GRAD SCHOOL! && 18 weeks-Coming up with some names...

Before I ramble off some uninteresting updates about the babe, I thought I'd share our wonderful news!! Todd got accepted to a Physician Assistant program at New York Institute of Technology!

Last Monday night, Todd hopped on a red eye flight to NYC in order to go to his interview at NYIT. He arrived around 10am and had quite the adventure out there with a big storm rolling through and some other drama trying to find his rental car. That day, after getting his car, he checked out the campus a little to scope out where the interview would be, and then spent the rest of the time at his hotel. We were so sad that the weather was so horrible, so he didn't get to sight see or anything at all :(. The next day, he interviewed and went straight back to the airport because he had already checked out of his hotel. Sadly, the interview ended at 12, and the flight wasn't until 6:30pm. To add to his misfortune, the internet didn't even have free wifi. I felt so horrible! Then, whilst at the airport, Todd kept getting informed about delays and gate changes. After 5 gate changes, they finally boarded the plane around 10pm. THEN, the plane had to be de-iced (or washed or something) and they were waiting around, SITTING on the plane for another hour and a half before they took off. The flight ended up not even getting in until 1am Vegas time (4 am NYC time). My poor hubby endured quite the exhausting trip!

Lucky for us, I didn't work the following morning, and Todd had asked for the day off. We got to spend the morning sleeping in and relaxing. Thank goodness! It felt like just after talking about his interview, and how poorly he felt it went, Todd received an email. It was from the director of the PA program at the school, offering him a seat in the program! Whaaaat???? Almost exactly 24 hours after interviewing, he got a seat. Seriously, a Christmas miracle! 

So now, this is the decision we face. This school is very reputable and has many incredible resources! It is also on Long Island, so living expenses will be very steep. The cost of tuition is also significantly higher than other PA programs. The program lasts 3 years, while many others last 2. So we could potentially wait a year, and hope to get into a 2 year program next year. This would potentially save us a lot of money on living costs and tuition. However, this is, so far, his only guaranteed seat. If we were to give it up, there's no guarantee for next year. It is also a very very good school, and Todd feels he will do very well there. For now we're going to pay the deposit in order to hold his seat. We also have a little bit of hope for St. Francis University, because he is on the wait list for that school. There is still a chance that he will be offered a spot there later on. So those are the updates! It's just such a relief (and a miracle) that he actually made it in! Only being able to apply to 4 schools (because of prerequisites and requirements), meant that it was near impossible for him to get in this year. I'm just overwhelmed with joy and pride for my amazing husband for succeeding and beating the odds!

On a different note....

Sunday marked 18 weeks along in the pregnancy! That makes the boy the size of a bell pepper, and weighing approximately 7 ounces. I look down at my stomach and say to myself (and Todd... almost every day...) "How does this little boy fit in there???"

I don't know if this is TMI, so stop reading if you're faint of heart. I have what's called a retroverted uterus, which just means my uterus curves towards my back instead of towards my stomach. This is a big part of the reason I haven't been showing that much, because he's still tucked away towards my back. As he gets bigger though, he'll fill in where there's room to grow, so it's only a matter of time. 

Sadly, this also means that I haven't been able to feel any movement yet! I keep reading that a lot of women start feeling their babies move around this time. Also, other women I know who are as far along as I am have felt their babies. I feel so left out because I haven't felt a thing! 

So here are some of the latest pics. I was comparing my belly bump from 16 weeks to 18 weeks, and it is exactly the same... if not smaller in 18 weeks. Lame sauce. Here are my 16 and 18 week photos.

So maaayyybbe a little bit of growth, but not a whole lot. I have also realized that the pics are a liiiittle deceptive, because the shirt is so tight, and I take it at the right angle. At 16 weeks, just for comparison sake, I also took a picture in a normal clothes to show what I look like to everyone I interact with. I've had plenty of people sooo surprised by how I'm "not showing at all" yet! 

