I Sold My Soul And All I Got Was A Snappy Blog Name!

January Happenings

2012-02-02T12:23:00.006-08:00

Are you ready for an update on what the Greenhalghs have been up to for the last month? (Or the last year for that matter :) but I don't have the time to catch up a whole year- so I'll just start with a month!)

The month started off with a big milestone for Zac! On January 7th he turned the big 3-0!

As Zac puts it his "life is a third over." I'm not sure he was entirely ready to turn 30, but it came just the same. In his 30 years Zac has made many friends, got an Eagle Award in scouting, served an honorable 2 year mission for the Church, graduated from a great university with great grades, got an awesome job right out college, married a pretty cool girl, received high praise and accolades from those he works with, received promotions and raises at his job, had the world's most beautiful baby, and has really great ideas and will one day be a very successful entrepreneur! I would say that is a productive and successful 30 years, and I can't wait to see what he does with the other two thirds of his life!

Now to be completely honest, I kinda forgot to plan something for Zac's birthday. I felt terrible! I kept thinking I needed to plan something, and then put it off because I was busy and all of a sudden it was Saturday the 7th at 3:20 PM and it hit me! We had planned in advance to spend Saturday cleaning our house and organizing our office, so somehow I hadn't put two and two together that Saturday was our cleaning day and Zac's birthday. I could tell Zac was a little disappointed since this was a big milestone for him, so the next day I planned a surprise party for him for the next weekend. I sent him golfing, invited a bunch of our friends over, and when he came home we surprised him! Well since it was a week late, he was definitely surprised, I said that was my plan all along. :)

We had pizza, Olive Garden salad and bread sticks, and I made a fun-fetti cake that tasted better than it looked. Then we played Bezzerwizer, which I got for him as his birthday present, and we played a really fun game of girls vs. guys. I guess since it was Zac's party it is only fitting that the guys won, but we will have to have a rematch soon because it was really close! I think Zac had a great time, and I hope I made it up to him for forgetting on his birthday!

Much of the rest of the month I was very busy with stuff for my business. Gabbie and I flew out to my mom's house for a little less than a week to make kits, and samples of all the things we wanted to sell at a Craft Show we were going to at the end of the month in Phoenix, AZ. It was fun and pretty productive, especially since my dad and really great friend Linda Lyons came over to help us a ton! Although we never seem to get everything done we need to at these work weeks, could it be because Gabbie is just so helpful...?

If you couldn't tell this is Gabbie walking all over the fabric we are trying to cut!

At the end of the month Gabbie and I flew down to Phoenix, AZ for a craft show put on by Rusty Barn. We had never been to one of their shows before and weren't really sure what to expect. It wasn't nearly as big as the other two shows we have been to, and people weren't buying as much as we would have hoped, but it was probably still a good experience. We learned a lot from the previous shows, and I think we did really well in terms of being prepared, and what to bring, and how to set up the booth, and if people would have just bought more we could have done really well. We had a ton of people come into our booth, and tell us they thought our stuff was really cute, but only about 1 in 5 people actually bought something. We talked to our neighbors, and apparently it was the same story for them as well. One guy said that with the recession the last 4 years he has made about 4 times less revenue than he use to. Well at least it wasn't just us! We will just have to see how the next couple of shows go, so keep us in your prayers that we can actually make some money at this because I love doing it, but it would be great to actually cover our costs at some point!

We sold baby blanket kits, stuffed animal kits, patterns, and some of our favorite Shannon Cuddle fabrics. I was very proud of what we presented, and we got a lot of compliments, which feels pretty good!

Another great thing about going to Phoenix is that I have a bunch of family on my dad's side that lives there, and I don't get to see them very often. My dad's parents and his sister, her husband and daughter all live in Tempe. It was great to spend some time with them getting to know them better, and enjoy spending some time together. My aunt Kathleen, and cousin Kristina were also very gracious in that they worked out their schedules to be able to watch Gabbie for me the whole time I was at the show. It was so nice of them, and I think they actually enjoyed it too! However everyone who any spent time with Gabbie has become quite familiar with Dora the Explorer, since it is her favorite show! They also got to see just how much Gabbie loves the park, especially the slide and swings, and luckily it tires her out pretty well, and then she would take a good nap for them!

Another great thing about visiting Phoenix is that my oldest friend Alexis Perry lives there now with her husband and two cute kids. Her husband Ben has been going to Medical School there for the last couple of years. It was really great to see Lexy and her cute little house, and letting our kids spend some time together. Lexy has already arranged the marriage between Gabbie and her son Hayden since they are only about 4 or 5 months apart, so that we can officially be related!

We just got back from the show, and I have been busy developing things for my business, and working on getting my clearance to do my in-school observations for my teaching preparation program. Zac has been busy finishing a highchair he is making for Gabbie that he started at my parent's house over the Christmas break. And Gabbie has been enjoying Dora some more, but we haven't been to the park the last couple of days because she has been sick, but hopefully she will feel better soon!

Well that is January in a (kinda large) nutshell. My goal is to blog at least once a month, so stayed tuned for a February update at some point next month!

August

2010-10-19T14:50:00.000-07:00

We didn't have too much going on in August, but we did have our 3 year wedding anniversary. We played it pretty low key this year though. I knew that our anniversary was on the 17th but when I was signing up on the missionary calendar, I didn't look at the date, I just looked at the day of the week, because we were so limited in which days we could have them over. So I signed us up for Tuesday, which as I discovered later, happen to be the 17th- our anniversary. So I made dinner, and we shared it with the missionaries for our anniversary celebration. We didn't really feel like doing anything too special, but Zac got the inspiration to go get soft serve ice cream from McDonalds at like 11 o'clock at night. It may not be a glamorous celebration, but it definitely made for a fun story. But I thought I would do a little tribute to the wonderful years that we have been married. From dating to engaged to married, to now a wonderful little baby our lives have changed so much, but I can't imagine it any other way!

2006: Dating

2007: Dating and Engagement

2007: Married

2008: Married year 1

2008 and 2009

2009: Married year 2

2010: Married year 3

It has been 3 wonderful years! Zac is an awesome husband and father, and I am so grateful to have him in my life! And maybe we will do something special at our 5 year anniversary, or maybe we will just wait until we hit a decade!

June & July

2010-09-30T15:18:00.000-07:00

So one of the first things in June was Zac's golf tournament in Las Vegas. He has been going for the last 3 or 4 years with his friend Josh. They get to play on some really nice courses for a really good price, and a high end item on a good deal and golf are two things that Zac just can't pass up. They even played a course called Wolf Creek, which is a really nice golf course that is even played on the PGA tour. So of course this golf course was on Tiger Woods Golf game for Wii, which of course Zac own, so naturally he practiced on Wii before he went out. I'm not sure if it helped at all, but lets just say that it did. They didn't win this year, but they still had fun, and of course there is always next year. The next big thing was our trip to Europe. We had a great time on this trip, but I have actually been avoiding blogging on this trip because I didn't know where to start. We went to Ireland, Scotland, and England, and the trip was 14 days long. I wanted to post pictures but there are so many! There were 8 people on this trip, all taking pictures; however, the main perpetrators of course would be my mom, my sister, and of course me. The 3 of us alone each took at least 500 pictures a day, so do the math (500 x 3 x 14) and what do you get? 21,000 pictures! So I say again where do I start? Plus even if I post one picture a day that's still 14 pictures and I would inevitably get comments on how long my post was. Not to mention how I pick 1 picture from 1,500. The idea was daunting, so I avoided it. I am making photo album pages of the whole trip, but it will likely fill up 3 photo albums, so if you want to see the whole trip you will just have to wait to see the photo albums. I took a break to do scrapbook pages of Gabbie, and I did a few pages on the trip, so I will just share those, since they offer a very light overview of the trip and they highlight the cutest person on the trip. :)

This was a crazy little bassinet that they let us use on the cross-Atlantic flight. Of course Gabbie didn't like it much, so we had to hold her most of the way.

We started the trip by flying into Dublin, Ireland.

This was at the Blarney Castle, where you kiss the Blarney Stone for good luck.

This picture of Zac was at the Giant's Causeway, it is really famous for it's amazing scenic photos.

After about a week we took a ferry across to Scotland. I loved Scotland, and I definitely have to go back, because we only got to spend about a day and a half there, which was just not enough.

Zac and I both agree that Edinburgh was one of our favorite cities we have ever visited. It is beautiful, and well preserved, with a good mixture of history, and modern day. And it didn't hurt that we had beautiful weather, from what the locals told us, the day we were there was the most beautiful, sunny, warm day they had seen in 5 years! We want to go back again, even if it does rain on us next time!

After that we made the long drive down to London. Where again we were too short on time. We only had 1 and half days to see all of London. We managed to see the big famous things, but there was so much more we have to go back and see.

After London we visited Stonehenge, Stourhead gardens, and a short visit to Bath and Chester. I know this doesn't really do our trip justice but I just can't condense the trip for the purpose of a blog any better. It will just have to be shared with the scrapbooks when I get them finished!

Playing catch up: Apirl and May

2010-08-02T10:13:00.000-07:00

So I am going to do a little catch up since I have been slothful in posting. I am going to start back in April. Over the weekend of April 24, my two brother-in-law's: Kayla's husband Kevin, and Zac's brother Rawleigh graduated from BYU. Kevin graduated in Neroscience, and Rawleigh graduated in International Relations. Kevin's graduation was huge and took forever, but it was a really hard major, so we were all happy to sit through the 3 hour ceremony to support Kevin! Rawleigh's on the other hand was short and sweet; however, maybe a little too short, and definitely a little to early in the morning since Rawleigh almost slept through it! We had to call and wake him up, and he ran over just in time to walk across the stage! We had a big celebratory dinner in downtown Salt Lake City with the Greenhalghs: Rawleigh, Dallin, Verl, and Ann; the McKay's: Kira, Gabbie, Kayla, Kevin, Sheila, and Pat; the Johnsons: Dacia, Joe, Ellie, Topher, Alysia, Grace, and Alan. It was a lot of fun, and great to see so much family!

We also went bowling in Provo with Kevin's parents. And of course we had to make a special stop at my dad's favorite place (besides the actual woods in Alaska)... Cabela's. They have a little shooting gallery were you can use (fake- obviously- it's not that red-neck) guns to shoot little targets. We all competed to see who could get the best score. I think Kevin technically won, but that's only because he happened to pick a gun that was broken and actually gave him a score of like 350 which isn't even possible! (A perfect score is 50- then the machine should reset, this machine obviously didn't reset).
The next trip was in May. Over the 7, 8, and 9 Gabbie and I went out to see Britney Holland (one of my best friends since grade school) graduate from Loyola Marymount University in International Business. Britney got all kinds of awards for being so awesome and hard working! We were so proud of her, and she was so excited to meet little Gabbie.

We took a walk along the boardwalk along the beach. It was really nice weather and we had a great time talking and catching up.

The next trip was May 19 through the 23. Gabbie and I flew out to Vancouver to see my best friend Lexy's brother get married. Scott married his best friend Christi, in a pretty little ballroom in downtown Portland. I have always been friends with Scott, but coming out was mostly an excuse to see Lexy, so she could meet little Gabriella. Kayla and Kevin even came out because Kevin was taking the MCAT in Portland.

My Dad took off for the weekend to go out for a trip to Alaska to do some hunting, which of course was a trip to heaven for him. After Kevin's test, my mom, Kayla, Kevin, Lexy, Sandy (Lexy's mom), Taylor (Lexy's daughter), me and Gabbie all went out to Fort Steven's State Park, for a little fun on the beach. All 8 of us squished into out tiny little camper trailer, it was cozy for sure, but it helped us stay warm!

We also stopped in the cute little town of Seaside for some elephant ears and a walk on the beach.

For the next vacation, everyone actually came out to see us. Over Memorial weekend at the end of May, all of my family: my parents: Sheila, & Pat; my sister Kayla and her husband Kevin; and all of Zac's family: his parents: Ann, Verl, Zac's sister Heather, her husband Quentin, her kids Geneva & Wesley; Zac's sister Aubree, her husband Phil, and their son Cooper; Zac's brother Garrett, his wife Ashley, and their kids Greta and Finley; and Zac's younger brothers Rawleigh and Dallin: all came out to the Bay area for a mini vacation.

Our first day was in San Francisco, and we started the day at the Golden Gate Bridge.

Then we went to the Exploratorium in Golden Gate Park.

Then we went to Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf for some lunch and shopping.

Then it was a walk up to the top of Lombard Street and then a fun walk down the curvy street.

Then we went to the "Full House" house and the "Painted Ladies" to see the pretty Victorian houses.

And of course we had to see some shows in San Fran. Kayla, Kevin, Ann, Ashlee, and Aubree all went to see Wicked; Kira and Sheila went to see Peter Pan; and Phil, Verl, Rawleigh, Dallin, and Garrett all went to see a San Francisco Giant's game. You can always count seeing great entertainment in San Fran.

The next morning my mom got up early to go for a walk and took lots of cool pictures. Of course no one else was crazy enough to get up before sunrise, so we were glad she took pictures so we could appreciate the view that way.

We stayed at one of my mom's favorite hotels the Stanford Court, it was a really nice hotel, and we had a really yummy, really fancy breakfast the next morning.

Before leaving San Fran we had to make a quick stop at Coit Tower.Then we endured crazy bad traffic on the drive down to Monterey. Our first stop was the famous Monterey Bay Aquarium.

We enjoyed all the cool exhibits.

We especially enjoyed the sea horse and sea dragon exhibit.

Then we took a walk along cannery row, and had dinner at our favorite place Louie Linguini's.

Then we took a drive along the beautiful 17 mile drive to see the Lone Cypress, Pebble Beach, and all the other pretty golf courses along the scenic beaches. And we ended the tour at our favorite beach at Carmel.

The next day was Sunday, and was the reason that everyone came out. It was the day of Gabriella's baby blessing. My mom made a beautiful little dress for Gabbie, Zac gave a BEAUTIFUL blessing (he even started to cry! He never cries! His little girl obviously means a lot to him!) and it was great to have so much family there to be in the circle for Gabbie's blessing.

These pictures definitely shows how much bigger the Greenhalgh family is than the McKay family!

After that we came back to our apartment and made an awesome BBQ lunch. Of course my dad volunteered to be babysitter for Gabbie. I'm not sure who enjoyed story time more... Granddaughter or Grandfather, and I know they both really enjoyed nap time!

Then we took a long drive on the congested road out to Santa Cruz. It took twice as long to get there as it usually does but by the time we got there we had a really great time.

All the boys played in the ocean, and a rousing game of beach volleyball.

And we took some time for some family pictures:

From the top down: Sheila, and Pat; Verl and Ann

Zac, Kira, and Gabbie; Quentin, Weslely, Geneva, and Heather

Kevin, and Kayla; Aubree, Cooper, and Phil

Dallin, and Rawleigh; Finley, Ashley, Garrett, and Greta

It was really great having all our family out visiting us for a weekend, I really wish they could come out and visit more often!

That catchs me up through the end of May! June and July coming soon!

Gabriella's 1st Easter

2010-07-07T08:30:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm a little behind in posting as usual. Here are some pics from Gabbie's first Easter.Here is a video we took. ok she doesn't do much, give her a break she was only a month old, but it is still super cute.

Gabbie's First Beach Trip

2010-05-10T13:25:00.000-07:00

On March 28th we took Gabbie out to Santa Cruz for her first trip to the beach. We had a great time while there. It was a beautiful sunny Sunday. Gabbie kind of enjoyed it, she only half enjoyed when we put her feet in the sand and water. We got some cute video, although they are kind of out of focus. We didn't realize that when we held the camera so close to her face that she wasn't in focus, and instead the background was. Sorry about that. I have never posted video before so we will have to see if this even works.

This video is us introducing Gabbie to the beach.

Gabriella with her Daddy! This video is Zac being funny:

Gabriella with her Mommy!

These videos are of a seagull, and kind of funny.

She kind of liked putting her feet in the sand, she only cried a little.

This video is of us taking Gabbie down to the water.

These videos are of us putting Gabbie's feet in the Pacific Ocean and her thoughts on it. :)

Oh The Ways A Baby Can Sleep

2010-04-30T18:24:00.000-07:00

In the first couple of weeks Gabriella slept all the time, for long periods, and was pretty easy to get her to sleep, except at about 11 o'clock at night when we wanted to go to bed of course. Now she sleeps surprisingly well at night (6- 8 hours straight) but is up and a bit more fussy during the day now. So I am not as tired but I also don't get as much done because she always wants to be held. I was going through my pictures to see what was next to post and I realized that I had like a million pictures, and she was super cute in all of them, and she was also asleep, so I thought I would make a little montage of all of the pictures of her sleeping! I feel like this should be a Dr. Seuss book or something...

She loves to sleep in her car seat, with her hands in the air, and in her dad's arms... She likes to sleep in our bed...
In her bed...With her mom in bed...
With her mom on the couch...
With her sweaty gross mom on the couch after a workout...
With a boppy on a bed...

With a blanket on a pillow...

In a cute sandal shirt...

In a cute fishy outfit... Squished in her daddy's lap...

Squished in her mommy's carrier...
Oh the many ways a baby can sleep. And so cute in each and every different way!

Photo Shoots

2010-04-30T15:42:00.000-07:00

I did a photo shoot of Gabriella when she was 12 days old. She was actually very cooperative, she slept the whole time! Even through a lot of repositioning and outfit changes! She is super cute so be ready to contain yourself!

Then the next day we all did a family photo shoot together. What a cute little family we make!
Daddy and Daughter!

Mommy and Daughter!

I love my baby so much and I'm so glad she came to our family! Sometimes I look at her and I just can't believe I got such a cute little girl!

Finishing Gabbie's Bedroom

2010-04-24T11:18:00.000-07:00

Since Gabbie surprised us by coming 2 weeks early we didn't have her room prepared yet, not that I didn't try- Zac kept procrastinating since we "still had time." In fact when I was in labor in the hospital Zac went home to put a few more coats of varnish on the changing table.

