It's a GIRL!

It all began one hot, steamy July night...

but we can skip that part for EVERYONE'S sake.

On July 31st we thought we better take THE TEST.

We were both certain it would be negative, but apparently neither of us knew what we were talking about.
Then, we were both SURE it was a boy.

Again, neither of us knew what we were talking about because

IT'S A GIRL!
(Although, our subconsciouses must have been trying to help us out as we each dreamed it was a girl last night...)

Anyway, we're in the ultrasound (looking for gender at this point as the rest of baby looks healthy (which, I should add, I'm so grateful for, I know I'll spend some time tonight thanking God for all the blessings He has given me. Seriously, this whole things is nothing short of a miracle)) and I yell out, before the tech even has a chance, "It's a GIRL!?" After a few minutes of utter bewilderment I was so excited I could hardly contain myself. I repeated "I can't believe it's a girl!" for about 2 hours. Then, OF COURSE, my mom and I went shopping for clothes and yarn for me to begin my knitting endeavors (still to no avail!).

Eric and I had been looking forward to today for the past 3 months. I woke up at 6 AM this morning b/c the excitement was too much for me. It was like I was 6 years old on Christmas morning. We're already so grateful for this tiny angel that pokes me all day long. We thought we'd be content once we knew the gender and that everything appeared healthy, but now we can't wait until she actually gets here!

Anyway, we'll keep praying for a happy, healthy baby girl!
<3

In His Own Words

You hear about it all the time. All the new mom's talk about it. You can't quite understand it, but you know it must be true. They all seem to say the same thing.

"Leaving your child, even if just for a day, can be tough."

They say they worry about them and miss them. They hope they're safe, that they're being looked after.

You wonder, "What the he!! is going to happen to your kid while you're out for a few hours?"

Now I know.

I left Eric unattended for 24 hours this week while I flew to BYU for some EY recruiting. Was I worried about him? Not really.

I will be next time...

In his own words, the morning after I had left:

"It ended up being a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day... it's almost too soon to relive it.

I went out the front door, unlocked by bike from the banister, and started on my way to school. It was like any other day.

Cold. Rainy.

I'm going through the only intersection between home and class. A fairly busy intersection, always cars waiting for a green light. The construction has made it worse.

So what happened was, I'm in the bike lane, coming up on the construction zone. I suddenly realize the the bike lane has been blocked by a road-roller.
(Eric now calls this "The Enemy" whenever we drive by)

I had to get out of the bike lane. I noticed just before the road-roller, there was a break to enter the sidewalk.

I'm about a foot from the sidewalk... and then I see it.

The construction workers had dug a divot for the road repaving right before the ramp. Now there's a 3 inch high lip to the sidewalk, but I figured my tough mountain bike could handle it.

It couldn't.

(Eric swears the construction workers must have filled in the divot since then... I'm skeptical)

It stops me dead... and I fall all the way off my bike. I land on the ground, my bike wrecked, jeans ripped and hands bleeding.

I know people saw the whole thing because when they're light turned green, it took them a moment to get going.

The worst part: I picked up my bike and the brakes were bent, making it impossible for the wheel to turn. So I had to turn around and walk back across the busy intersection... dragging my bike home.

Later, after I got my hand all bandaged up, people kept asking me what happened. When I told them I crashed on my bike, they'd ask, 'Motorcycle?'

'Nope... my bicycle.'

Then we'd usually just part ways."


I am going back to BYU for recruiting next weekend. I'm not sure what I'll do to keep him safe in my absence. Today I think we'll stop by the bike store and get him some necessary gear (helmet, elbow pads, knee pads, reflective vest, gloves, maybe a protective leather jumpsuit that erupts into sirens and lights upon impact).

Maybe I'll ask around church on Sunday for a good babysitter to check in on him... because this is apparently a recurring problem:

As of late...

Lately, Eric and I have been having lots of fun. While we both have to work, we've made time for the important things in life. I have been meaning to blog about our Honduras and Lake Powell trips in detail, but cannot find my camera with all the pictures... to be continued...

Anyway, mostly we spend our time on normal weekends with Jason and Gin and their little rugrats Ollie (almost 3) and Max (10 months). As such, I thought I should post some of my favorite pics of Eric with our nephews. Now, let me explain this family dynamic to you by way of a conversation I had with Ollie the other day after an afternoon of swimming in our pool:

Me: "Ollie, did you have fun swimming with Eric?"
Ollie: "Yeah."
Me: "Good. I love you Ollie."
Ollie: "Ok... and I love Eric."

Ollie and Eric
Max and Eric - and those are raisins in Eric's hand... not poop...

I think another illustrative conversation I could share occurs every time I walk into Ollie's house without Eric behind me:

Me: "Hi Ollie! What are you up to?"
Ollie: (With his "naughty" face on) "Are Eric?" (Translation: "Where's Eric?")

As you could gather, Ollie LOVES Eric. I think Eric may have even usurped Grandma's thrown. He doesn't want me to get in the middle of their play time, he doesn't like Eric to hold Max, and a common phrase I'll hear him tell ANYONE else trying to help and/or play with him is "Eric do it."

Regardless, I still love the heck out of those babies. Here are Ollie and Eric one morning of the 4th of July weekend "cleaning their ears:"



Anyway, I thought I should also quickly recap this past weekend for posterity's sake and to warn the general public:

Eric and I decided we'd take a weekend trip to Yosemite.