I'm trying to be grateful for this time of not being huge, but I am getting more and more excited (and impatient) just to feel the little guy! That's really all I want at this point :) Aaaand maybe to get to wear cute maternity clothes.

Now that Todd and I finally know that we're having a boy, we've begun brainstorming names. At church the Sunday after we found out, we made a list on my phone of all of the names we liked... the list ended up having more than 50 names on it!! Oh boy! So after a couple of days we decided we would each take the list, and choose our top 25. Then we would compare our lists, and only consider ones that we both had. Turned out we both liked almost all of the same names, but with some discussion, we were able to narrow our list down to 13. So that's where we stand at the moment. We'll probably consider these ones for a little while.

I've really been wanting to go crazy buying all of the things we will need! The temptation has been real! In order to resist, I've found some things that I can make instead. That way it makes me feel productive that I am doing enough to prepare for the little guy. Way back when I was like 12ish weeks, I bought some baby fabric and made two baby blankets. One for a girl and one for a boy. 

I also made this little onesie... I mean, I decorated this little onesie. I had planned on making a bunch of different animals, but this one took forever to hand sew on. So I was content with just the giraffe :)

Last week I decided I wanted to attempt making some burp cloths. After some research, I figured it would be much cheaper to make than to buy, and I figure I can never have too many of those! I went and got two cute patterns I liked, and there ended up being enough for 12 burp cloths! So we'll be pretty much set I think :) 

Now I'm thinking my next project will be bibs... I can only handle very simple :)

That's about all I have for now! We are open to any baby name suggestions if you have some!

*Drumroll Please*

... We're having a...

Dinosaur!!!

 Obviously kidding... But I do really want this shirt!

Now in all seriousness, we went for our 16 week appointment and ultrasound yesterday! I asked for work off so we could have an afternoon appointment, and Todd was able to get off work early. It was so great because we had the whole afternoon to celebrate the good news. It was such an amazing experience, one I hope I'll never forget. 

So without any further adieu, the little bundle of joy that will be joining our family in May is...

.

.

.

.

.

.

a baby BOY!

After our wonderful appointment, Todd and I hit up the mall. We'd been planning on buying a little outfit to celebrate. We also got really lucky, because on Black Friday, some lady gave me a coupon/voucher for $20 off anything in JC Penny! We got to use that voucher to get the little man something nice... and we might have picked something else adorable out at Khol's too :). We just couldn't resist. 

So this is the first little outfit we bought at Khol's.

We mostly took this picture for my mom, because I had been torturing her by telling her that we knew, but I wouldn't tell her what it was yet. I wanted to wait until we found an outfit for the little guy. So I just sent her this pic without saying anything, and she got it right away. We ended up sending the same picture to Todd's parents, and they were confused what it meant (boy or girl). In their defense, gray is pretty neutral, but it made us chuckle that they couldn't guess it still.

After that failure of an announcement, we sent this picture to the rest of the family, thinking they'd for sure get it... 

We still got responses from confused family members, not sure if it meant it was a boy or a girl. Pretty funny! So I guess if it isn't blue, or doesn't say "boy" on it, maybe it's not that obvious :). So for our official announcement picture, we tried our best to make it pretty clear. But just in case the blue didn't give it away, I wrote on there what we're having too :).

So here are some pics I know all of you have been waiting to see... ;)

His little face :)

He is so squished in there! Doesn't look too comfy to me

And of course... The classic ultrasound picture!

Looking at his little face just makes me so happy!

Now that we know we're having a boy, and now that he looks so much more like an actual baby instead of a gummy bear, it's really starting to sink in. We can't wait to meet the little guy, and spoil the heck out of him. I also can't wait to see Todd with his little mini-me, it just melts my heart to think about!

Let the Stockpiling Begin!

