Two Transitions Too Soon

So, as you can tell by my writing this entry, I have survived through the past week. After taking my History 202 final last Monday afternoon, I began my History 201 class later that night. From that point onward, I did little else but study and work on this class. I worked through the night to complete the lessons and quizzes for the first half of the classes. On Tuesday afternoon, I went into the testing center and took a three-hour long essay written midterm. That night, the studying continued as I finished the remaining lessons and quizzes for the class, 14 in all. It took me until Wednesday evening before I started on the class project, a 2,000-word research term paper, complete with bibliographical references. Last, but not least, I had to take another three-hour long essay written final on Thursday before going in to work. It was a crazy three and a half days, but I am finally done and graduation is now around the corner!

During all this mess, I took solace in the thought that soon my family and I would be moving into a house and settling in to a nice life, or so it seemed. For those of you who don't know, I recently applied and was interviewed for an internal promotion to an Technical Services Engineer. I felt I did rather well during the interview process, and that is why we decided we ought to buy a house. This past Tuesday night, however, I discovered another potential job opportunity that might take me to China. So now we have until this Friday to decide which offer we will pursue and consequently decide where we will be living for the next few years, at least. We'll be sure to post an update as soon as we have this next big mess is figured out.

One of the Hardest Weeks of My Life

This post will be a short one, and then I doubt you all will hear much from me until next week. You see, this week I will attempt the impossible: complete an Independent Study course from start to finish in four days. That includes all reading and writing assignments as well as two major exams.

I may end up taking time off of work to make sure I can get the coursework done, but I really really want to be done with my under-graduate education. So wish me luck, and hopefully I'll see you all on the other side :)

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!

That's Overweight

If any of you reading this recognize the title, you probably own a Wii Fit. We heard these words when Brittny stepped on the Wii Fit today. Now, before you round up a mob to lynch me, Brittny actually wants to gain weight and has given me permission to write about this topic! Trust me, I'm not that crazy to discuss a woman's weight!

Brittny's Overweight Mii!

It is good that Brittny is well on track for delivering a healthy baby boy! We're very excited to meet him come February. Brittny has left the "honeymoon" second trimester and entered the I-feel-like-a-whale third trimester. It means more heartburn, lower back pains, and trouble getting out of bed (I try not to laugh...). She's handling it like a champ, though.

Week in Review

I guess the title is applicable to this post in more ways than one. This past week has been incredibly hectic for the both of us. Finals week was upon me, and it was not fun. Of course, I would think you have to have some sort of mental issue if you actually enjoyed taking finals! I had finals for all of my classes, and unfortunately, many of them were scheduled for the last two days of the week. I won't bore you with the details, but I am simply glad to have this semester done and over with. It is hard to imagine that I will be done in just one more semester!

It snowed this week!

Brittny has been terribly busy with work as the holiday season and current economic state has many retailers and companies going into overdrive to maximize efficiency and profits. This translates into more requests for work and changes to be completed before the break. And with the snow this week, Brittny didn't feel comfortable driving into work for most days. It is understandable...she is a California driver!

But what's amazing about this woman I love is that she just keeps doing more! Handling a pregnancy, working full-time, and she still finds time to make wonderful treats like Strawberry Glaze Bread!

Mmmm! It's delicious!

She made time to do this and help take care of the apartment chores. We were definitely excited to be able to sleep in this weekend.

Family fun

On Saturday, we had the chance to take care of one of our newest nephews, little CJ Hansen while his mom was visiting Orem for the afternoon. It was so much fun to play with this upbeat 4-month-old. He was always happy and content, even after he woke up from his nap, he just looked around and waited for one of us to come and pick him up.

Look at that cute face!

