Baby!

Well, for anyone that hasn't heard yet, we are having a baby! I am due June 19, 2011, and we are so excited! Here is a timeline of the events:

October 16th - Positive pregnancy test!


We also decided to tell our parents right away since we had no idea what we were doing. We called my parents that night and got them talking about some of their upcoming vacations. I told them I had a great idea for a vacation spot, and I got them both on the phone at the same time so I could tell them both. I told them that they could come to our house in June to meet our baby, and they were way excited.

October 17th - We told Chris's parents the good news this night. We had a birthday card for her that was addressed to Grandma. Here is what the inside looked like (the pictures were in there too):


It took them a minute to figure out what it meant, but then they were really excited too!

November 11 - First prenatal appointment . They took lots of blood, ask lots of questions, and invited me back for an ultrasound on the 18th.

November 18 - First Ultrasound! The baby was perfect. The ultrasound tech measured and said that the baby was right on track at 9 weeks , 4 days. The little baby was moving its little arms and legs like crazy! I think it was excited to see us. We saw the little heartbeat and heard it too. It measured at 171 bpm which is right where it should be. Here is one of the ultrasound pictures.
Chris think our baby looks like a mouse. I'm afraid he's right.


November 23rd - We finally told everyone else that we were having baby. My sisters were in town on their way down to Las Vegas for Thanksgiving, and Chris's brother and sister in law were in town as well. We decided to get together for dinner at a chinese restaurant we all really like. We decided to secretly order custom made fortune cookies with fortunes that annouced our pregnancy. Chris went and talked to the owner of the store, and he agreed to give us our fortunes cookies after our meal instead of the ones they usually give out. We got there, and the owner was totally cool and didn't ruin our secret at all. He's sneaky! He brought the cookies out and everyone started opening them. Here is what they looked like.

Regular Fortune Cookie?

Nope!

Chris's mom actually got a video of everyone's reactions, so I'll post that after I get it from her. It was great being able to finally announce our good news!

Right After the Announcement :)

Spring Break

We spent the first few days of Spring Break in Park City. It was fun! We shopped at the outlet mall our first day there. The highlight of the outlet mall was the Bose store. We went in and watched a short film about high quality audio in a home theater system, and then we found out how much it was(A LOT!). Since we watched the movie, they let us enter into a drawing to win one, so don't be surprised when we announce on April 16th that we won it. I'm sure we did, so soon we will have a new home theater system. You're all invited over to enjoy it when we get it. (Don't tell Chris we might not win. He is convinced that we have it in the bag.)

After the outlet mall, we went over to the historic district of Park City and walked up Main street. We spent most of our time in the art galleries looking at pictures. We also saw the painting done by the graffiti artist Banksy this year during the Sundance Film Festival. Here is Chris with it.


I had heard about this guy before, and I was excited to see it.

The next day, we went to The Utah Olympic Park. We spent some time looking through the museum, and then we went a guided tour. It was awesome! They took us to the bottom of the ski jumps, and then all the way up to the top of the luge track, the top of the bobsled track, and the top of the ski jump hill. It was SO STEEP! I can't even imagine going down that thing on skis. I'm not usually afraid of heights, but I would be scared to death to do that! Here are some pictures from the Olympic Park.





Saturday night, we were back home and we decided to color Easter eggs. I know we're not little kids, but it was fun! We bought the Tye-dye set and let me tell you, it was the most complicated Easter egg dying I've ever done. We had to take each egg, put it in a plastic bag, and use these little sucker straw things to suck up a little bit of dye and drop it on the egg, rub it all around using a bag, switch the egg to a new bag, add more color, and repeat until you were satisfied. We quickly found out that too many colors just turned the eggs brown. Only a few ended up ugly. Here are some of our eggs.

Kiersten's Senior Pictures

My parents came in town this weekend for my Aunt Berta's wedding. Here are few shots from the Mount Timpanogas temple.

Shannon, Berta, Ron, and Don

The Happy Couple

Congratulations, Randy and Berta!

I also took some pictures of Kiersten at Wheeler Farm. Here are a few of them.






