Christmas in Claresholm

So in the past I never really cared very much for Christmas, I do have good memories of Christmas as a child, but I also have hard memories and I think thats why I never cared much. But this year I was losing sleep with anticipation, I don't know what it was. Maybe the fact that we now have a little baby to establish traditions and excitement with or perhaps I didn't feel overwhelmed with the thought of buying presents that people wouldn't like. I also spent almost the whole month before Christmas arrived listening to music and think about our Saviour and the true meaning of Christmas, we also had the missionaries over like 3 times in the month before Christmas to remind us of what we should be focusing on at Christmas.

The missionaries were saying that during the week around Christmas they hardly have any appointments, with or without members of the church, which surprised me. We always had the missionaries in our home around Christmas when we were growing up, they just help bring the right spirit into the home. I love the sacrifice missionaries make for two years, it never ceases to impress me.

This year Jared and I kept it simple, no big gifts, I just got a few things for our stocking and that was all the money we really spent other than presents for the siblings we drew in our family. We didn't even get anything for Mr.Magoo, we figured we just bought him a package of diapers before Christmas, and the Grandparents and Aunts and Uncles would cover the rest just fine.

We spent Christmas with Jared's family this year, and it was great, it has been a little overwhelming at times with a one month old who seemed to have gotten very fussy since being here (thank goodness for patient grandparents!) plus ALOT of noisy nieces and nephews. My best present this year I think has truly been that I could spend so much time with family. Yes, it is not home and things aren't always ideal, but look I have time to write a blog post while Far Mor (Scandinavian for Grandma) keeps my fussy boy content, some what.

Little Mr.Magoo really got spoiled even though he didn't receive anything from his cheap parents. Lots of clothes and toys and books. And his parents got pretty spoiled too even though they were not expecting it. Gift cards and sweaters along with a couple other things, plus things for their little guy which really makes me most happy.

Here are just a couple pictures of Christmas morning. I wish we would have taken a few more but we are bad at remembering to take pictures.


Me with sleeping Magoo, and Jared's sister and her (now) fiance, they just got engaged last night! Yay for weddings.

Mr.Magoo in his Christmas PJ's that Far Mor got for him, and I think they are so cute on him, I do love him in green.

So we will head to my parents house for New Years, wish us luck in the drive, hopefully we get Sleepy Magoo for the drive and not Fussy Magoo. I am so excited to see and spend time with my side of the family, I think that since having a baby I have felt so cooped up and somewhat isolated just cause I think going very many places for long periods of a time doesn't seem like that much of an option, or they just take a lot of extra planning.

I hope everyone else had an excellent Christmas with fond memories, I know this one will be one to for the good memory bank for me.

Photo Shoot Fun

First of all can I just say that I think it's crazy that this:


came outta this:



So I got photos taken of me when I was about 37 weeks or so, and we got pictures of Mr.Magoo when he was just about 2 weeks old and I thought I would share a few of our little guys shoot.


Jared is such and awesome Dad, although I kinda saw it coming long before he became one, I guess that's one reason I married my hunk of burning love...

Yes, I am putting up a picture of my baby crying. It is so heartbreaking to hear and see your baby cry, but so precious and innocent all at the same time.


I just love my new little family. It's funny that before we had our little guy it felt like we were a couple, and now it feels like we are a real family, and an awesome little family at that.

p.s. if you are wondering who took our pictures you can check out her website here. We loved having her do our shoot and would recommend her to any one, she is not only really talented at what she does but she is a lot of fun while she does it.

The day my life changed...

So there have been a few requests for me to get this post up, but it is crazy how your time seems to be consumed when you are a new mom and still trying to establish some sort of routine. And even as I write this I am hoping that I can finish before my little guy wakes up and wants to eat... again...

So I guess I better get started.

My due date was November 11 and by November 20 we decided to go for an induction. After a very sleepless night we got to the hospital at 8am on Saturday (the 20th) to start the process. I was put on the monitor for a half hour and then was checked and had to have cervidel (sp?) to "ripen things"...

If while you read this and there are thing you don't understand what I am talking about, go look it up. I don't plan to go into great detail about certain things.

So I had to stay at the hospital I was free to walk around but had to be back every hour to be put back on the monitor to see how my baby was doing. I had small contractions during this time but really nothing special. My mom got the hospital around 3pm, it was really nice that she was able to come, I really appreciated her being there.