We actually had the crib done and set up before she was born, but that was the one thing she wasn't even going to use for a while! Our second bedroom (her bedroom- where the crib is) is downstairs, so we put a pack-and-play (with a bassinet) upstairs in our room for her to sleep in for the first couple of months. So it will still be a while before she even spends her nights in the crib, but at least Zac got it done!
It was about a week after Gabbie was born that Zac got the changing table done. Zac actually finished it in warp speed, I was pretty impressed! And it turned out completely amazing! I am so glad Zac made this furniture for our daughter, it is beautiful, and that much more amazing because Zac made it.
This is her bedding that I designed and made with my mom's help. I was really glad my mom had it professionally quited, because that was really difficult with the soft fuzzy fabric I picked. Again she hasn't gotten much use out of it yet, but I'm sure some day she will love it.

So not only did we not have her furniture done yet, we hadn't finished shopping! When my mom got there on the Friday after she was born she went with us to Target and Babies 'R Us to finish doing our shopping for all those little necessities like wipes, and diapers, etc. We also ordered our rocking chair which has turned out to be a very well used item.

We only have 2 bedrooms, 1 is obviously ours, and our other room was completely packed, so we had to deep clean the room and throw a bunch of stuff out to make room for Gabriella. We originally had high hopes of giving her half the room, but she ended up with only about a 1/3 and the smaller of the two closets.

This is our 2/3 of the room, with 1/3 the den with the desks and computers and all our BYU paraphernalia, and the other 1/3 with my sewing machines, painting supplies, and scrapbooking stuff.

This is Gabriella's 1/3 with her crib, changing table, and bookcase. Zac got me a small TV for the room for my birthday so I could watch TV and movies while doing crafts, but now it has definitely come in handy for all those all nighters staying up with my crying daughter.

The room is definitely packed, but it has to serve a lot of purposes and I think it looks as nice as can be expected for all the stuff we had to cram in there!

Visitors

2010-04-18T22:04:00.000-07:00

Lucky for all you readers this blog is mostly pictures.

My parents came to visit. My parents loved holding her and cuddling her to sleep, it was wonderful to have them here, and they sure love being new grandparents. On another day my Aunt Colleen (my dad's sister) came to see the first grandchild of McKay blood.
And Zac's parents and his brother Dallin came to visit for a couple of days and they brought out our car that we bought last Thanksgiving. Gabriella is their 6th grandchild but you would think it was their first with how enamored they were with her!

We love having visitors so anybody and everybody is welcome any time, please come visit us! Gabbie wants to get to know everyone, so if you want a fun sun filled vacation come spend a weekend in San Jose, stay with us, and get to know little Gabriella!

Kira's Birthday

2010-04-01T18:25:00.000-07:00

So obviously my birthday kind of took a backseat this year. Our new little baby girl was pretty much the focus of the day; however, my mom did send me a gift. This is me on the phone with my mom as I opened it. She got me a new, super cute, super cool little camera. It was exactally what I wanted and it was perfect timing now that I have this super cute little girl that "needs" her picture taken all the time.

Hopefully next year, we will celebrate Gabriella's birthday and then celebrate mine instead of it being all about her, like it was this year. :)

Messed up Posts

2010-03-29T14:34:00.000-07:00

Okay so somehow my posts got a little messed up. The order they should be read in is: A Special Day, 38 Weeks, and then Gabbie Comes home. Somehow 38 weeks posted after A Special Day so scroll down to read the story of her birth, it's a really long post, but this is basically my journal, and this story is very important to me and I want to be able to remember all the details.

Gabbie Comes Home

2010-03-27T23:20:00.000-07:00

On March 4th we spent the morning getting ready, taking care of all the discharge papers, and meeting with the lactation specialist who was helping me get the hang of breastfeeding.

Finally, at about noon we were ready to leave. We got Gabbie all dressed up in her outfit we brought for her to wear home. This was the first thing I bought for, plus Zac and I are HUGE BYU fans so we thought it was the perfect outfit to bring her home in (Zac wants me to point out that he didn't force me into this, and that it was, in fact, my idea). Turns out it was a little big. It was newborn size, but she basically came out preemie size so we didn't have anything that would fit her!

So we went home and took a nap, and struggled to wake Gabbie up to get her to eat. She had dropped to 5 lbs 1 oz when we left, and we had to bring her back to the doctor the next day to check her weight, they were pretty concerned because she was so small. However, Gabbie was pretty tired and she did not want to wake up to eat, and this stressed me out greatly! I finally got her to eat a little, and I felt better, but I was in a pretty emotional state.

Later that night we watched the Office, one of our favorite shows, and it couldn't have been more perfect, because it was the new episode where Pam and Jim have their baby. It was fun watching the show about them having their baby right after we had ours.

It was a good day. We were scared out of our minds as to how to take care of this little person, but we did it, and she is healthy and gaining a good amount of weight, so we must be doing it mostly right. :)

A Special Day

2010-03-24T16:35:00.000-07:00

March 2nd is a special day. It was on this day 4 years ago that I got into a big sexy grey truck with a really cute guy dressed down in basketball shorts, a t-shirt, and knee high socks.

This story actually started a week or so before when I fell asleep in my Chemistry 106 class. At the end of class, as we were leaving this guy asked how my nap was. I was still pretty tired, so I really wasn't in the mood to get hit on. I said my nap was fine and kept walking. He then proceded to tease me about having lines on my face. I was less than impressed with this lame attempt to start up a conversation, and decided I wanted to avoid future awkward conversations with this boy. So after that I tried to either stay behind and talk to the people who sat next to me or rush out quickly so I wouldn't have to talk to him again.

However, one day he managed to corner me. I had forgotten to write a paper for my next class so I had to skip Chem and sit outside class and write my paper. Well coincidentally, Zac decided to skip class that day too (to go golfing) and as he was leaving class he saw me sitting in the hall. He tried to be sly by pretending he was getting a drink from the fountain next to where I was sitting and then he casually began start up a conversation with me. I was a bit irritated since I was on a deadline to finish my paper, and I was less than impressed with his attempt at small talk, especially when I told him where I was from and he asked if I was a fan of one of the sports teams from Washington (The Seahawks). I'm really not that into sports. Anyway I really wasn't that surprised when he asked me out, and I really wasn't that excited.

However, from the moment he picked me up for that first date my opinion began to change. First the big, old, grey truck was pretty sexy, I don't know why, it just was. Second he had a lot of confidence driving that big old truck, and he had a lot of confidence showing up for a date all sweaty and in his soccer gear. Thirdly I was impressed by his determination to go on the date. He asked me out on a Tuesday, he had a test on Wednesday, and I was leaving on Friday for Las Vegas with my roommates for my 21st birthday. So the date had to be on Thursday but he had a soccer game; however, he was determined and so he suggested we go out for ice cream after his game since it would be late (his game didn't get over until like 9:30). What really sealed the deal for me though was when we got in the truck he asked me what music I liked, and I told him my favorite band was Fall Out Boy, so he put on Dance Dance and we both rocked out the whole way to Ben and Jerry's. It was cool because it felt like we had known each other for a long time even though it was a first date.

After the ice cream we came back to my apartment and ended up talking for hours. As it turned out he was cute, funny, smart, and interesting. After that we were inseparable for the next year and a half as we dated... ... and I realized just how cool this guy really was. Turns out he wasn't as weird and awkward as I thought. :)

After that date I was hooked and it only took a few months for me to know he was the one for me, and ironically it was me that spent the next year and 1/2 convincing him that I was the one for him.

Finally on May 17, 2007 Zac took me up Rock Canyon just outside of Provo to a park that we had gone to while we were dating. This park had particular significance because it was where Zac first told me he loved me. We had come here to look at the stars, and we had gone on a few group dates here. He told me there was a meteor shower that night to get me up to the park, he put on "our song" (a remix of Forever Young) and got down on one knee (in the bed of his sexy truck) and asked me to marry him. Obviously I said yes, well technically I said, "Yes! Finally!" Then I cried, which was actually a bit uncharacteristic of me, but I was just so happy he finally proposed!

We planned the wedding in only 3 months, and on August 17, 2007 I married my best friend for time and all eternity in the Portland, OR temple.

Zac turned out to be my perfect complement, and marrying him was one of the best decisions I ever made! So it turned out that agreeing to go on that date was also a really good decision. That first date changed my life forever, in a way I could never have anticipated, and so much for the better; which is why March 2 is a such a special day.

As it turns out exactly 4 years later on this special day my life would again change forever in a way I could never have anticipated, again so much for the better...

38 Weeks

2010-03-23T19:31:00.000-07:00

After reading this post, Zac informed me that this isn't the kind of thing guys want to read about. "Kira, dudes don't want to read about cervixes and gushing and stretching and tearing." So, let me warn the "dudes", this post has some "cervixes" and some gushing, stretching, and tearing. If you can handle that, read on.

March 2, 2010: 5:00 AM

On the morning of March 2nd, I woke up to a small gush. It felt like when you laugh a little too hard and a little bit of pee comes out. I thought it was weird that this would wake me up, but I didn't have to get up for another hour so I decided to ignore it. 6:00 rolled around and I got up to get ready, and another small gush came. Hum... weird, but at 38 weeks of pregnancy, when it seemed like some new weird thing was happening to my body all the time, I ignored it. I took a shower and got dressed, and as I was getting ready, another small gush came. Now I was just plain annoyed. How was I supposed to go through the whole day like this? I started wondering if my water bag might be leaking (I learned about it in my birth prep class). But I still had two weeks till my due date so there was no way that my water had broken. I put on a pad and decide to ignore it. I went down and made myself some breakfast. Just as I was about to sit down... big gush... hum... harder to ignore. So I went into the bathroom and sat on the toilet trying to deny that my water really broke. Zac walked down the stairs and saw me sitting there and asked if I was okay. I said, "well I don't know, I think my water may have broke." And he said, "are you serious?!" I began to relate the events of the morning to him. After some discussion we decided it would be best if I called the hospital and asked them. So I did, and of course they suggested I come in and get it checked out. I finished my oatmeal (which was a good thing, because it was the last food I got for over 24 hours!) and headed to the hospital.

On the way there we were both still denying that I was going into labor. After all I hadn't felt a single contraction! I hadn't yet wrapped my head around the whole "labor" thing, I was putting off thinking about it. We hadn't packed for the hospital, we didn't have a name picked yet, I wasn't done teaching my classes, I had done a ton of work and planning, and I wasn't done yet! I was getting really stressed, and in complete denial because I NEEDED two more weeks, I wasn't ready yet. Of course I was sick and tired of being huge and uncomfortable, and ironically the night before I yelled in desperation, "I just want this baby out!" but in all honesty I really meant I wanted her to come on her due date and not late. When my mom was pregnant I was 2 days late and my sister was almost 2 weeks late, so I basically had it solidified in my mind that our baby was going to be late, and I didn't want to be pregnant any longer than I had to be....but I also didn't want to be early. In hindsight I suppose that was rather unreasonable of me to assume that she would be so accommodating.

We got to the hospital at about 8:30 and the nurse did all the preliminary checks (ironically all this stuff- checking my weight, blood pressure, etc.- had been done the day before because I had a pre-natal check up, and everything was fine, with absolutely no indications that I would go into labor 2 weeks early). Then the midwife came in and did the examination. Yes my water had in fact broken, but I was only dilated to a about a 1. They were going to have to admit me now. Wait... what? We hadn't packed yet, we thought we could go home, and come back. Contractions hadn't even started yet. At the class they made such a big deal about don't come in until your contractions are 60 seconds long and 5 minutes apart. However, once your water breaks they have to admit you for fear of infection to the baby. So I had to send Zac home with a very detailed list of things to get and where to find them.

Since my labor hadn't really started yet the midwife asked if I would like some medicine to help loosen my cervix and help start the labor. Well I didn't want to be at the hospital forever so I agreed. I had to keep this little string with medicine in my cervix for an hour, but after about 40 minutes the nurse came in and said they were going to have to take it out now. Contractions had started, but they were now coming back to back. I couldn't tell when one stopped and another started. The midwife was very surprised at how quickly my body was reacting to the medicine, and since my contractions were out of control, they were now going to have to give me some medicine to counteract the first medicine and slow the contractions down.

Well the contractions didn't really slow down, but somehow this didn't help me dilate. It was about 11:00 when Zac brought me the stuff from home, but I was still only dilated to about a 3, so he decided to go back to work. I spent the rest of the day with back to back contractions and only dilated to a 3. It was very frustrating! Sometime that afternoon, the midwife came in and asked if I would like anything for the pain, and I decided to get a shot of the narcotic to help take the edge off. It was really weird and it made me super dizzy. It helped for about an hour, and I waited another hour, and then decided to get another shot. That lasted another hour, and after that wore off, the midwife asked if I wanted the epidural. Originally I had wanted to wait until I had dilated to a 5 so I wouldn't slow down the labor, but I had spent the whole day with back to back contractions and I was in a lot pain. I still hadn't dilated past a 3, but I figured it was already going slow, I might as well be more comfortable. I decided I would take the epidural but I wanted to wait until Zac got there. Once Zac got there at 6:30 they gave me the epidural, and once it kicked in I felt a lot better. But I continued to stay dilated to only a 3 until like 12:00 that night!

At about midnight the nurse came rushing in and hooked up another bag of fluid to my IV and they said they needed put an oxygen mask on me to help the baby because her heart rate was way down. Then the midwife had to come in and put the internal monitors on the baby because they weren't getting good enough readings from the external monitors. After she placed the monitors she said I had dilated all the way to an 8! She had checked me two hours earlier and I was only at a "loose 3".
So in about 2 hours I had gone from a 3 to an 8, apparently this put some stress on the baby, imagine that. Because my water had broken so long ago the baby no longer had her watery cushion so it was putting too much pressure on her umbilical cord and she wasn't getting enough oxygen. So this is why they hooked up the extra fluid, to give the baby more of a cushion and try and lower the stress on her. They had to keep monitoring me, and had me try different positions that would help bring her heart rate back up. It was pretty scary, and so my blood pressure started going up, and I had to work really hard to control my breathing and calm down to keep my blood pressure under control. But the nurses kept a really close eye on the baby so everything was well taken care of. After that it took another 2 hours or so and I was fully dilated and ready to start pushing. It took me about 30- 45 minutes of pushing just to figure out how to do it right since I had the epidural it was hard to tell what I was doing. I ended up pushing for about 3 hours and 40 minutes (they said it usually takes 1 to 2 hours). I was so tired! That was what I remember the most, just being completely exhausted! I hadn't eaten for like 20 hours and hadn't slept in as long, and pushing is hard work! Also the epidural made me nauseous and I threw up about 20 times (which was particularly unpleasant since it was mostly stomach bile, since I hadn't eaten all day). And because of the nausea I couldn't have any water either because that would make it worse. So Zac and the nurse who was helping me push kept motivating me to push by telling me if I pushed really hard they would let me have some ice chips, and when I did really well I got one or two small sips of apple juice! The nurse had me try a couple different positions to help me push better, but all the other positions besides just being on my back kept slowing down the baby's heart rate, so I had to mostly just lie on my back and push.

The epidural was a life saver! I don't know how I would have done it without it! Just the pressure alone was terrible! Plus at the end right before her head came out, it was so painful to be stretched out so much! Even with the epidural I could feel that pain! Finally after 3 hours and 40 minutes of pushing she finally came out!

She was healthy and strong and beautiful! The first thing I said was, "oh she is so cute!" They immediately put her on my chest for skin to skin contact. I held her, then I practically fell asleep from exhaustion!

She came out with a full head of dark hair, and dark blue grey eyes. She weighed 5 lbs and 8oz and was 18 inches long. I'm sure the nurses all got a good laugh that it took me so long to push her out! They said it usually only took an hour or two, it took me twice that long and she was tiny! I sure hope all my babies are this small because that was freaking hard, and I still tore even with a tiny little baby!

My nurse and midwife were awesome! Thei (on the left) was my nurse and she took really good care of me, and she was really good at motivating me and helping me push. Melanie (in the middle) was my midwife, and she was very nice, and helpful, and she delivered my baby very smoothly. Zac quickly learned from Thei what to do and how to help hold my legs to help me push better. Zac did awesome! He was actually really intrigued by the whole process, he didn't have any problem looking "down there" and watching the baby come out. He jokingly asked me if I wanted a mirror so I could see, and I said, "heck no! That's gross! Why would I want to see that?" He wasn't squeamish or anything, he was actually really excited, he thought it was cool. I am glad Zac was there and he actually said just the right things at the right time! When it comes to pushing, I'm not a screamer or anything, and I don't get mad, or mean, so Zac was pretty lucky there. I just cried. It hurt really bad, and I was so tired! I was just so frustrated that I was pushing so hard and for so long and it felt like I wasn't making any progress, I just wanted to give up! I am sure I was more pitiful than anything, since I just cried a lot. Zac told me I was doing great, and I was making progress, and it would be over soon. I really needed that or may have just given up, and let the baby come out on her own, or just let her stay in there if she really wanted to stay in that badly!

I was holding her as they had me birth the placenta, and then stitch me up. I asked Zac if he wanted to hold her, but he said he would wait until after they cleaned her up. He was just scared to hold her. After they finished with me they took her to give her a little bath, and I immediately fell asleep. I was so tired!

The nurses weighed and measured her, and then gave her her first bath, which of course she did not enjoy. Everyone was amazed by how nice she came out looking. She scored a 9 on her APGAR test, and everyone was impressed by how cute she was because she wasn't squished or bruised or weird looking or anything. Little did they know that I had been praying for 9 months that she would come out cute! Okay so I prayed that she would be healthy and strong without any problems, but I also secretly hoped that she would be cute, because lets face it, not all babies are cute, and I really wanted a cute one! Obviously I am biased, but I think she is super cute!