After that, a good portion of the Hansen clan got together for dinner and a special family tradition. We had my sister Julie and her family, Katrina and family, Mike and family, Kristen (sister-in-law), my parents, and us! We all had to cram into my parents apartment in Salt Lake City (they are serving a mission right now at Church HQ), which was no easy task. After a really yummy dinner, the grandkids gathered around the table to make gingerbread houses! How cool is that!! My mother had a recipe for a frosting that hardened, becoming an edible glue, in essence. The kids used the frosting to build and decorate their houses. The whole night was a fun adventure. For your viewing pleasure, I have uploaded a video of each grandkid's house.

My new toy!

Christmas came a week early this year for me! And while the title suggests I got a new toy for Christmas, the real impetus for this gift was for the forthcoming baby. Yup, you probably guessed it! We got a new video camera!

ooOOoo! Pretty!

The video and pictures on this blog post are thanks to this brand new, High-Definition video camera! I am loving the deal we got on it, too (less than $500). For those of you who are interested, I have a full review on my website.

Of Epsom Salts and Roses

Wow, November totally got away from us! Sorry for the lack of posts last month. I'd promise that we'll do better, but I know that the holidays are now in full swing and it's only going to get more difficult to post regularly for the next month or so. Instead I'll just apologize in advance and get on with this post.

I guess we never posted about what we did for Thanksgiving. We've been switching which family we spend which holidays with so that neither Eric's family or my family feels neglected (well, Kyle feels neglected whenever we spend a holiday with Eric's side instead of with him... but he can't feel justifiably neglected :) ) Last year we did Thanksgiving with my family and Christmas with Eric's, so this year we were scheduled to do Thanksgiving with Eric's family. Luckily for us, Eric's parents were recently called on a mission to serve at the Church Humanitarian Center in Salt Lake City helping with the medical programs coming from Church Headquarters. So, we didn't have to go very far! It's so much more difficult to really get away in the middle of a semester so it was a blessing to not have to try to travel during this time. Instead we went to Eric's brother Mike's house in Herriman and spent the holiday with his family, Eric's parents and sister Diane's family. It was pretty low key but super fun to get to go hang out with everyone. Plus, Mike's wife Marianela is an AMAZING cook, so the food was delicious. Eric did have to work that evening unfortunately, but he was able to just set up his computer in Mike's office and take calls from there. He only had one call come in the entire night which was definitely a blessing so that he could spend more time with the family instead of on the phone. It was a wonderful day and we enjoyed having a chance to reflect on our blessings - especially the blessings of our wonderful families :)

So, what's been going on with us more recently? Well, earlier this week Eric asked me out on a date. That might seem like a silly thing but if we don't make plans specifically our Friday nights generally end up with us getting take out food and watching a movie on our couch. Which is always nice at the end of a long week, but every so often Eric will ask me out on a date (as if I had someone else in mind that I might spend my Friday night with :P ) and we'll have a real night out. I'm always really excited when he does so because it's just a fun break from our normal routine. So we planned that after work on Friday we'd come home, shower and get all dressed up to go out and then do whatever Eric had planned. While I was getting ready (I had curlers in my hair at the time), Eric surprised me with these...

Pretty pink roses!

There wasn't any special occasion involved or anything, just Eric being sweet. I was really touched. I may not be the most girly girl or anything like that, but I can definitely appreciate flowers. They're beautiful and definitely made me feel special just that he'd think of me and get me some pretty flowers! So, it was a really great way to start off the evening. We went to Macaroni Grill, which is one of our favorite restaurants, and Eric had a gift certificate from helping a guy in his class with some computer stuff. We have a tendency to fill up too much on their bread (it's sooo good!) at the beginning of the meal, so neither of us made it very far through our actual meals. But that was ok since we just brought them home to reheat and enjoy later. From there we went to the new theater at the University Mall to see Twilight. I'd already seen it once, but I loved the books and wasn't sad to see it again (even though there's one scene that's not great for those who pass out when presented with lots of blood, i.e. me, I enjoyed the rest of the movie so much it outweighed that scene. Plus, since I knew where that scene was I was able to prepare myself in advance). Eric has read the books (just for kicks) as well, so he was able to enjoy himself well enough. Overall, we thought they did a pretty good job, but there's definitely room for improvement the upcoming sequels--I won't bore anyone with more of our analysis than that. It was really fun just to have a dedicated date night and enjoy being together. I want to do better about planning similar occasions for Eric because I know how special it makes me feel when he does that for me, and I want him to feel that special too.

