Schedule Swaps

First, as a matter of very urgent business, Brittny has requested that I inform Amber Phillips and Becca Mock that she has responded to your tagging of her. You can see the results here.

It's been awhile since we drove this car

So, even though there were excellent snow conditions on the slopes at the beginning of this month, I have sadly been to busy to get any sort of skiing in whatsoever. The fact of the matter is a family, school, and work take up a lot of time, so going skiing on the weekend isn't very realistic. I have found an alternate way to get my exercise in, but more about that later.

Brittny finished her last full day of work at the office last Friday! Hooray! That means no more daily commute between Orem and Salt Lake City, and you'll hear no complaints from me. In the meantime, Brittny is working from home full-time up until she has the baby. She really enjoys being able to work in her PJs most days and not have to wake up super early any more. This sits well with her as she is now entering the last month of the pregnancy. Comfortable clothes, easy access to the ice cream, what more could you ask for?!

I called this post schedule swaps because as Brittny is able to wake up later in the day now, I am for better or worse waking up around 7:00 or 7:30 most days. This is much earlier than I am used to, but I think it isn't a bad idea for me to start ascribing to the "early to bed, early to rise" paradigm once again. But I have enrolled in Basic Strength Training and Racquetball on every other day so that I have good exercise to start off my mornings throughout the school week. It is helpful to reach my Wii Fit goal, but I need to take short power naps during the day just to keep up. I am still working until 11:00 at night, so that doesn't give me much leeway. You can read more about that in my personal blog post.

Brittny had a family-only baby shower this past Saturday, and she really enjoyed the chance to be with both sides of the family "playing girls" as she likes to call it. We are very lucky to have received so much support for the birth of our first child. Fortunate to have older siblings and relatives to help out, we haven't needed to purchase a crib, bassinet, or very many clothes at all so far. That doesn't keep Brittny from window shopping of course ;) One of her favorite weekend activities is make sure the Baby Registry is "up-to-date" on Amazon.com while I am working.

And then Saturday night we went to an Evansville Ward Reunion at my sister Julie's house. Even though it was mostly the older generation in attendance (and thus I only really knew them by association with my siblings), we still had fun in the nostalgia of all the crazy things we did when we were young.

And that was that for this week. Not incredibly eventful, but still pretty good overall. Until next time!~

Baby update post

So, since I've made you all wait for a whole month for a new baby bump shot I figure I better get that out of the way first.
It's hard to gauge how big I'm getting since I see myself every day... and my size doesn't change drastically from one day to the next. In fact, I took this picture and thought that it probably looked about the same as the last one we'd taken. Boy was I wrong! (you can see that picture in this post) I knew I was gaining weight, I guess it just hadn't set in how much I'd really put on! Although the Wii Fit has given me no false notions of where I stand weight wise...
Don't worry, I didn't really gain a ton of weight all of a sudden at the end of December. When my family got a Wii Fit for Christmas we realized that the solution to using the Wii Fit on carpet... was the carpet extenders that came with our Wii Fit in the first place! Somehow we'd missed them when we were setting our's up. Unfortunately it means that we both suddenly gained about 10 lbs according to the Wii Fit (not a great way to boost your self-esteem), but on the plus side my Wii weight is now much more similar to what they've been telling me I weigh at the doctor's office. Oh, and don't think I'm super shy about my actual weight. I post the BMI graph because it shows the whole scale for the past three months... it gets cut off on the bottom when I look at the actual weight graph.

So it's kind of hard to believe but we're now in the home stretch of this pregnancy. About a month and a half from now we should have our little Samuel here! We're very excited about it. I will stop commuting and work exclusively from home starting at the end of this week which will be an interesting change. I've been slowly trying to make that transition. Unfortunately, since our company moved buildings this summer I've really grown a lot closer to my co-workers. There were a few changes on our team just before the move and somehow making that move and having the new environment sort of bonded us all together as a team more so than before. Anyways, while I'm not sad in the least to be giving up the commute, I will be sad to not get to interact with my colleagues in the same way.

I think we're getting a lot closer to actually being ready for Samuel to come. As we mentioned in a previous post we got a crib from Rhett and Julie, which we set up just after New Year's. It's been hard to give up having an office since we'd gotten used to it over the past few months. But almost all of the random stuff that had accumulated in there has been moved out to our storage closet and it now houses a lot of baby stuff. We were really blessed and got a TON of stuff from my Uncle Paul and Aunt Stacy since they were getting rid of a lot of the things they had for their son that was born during the spring of last year. We have two huge Rubbermaid containers and a box full of clothes, a bag of bottles, a vibrating chair, a carseat and a bunch of other stuff from them! Thank you soo much Paul and Stacy!! Now we basically just need some diapers and wipes and we should be good to go. Ok, so there are several other things that we would like to get before then as well, but it's definitely reassuring to know that we've got most of the things in order already.