After they cleaned her up, Zac was finally ready to try holding her. He was pretty excited, but also pretty scared. It is scary holding something so small! She seemed so fragile! He is such a cute daddy. He is much more confident now, and thinks it is funny how scared he was at first.

After all that, they helped clean me up and move me to my postpartum room. I had breakfast, which was much needed since I hadn't eaten in forever! And the food was actually surprisingly good! I mostly slept all day, while Zac spent most of the day looking back over the name books, since we still hadn't picked a name for our little one. Before coming to the hospital we had narrowed it down to Avery or Kennedy, but I wasn't particularly thrilled with either name, and I was hoping some really great name would hit me once we saw her. Once we saw her we threw out Avery since we didn't think she looked like an Avery, and we tried out Kennedy, but it didn't seem to fit either. After hours of looking over the book and texting everyone we knew for their opinion Zac found the name Gabriella. I mentioned this name to him before, at least twice, but he immediately threw it out without thinking about it because he thought it sounded too exotic, but when he found the name himself he liked it a lot better. And when we looked at her she looked like a Gabriella, plus the name wasn't super popular, and it had really cute nick names. So at the last minute, basically right before the lady made us give a name for the birth certificate we finally decided on Gabriella Mae. This surprised pretty much everyone since it was out of left field. It had never been on a list, and we had been texting people all morning about other names, and then suddenly we decided on a name we had never even mentioned! But we love it, and we think it is absolutely perfect for her!

After that we spent the rest of the day sleeping and trying to wake Gabriella up to get her to eat. Breastfeeding turned out to be much harder and more painful than I had anticipated!

That night the staff brought us our complimentary celebratory dinner, which was actually really good! There was steak, potatoes, green beans, fruit, pie, and little bottles of sparkling cider. It was so nice!

We spent the night at the hospital and the nurses came in and woke me up to give me my pain medicine and help me feed Gabriella.

It was a very long, very unexpected day. When I look back on it now, it really wasn't that bad. I usually only remember the good things when I think back to past experiences, and I tend to quickly forget bad things. At the time I remember thinking it was going to be a long time before I gave birth again, but now I realize it really wasn't that bad, and I could definitely do it again in a couple of years. The hospital and all the staff were awesome and sure hope that all my birth experiences go so well with such nice people and such nice accommodations.

Done Playing Catch-Up

2010-03-19T15:06:00.000-07:00

Okay so I am finally caught up! If you care there are about 8 posts to look over as you wait just a little longer for me to post the stories and pictures you have all been waiting for!

36 Weeks Pregnant

2010-03-19T14:54:00.000-07:00

Okay so I wasn't looking particularly cute this day, but for some reason Zac thought I looked hot, and wanted a picture. Not much different than 34 weeks, I know.

And by now I was definitely uncomfortable and so ready to be done with being pregnant. Little did I know I would get my wish a little sooner than expected!

Zac's Creation

2010-03-19T14:43:00.000-07:00

Zac created this lovely little sculpture out of hangers: I have no idea what it is, and neither does Zac for that matter, but he was pretty proud of it and wanted a picture of it.

He wanted to leave it on display, but I wasn't so enamoured with it, so I told him to take it to work and put it on display there. Zac is so cute, and I am glad that he occasionally acts on his creative side, and makes these fun creative little "things."

34 Weeks Pregnant

2010-03-19T14:14:00.000-07:00

I hit 34 weeks pregnant on Ground Hog's Day, that is February 2 for those of you who don't care to know when this very special holiday takes place. It was right about this time that I finally hit the "puffy" phase of pregnancy, and I finally surpassed Zac in weight. It was awesome! It did wonders for my self esteem. And to make me feel even better my doctor confirmed that I was fat. Right about the time I puffed out I put on like 8 pounds in one week, and when I went into the doctor for a check up my doctor informed me quite bluntly that I needed to watch my weight gain. As it turns out I am pretty sure that it was just the water weight that made me really puffy that accounted for the rapid weight gain. My body was pretty weird during pregnancy, for some reason I always made these big jumps out of nowhere even though my eating habits never changed. I jumped 8 pounds in one week and then I didn't gain another pound for the rest of the pregnancy, and I honestly never did anything different week to week. All in all I gain 28 pounds with the pregnancy and that is safely within the healthy ideal range, so my doctor made me feel really badly about myself for no reason!

New Job

2010-03-19T13:51:00.000-07:00

So in February I was fortunate enough to have a wonderful opportunity fall in my lap. I was asked to take a semi-long term sub job for a teacher out on maternity leave. Because of the type of credential I have, I could only sub in the same classroom for 6 weeks at a time, but that worked out perfect since that was how much longer I had until the baby was due. The kids thought it was pretty funny that they were replacing one pregnant teacher with another.

This job could not have been more perfect if I had hand picked exactly what I wanted. It was at the nicest school in the East Side District, the only school I liked working at, because it actually has good kids. And by good kids I mean more like a normal school, where in general the kids care about school, or their parents care, and there are only 1 or 2 kids in a class of 35 who don't care and don't try, unlike the other schools where the entire class of 35 kids didn't care and didn't try, and I had to deal with 5 classes of rude, disrespectful, unmotivated kids. These kids were good, they put forth effort, and they were actually fun, respectful, and kind to me. It was a huge change from regular subbing, and I loved it!

Also I got to teach 3 classes of Biology and 2 classes of Chemistry which I absolutely loved! It was exactly what I would want to teach when I become a real teacher some day, and I loved that I actually got to really teach! Plus as it turns out, I am actually really good at it! Regular subbing was pretty disheartening, and I had pretty much given up on the idea of teaching because I hated subbing so much. The kids were awful, I didn't feel like I was any good at it, I couldn't get the kids to do anything, and it was really boring. I was also really sad that it felt like I had never had a real job before I was going to stop working and stay at home to be a mom. I felt like I hadn't accomplished anything, and I hadn't done anything with my degree that I worked so hard on.

This job totally changed that for me. I found out that if I am at a good school, and I am really teaching, that I actually love it, and I am actually really good at it. The kids loved me, they told me the learned more with me than they had the whole year, and they begged me not to leave. It was a lot of work for sure, and I definitely didn't get paid fairly for the kind of work that I did, but it was well worth it. Having this job for only a month erased a year and a half of bad experiences with subbing. It made me feel good about myself, I felt like I had accomplished something before I had to stop working, and I realized that I do still want to be a teacher some day, and when I do, I know I will be a good one!

Projects Completed

2010-03-19T13:28:00.000-07:00

So in January Zac and I flew back to my parents' house to work on our projects some more. Zac had finished pretty much everything on the crib other than the varnish, and my dad had spent the last 3 weeks putting the finish on so it could get done. So when Zac and I came back Zac started work on the changing table. Again Zac designed it from scratch and he and my dad just figured it out as they went along. We were there for 3 days and Zac got a ton done, but there was still quite a bit to get done when we left. My dad did as much as he could, but there was still a lot to get done once we got it here. I went along to finish the bedding that my mom and I were working on. I finally finished the quilt while I was there, and my mom took it to a professional to have the back quilted on.

However; we were still left with the problem of the furniture being in Washington so in February my parents drove the furniture down over President's Day weekend. It was a lot of driving (for my dad especially!) but we REALLY appreciated it! So once the stuff got here we set up the crib since it was done and here is how it looks: Pretty amazing right? It looks absolutely beautiful and I am so proud of Zac and my dad! They did a phenomenal job, and I think it looks better than anything we could have bought!

You can kind of see the bedding that I made too, which I think turned out really cute. My mom took a bunch of pictures when they were here of us with the stuff, and I will have to get those pictures and put them in the post, since they are better than the ones I have, but these will have to do for now.

My parents helped us get the supplies we would need to finish the changing table here, and we set it up in our garage and Zac would spent the next couple weeks doing the finishing, and putting the whole thing together.

Zac's Birthday

2010-03-18T21:43:00.000-07:00

I made Zac his favorite meal for his birthday dinner. Usually we go out for dinner, but since the National Championship game was on, and I knew Zac would want to watch it, we decided to stay home, and I would make his favorite meal, which is pot roast. Unfortunately Zac usually makes the pot roast, so I was nervous to make it since I had never made it before, but it actually turned out pretty good, almost as good as when Zac makes it.

Zac turned the big 2-8, does he look older and wiser?

I worked really hard on this cake, but it still turned out weird looking. I guess I'm not cut out to be a cake decorator, I should probably leave it to people with talent, like my Aunt Linda, she makes amazing cakes!

Zac was pretty excited about the gift he got from my parents. He loves the Office, and he got all the seasons! We have been watching them ever since and we are almost done, so I guess we will have to start back at the beginning soon.

I got Zac a Mario Golf game for the Wii, Zac has been wanting it for a long time.

All his loot, he made out like a bandit!

All in all I think he had a pretty good birthday!

30 Weeks Pregnant

2010-03-18T21:30:00.000-07:00

January 5, 2010 I reach 30 weeks pregnant. I don't even remember what it looks or feels like to have a waist! She is moving all the time! She especially likes kicking me in the ribs when I am sitting down, isn't she kind? Good to know at least she is healthy and strong.

January and February

2010-03-18T21:10:00.000-07:00

I know this is not the posting everyone has been waiting for, but I need to catch up on these posts before I post the good new stuff everyone has been waiting for. So bear with me as I catch up through January and February.

Just remember, Patience is a virtue.

December

2010-02-06T16:54:00.000-08:00

Date Night in San Francisco (Jan. 16, 2009)

Zac and I have wanted to go see the play Wicked for a long time because we had heard from just about everyone that it was absolutely amazing. So when we found out it was coming to San Fran we decided to make a date night out of it.

We started the night by going to dinner at our (okay maybe my) favorite restaurant: Red Lobster! I had to take some pictures of the delicious food! We had lobster and crab and shrimp, and cheese biscuits, it was awesome! Plus we had gift cards, so it was totally free, which made it doubly awesome!!!

Then we drove the rest of the way into downtown San Francisco to the Orpheum Theater. It is a beautiful old theater right in the middle of town on Market Street, it is the same theater we went to last year about this same time to see the Phantom of the Opera.

As promised the play was awesome, and we loved it! I had actually read the book before going to the play and I was surprised by how completely different they were. At some points I wasn't sure they could even be considered "loosely based" on each other. But that is not necessarily a bad thing, the play was much better than the book actually. The book is interesting because you get a lot more detail of the story, but the storyline they created for the play is much better (and happier) then the one in the book, so I'm glad they changed it like they did.

It was a great night, and I love going on dates with my incredibly cute husband. I love that he actually enjoys and seeks out cultural events like musicals and plays, and it is not something that I have to drag him along for. Plus we always enjoy getting to go to San Francisco, it is such a cool place! In my opinion it is like a million times cooler than San Jose; however, the cost of living is even higher there than here so I think we will just have to settle for living 45 minutes away and just going to visit. Plus we really love Monterey too, and living in San Jose puts us equidistant from both, so it probably works out better living here anyway.

Making Christmas Presents

So I was overly ambitious and decided to try and make personal gifts for everyone for Christmas this year. In all honesty I took on more than I could handle considering that it is now February and I still have not technically finished. I am still working on the gifts for my mom, my sister, and Zac's mom. However, I did finish the gifts for Zac's sister (Heather) and her family. And since we finally shipped them off (almost a month late) and they have opened their gifts I can now post the pictures! They turned out quite well if I do say so myself so I thought I would take some pictures to show the world my mad skills.

I made this bag for Heather.

I made this tie for Quentin.

This robe for Geneva.

And this robe for Wesley.

Mad skills right? Thanks. Guess I better get busy and put those mad skills to use finishing everyone elses very late Christmas gifts.

On the 17th we had Zac's work Christmas party. I even remembered to bring the camera this year, but still managed to forget to take any pictures. I was really hoping to get a picture of Zac with his old boss Stacey and his new boss Tom, but oh well, I guess I will just have to wait for another Stryker event.

This picture was after the party just before I left to go home, we decided we needed a Christmas picture like last year, so here is our happy family Christmas photo!

Washington

In order for me to use my mom's free ticket and so that some family members would be able to visit I left for Washington a week before Zac. Zac couldn't take very much time off of work so unfortunately he had to stay back and work a little longer.

Baby Shower (Dec. 19, 2009)

My first day back home and they throw me a party! Okay technically maybe it was more for the baby than for me, but it was still really fun! My mom and my cousin Kristin (who flew all the down from Alaska to be there!!) threw me the cutest shower, and I had a ton of family and friends there, and that really meant a lot to me, it was great getting to see everyone. By the way I apologize for the pictures, I got the pictures from my mom, but her computer apparently ruined a bunch of her pictures, so some of the pictures are a little chopped up or have weird colors on them. Luckily my mom still had the pictures on her camera so she re-downloaded them on to her computer, but I haven't got the good pictures yet, so you will just have to deal with the less than perfect ones. :)

Here is me, and my best friend Lexy.

My other mother: Sandy, her mom Winks, and Lexy's daughter Taylor.

My wonderful Aunt Linda, and my cousin's wife Shannon.

My cousins Christi and Heidi.

My wonderful mother, and my other mother Audrey.

Me with my cousin Kristin who made this really cute baby "cake" for me out of diapers, onesies(sp?), and other little baby things. It was a lot of work on her part and I REALLY, REALLY appreciate all that she did for me!

I was really happy that so much of my family made a special trip to celebrate this time with me. I feel very loved, and very special! (And so does "Baby" since she got a ton of really cute stuff!)

Serving Dinner at the Homeless Shelter (Dec. 21, 2009)

Every year my mom likes to have us do a service project for those who are less fortunate than us. We usually do a Christmas breakfast for the homeless at a shelter through the Girl Scouts, but apparently the Girl Scouts stopped doing the breakfast, and all the shelters we called didn't need any more volunteers on Christmas, so we opted to go a little before Christmas.

Our neighbor Linda, Kayla, Kevin, my mom, and myself were all able to go to downtown Vancouver and spend a couple hours preparing and serving dinner to the shelter. As always it was a good and humbling experience. I am so incredibly grateful for all the blessings that I have: a beautiful apartment, two working cars, a really great husband, and a wonderful family. I am so glad my mom takes the time to make sure we do service like this to help us remember just how blessed we truly are.

The Christmas Tree Hunt (Dec. 23, 2009)

So better late than never we decided to go get a couple of Christmas trees, mostly for the experience, since we usually do it every year, and we have a hard time letting go of traditions. My parents had already bought a Christmas tree for the front room from the High School, so we got a couple small trees to put in my room and Kayla's room. Although we were too busy with projects to actually decorate them, it was nice to have a festive touch in my room, and it smelled wonderful. Plus it wouldn't be Christmas with out a Christmas tree hunt.

Oh and this year Mesa got to come, even though his presence stunk up the truck significantly. But I think he thoroughly enjoyed himself, and I'm glad we brought him. He was excited by the snow, and being in the great outdoors without a leash on, he kept rolling in the snow just for the fun of it. However, his greatest joy still came from someone throwing the ball for him, anyone who knows Mesa is not surprised by this (you may be able to tell in this picture that he is staring intently at his ball, setting it there was the only way to get him to be in the picture).

Christmas Lights (Dec. 23, 2009)

Later that night after the Christmas tree hunt Zac was finally able to fly in, and the first thing we did was to drive into Portland and see the Christmas lights on Peacock Lane.

We had a bit of an interesting experience trying to use the bathroom at the local Walgreen's while we were there. It is downtown Portland so it is understandable that they have a policy of making you buy something to be able to use the bathroom, but most people would make an exception for a women who is clearly 6 months pregnant and in desperate need of a bathroom, well this checker would not. So since I needed more pre-natal vitamins we went to look for them, of course the ones I use were the only ones they were completely out of. So we decided on a pack of gummy bears instead, we checked out, and the lady forgets about the bathroom key! I reminded her, and she was like, "oh yeah" and she called someone to open it for me. Then when I got in it was filthy and there was no toilet paper or paper towels. It really shouldn't have been a big deal, but I was (and still get- even writing about it) slightly irritated by the situation, I'm going to blame hormones for that.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

Onto the main event, the best day of the year!

Here we are on Christmas Eve hanging our stockings, in our new Christmas Eve pajamas. It is a tradition in my family to get a new pair of pjs on Christmas Eve (my sister and I always get matching ones, even now when we are in our 20's and married). It is also usually a tradition that my mom makes these pajamas and she is usually making them on Christmas Eve, well apparently this year she decided to save herself the trouble and bought us pjs instead. So I stepped in to fill the void and I was busy sewing pj pants for Zac (they have golf balls on them- he is not a big fan of pajama pants- but he loves these!) and for my mom. Thanks mom for passing the procrastination/try to do too much torch on to me! Of course we also watched our traditional Christmas movies, that my mom grew up watching, and now Kayla and I have grown up watching. Zac and Kevin are still warming up to them, I have made Zac amend his original assessment of "lame" to "cheesy." I guess without the attached nostalgia of having watched these your whole life, I could see how maybe they are not quite so cool, but I still love them none the less.

On Christmas morning we decide to hand out Christmas breakfast bags since there wasn't a specific shelter we could visit. It was still really fun, and we found a lot people who were really grateful for some extra food that morning.

After that we made our traditional trip to IHOP for breakfast with the Hadenfeld family. We always get way too full, and enjoy hanging out and talking. The boys all talked sports and school stuff on one side of the table and the girls all talked baby stuff on the other side. Lexy had just announced that she is pregnant with their second child! Congrats to Lexy and Ben (and Taylor who is going to be a big sister soon!)

After breakfast we came back home and started opening our loot, but of course we had to take a family picture, another McKay family tradition. And yes my cat is in a Santa suit, yes he does look dashing, surprisingly he was not that upset, and yes Zac does think that it is absoutley ridiculous that I take so much pleasure in dressing up my poor cat.

