Sunday, April 28, 2013

Baby Shower

Mom and Megan flew into Utah a few weeks ago on Wednesday, April 17th.  Megan is starting a new semester at BYU-Idaho and needed to be up to school by Friday.  They were able to come in about a day early to visit with us and throw me a baby shower! 

We had the baby shower at my place on April 18th, which was a "Reading Day" aka Study day before exams for any BYU students.  I was 33 weeks exactly on the day of the baby shower.  Here is a picture of me, the day before.  I haven't really taken any update pictures since then.  I guess I'll take a picture on Thursday when I'll be 35 weeks (...what?! I can't even believe we're so far along already.  39 days until due date as of today!)


Like I said, Mom and Meg flew in Wednesday afternoon and the shower was Thursday morning because it was a "Baby Shower Brunch".  It was a little bit crazy for them to try and get done shopping, food prep, decorations, etc done all in one night!  Geoff came over and we all kind of pitched in a bit to get some stuff done and ready.

You can tell from the chef's coat, I did a little bit of baking of mini muffins :) I also helped a bit with making some decorations.  They had everything planned and ready, I just followed some directions.  And I think it turned out way cute! 

 Mom and Geoff doing some food prep

 Mini muffins out and cooling!  Blueberry, Chocolate Chip, and Lemon Poppyseed!

Meg melting some chocolate for the strawberries

 A jar of animal crackers for one of the games we played at the shower--Guess the # of animal crackers. 
Correct Answer? 93.

 More kitchen prep

 Some tasty and fun cream filled wafer cookies! These things are delicioussss and very festive :)

 Nala was a little perplexed with all of the commotion, but she was a good sport.

 Meg and I in our matching penguin pants!

 Some of our baby shower favors-- different chocolate bars wrapped in decorations that said "New Baby Jimmie"

 Nala, just chasing people around  :)

 Hanging decorations the next morning! This was the backdrop to the food table.

Hanging the pendant banners with Jimmie's name on it


Posing while we work :)

 The final banner

 Some of the muffins and scones before the rest of the food.  Note the giraffe table cloth! 

Megan welcoming guests!

Grandma Tucker and Aunt Jeri were able to drive down from Idaho for the shower.  It was so great to be able to see them!  

Some of the food spread

 You can see the cute strawberries here a little better that Megan made.  I thought they were just adorable!

 Some of the gifts starting to arrive


This is a picture for another one of the baby shower games.
It was a "Guess the size of Emily's Belly" game where people would submit their guesses for the circumference of my belly and the closest won.  I think the correct answer was about 40.5 inches at the biggest part.  Wowzer!


Me and Aunt Jeri

Once guests arrived we visited, talked, let people guess at the various guessing games, and had a lot of fun.  When we started to open gifts, Jim came out to watch for a bit before he had to run to work at 12. Here are a few shots from gift opening.  We got SO much wonderful stuff! Thank you again to everyone for their awesome gifts.  

Some BYU onesie's from my Mom 

Baby swing, also from Mom

 A beautiful baby quilt made by my cousin Becca!

A soft, comfy blanket with zoo animals and red stripes made by Grandma Tucker!

 Some picture scriptures from the Kennedys

 An elephant blanket made by Megan and Mom...each of those elephants are quilted!

A "beary" cute baseball quilt from Grandma Foulk :)
Okay, I'm sorry, that was corny...but punny! 

On the baby shower invitation, they put asked people to bring their favorite baby book to start building Baby Jimmie's library.  We got so many wonderful books, it was such a wonderful idea!



One of the final games we had was a list of animals and people had to try and write down what the baby animal was called.  For example, if it listed "Cat" you would write "kittens".  There were some SUPER hard ones on here but it was a lot of fun to hear the answers and what people put down.  



After the shower, a few people stayed and visited for a while and Nala was able to come out and play....or well, mostly just beg.  

Shamelessly staring down the food...

Nala really loved Aunt Jeri :) She even got her to take her for a nice walk before leaving

 Geoffrey, the giraffe balloon, got to go out to the road with a baby shower sign to show people where it was, since no one can ever find our house :)  He was a big helper. 

A picture of some of the gifts from the wonderful gifts from the day!

After the shower, I didn't really want to take a nap, so after people left and Megan and Mom rested before needing to hit the road, I put together some of the great baby equipment we got.  Here you can see the baby swing, the Fisher Price Rock N' Play, and the bouncer all set up! 
Pretty funny how quickly a big space starts to get smaller with all the baby stuff!

But by the end of the day, we were all pretty exhausted.  As I was setting up the baby swing, I heard really loud snoring.  I thought it was Megan, who was asleep on the couch. But lo and behold, I look over to the trampoline and Nala is totally crashed.  This picture doesn't show it because she moved before I could get a picture, but she had her head hanging off, upside down, mouth open, tongue out, totally snoring louder than ever.  