At 5:30pm or so my doctor checked me again and said that I had gotten to the point where they could rupture my membranes. And then she told me she didn't know if they would be able to cause there were a few women already in labour and they didn't know if they had enough nursing staff. But they decided to go ahead with it, which I was glad for cause I really didn't want to wait through the night. After they ruptured my membranes well thats when the party really got started. I just want to say that having your membranes ruptured is probably one of the most disgusting things ever, at least to me it was. It was sick and stank. So when they said I could finally get in the shower I was so grateful. The shower was awesome for me, it helped with contraction and had this cleansing effect... it was glorious. I spent quite a bit of time in the shower.

By 8pm or so I hadn't progressed very much so the stared me on pitocin (a.k.a. "the drip) and that really kicked my contractions into high gear. I had really bad back labour. And as they increased the pitocin I slowly felt like the pain in my back would cripple me. It's hard to really explain the feelings you go through when your in labour, but for me it was horrible. I laboured on a birthing ball for most of the time after they stared me on pitocin, it seemed to help keep the baby's heart rate normal. By 10pm I was at the full dose for pitocin and in between contractions I was so exhausted it took all my strength to stay on the ball, and it seemed like there was no position I could get in during contractions to ease the pain. I was in so much pain and so tired and Jared could tell I was not doing well.

Jared eventually suggested that maybe I get an epidural. I did not take that very well, I was pretty upset that he even suggested it after everything we had talked about during my pregnancy. After I had said no the nurse decided to point out that if I was not able to relax and progress that chances were I would end up needing a c-section, and I would end up having to get one anyways. So then I decided to consider it, and I eventually decided to get one, which was really hard on me, I just felt like a failure. The process of getting the epidural was so stupid, the guy who put it in had to do it THREE TIMES! Thats right 3! It does't really hurt, there is just a lot of pressure, but the whole thing where you have to sit in a stupid uncomfortable position through contractions while some guy puts a needle in your back is really difficult since they expect you to relax.

Once it was in though the medication could not kick in fast enough, I was begging for relief. Once it did kick in though I was able to take little cat naps in between contractions and went from 4cm to fully dilated in a half hour or so.

We thought that we would be having a baby on the 20th which just so happened to be my sister Robyn's birthday as well, but they decided I could start pushing a little after midnight, so we missed Robyn's birthday just by a couple hours.

Once I started pushing things were going well and I was progressing well until the very end. My little boy really did not want to come out. The doctor could see the head and everything but it seemed like after a certain point he just would not come down any further, so they decided that it was a cord complication, although they knew it wasn't around the neck, so they thought it was around the torso or a limb. So we decided to use the vacuum to try to assist the process, after try pushes with the vacuum we were still having some difficulty and by this point there was so much pressure and I desperately wanted him out. So we decided to go with an episiotomy and the vacuum and after a couple more times he finally came out! Yay, it was so relieving.

He was born at 1:55am on November 21. He weighed 7 pounds 6 ounces and was 20 1/8 inches long. I'm not going to put what his name is. For the blog purpose I will be calling him "Mr. Magoo" as I have kinda nicknamed him that at home. If you would like to know his name and you know me personally you can email me.


This was taken last week, it's my favourite picture of him so far.

This was taken just on Tuesday, and this is his classic look, very serious.

I have had some complications which I will have to post about another day, especially in the breast feeding department, but we are working on them and they will hopefully improve completely sooner than later.

Bread and Jelly anyone? + Hopefully my last preggo pic...

So this past summer Jared and I helped his grandparents out with their garden. We had to go out to Glenwood quite frequently but it was well worth the drive for the learning experience, not just gardening, but also about his Grandpa and Granny, I have grown to love them so much!

So they have these beautiful apple trees, which I made many apple crisps from this fall, and Granny said she would show me how to make jelly out of them. So this past week she called me up and said the apples were juiced and ready to be jellied and she had already done a batch or two that morning.... this was at 8:30am that she called. So luckily I had nothing better to do that day (surprise...) so I headed out and made three batches/12 jars all to take home for our food storage! And they are delicious.
Thanks Granny for teaching me the tricks of awesome crabapple jelly making.

So on the way home I decided that the only thing that would make this jelly any better was homemade bread, something I have never attempted to do. And it couldn't be just any homemade bread, it needed to be my moms recipe. So I called her up, got the recipe, went out got the supplies, and the next morning made homemade bread that turned out perfectly! And I have to say I have OD'ed a bit with the bread and jelly, but can you blame me?