Here is Chris entertaining himself while I took pictures.


It was a fun weekend!

The last 7 months or so...

So, the last time I blogged was in July of last year. Wow. I did change the background once around Christmas with the intention of blogging...but it never happened. Sorry for those of you who got excited thinking I blogged (Becca :). So, lets see...school started, Halloween happened, Thanksgiving happened, Christmas happened, and New Year's happened. They were good.

So, my birthday was a few weeks ago, and Chris bought me this.



So exciting! I am excited to learn how to take really good pictures. In fact, I have already read the entire user manual and the entire "Digital SLR Cameras and Photography for Dummies" book. I went to a cool workshop this weekend where I learned all about different types of lighting. It was awesome!

We went to St. George last weekend for the UMEA conference. It was good break from school and we were able to do a lot of networking with several other teachers in Utah.

I have the best husband ever! For Valentines Day, he sent me roses at school. All of my students (particularly the girls) thought it was really sweet. I did too. He really knows how to make me feel special. He also continued the tradition of giving me a noise-making stuffed animal for Valentines Day. Plus, I got chocolates. He spoils me so much! Here are the goods.



Since Chris's favorite food in the whole world is cheesecake, I decided to attempt to make one. I didn't have a recipe, so I googled "best cheesecake" and made the first recipe I found. It was a complete and total success! Chris loves it ( we still have half in the fridge which I'm sure he will finish off quickly). It was a great recipe and I will definitely do it again. However, next time, I'm going soften the cream cheese to room temperature before I start. I think it will make it smoother. The flavor, however, was PERFECT! I also made a tart raspberry sauce that complemented the cheesecake very well.
It was a great weekend and I am SO LUCKY to be married to such a fabulous man. He is the best husband anyone could ask for. I love you, Chris!

The camera is back!

Woo hoo, our camera is fixed! $112 dollars later, we are able to take pictures again. Thanks Dad for letting us borrow your camera for our cruise :)

So, on the 24th of July, we decided to get tickets to the Bees game. Chris's parents and his sister Becky came with us. Here is Chris driving us there.

And here is me riding.
So, we arrived at the game, got a really good parking spot, and went to the box office to pick up our tickets. There was a sign on the window that said the game was postponed! The team that was supposed to come got sick, so they brought in some all-star high school teams for a home run derby and a 7 inning game. They were still going to have the fireworks show too, so we stayed. Also, because of the inconvenience, they gave everyone who bought a ticket 2 more tickets to a Bees game, a Jazz game preseason ticket, and a ticket to the Miller MotorSports park. Hooray for free entertainment for the rest of our summer!

We got seats on the grass and watched a high school kid dominate the home run derby. He was even outplaying all of the Bees players. We later found out he is sort of famous and was on the cover of Sports Illustrated recently. He is only 16! I think Kiersten should marry him since they both live in Las Vegas. His name is Bryce Harper. Read about him. You'll be impressed.

Here are some pictures from the game.

Bunny ears :)

They moved everyone from the grass to the outfield so they could launch the fireworks.

Okay, the fireworks. This was one of the best firework shows I have ever seen. They advertised it as "Utah's Best Firework Show" and I was skeptical, but after seeing it I am a believer. They had lots of unique fireworks and they were fast paced. Here are a few shots from the professional firework picture-taker, my talented husband.

This one looks like jellyfish :)

Here is a group shot taken after the fireworks.

I think Chris is standing on my foot.

The next day, my parents came into town for the weekend. We went miniature golfing at Boondocks.

I think he means business.

Today we volunteered at the Oquirrh Mountain temple again. Chris did parking and I was an usher outside of the tents. Chris got a very fashionable sunburn in all of the places he did not put sunscreen, and I am now a pro at crowd control and keeping people who have to wait in long lines happy. I really liked my job this time and hope I get put there again tomorrow. Last time, I opened the main doors of the temple on the side that got almost no action, so in 5 hours I saw about 100 people. The rest of the time I just stood there. This time I was busy the whole time. Much better :)