As far as I go, I'm still feeling really good. Still dealing with heartburn, and getting a little bit more tired. Other than that, my biggest complaint is that it's getting harder and harder to get up off of our comfortable memory foam mattress :) Eric now has to shove me out of bed, not because I don't want to get out... but because I get stuck! I'm feeling really blessed to have such limited symptoms. Last Sunday I was looking around our ward at some of the other pregnant women. There was one woman in particular who I looked at and thought, "Man, she's huge and looks really uncomfortable. She must be ready to pop!" I looked at the Relief Society binder and looked up her due date... it's exactly one month AFTER mine. So, I'm definitely feeling grateful for how easy I've had it. But I am growing right on track so far. I have another appointment tomorrow and I'm anticipating my doctor to tell me that everything's looking good like she has for the past few appointments.

Hopefully you're not offended by seeing my bare tummy... it's really funny to watch it move on its own!

Getting away from baby news, Eric just finished his last first week of classes! Wahoo! Between the 14 credit hours he's taking, going full time at Omniture and having a baby this semester he's definitely got his plate full! We're hoping that he'll be able to pass the Physical Science 100 exemption exam this week so he can eliminate 3 of those credits, but he'll still be really busy all semester. And yes, you did read that right, Eric is now officially a full time employee at Omniture. He made the transition from being part-time at 30 hours to being full-time at 32 hours at the beginning of the year. It's not a huge change scheduling-wise, he still works basically the same shift as before. However, now he is a full-time employee with benefits, woot!

Active Andersons: Part 5 - The Rest of the Trip

On Friday, I got to meet up with some of my high school friends for lunch. It was fun to get to catch up with them and see where everyone's lives have taken them. It's always interesting to see how much things do and don't change over the years. Life has taken us all in different directions, but we're still essentially the same people that we were in high school.

In the evening the guys decided to have a "boy fest". Originally the girls were going to go out and the boys were going to stay home and play basketball and Wii, but we girls didn't end up leaving. So the boys still played their basketball and Wii but then we all spent time together playing Bang! and Ticket to Ride (and playing Ticket to Ride online). I think some of my very favorite times are just sitting around the table playing board games with my family. We got to do a lot of that this trip, and I think it will be a while before any of us (except for maybe Cody) will want to play Bang! again.

Saturday ended up being a very busy day. We got up early so that my parents, Ryan, Eric and I could go to the temple, and by early I mean we got up at 5am so that we could be to the temple by 6:30am. I was definitely NOT a fan of getting up that early but it was awesome to get to go to the temple with my family. We came home and took a much needed nap afterwards. That afternoon we went to the beach and took family pictures. I'd post them here, but that'll have to be another time since we haven't gotten them back yet from Tami Bowerbank - the photographer. They should turn out really fun though so we'll definitely post them when we get them.

After family pictures I got to take Eric to geek heaven - Fry's Electronics. If you are not a nerd or have never been to Fry's you won't fully appreciate what an amazing place it is in nerd-dom. It has EVERYTHING that tech nerds could possibly ever want. Computer parts, audio systems, DVDs, books on computer languages, hi-tech appliances, games etc. If a nerd wants it, they can find it at Fry's. Eric had never been to a Fry's before since there isn't one in Utah and the closest one to his hometown in Indiana is about 4 hours away. It was fun to get to take him around and see everything. We were there to get some miscellaneous parts for a computer that we were building for Taylor and Ryan (we'd been able to scrounge up just about everything except for RAM, a case, a power supply and a processor). It was a fun project for Eric to get to put it together and a great Christmas present for Taylor and Ryan. We got the money for the extra parts from selling off pieces of Taylor's broken laptop. While we were at Fry's Eric also found a ridiculous deal on RAM for our desktop... so we now have 6GB of RAM in our desktop :P Eric spent the rest of the evening setting up their computer, and they ended up with a pretty sweet system, especially considering they were getting it for free. Once again we confirmed why we are NOT Mac people, you could never build a pretty decent computer for practically nothing and have it be a Mac. Yay for PCs :)

Sunday we went to church and then spent the rest of the day with the family at home. Monday we drove back to Utah and now we're just settling back into our regular routines. It was a really fun trip, and nice to be able to spend time with family, especially at this time of year. Thanks Mom & Dad for having us!