Here are all of our overstuffed stockings. If you are observant you will have noticed that there are 8 stocking there and there are only 6 people in our family. That is why 2 of them are empty. You see 2 years ago when Zac and I moved from Utah to California we lost our stockings, I thought they got lost in the move, and I was pretty upset about it. Well Kayla, bless her heart, agreed to learn from my Aunt Linda how to knit the stockings and decided to make new ones for me and Zac. Well over the past 2 years my sister has given (and re-given) me our stockings for various occasions (about 5 times) all in various stages of almost done-ness. I tried to tease her only slightly because I know they were a lot of work, and I was really grateful she was doing it, but I did think it was funny how many times I recieved them as a present, so I couldn't pass up the opportunity to tease her a little. Anyway right before I was getting ready to come out for Christmas I was looking through some empty boxes I had saved, well turns out, one wasn't as empty as I thought, and low and behold I found our old stockings! Of course it was right about now that Kayla acutally finished them and was planning on giving them to me completely done. Perfect timing! Oops! Well thanks for making them Kayla! Anyway now we have 2 sets, and 2 is better than none!

This last picture is all of us with all of our loot! We made out like bandits, it was pretty sweet! Thanks mom and dad!

Projects

So right after Christmas Zac decided to throw himself into a huge undertaking of a project. He decided to build our daughter her crib! We looked at a bunch of cribs and of course the one that I liked the best was $430, way, way out of our price range. Well I suggested to my mom, that maybe my dad could make us a crib instead since cribs were all so expensive. My mom didn't think my dad would have enough time to finish the crib, so I suggested that Zac could help over Christmas. Well this project kept getting bigger and bigger. Instead of using a pattern Zac designed the plans himself so he could make it similar to the one that I liked, they went to my dad's favorite hardwood store and my dad bought us real mahogany to make the crib out of, and Zac spent numberous hours from sun up to sun down working with my dad's help on this crib. He had full access to my dad's state of the art shop and all of his "fun toys" without which Zac never would have been able to make such an impressive crib. My dad taught Zac new skills, and Zac helped encourage my dad out of his comfort zone: the need for a "real pattern" and to just make a crib from scratch.

They did a spectacular job and the crib looks absoultely amazing! Against all odds Zac was able to finish most of the crib before we had to leave, although he was still staining up until an hour before we were supposed to leave for our flight. They got all the pieces cut out and stained, and from there my dad just had to glue them together after the stain dried and spray on the finish. However the story doesn't end here, it continues next month...

Well I couldn't let Zac be the only one who was crafty and make something super special for our daughter. So I decided to make her bedding, with my mom's help of course! It took me like 2 days just to decide on a color scheme, but I finally settled on pink, green, and yellow with little birds, vines and flowers. As you can see from this picture of the quilt squares Morteki approves of my color choices.

Instead of making an easy quilt I decided to design my own pattern. As you can see Zac and I suffer from similar conditions that make us create more work for ourselves to get what we really want.

I spent most of my time designing, and my mom did the executing. I designed and cut out the bumpers, bedskirt and diaper bag and my mom took on the task of sewing them, and with the mink-y fabric I picked that was actually not a very easy task, I'm glad she agreed to do it for me because I don't think it would have turned out as nice if I had done it instead.

So basically if you haven't noticed already this little girl is not even born yet and is already completly spoiled with a completly custom made bedroom set compliments of her parents and grandparents! Plus as it turns out making a crib and making bedding turns out to be nearly as expensive as buying them already made, so we are incredibly INCREDIBLY grateful to my parents for buying the wood and fabric for us, and the use of their extensive collections of tools which made these special items possible. We are absoultely in love with what we have created and we certainly could not have done it without the generosity, skills, and talents of my parents, so if we haven't already told you enough mom and dad... Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! You are both so awesome and we love you so much!

Well that was the month of December. I told you it would be long! As you can see the story of our "projects" continues on into January so stay tuned for more on that later!

November

2010-02-02T17:47:00.000-08:00

Okay I do realize that it is February and the title of my post is "November," but I am finally catching up on all my postings for the last 3 months! So obviously I am starting with November...

Yosemite

At the beginning of the month my mom came out to visit us while she was on a business trip. She stayed after her business was over and took me to Yosemite National Park. Zac chose to stay home and watch football games, so it was just a mommy/daughter weekend. It was a beautiful perfect fall weekend. The weather was nice, it was just a little cool and crisp, and the fall colors were beautiful.

We stayed in these very high class little tents. Everything was all booked up so we had to stay in these canvas-sided tents, but at least they had a heater and beds, it beats real camping in a tent and sleeping bag any day!

We saw a bunch of beautiful waterfalls and pristine scenery.

While walking we came across this family walking this very cute little puppy! It looked a lot like little Pupface (our friends' dog that we dog-sat for when they were out of town) and I just melted when I saw it! The little doggie's owners were kind enough to let me hold her, and of course I had to get a picture to show Zac to try and convince him to let me get one of my own, but he is still unconvinced. He says I'm getting a baby and I should be happy with that. I still want a Pomeranian (although I am excited about getting a baby too).

We went on lots of little walks, and we took the park bus system everywhere, it was really nice. Also we ate at some of the nice restaurants at the lodges, and it was actually really good food.

This is me carrying all of our bedding back to the car. It was a great weekend, and I'm really glad my mom came out to visit and took me to the park!

Utah

A couple of weeks later I went out to Utah. I left about a week and a half before Zac and stayed with his parents in Murray, and it was actually really cool to get to spend some time with them. I went to lunch with Ann (Zac's mom) and we got to talk about Zac and all his "Zac-isms" for like 4 hours! It was awesome!

Brittany's Wedding

The reason I left before Zac was so that I could be there for one of my very best friend's weddings. Brittany Chambers is one of my closest friends from college, we were roommates for 3 years, and I love her to death! She found a very wonderful man named Kenton Young, and they were married in the Salt Lake Temple for time and all eternity on November 19, 2009. Her wedding was absolutely beautiful, and a I am so happy for her!

This is almost all the roommates reunited! Tricia (Spencer) Layton, Courtney (Lunt) Buell, Brittany (Chambers) Young, and Kira (McKay- ha ha just thought I would throw that in there to keep the parallelism in tact) Greenhalgh. We are just missing Ashley (Ewell) Harrison who couldn't get off work to come out. :( We missed having her there, but it was really great to see all my other roommates again, I miss them so much!

Look how amazingly tall he is! I still remember when we were first roommates our Sophomore year and Brittany told me about her "dream man" and she said that he HAD to be tall, 6 feet was the absolute shortest she would go. Well Brittany certainly met and exceeded that desire! In case the door frame behind them isn't enough for a frame of reference you should know that Brittany is like 5'10"! Don't worry, Kenton does have other great qualities besides being tall :) he is really nice, and funny, and he is a really good match for Brit!

I am so glad I was able to be there for her wedding and share this wonderful moment in her life with her!

Thanksgiving

Zac wasn't able to take much time off from work, but he was finally able to come out a day before Thanksgiving.

Unfortunately we forgot to get pictures of us with Zac's family for Thanksgiving, so I am just including a picture of the Thanksgiving decorations I put up at our apartment. :)

It was really great spending some time with the Greenhalghs, being in California we don't get to see them very often. On Thanksgiving day Zac's older sister Aubree and her husband Phil were there, as well as his younger brother Rawleigh. Ann made us all a wonderful meal. The next day Zac's older brother Garrett, his wife Ashley, and their two daughters Greta and Finlee came down from Logan and we all went to Spanish Fork where Aubree and Phil live to go to a craft fair and we had lunch at a little Mexican restaurant. Finlee was about 6 months old at the time, and this was the first time we got to see her, and man is she cute! It is amazing that Greta and Finlee can both be so extraordinarily cute, and yet look and act so completely different! Zac and I are hoping that our daughter will be as cute as those little girls! It was really great getting to see so much of Zac's family, we didn't get to see Zac's oldest sister Heather, her husband (Quentin) and two children (Geneva and Wesley) because they had either decided to stay home (they live all the way out in Illinois now!) or they had decided to visit Quentin's family. We also didn't get to see Zac's youngest brother Dallin who is still on his mission in Hong Kong (he returns in March!).

BYU vs. UTAH Football Game

The weekend after Thanksgiving was the "Big Game." And man was it intense! Utah scored first but then BYU went up, and we dominated for the 2nd and 3rd quarter, but then we let them come back in the fourth quarter, and they managed to tie it up at the very end of the game. Then in overtime we held them to just a field goal and we turned around and scored a touchdown to win the game! It was awesome!!!

Zac's brother Rawleigh came through for us and was able to score us some tickets from his friends in the the student section for a really good price, which was really awesome of him, and it was great fun being in the student section again!!!

And this is everyone rushing the field after BYU got the big win! Zac and Rawleigh ran down right away. I actually got down onto the field too, but I waited until it was not a mad rush since I didn't want to get pushed or trip and fall (probably a bad idea when one is pregnant).

The game was awesome! I'm so glad we got to go, it was a ton of fun! But man oh man being back on campus makes me realize just how much I miss BYU and how much I wish I could go back! I love that school!

Well that wraps up the month of November, sorry it was so delayed, stay tuned for December, it's going to be even longer and have even more pictures! Yeah!

24 Weeks and Counting

2009-11-30T21:20:00.001-08:00

Okay so I am late in posting as usual. These are some prego pictures of me at 24 weeks (all though it took me so long to post I will technically be 25 weeks tomorrow).

Enjoy the front view:

The lovely profile:

And of course Zac decided to get a close up of the "roundness" because he is quiet fascinated by my protruding stomach:
So there you have it, I look very pregnant, and I feel very pregnant, although I am constantly reminded that it "only gets worse." Lets look for a little more positive phrasing here people, honestly with my emotional state of mind that is not what I need to hear!

Zac still makes me feel cute and he even still thinks I'm sexy- why I don't know- but I'm certainly grateful for it! I am sure glad Zac is willing to constantly reassure me that he still thinks I am beautiful, I know it takes patience on his part to have to listen to me whine about it over and over again. Zac is a great husband and a great support to me and I know I am very lucky to have him in my life!

Halloween in Review

2009-11-22T15:55:00.000-08:00

Better late than never.

Zac and I went to my parent's house for Halloween this year. We had a ton of fun while we were there.

The first thing on the agenda was to dress the poor cats up in Halloween costumes. Kayla took great (evil) pleasure in torturing the cats in this way.

Squeaker the little witch and Morteki the Pirate.

Turns out Morteki was actually fairly content with the whole process he mostly just laid there and purred. This was notably surprising if you know Morteki at all. As you can tell from the picture he basically just sat there and let Kayla take pictures of him. My personal opinion is that he was too afraid or too uncomfortable to move because he had these little tiny straps that went around his legs.

Squeaker on the other hand was a basket case. She enjoyed nothing about being in her little costume. She kept trying to walk backward to get out of it, and then she would hide under the desk in a dark little corner, I think it was because she was embarrassed about how ridiculous she looked.

The next day when Zac got there, the first thing we did was to go to OMSI (The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry- for those of you who have never been there before). We explored the exhibits and played the brain teaser puzzles.

Later we all carved pumpkins.

I carved the Cheshire Cat

Zac did the Superman sign

Kayla did a cat with fish bones

Kevin did a bat

Mom did a cat sitting on the moon

And Dad did some sort of creature (self portrait maybe? He he.)

These we didn't even carve, they were like Mr. Potato head pieces that you just poke into the pumpkin.

The house at night, all decked out for Halloween!

Then we went to a corn maze in the dark. We thought there would be lights so none of us brought flashlights so we had to use cell phones to guide us through.

Truth be told, every single one of us cheated. My mom and Sandy ended up getting so lost that they had to come back out the entrance (and they were still last). Zac and I used the map as did Kayla and Kevin. I will say we tied getting out, although Kayla and Kevin technically exited the maze first. That was only because they could run and I could not. We both reached the same point near the end of the maze at exactly the same time and then they took off running, and it was really muddy and I didn't want to risk falling (I'm pregnant remember) so we just had to walk fast. However if Zac hadn't stayed back to prop me up I guarantee he would have gotten out first. Kayla and Kevin may have long legs but Zac is one of the fastest sprinters I (or anyone else who has watched him run) have ever seen.

Good times. Anyway when we got back we of course had to stuff our faces.

That was pretty much the highlights of what we did. While I was home I was also crafty in my down time. I had my dad busy out in his shop cutting out Halloween decorations for me to paint.

I made this ghost.

This set of pumpkins.

And the cat sitting by the fence.

My mom has had all of these for years and I decided I liked them and wanted a set for myself so I decided I would copy them that weekend. (With my daddy's help of course!)

So when I got home I had to put up all my new Halloween decorations (even though Halloween was over at this point) and take some pictures.

Before I left for my parent's house I made this little WITCH decoration, (that my dad had cut out and mailed to me) which I guess it what put me in the crafting mood when I went to my parent's house.

Well that was our Halloween. I know this post was a long time coming, but I had to wait until I saw my mom again in Nov. to get the pictures from her. I'm so glad my mom brought us home for the holiday, we had so much fun!

Caribbean Cruise Vacation

2009-11-03T17:44:00.000-08:00

So Zac and I have wanted to go on a vacation with just the two of us for as long as we have been married. Our special all-inclusive week long honeymoon in Cancun got canceled due to a hurricane. We were pretty bummed about it, but Zac's aunt was gracious enough to let us stay at her hacienda on the Cabo side of Mexico instead, and we had a ton of fun. However, we were still bummed we didn't get to do our really cool trip, and we have been talking about doing a cruise sometime as our cool trip. We threw the idea around for a long time, but when we finally found out that we were expecting a baby we decided to make that dream a reality because our time to go on a trip with just the two of us was rapidly coming to a close. So we finally got around to finding the right cruise and finding a steal of a deal. We decided we wanted to go to the Caribbean and we were hoping to go in August around our two year anniversary, but between Zac's soccer games, and golf tournaments we couldn't go until October. Plus since October is the off season for cruising in the Caribbean it was a great deal. We picked a 6 night cruise that went to Key West, FL; Georgetown, Grand Cayman; and Ocho Rios, Jamaica on the Carnival Freedom. It was only like $800 for the both of us! Plus a couple months ago when coming back from a golf tournament Zac offered to take a later flight and so Southwest credited him $300, and my mom gave us a free ticket, so it ended up only costing us $100 for airfare. It was awesome to get such an awesome vacation for such an awesome deal!

Our trip started on Saturday Oct. 17 when we flew from San Jose to Ft. Lauderdale. We had to leave super early and it took all day, and we both looked absolutely beautiful by the time we reached Florida, as you can tell:

We were a little surprised when we got there and it was really overcast, but it was still very warm. We knew to expect rain while we were in the Caribbean in October, but we hoped the rain would cooperate, and for the most part it did. We only got one day of rain the whole trip.
That night we stayed at a very nice luxurious resort know as the Days Inn. Okay so it wasn't 5 stars or anything but it offered a free shuttle from the airport to the hotel and a free shuttle the next day from the hotel to the cruiseport, and it was cheap and that was enough for us. That night we went down to the beach and had dinner at a cute little restaurant. We listened to live music while we ate fajitas and afterwards we walked along the beach for a while. The water was still so warm even late at night. Zac wanted to go swimming in it, but I pointed out that we didn't have our swimsuits on. This of course gave Zac another idea, which I promptly turned down becuase even though it was dark, there were still enough people on the beach that could see :)

SUNDAY- boarding the cruise

We were able to get on the boat at noon. We got through customs, and all the cruise check in stuff, and finally got on and found our room. We got some lunch then it was time for our muster drill. This is where we report to our muster station and learn what to do in the unlikely event that we needed to evacuate the ship. And I'm sure in that unlikely event we would all calmly find our assigned muster station. Rrrriiiiggghhtttt. Then we went out on deck to watch us leave port. Zac was particularly excited since this was his first cruise, and I was excited to see Zac's excitement since this was my sixth cruise. We enjoyed a very nice steak dinner, and then a show in the lounge. After that we explored every part of the ship. So cool! We both enjoyed the drawing room and the library and of course, the lounge. We finished off the night by watching the Falcons vs Bears game on the outdoor big screen on the top deck while we played in the swimming pool.

MONDAY- Key West, FL

It was beautiful, sunny and the perfect temperature when we arrived in Key West.

Here is a picture of our cruise ship.

The first place we saw when we got off the boat was this cool museum that had really realistic life size statues everywhere outside. This statue was a guy who was painting a picture of the other statues.

Here are the statues that guy was painting. They were some weird naked ladies with a guy looking up, so Zac decided to have a look see too.

We walked around the town and explored a little before we decided to ride scooters to some of the historical sites. However the scooter guy could tell I was pregnant (guess I wasn't hiding it well) and said I couldn't ride a scooter, but I could ride a bike (I'm not sure why a bike is so much safer, but whatever). So we decided to ride bikes. Then we discovered they had tandem bikes, and we had never ridden a tandem bike before so we decided to do that. It turned out to be a lot of fun, and I'm really glad we did it, it was probably even better than scooters.

We went to a couple of historical sites on the island. The first place we went was the southern most part of the island, which is also the southern most point of the USA. Then we found an historic Lighthouse.

Then we went to Ernest Hemingway's home. It was interesting and we learned stuff about this gifted man, and his rather tragic life. I especially enjoyed all the Hemingway cats. Hemingway had like 50 cats when he lived there, and the trust that maintains the the home has kept the descendants of his cats on the property and continues to care for them. This little black cat is named Charlie Chaplin and he was so cute!

Then we went to the Harry Truman Little White House. This was where President Truman liked to come on vacation while he was president. It was informational and we learned a bit more about Harry Truman and some of the historical events that happened in the house.

After that we went to a little cemetery. We heard there were some funny sayings on some of the tombstones, like 'At Least I Know Where He's Sleeping Tonight' and stuff like that, but we couldn't find any of these tombs. We did notice that a bunch of the tombstones had these Masonic symbols on them:Zac had been reading the new Dan Brown book that deals with Masons so he was pretty excited and intrigued by this, thus the picture.

After that we took the bikes back, and did a little shopping. Then we found a little shop selling key lime pie, and so we stopped for some key lime pie in Key West.

