Valentine's Day

Jared and I celebrated Valentine's Day twice I guess you could say. We had some movie tickets and a Chili's gift card, so we had a date on Friday night almost for free! Can't beat that :) We enjoyed some delicious dinner at Chili's and then headed over to the new MegaPlex in Centerville and watched "The Vow." It was a good movie, but I wished the ending would have been a little bit better. It was still fun to get out of the house and enjoy a 'night on the town' before our little one gets here.

Here's a self portrait of us before heading out the door on Friday. I hadn't realized how chubby my face has gotten too! Good grief! My eyes squint up WAY more now than they normally do!

I got a delivery at work on Valentine's Day from my sweetheart. He had these beautiful tulips sent along with a very very sweet note. They still hadn't bloomed when I got them, but over the past few days, they started to bloom. They're gorgeous!

And inside the box was this note in an envelope that said someone was thinking about me. I sure am one lucky lady to have this wonderful man as my husband forever!

Jared had school on Tuesday night, so he stopped at home for about an hour to get some stuff done and then he headed up to school. He usually gets home around 8:30, so while he was gone, I ran to the store and picked up a few balloons and a yellow rose and got the table set with some candles and our etched glasses we got for our wedding.

We enjoyed a nice dinner of homemade lasagna, garlic cheese bread, and sparking red grape juice. It was great to spend a fun evening with Jared. All in all it was a great Valentine's Day for both of us!

Almost finished!

Our nursery is coming along great! We found a new pack n' play on clearance at Shopko and a nice 3 piece furniture set at Wal-Mart. The set included a crib, changing table and dresser. We've gotten most everything else out of Alexander's room, so now it looks more like a nursery! :) We're very excited and we're down to 11 weeks, which seems SO crazy!

Here's a picture of the crib and the changing table

Looking in at the crib and rocking chair

This is the AWESOME Broncos blanket my friend Linda at work knitted for Alexander. He's going to love it (if Jared will ever let him use it) ;)

Here's our clearance pack and play. It's also got the raised bassinet which we love.

And last but not least, a picture of the rocking chair again and the dresser as well. The dresser was horrible to put together, but we finally got it. The crib was super easy to get together, but I put it together in the living room, only to come to realize it wouldn't fit through the door to his room! So we unscrewed it and put it back together once we took the pieces into his room. All in all, things are coming together.

We have our baby class at McKay-Dee on Saturday and then Rachel's throwing a shower for me later this month. We can't believe in 11 short weeks our little bundle of joy will be here!

Nursery Addition

We've been keeping busy as Jared has started back to school and we're trying to plan for Alexander. Here's the newest addition to our nursery. We've been wanting to find a comfortable but reasonably priced glider and here's what we found. It was originally $259 at Shopko and we found it on sale for $99. I know it's not as good as some of you bargain shoppers might do, but we think it will work well!

Merry Christmas!

We were very excited for Christmas morning because we were opening our present to find out what gender our baby is! I was up at about 3 am with heartburn and throwing up....no fun! I thought about waking Jared up to open the present, but I decided against that and tried to get back to sleep. I tossed and turned till about 6 am and then woke Jared up. We were both kind of nervous as we headed out to the living room to grab our present. We opened it up and pulled out the ultrasound picture and read the words "I'm a Boy!" :) We were both very excited and happy! It was the best Christmas present ever! Here's the picture of our little boy.

Here's a proud daddy in his Broncos shirt along with the Bronco football we got from Becki and Paul! Jared is very excited it's a boy because he can have someone to teach football and baseball to! :)

Here's what 'Santa' brought us....matching Bronco shirts!

We did our traditional ornament exchange over at Rachel's on Christmas Eve....can you guess which one is Jared's and which one is mine?

Here is our amazing present from Rachel, Shawn and family....a gorgeous picture of the Bountiful Temple!

Here is a cute little baby blanket that Jared's Grandma made for us! We think it will keep Alexander warm and cozy! On a side note, I just have to mention that his Grandma is hilarious. We met her last weekend for dinner and when she hugged me she said "Hello Tubby" ..... I'm sure it was out of love, but I still chuckle about that. I'm tubby, and I know I'm going to get more tubby before this is over with! :)

Jared's sister Becky and her husband Drew had our name for Christmas and they got us this sweet Atari console with 60 games!! Wooo hoooo!!

Jared's parents got us this great Rice Cooker and Steamer! I'm so excited to use it! No more boil in a bag brown rice!

Paul and Becki also got us this nice crock-pot. The one we've been using is a hand-me-down from my Mom that I got when I moved into my first apartment in Sioux Falls. It's been good to me, but definitely time for a new one, so this will be great!

Matthew and Jen got us this cute little baby calendar. You customize it with stickers so it's baby's first year. There are cute stickers to record special moments and places to put pictures as well as journal space. We love it!

All in all we had a great Christmas. It was amazing to find out the gender of our sweet little baby and also know that the reason for celebrating Christmas is to remember the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Jared and I have been so blessed this year and are so grateful for wonderful friends and family. This was truly an amazing holiday for our little family! We love you!

Go Grizzlies!

Last Monday night we went to the Grizzlies hockey game against the Idaho Steelheads. I had been to a hockey game once before in Sioux Falls, but we sat so far up and I couldn't really see anything, so I consider this my first real hockey game. We went with Jen and Richard and their kids. It was a lot of fun! We had really good seats too! Too bad we didn't win though.....it went into overtime and then the Steelheads scored 2 out of their 5 shots and we didn't score any, so the final score including the OT shots was 3-1. But it was still fun to get out and have a good time! Here's Jared and me waiting for the game to start.

