Ready to Rock.

I have felt a huge increase in movement from baby Jack-Jack this week. The best part is that Bart was finally able to feel him moving too!

Ever since our last ultrasound Bart has been trying almost every day to feel our baby boy moving but with no luck. I hated seeing his sad face everytime he would put his hand on my belly and feel nothing. So when yesterday morning (10/18) came around, it seemed like it would be yet another sad day for Bart, except after his disappointment he put his head on my belly to see what kind of reaction he would get. Well, that did it!! The extra pressure made Jack go crazy and he started kicking Bart in the head. :) Bart was so excited he kept laughing everytime he felt him kick or squirm.

After that it seems like Jack hasn't stopped moving! It feels great to know that my baby seems to be doing well. I think this is a preview to how active he is gonna be when he's finally out of my tummy and ready to rock.

Speaking of rocking, Bart and I are going to see U2 in concert tomorrow. Bart is completely stoked (since U2 is quite possibly his "favorite band of all time") and I am excited to see how happy he is going to be when we are there. :) I hear their concerts are awesome.

Lastly, my cravings have definitely not stopped even though my nausea has. This week's craving that I can't seem to get enough of:

Doughnuts!

All the Best.

My New Favorite Shoes.

Yep, I got them...and I'm totally stoked. For those of you not in the loop, read this. And don't you worry, I definitely thanked Mr. Taylor as I walked out of Journeys.
(Oh, and don't mind the belly in the photo...it comes with the territory.)

Sorry to cut the post so short, but I gotta go pick out my outfit for tomorrow. And you better believe it's gonna revolve around these beauties. :)

All the Best.

Our Baby's Story

We had our second ultrasound on October 1, 2009. We had been waiting 30 painfully long days for this ultrasound...because on this day, we would find out the gender of our baby. I was so sure our baby was going to be a girl. One of my sister's just gave birth to a little girl in September, and my other sister (who happens to be due 10 days before me) is also having a baby girl, so I figured our little bundle was destined to have double X chromosomes. (Side note: for those of you who don't know, I have 22 nieces and nephews...soon to be 23 with my pregnant sister's baby. Out of the 23 grandkids my parents were blessed with, 16 are granddaughters and 7 are grandsons. Needless to say we are not lacking in females in the Kitchen line).

So when the ultrasound tech placed the camera on my belly and I could immediately tell this little baby was a boy, I was a little shocked. So shocked in fact that I looked over at my husband to see if he saw the same thing. The look of shock and triumph I found on his face confirmed my suspicion. Now at this point in the game our tech was not giving us any hints as to the gender of our baby...she was getting the important stuff out of the way first (which I was very grateful for, being an already worried mother). She checked the baby's heart, brain, and spine while making sure I was progressing and developing the way I should. Thankfully, all is well and our baby was right on schedule (being a little bigger than average as we came to find out later).

So after all the vital measurements were done, she turned to Bart and I and asked if we wanted to know the gender. We pretty much already knew, since our baby was sitting on the camera when we first saw him, but we both muttered a breathless "yes" as we plastered our eyes to the T.V. screen one more time. So she introduced us to our little one through different camera angles and pictures she was able to take. She immediately said our baby was not shy, since he was posing so beautifully for the camera. I told her our baby definitely got that from his Daddy. Bart is not a shy guy. Here is what she showed us (Another side note: I have never used our scanner before, so please excuse the scanning job...I'll do better next time I'm sure):

Our baby's profile: you can see his cute little button nose, his mouth (which was moving at the time), and strong chin. His hand is right by his face.

This is our little boy staring straight at the camera, hence the small skull you see in the upper left part of the picture. He's getting ready for Halloween a little early. :)

A nice shot of our baby's foot. It looks like he has all five toes (what a relief!!). After this picture our little guy quickly moved his foot away from the camera. The tech laughed saying he had ticklish feet. Now that trait he inherited from me. :)

And last but not least here is one out of three pictures she was able to take confirming that yes indeed, our baby was a boy. In the first picture he had his ankles crossed, which was a little bit of a challenge for her to determine. Then, after the first picture was taken he uncrossed his ankles, giving us a picture perfect view of the thing between his legs (Please see the above picture: the view is him sitting on the camera...again). She then proceeded to take one more picture confirming our baby was a boy (like we really needed the proof after the above picture) and wished us both "Congratulations" as she flipped on the lights and handed us our pictures.

As I took the pictures from our ultrasound tech, I stared at Bart with tears in my eyes, grateful that I was blessed with a wonderful baby boy. He, having a huge smile on his face, gave me a big hug and we both laughed together until we finally found our way to the door. We went back out into the waiting room (since I had my monthly check up right after) and Bart immediately went outside to call both sets of parents, siblings, and close friends to give them the good news. I was fortunate enough to stay in the waiting room and contemplate over the greatness of our little boy while I stared at his pictures. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I am pregnant and we will have another person joining our family in four very short months.

So that is the story I give to you, introducing our oldest son, Jack Wayne (or so his name is now) into the world.

All the best.

Pregnancy Update Preview

I have now come to the conclusion that there is nothing hotter than a pregnant woman wearing elastic-waisted pants in search for chocolate...which is why my husband is so attracted to me right now. :)

I have many updates to post, but they include pictures that are not ready yet (ie: ultrasound pictures that I need to scan, and a belly picture I need to prepare for). But I figured I would let everyone know that Bart and I are now part of the "in" crowd when it comes to baby genders.

