10 Weeks

First of the weekly baby updates!!

Officially 10 weeks along! Roughly a quarter of the way through!

No belly yet of note.

Baby is approximately the size of a prune.

Baby is forming bones and cartilage. The arm joints are now movable and baby has started making their own red blood cells! Microscopic fingernails are starting to grow and baby is sprouting hair!

We're Pregnant!!

Remember, you blog readers are getting this a day early. Facebook and others find out tomorrow. So please don't post anything on facebook until then. :-)

Our big news!! Jake and I are going to have a baby!!

We found out on June 17th. It'd been a while since I'd had a period, so my coworker and friend Cathi sent me off to the Dollar Store to buy a pregnancy test. At around 11:34 that morning, it turned out positive!! Here's that first test:

I decided to rush to K-Mart on my next break to buy some more tests. I simply couldn't believe that this one was correct!

Cathi made us a little document to track all the tests of the day.

We did 6 total!

My favorite (aside from the first, of course) was this fancy digital guy. Nice and clear, not so easy to argue with this one!

Before I left work that day, Cathi and I decided to take a commemorative photo. :-)

The belly rub.

Even though it was only a few days until Father's Day, I knew I wouldn't be able to keep this a secret from Jake for that long!! We were planning on having burritos for dinner that evening. So I got a little creative.

I used food coloring to make baby faces on the burritos and moved their wrappers like baby blankets. I laid out the pregnancy tests from the day and called Jake over to the table for dinner! At first he just looked at the burritos and said "Oh, that's cute.".... then as he started to notice the tests he said "Wait.... are you....?" haha. We had some hugging and laughing time, and then decided to eat our burrito babies while they were still warm and tasty. :-)

YUM!!

Poor baby!

Last Wednesday (July 21st), we had our first appointment with the OB and our first ultrasound!

There's the baby. And this is what we learned:

Baby is 2.49 cm long from crown to rump. That's almost an inch!

Baby's heartbeat was 173 beats per minute! We got to listen to it!

At that point I was officially 9 weeks pregnant, making baby due on February 22nd.

And NOW... baby is officially a fetus! (Instead of an embryo!)

And this week it is about the size of a green olive.

I'll try to post weekly updates on how big baby supposedly is/how baby is developing/etc. But there won't be any more ultrasound pictures until we're at 20 weeks when they will check out baby's "plumbing" and see if it is a pink or a blue.

Exclusive News Release

You special folks who follow our blog are in for a treat today!

Later today (not sure when) you will be privileged to some special information before the rest of the world is!

All we ask is that you pay attention today and then not spread this announcement (facebook and the rest of the world will find out tomorrow).

:-)

World's Biggest Water Balloon Fight!!

BYU didn't have classes on Friday ("Pioneer Day" was Saturday, and in Utah it's a state holiday). But they DID have the World's Biggest Water Balloon Fight! So Jake and I went!!

There were almost 4,000 people there (they beat the previous world record by only 25 people!) and over 120,00 water balooons!! And some kid was trying to record a music video in the middle of it!

We got a free lunch and free T-shirts (see above). They used the colors of our shirts to divide people into teams. Jake got a green one, and I got a pink one.

It was crazy! But tons of fun. Jake and I were in the middle of the group instead of on the front battle lines. And we still got soaked! Some of the balloons hurt pretty bad if they didn't pop when they hit you! We thoroughly enjoyed the chance to cool off and spend time with friends we ran into.

(I borrowed the pictures from the Daily Herald. You can read their story about the event here.)

DQ and Ducks

Jake and I are members of Dairy Queen's Blizzard Fanclub. So about every other month they email us a coupon to "Buy one Blizzard, get the second free". Since there are two of us, this works out PERFECTLY!

Jake likes to make fun of me though. Because I ALWAYS get the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Blizzard, while he likes to try a new one every time. Last night he got something called "Choco Cherry Love".

Although it had been pretty hot during the day, it looked like it was shaping up to be a nice evening. So I suggested that we go to the stream/duck pond by Heritage Halls and watch the ducks while we ate our ice cream.

It wound up being a BEAUTIFUL night. And I LOVE ducks.

