Christmas & New Year's

I will just start out by saying I have stolen most of these pics of other people's blogs and facebook so hopefully they don't mind.

December flew by. We went to see the Utah Symphony Christmas concert at Thanksgiving Point.

Went to a couple of friend's Christmas Parties. Saw Hugo in 3D for Ryan's work Christmas party. Celebrated Christmas with Ryan's family before flying to Seattle for Christmas with my family.

We underestimated how busy the airport would be this time of the year and barely made our flight. We call it our Christmas miracle. We had been told that if we didn't make this flight at 7 am the next one was at noon, and there were only 2 seats available, and since my sister was with us we envisioned a nightmare day at the airport getting split up and missing all our plans we had for that day in Seattle. We were going thru the longest security line I have ever seen, heard the final boarding call for our flight while in line, ran, (well I as Ryan says did a panic waddle in my pregnant state running was not an option,in my socks holding my boots) actually barely made it on the plane 5 min after it was suppossed to take off. Even our luggage made it there when we had been told it might not b/c of the late checkin. Christmas in Seattle consisted of going on a chocalate factory tour, playing mafia, eating out and generally enjoying being almost all together. Also, my family had a really fun shower for me and Ryan where we got to hang out with all our awesome cousins and get some really cute baby stuff including a crib!!

Baby Shower

New Year's Eve party at Ryan's sister's house

Thanksgiving!

is one of my favorite holidays. Its all about one big wonderful meal and being thankful for what you have. This year my little sis. Penny stayed with us for the weekend from the far land of Provo. She was an Angel and upon arrival and my joking that I would pay her to clean my oven that I had dropped a pizza in a few days earlier she got right to work and cleaned and scrubbed it till it looked brand new while me and Ryan finished and cleaned up our painting job from the day before. I still love opening the oven and having it sparkling clean. The morning of, Ryan made us delicous beinget dounguts we got from our trip to New Orleans so that our stomachs would be stretched for the main event. We met Ryan's family at his aunt's house and had a wonderful meal, and Ryan and Penny participated in the Walleyball game. Afterward we relaxed at Ryan's mom's house and watched a movie.

Black Friday we didn't have any incliniation to wake up at 5 am again, but we did brave the shopping around noon and got a few good things.

Saturday, sister Annaliese and family were in town and we had a fun day, eating at Costa Vida, going to the Bean Museum, Byu bookstore, Penny's apartment and Baby's R' Us.

New York- 11/11/11- 5 Year Anniversary

For our awesome 5 year anniversary date we went to New York. It was fun, but I probably wouldn't advise anyone who was pregnant to go. If i was to do it all over again I probably would have picked a more relaxing vacation to go on, just because of all the walking involved and my body isn't used to walking around with all this extra weight:)

We did all of the touristy things. Went to times square, rockefeller center, metropolitan museum of art, central park, top of the empire state building, statue of liberty, rode the subway and saw a parade and the Wall Street protestetors.

Our hotel.
The morning of our anniversary 11/11/11 we walked outside of our hotel to a full blown New york parade, in honor of our anniversary or Veterans Day, (one or the other)


Met




This bridge at Central Park look familiar? Its in the Cloverfield movie at the very end, probably other movies too.


Who knew there was a freakin castle in Central park, would have loved to explore this if it hadnt been getting dark

random brake dancers in the subway
From the top of the empire state building, it is crazy that you are looking down on all the sky scrapers from this buildilng

Halloween Stuff

October flew by, we had a lot of fun celebrating all things scary...

We went to Cornbellies, a haunted corn maze.

We saw the Odyssey Dance Theatre's Thriller performance. Even if you are not huge into dance it is really a very entertaining show, and the dancing is absolutley amazing.

We carved a pumkin in baby Tristan's honor, whose initials are going to be....

We watched a lot of scary movies.

We went to our neighbor's Halloween Party. ( We are the typical red neck shot gun wedding, I am trying to sell it by rubbing my belly )

A Boy!

While we were going thru the in-vitro process I was at the store or somewhere I can't quite remember but I saw a bottle on it or something that said Tristan on it (which was already the boy name we had picked out) and I kinda felt like it was a sign (in a non-sacreligious sort of way) that helped me think this might work, along with the fact that if this worked the baby due date is 2 days before my dad's birthday. The same weekend we found out we were pregnant we also bought some energy bars that we took hiking with us and my bar's expiration date was two days after my due date. Silly things I know, but as anxiety filled as I was, they kinda helped.