In other news, I've had lots of demands for updated baby bump pictures so we'll get that out of the way now:

Originally I was wearing a black shirt, but there was a slight shadow around me that was hard to separate from me so we decided to re-take in a different colored shirt.

I'm starting to get pretty big! I've been tracking my weight gain with our Wii Fit. It's kind of funny because with the Wii Fit you can set a weight goal for yourself and then track it... and right now my goal is to be overweight. I don't think the Wii Fit is very impressed with my goal, but I wanted to be able to track my weight gain and make sure that I don't gain too much or too little. It doesn't seem like I gain that much from week to week but it was really cool to be able to look at the graph and see my weight gain over the past 2 1/2 months:

I'm getting so close to being overweight!!

I guess I've gained a lot more than I realized! It makes sense since my stomach is getting bigger and bigger, but somehow the weight gain hadn't seemed as significant since I was weighing myself pretty much every day as I play with the Wii Fit.

Samuel is starting to move a TON. I have never been so amused by my own stomach in my entire life! I can sit down in the evenings and watch as he kicks and punches me hard enough that you can see my whole stomach move. It's the most bizarre feeling but so cool to think of the little person inside of me that we're going to get to meet in not too long! What's really fun is that Samuel responds to Eric touching my stomach but not anyone else. Whenever Eric will be cuddled with me or just touch my stomach he tends to get kicked. Hopefully that means that Samuel really likes him, and not that he's trying to kick his dad in the face! I can't believe we have less than 12 weeks until my due date. I'm still feeling really well and I'm just counting that as a blessing. I do have some pretty good heartburn which is weird for me since I've never really had heartburn pre-pregnancy. However, it's nothing that I can't handle with some Tums, and I figure the extra calcium is good for me anyways (oh, and Otter Pops really help too - thanks Amber for that tip!!). That's really about the only symptom I have right now, which is pretty good for being in my third trimester.

We got a crib yesterday which we're super excited about! Eric's sister Julie was cleaning out some closets and found their crib that they don't need anymore. It's perfect for us since we'd been debating whether or not to buy a crib right now anyways. We didn't want to spend a bunch of money on a crib and then find out that we were moving to Taiwan in May (still no word on whether that's going to happen or not--Eric says it's normal for Omniture to take this long) and have to either move it or buy a new one when we get there anyways. I figure Samuel will probably mostly sleep in a bassinet for those couple of months anyways so it seemed like it was potentially a huge waste of money. But now we have a crib whether we move or not! Thanks soo much Julie and Rhett!!

Let's see, other important things that happened this week. Oh, Eric got his toe cut off by the podiatrist. Okay, so not really, but that's what I like to say happened. Eric's had an ingrown toenail that had slowly gotten worse and worse for the past few months and we decided it was finally time for him to just go to a podiatrist and have them take care of it. Really all they had to do was cut off a large chunk of his toenail and use some acid to kill the root of the part that was becoming overgrown. We forgot to take pictures of it before, but here's some pictures of it now:

Here it is pre-soak with his Epsom salts and antibiotic ointment.

He's supposed to soak it in water with epsom salts every day until it's healed and then put the antibiotic ointment on it and keep a bandaid on it.

It has healed so fast! I think if we'd realized how easy the whole thing was going to be and how much better his toe would be we'd have done it a lot sooner. But we're glad he's done it now! And we're definitely glad for insurance so that the procedure hardly cost us anything.

I guess those are our highlights from the past couple of weeks. Eric is getting ready for finals now which has kept us up later in the evenings and he's been super busy. He had a paper or a project due every day this last week and was up really late completing them. Hopefully this next week will be a lot easier for him! I think he's looking forward to having two weeks off for Christmas and getting a chance to just relax. I know I'm excited, and I don't even get the two weeks off! That's pretty much all from us for now. Hope everyone has a great week!

