Month of Thanks

I realize that it is still Halloween and still October....

BUT!

I just got so excited that I wanted to give a heads up!

Last year, during November, I did "Month of Thanks" posts. Every day in November leading up to Thanksgiving, I wrote a post about something I was thankful for. And I'd like to repeat that this year! Obviously, I will still be thankful for some of the same things. But it sure doesn't hurt to be reminded of them.

So starting tomorrow, watch out for the Month of Thanks posts!!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Today is Halloween!!

Friday we went to our ward's Halloween party. I won second place in the pumpkin carving contest!!

Here are Jake and I in costume!! We were Juno MacGuff and Paulie Bleeker from the movie Juno. We even had props!! I carried around a gallon of Sunny D* and Jake had three packs of orange Tic Tacs tucked into various pockets.

*It was not ACTUALLY Sunny D... we bought the thing of Sunny D. But since I had NO desire to actually drink ANY of it, we refilled the bottle with regular orange juice.

Halloween Photo Fun

I am a fan of the website/software Picnik. That's where I've been editing all of the baby pictures. Right now, they have a bunch of Halloween special effects. I took the opportunity to take this picture:

from when Jake and I were dating and make it all Halloween-y!

We became ghosts:

And vampires (although we don't sparkle):

And my personal favorite, ZOMBIES!!

Pumpkin Carving 2010

Monday evening for FHE, we carved pumpkins with my dad (who is currently out in Utah for a visit). We had to drive to several grocery stores in Provo because EVERY FHE GROUP EVER decided to also carve pumpkins and the stores were sold out! But eventually we found these beauties. Well... Jake and I found beauties. My dad picked a "warty" pumpkin (in the middle).

Carving away!!

Jake and I were trying something a little fancier, so my dad finished first. Here's his pumpkin face:

While he waited for us to finish, he baked pumpkin seeds!!

Jake carved a Bowser (from the Super Mario Bros games). I helped a bit though, because I drew out the pattern for him to follow.

I carved Princess Peach (continuing the theme of the Mario characters). And man was she difficult!!! Both of our pumpkins look kind of silly when they aren't lit up...

But check out how awesome they are when we put in the candles!!

FANTASTIC!!

IT MOVES!!

Here is the latest Belly Picture

And... Some of the most exciting baby news recently (well... other than the part about it's gender)...

JAKE GOT TO FEEL THE BABY MOVE!!

Just about 20 minutes ago. Hooray for baby growing big and strong!

True Blue Football

BYU has a tradition that during Homecoming Week called "True Blue Football".

This involves setting up several giant slip and slides into a mass of blue foam. Indeed there is nothing football-y about it.

Even though this is my fourth fall here, I have never gone. But Jake REALLY REALLY wanted to take me. So, despite my skepticism about the weather (it had been DUMPING rain about 15 minutes before we had to leave), we went.

After waiting in line for over an hour, this is a general idea of what was going on:

We were smart enough NOT to bring a camera, so I borrowed this picture from the newspaper.

All of our pictures were taken once we arrived home.

Jake was twisting and turning on the way down the slide. I tried to stay on my bum to protect baby. Jake also was slathering MORE foam onto himself once he hit the pool at the bottom. I was less excited once I saw how the foam there was more of a gray with grass and dirt and who knows what the heck else was in it... So I am significantly less blue than he is.

Good times though!

IT'S A BOY!!

Yesterday was the big day!! The 20 week ultrasound!!

And the news is....

BABY'S A BOY!

For your viewing pleasure, here are some pictures from the ultrasound. I may or may not post the video file on here. But its on facebook. So you could always find it there.

Baby wanted to stay laying on its face the WHOLE TIME! She tried to shake it awake and everything! So they have to do another ultrasound when I go back next month to try to finish some measurements. They said I should make sure to drink some caffeine so that baby will wake up and be moving around that time.

Spooky Story

Since it is October, I thought we could start out the Halloween month with a real life spooky ghost story!! Well... maybe it's not a "ghost" story. But it sure was spooky!

Earlier this week, I was working the graveyard shift at work. This means that my shift lasted from 7 PM - 7 AM. At 6 AM, two more CNAs come in to start the work of the day shift.

In order to understand the following events, I have made for your pleasure a CRUDE map of the Berkshire, where I work. Numbered rooms are patient rooms. The orange ones were the occupied rooms at the time of this story. The two red Xs will be explained in just a moment.

SO.... Around 6:15, I was walking back from Room 9 to the CNA station with one of the 6 o clock girls. When we got to where the X is between rooms 10 and 11, we heard a man's voice say "Hey."

Which may not be too weird until you consider that 1) ALL of the staff in the building at this time were female, 2) all the patients are still asleep, 3) The patients in rooms 8, 9, 11, AND 13 are all female, and 4) the man in room 12 has a much higher pitched voice. Once you realize these four things, it gets a little creepier.

The other CNA and I stop dead in our tracks, look at each other and have the "Did you hear that?" conversation. We can't figure out where the voice came from and although we're a little weirded out, we continue on with our duties.

Around 6:30 or so, the same CNA and I were in the back section of the building. When we were at the second X (near room 16 - feel free to scroll up and consult my map), we heard the same voice again.

There were male patients nearby this time - in roms 14, 15, and 16. However, we checked on all of them. And they were all dead asleep. None of them have ever talked in their sleep before. And because the voice sounded the same as the first time, we didn't figure sleep talking was a likely answer anyways.

Now we were SIGNIFICANTLY creeped out....

Then, around 6:50 the physical therapy staff started arriving for the day. One of them stopped at the CNA station and asked us if we had heard about "Bob" (name changed). Bob was a patient who had been in our facility. He was admitted into room 16. As he got sicker, we moved him into room 10 so that he would be closer to us and we could keep a better eye on him. A little bit later, he was still getting sicker and had to be ambulanced to the hospital.

Turns out, Bob had died the night before. And where did we hear this man's voice? Right outside rooms 10 and 16. The two rooms Bob had stayed in.

Spooky.