Belly Shots

So I became very bloated very soon after getting pregnant. I was very uncomfortable and (I think) very pregnant looking right away. I started taking pictures of my belly really early. I thought you might enjoy looking at my belly shots I've taken so far the first ones are just bloat of course but my belly is now starting to get firmer every week meaning the belly is now being caused by baby. I've been taking the pictures myself and just trying to get the belly so my head is often cut off and our mirror is usually dirty lol anyways here are the pictures.

Just for reference here is me about 2 months before getting pregnant so I know I had a bit of a belly to start with.

5 week uncomfortableness

10 weeks still bloated with a bit babyness along with it lol

14 weeks and feeling pretty big (yes there is only one baby so please don't ask I just show a lot)

15 weeks

Still 15 weeks I just thought it was kinda funny how much my belly stuck out when I was sitting

and these are from today 16 weeks, belly is definitely feeling firmer and not bloated
 

 Oh I forget to mention I still haven't gained any weight yet I actually lost quite a bit of weight during the first trimester, around 15 pounds or so, and have just stayed at that weight.

honesty

It really bothers me that being honest is the same as being rude a lot of the time. It's really annoying.

We're Pregnant!!

Yes I realize I have 3 sidebar ticker things but they were all so cute! lol So I started to keep a journal which I've been calling the baby blog even though it's just a word document since we started trying. And I thought I'd share some of the more exciting entries from it.

Jan 23 at 1:00 am we found out that WE’RE PREGNANT!!! YAY!!! I’m SO excited! So here’s the story, I begged Chris to get me a pregnancy test because I had been having pregnancy symptoms for about a week.  But he said they were a waste of money and that I should just wait till I missed my period. But you can miss your period for several different reasons so that's not a for sure tell of being pregnant. AND I’m super impatient! Lol I asked him to look at the dollar store, Sarah (my oldest sister) told me that she had used the dollar store ones and that those worked great! So he checked at the dollar store and they actually had one for just a dollar our dollar stores are dumb and hardly have things for just a dollar! What is up with that?!? Anyways back to the story I took a nap while watching Ghost Whisperer, and when I woke up I had to pee and I couldn't resist testing because I had a test! I was a little worried though because on the directions it said you could test as early as your first missed day. I wasn't expecting to miss my period for another 3 days or so. But I wanted to test anyways, so I was sneaky and brought a cup in with me to the bathroom so I could catch my “sample”. OH a really cool thing with this test it only needed 4 drops of pee! How cool is that only 4 drops!! I thought that was awesome! So I peed in the cup and used the little dropper that came with the test. Put in my 4 drops and waited for the results and it was POSTIVE! How stinkin exciting!!! I came out of the bathroom and grabbed the onesie and booties I had made to give to Chris as my way of telling him we’re pregnant. I gave him the onesie, booties and showed him the test with the result chart thinger. And he just looked at it and was all does that mean we're pregnant? And I just smiled and nodded. I teared up a bit happy tears of course! That’s when we took pictures! Chris is very excited as well! And loves his onesie and booties! (Well he won’t actually be wearing them but you know what I mean) And that’s the story of how we found out we’re pregnant! 

Jan 30^th So I like to chat before going to bed, so I'll talk with Chris while we're getting all cozy in bed to fall asleep. So last night I asked him if he had a preference to whiter the baby is a boy or girl? He said yes but he didn't want to say which one he wanted ... so I assumed he wanted a boy b/c he knows I love the idea of having a girl and that he didn't want to say that he wanted a boy b/c of that. Of course I'll be thrilled no matter what as long as baby is happy and healthy. And I told him it’s fine if you want a boy I'm not going to be upset or anything if you do, most daddys do want boys. But he still wouldn't tell me what he was hoping the baby would be; because he said, "If I say it out loud it won't come true" It's not a birthday wish! lol So I kept bugging him because I really wanted to know! And he wants baby to be a girl! I thought that was so sweet because usually guys are all I want a boy and blah blah blah manly crap blah blah blah. Cute huh! He had so much fun with his little cousin (Tressa Slight) while they were here in July she LOVED him and just wanted to be held and snuggle with him and stuff so I think that's one of the reasons why he wants a girl. But he isn't sure why he just really wants it to be a girl! *sigh* so sweet! I love it! =D 

Sun Jan 31^st

I’ve been really emotional. This morning I was really snippy and irritable. On our way home from church I was really annoyed at Chris and then once we got home and out of the car I was laughing really hard. Chris asked, “So how are those mood swings coming?” And I’ve been crying at stuff more than normal (yes I am a crier) The other day I cried at an animal abuse commercial (which I usually cry at anyways) than tonight we watched Toy Story 3 and I cried at the parts I had when I watched it before but today I couldn’t not stop crying and it wasn’t even at the sad part anymore and I was laughing while crying because it was so silly! I was really crying too not just a few tears down my cheeks but like I couldn’t breathe I was crying that badly! Chris thought it was hilarious and told me that I had to go write about it in this while it was still fresh in my memory. 

Sat Feb 19^th I’m so in love with Christopher, that’s pretty much it. I told him I wanted French fries and when he went out to run errands he got me some :) I’m so excited to have this baby with him. He is so cute with kids and babies; I can just imagine how good of a father he is going to be. It makes me love him that much more. I can’t wait to see him with our baby! Thinking about it makes me melt! Life is good.