Then we got back on the ship and went to dinner. When we came back, we found our first towel animal. So cute!

TUESDAY- at sea

There were tons of activities going on on the boat, so we had plenty to keep us busy all day. One of the things we did was a trivia game and Zac actually won so he got this cool little "ship on a stick" trophy.

It was also our first formal night so we got to get all dressed up and go to dinner and a cool singing and dancing show.

They had a bunch of stations set up to have your picture taken at, and we actually went to like 10 of them, but we didn't buy any of them because they were like 10 bucks a piece. Heck no! So our cheap pictures will have to do.

When we got back we found our second little towel animal. I love this picture of Zac, it's so cute!

WEDNESDAY- Georgetown, Grand Cayman

The last two times I've been to the Cayman Islands I went to Stingray City with Captain Marvin's tour group, and I decided to take Zac back to Stingray City again, because it was such a cool experience.

We got to do some snorkeling and see some cool fish and pretty coral, and of course we got to hold and kiss wild stingrays!

After dinner we found our next towel animal, and so appropriately it was a stingray (this is me being a fish by the way).

THURSDAY- Ocho Rios, Jamaica

The first thing we decided to do was take a taxi to Dunn's River Falls.

You actually walk up this series of waterfalls. It was really cool and beautiful!

Try not to pay too much attention to my pregnant belly. I realize it is not very attractive, plus none of my swimsuits really fit anymore, so I was kind of limited in what I could wear. When we first discussed this trip, I imagined myself being skinny and looking really hot. I was going to workout and everything!

Needless to say once I became pregnant the skinny option disappeared, and I pretty much gave up on the idea of working out. Oh well!

Once we got to the top we had to take our picture with the sign congratulating us for making it.

FRIDAY- at sea

We spent most of the day on deck reading and riding the water slide. We actually got a bit of sun this day, and got pretty sunburned. At least it was the last day and not the first day. It was very relaxing and a great way to spend our last day.

Dinner that night was our last formal night, both in purple, so cute!
We also went to an art auction that night and learned a lot about high end art and the kinds of people who buy it. Some of the stuff was going for over $100,000!

SATURDAY- fly home

Well all good things must come to an end. We were pretty sad to leave, but I guess we had to come back at some point. It was really great to go on a real trip with just us, although if I had already had the baby and we left her at home with family she would have been less "with us" than she was. I took her everywhere! At least at this point she didn't need to be fed or changed or take a nap or anything :)

We had a really great time on our trip! We did so much fun stuff - from comedy shows to warm Carribean waters to games to simply relaxing in the pools. If you thought this blog post was long you didn't even get half of it. I loved that I was able to spend quality time like this with Zac. It was really great to spend so much time with my best friend. We had so much fun, we got totally spoiled and we are so not ready to go back to the "real world."

20 Weeks: Half Way Today!

2009-10-27T21:08:00.000-07:00

Yea I have made it half way through the pregnancy! Wow I can honestly say these past 4 1/2 months have... absolutely dragged by! (bet you thought I was going to say "flew by"-unless of course you have had a baby then you are probably not that surprised) I stop and think, "wow, it has only been 4 1/2 months? It feels like freaking forever!" And when I think about it even more I realize that I have only known I was pregnant for 3 1/2 months, now that makes looking ahead to the next 4 1/2 more months that much more daunting.

Oh well. I haven't been too miserable for the most part. I got sick about 3 weeks ago and realized that all doctors want pregnant women to be miserable because they don't want lawsuits. Every single cough syrup said to see a doctor before taking- and of course no doctor wants to tell you its okay. Actually my nurse did recommended a few that were okay to take, but said to only take the smallest dose before bed to try and limit the amount I took, and to just take a few Tylenol throughout the day. Needless to say I was downright miserable for a week- no NyQuil! But I recovered, I am resilient, imagine that.

Also I have discovered that nobody wants you to have fun when you are pregnant. We went on a cruise last week (that will be my next post... stay tuned for more on that later) and almost every activity was "no pregnant women" allowed. No para-sailing, horseback riding, scooter riding, hot tub, water slide, bobsled roller coaster, or pretty much anything exciting. (By the way the hot tub was only luke warm so I got in for a little bit, and I did the water slide 4 or 5 times just to show that sign next to the slide telling me- the pregnant lady- to keep off, that I don't give a rat's furry tush about it or it's lame warning). All the other stuff we really couldn't do, there were people involved and they could all tell that I was clearly pregnant and so they said, "no way." Whatever. Everyone tells you the fun stops when you have a kid, apparently it stops before the kid even gets here. But really- we did other things, and we still had a ton of fun!

Anyway for those of you out there who may have secretly longed for the day I would truly look fat, you are in luck, that day has come. For your viewing pleasure I give you: I think I have now officially reached that point where people stop wondering, "Is she? or isn't she?" As you know I am a substitute teacher in high school and you can always count on teenagers to tell you what they think. About 4 weeks ago I got a tentative question or two beating around the bush to ask if I was pregnant. Now kids I have never seen before come up to me and ask, "how far along are you?" or my favorite as I'm passing out papers, "oh! Your belly is so cute!" And both of these statements are posed before anyone has asked to make sure I am actually pregnant. However the best is when a 10th grader asks me how far along I am, then tells me she is 6 months, and asks if I know what I am having yet. So far this year I have seen at least 5 pregnant girls all in 10th grade and all 5 months or further along. All I can say is, "Wow."

Anyway, I have put on about 7 pounds which means I no longer fit into any of my pants. Yippee! So I have now gone up a bra size as well as a pant size. Fun! The doctor said normal weight gain should be about a pound a month for the first 20 weeks then a pound a week for the next 20, which would put you at about the recommended 25 pounds. Well at 7 I guess that puts me 3 pounds over what I should be at, but I'm going to say that's still normal so I don't damage my self esteem too much.

Well enough of me and my fat self, here are some pictures of the baby:

The head is off to the right, and in the middle that is either a hand or a foot, I personally think it looks more like a foot, but its where the hand should be, so take your pick. By the way our baby does have all the normal parts and they are all in their proper place, I assure you this is just an odd picture. By the way, that is the leg on the left. I think the baby looks pretty squished in this picture, but the ultra sound tech said there should still be plenty of room in there. Next, for those of you who have not heard the news yet, and are still wondering as to the gender of our baby; this picture has a handy little arrow pointing right between the legs from the bottom up, and if you look very closely you will probably see... nothing. So yes after a few very good looks, with the baby was cooperating perfectly, the ultrasound tech was fairly convinced by the lack of any obvious male genitalia to pronounce with confidence (although he refused to assign an actual % number to his confidence) that we are having a girl. We are both happy and excited- although we had mostly boy names picked out if that gives you any indication as to what we were originally hoping for. However, as Zac points out to me on occasion (more so when we were first dating) that I know nothing about boys and how they work because I don't have any brothers. And I won't lie, that is absolutely true, I won't dispute it, I would have absolutely no idea what to do with a boy. I am the Sunbeams teacher and I have one little boy in my class, and he needed to go to the bathroom one day, and I will have to say I was very little help, I have no idea what to do. Alas, I would probably tell our little boy (if we ever have one) to wipe after he pees, which Zac tells me is a big, NO. Guys just don't do that! Well for now we are happy to have a girl and hopefully someday we will have a boy and I will learn the full extent of my ignorance when it comes to the male gender.

This picture is actually somewhat creepy (and yes I do feel guilty saying my daughter looks creepy) but it is just due to the nature of ultra sounds obviously that this picture looks more like an alien than a human being. That is her head on the right hand side and I believe she is facing the camera (again what a cooperative baby! she obviously takes after me :) ) Also if you look carefully on the left side you can see her very healthy little heart. The doctors have never had a problem finding her heartbeat, even from 8 weeks old, and they say it sounds very healthy.

The next question we get after, "do you know what you are having?" is, "do you have a name picked out?" Short answer, no. We have some names that we are considering, but we aren't completely sold on any name we have found yet. Here is our list so far of names we are considering. We would love input or suggestions- not that we will honor all advice or suggestions :) -but we would love it none the less- seriously!

Addison

Boston

Brooklyn

Chloe

Isabel/ Isabella

Kennedy

Kenley/ Makenley

Kinley/ Mckinley

London

Mackenzie

Madison

Mckenna

Siena

Vienna

So that's the update. If you skipped all the other writing and just looked at the pictures, here it is in a nutshell. I am fat, I now look pregnant, we are having a girl, she appears to be very healthy and we don't have a name picked out yet.

Zac's Golf Tournament

2009-09-29T16:22:00.000-07:00

On September 12 Zac played in his company golf tournament. The tournament was held at Coyote Creek Golf Course; a course near San Jose that was actually designed by Jack Nicklaus (who I'm told was a "pretty sweet pro golfer"). He was in a group of 3 other guys that he goes golfing with a lot: Chris Mitchem, Casey Trubo, and Chris Niro. They had a good time and actually did very well! In fact they won first place!!! This is Zac's second tournament this summer, and he has won both! I'm so proud of him. Zac golfed like crazy right before the tournament to get ready for it, but since the tournament he has taken it easy and focused on soccer. His soccer team was top of the league in the regular season and has played in the playoffs all the way to the championship game - which will take place this Thursday. Zac is pretty confident they will win the championship and claim the coveted T-shirt that the winners get. I'll keep you posted. Back to the golf tourney: Zac had a great time and he did awesome! I am so proud of him! (Side note: I personally like that someone took this series of pictures of Zac as he is teeing up and taking a shot. Zac says this shot ended up being a slice and he blames it on the fact that someone was taking a ba-zillion pictures of him as he was trying to focus. But I say if you want to go pro you better get use to the the pressure!)

Here is Zac and Casey hanging out in the golf cart.

The winning team: Mitchem, Zac, Casey, and Niro.

Labor Day Weekend

2009-09-27T14:27:00.000-07:00

Yes I realize that Labor Day was almost a whole month ago; however, I am lazy, and since I am pregnant, I will say it's justified. If I have to get fat and feel sick then I feel I deserve to use the pregnancy as an excuse for all my short comings. :)

Anyway for Labor Day we decided to go to Monterey and ride bikes. Since our bikes were stolen right off our patio and we haven't bought new bikes yet we had to rent some when we got there. We found a nice place and rented two bikes for half a day. However we realized that with how much it costs to rent a bike, we could just buy a new bike for the same cost as 2 or 3 full days of renting. So maybe we do need to just break down and buy some new bikes and get more use out of them!

The bikes were really nice, and actually very comfortable. However, since it has been forever since I've been on a bike I got sooooooo sore! Zac is a lot tougher than me, so he only mentioned that he was slightly uncomfortable, whereas I was almost in tears by the end of the ride!

When we got to Monterey we first had lunch at our favorite little restaurant, Louie Linguini's. Then we rented our bikes and set out to bike 17 mile drive. Of course we had to bike 5 miles or so just to get to where 17 mile drive started. So that added another 10 or so miles to the round trip.

The scenery was beautiful as always, and the weather was perfect! We couldn't have asked for a better day!

It was sunny and clear and the weather was cool enough that we didn't get hot while biking and warm enough we could wear short sleeves (usually it's kind of cool and overcast when we visit Monterey).

Of course Zac needed a picture in front of a golf course! I believe this is Spanish Bay Golf Course.

This is Spy Glass Golf course behind me.

This is the Lone Cypress tree out at the end of 17 mile drive.

We biked out to Pebble Beach and got a soda and ice cream as a reward for making it to the end. We sat and talked to a very nice (and slightly eccentric) older gentleman who told us his story of how he made it rich in the balloon business. After that we turned around and biked the 17+ miles back.

We saw this house along the way right near Pebble Beach and we thought it was so beautiful so we stopped to snap a picture. How rich do you think you would have to be to own this house? Oh very rich my friend, very, very rich. The person who owns this house is very lucky.

So about 1/2 way back I had to stop and I wasn't sure I could keep going! My butt hurt so bad, but even more than that my legs had cramped up so badly I wanted to cry! I pushed myself to finish, and Zac was surprisingly supportive (if the roles had been reversed I think I may have taken the opportunity to tease him) but Zac was very supportive and genuinely felt bad for me, so that motivated me to keep going.

So some 44 miles and 4 hours later we arrived back at Bay Bikes to return our bikes. I was so sore and my cramped legs continued to plague me the whole drive back, but as soon as I got home I took a couple of Tylenol and took a warm bath to soak my legs and I felt much much better! All in all the trip was a ton of fun and I am so glad we went! It was a beautiful day, I actually really enjoy biking (we just need to do it a bit more often so I'm not so out of shape), and it was great to get some good ole' fashion exercise (like I said, I've been lazy lately so I haven't been getting much of that in general).

If you've never biked 17 mile drive we would definitely recommend it! We had a great day off work!

Our Big News!

2009-08-31T16:33:00.000-07:00

Zac and I have a pretty big announcement to make...

We are expecting a baby!!!

As of today I am 12 weeks along, which means that the baby is due March 16, 2010. We won't know for another 6 or so weeks what the gender is, but we will keep everyone updated when we know. As for an update on me, I am doing better. My mom said she had very easy pregnancies and didn't get sick at all, I was hoping to be the same; however, it doesn't appear that I am quite as lucky. Fortunately I have only actually thrown up twice; unfortunately I have had pretty bad nausea for the last 6 weeks or so. About 4 weeks ago when I started taking the prenatal vitamins I started getting really sick, I am pretty sure it was the vitamins so I started taking them at night, and I have been feeling much better.

Since this post comes so close to my last post, I am fully aware of just how chubby I looked in all of my sister's wedding pictures, so I would like to take this time to blame that on my pregnancy. :) Yes I realize I was only 9 weeks pregnant; however, it was right in the middle of when I was most sick and tired. I hardly got any exercise and I was very bloated! Any of you who were at the wedding, I'm sure you noticed my extra chub, and if you try to deny it, just go back and look at the pictures. Actually since I have been feeling a little better I think I actually look better now than I did then even though I am 3 weeks further along! But its not too long now before I learn what fat really looks like!

So that is the basic update, but if you know my writing, then you know I like to tell long, drawn out, detailed stories... I am pretty much incapable of telling the "short version" of any story. So if you like my long drawn out stories, continue reading on for the story of how we got pregnant (I bet you have an idea - wink, wink). But I will give a warning to anyone who doesn't like hearing about "that time of the month" this story does mention a "period" since that has a lot to do with getting pregnant. Don't worry I've kept it clean, just thought I would warn any potential male readers who are uncomfortable about this kind of talk. :)

So let me start by saying that the only possible conclusion that one can make from this story is that Zac and I were destined to have a child at this time because the series of events that led to this event can only mean that Heavenly Father was sending us a message loud and clear. Also, by telling this story I realize I am letting everybody and their mom (and their dog, if it has access to a computer) know that we weren't necessarily planning on this pregnancy (Shhh, don't tell anyone). But I couldn't waste a good story!

Our story actually begins back at the beginning of the year. Back in January I went into the pharmacy to pick up my birth control refill. When I went to pay I was quite surprised when my normal copay for a 3 month supply that was $5 turned into a copay of $90! Apparently our insurance policy changed over the new year and we didn't realize what a significant difference it would make. Well I had little choice other than to just pay for it, but I decided that we were going to need to find a different form of birth control because the one I was currently on didn't have a generic version, so I decided that I needed to talk to my gynecologist to get a new prescription.

However sometime within the next month I received a letter from Kaiser saying that my OB/GYN had left her practice, then a another letter that reassigned me to a new OB/GYN; however, this doctor was a male and I wasn't too comfortable with that. When I went online to find a new doctor, I couldn't find any female doctors accepting new patients. Well instead of actually doing something about it, or just going to a male OB/GYN to get a new prescription, I put it off and forgot about it until May when I ran out of birth control. Well I still didn't want to pay the $90 again and I didn't get a new prescription in time, so I decided I would just continue using the Nuva Ring for another month and just skip my period for a month, giving me more time to go in and get a new prescription. My doctor told me this was okay to do, and I had done it one or two times before and never had any issues, so it wasn't a big deal.

Now you may be thinking, a-ha! That's how you got pregnant! Well if that's what you thought then you would be wrong. :) All that did was make my period come 3 days early. No big deal right? It shouldn't have been except for perfect timing of the next few days. So here is the break down... I flew home to Vancouver to visit my family (to help Kayla with ideas for her wedding- you can reference an early blog for that story) on Wednesday June 10th. I didn't come back home until Tuesday the 16th. Try and follow me here - my period was supposed to start on Thursday the 11th but it ended up starting on Tuesday the 9th. The idea was that I would leave to go home on Wednesday, my period would start on Thursday, then I would come home the next Tuesday, bite the big one and pay the $90 to refill my birth control and start on it again on Thursday (the 18th). However when my period came on Tuesday, I left on Wednesday, and my period ended the following Tuesday, the day I came home. Now the problem was that I was suppose to have time to get home and reorder the prescription and pick it up in time, now there was no way I could pick it up on time. I was going to reorder the prescription online from home, but I forgot that I needed the prescription number which was on the box back home, and I couldn't have Zac look up the prescription number because he was on golf trip in Las Vegas (you can look back for that blog as well). So I had to wait until I got home to reorder the birth control, but of course, the online renewal site was down, and it was too late to call. So I reordered on Wednesday, but it still takes 2 days to fill the order, so we picked it up on Friday and started on the birth control, 3 days late. In the past I have been a day or so late starting my birth control, but we never had any issues so we didn't think that 3 days would really be that big of a deal, even though we have read the instructions with the birth control that say if you are even a day late, the birth control won't be effective for at least a week. Well needless to say, 3 days does make a bigger difference than 1, and well... basically that is the series of events that have led us to my present condition. :)

Well the story continues if you can handle it. At this point in the story we are still unaware of anything obviously. So this brings us to the first week of July, and I stop my birth control for my period. First I should mention here that Zac and I had talked about when we wanted to try and get pregnant, we had kind of unofficially decided that we would start trying in about a year from now, so at this point we were both not really considering getting pregnant, and Zac especially got particularly worried waiting for my period every month. My period usually took about 3 days to start after I stopped my birth control, and every month Zac would worry, freak out, and ask me every day until my period started. So of course July was no exception and Zac asks me everyday if it "has started yet." Days 1- 3... "No, not yet, stop freaking out." Day 4, "Not yet, calm down." Day 5, "How about I tell you when it starts." Day 6, "....um... not yet" Day 7, "okay this is weird, something must be wrong." Now my periods have never been irregular so I was more worried that something was wrong with my menstrual cycle, and that we might face fertility issues in the future.