Active Andersons: Part 4 - The Biggest Hit of Christmas

Probably the biggest hit from Christmas however was the game that I bought Eric, and my parents also bought my brothers — Raving Rabbids 3: TV Party. For those of you who have never played a Raving Rabbids game... you're missing out. They have become some of our very favorite games to play. They're mostly party style games meaning lots of people can play and enjoy them, and they have simple rules. This newest rendition has some games that use the Wii Fit (you play it with your butt!) so we were extra keen to get it since we've been enjoying our Wii Fit so much already! Unfortunately, this wasn't a surprise either since Eric tried to buy the game for me for Christmas as well (I told you we love these games, and stink at surprises :-) ) and I had to stop him. We got a lot of fun videos of different members of our family playing the dancing game. Eric just recently made a compilation of the fiasco!

Active Andersons: Part 3 - The fun of giving and receiving

We had some fun gifts that we gave and received. We bought a few movies for Taylor and Ryan to enjoy together (my family rotates so that each sibling buys for just one other sibling - Eric and I had Taylor and Ryan this year), and a webcam for my parents (of course, my dad also bought one for my mom, which at least confirmed that it was a good idea...). We also got a calendar for my dad that has funny grandparent stories (I'm not sure how it started but I've bought a day-to-day desk calendar for my dad every year for the past several years. I like it because he keeps it at work and will tear off a page every day and think of me, and it's something he uses), and a book called Funny, You Don't Look Like a Grandmother for my mom. Since Samuel will be their first grandchild it was fun to get them some grandparent gifts.

We got a lot of baby stuff — my mom even put together a stocking for Samuel!

We also got a stroller from my parents for Christmas.

There's a really cool demonstration of all of the cool features of this stroller on the manufacturer's website but unfortunately the makers of the site did the whole thing in flash (shudder) and so I can't post a direct link to the demo here, but if you are interested you can go to the website and click on products, the on strollers and then select the Helio (it's the second thumbnail from the right on the top) and then click on demonstration. I really like how lightweight it is and how nice and small it folds up while still being a very functional full sized stroller. Thanks Mom & Dad!

As Eric wrote about previously, we got the video camcorder from Mom & Dad Hansen in conjunction with Samuel's imminent arrival :) We also received several cute outfits, baby towels and baby blankets from Eric's brother Mike's family and our sister-in-law Kristen's family for Christmas. I'm really excited to start organizing everything and even more excited for Samuel to come now!

Eric totally surprised me this year, which is quite the feat us! We both get too excited about our surprises for each other and usually end up sharing them beforehand. However, Eric managed to save some surprises for me. See, I lost my little bag that I keep my jewelry in when we moved from our apartment in Wymount to our friends' apartment this summer. It had all of the jewelry in it that I wear regularly (which isn't a lot, but they were the few pieces that I really liked). On Christmas Eve Eric went to the mall and bought me some new jewelry so that I have some nice things to dress up with! I never thought I'd be the kind of girl who was excited by little jewelry boxes under the Christmas tree but I was apparently wrong. He had picked out a couple of things that were simple and beautiful (just my style) and I was really touched by his sweet gifts.



Thank you so much honey! He'd also bought me a pair of new headphones that are a lot nicer than the ones I'd normally buy for myself. They're really good at blocking out sound and really comfortable too. I had to promise though not to put them in my purse since we think the magnetic buttons in my purse are what previously caused the demise of Eric's headphones.

Sadly, I didn't have any really cool surprises for Eric like he had for me. He had made me promise not to get him anything really big since we'd spent a fair amount of money on some new suits for him a few months back. However I really enjoy putting his stocking together so I'd gotten him a few things that I thought he would enjoy, including some of his favorite books from when he was a kid (Goodnight Moon, Go, Dog, Go, Amelia Bedelia and the Baby, and Teach Us Amelia Bedelia). I also had some onsies made that obviously will be worn by Samuel, although they were really for Eric. They have this design on them that I created myself:



I think those could have been a cool surpise, however I needed Eric's help designing them since I don't know how to write Chinese, and I would have hated for him to open up his presents on Christmas morning and have onesies that say something like "I love dog food" instead of "I love my daddy". I made two for him, in different sizes so that he'll be able to have Samuel wear them for more than a couple of months. I was surprised that I was able to do it for a pretty reasonable price at MakeAOnsie.com.