Slower week

Since this is me, I won't be doing a novel-lengthed post. I don't even think there's much Brittny could write about.

BYU didn't play football this week, but the crazy upset loss USC had was pretty nice for us (even though analysts still don't take us seriously)! Hopefully we can keep this winning streak going! We are the last non-BCS team to win a national championship, so that would be neat to do it again!

We went to the Office Premiere party at Cody & Amber's house last Friday. It was a ton of fun! I won't spoil the exact detail, but something has happened that we have been waiting to happen for quite some time.

I'm still really enjoying my scooter, by the way. I went to fill up this week--$3.52 and that's all :) Wish me luck on my skills test (to make my motorcycle license permanent) next week.

School is school. I'm trying to fight Senioritis, and so far so good...

Playing Wife

Yesterday I got to play my favorite game - wife! Most of you are probably thinking, "um, Brittny, you ARE a wife... what do you mean by playing wife?" You see, most days I go to work and am away from the house for about 11 hours out of the day to be in Salt Lake City. When I come home in the evenings I usually have just enough time to make dinner, pack it up into tupperware and take it over to Omniture where I eat it with Eric. By the time I get home for real it's usually 9pm at the earliest, which doesn't exactly leave me with a plethora of time for doing wife-y things such as dishes, laundry, cleaning etc. As un-glamorous as those things may sound I love the feeling of having put our house in order and making real food - rather than just pasta roni.

However, yesterday I had a doctor's appointment in the morning which meant that I had already asked for permission to work from home, saving myself the 2 hours of commute time. In anticipation of staying home on Monday I had worked a little later a few nights last week so that I wouldn't have to spend as much of the morning working. All these things added together meant that I had a fair amount of extra time yesterday for "playing wife"!

So first of all, we had the doctor's appointment. I had made the appointment for 9am since we didn't know what Eric's school schedule was going to be like when I made the appointment I had decided to err on the side of setting an appointment too early (9am is their very first appointment of the day) since it seemed less likely that Eric would sign up for classes that were that early. Well, I was right on one thing - Eric definitely doesn't have classes that early! Since his classes are all after 2pm and we don't have church until 10:30am there is never a morning where Eric has to be up before 9am and normally he would still get to be asleep instead of at the doctor's at that time of the day. Sorry love! Luckily he was a good sport and came with me anyways :)

When we got in they placed us in the ultrasound room to wait for the doctor which definitely raised our hopes. We knew that they offered the gender ultrasound as early as 16 weeks at my office and I am 17 weeks along currently. Of course, we weren't scheduled for an ultrasound so we didn't really think that we'd get to do it then, but still our hopes were raised a little bit. The appointment went really well. Things have been going really well with the pregnancy lately. All the rumors are true! The second trimester really is a lot easier! We got to hear the baby's heartbeat again, which is always exciting. Plus, we got to schedule the ultrasound! We should get to find out the baby's gender on October 7th - two weeks from today. Wahoo!! So if you haven't voted on the flavor of baby we're having in our poll, you have two weeks left to make your voice heard! We'll post on here as soon as we know for sure and probably some pictures from the ultrasound too so you can see our baby! We're definitely excited to find out what kind of baby we're going to have!!

After the appointment I took Eric to a meeting at Omniture while he had the 500 mile maintenance done on his bike, and I went to the grocery store. I'd decided that since I had some extra time I was going to make garlic sirloin for dinner, so I needed some ingredients. I started putting it all together when we got home in hopes that I'd be able to have it all ready for dinner (it's cooked in a slow cooker for at least 6 hours so I had to get it ready earlier rather than later). Well, at 4pm I finally finished putting the final touches on it. It probably would have helped if I had known earlier that a clove of garlic is one of the little pods within a bulb... not the full bulb. Since we didn't want to be eating dinner at 10pm I put the roast in the fridge so we could cook it today, and we had Taiwanese breakfast burgers instead (one of our favorite simple meals - toasted hamburger buns with sausage, a fried egg, thinly chopped cucumber and ketchup, apparently they're a pretty common thing to have for breakfast in Taiwan - go figure!). We had the roast today and it was SO good. Nothing like what we were aiming for - the garlic sirloin that they have at Tucanos- but it was a really delicious dinner.