We headed home with happy hearts and tummies.

Fireworks Videos

All right... I tried uploading videos... Supposedly it worked? We will see...

This first video is of a firework called the "Magic Crystal"... We fired off two of them - both shot up about twice as tall as Mike and Karen's house... One of them even wound up in the yard of the people behind them! We were not expecting that at all!

These little guys were called "Baby Sunflowers". Jake thought they would be lame, so he only let me buy one box of them. But they were SO FUN!! They would spin and kind of hover about 5-6 feet above the ground and then dart off in different directions. Only problem was that sometimes, they would attack!

Here is a clip of when one of the Baby Sunflowers headed straight for us! There was one (not this one), when I actually had to hit the ground and even then it just barely missed me!!

Nothing like a little excitement to make your fireworks more enjoyable!

Fireworks!

On the ACTUAL Fourth of July, Jake and I were busy driving back from Colorado. So the evening of the Fifth, we went over to Mike and Karen's house to set off some fireworks.

Mike was the primary firework-lighter.

Here's Ethan with a sparkler! And somewhat uncertain of what to do with it!

Also... there were all these random neighborhood kids that showed up and kind of annoyed me... But we still had a pretty good time.

This is my favorite picture of the evening! Managed to get in all the main participants!

We had a great time, and we're planning on heading back on the 24th to use up the leftovers.

I have a few video clips. I haven't yet managed to upload videos onto the blog.. But I'll give it another shot and we'll see what happens!

Colorado Trip

Over the Fourth of July weekend, Jake and I went on a little trip! My maternal grandparents live in Loveland, Colorado. My grandfather doesn't travel any more for health reasons. This meant he was unable to attend our wedding and hadn't met Jake. My mom LOVES the fourth of July in Colorado. So we made plans that they (Mom, Dad, and Laura) would drive west from Nebraska and Jake and I would head east from Provo and we would all meet in Colorado!

Whenever my family is driving I-80 through Wyoming, we always stop in Little America outside of Cheyenne. It's usually at a time when we need to refill the gas tank and they have 50 cent ice cream cones!

I decided to introduce Jake to this little tradition!

YUM!! Twistie Cones!!

Most of the time we were there, we just hung around at my grandma's house. I don't have too many pictures from that.

There was one day when Dad drove Laura, Jake, and I into Denver and around some places... including to Casa Bonita! The funnest Mexican restaurant EVER!!

The whole restaurant is designed to look like you are in a Mexican village near the jungle! There's a haunted cave, Mariachi bands that wander among the tables, a mine, a giant waterfall with cliff divers.... it's fantastic!

So excited! The food is good, but you DEFINITELY go for the environment!

Well... the environment and their sopapillas!

They're little bits of fry bread that puff up hollow in the center!

And they're served warm with honey.

My favorite way to eat them is....

1. Rip off a corner or a side of them.

2. Drizzle honey into their hollow insides.

3. Move it around a bit so the honey spreads out through the whole thing.

4. Dig in!!

YUM!! We had about 3-4 orders of these! They're the best!

They also have a bunch of little merchants and goofy little gift shops. We found these ENORMOUS "diamond" rings in one. So Jake "gave" one to me.

It was tough with the lightning, but here's Jake and I in front of the waterfall/diving pool.

We stopped for a photo op at the fountain outside!

After we were all full, we drove over to Boulder. Dad wanted to find the apartments we used to live in there and some other landscapes from my EARLY childhood.

We also drove up the mountain to NCAR - The National Center for Atmospheric Research - where my dad worked while we lived there.

The hills behind the building are GORGEOUS and Dad used to take me hiking there when I was VERY small!

This is what I used to call the "Bench Rock" when I was little.

So, of course, we needed pictures sitting on it like a bench!

It was a fun weekend to be able to get away from things and see family. We really enjoyed the trip.

And, of course... we stopped for more ice cream on the way home!

Although the ice cream wasn't our only stop...

We also stopped to buy some fireworks in Wyoming... which we came to find out later may have been of questionable legality in Utah.... Whoops!

Sneaking back across the border with our "loot"...