You Know You're In The Desert When....

You know you're in the desert when.....

you're out for a walk and this giant tumbleweed bounces up out of nowhere and hits you in the face. haha. It startled me so much I almost fell down. 

Tumbleweed: 1

Me: 0

Merry Christmas!

 Merry Christmas everyone!

We had such a fun day hanging out, eating good food, and opening presents.

We started our festivities on Christmas Eve with being able to Skype with Mike, who's in Brazil.

He was so fun to talk to and seemed to be doing really well. His birthday is the day after Christmas and we definitely miss having him around.

On Christmas day we slept in, ate a great breakfast of french toast and omelets, opened presents, and watched basketball. In the afternoon Caroline and I went to the movies to see Les Miserables. It was so good! We loved it. I will never get tired of that music or that story. When we got home we had my special birthday dinner- sweet and sour chicken with pineapple, rice and a berry spinach salad. It was delicious. For dessert we had red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. I felt very spoiled and loved all day long. Thanks to our families for being so nice and generous to us this Christmas/birthday. It's crazy to think this is our last without kids (!)

and I just thought these were so cute- Jeff's mom got baby girl some Cowboy's onesies so she'll be ready to go next NFL season. 

Hope everyone had a great day. I know Jeff and I are very blessed to come from such loving families. 

Merry Christmas!

Vegas

We've been in Vegas for a week now and it has been so nice to hang out with each other and relax! 

We've been keeping busy with making tons of treats, watching a lot of old volleyball games, and taking Laser out of walks. We were also able to spend a morning in the Las Vegas temple. I'd never been to this temple and it was so beautiful inside and out. 

On our plane ride out of Dallas we were on board with a ton of rodeo guys with big belt buckles and girls with huge hair. Apparently there was some big rodeo in Vegas this week. They were really drunk and noisy the whole flight. I gave one of the old guys the evil eye and he slightly quieted down.

 Jeff out with Laser

I picked out some ribbon for crafts

A little glimpse at all the food :)

Jeff's in heaven.

Pretty Vegas sunset

We've also been hanging out with Jeff's friends from high school. They're all so fun and get together every Friday night with all their kids and just hang out. 

Jeff was able to get some practice in with their cute little girl, Scarlett.

twins

And now we're just excited for next week and Christmas and my birthday!

Hair

 Happy early birthday to me!

Today I finally got my hair done. It had been a really long time since I've had it cut- I also decided to go back to being blondie blonde. 

and this is when I need to turn off photobooth and go to bed. 

I can't help it though- when I bring my hair forward and peer out it always creeps Jeff out so bad. Think I'll set this as his background on his phone.

20 Weeks

Today the weather is gorgeous. 

It's finals week for Jeff and today he was able to come home early so we decided to go for a walk. It's actually been pretty chilly lately so the sunshine today felt amazing. Tomorrow Jeff takes his last two finals in the morning, coaches some vball and then we are off to DFW to catch our flight to Las Vegas. We are so excited to see family, relax, eat, shop, and basically just chill for the next few weeks.

Today I am right at 20 and a half weeks. Part of me kind of can't believe I'm this far along and the other part of me feels like I should be farther. I'm feeling better every day and my headaches and nausea have decreased dramatically so I am extremely thankful! I'm definitely feeling bigger- Right now I'm just wearing my regular jeans and they fit comfortably unless I eat - then I feel like a whale. I've used the hair band thing but my mom bought me some maternity clothes and I can't lie- the maternity jeans are 

c-o-m-f-o-r-t-a-b-l-e 

I kind of love them and think I'll just start wearing them all the time as soon as I can. I don't think I'll ever not want to wear them- why do so many people hate them? They have elastic tops! They stretch when you sit down! They expand when you eat :) haha, Why can't all pants be like that? 

anyways....

What else pregnancy related do I need to record..... oh, movement. 