The other good thing that happened yesterday is that my BellaBand came! No, a BellaBand has nothing to do with the main character from the Twilight series, it's a piece of maternity clothing. It's basically a band that goes around the waist and helps pregnant women extend their wardrobes. Here's a picture of the band in action:

The BellaBand in action

Basically right now I can wear it with my normal pre-pregnancy pants and it will hold my pants up if I want to wear them unbuttoned and even unzipped a little bit, without it looking like I'm a moron that forgot to zip up their pants. SUCH a blessing! My pants have been feeling really tight as this baby is growing, but I'm definitely not pregnant enough yet to really be ready for maternity pants. As you can see in the picture, the band has uses for all different stages of pregnancy. As I get more pregnant and my pre-pregnancy pants don't fit anymore, I can use it with maternity pants that will inevitably be too big at first to help hold them up. Later on it's really good for supporting that great big tummy. And after the baby is born it helps as I slowly lose the extra weight and can transition back to normal clothes again. I'm definitely very excited about this purchase :)

I guess that's about it from me for now. My family is coming up next weekend for conference and I'm way excited to see them. Other than that I'm mostly just counting down the days until we find out our baby's gender!!

First Week of School!

Well, this last Tuesday it was back for another semester of school for Eric. We're still getting used to him being back in school after the nice break he'd had this summer. Luckily it doesn't look like this semester is going to be too bad for Eric overall, although I'll let him post about it himself. With the beginning of a new school year it means another big change for our little family - my BYU bus pass is no longer valid starting next Monday, and since I've graduated I don't qualify for a new one. We only had to pay $70 for it for the entire year and I was able to get to Salt Lake City almost every weekday! We're going to miss that convenient and VERY economical way for me to commute. We looked into buying me a monthly bus pass, however the cost of a bus pass is $160 per month, which wouldn't really be saving us that much over what it would cost us in gas. Plus, since I can work from home sometimes or work out other ways of getting to Salt Lake on occasion it quickly becomes more economical to drive.

As sad as it may seem to be giving up the bus pass I'm actually kind of excited to be driving in. I really like the freedom I have with driving that I can come in whenever I want and leave whenever I want. It will also mean that for the first time in our married life Eric and I will be able to have similar morning schedules so we can see each other in the mornings, which I'm definitely looking forward to :) Part of the ripple effect of me starting to drive to Salt Lake every day is that I'll be taking over our Corolla as my primary vehicle and leaving Eric home with our Cadillac. While our 1994 Cadillac Seville has held up surprisingly well so far... Eric wasn't very comfortable with having to rely on it to get him to and from school and work every day. So, we decided it was time to get rid of our Caddy and instead invest in a scooter which Eric bought on Thursday. He's pretty excited about it as it will get him better parking and AWESOME gas mileage (82 MPG). I'll let him post about that as well since he can give you more details about the kind of scooter we've got and all that, since about as far as my technical specs go gets us through the fuel economy and the color (red).

After this long week of school and work were over we had a pretty packed Saturday to follow it up! It was actually a really fun day, if not as relaxing as our Saturdays generally are. We had 5 years worth of YA technicians over to our apartment in the morning for breakfast. I really enjoyed seeing a lot of people who I still consider to be close friends, even if they aren't people I see very frequently (traveling the world with people tends to form some pretty strong bonds, especially when you're working so closely with such great people). Young Ambassadors was a wonderful chapter in my life that deeply influenced me, but I'm definitely where I'm supposed to be and doing the things I'm supposed to be doing. I wish we'd taken some pictures of all the people in our apartment but I never think of taking pictures until I'm sitting down to write these posts. Oops!