Also I only have like 4 more days till my due date, crazy! So we took pictures yesterday and I am hoping that the next one will be of me with my baby on the outside, that would be fun. Although I have a feeling I am going to have to wait a bit past the date. I am hoping for some sort of improvement from my visit to the docs last week when I go on Tuesday, but I am trying not to get my hopes up.

Vegatables?

All right so I have been off work for a couple weeks now and I don't think it will come to many peoples surprise that I have been filling a lot of my hours with baking/cooking. I would like to say it's all healthy and what not but I really can't.

Jared's home teaching companion came to visit one time and brought some treats with him, they were squares of sorts, but we had never had them before, but we thought they we awesome! So since they seemed to be made out of golden grams I had this idea to look on the back of the cereal box and voila there they were! These amazing treats are called "Indoor S'mores" or as Jared has named them "Indoor S'moregasms". Haha ya, that good. So I think I made 3 batches of them for him in like a week, thats what a family sized box of the cereal can do for ya. The only question is how would you suggest I add some veggies in there, carrots, broccoli, suggestions anyone?

It is kind of funny when I suggest to Jared that he eats something other than these treats for breakfast and all he has to say is that they are made out of cereal, haha!


Thought I would take a picture of the recipe instead of typing it out, if you can't read it, it's on the back of the cereal box.


And I'm sure there is someone out there reading this wondering about my ever growing belly *cough Des*, so the only news is that I have a week till my due date! Crazy, but I think I have been saying that this whole pregnancy, everything is Crazy! But seriously other than that not too much new other than starting to get uncomfortable and the pains of the last month of body stretching and shifting funness. I had some maternity pictures taken a couple weeks ago, which went really well and I am really excited for them and will do up a post as soon as I get my sausage fingers on them, although Im thinking that will be after the baby gets his first photo shot done, since I got the combo deal from this great photographer. But we shall see.

I will try to do up a post as shortly after the little guy is born as I possibly can. Other than that, we wait.

Grateful

So I have been feeling so blessed and so loved. The past month has been so great, I have been feeling pretty good other than a few aches, a full bladder, and a few sleepless nights. But I think most preggos feel those things, I have had such a blessed pregnancy, sometimes I think labour might end up being pay back... hopefully not, but it could happen.

And I only have 5 1/2 more days of work! Which honestly I have mixed feelings about because then I will have 3 weeks before my due date, and if I am like my mom, or most first timers I will be over due (in the case of my mother, many weeks). I was going to work longer, like up until the last possible working day of October, and since I work with a bunch of doctors I wasn't too worried about "what if it comes early...".The doctor I work for is going on vacation until the beginning of November and they really had nothing else for me to do so I decided to go on Mat leave early. I have been making quite the list of things to accomplish during my days, but I have a feeling it wont be long enough. And I think I will miss work.

So last weekend Karmyn (my sister-in-law) threw me a baby shower for friends and family who lives in Southern Alberta. It was really nice how many people were able to make it. We played a game where some of the girls had to drink some juice out of some really small baby bottles, it was really quite entertaining.

So there was Cassi, and Shay (my nieces on Jared's side of the family), and Cheryl (a great friend)

They were all really close, but Cheryl was a machine, and got the most. She said her mouth hurt quite badly after.


We also played "The Price is Right" type game with baby items like soap, onsie's, bum cream,ect. it was fun, and I got all the stuff in the end. Bonus! Then we had delicious cupcakes, and Emily made a beautiful cake that was really good. I scored awesome gifts that we are very excited for. Unfortunately we didn't get very many pictures.

Also in my things to be grateful for, is how loved and appreciated I have felt lately. I know that some of the people I work with are very sad that I will be leaving soon. There was even one of our patients who came in the other day with her boys just to give me a baby gift. It was so kind of her, it made me feel like I have a greater affect on people other than just the ones I work with. Plus the fact that Karmyn and her mom put on a beautiful baby shower for me, and all the people who came. I even received a gift in the mail from Heidi, a very dear friend of ours who lives in Denmark.

Here is the latest picture of my growing belly for all to enjoy, Im in my 35 week. Today I have exactly 1 month till my due date, kinda crazy!

These shoes were made for walkin'

Alright so I don't know if you remember my post about my favourite pair of jeans ... but I definitely had another one of those "favourites" be replaced this past month. This time shoes.

Now if anyone knows me I have some pretty funky feet, my feet probably look like your grandma's minus the wrinkles. How you might ask, well I have bunions, beautiful bunions. Heres a picture. Needless to say, I have never been much of a shoe girl and pretty much despise shoe shopping, unless I am in a really good mood.
So "those" shoes I had been wearing as a street shoe I had bought about 5 years ago and they were well broken in...