So we sat and discussed what are were going to do now. Zac wondered if we should take a pregnancy test, he was really freaking out. I was like, "I guess, but there's no way. I think I would know if I was pregnant." (For some dumb reason I thought I would be able to "feel" a baby or something and it didn't even occur to me that most people do actually know by this point because they feel sick. I wasn't feeling sick, so that should have been my reasoning, but alas, I wasn't even smart enough to think of that.) So we decide that we should go rent a movie and get some snacks, and so we might as well pick up a home pregnancy test while we are out. So we picked up our movies and we went to our local Lucky supermarket and picked up a couple snacks and a home pregnancy kit. We got the only one they had which was some e.p.t. 3 for the price of 2 value pack, so we got it and and went home (by the way, at this point I ironically had no idea that e.p.t. stood for error proof test).

Zac was still pretty nervous about the whole situation so he insisted that I take a test before the movie so he could rest at ease. So we read the directions, opened one of the strips and I took the test. This is the result we got:

Now this may look clear to some of you, but we were not so sure. As you can see there is a strong vertical line, but only a faint horizontal line. Obviously if you are pregnant you are suppose to get a positive sign and if you are not you get a negative. Now we figured this looked more like a negative facing the wrong way than it did a positive sign, so we consulted the directions once again to see if the negative could be facing the wrong way. It didn't mention this as a possibile out come; however, we still weren't convinced. So we decided that we needed to take another test to get more definitive results. Now there are two ways to take the test, I tried the pee on the stick method first, and we decided that it was possible that our "odd" result could have been because of the way in which I took the test. So we decided I should try the other method of peeing in a cup this time. This is the result we got:

This test appeared to be a bit more definitive; however, we still weren't completely convinced. I suggested that we could have faulty pee strips or perhaps this could be somebody's idea of a sick joke to tell everyone that they were pregnant or something. So being the good scientists that we are we know that the only way to know for sure was to have a control sample. So Zac has the brilliant idea that he should take our 3rd test. Well I thought this made perfect sense so we went forward with this idea, and this is the result we got:

Apparently Zac was not pregnant. But it was starting to look like I might be. Now most people would be fairly convinced by this very clear negative, but we are not so easily deterred from our mission to prove that I was not pregnant. So the next thing we think of is, "hey this a home pregnancy test, these things are known for giving false positives, right?" So we consult the trusty instruction sheet again for the accuracy rates. This is one of those tests that you can take up to 5 days before your first missed period so it says: at 5 days before- 70%; 3 days before- 80%; 1 day before- 90% and day of- was something like 99.8%. So at 7 days after my missed period, the accuracy was looking to be pretty sure.

However, we were still not convinced. We decided that we needed to take a test at the doctor's office because that would be more accurate. So I emailed my doctor and she ordered the test for me, and about 2 weeks later (a Saturday) I went in and took the test. They told me my results would be posted in my online profile within 24 hours. I checked the next day, but they hadn't posted the results, probably because it was Sunday. I went to work on Monday and I got a call at lunch from my doctor. She asked if I'd checked the results, I told her I hadn't yet that day, and she then informed me that the test was positive, that I was in fact pregnant.

So we finally had no choice but to accept the news and start getting excited about it. Of course it was still hard to believe, but it started becoming a little more believable when I started getting nausea and getting really, really, really tired at about 6 weeks. Then when I went in for my first appointment with my OB/GYN (by the way- it's still the male doctor I was assigned, and it has been a little awkward but I got over it- funny I didn't decide to just get over it sooner). Zac couldn't make the first appointment, and I didn't think it would be a big deal since I heard at 8 weeks the baby is the size of a peanut and doesn't look like anything anyway. But I actually got to see the baby, and it even looked like a tiny little baby! I could see the head, arms, and legs! I could even see and hear the heart beat! I wish Zac could have been there, but at least he got to see the picture:

So basically this story is what I call "Our Path to Believing."

Here are the most recent pictures of little baby Greenhalgh. This is at about 11 weeks. I was amazed at how much bigger it is! Zac got to come with me this time, and it was really nice to share the experience with him. We saw and heard the baby's heartbeat, and we got to see it move around! The little guy (or gal) was going crazy! Doing somersaults rolling around, and we even saw it clapping! So cute! In the first picture the baby is in what the doctor calls the "teddy bear" position. In case you can't tell the head is kind of at the bottom and the arms and legs look like circles- kind of how a teddy bear looks. In the second picture the baby is in profile and you can see its big head on the bottom left.

So if you have made it through my very long detailed story... thank you! I know it was long, but I hope you enjoyed it. All in all Zac and I are still getting used to the idea, but we know this must be what Heavenly Father had in mind for us because this certainly seemed to be our fate. Of course we are like any expecting parents that are excited one moment, and completely terrified the next! This baby is really going to bless our family and we are very excited to bring it into our family! Plus as many of you can imagine my parents (especially my mom) are ecstatic! They are going to be first time grandparents so they are pretty excited. Zac's parents are really excited for us as well, even though this will be their 6th grandchild. Zac's sister Aubree is actually pregnant right now as well, and is about 3 months further along than I am with a little boy, so we are pretty excited that our baby will have a cousin so close in age. Hopefully they will get to be good friends!

We are very excited, and we will certainly keep people updated with pictures of the baby, and probably even of me getting fat. :( Even though I know I will eventually get huge Zac assures me he will be supportive and helpful to me so that I can get back into shape after the baby is born. :) I expect to take him up on that, and have him watch the baby while I go work out. ) Anyway, we know we are very blessed and this baby is just one more way the Lord is continuing to bless our lives. I hope that we can be the kind of parents that our parents were for us, and we can be the kind of parents that the Lord wants us to be.

A Little Rodent Gets Married!

2009-08-30T21:01:00.000-07:00

My little sister (who I affectionately refer to as Rodent) got married this summer! Yeah for her! I am so happy for her that she found a really great guy to marry! His name is Kevin, and my whole family thinks he is pretty cool. Especially Zac who loves that now there is another guy to do sports things with, and I am happy so now when we get together for craft weekends Zac will have someone to play with so I can do my crafting! She got married on August 14th, which happens to be the same Friday Zac and I got married on two years ago (only it was the 17th then). It just happens to be the perfect weekend to get married because it gives you a week for a honeymoon and a week to move before school starts, it made sense for us then and so it was natural that it should make sense for them now. Anyway, as you may remember from an early post, I was made the official wedding planner, so I came out a week before the wedding to help plan, design, and prepare for everything that needed to be done. In all honesty though, I still feel a little guilty that I didn't help enough because my sister was at home during my wedding so she probably helped me more overall, but I tried to help as much as I possible could being so far away.

Well the first thing that I did when I got home was actually to drive up to Forks, WA to see my cousin Landon give his farewell talk in church before he left on his mission for 2 years to London, England. I am really happy I got to be there and hear him speak- even if I did have to sing in Sacrament meeting! He is going to make a great missionary and I am so proud of him and his decision to serve the Lord; he will certainly be blessed for it.

This is the cousin flock-shot of all of us who were able to make it. (Bryce, Landon, Kelsey, Christi, Kira, Kayla, and Kandice)

This was all the family that was able to make their way up to the rainforest for the farewell. From what we are told (although I'm not sure I believe it- since I have never seen an all sunny day in Forks) apparently it had been sunny and warm and hadn't rained in Forks in 2 months, but of course the weekend we got there it was cool, rainy, and overcast- go figure right? Anyway after church they had a really great BBQ in their really beautiful backyard, and it was really great to sit and talk with Landon. I am really grateful that I was able to spend this time with him before he left. Any way we left after lunch, and Landon left for the MTC that Thursday.

Then on Monday Kayla, my mom, and I went to the greatest stylest on earth to get our hair cut before the wedding. This is me, with my cute new hair cut, and Kayla with her cute new haircut all up in curlers as they did a practice run for the wedding day hair-do. This is all of us with Melanie our totally awesome stylest. Kevin even came and got his hair cut too! How cute! (Plus I took Zac later that week when he got there and he got his hair cut too. I have been doing it for the last year, and I learned that I have been doing it all pretty darn wrong! Now if only I can remember everything she taught me so I can give Zac a better haircut!)

After that we went and got manicures and pedicures so that we could all be picture perfect for the big day!

We like to make it a big group event. This is Sandy, Linda Lyons, Kevin (yes even Kevin got a mani and pedi!), Sheila, Kayla, and Kira. Its always fun to get pampered!

After that Sandy (Lexy's mom) held a Hadenfeld/ McKay party for Kayla and Kevin. The Hadenfelds have been very close family friends for like 18 years so they were pretty bummed that they wouldn't be able to go to Kayla's wedding so they held a little party to celebrate before they left. This is Audrey (Britney's mom), Britney and myself at the party.

The next day was a long day of bridal pictures with my cousin Alan. Alan took all my wedding pictures too, and he is so awesome!!! I have gotten so many compliments on our engagement, bridal, and wedding pictures. Alan is an amazing photographer, and I would definitely recommend him to anyone and everyone! Of course Kayla was Alan's assistant and my wedding dress fixer, so naturally it was my turn to return the favor and hold the reflector to shine light in all the right places, and make Kayla look absolutely luminous! I got to arrange the dress train, try to keep if from getting dirty, and fix the flyaway strands of hair. Alan took some amazing pictures, and I am sure he will win more photo contests with them! (He won a photo contest with a photo he took from our wedding.) Here are just a few of his amazing pictures!

The next day was a lot of wedding day preparation like planning the table decorations, Aunt Linda making the cake, and Aunt Bibi and her daughter Alysia making all the flower arrangements. And in the evening we went to the the temple for Kayla to take out her endowments. It was a really great experience to get to do that with my sister. After that we had a huge dinner at the Olive Garden which was fun for the good company and good food!

On Thursday we did more wedding prep during the day, Zac came the day before for the endowment session, and he took the opportunity to go golfing at a really nice golf course on this day since he isn't really into the whole sewing and crafting thing. :) And later in the evening some of the guys went to go see a movie; and my dad, Kevin, some of his friends, and Zac went bowling while us "women folk" had a bridal shower for Kayla. Britney Holland, one of my best friends since 5th grade also happens to be like an older sister to Kayla, and thus Britney and my other best friend Lexy (another pseudo-older sister) were two of Kayla's bridesmaids. I certainly tired to help Britney with the shower, but I was definitely over stretched this week, so in all honesty she did pretty much everything! So thanks Britney for everything you did! It was a ton of fun for Kayla and for all who attended!

Well that brings us to the big day! Friday August 14th was the day of the wedding! The wedding was at the Portland temple, and the ceremony was beautiful and wonderful. You certainly take in a whole lot more when its someone else's wedding. I remember I really liked what the sealer said at our wedding, I just can't remember exactly what it was. Anyway, the ceremony was great, the sealer was inspired and Kayla was beautiful!

The first picture is the bridesmaids and sisters: Lexy, Nabphreet, Britney Holland, Kayla, Britney (Kevin's sister), and Kira. The second picture is the bridesmaids again.

This is the groomsmen and brothers: Kevin, his 3 friends (I didn't really catch their names, you'll have to see Kayla's blog for that info), Zac (yes the short one- poor Zac- he really isn't that short, its just Kevin and all his friends are really tall!), and James (Kevin's sister Britney's husband).

Here is a few pictures of Kayla with me and my mom and dad.

The happy couple.

Here are some pictures from the reception. It was held at Vancouver Lake Park, the same place where we had my reception. We already had all the table cloths (even though we found out once we got there that they shrunk about a half a foot from being washed! We made it work though- duct tape works wonders!) the park was a beautiful really great location so it made sense to have Kayla's there as well. I designed the table decorations for Kayla's tables too and I think they turned out pretty nice so I thought I would include a few pictures of those. :)

All in all the wedding was beautiful, and it ran so smoothly! Luckily for Kayla we worked out a lot of the kinks at my wedding! (My wedding was great and we didn't have any real problems, but we worked out the timing a little better for Kayla's wedding.) I am so proud of my sister for finding such a great guy and for being prepared to marry him in the House of the Lord for time and all eternity. I know she is going to be so happy and I wish her and Kevin all the best as they start this new chapter in their lives together!

P.S. The Monday after we got back was the 17th of August, which marked 2 wonderful years of marriage to my best friend! Zac and I have been so blessed, and we are so grateful and thank the Lord everyday for the many ways he has and continues to bless our lives. We have a beautiful apartment with everything we need, two working cars, good jobs, and best of all wonderful families and each other. I am so lucky to have Zac in my life, he is truly my best friend and I couldn't imagine my life without him! Happy 2 years to us!

Summer vacation: Johnson Family Reunion

2009-08-25T16:43:00.000-07:00

This summer our main vacation was a trip to southern Oregon for my mom's side of the family. The trip was in June in southern Oregon near Grant's Pass, OR. We spent half a day driving up to the cabin, and got in about 10 o'clock and I was immediately pulled into the baby shower being thrown for my cousin Shannon. After that we stayed up and did a card swap; luckily for me, my mom made my cards for me, but I got some really great ideas for when I do some cards of my own!

The next day we had a very fun action packed day! The first thing we did was a very fun rafting trip down the Rouge River. We got these spray guns, and believe me we got our full use out of a $14 PVC pipe- pump squirt gun! We had a full on family war, and Kevin (Kayla's fiance) was quickly initiated into just how much fun our family really is!

After the rafting trip we drove back to the cabin for a shower and quick dinner before taking the hour and a half drive out to a zip line course. It was a lot of fun, although the regular zip line wasn't all that impressive, and the guides seemed more interested that we have "perfect form" rather than actual fun; however, the part after the regular zip line course was when the real fun began. We did what they call the "Tarzan Swing." Basically you are hooked into a harness, then that harness is hooked to a rope that pulls you 50ft straight up in the air where you hold onto a trapeze swing, and when they give the okay you let go and fall into a long pendulum swing. I'm not going to lie, I was absolutely terrified my first time! But the second swing was less scary and more fun. Zac loved every bit of it, as did my mom, and my sister had the oddest reaction, which was to laugh the whole swing. She actually got made fun more than me for her laugh than I did for my shriek of terror!

The next day Zac and I went with my parents, and Kayla and Kevin to a wildlife rehabilitation center and saw a lot of animals that had been saved and given a new home. We saw a raccoon, badger, cougars, wolves, black bears, a grizzly bear, all kinds of owls, eagles, and hawks, and a lynx. It was really cool and a lot of fun.

After the wildlife refuge center we drove south to the city of Ashland for the Shakespeare festival. We had a really nice lunch there and walked around admiring the cute charm of the town.

After that we drove back toward the cabin, but along the way we stopped for a little nature walk with my cousin Alysia, her husband Topher, and their little daughter Grace. It wasn't quite the "botanical garden walk" we thought it was going to be from the name, but it was pretty, and we had a nice walk.

The next day we cleaned up and packed up our stuff because it was time to check out of the cabin. But before we could leave we had to take some family pictures. No Johnson family reunion is complete without family pictures. Since Zac and I weren't able to leave until 2 days after the actual reunion started we missed the official whole family picture day, and it would depend on who you asked whether this was a good thing or bad thing. Much is of my family is a "bit" impatient and the whole picture taking session is only slightly less than torture for them. However, it was a shame that we didn't get to be in the big family picture. We did get some of us and my family though.

After that we drove a little north to go to Crater Lake National Park. Zac had never been there before, and even though I have, I was pretty young, so it was pretty much a whole new experience for both of us. It was very beautiful and scenic; however, the mosquitoes were in full force and were absolutely terrible! We drove to a few lookouts that night before we decided that we were done being mosquito bait. We went back to the campground and set up camp in my parents' cozy little trailer. Some other families joined us in the campground, and it was fun to get to spend more time with them. My cousins: Alan, Jen, and their two kids; Emily, Jared, and their 3 boys; Alysia, Topher, and their daughter; and Dacia, Joe, and their daughter, all camped at the campground with us. We all enjoyed taking shifts in the trailer for dinner, and trying to stay away from those pesky little bugs!

The next day our family decided to go for a hike down to the lake. We wanted to take the ferry out to Wizard Island in the middle of the lake; however, we didn't find out until we got all the way to the bottom that the ferry wasn't running for the season yet. Oh well. It was still a nice hike down, and I specify down, because it was a pretty steep hike back up that wasn't nearly as enjoyable for me! Although Zac said he actually prefers going up steep inclines, than going down steep inclines, so I guess it wasn't as bad for him, but he is also in better shape than me so he had that going for him as well!

After that we headed to the Visitor's Center where I found some very cute jewelry, then we headed to the showers that I was totally craving! I was covered in oily bug spray and desperately wanted a shower! Needless to say I was a much happier camper after my shower.

After that my family continued on northward, but it was time for Zac and me to head southward towards home. On our way home we managed to find the same Denny's that we stopped at on our first drive down from my parent's house when we first moved to San Jose, it was a fun little trip down memory lane. Over all it was a very fun trip even if it was too short and packed full! It was so great to see all my immediate and extended family! I love my family so much and I absolutely love getting to see all of them and spending time with them! I love that my family has these reunions every two years. Family is so important, and I love that my family values family so much to put forth all the effort and work that it takes to plan these reunions every two years!