I think I feel movement but I'm not entirely sure. Every now and then I get a weird sensation in my stomach or just a weird vibe going on....it's hard to explain. It doesn't feel great but it doesn't feel bad so...I'm not sure. Hopefully soon I can feel something a little more definite. 

I am feeling round ligament pain! Otherwise known as growing pains. Woof. At least it tells me that the baby's growing and things are moving along as they should be. It just happens to manifest itself at like 2 am every night. I told Jeff my stomach hurt and he told me I'd get used to it. So I punched him in the gut and told him he'd get used to it- I think I'm a little hormonal.

I'm still getting heartburn but it's not the worst thing ever so I try not to let it bother me.

And- my hair has stopped thinning/falling out! Woot woot. I was getting worried. Thankfully I had a lot to work with from the beginning but... I was getting worried- like huge chunks would come out. 

I'm not having any dreams that are crazier than usual other than the one where I have a talking baby, like it can talk as soon as she's born. And in my dreams the baby is always very rude. Not sure what this means.

Most of all I am just so excited to be a mom and love this little girl to pieces.   

pics from our walk today

20 Weeks

Some days I wake up and I definitely look pregnant but other days not so much. Today I definitely felt pregnant. The fact that I had lunch at Johnny Carino's probably helped.

Jeff got in on the photo shoot action too

didn't want to feel left out lol

Its a.......

GIRL !

We found out on Thursday that our baby's a girl :)

I am beyond excited.

Just like at my last ultrasound she was being uncooperative. So we spent a really long time checking and rechecking all of her measurements. It was really cool to see her face and her spine! Her spine was crazy- you could see every single little part. Of course Jeff loved that part. Her face was a little freaky, my doctor said at this stage when you see the face straight on it looks like one of those Day of the Dead skulls.....and I really can't disagree, ha. It actually looked like I thought it did when I was so sick and I referred to her as our little monster baby.

Finally we kind of got a shot that let us know it's a girl. Unfortunately their printer wasn't working so I just snapped a pic with my phone- I wish I would have gotten one of her profile! But her little bum is cute too.

Happy and excited parents-to-be

Going in to the ultrasound I had no guesses either way. Growing up with no sisters and four brothers though, I was kind of hoping to get our girl first since they were such a rare commodity in the fam. I was talking with my brother and I told him that now I have a real girl to dress up and I won't have to rely on my days when we were younger and I'd force him into my princess dress and do his nails and makeup. I'll have a real girl to torture....j/k.....kind of. 

Tis the Season

 It's my favorite time of the year. 

We leave for Christmas break next week (!) and we are getting so excited to be done with tests/school (Jeff) and into a house that has a quality water heater (me).

Because our Christmas break starts so early for us this year I decided not to go all out with the tree and decorations, but we did kick off the season with the wonderful First Presidency Christmas Devotional. We also had cinnamon rolls delivered to us just in time for it to start. Perfect and delicious.

I tried again to make sugar cookies...and again I ruined them. I can't help myself! I always roll them too thin so they turn out all crispy and really crunchy- however, they are still yummy to me, but I wanted to give them to my neighbors :/ 

I'll have to try again before we leave.

I attempted to get my craft on....thank you pinterest. I really liked how the snow globes turned out but I didn't love my dumb pine cones- the colors came out all wrong- but they do smell amazing so I'll keep em around.

Got Jeff to take a study break

and this is my current project. I didn't take a before pic like I should've, but this is one in progress. Cross your fingers for me that it turns out cute. The way my chairs and table looked before was super ug so I figured there's not a lot I can do to make it look worse...right???

Oh! and the most exciting news of all is that I go in for a doctors appointment TOMORROW morning to find out the sex of the babe!!! I've been trying to be patient but it is NOT easy. My appt was originally for Tuesday morning but they called me Monday saying something came up and they had to reschedule for later in the week....I wasn't too happy. Hopefully all goes well tomorrow and we'll find out if this babe is a he or she :)