My mother almost had a break down every time she would see I still had "those" shoes and was still wearing them.

Yes, they were Diesel Shoes and like the awesomest shoes ever.

and no after so many years they no longer had the capacity to keep my feet dry or warm any more, but I still wore them year round.

But they have now been replaced by these:

Thanks mom. They are Merrells, and so far have not been that bad to break in. The only problem I seem to run into is looking down and seeing a different pair of shoes on my feet... but that will only take some time. So bring on winter this year, cause aint no water/snow/freezingness leakin in from any uninvited holes!

I will also have you know that I completely threw out "those" shoes so that they could no longer tempt me on a bad day, and have only kept pictures as a keep sake.

99 bottels of beer on the wall...

Okay well definitly just root beer, but still the count down in double digits is on. According to my widgit on the right there are 99 days left until our little dude is born. Not that I'm really counting honestly, this pregnancy has not been horribly uncomfortable for me. I have been VERY lucky, and blessed. As of right now I feel this guy could stay in there as long as he needs to... well I'll give him a max of 2 weeks after my predicted due date. I keep meaning to take pictures, I was so from like the 16th week to the 22 week and now I have totally fallen off the wagen. But I will try to get a more recent pic of my belly up soon, it's definitly bigger than the last time you saw it.

Also I added a new widget that says where people are from who visit my blog, yes that means you reading it right now... and I honestly don't know how I feel about it, I think it kinda creeps me out alittle, especially cause there are no names attached. I guess the purpose of having a blog is to have people read it, but if names were attached I might feel abit better about it. And I really have no problem with people I know reading about my life, but for example there is a person/people from Red Deer who ALWAYS seem to be reading my blog and like seconds after I signed on, and I keep wracking my brain about who I know in Red Deer and for some reason it is just not coming to me, so if it's YOU maybe you could comment and let me know that you enjoy my blog or something. I might just take it off so that I am not so thrown off by all the unknow people reading about my life.

On a third note, my cousin Mitch James was in a seriouse car accident last night and is currently in the ICU with some very seriouse injuries. Please keep him and his family in your prayrs, he is dearly in need of them at this time.

Riley Graduated!?

I was so lucky to get time off work to be able to go to Riley's grad, and spend Canada Day with my family!

So Riley decided that he didn't care to go to the banquet so Dad took us all out to the Saw Mill for dinner. For any of you who don't recognize the two extra cute girls in the picture. Riley had is girlfriend Madison, and Dallin brought his girlfriend Makenna. Both of them are really fun, it's kinda wiered that both my little brothers have girlfriends!


After dinner Dad wanted to get some pictures down at the Legislative grounds, it didn't last long cause it started to thunder and lightening so we high-tailed it out of there before the rain started.



(yes Emily's hand is on my belly in the next picture, she thought it was pretty funny.)


Riley and Madison were both lookin smok'in that night, pictures don't do justice.





Crazy right, I know. This also means that Riley is planning on leaving on his mission in a short 6 months.

Our fetus flavour

So I have a lot of things I've been wanting to post about lately, but I really wanted to do them in order that they happened and I really wanted to be able to put up pics, so I had to wait till I was able to scan these pictures, but I am really excited for this post!

So we had our ultrasound on Monday, which went really well. My two favourite parts were when I could see and feel the movements at the same time, and when we saw it making sucking motions. So cool. And yes we did figure out what it is...

So in this pic, I don't know if you can see without me pointing out, but just above the body were its legs, it had like completely folded it's self in half.

Then it moved and we got a really good shot of the legs, knees and everything.

And a great picture of its little had and arm!

Alright so, the story about the flavour. So keep in mind that the ultrasound techs are not aloud to tell patients what the gender is, the have to just say it in the report and then leave it for the doctor to say. So that is why she didn't just tell us...

But anyways, so part way through the ultrasound I asked our tech if we could try seeing what the gender was. so she moved from where we were looking down to the side of the leg and then around, and we got a really good shot of its butt with the legs bent up. The legs weren't blocking , and so not wanting to assume anything, I asked if that thing between it's legs was the umbilical cord. She replied by moving back over to the side of the leg and pointed out the umbilical cord, then went back to the butt shot and pointed out the bum and legs. My reply... " So that isn't the umbilical cord..?" She then again went to the shot of the umbilical cord (which is much bigger than the thing in between the legs) and then back to the butt shot and said " if you don't know what that is you should go back to grade 5." HAHA! ( I really just wanted her to tell me than me have to make assumptions).