When I was about 8 weeks along, before anyone but Todd knew about the pregnancy, I had a little incident at the school where I work. I was in a classroom that was very hot, and there was very little air flow in the room. I was in the middle of helping a girl with a problem, when I got super light headed and dizzy. It got so bad that I had to sit on the floor, not move, and she ran to get the nurse for me. Talk about embarrassing in front of 30 high school kids!  She found out I was pregnant and called my supervisor to let her know what happened, and why it happened. The next day I get to work and all of the teachers are telling me congratulations! I was so confused until finally one of them told me that my supervisor sent out an email to all of the teachers in the program I tutor for about my pregnancy! I was so uneasy about it because I hadn't told a SOUL yet, and all of a sudden it seemed like the whole world knew. I got over it real fast though when a teacher offered me a ton of free baby stuff that she'd been wanting to get rid of anyway. SCORE! I also realized that it ended up being a good way for the pregnancy to be out in the open, and I don't have to say anything. So it ended up being a big blessing. 

So below is a picture of everything bagged up that we were given. In the top bag there is a really nice bedding set and the bag below is a giant bag of little boy clothes. The two sticks are Eddie Bauer sun shades for the car. Super nice! In the small plastic bag is a bottle warmer and some other contraption that I still haven't figured out :). Below it all are some books about baby sign language, prenatal yoga, baby names, and a medical book. Pretty awesome!

 Not to mention the best thing we were given! This suuuuper nice high chair! You wouldn't even know it was used, it's in perfect condition!

So that was the beginning of the stockpile. We didn't add anything to the stockpile for a while either because we haven't wanted to buy any clothes or anything until we know the gender. It feels like we've been waiting forever for that! But the wait is almost over! We find out Thursday!! Anywho... I've also wanted to start stocking up on diapers and wipes, but I haven't found any spectacular deals (nor have I been actively searching that much). Lucky for me, Black Friday rolled around, and I hear from a coworker that Toys R Us and Babies R Us would be selling boxes of diapers for $10 each. This equated to about $0.11-$0.13 per diaper, which is a pretty super deal! Things I've read on pinterest suggest never paying more than $0.20 per diaper, so I thought that $0.13 was pretty spectacular! It was hard to shell out about $100 all at once for the stockpile below, but I think I'll be pretty grateful that we did later on. 

 Todd and I also had some time on Thanksgiving day (while the Turkey was cookin') to run to an outlet mall that had some incredible sales going on. Everything at Carter's was 50% off, and we couldn't resist the deals! We ended up getting two sleepers and a bib that were just oh, so cute! I still insist that the sleepers are gender neutral, but Todd thinks they're girly. I just think that they're so perfect because Todd always refers to our future baby as his "little duck," so both sleepers are little ducks. I think it's adorable :)

I've been a little discouraged lately because I've been feeling like I haven't been "showing" as much as I should at this stage in my pregnancy. I look at week by week pictures on pinterest and I feel like all those girls started showing waaay sooner. I know it's a silly thing to worry about, but I'm a worrier I guess. Thank you for the worry gene, Mom ;). I've been taking bump pictures weekly. I may not ever do anything with them, but it's fun for me to  compare, and to reassure myself that I am actually growing. I thought I might share my first pic and my most recent pic. The difference is definitely there!

 I took a pic at 8 weeks too, but my pose was a little awkward. So I thought I'd start with this one... little grape-sized baby Brooks

The bump exists!! It actually looks really big in this picture and the tight shirt. When I'm in my usual attire, it is not noticeable at all, but here's the proof people! Let's also pretend that the bump was not at all influenced by the big lunch I had that day :).

Taking these photos has actually been more of a chore than I anticipated. I've been doing it weekly, but have seriously been considering doing it every other week. I'll probably give in to that the week that I get super busy and/or forget :). I took a pic of my little set up that I have to do each time. I have to move our dining table and chairs out of the way, and set up all of the lamps in our house so I can have enough light for the pic. Unfortunately, there is never enough light streaming in from the balcony :/. It's a pain in my booty, but it will hopefully be worth it one day :).