Mar Sun 20^th So three days a go I turned 24! Man these last 6 years have flown by sooo quickly! I am now the age Chris was when we first meet and started dating! Don’t tell him but that makes me feel old! I remember how in shock I was when I found out that he was 24, me being 18 that seemed to be old lol. I had no clue why he’d be interested in me, I was fresh out of high school and he had been home from his mission for 2 whole years!! Turns out that if you know Chris age doesn’t matter to him. He is an amazing guy and he thought that I was fun and cute so it didn’t matter to him that I was young. He wasn’t trying to take advantage of my young age either which was an other concern of mine. Anyways I didn’t mean to go off on when I met Chris. I actually was going to talk about that day and why it was such an awesome birthday! We finally got to see baby!! And not only did we get to see baby we got to hear baby’s heartbeat!!! Oh my goodness! It was amazing!!! I loved it! I expected to cry, but I didn’t I just was in awe, there’s really a baby in there! All I could do was smile and look at baby and Chris. It was a great moment! I love the middle ultrasound picture I think baby looks like he/she is smiling! It makes me happy; Chris just laughs at me and is like yeah uh huh baby’s smiling lol Oh and we’re 5 days farther along than we thought! I thought that I would be a few days under 12 weeks but baby was measuring at 12 weeks 2 days. So our due date is Sept 27^th. We thought that it’d be Oct 2^nd. 

 

 Those are the major highlights of our pregnancy so far.We'll being getting the ultrasound done to see if baby is a boy or girl in about a month! So we're really excited!

Family Wall Hanging

For Christmas this year I made my parents a wall hanging that says "family". There are 6 letters in the word family and there are 6 kids in my family. Each letter represents one of us kids. So I made different images to put on the front of the letters that goes with each individuals personality, hobby's, things they are good at, you know stuff like that. I also had everyone write a message for mom and dad and put those on the back of their letter. I really hope that my parents like the gift! I think it turned out pretty cute. Here are some pictures of it =DThe back where everyone's messages are.




Hopefully you can tell what everything is on the fronts but if not here's a list of what they are and my thought process

F (Sarah) sewing machine and spool of thread with needle. She is awesome at sewing
A (Josh) mixing bowl, various ingredients and cookie. Makes amazing cookie bars!
M (Lars) a open book. You could be "deep" and say Lars is like an open book or that he has to study a lot for law school however you'd like to look at it lol
I (Darby) “comedy/tragedy” mask, paint brush and paint splatter. No brianer because she is artistic.
L (Maren) knitting needles and a cozy home. Have you seen those adorable hats she's knitted for the boys? They are GREAT! And she has made such a cozy home for her family
Y (Ashley) scissors and Patch. The scissors could represent a lot of different things for me... doing hair or anything crafty that I do tend to need use of scissors at some point. And Patch b/c she's my baby!

and here are close ups of each of the letters because they took awhile to design and actually get made so I want to show them off =D

hair

So I finally have redone my color ... it was sooooooooo faded the browns were a red color, my hair ALWAYS fades to red which is amazing because I've stopped using color that isn't pure ash (blue) base but it still fades to red! And it's not like a little bit red it's like people ask "oh so you've put red in your hair" Nope! That's just what it does. Anyways off of my hair stylist rant lol here are some pictures of my hair :)


I really like it to be mostly brown with highlights now a days ... well to be fair it's pretty even between blond and brown but the brown is a more dominate color.... And who's noticed how long it's getting? YAY!!!! Finally it grows soooo slow. Welp that's enough talk about my hair :)

offended much?

I've realized that the older I get the more easily I get offended by people, and honestly most of the time it's silly things that are taken wrongly and then multiplied and than I go looking for other reasons not to like that person! Can you said crazy lady? *conducts the chorus of crazy lady* And other times I feel justified in my getting put off by someone and instead of wanting to revolve those feelings I just avoid being that person because, heck, that's a whole lot easier than given them a chance to "redeem" themselves. Which is dumb how can someone make up for something they didn't even know they did. Everyone say will say something that will offend someone else without even knowing it.

Case in point there is a woman in our branch at church, for those of you who don't know we're in a care center for our church calling which we LOVE! (no sarcasm we really do love serving there) but there is one woman that is just a bit ornery, she's made comments about a dress I wore that she didn't like, she's asked me if I'm pregnant (which I'm not people I just carry my weight in my tummy!!! lol) and quite a few other things. So when we were at the center doing some visiting we ran into LaRae and she was telling us that she "apparently" had offended a lady that lived there and the woman told LaRae that she would NEVER talk to her again and has been true to her word. But the thing is LaRae had no idea that she had done anything to this woman and was upset that she had. LaRae told us she tries not to offend people which goes to show that even the most "offensive" people probably don't mean to be.

This post is just for my benefit really to show how silly it is to become offended by people and to let it interfere with being friends with someone or harboring bad feelings about someone. It's not showing so-and-so anything all it's doing is hurting ourselves. For one you've lost a friend and two you're the one left with the negative feelings. So silly! So I guess the whole reason for this post is to show that again I'm NOWHERE near perfect and that hopefully it'll help someone out there. I know there aren't a whole lot of people who read my blog but still hopefully it helps someone =D And if I've ever offended you I'm SO sorry I didn't mean it in that way and I didn't mean to hurt you at all. I'm in this whole journey called life along with everyone else and I make just as many mistakes as the next person if not more and I apologize for my insensitivity and hope you'll forgive me if I have cause you to be offended.

Parents

I saw this posted on a cousins blog. It was very powerful and I feel the need to share it on mine as well

http://www.danoah.com/2010/09/you-just-broke-your-child.html

It just breaks my heart to know that there are children who aren't getting the love they need and have the god given right to have in their lives.