Anyways, I was pretty convinced that we were going to have a boy. But, I had always pictured us with a girl first. Probably because I am the oldest in my family, Ryan's sister is the oldest in her family and his sister and my sister and my brother all had girls first and Ryan was convinced it was going to be a girl. So, I began to think we were having a girl. The day of our ultra sound finally arrived. As the technician measured every body part, baby was uncooperatively crossing his or her legs and was very relaxed not wanting to move. Nearing the end of the appointment I grew dissapointed thinking we might have to wait several more weeks to find out. She had me get up walk around turned me over to one side and then the other and then Ryan said, Ahh, I think that looked like a boy, and sure enough it was. The technician girl said yes I am about 100% positive this baby is a boy! Since we had both names picked out it was so cool to be like ok, now we know its Tristan in there. I admit I felt like I might be a little out of my element with a boy. I am not all that interested in sports and cars and all that "boy" stuff. But I am so excited for him to come so that I can learn!! After the ultra sound appointment I immediatly went to Baby's R Us and bought the cutest newborn onesies for him.

As requested here is a preggie pic of me and my belly.

Also, this morning (Wed, Nov 2nd, I always write my blogs a week before I get around to transferring the pics off the camera) I finally felt little Tristan moving around like crazy, such a cool feeling, Ryan could even feel him move just a little bit once.

New Orleans Trip

For Labor Day we went to go visit my sister, Annaliese, who just had a new baby boy, and see the sites of New Orleans. We got the true New Orleans experience as we arrived in the midst of Tropical rain storm Lee. We ate lots of Cajun food which was Ryan's main goal, got to be there for Carter's baby blessing and played a lot with my niece addie and new nephew Carter. Luckily the weather cleared up the last day before Ryan flew out so that we were able to go on a really fun swamp tour, ate Beignet, (french doughnuts) at the famous Dumond cafe, and walked around the French Quarter. We also went uptown where the universities are and walked around looking at all the houses that were so beautiful with really cool archicecture and my favorite big front porches and huge (I can't remember what kind of trees) lining the streets. I stayed a few extra days after Ryan left and ate Blue Bell ice cream to my heart's content :) and generally hung out, went to a couple of parks, tried to highlight Annaliese's hair-didn't turn out- she had to dye it dark after i left, and went on a tour of one of the old plantation houses.

And now for the pics....

Carter's Blessing Day

On the Swamp tour...

.There were a bunch of houses (I use that term very loosely) on a part of the river that some people actually lived in year round, and can only be gotten to by boat, and some were just fishing getaways. This one never recovered from Katrina

Cafe Dumond

Jackson Square

French Market
French Quarter

Cool house by the university. All the houses were so nice, there was one street that we wanted to walk down but was gated with a guard who said we couldn't get in without invitation.
We didn't take a whole lot of video, but Ryan put this little video together of our trip really quickly, I think its working...

The Happiest Day

To make it official, I AM PREGNANT!!!!! After 4 years, countless dr. appointments, unpleasant testings, many, many blood draws, medications, shots, 4 failed inseminations, 1 surgery, 1 cancelled in-vitro and one successful in-vitro to say that we are excited and happy is an understatement. It actually still feels surreal to even be able to make the announcement. I still feel like an "infertile" masquerading as a pregnant woman.

As scary as it was to finally proceed with in-vitro it felt like this was the next step. The two weeks of medications, shots and daily dr. appointments were nothing compared to what is known in the infertile world as the two week wait. I envisioned both outcomes and prepared myself for what I assumed would be the worst as we had yet in all our years ever seen a positive pregnancy test. The day finally arrived. I couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, and felt as nervous as if I had to give a talk in sacrament meeting that day. We drove to the dr. appointment for yet another blood draw to find out if I was pregnant or not. We drove home almost in silence and literally sat on the couch just waiting for the phone to ring. When the call came the dr said these words, "Well, you're definitly pregnant", All I could say in shock and immediately in tears was " Really?", You're levels look good he said. Ryan literally jumped for joy when he heard my response. The next couple of hours were so amazing that we both feel like it was the happiest we had ever been and that we will never forget.

I am currently 12 weeks pregnant and feel incredibly blessed for this to work and to be able to stay pregnant and that this is due to our family and friends prayers and fasting on our behalf. Thank you everyone so much!!

We have already had several ultra sounds already, we might be a little biased but we feel like our baby is pretty darn cute already:

This was our very first ultra sound at about 6 wks to see if it was twins or not. Its not, which is totally ok with me. The arrow is pointing a little tad pole but can barely be seen.

This was our second ultra sound at about 9 wks. This was the first time we heard the baby's heart beat. The most amazing experience, I finally started to feel like this was really going to happen. We affectionatly nick named the baby "gummy" as it looks like a cute little gummy bear in this pic.

We had a little scare around week 10 when I had a little bit of bleeding, we are definitly overly paranoid and went to the ER. Everything was fine, baby was completely normal and we even saw it move its arm's a little bit.

Finally we had our first dr.'s appointment at my regular ob clinic at 12 weeks. This time we actually saw the baby moving a lot which was so cool.