We're having a boy!!!

It seems like everyone who is pregnant right now (at least the ladies that I know) are having boys, which is great because that means our little bundle will have friends to play with. My next post will be all about our ultrasound, and how Bart and I came to find out that the little human inside my belly is just like his daddy...in more ways than one. :) I can't wait to share his story with you. It's a great one.

All the Best.

What I'm thinking about...

If only...

The Baby Bump!

18 weeks and counting!

Our Love Story: MFEO

Warning: Long post ahead!
(I've always wanted to say that.)

I've been thinking a lot lately about me and my husband's history together, and decided to blog about it. I hope you enjoy our story...I hope I don't bore you too much...but I guess this post is mainly for me anyway.

Bart and I have known each other since middle school. Our families have been in the same stake since our oldest siblings were young. I remember one particular Sunday a LONG time ago (who knows how old I was) my mom pointed Bart out to me and said she wanted me to marry him someday. She thought he was an awesome kid and would make a great husband.

Fast forward to the middle school years (I was in 7th grade, Bart was in 8th). I walk into my social studies class and there was the boy my mom had betrothed me to, sitting by my teacher's desk as his student aide. To tell you the truth I thought he was pretty hot for being 14 (even though we both were in our prime awkward stages). I didn't like the class much (and I hated my teacher) but I loved seeing Bart. We kept eyeing each other all through class and I remember finding random smiley faces on my test, which I know were not from my teacher.

The next year is when we really hit it off. I was still in middle school but Bart had moved up to our high school, Shadow Mountain. During this time we would pass notes back in forth (using my sister and her boyfriend as carrier pigeons). My birthday came and he gave me a vase of yellow tulips, which were beautiful. Another year went by and I moved up to Shadow. We still talked on the phone and hung out (I skipped a class to eat lunch with him...I was completely scared and Bart still laughs about the plan I devised to get out of class).

Then the crucial day came...the day every mormon girl (and mormon guy who likes the said girl) waits for...the day I turned 16. I'm proud to say that Bart was my first date. :) We went on a double date with Rob Campbell and Jenny Rojas (now Coleman). Our plan: dinner and a movie...classic! Dinner was at Outback Stakehouse and the movie was Ice Age (I know, that was a long time ago!). He held my hand during the movie.

Our 2nd date: Prom. Since Bart was a Junior he was eligible to go to prom and therefore asked me to go with him. We had a blast! We had dinner at Bart's house with my future mother-in-law as our chef (and it was wonderful, of course). Then we danced like crazy at prom and finished out the evening by getting pulled over (thanks to Eddie Ford's fish tail skills right in front of a cop). Oh, and then we watched an illegal copy of Spiderman at Bart's house. I know...bad to the bone! :) Out of the three years that I went to prom, that was the only professional picture that turned out great. The 8 x 10 picture is hanging up in our apartment.

A little time after that I remember listening to the prophet saying that the youth should not be exclusively dating. I knew that my situation was included in this category and felt like I needed to do the right thing. So I told Bart that I did not want to exclusively date anymore. Well, he was not too happy about that. Many things were said (that I'd rather not repeat even if I could remember them) and our feelings of love interest quickly changed to anger, disgust, and sadly, dislike.

Bart keeps telling me that he was able to get over our little "tiff" a lot earlier than I did. I guess I can agree to that, to my dismay I have a bad habit of holding grudges. And to make me even prouder of my actions at this time, I completely went back on the prophet's council (and my reason for breaking up with Bart) and started dating someone else exclusively for a year-and-a-half (I know...don't get me started).

Needless to say, things did not go well between me and Bart for the next two years. Every time he would try to talk with me I would be nothing but cold. And I had no problem slandering his name whenever it came up in a conversation (what a vicious girl I was!). Eventually I calmed down. And to show you who the better person is in our relationship, the day of Bart's farewell he came up to me and apologized for all the crap that happened between us. It hit me that day how awful I had been acting...not only to Bart, but to others who I felt "wronged" me. Who was I to think I could treat people like that?

Well Bart headed off to Canada for his mission with no regrets, while I was left at home to do some soul searching. I dated a couple of people here and there but no one too serious. I still kept thinking about Bart and how easily he had forgiven me (and all of his other awesome qualities that I could not get out of my head). At this point and time we were writing back in forth, but nothing too serious...until I violently shoved the letter writing into said seriousness. Bart could tell you exactly when this effort happened, because he started receiving letters like crazy from me. No, there was not talk of I love you or you're the only one for me or I can't wait to marry you...at least not in these letters. :)


But, as most of you may know, Bart broke his leg during the last half of his mission in Alberta and had to come home for surgery and recovery (another blogworthy story about how it happened and my reaction to him being home, but that will have to wait another day...this post is way to long already). Well needless to say our relationship progessed to the level where I believed he was the guy for me. And then Bart headed back out to Ontario to finish up his mission.


We continued writing, I continued waiting, and the rest is history. Granted we did have a few shaky moments that made us both rethink our relationship, but in the end Bart got the girl and I married the man of my dreams. :)


Well, congratulations! You made it to the end of my very long post. Again, I hope you enjoyed it and I promise to not give you that big of an information overload for awhile (at least not without breaking it up with pictures!).

All the Best.