Our plan: Spend most of Saturday hiking the Yosemite Valley, stay overnight in a hotel, and then return the next day for more scenic hiking and breathtaking views.

Reality: We arrive to Yosemite Saturday around 4 PM. The park is PACKED! We are literally STOPPED in traffic in the park and cannot find a parking space for over an hour. We finally get out of the car and make our way down Mist Trail. There are so many people with crying children I momentarily wonder if I died and some how ended up in Hell. Amazingly, the park's beauty still outweighed the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth and we managed to get one picture without 50 strangers in the background.
We leave the park around 6:30 to try to beat some traffic out. We are trapped in traffic anyway and eventually make it to our hotel in Jamestown, CA around 8. Now, I found this hotel weeks ago using Hotels.com and chose the only one with more than 2 stars in the area that wasn't over $150. It was an "America's Best Value Inn." OH MY GOSH... IT WAS THE WORST PLACE I'VE BEEN IN MY LIFE! Eric and I decided to write this review for Hotels.com and we're planning on calling the manager again (he seems to never be around):

"Insomniac Plumber's Haven"

"We got in around 8 PM ready to crash after a full day of hiking. Our "cottage" was more than rustic - it was a DUMP! The wall A/C unit was so loud and erratic my husband and I were still awake at 5 AM when we decided to just leave and make the two hour drive home so maybe we could get just a little sleep that day in our own bed. The unit continually switched on and off all night - and not a sweet background air noise - a huge blast of sound (and no accompanying blast of cool air... it was so hot in there and the windows DON'T open)! The toilet ran continually unless you re-flushed it a few times until you got lucky and it finally sealed. When our neighbors on the other side of the cottage came in around 10PM, we could hear every sound they made. We knew it was a male, female, and little girl speaking Spanish. We heard when they went out to get things from their car, used the toilet, shower, sink. We even heard them get into bed. We decided we should probably turn our TV off as their daughter probably needed to get to sleep earlier and if we could hear them this well, they were probably following the storyline of the movie we were watching on our side of the wall. Anyway, if you haven't gathered, I don't know how this "hotel" managed at 2.5 star or why their overall rating is a 3!? Maybe those pleased with the accommodations are insomniac, plumbers that enjoyed having others around to listen-in on at the wee-hours of the morning and broken toilets to tinker with all night long."

So we came home, missed our second day of hiking, and flushed a cool hundred down a leaky toilet.

(Disclaimer: Yosemite is still BEAUTIFUL - you should go, but reserve a campground and bring a bike)

Employment

So I had to fill out a government form for California when I started my job asking about my previous employment. This was in attempt to better understand the job market in the state and assess how well our wonderful government's unemployment department is handling this economy. The form asked,

"How long did you look for work after your previous employment before finding this position? What was your previous employment?"

I seriously looked at this form for approximately 10 minutes while all the other new hires were hurriedly scribbling all their past experiences to prove they were no bozos. Finally, I wrote,

"What previous employment?"

I think Jerry Brown will appreciate that for his statistical sampling. Although in hindsight, this probably wasn't the best response b/c you know all the entitlement programs are going to use that as the poster child for stimulus dollars suddenly employing some life-long welfare case as an accountant. Anyway, let's leave politics out of this....

I guess people in this working-career world have a notion that most people have jobs. In fact, apparently they believe BOTH parties in a marriage would have a job (we're still working on 50%). Hence, I get this question a lot:

"So what does your husband do?"

At this point I pause for an uncomfortable moment to watch their face suddenly become concerned I have some unemployed liability and therefore assume my next logical step will be a lawsuit suing them for harassment. See, it takes me a moment to pick my response First, I rank the inquisitor on a scale from witty to unimaginative. Now, given my line or work and the stereotypes thus attached, I usually just have to safely respond that he is "self-employed," "in sales," or "taking classes."

*Which I must make a disclaimer that most of my colleagues are hilarious. I guess stereotyping isn't always appropriate, who knew? ;)

While all of the above responses have emblems of truth... but I feel like the most accurate responses would be:

Aquaponics Enthusiast

honestly, 9 out of 10 times when I get home I find this.

And let this be a warning to our neighbors... apparently Eric is always scantily clad while doing his aquaponics and also strategically positioning the plant life to provide the illusion he is indeed nude, so be careful if you have a wandering eye.

I have enjoyed the fruits of his labor though... or should I say "vegetables" of his labor? Mwahahaha.

Another great description of my amazing husband's largest pastime would be:

Church Baller

Remember growing up on Tuesday or Wednesday nights, all the men aged 12-85 would gather and bring their friends for a couple hours of wholesome church basketball? Often there wasn't much real talent and everyone would still pass the ball to the 4 foot 12 year old because they probably got picked on at school and wouldn't get a chance to play otherwise?

Yeah, Eric's not into that.

Eric will often wake up at 530 AM to play in the mornings and will sometimes play til midnight in the evenings. Now, I heard the crew that played at our building in Saratoga were a little rough, but from the looks of things I'm pretty sure they were actually referring to the white boy that most enjoys spending his days gardening (i.e. my husband).

Here's just a few pics of Eric after another family-friendly game:
Note: the cut near his eye still noticeable two days later...... and the black eye on another occasion.

I just want to say "I'm sorry" to all those that may have sustained similar injuries at the hands of my husband. Apparently, he's not there to make friends.