After the YA breakfast I had just enough time to change my shirt (that had somehow gotten all grease splattered while standing next to Kyle cooking bacon) and head over to my friend Stephanie's baby shower. Stephanie has been a great blessing to me for the past few months as I've been pregnant. She and I talk online while we're both at work and she's been helping me get through the weeks of pregnancy. It's really nice to have some friends who've already been there to help show me the way and celebrate the little milestones that pregnant women appreciate more than most other people. Even though I didn't really know any of the people there it was fun to meet a lot of the people who she's told me so much about.

When I got finished with the baby shower Eric came and picked me up (yup, on his cool new scooter :) ) and we were back just in time for more friends to come over for the BYU Football game! Even though I'm not a big football fan I can really get into a game like that. It was a pretty intense game, especially since there seemed to be some bias on the part of the referees against BYU. I was very proud of our team that they were able to pull through and shine in the face of that and go on to win! It was a great game and we had a lot of fun watching it with friends.

So those are basically the highlights of our week. I'm sure Eric will have more to add in later. I've been feeling very blessed this week as the rumors I'd heard about the second trimester being easier than the first have proved to be true! I'm about two weeks into the second trimester, and I haven't felt nauseous hardly at all this week. I can finally eat like a normal human being instead of a hamster! I'm hoping this can hold up for most of the rest of this pregnancy (I know there are more symptoms that rear their ugly head in the third trimester but I'll be happy to keep the nausea at bay!) I'm a little frustrated to be 15 weeks along and still no baby bump to show for it. It's kinda weird, I guess I never realized how long into pregnancy you can get before starting to show. I'm sure soon enough this baby will be taking up plenty of space in my body and I'll be huge and wishing to be back to regular pre-pregnancy size. For now though, I slightly envy my friends with big tummies that can feel the babies kicking. One of the cool things is we can sorta feel where the baby is, but it's still too low in my pelvis for anyone other than the doctor, Eric or I to feel it. I know I just need to be patient, I'll be showing soon enough!

I almost forgot! One of the main things I wanted to do with this post is to invite everyone to take the poll in the right column about what flavor of baby we're going to have. (sorry, I think that's an Anderson thing to talk about a baby's gender as a flavor... don't ask how it started, I have no idea) Generally speaking people won't find out until week 20 when they have the anatomy ultrasound whether it's a boy or a girl. However, there are places in Provo/Orem where we could go and get an ultrasound as early as the end of this week to find out the baby's gender. It would only cost us $45 for the ultrasound and an optional $10 for a DVD recording of it. But we're not sure we want to fork out the extra cash just to know a few weeks earlier. However, my little brother Cody is apparently DYING to find out and he's offering to put up the money for us to do it earlier :P. We'll have to see what we choose. Another big factor is that I'm not home during the days anyways so I'd have to plan to work from home another day to go in and do it. But maybe we'll start going crazy enough about it that we just want to find out. It will be really cool to finally get to see this baby, even if it's just the vague images on an ultrasound. I can still remember going to my mom's ultrasounds when she was pregnant with my younger siblings. Those were cool experiences and I'm sure it will be even cooler with our own baby.

Anyways, we'd love to hear what people think our baby will be or even just what you want it to be. Don't ask us for our opinions, because we don't have very solid opinions. Eric hasn't been able to make up his mind on what he thinks it is, and I keep having very decided opinions... and then changing them (yup, I'm definitely a woman :). So much for parents' intuition! If you do make a vote we'd love it if you left a comment stating how you voted and maybe why you think that, just so that we can sorta see who thinks what! We did leave an extra spot for people to guess both if you think we're having twins (which there isn't any evidence of so far, and the fact that I'm still not showing would tend to indicate against). For now voting ends on the day that I hit 20 weeks, but when we figure out when we're going in for the ultrasound I'll change it to that date and time instead. Happy guessing!

