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.

Baby Update

Baby is finally big enough that you can SEE some evidence of my labors from the last 4 and a half months. Which is exciting!!

ALSO, less than one week until we find out if baby is a pink or a blue! Hooray!

Old Navy's Maternity/Baby Sale

Old Navy has been having this HUGE Maternity/Baby Sale. And I needed another pair of maternity jeans. So we got some stuff. Then we realized that we were only about $12 away from being able to get free shipping. So, we decided to take a look at what baby things we could add on.

We haven't bought ANY baby things yet. We don't find out the gender for 2 more weeks (Oct 6). But we decided it wouldn't hurt to look for some neutral things that we liked.

And this was just too cute to resist:

The Beginning of Nursing School

I started Nursing School this semester. So far, nothing too exciting has gone on.

But on Monday, I had my first round of clinicals at the hospital!

I was on a Medical/Oncology floor and assigned to a nurse named Trent. Because we haven't learned much, there wasn't much for me to do. I listened to some heart beats/lung sounds on some patients. And checked their pulses and such. And cleaned up some poo. Otherwise, I just followed the nurse around.

So, it was uneventful. But everyone has to start somewhere, right?

Here I am all dressed up and ready to head to the hospital!! I felt so official in my uniform with my badge and everything!

I would like to make excuses for this picture by saying that at this point in the day I'd already been at work for almost nine hours (after working twelve hour shifts the two days preceding)... So I was TIRED! But the battery on the camera died so we only got one shot. And this is it.

Baby - 17 Weeks

Okay... So... I realize that it has been FOREVER since I posted. But.. School started and life got busy! Until I have time to do another post (which will either be tomorrow or sometime late next week), here's a belly picture and a quick story!

I went into the OB yesterday. And we were listening to the baby's heartbeat on the Doppler. All of a sudden we hear this loud WHOOMP. The nurse starts laughing and said that that was the baby kicking at the microphone!

ALSO.... we scheduled the big anatomy scan/gender ultrasound!! So mark your calendars! October 6th at 3:30PM

Can't wait!

Back to School Barbecue!

My parents like to send us Omaha Steaks packages (which we LOVE!!). However, we usually go through everything else before we use up the burgers. So we have had hamburger patties accumulating in our freezer for a while. We decided to put them to use by hosting a back to school barbecue!

Jake took charge of cooking the meat.

We invited a bunch of old roommates and good friends - some of whom I hadn't seen for a year and a half or so.

It was fun! There was lots of yummy food and I think everyone had a good time.

And what better way to end the night than with an impromptu watermelon seed spitting contest?