In non-baby related news...
Todd and I recently had the opportunity to fly out to Pennsylvania for Todd's first grad school interview. It ended up being a long journey to and fro, but it was well worth it. I flew standby and we bought Todd's tickets with United. Not only was I lucky enough to get on all of the same flights as him, but we were also able to sit next to each other on every single flight. That was a miracle! 
We flew into Philly, and then drove four hours to a tiny tiny town called Loretto. It was so cool to be able to check out Philly, and then the country-side of Pennsylvania. There's so much history on that side of the country, it's crazy! 

So this is a screen shot of the town and the university. As you can see... the university's campus is bigger than the whole town! And this campus was probably a little bit smaller than BYU-Idaho's campus... just to put it into perspective a little bit.

We ended up staying in a town about 6 miles away that was super cute, and a little bigger than Loretto. It had a Walmart, so we'd have everything we'd ever need if we lived there! We also found these townhomes there, and I seriously want to move to Ebensburg JUST so we can live in those townhomes! They were white and adorable, and the best part is... rent is like $600/mo for a 3 bedroom! Whaaaaaa?

Just this week the likelihood of that happening very slightly went up too! So just to give some background... this University has an undergraduate Physician Assistant program that feeds into the graduate program. Therefore, they reserve all of their seats for their undergrad students. Every year they'll have anywhere from 2-10 students drop from the program. They interview outsiders (like my Toddy) in order to make a wait list for if and/or when students drop out. So Todd's odds going into the interview were very slim to say the least. We figured it was worth it, however, because it would give him the interview experience that would help him when it's for an actual spot instead of a wait list spot.

Well, of course Todd aced his interview anyway and just this week we found out that he's been awarded a wait-list spot! It may not sound super huge to you, but if this had been any other school, that would have been an actual spot in the program. We won't find out where he falls on the wait list, but I think he's probably #1 or 2 :). So we just need a couple people to drop out, and we're in! Keep your fingers crossed! 

So St. Francis will be on the back burner for now, and Todd will keep interviewing in the meantime. He has an interview in a little over a week in New York, and then in February at another Pennsylvania school. We should also find out this week if he got an interview at the school in Yakima, WA. I'm still really hoping for that school (in Washington), but I'm also starting to think Pennsylvania would be alright too :). It's pretty gorgeous out there! Here are some pics from our journey out east!

First Priority: Chow down on some Philly Cheese Steak! Yumm!

We got to take a tour of Independence Hall, which was super awesome!

We finished our day in Philly at a world foods market thing. 

I found some olives :)

Soooo pretty!

This is the campus

Another pc of campus

Todd was eager to get to work!

This is pretty much the entire town of Loretto, haha. So cute though!

Needless to say, we had a great trip, and we ended it with a nice long layover in Houston! ;)

So that's about all that's new! I decided to turn down that teaching job that I was offered (in case you were wondering what happened with that). We just feel like everything is still so up in the air right now, it wasn't a commitment I was comfortable making. So we're both just plugging away in our current jobs, trying to see if we can find a way to maybe make it to Utah sooner rather than later.

The Rumors Are True!

In case you didn't catch the announcement on facebook...

Todd and I are expecting a little nugget!!!! He or she will be arriving around mid-May, and we are beyond excited! I am currently 13 weeks pregnant, and it has been beyond difficult to keep this a secret for so long! Todd and I have been waiting so long to be able to start our family, and have just wanted to tell the world now that it's finally here. 

Just for a little background on this picture, I set a timer on the camera and told Todd the news when it was about to take the picture. The three pictures on the right comprise of his reaction to the happy news. The big picture on the left is of us holding the onesie I bought for him that says "Daddy's great catch." 

Last week we sent little packages to my family, and then went up to Utah on the weekend to tell Todd's family. It was such a happy time to be able to share our happy news with our loved ones and celebrate! I'll probably share some videos and pics of everyone's reactions in my next post. 

