Winter Wonderland

Friday morning I woke up to a phone call informing me that school was cancelled due to the snow.  It was the first time in the last thirteen years that school has been cancelled in the district I am employed by.  I was very grateful I didn't have to brave the weather to make it to work.  The snow had started to come down on Thursday just as school was getting out and it took me twice as long as normal to make it home.  I was content to spend a day at home in my pajamas lounging around.  It was nice that Seth received a text that he could work from home.

I wanted to show a few of my friends in South Carolina what a snow day in Utah looks like.  The two pictures below were taken on Friday evening.  The snow was literally up to our knees in places.  We decided to brave the weather and walked several blocks to pick up a movie.  We joked about how if it ever snowed in South Carolina like this...school would be cancelled for a month.

Saturday we met up with our friends Matt, Beth and Philip for a snowshoe hike up to Ensign Peak.  The trail was fairly packed...which I was grateful for on the way up hill.

The view from the top was AMAZING!  So nice to see all of the gunk cleared out of the valley.

We continued on our trek up to the Bonneville Shoreline trail.

We encountered several herds of deer along the way.

This was by far my favorite part of our trip...the powder was fresh and nearly up to our knees.  It was fun to run downhill in this section.  FYI...the Camelback was a good idea in theory...it was only 16 degrees outside and it froze very early on in the trip.

As we came out near City Creek Canyon we entered this beautiful Winter Wonderland.  It was absolutely magical and reminded me of a picture book or a scene from a movie.  I apologize for the weird lighting...it was pretty dark by this point and the only light in the picture is that reflecting off the snow.

Gender Reveal

We found out on New Years Eve that we are having a little BOY!!!  I went in for my third ultrasound to check on low amniotic fluid...and found out the great news that my amniotic fluid levels are doing much better...most likely due to drinking a ridiculous amount of water over the break. While we were there the doctor asked if we wanted to know what we were having.  The doctor was about to say it was a girl...and then paused and said wait a minute...after a little adjusting and poking our little one showed himself.  

That night we had dinner with our good friends and tried to reveal the gender of our little one in a fun way, with balloons...but our attempt failed.  Both the blue and pink balloons inflated...even though I poked all sorts of holes in the pink balloon.  We were happy to share the news with them regardless of our failed fun reveal attempt.  The picture below was taken at midnight that night.  It is exciting to think that this will be the year that we welcome our son into the world.

After our next failed reveal attempt with my parents...we decided to try a new idea.  I made cupcakes for Sunday dinner and filled them with blue whipped cream.  I accidentally let the gender slip to my sister-in-laws in our pre-dinner conversation...but our nieces and nephews were sure surprised.

Mueller Park

The day after Christmas we headed up to Mueller Park in Bountiful for a little snowshoeing.  It was fun to be get out and enjoy the snow.  This trip inspired Seth to plan a trip from Mueller Park to Ensign Peak in Salt Lake.  I volunteered to be the driver on that trip.

Christmas 2012

We had a wonderful Christmas Day up in Cache Valley.  The picture above is Seth playing with the gift he got his parents...a castle building block set.  Seth has a strategy of getting his parents something that he would like at their house.  He and Jami spent quite a bit of time building castles in the morning.  Our big gift this year was a DSLR camera with many accessories.  After charging up the battery I was ready to take some photos...Seth was my first subject.

I was excited to try out our new present at Jamie and Jotham's house.  They have a lot of land behind their house and we headed over to their house to shoot shotguns Christmas afternoon.  They have beautiful horses in their back pasture.

A fun shot of Jamie, our gracious host.

I took a short turn shooting...I may or may not have got one pigeon.  I blame my poor shooting on the cold.

Seth on the other hand was quite skilled with his gun.

He is also not half bad at throwing the pigeons.

Remember how I said it was cold...you can literally see frost in my hair in the picture below.

Snowball fight

We headed up to Cache Valley for Christmas this year.  We had planned to go snowshoeing on Christmas Eve, but the canyons were a little too icy so Seth came up with a back-up plan.  He decided to have the snowball fight of all snowball fights.  He enlisted the help of willing family members who helped build forts and prepare hundreds of snowballs. 

Then he impatiently sat and waited until the remainder of the unsuspecting family members showed up at the house.

Then the fun started.  The fight lasted a good half hour...then the teams continued the fun with a game of capture the flag.  I decided to remain neutral and acted as the fight photographer.

As much as Seth loves the snow...I wonder how we ever made it through two winters in South Carolina.

I believe a good time was had by all...this may need to become a new family tradition. 

Utah Eats: Part II

Here are a few more pictures from the yummy places we have gone to eat recently.  For the most part eating is a chore these days...the constant nausea I experience makes it difficult to really enjoy food.  I have had a few cravings and have learned very quickly not to by an item I am craving at Costco...seriously one day I crave something and the next day the thought of that same item makes me sick.  But one constant craving is  meat...I have taken to calling our little one Rex as in T-Rex for this reason.  I typically have the biggest sweet tooth around...but lately I have no cravings for sweet.  Seth is amazed at the abundance of sweets we have around.  We have had ice cream in our fridge for over two months and usually it doesn't even last a week. One of my co-workers gave me a cupcake from the Sweet Tooth Fairy for Christmas...normally this cupcake wouldn't have even made it home from work...but this year I carried it around for a few days waiting for a little bit of my old sweet tooth to kick in.  With that said...here are two of the places that have actually made me want to eat recently.  

First up Pat's Barbecue a local place featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.  We buy a Groupon almost every time they are available and used ours the Friday after Thanksgiving for lunch.  We were lucky enough to get there in time for the special of burnt ends.  We ordered bread pudding for dessert.  I had a few bites and it reminded me of our old home in the South.   

The next place we visited was The Mandarin right here in Bountiful.  The atmosphere was very festive and the food was delicious   We ordered the walnut shrimp and the cashew chicken.  The walnut shrimp was by far our favorite...when you go order it and I promise you will not be disappointed.

TITLES

I used to consider myself a "runner."  I wore the title of" runner" with pride and basked in the feeling of accomplishment that came each time I stepped across the finish line.  Each race convinced me that  I could do "hard" things, I could cross the finish line no matter how tough the miles were to get there.  So what exactly does this have to do with being pregnant...I feel like I have entered the longest race of my life...40 weeks of race to be exact.  I just reached the 13 week mark last Monday...and during those first 13 weeks I felt like I was not tough enough for the race that I had entered...that the race was much harder than anyone that had run it before me had said...and that this was not exactly what I thought I had signed up for.    

Well this last week finally brought the relief of the first aid station along the course.  We headed to our first doctor's appointment and were able to hear the heartbeat of our little one for the first time.  I was left quite speechless when we heard it.  That little sound brought all the peace that I had been praying for.

The next day we headed back for our first ultrasound.  The picture below was our first view of the baby.  We were relieved to see that there was just one in there...although at this point a two for one sounds pretty good.  I had a dream around the time that we got pregnant that we had twins and the night before our first doctor's appointment Seth dreamed we had triplets.  Let me tell you this little one is a mover and a shaker.  It looked like there was a dance party going on...I think this little one might take after their father.  

Here is a shot of one of the arms.

This is a shot looking down on our baby's head.  You can see their little fingers lifted up in front of their face.

In this picture you can see the spine.

This week has given me the will to keep going.  The finish line is expected to come on June 9th.  I am excited that at the end of this race I will gain a new title I will be a "mother."