I guess it was a long and exciting day for everyone :)


Thank you to everyone for coming to celebrate with us! It was so much fun and I feel so blessed to have so many wonderful friends.  And thank you to everyone, here or far away, who brought or sent gifts for baby Jimmie!  He is going to be one spoiled little baby :)  Most importantly, thank you to my Mom and sister for planning the whole thing and going above and beyond in making everything perfect!  We can't wait for baby Jimmie to get here to be able to use all of these wonderful things and meet all of these wonderful people in our lives!

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Catching Up

Okay, for the sake of time, I'm just going to post a lot of pictures of what's been going on since... mid-March (?) and try and fill in details and explanations where necessary :)

Well let's start here.  Jim bought me this wonderful camera for a (quite early) birthday gift.  He's a big sweetheart.  He knows I've wanted a nice camera for years and has been planning/saving up for it for a while :) However, I get it early so that I can (1) document these fun times in the next few months (2) get some experience with the camera and practice before little one comes (3) aaaaaand it went on a nice sale ;)  So, we're taking a lot of pictures! Which means you may get more blog posts.  Enjoy!



And I took the 3 hour glucose test! (because I failed the 1 hour) Which, this dumb test, is more like a 5 hour waste of time from your day.  
It felt like forever... and I found out 2 things a few weeks later.  
#1- I passed the 3 hour glucose test! I don't have gestational diabetes
#2- ...I never actually even failed the 1 hour.  I passed by about 3 points and the nurse misread my test results.  Thanks nurse, for wasting an entire Saturday :)

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Also, I finished my practicum! My fourth graders were really sweet and each wrote me a card.  We had our "Mighty Mall" on my last day there where students were able to trade in the money they earned from good behavior for different little gifts and such.

One of my students bought balloon animal kit and made me this excellent party hat.  
My mentor teacher brought me these beautiful flowers.

And I made this for my mentor teacher: 

Fun, huh?! I can't really take credit for it though.  One of my friends made something very similar which was based on something found on Pinterest.  So I made my own version and I thought it turned out quite nicely!

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Towards the end of practicum, my heart decided to start doing some crazy things.  One night, after work, when I was just sitting on my bed planning a lesson, I passed out. Since I hadn't passed out in a long time and I had never passed out just sitting there, not doing anything physical to trigger it, it alarmed me.  I hadn't felt a ton of movement and was feeling extremely nauseous so we decided to go check it out.  The baby was fine, it was just my heart being weird.  Seemed like POTS just acting up again, but the doctor wanted me to see the cardiologist to make sure it wasn't anything more serious. 
The cardiologist agreed that it was probably just POTS symptoms being aggravated by pregnancy, low blood pressure, etc. but wanted to get tests done.  I had an echocardiogram which came back normal. And I had to wear THAT ^ awesome heart monitor for 2.5 weeks.  Because the 3rd trimester is so comfortable as it is, we thought we'd make it more comfortable by having wires and monitors hooked up to me 24/7 with electrodes that I ended up being allergic to and gave me a rash and burns.  Woohoo! Ha! Needless to say, I nearly cried with joy when I was allowed to send that wretched heart monitor back.
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Easter
We didn't dye eggs or do anything very fun. But the Easter bunny came! 


And I looked like an Easter Egg... 

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After practicum, we went back to classes for a few weeks.  And in the Elementary Education major, we do things like make edible DNA.  That's how we roll.  

 My last day of classes was a week ago today!  Time is flying by.  I've officially completed all classes that I need to/will ever take.  (Unless for some bizarre reason I end up going to grad school years later.  Ha! Very doubtful! 99.999% sure of that!)

It's a little bitter sweet... but mostly sweet :)

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A few weeks ago, we had a bit of a scare, which thankfully turned out to be nothing!
We went to the hospital on Sunday because I wasn't getting fetal movement.
It was more than just a "lazy" day where he's tired after having a busy day the day before.
I would do the "drink ice cold water" or "something naturally sweet", lay on my left side and count kicks.  On Saturday, I could get about 4-5 very faint movements instead of the typical 6-10, we continued to monitor it throughout the day and still were feeling a little uneasy about it. 
By Sunday, after being up for several hours, I wasn't getting any movement at all so we decided to head into L & D.  


The room we were put in had a BEAUTIFUL view though! So it was a little more enjoyable :) and now we know to request room #7 the next time I have to go to the hospital... hopefully next time we leave, it will be with a little baby :)

 Clearly, I enjoyed it.  

Turns out, everything was just fine.  They kept me there for several hours monitoring for any contractions and the baby's heartbeat for normal accelerations and decelerations.  Everything looked normal and we were free to go!  We haven't had any concerns or issues since then thankfully.

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Though the temperature of the air may not feel like it, the blooming plants and flowers around here tell a different story!  A few days after we got the camera, I wanted to try it out, so I went out into our backyard and took some pictures of spring in full bloom. 








And poor Nala ends up getting a lot of pictures taken of her, but we'll spare you.
Jim's posted most of them on his Facebook if you're interested :)
I gotta practice taking pictures of someone so that I can take nice pictures of our baby.



And Nala sends her love to all of you :)