Word of the Year

So it only took me seven months to finally decide what my word of the year is, but I finally did it. My word is SIMPLIFY. So with that, I am going to leave some things behind, things that I am not really committed to.

#1 is facebook (although I do like to reconnect with old friends, I don't know that it is worth my time to check it every day, or even once a week.)

#2 is probably this blog. I don't update it often enough for it to really let you all know what is going on in my life, so instead I think I will just start calling people and building a real relationship... not just an "I know what you have been up to" relationship. So if you want me to call you just leave a comment with your number if you don't know if I have it or not and if you know that I have your number, just tell me how good I look or something :).... don't worry the comments will not be public so I will be the only one that gets your number.

Hope to hear from all of you!

Nope, not yet.

For those of you that are anxiously awaiting the post that will announce to the world that I have gone in to labor, you will just have to wait a little longer. This little one seems very content hanging out where she is at, she must really like being curled up in a little ball with little/no stretching room.

So yesterday I was having contractions for several hours, only about a few minutes apart, but they did not seem like they were getting much stronger and I could still walk and talk through them. I really did not want to go to the hospital, sit there for a few hours (so uncomfortable) and have them send me home, so I hung out at the house, read a couple chapters from a book, took a nap and drank TONS of water (I can't believe how much I have been able to drink this past week!!). Eventually the contractions stopped, or at least I was distracted enough to not notice them anymore.

So anyway on to the rest of my week... Jacob got back from Virginia/D.C. on Monday (his b-day) and I took him (well, he drove of course) to Krispy Kreme for his FREE dozen doughnuts, which I gladly ate half of. I finally cleaned up the 'nursery', but when half of the things you own are in that one room, it doesn't stay clean for long... Then yesterday was my b-day, so Jacob and I took another trip to Krispy Kreme for my FREE dozen doughnuts and then last night we went to Coldstone for our FREE ice cream. Gotta love the birthday freebies!!

P.S. If you want the birthday freebies, all you have to do for the Krispy Kreme is show up on your birthday and show your ID and you get a free dozen... for Coldstone you have to sign up for the birthday club on their website, and you can print out the coupon (good for a week before/after your birthday)

Lovin' College Classes

You definitely have to love what you learn in College. My second semester at ASU I took a programming class, which came in handy today. I felt like changing up my blog a bit and putting in my own picture as a background, and I wanted to change the layout so with the help of Simply Chic Blog I was able to get the code to use my own picture. I uploaded my picture to the internet (after much hassle with getting it the right size) and then proceeded to change other coding to make my posts wider so I could get more on each line. Now I am not all that great with programming as it has been 3 years since I finished the class, but I am sure glad I know enough to get what I want done (or get me into trouble - whichever way you want to look at it).

Hopefully Jacob likes the new look, otherwise I will have to change the background pic to another picture that I took, or a picture I will create. No more of these backgrounds anyone else in the world can use. I want mine unique and I want it to fit my personality.

So I was just catching up on blogs and I saw my sister's post from this morning. It reminded me of when I was growing up in Snowflake and we had irrigation every couple weeks and we would go out and play in it. I miss those days. When I buy my own house, I really want to have irrigation so that my kids can play in it like I used to.

Head Chicken Herder... can I buy your house (in like 10 years when I have enough money to buy a house?)!??! Of course I would have to beg and plead to get Jacob to be willing to move up where it is actually cold in the winter since he absolutely loves being WARM all the time. 10 years should be enough to convince him (feed him enough so he can build up a store of fat that will keep him warm) right?

30 minutes down, 115 hours to go. YIKES!!

This will be the longest week of my life!!! Jacob has just left for Virginia to visit one of his friends and will get home Monday afternoon (his birthday). One thing that will be nice is I will be able to take over the entire bed for the week! Hooray!! But, there are a couple things I am going to work with. First, Jacob and I have never been apart for more than two days in our 3 1/2 years of marriage so this will be completely new (at least I will not be alone living here with the in-laws). Second, this baby better not come until after he has gotten home. No way I want to go through labor and have him gone, but if it happens, it happens. At least I have my mom and Jacob's mom here in town just in case. Everyone wish me luck though. I am definitely going to need it!

3 1/2 Weeks to go!!

36 down, 3 1/2 to go (or less). So I was taken off of bed rest almost two weeks ago. Must admit I am glad it was short lived, I am so not good at sitting down when I have to. I was dilated to 2 cm when they took me off bedrest, and at my appointment last Wednesday I was 2 cm still, but 50% effaced. I have still been having a lot of contractions, but they are so irregular and not really painful that I have just been ignoring them.

To be honest, it has been hard to transition from being a full time student being BUSY all the time to having hardly anything that I have to do. I know that will change in just a couple weeks with the arrival of the baby, but for now I just don't know what to do! I find myself sitting in front of the TV way more than I would like to (I don't particularly like TV at all, one or two shows a week and even then I record them and skip the commercials). I seriously need to pick up some hobbies as I cannot remember what my hobbies were before I got so busy with school.

Anyway, not a whole lot else is going on right now except Jacob is still looking for a job and waiting to get his x-ray certification. Anybody have connections to a hospital here in AZ that is needing an x-ray tech?

Done! Finally Done!!!

