebrate later that day or do something another day. Then of course the day after our anniversary is Mother's day!!! Poor guy, he gets hit up twice in February for my b-day and Valentine's day and then in May it's our anniversary and Mother's day! :) He's already starting to fret over a good anniversary gift and as far as I know hasn't figured out what to do yet (neither have I...I have ideas but nothing definite...gifts are so hard to think of sometimes!!! And we're both so indecisive it just makes it harder :). Oh well...I really don't care as much about what I get, just as long as I'm with him!

We still haven't heard a definite answer from the Navy yet but have got a better explanation of why it's taking so long. I won't go into the story cuz it's long and frustrating and this post is long enough already but I will say it SHOULD be any day now and it sounds very promising for Mark! I just can't wait for the wait to hear to be over...it's been SO long!

Well I think that's all for now on updates...I can't think of anything else I should say (I am a million times more forgetful than I ever was...which sucks cuz I was SO forgetful already before I was pregnant...well at least I have an excuse for it now :). So have a wonderful weekend everyone!