A Zac Update

2009-07-05T18:40:00.001-07:00

I know how much all of you appreciate the half naked Zac pictures so I thought I would post another since it has been two whole posts without one! This picture was right before Zac had me cut his hair and he wanted it documented just how long it got. Of course since he was getting his hair cut he had his shirt off, and I pointed out that he was going to have yet another naked Zac picture on the blog, but he didn't seem phased by it. In fact I think it may be his "thing" now. Lucky for all of you that read our blog!

On a slightly more clothed note, Zac went to a golf tournament in early June in Las Vegas (well technically it was in Mesquite) with one of his friends, Josh (the other guy standing in the middle next to the trophy) from Provo. Josh and Zac have been golfing together for years, and they have done this tournament before, and even though Zac has moved out here to San Jose, Josh managed to convince Zac (as if that would be very hard) to go out for this golf tournament. Well as you can tell from the large trophy that Zac is holding, they did rather well! First place in fact! I am so proud of him! And I had little doubt he would do great, since he has been using our living room as a chipping green for months now! In fact he wanted to build some sort of contraption so he could practice his driver in the living room. I guess he either lost interest, or was too lazy to actually follow through on it. He has been a little less obsessed with golf now that the tournament is over, but he still goes golfing or to the driving range at least once a week! As for his "other life" (the one that doesn't involve golf) Zac is doing great, he is enjoying work, although he has things running so smoothly now he is actually getting bored (thus the extra attention to his golf game)! But his boss is really proud of him because he has done a great job setting up all the systems and processes that keep Joint Preservation running smoothly. Zac always excels at anything he does so this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to anyone who knows him!

Memorial Day Weekend

2009-07-05T12:00:00.000-07:00

So for Memorial Day Zac and I drove out to Capitola, which is a cute little town just south of Santa Cruz. We walked around town and had some lunch, but they weren't as dog friendly as we imagined they would be, and the beach smelled really bad. So we decided to go to our favorite beach, which is Carmel; just south of Monterey. Its funny because we realized later that Carmel is where we went last Memorial Day weekend, and we had Pup Face with us last time too! We just chilled on the beach, strolled around town and enjoyed our time together and with our foster puppy.

This is a little candy shop that we always go to in Carmel, it is so cute and it looks like it is straight out of a Mother Goose story.

And since this weekend turned out to be our last Puppy watching experience I had to post all of pictures of her as a tribute to our little baby. Our friends Cat and Jesse (her real parents) moved away to Florida on June 30. We are so sad! And not just because they took little Pup Face with them! (Although I will miss her desperately and I'm campaigning even harder for Zac to let me get a puppy of my own since we have no more friends!) Actually Cat and Jesse were some of the closest friends we have ever had and we miss them so much! Jesse decided to join the Navy and so they are moving to Florida for training. I think Jesse will be much happier in the Navy, but man will we miss them! Oh and our other friends Ryan and Kaylee moved the weekend following Memorial Day so we have been without them since the end of May! They were also some of our closest friends ever! Ryan ended up getting a really good job in Sacramento, so they have moved there onto bigger and better things. We are really happy for them, but also really sad for us at the same time. We really have lost all of our friends here, so I guess we have to start at ground zero again and make all new friends here in San Jose. :( I am still wallowing in self pity; however, luckily for me, Zac- my eternal optimist, is confident we will stay in touch with our old friends, while making new friends.

February to Early May Update

2009-07-01T19:43:00.000-07:00

Okay, okay, I know it has been a long time since I have made any posts so I know I have a lot of catching up to do.

First I need to update the situation with my car. So back in February Zac fixed my roof, replaced my stereo and console, replaced the tires, changed the spark plugs, changed the O2 sensor, fixed the oil leak, cleaned my car inside and out, and paid the $500 to have a mechanic replace the timing belt and catalytic converter so that it will continue to run, and most importantly, to pass California’s impossible smog standards! He did all of this for Valentine’s Day because he is incredibly awesome, and he loves me! My car is in tip top shape now, and I love Zac so much for it!

In March, we went to Las Vegas for my 24th birthday. I actually went to Las Vegas 3 years ago for my 21st birthday with my roommates, and it was actually 2 days after my first date with Zac. It was fun to go with him this time. We met my mom, Kayla and Kevin there as well. We went to see the Cirque de Sole show called Ka (AWESOME!) and we ate dinner at the Rainforest Café at the MGM Grand. We only got to be there for about a day and a half, but we had a ton of fun!

At the beginning of April my parents came to visit us. The last time my mom came to visit we went north to San Francisco and Napa Valley, so this time we decided to explore south of San Jose. First we went to Hearst Castle, which is about an hour south of Monterey. The Castle was huge and amazing! We need to go back another time to see more. We were only able to see a small portion of the whole castle. After that we drove north along the coast line. Along the way we stopped at a beautiful waterfall in Julia Phieffer State Park. This waterfall was so cool! It poured out right onto the beach. After that we went north to Monterey and had tons of clam chowder samples on the wharf. Then we came back to San Jose, and my parents came to church with us, they even came to my Sunbeam class with me. Although my dad was more like one of the kids rather a teacher; however, I think he probably deserves getting to be a student every once in a while, after all he deals with 7th graders all the time. Plus I think he really enjoyed being a sunbeam, since he is at about their maturity level! (Ha Ha just kidding Daddio!) It was so great having my parents come out and visit us! I love having them out here especially since we actually get out of San Jose and do something! Zac and I tend to be a little lazy and just hang out around the house when we don't have an excuse to get out. So its great when we actually get out and do fun stuff and see all the cool things here in central California.

The Humor Never Ends! Life with Zac Part 3!

2009-02-10T18:20:00.000-08:00

It was pretty funny actually. I was looking at my other posts and I was reading the comment from Quentin/ Heather about our Santa Cruz pictures that said "Yet another blog entry featuring a shirtless picture of Zac." And right as I'm reading this Zac walks down the stairs into the living room like this...

It was totally ironic! He was working on the brakes on his truck, and he needed to shower off... He had a full goatee earlier that day, and I guess he randomly decided to shave it off, but leave the mexi-stash and the soul patch. He came down after his shower, of course with his shirt off, to show me. I told him about the comment that I just read, and he gave me his sad puppy face and said, "I don't always have my shirt off.... do I?" And I said, "Well actually... you kinda do. I think the pictures kind of speak for themselves."

I wanted him to go to work the next day like this but he wouldn't do it. He shaved off the moustache but left the soul patch.

So in case you were wondering, that's the latest update on Zac's constantly evolving facial hair.

He is such a nerd! I love him so much! He makes me laugh every day, and I was laughing my guts out for like 5 minutes when he came down like this!

Rock Band and Guitar Hero

2009-02-08T18:55:00.000-08:00

Well before my car was broken into we bought the Rock Band game for our Wii on eBay for a sweet deal. We have played Guitar Hero with our friends Cat and Jesse a few times and we really liked it, and we played Rock Band with some other friends, and we liked it too. Zac's parents said they wanted to give us a Wii game for Zac's birthday, so we decided we wanted Rock Band (thanks Verl and Ann!)

We have played it so much! We had Cat and Jesse over last night to play with us, and we had a blast. It has a mic, a drum set, a guitar, and a bass guitar. Zac thinks he's a real rock star while he belts out the songs (whether he's the one with the mic or not) and jumps off couches and stuff. It's amazing our neighbors haven't said anything yet. We have to turn it up really loud even at wee hours of the night so we can, as Zac says, "feel like we're at a real concert." Anyone who ever comes to visit or stay with us will have to play Rock Band with us because it is so much fun!!!

A Sad Sad Day for the Miata

2009-02-08T17:57:00.000-08:00

Well last Thursday morning I came out to my car to go to work and this is what I found.

Yeah its a little more than just a sad day. It was a really sad day.

This roof was only a year old. We bought a new roof with a glass back window last year for like $250 and Zac put in all the time and work to install it himself. And now it is ruined. Just in time for the rainy season. Fabulous right?

Oh but it gets better. The hole in the roof was just the entry into my car to get what they were really after. My $300 stereo. It had a special hook up for my ipod. The stereo and the roof were really the only nice things about my car, and now they are gone. And of course they went through all of my compartments and stole anything else of value, including the $2 in change in my ash tray.

My car is 19 years old, and now without the stereo the silence gives me the opportunity to hear all the clicking, buzzing, and chinking noises that my car makes in it's old age. Add to the ruined roof and the stolen stereo the fact that my windshield has a crack all the way across it and my car hasn't been registered for the past year because we can't get it to pass smog inspection. We've tried twice and already spent about $150 trying to get it to pass, and they say we need to take the $90 diagnostic test but one mechanic guessed it was probably the catalytic converter- and that's not going to be cheap. Also I have to put air in all the tires every two weeks because I got screws in them (we think from our apartment complex) and although I got them patched, I don't think the patches are holding because they lose about half their psi every two weeks. Also over the summer the inside of my car was egged overnight here at our apartment, and we tried to clean it but you can still see streaks on the fabric.

Also don't worry, our insurance doesn't cover any of this because my car is so old we decided it wouldn't be worth it to have anything but the very basic coverage on it, which was and still is a good choice, but it didn't seem to work out in this instance.

The silver lining to all of this... our apartment complex gave us a garage for free (it would have been a $50 a month extra charge if we had to pay for it). Although legally they certainly didn't have to do anything for us, and they do have security guards that roam the complex at night, they were very nice to give us a garage for free since my car was clearly being targeted, and they obviously didn't want us to move out of the complex. Our new garage is a little farther walk for me, but now it gives us more storage space which is really awesome because we desperately need more storage.

This situation has been really depressing and upsetting for me, but we did get something nice out of it that we didn't have before, so that is nice. Now if we can just get my car back in good condition I will feel a whole lot better! And if you want to donate a dollar to the fix my car fund I won't turn you down! Ha! But really we will find a way to make it work. The Lord has blessed us so much, we have to have some trials, right? I am sure the Lord will help guide us to the right people and the right places that will help us get my car back into good condition.

The beach? In January?

2009-02-07T16:53:00.000-08:00

It is January and guess where we are going? The beach! Yes! It is one of the main perks of living in one of the most expensive cities in the entire United States! The fact that the beach is so close and that we can go in shorts and tee-shirts in January is so awesome!

These are the Santa Cruz mountains that you drive though on the way from San Jose to Santa Cruz. It is a beautiful drive!

However, it is only a 2 lane road (very tiny lanes I should add) and it is very twisty. And on a beautiful weekend like this, lots of people had the same idea we did of going to the beach, so there was lots of traffic!

This is the traffic getting into Santa Cruz! Crazy huh?

Welcome to the Beach!

This is the entrance to the boardwalk. It is so cute! We love the boardwalk. We had some tickets left from last time we went so we got to ride on all of the fun rides! The Dipper (old school intense roller coaster), The Double Drop (tall tower that drops you then you bounce up and down- you get the best view of the beach), the Hurricane (roller coaster- you go in circles on your side- like you are whirling around in a hurricane), and the Fireball (this ride freaks me out more than any! You spin in a circle on a pendulum and you go upside down, and the straps don't go tight enough on me so it freaks the crap out of me!). We also ate a hamburger and chicken strips that cost twice as much as they should, but it was still fun for the experience.

Then we went out to the beach to put our feat in the water (it was still really cold) and hang out on the beach.

This is the boardwalk.

Zac, was really the only one daring enough to get wet. Of course as he was out running from the waves, those same waves almost took off with his shirt and sandals so lucky I wasn't in the water, and I was there to save them in time!

Yes this is as close as I got.

Well we had tons of fun, and it is nice to have these moments, because it makes us a little less depressed about the $1540 we pay in rent every month! Hopefully everyone else isn't too cold where ever you are! :)

Living with Zac Part 2

2009-02-07T16:33:00.000-08:00

Zac is such a nerd! We were cleaning up our apartment and getting rid of anything we didn't need after Christmas (so that we could store all of the new stuff we got!)and I was throwing away this canvas because the painting didn't work out like I planned and it would have been too hard to paint over so I was throwing it out. Well Zac apparently had always wanted to smash a canvas over someones head, and since mine was not an option that only left him with his own. Of course after a few failed attempts and the beginning of a headache (which was hilarious to watch) he was on to plan B. He decided it needed a little slit in it to get it started. He tried smashing it over his head a few more times. Ha! Still failure! So then he decided he would just have to cut all the slits, but of course he still wanted a picture that would look like he had smashed it over his head. So here you have it.

Next... okay this is totally random, but one day Zac was just sitting on the couch doing some research on his computer and I looked over and this is how he looked. I just thought it looked so funny! He looks like an old man! His pants are pulled up high and he is kind of crouched up and it just looks like how an old man would sit. Okay so if do you don't see it, maybe it's not that funny, but I thought it was hilarious!

Christmas!

2008-12-21T17:03:00.000-08:00

Oh how I love Christmas! It has taken me a while to get these pictures posted, but I have been so busy lately! And besides, better late than never! So I wanted to do a Christmas picture card and newsletter to send to people, but I ran out of time before Christmas, so I decided I would just post some pictures and our letter on the blog. So here you go...! Merry Christmas! So of course I decorated for Christmas, and so I have to post some pictures! As our friend Jesse says, "it looks like a Christmas bomb went off in here!" And it most definitely does!

So this is our beautiful, "perfect" Christmas tree. And Zac would like me to point out that he was the one who decorated the tree. He set it up in the stand, put the lights on, topped it with a star, and arranged the ornaments so perfectly. I have to admit, he did a great job!

I have to take credit for these curtains. I found this fabric at Jo-Ann's on the red-tag clearance, and bought it on a day when all clearance items were half off, so they were dirt cheap, it was awesome! I think they turned out pretty great. I even had a happy miscalculation that made them turn out even better. After a measuring error, I ended up putting a band of the opposite color across the bottom of each curtain. You can't really see it in the picture, but when you see it in real life and you do notice it, I think it's actually a nice touch.

This is the rest of the room. Included in this picture is the advent calendar that my mom made for me.

I made these trees at Thanksgiving. They aren't actually done, but they are done enough for a picture I suppose.

There are some stuffed moose (or meese as my mom would say) in this picture that my mom gave me.

As you can see, one stocking has a "K" on it and the other is blank. This is because I couldn't find a stocking at any store that had a "Z" on it! How lame! So I will have to find a way to put a "Z" on it. And anyway my sister is supposed to be making me and Zac our special Christmas stockings, which we were supposed to get for Christmas, but, ehem, someone didn't finish! Chop Chop Rodent! (Rodent-that is what I call Kayla by-the-way. You should call her that too, she loves it.)

In this picture is a little wind-mill thing (I'm not really sure what you call these things) anyway, it is really cute, and my mom and sister got it for Zac and me when they were in Europe. Thanks guys!

This is the centerpiece on our table, and I have to say that I am pretty proud of it since I made it myself, and I think it turned out pretty awesome! I saw one like it at Costco for like 60 bucks and I said, "heck no!" to that price, so I went to Jo-Ann's and got the flowers and green foam stuff on a great sale, and the hurricane lamp and deer at Kohl's on an awesome 70% off sale and made the whole thing for like $20. Sweet huh?

By the way it is way cheaper to buy real poinsettias than the fake ones, and real is always so much better than fake! We got this one at Home Depot for like 6 or 7 dollars and the fake ones about the same size were about $20 even at Wal-Mart. The moose in this picture is from my mom, and the cute Santa Clause is from Ann (Zac's mom).

This is a picture of the little bar thing that divides our living/dinning room from the kitchen. If you look really closely in the picture on the left, you can see a Santa Clause in the background, I point this out because it is really cute, and my mom hand painted it. She made one for herself and her mom, and when she got back the one from her mom she gave it to me. Lucky me! Tough luck Rodent! Oh and also you may notice that there are two reindeer, one in each picture, at the ends of the bar. Mom told me to only take one, and leave one for you Rodent, but as you can see I took both! Ha! I can taunt my sister like this because she is currently out of the country on a cruise with my parents- without me! and I am slightly jealous, hence the taunting. And since she has something (a two week cruise around the bottom of South America!) slightly better to rub in my face (which she hasn't actually done yet, either because she is a better person than me, or the more likely reason, she has been too busy with finals to get around to it) I am taking the opportunity now to gloat in the fact that I got two reindeer instead of one!!!

Sorry you have to put these two pictures together in your mind. I took them with the panorama feature on our camera, but I'm not sure how to meld them together. On my old camera it did it for you, all on it's own, so now that I have to do it myself...well... I'm at a loss.

So anyway, you kind of get the picture of the Christmas bomb that went off in our apartment. As for some of the things we have done this month, on Dec. 6th we went to Zac's work Christmas party. It was a blast! We had dinner with a bunch of our friends, we talked and we even did some dancing. It was awesome because we could go out and dance, and look dumb, and nobody cared, or will remember because they were all so drunk. (Nice huh?)
We actually forgot our camera, but luckily Cat remembered to bring hers so we got some nice pictures from her.

This is Jesse, Cat, Zac, and myself. Kaylee, Ryan, and some other friends that we know from Stryker who are also members of the church (Jesse and Carly, and Don and Sarah) were also there, and we did get some pictures with them, but I still have to get them from Kaylee, because luckily she remembered to bring a camera too! Oh and Stryker also had a raffle and Zac actually won something! He won this cool i-home! We actually already have one but it was still cool to win something! And I "kind-of" won the table centerpiece. At the beginning of the raffle they said to count off around the table, Zac started so I was #2. They announced that #4 won the centerpiece. Well #4 was a girl that we didn't know, and she didn't seem very excited when she won, and when she and her friend left about 5 minutes later, and didn't come back, I was the first to speak up and say, "well 2 is half of 4, so I will take it!" Every one agreed; hence I "kind-of" won the table centerpiece.

Also this month, Cat and Jesse left for Hawaii for a weekend (lucky dogs!) so they let us watch little Pupface again! We loved every minute of it of course! And of course we had to put her in a Santa hat and take a picture! She is just so cute we couldn't resist!

Oh!!! Who knew napping could be so cute?!!