So yes it's a BOY! We are both very excited. And we do have a name picked out, we have actually had a boys name since like a year and a half ago. Although I don't think I am going to post what it is, at least not this post. I have told some people, like family, and for some reason calling him by his name while he is still in me kinda gets to me, I don't know why. But I just call him, him or wiener ( my mom thinks it is so crude that I call him that, which makes it funnier).

Also during the ultrasound she got a really good shot of the heart which she seemed so intrigued by and just kept saying how good it looked and how amazing the shot was, which was so good to hear. Not that I was ever worried about there being something wrong with any of its body parts, but just to hear how good she thought it was made me feel awesome. It was really cool since we could see all 4 chambers of the heart and the different stages of it beating.

So we haven't been officially told by our doctor what it is, but it's pretty safe to assume what is in me is of the male gender, but if it's not we will know by Wednesday and I will repost...

Emerald Pools

Day 4, the last day of camping.

So this was still in Zion, we decided to do one more hike before we headed back to Orem.
The name of the pools my make it sound like some magnificent pools, and they were really nice but not cause they we a pretty green and all sparkly and what not. They were actually given the name because of the fungus that grows in them makes the pools look green, and more like a brown-green. But they are still really cool cause they are filled by a waterfall.







So thats the end of our Utah adventure. We had a really awesome time, and the best tour guide ever, with like infinite patience. He even drove our whole camping trip.

After camping we spent a couple days in central Utah area, went out to Park city and did some outlet shopping. Hopefully it wont be so long before we can go on another awesome adventure, although it might not be as crazy once we have this kid out I'm sure.

Zion

Day 3....

Oh my where to begin, first of all if you ever go to Zion (especially for the first time) go in through the East entrance! It is totally worth it even if it takes longer to drive there, just do it!

I always wondered how someone could go to a place, and knowing what the word "Zion" could mean to a person and then name a place that, how someone could compare the beauty of something to Zion. But when we got there, I totally understood, it was magnificent. The pictures just do not do it justice.



So we did this hike called "Angels Landing" it was pretty intense. It took us 3 hours round trip to hike (which was pretty quick, it said on the sign it takes the average person 4 hours). The 1.9-mile trail to Scout Lookout is paved, though steep - it climbs 1,000 feet. The route to Angels Landing is more rugged, adding .5 mile and another 500 feet in elevation to the hike. Both trails are popular. (Some of the info I did copy and paste from a web site, so I can't take credit).


This was a bit of what the beginning looked like.


Once you were close to the top, this is what you still had to ascend.


With this as your only grip on safety. This is what one of the signs read:
Caution: The route to Angels Landing involves travel along a steep, narrow ridge with support chains anchored intermittently along the route. Footing can be slippery even when the rock is dry Unevenly surfaced steps are cut into the rock with major cliff dropoffs adjacent. Keep off when it is wet, icy or thunderstorms are in the area. Plan to be off before dark.



Once you got to the top, this is what you saw.



This is whats called "Walters Wiggles" it is a series of 21 short switchbacks. It was fun... to look at, not so much to hike up, we had fun going down though.

This was probably the hardest hike I did the whole trip, and I was glad we had done a few "warm up" hikes before this one. I really enjoyed it. I am one of those crazy people who kinda loves heights, and the excitement it brings. It felt really good to accomplish especially because I was 4 months preggers at the time we did it. Jared kept saying I needed to slow down a bit cause I was making him look bad for needing more breaks than I did. haha.

For some reason my blog wont really let me put on more pics, but really I have a hard enough time choosing as it is. This was definitely one of my favourite days, and I would do it again in a heart beat.

Bryce Canyon

Evening between day 2 &3...

So the night we camped at Bryce Canyon we didn't do any hiking into the great vastness of Hoodoos, and I really wasn't feeling all that great that night so I don't think I really saw what was before me. But going back through the pictures I am getting a different perspective of it, and some time I will go back to explore them and better appreciate them, because they are more beautiful than I think I originally felt.

This was a quote at one of the look outs. I could not have said it better:
"There are deep caverns and rooms resembling ruins of prisons, castles, churches with their guarded walls, battlements, spires, and steeples, niches and recesses, presenting the wildest and most wonderful scene that the eye of man ever beheld, in fact, its one of the wonders of the world." -T.C. Bailey, Land Survey 1876

And truly if you looked indeed you could see city walls with little buildings in them. Enjoy the pictures.