Brittny's novel-lengthed post for the week

We didn't really have any one major thing that we wanted to write about this week so I thought I'd just give an overall recap of highlights of this week. I'll try to contain each highlight to one bullet point so it doesn't get too confusing:

• Last Sunday we decided that 8:30am (the time that both our new old wards met for sacrament meeting) was NOT going to happen after moving all of our stuff into our new apartment. So we let ourselves sleep in and since we live in Utah... we figured that any time of day on Sunday we could go in any direction and find a sacrament meeting. So, just before 1pm we went to the building where our wards meet hoping to find another married student ward to attend. Unfortunately, we hadn't taken into account that our stake meets on half hours and so the meetings in both chapels in our building were about half over. So, we walked across the parking lot to the other building (yes... there are two buildings within that one parking lot with four chapels between the two of them. You can also go and within 4 blocks find at least 4 other church buildings - yay Utah :) ) The first chapel in the other building had already started however the second chapel had people flowing in and we were very happy to find a sacrament meeting that was just starting. As we went in however we realized very quickly that this was NOT a ward for married students... or families... it was a singles ward. Luckily, I don't look pregnant yet so we were able to inconspicuously sit in on it so we could take the sacrament. A few minutes into the meeting another couple came in and sat next to us... both with wedding rings on. I noticed this and thought it was odd... but of course, Eric and I had both worn rings before we were married (since we were at BYU this seemed like a good way to signify that we were both off the market) I didn't think too much of it. However after a minute the girl next to me asked if we were in a singles ward, and we found out that both of us were in the same situation - married students who needed to find a church meeting to attend. I joked with them that it would be funny if that Sunday was you-should-all-get-married-and-date-more-Sunday or if it was Chastity lesson Sunday (yeah... the boy in my apartment is definitely allowed to stay past curfew. I don't think Eric would appreciate being kicked out of our house in the middle of the night :) ) Sure enough... the talks that day were all centered on a talk from this month's Ensign - Making the Most of our Single Years by Russell Stevenson. We laughed quietly together though the meeting about the irony of the situation but it was good overall. If nothing else it made us appreciate that much more what a blessing our marriage is. I think if any couple is going through tough times they should go to a singles ward on dating Sunday. Not that there's anything wrong with that stage of life... but once you've gone past it, you don't ever have any desire to go back. I'm very very grateful for Eric and the blessing it is to be married to him.
• On Monday we went to the doctors and got to hear our baby's heartbeat again. It was a really quick visit to just make sure everything was going well. It's always cool to hear the baby's heartbeat, just a little reminder that there really is a little person in there! We're getting more and more excited for this baby to come and for us to get to be parents.
  
  After the doctor's appointment we finally went and got my blood drawn... which should have happened about 2 months ago but I've been too chicken to go. Finally after a lot of praying, a blessing from Eric and basically being forced in we made it. Eric stuck with me the whole time which was VERY helpful. We sat me down in the chair and made sure to explain to the phlebotomist (yeah, I spelled that right the first time and I'm SO proud of myself right now :) ) that I would pass out. I also made sure to warn her not to try to make it seem like not a big deal... because I already know that but having to think about it makes it worse. She was great. She actually brought up Twilight and she and Eric had a conversation about how much I like those books which gave me something good to focus on while she drew my blood and I tried very hard to remain conscious. It worked... sorta. I stayed conscious until they had taken out the needle and bandaged my arm... then I passed out and fell out of the chair. Eric says I looked almost like I was having a seizure and he had to catch my head so I didn't slam it into the wall. I also apparently wasn't sitting as still as I thought I was so I ended up with a pretty good bruise. I meant to take pictures of the bruise earlier in the week but didn't get to it until today. Just remember that this is a picture of the bruise almost a week later... it looks way better than it did earlier in the week.
  

  
  It may look better, but it still doesn't look that great!