And Zac is a pretty big sucker for rubbing her tummy! She definitely gets spoiled when she is with us!

Also this month, we went to our ward Christmas party, which I made posters and cookies for. It was a Polar Express theme so everyone came in their pajamas. I wore my jingle bell reindeer slippers and reindeer antlers to the party. They were quite the hit, so it's too bad that we didn't take a picture of it. However, a number of people in the ward stopped me for a picture, because it was pretty funny looking, and they remembered their cameras! Zac wore the Santa hat, and luckily my mom had made him some pajama pants last year for Christmas, because he usually just wears basketball shorts, and basketball shorts don't really look like pajamas.

We also went to Zac's team party for work. It was at his boss's house with just the people he works with in Joint Preservation. It was really nice to get to meet his boss and all the people that he works with. His boss Stacey is so funny, incredibly nice, and a wonderful hostess. She made a wonderful dinner for us! Then Stacey and the Director of R&D , Todd, gave everyone a very nice plaque for being the founders of Joint Preservation and a couple of gag gifts. Zac got a Budweiser baseball cap with a bottle opener on it, because they teased him that since they go on outings where everyone drinks, and he obviously doesn't, at least this way he will be useful with his bottle opener. Everyone is actually very respectful of the fact that Zac doesn't drink, which is really awesome. They also got him some golf balls because they know how much he loves to golf. We also did a white elephant exchange, and we ended up with movie tickets and a white elephant goblet (which will come in handy as our gift to the next white elephant that we go to!) We also played a rousing game of Catch Phrase, which got a little intense, but it was all in good fun. I wish that I had remembered my camera, but as you can tell I forgot the camera for a lot of important functions! One of his co-workers, a really sweet girl, Lindsay, had a camera and was taking a lot of pictures, so maybe she can send some to Zac and we can post them.

This past Thursday we took the 45 minute drive into San Francisco to spend an evening there. We ate out at a restaurant on Market Street and topped it off with seeing Phantom of the Opera at the Orpheum Theater in San Francisco. It was so cool! I have seen it before but Zac hadn't so it was cool to see him experience it for the first time. We both loved it! We didn't end up getting home until 1 in the morning - on a work night! It felt like college again.

So all of that, plus of course work (Zac still at Stryker, and me substitute teaching),Christmas shopping, and callings at church, we have been pretty busy this month! We are leaving for Utah in a couple of days for Christmas and we are really excited for the break! We are going to spend Christmas with Zac's family, and it is going to be cool because almost all of his family will be there, even his sister who lives all the way out in Illinois. The only person who won't be there is his youngest brother Dallin who, is of course still on his mission in Hong Kong. We will be in Utah until Jan. 4, so we would love to see anyone who is or will be in Utah from Dec. 24 to Jan. 4.

We are so grateful for all of our friends and family. We are incredibly blessed, and we thank our Heavenly Father for it everyday. We wish everyone a Very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!

Love,
Kira and Zac Greenhalgh

Decorations in November

2008-12-02T18:48:00.000-08:00

Okay, so here are my Thanksgiving/Fall decorations. I suppose I am just kind of bragging about my decorating skills by posting these, but I do think it turned out really cute! And since it is now officially December I get to take them all down and decorate for Christmas! Yeah I love Christmas!

Posting Extravaganza!

2008-11-02T18:21:00.000-08:00

Okay so I was really, really, really behind in posting so I decided to sit down and catch up on everything all at once. So I realize that there is a lot here, but most of it is pictures. So please read all 7 of the next posts! Most of them are short on words and big on pictures so it shouldn't take too long! I just wanted everyone to know that everything that is showing on the page is actually new. Okay thanks, enjoy!

Halloween Night

2008-11-02T17:32:00.000-08:00

For Halloween Night we got together with Jesse, Cat, Ryan, and Kaylee. We all met up at Cat and Jesse's house, and of course little Pupface was there as well.
Jesse was a ninja, Cat was a geisha (but she got chocolate on her costume before we got a picture), and Pupface was Picachu.

Zac was a King, and I was a Queen. For anyone who might be worried, don't worry, I didn't actually dye my hair (or grow it really long overnight) this is actually a wig. I thought it would be fun. I look so different right? The little blurr you see at the bottom right of the picture is Pupface jumping up trying to be in the picture. Our costumes turned out pretty well considering I only had four days to do all of it! I made Zac's top and pants, my dress, and both capes. Plus factor in that I had to buy the patterns in kid sizes since they were out of adult sizes, so I had to alter the patterns, cut out all the fabric, and my sewing machine kept freaking out on me and making my life just that much more difficult! We tried to make these really cool crowns too, but they ended up looking more like chef's hats than crowns, so we just used these pre-made ones. It was hard work, but I think it paid off, because they turned out really cool.

Ryan and Kaylee were presents. I thought that was a pretty cute idea.

For our first activity we made gram cracker haunted houses. We decided to make it a competition of girls vs. boys. I think you can guess who won. The girls of course! I will have to admit however that the boys had some really good architectural ideas, but it took them so long to put it all together that they didn't have any time to decorate. This is a picture of the boys haunted house.

This is the front side of the girls.

And this is the back side.

For our second activity we broke up into couples and we each got a bag of random stuff and we played Halloween "Project Runway" for Pupface to see who could make the cutest costume for her.

This is Jesse and Cat's witch costume.

This is Zac and my witch costume.

And this is Ryan and Kaylee's pirate costume.

She looked so cute in all of them that we decided to call it a tie.

After that we did a murder mystery game, and that was really fun. We all picked character books, and learned secret information, played charades, and revealed information. After we all submitted our guess as to who the murder was we discussed it as a group. All though no one guessed right on their individual guess, as a group the majority of us did correctly guess Zac's character as the murder.

We had a really great time, and we are so grateful that we have such awesome friends who like to get together and do this totally fun, yet somewhat corny types of things with us. All in all, we had a great Halloween!

Halloween at Stryker

2008-11-02T17:16:00.000-08:00

Stryker celebrated Halloween on the Wednesday before Halloween (why I don't know, seeing as how Halloween actually fell on a Friday, but that is how they decided to do it). Each group dressed up together with a theme. Joint Preservation (Zac's group) decided to go as gangsters. So this is Zac's thug costume. He looks so tough huh? And yes he did grow and shave a goatee just for this occasion.

This is Zac's team. From left to right is, Kyle Pilgeram (he is in R&D), Lindsay Matz (Buyer), Zac Greenhalgh (Planner), Eli Perez (Material Coordinator), Vicki Onyabor (Quality Engineer) and Gabe Castillo (Packager). They discovered when they got to work that they were all different types of gangsters, but it still worked. Kyle was a mobster type, Lindsay was an East Coast type, Zac was Malibu's most wanted, Eli was a Bay area thug, Vicki was a Mexican chickida type, and Gabe was scare the crap out of you if you cross him type.

Pumpkin Carving Night

2008-11-02T17:01:00.000-08:00

The Friday before Halloween Zac and I got together with Jesse and Cat to carve some pumpkins. It was a fun and yes, messy night. Zac and I went to the pumpkin patch first, mostly for the fun experience, and decided the pumpkins were too expensive (we would have paid $36 for 2 pumpkins!) there so we went to the grocery store and bought the same size pumpkins for $7 for both!

Obviously the cat is mine, the skull in cross bones Cat and Jesse did together, and the haunted house is Zac's. So cute huh?!

Halloween Decorations!

2008-11-02T16:39:00.001-08:00

Ok so I was really proud of the awesome decorating job that I did for Halloween so I had to post some of the pictures. Cute and spooky all at the same time right?

I understand that all the pictures are rather random and probably hard to put together if you haven't been to our apartment before, but it all looks cohesive when you see it together, I promise!

Our Trip to Utah

2008-11-01T20:34:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago we went on a trip to Utah. Zac was coming back from a business trip in New York, so his work actually paid for his ticket, so we only had to pay for my ticket, so we decided to go out for the first Real Salt Lake soccer game in the new stadium in Sandy and go to the BYU homecoming football game that was against New Mexico. We had a ton of fun at both games. Real Salt Lake tied their game against the New York Red Bulls. We went with Zac's parents, his brother Rawleigh, and my friend Brittany. Luckily BYU won their game! We went with my sister Kayla, and we had a ton of fun! We all really miss going to the football games together!

The Randomness of Living with Zac

2008-11-01T20:14:00.001-07:00

Just so all of you know living with Zac is never boring! This is why I married the man! He is so funny and random. So I have two random stories about him. The first I like to call "The mystery of the empty can." One night Zac was cooking dinner, and he went to cook some green beans, I was busy doing something, I don't remember what, but it will suffice to say that I was distracted. Zac walks over and says, "Kira, look at this can of green beans!" I didn't look up, because, honestly how can green beans be interesting. He continued, "No look there is nothing in it!" And then I said, "Yeah Zac, that usually happens after you dump the contents out." And this is where Zac got really excited, "No! This is how I opened it! Look it's just water! There are no green beans! What are the odds that we would buy the only can of green beans on that shelf that didn't actually have any green beans in it." So I said, "wow, yeah that is really weird." Needless to say this little oddity really excited him, and so he wanted to take a picture of it to document it. At first he wanted to send it in to the green bean company to show them how they gypped us, but I pointed out that even with a picture that would be pretty hard to prove. So then he decided he needed a picture purely for his own enjoyment, because this was such a weird thing. Thus we have a not one, but five, pictures of an empty can of green beans.

My second story is not for the faint of heart, so if you are you should turn away now. I don't think these pictures need much of an explanation, they mostly speak for themselves, other than you should know that he didn't actually do this to in some weird way to be romantic or anything like that, this was purely to make me laugh. And now it is to make you laugh too.

Oh and just so you all know, these are the "clean" pictures. You should all be thankful I didn't post the one of Zac bending over to put a pan in the oven! And I also thought about making a little black box to cover his cute "bubble" shaped behind, but I didn't know how to, so... sorry, I hope your eyes aren't blinded from the whiteness.

Tennis Game Night

2008-11-01T19:57:00.000-07:00

Here are a few pictures from another one of our group date nights. We played tennis at a local high school. Since we have three couples we decided to make up our own game. We decided that you could bounce the ball on your side as many times as you needed to, you just had to get it to the other side before the ball stopped bouncing. This way everyone could play, no one would be left out, and the games could go on a lot longer. We did teams of 3 on 3 and played 3 games rotating teams so everyone got to play on the same team as their spouse. It was pure random chaos and it was so much fun! I suggest everyone try it at some point in their life!

This is Ryan and Kaylee

Jesse and Cat
Kira and Zac- and yes Zac is in fact wearing my shorts. He really wanted to win the costume contest! And he did!

The whole group.

Mini Golf Outing

2008-09-15T15:40:00.001-07:00

So if you remember from before I mentioned that Zac and I decided to have a group activity night every Thursday with our friends Kaylee and Ryan, and Cat and Jesse. We had the first night, and we did an awesome night of Badminton. Cat and Jesse had the second night which was a fun game night of Balderdash and Cranium. And our most recent night was hosted by Kaylee and Ryan and we went mini golfing. Jesse actually brought a camera this time, so these are our first game night pictures, but we decided that we need to take pictures every game night! So here are a bunch of funny pictures...

This is us tee-ing off.

Somehow Zac's ball mangaged to stop right on the edge of this volcano! Crazy! This is him trying to blow it down.

Cat, Jesse, Kira, Zac, Kaylee, and Ryan doing our best crazy pose.

Kira, Cat, and Kaylee holding our mushroom umbrellas.

Me next to the loop.

Zac attemping a pool shot.

Zac of course got the lowest score so he was the winner. This is me fawning over him and his awesomeness.

This is Kaylee, Cat, and me with our eraser lipstick prizes. So fun!

This is the boys doing machine gun poses at the end of the night.

Jesse, Cat, Kaylee, Ryan, Kira, and Zac ending the night with a totally awesome picture.

The Chalk Incident

2008-09-15T15:17:00.000-07:00

OK so Zac was home for lunch, and then he asked me, "what would you give me to eat a piece of chalk?" and I said, "Nothing! Why do you always ask me to give you something to do something totally stupid?" and he answers, "well do you dare me to do it?" and so I said, "okay, sure." So he did. Zac ate chalk. So I decided to document it with photos. Just looking back at the pictures makes me want to throw up all over again, and I wasn't even the one with the mouth full of chalk! So you decide for yourself... is Zac really funny or just really dumb? (Of course my vote is really funny, but I do think he may be missing a few brain cells to be willing to do this. Especially since he actually did it twice because he wanted another picture!)

Labor Day Weekend

2008-09-15T12:02:00.000-07:00

Ok, yes I realize Labor Day weekend was actually quite a while ago, but you all know it takes me a long time to post things!

So first up, as you can tell we got to watch Pupface again! Yeah! Jesse and Cat went to Panama (I am so jealous!) for a whole week, and they let us watch Pupface while they were gone! I had an absolute blast being with her all week long! She is just so darn cute! And just to preface here, since we don't have a cute baby to take lots of pictures of, and Pupface was like my baby for a week, this blog will be FULL of pictures of my "baby." This first picture was of Zac and Puppy napping during Zac's lunch break. Too cute right? This other picture was of Zac putting his tighty-whitey's on poor little Pupface. Pretty sad huh?

So we had lots of ideas of what to do for Labor Day, but we decided to make sure we did something that we could take Pupface with us. First of all we wanted to make sure we spent as much time with her as we could, and second, she gets really sad when we leave her home alone, and so she barks a lot, and since our apartment complex forbid dogs to even be on the premises, we didn't want to leave her home barking all day, getting us in trouble. So we decided that we would go down to Monterrey since Zac had never been there before. Its about an hour and a half drive from where we live, and Pupface loved the drive! She loves sticking her head out the window, even though it is too windy so she has to squint so much that she can't see anything at all!

When we got there we found a place to park near Cannery Row, and got out to walk around and explore. We found a cute little restaurant that would let us take Pupface out on the patio to eat. They had really great clam chowder, and seafood. Of course Pupface begged for food the whole time, like she always does. And so we spoiled her, like we always do, by giving her a few bites of clam and shrimp, she actually really liked it. This was after we finished eating but she kept begging so I brought her up on my lap so that she could see that there wasn't any food left. Zac managed to snap the picture right as she was sneezing, priceless right? Then we had our waiter snap a picture of us right next to our table that overlooked the ocean. It was so beautiful!

Then we went out and walked some more. We found a place that let you down to the ocean so we went down to explore. Of course Pupface loves the ocean, so she was stoked! She practically pulled Zac down the steps and into the ocean. She thought she was so brave running full throttle toward the ocean, but as soon as a wave that looked even remotely big was coming in she took off like a speeding bullet, dragging Zac along.

After that we headed back toward the car, but along the way we found this cool statue/fountain. Well Pupface thought it was pretty cool too, so she decided to play in that too. We called her a little Redneck Puppy since she was showering off from her play in the ocean in a public fountain. Nice.

This is a picture of Monterrey. It was really pretty. We were actually surprised by how hot it was there. It was really hot when we left San Jose, but we were assuming that it would be about 10 degrees cooler at the beach like it always is at Santa Cruz, but it was actually still really hot on the beach.

So we kept on walking and we found this cute little candy shop that had Carmel covered apples, and I really wanted one so I went in to get us a couple. We decided to sit down at a park bench and eat them. When we pulled them out of the bag we realized that they had just been freshly dipped and so they were still warm and sticky, and I now realized why the guy asked if I wanted them cut up to eat. It would have been a lot easier and a lot less messy! Well Zac then decided that he was going to give up trying to eat politely, even though we were in a very public spot and lots of people were walking by, and he was going to try and see how messy he could be. Lovely right? Well he wanted me to do it too of course, but I wasn't going for it, so he pushed my apple into my face and smeared it all over. So I got Carmel all over my face too. Beautiful, yes I know. So we went into the lovely public restrooms (still better than a fountain) to wash our faces off after we finish eating.

When we finally made it back to the car we headed for 17 mile drive. We had to pay to drive in, but it was well worth it because they weather was perfect the sun was beginning to set, and the beach's were beautiful. We actually ended up driving up and down the coast 3 times because we liked it so much!

Of course we stopped at the lone cypress tree and got some pictures.

As some of you may know there are about 4 or 5 really famous golf courses right there along 17 mile drive, but of course the one Zac really wanted to see was Pebble Beach. We actually drove down into the resort, which was really exciting for Zac, he said he felt so, "high class." This is a picture of Zac actually standing on the course, it was after hours, so it was alright, there weren't any really rich golfers out there getting mad at him for being in the way.

Pebble Beach is near the south end of 17 mile drive, and Zac wanted to do the drive again when the sun was set a little more so we decided to drive a little further south and visit Carmel-by-the-Sea. It is a beautiful, ritzy, little town. We parked at the top end of town and walked along the main street past all the cute really expensive little shops. The street ended at the beach, and this beach was way bigger, and way prettier than the one we stopped at in Monterrey. Again little Pupface loved the experience. Although this beach had a bunch of really big dogs that weren't on a leash, so she spent most of her time pretended to be really tough, and then freaking out and cowarding away. Zac also dug an underground tunnel that he was very proud of and decided that he wanted to have Pupface go through it. It wasn't very long, and he even dug it out some more to be a little wider, but Pupface wasn't having it. After about five minutes of him trying to push her through and her resisting his efforts strongly, the tunnel was sufficiently ruined and he was forced to abandon his evil quest. Well shortly there after Pupface walked over to her bag and sat in it, to inform us that she was ready to go now, and so was I, so we decided to head back. On the way back to the car we found another cute candy shop and Zac got to try some crazy liquorice (he loves liquorice) and I got some awesome taffy. We also got some ice cream, which Pupface immediately begged for, but she wasn't getting any of that!

When we got back to the car we head back up on 17 mile drive to see it again at night. Once we reached to top, we turned around and went back, because we had to drive out the other end to get back on the highway to get home.

It was a really great weekend, and we had a ton of fun with (not technically) our little "baby."