Here's a picture of Jen and her daughter Jorja (hard to get a smile out of that one!)

Here's the gang....Jared, Richard (our brother-in-law) Jorja, Josh and Jen (Jared's sister)

Here's our view of the rink from our seats....we were in row 4!!

Another view from our seats...it was kind of scary when the puck hit the glass or a player got slammed up against it, but still a great view!

Temple Square

Monday night we went to Temple Square with Jared's sister and her family and then both Jared's brothers, Chris and Bob and his sister Angela were coming down with their singles ward, so we met up with them as well. It was really fun to be with family and walk around temple square. Here's my all time favorite picture from the evening.

Here's a picture of Josh (our nephew) and me. He's a funny kid! We love him.

I tried to get a good picture of Jorja (our niece) but my camera wasn't working too well and she doesn't like to smile too often, but she's still cute!

Here's a picture of Jared and his brother Chris. You get these two guys together and get ready for some craziness! They sure are silly!

Jared and me enjoying the lights!

Jared and me trying to stay warm!

I love Temple Square at Christmas time!

More of the pretty lights

I always like the trees made of lights

Pretty red trees and the nativity on the reflecting pool. I think this was from the back, but still a nice shot.

All in all it was a great evening. Great to be with family and to be at temple square, reflecting on the true meaning of Christmas.

Sugar Cookies

So I don't claim to be the best baker.....and if you need proof, just see below! We tried making sugar cookies the other night and the first batch didn't turn out the best. I just rolled the dough right on our counter and I must not have had enough flour under the dough and I think I made them a bit thin. They stretched and got out of shape when I tried to pull them up and get them on the cookie sheet. The one on the bottom right is supposed to be a gingerbread man, but he looks more like the running man after I got through with him!

So here's our second try at these sugar cookies. I rolled the dough out in small batches and put more flour on the counter and made the dough a bit thicker. These actually turned out looking like they should! Thanks to Rachel for letting us borrow her rolling pin and some cookie cutters!

Here's the set-up we had on the kitchen table for decorating. I tried to make Grandma Friederich's frosting, but it just didn't taste like hers. It was ok, but I don't think I'll ever be able to make things as good as Grandma does!

Here are our finished cookies! We definitely had a good time! Jared's are on the left and mine are on the right. I think decorating sugar cookies will be a tradition that we have. Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas is in the air

We've been busy getting all our Christmas decorations up for the year. Last year we had a Charlie Brown tree, but we bought one last year after Christmas on clearance, so here's the newest addition to our Christmas collection. Got the lights and the star on to start.

Here's a picture of the tree with all the ornaments. We've also been doing the 12 days, both with our presents from Mom as well as the 12 day ornaments she sent a few years ago. She made an ornament and along with it a story. Every day we've been reading a story and then hanging the ornament on the tree.

This is the present we're most excited to open! :) Christmas morning we'll know if we're having a sweet little boy or girl!

Here's our nativity scene that I made last year.

Here's our 'fireplace' for our stockings as well as our Christmas countdown. "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!"

Insta Care is no fun!

Jared has had this bump above his eye off and on over the past few years. In the past it's gotten bigger but then it will go back down. On Wednesday it started to swell up again and since then it's just kept getting bigger and bigger and pushing down on his eye lid. He woke up this morning and his eye was about halfway shut due to the swelling. It opened up a little bit after he'd been awake for a while, but we decided we better get him to Insta Care before it swelled closed all together and got a lot worse.

Here's a before picture of my poor sweetheart on our way out the door to Insta Care. The picture doesn't quite give the full effect of how swollen it is.

Here's a close-up of his poor eye. You can see the bump towards the end of his eyebrow on the outside part of his eye.

So when we got to Insta Care, we had about an hour wait to get in to see the doctor. She thought it was some sort of cyst or abscess, so she wanted to open it up and try to get everything out of there. She brought out a big needle and numbed him up so it wouldn't hurt as bad. Then she opened it up and started getting all the gunk out that was making it swollen and infected. Based on how Jared reacted, I'm sure it still hurt a lot! Poor guy! She was able to get most of the stuff out, but he's got some antibiotics to take, as well as Lortab and a topical numbing ointment for when we change the dressing. We get to clean it for about 7-10 days and then give it about 3 weeks to see if it's fully gone. If not, she suggested that surgery would have to be done to remove it completely. Here's hoping for a speedy and full recovery so no surgery is necessary. Here's my poor baby after we got home. I feel so bad for him, but it was probably good to get that yucky stuff out of there.

And here's a close-up of the eye with the bandage on. We have to change it tomorrow night and then she said we should just be able to put a band-aid on it from there on out. Wish us luck!

20 weeks!

We had our 20 week ultrasound on Friday December 2nd up at McKay-Dee Hospital. Everything checked out good with our little baby. We have a healthy 15 ounce bundle of joy! We had the ultrasound tech put whether it's a boy or a girl in an envelope for us and we'll open that on Christmas to find out what we're having. We're super excited! Here's a few pictures of our sweet little baby.

Side profile, you can see it's cute little face and a little hand

Not 100% sure what the picture shows, but the line at the bottom is the heartbeat

We think this is looking down at the top of the skull and the face is on the left