  
  Luckily there's only one more blood draw for this pregnancy and my friend Stephanie has agreed to help me learn some good relaxation techniques so that I can get over this irrational fear, or at least take the edge of it. Let's face it, there's no way I'm getting out of needles when I actually have to give birth to this baby so I better work on it now!
• On Thursday Taylor came back to Utah!! I'm so excited to have my little sister back so I can bug her to come hang out with me again. We all made the trek up to Grandma and Grandpa Anderson's house on Friday night so we could retrieve all of her stuff. Unfortunately since Eric and Taylor had been busy in Provo and I had a HUGE project that my team's been working on all week that was due Friday night... and then we hit major construction on the way up to Logan... it was 8pm before we got up there and we hadn't realized that everyone there was waiting to start dinner until we arrived. Oops! Sorry everyone! It was really fun to go up there and be with family. Eric helped my Grandpa troubleshoot some things on his computer and Grandma helped me make a Strawberry Rhubarb pie for Eric (they're his favorite and since I never had someone teach me how to make a pie my past attempts have been... interesting... to say the least). This picture is post being cut into but it still looks better than my past pies by a long shot. Thanks so much Grandma & Grandpa for having us! And thanks for teaching me to make pie! It'll be very handy since I have 7 more bags of frozen rhubarb... and not really any other uses for it.

  Mmmmm! Pie!

• On Saturday night we had the Criddles and the Phillips over for a little end-of-summer get together. Jon and Cody were in Eric's Information Systems group last year so they spent a lot of time working together and all three couples have become very close friends. Everyone else was out of state over the summer since Cody and Jon went on internships so we were very happy to have everyone back together. We made ice cream (which decidedly did not turn out as good as my grandma's pie), ate snacks and just hung out for a few hours catching up on everyone's summers. The boys played a few games of Wii Mario Kart and it was just a really fun time. We had definitely missed having everyone so close by, and we're going to miss having the guys in all of the same classes this year, but hopefully we'll still find lots of opportunities to get together this year.
• This doesn't really fit on any one particular day but this week Eric has done an AWESOME job of getting our apartment unpacked and organized. I've been working late nights this week so I haven't been able to do much so I've been especially grateful for all that he's done in getting our little house put together. Tomorrow I want to get our pictures hung and the rest of us pretty well moved in but I've been impressed with all he's gotten done. Thanks honey for all you've done! Below are some pictures of the new digs:

  Entertainment Center/Living Room

  Kitchen/Dining Room

  Bedroom with a Memory Foam bed!

I guess that's about it. Eric starts school again on Tuesday so we're gearing up for things getting really busy again. Luckily, nothing can be as bad as the ISYS core was last year, but he's going to have plenty to do between school and work during this next semester. I'm going to miss having him home during the day, he's been very helpful in getting things done that I can't since I work in Salt Lake and am gone from the apartment up to 12 hours each day. I'm excited for him to be done in April, and for this baby to come so that I can stay at home and be a wife/mom and we'll get things done around the apartment again!

Free at last! Free at last! almost...

Huzzah! Today was the last day of Spring term classes! I cannot even begin to tell you how much I need this break for summer term. Sure, I imagine the honey-do list will expand ten-fold, but in all reality, I'm looking forward to getting some of this stuff done that I've had to put off before. I'd also get to work on my own list of goals and objectives which include but is not limited to the following:

• Practice the violin on a consistent basis. Nothing like I used to, mind you, but when I pulled out my violin last week to review some old music, years of nostalgia rushed over me. I would be happy if I could get to that once a week.



My 102 year-old buddy



• Finish my Independent Study course. Yeah, yeah, I guess I'm not really out of school for the summer term, but I don't think Independent Study courses count.
• Learn PHP, and learn it good! Anyone who wants to do web development needs to know PHP. I'm planning on using it for my website http://www.haiensheng.com
• It would also be cool to read some books or get back to work on my own novel, hehe.

So there are my great and glorious plans. Now I just have to get through finals week...