Wow! I can finally breathe again!! I am done with my student teaching and Jacob is done with school, except for his board exams on the 20th. It is hard to believe that we are done, I don't know what to do with myself. Trying to come up with things to do is harder than I thought it would be. Of course it makes it only more difficult that I have been put on 'modified bed rest'. I was having quite a few contractions Thursday morning so I called up my doctor and they told me to get down to the hospital. They hooked me up to the monitors and I sat there in the hard hospital bed for about 3 hours. They came in a couple times to give me tributiline shots, but since I was contracting pretty much every time the baby moved around they told me to take it really easy for the next few weeks. I have to sit down and stay out of the heat as much as I can, and 'no shopping at walmart'... Any ideas on what to do from those of you who have been on full bedrest? This is only my third day and I am already wanting to do things that I probably should not be doing...

Belly Pictures!!!

So I finally decided to upload the pictures that Jacob has been taking of my belly. It seems my belly is not the only thing that is getting bigger... :( Oh well. Comes with the territory I guess.

Hope this makes it a little more real for you Mom!

Week 7



Week 8

Week ???

Week 9

Week11

Week 13

Week 16

Week 20

Week 23

Blog Surfing

So I know I have blog surfed in the past, but today it was especially exciting because I found so many friends that I have not talked to in a long time. So, a huge THANKS to everyone for having their friends listed on their blog so I can search through and find my friends. ... It is interesting that we can find old friends through someone we would not expect.

Here are the pics!!

Right before she crossed her legs, and we couldn't see anything anymore...





Feet and Arms.







Some cross-sections of the baby's body.







Here are the profile pictures of her face.








Here are the front shots of her face.

Hope you all enjoy!!!

Drumroll Please...

So I know you have all been waiting for this... I had the ultrasound yesterday and the baby decided to cross her legs.... right after we got the pic of course. It's a girl!!

Tell you more about it later, but I am running late for school.

Shopping Horror Stories...

Well, not a horror for me, but for everyone who is not me wishing they were...


I have a story for everyone (well two really). About two and a half years ago, I was AD SHOPPING... you know where you get the grocery store ads in the mail and then you actually LOOK at them and see what is on sale. One week, Albertsons had corn on the cob on sale for 8 ears for $1. Since I was still living in my apartment at the time and had very little freezer space, I decided to get a rain check since they were so cheap (back when they had no expiration date)... anyway, I put the rain check in my purse and went on my merry way. About six months later I was on the ward activities committee and we were wanting to have a ward bbq with chicken, hamburgers etc. ... and corn on the cob. One problem. It is WAY out of season and about $5 for a pack of 4. Not a problem for the AD SHOPPER. She still has her rain check. So I go to Albertsons and ask if the rain check is still good and the manager told me it was, so I picked up 16 packs of corn but the total would have been around $80, but with my rain check it was only $8. Now I am not good with math or anything... but that is about a 90% savings there. I became known as 'the corn lady' in the Albertsons produce section because of that one shopping trip.

*****

Anyway, I think I have earned a new nickname tonight, but this time at Safeway. We can call me 'the granola bar lady'. Yet again, I was AD SHOPPING (CONVERT TODAY!!!) and put a star by all the goods that were on sale that I would actually use. I got through the ads for Safeway, Bashas, Albertsons and Frys, then when I finished drawing my stars, I pulled out a piece of paper and began writing which stores had what deals so I went through the ads again, this time only looking at the stars. Well, I write down the Safeway deals first, then went on to Bashas, and noticed that they had a manufacturers coupon for Quaker Granola bars ($3 off 5 or more) and I remembered that Safeway had the same Quaker Granola bars on sale for buy 2 get 3 free.

Now, the Safeway deal by itself was great, but adding in that coupon from the Bashas ad made it even better. So today after school I headed over to Bashas to get a couple more ads to stock up on a great deal, but they only had one more, so I have two $3 off coupons. I send my husband to Safeway to get the goods while I am at the school open house, but he did not have the Safeway card (and they don't let you borrow theirs) so he just came home. So once I came home I picked up the coupons and heard him mention something about another $1 off coupon boxes, but that my coupon was better so he didn't bother... so here is how the rest of the story goes.

Got to Safeway, found the Granola bars, put them in my basket, then saw those coupons he was talking about, $1 off two boxes. What the heck, I will give it a try. Grab five of them (since I am getting 10 boxes) and head up to check out.

They scan the Granola Bars, comes to 29.90. Ouch! People really pay that kind of money for granola bars?

Give them my (mom's--- thanks, you can have some of the goods it you want) Safeway card number and the total drops to 11.96.

Give them the coupons. Total drops to $5.96 from the Bashas coupons and then down to $.96 after the coupons I picked up in the store. Now, I could do the math, but it was already on the receipt so I won't bother, I saved a total of $28.94, or 97%. That completely blows CORN LADY out of the water, wouldn't you say?

Now if you think about it, I got 10 boxes of 10 granola bars each. Since I paid only $.96 for 10 boxes, that means I paid less than 10 cents per box, which means I paid less than one cent for each granola bar.

Anyone want to pay me to go grocery shopping for them?

The big day is coming!!

We are having THE ultrasound this coming Thursday and we want to know everyone's opinion on what we are having. Jacob is saying a girl (mostly because of probability) and I am saying a boy. Just leave a comment and we will see who guesses right!