To update everyone on life lately... Todd and I have been faced with some very big decisions that we're going to have to make very quickly. First being the fact that we're in a little bit of a pickle since our apartment contract is over in March, but the baby is due in May. 

To add to this predicament, since we won't know if Todd will have gotten into PA school before January, he's going to have to enroll in a couple of science classes to be able to apply to more schools next year (in case he doesn't get in). The school semester also ends in May, so we'd be stuck here until the semester is over. But if we stay, we'd have to pay month-to-month which can get pricey. We would also have to move almost immediately after the baby is born. 

We've started to explore the option of moving to Utah in January and taking classes/working there. We'd first have to see if Todd could get transferred to a Biomat in Utah, and he would have to enroll in school up there immediately. 

To make this decision even more impossible, I just got offered a full-time teaching position at a private high school. I would be able to finish out the school-year because it ends right before the baby is due. However... I'd also be working right up until the baby is born... which doesn't sound too fun. It is a really great opportunity to work at a great school and would help us save a bunch of money for little baby Brooks. But then that makes the months of April/May very very stressful with so much going on at the same time. 

We are kind of leaning in one direction right now, but need to make sure a few things will work out first. We just want to do what's best for our baby and his/her future. 

That's about all I have to update on right now, but am sure I'll be posting lots and lots of updates about the pregnancy, so beware. We find out the gender in 4 weeks and CANNOT WAIT! We want to start shopping but it's so hard without knowing if it's a boy or girl. I'm also super excited to be able to stop calling our baby "he/she" or even worse... "it." Sounds horrible. Just makes things a little more real and personal :)

As usual, I will leave you with some pics of our trip to Utah. We got to go on a hike with Todd's dad to the upper Silver Lake (I think that's what it's called). We didn't really know how long the hike was, but the sign when we got up there said "3.7 miles." We didn't know if that was each way or round trip... guess what it was? Yep! It was each way! So we ended up hiking almost 7 and a half miles, and I about died. It was just pretty steep on the way up, and I kept getting super light-headed. Can I blame pregnancy for that one? But we made it! No one passed out and we enjoyed a beautiful view at the top. Here are a few pics from our journey :)

These guys are so cute in their matching outfits. You can hardly tell them apart!

The three of us at the lake

We had to snuggle to stay warm. It was cold up there!

Love getting to see everyone!

The End of Summer

Hi everyone! The summer is officially over, and school is back in session. Todd and I had an amazing summer, and though we were working, we still managed to get out and do lots of fun stuff. I will post pictures and talk about that stuff later, but first I thought I'd write about the more recent updates first.

One fun and exciting thing that happened this summer, is our computer crashed. The hard drive just completely exploded, and we lost everything. We had an external hard drive, but had only backed up our pictures and videos on it, and we had done that several months prior. It was a huge blessing to at least have a back up of that stuff. So we lost our more recent pictures, and all of our word documents. Another blessing was that I had purchased Apple Care when I bought the computer, which is a 3 year warranty. The computer was still covered, so the repairs were free. Thank goodness for that too, because just one month later, it crashed again! Talk about frustrating! The second time, it was less serious. The hard drive survived, they just had to replace a cable that connected the hard drive.

So all of this computer crashing got us talking about maybe investing in a tablet of some sort, so we'll have something when this computer dies for good. We researched a bunch, and went down to best buy to ask questions and play with some tablets. We were interested in the Surface Pro 3 for a while, but ultimately decided on the iPad. Now I think we'll just wait for me to start working full time again before we buy it. We're both pretty stoked.

In other news, we're off to an ultimate tournament this weekend! Our club ultimate team here in Vegas started having practices to prepare for Sectionals. For those of you unfamiliar with ultimate/sectionals, Sectionals is the first tournament in a series leading up to Nationals. First you play the teams in your area at Sectionals in order to qualify for Regionals. If you do well at Regionals, then you qualify for Nationals. It's the first year our team has gone to Sectionals, so we're not getting our hopes up for anything, but we would really like to at least make it to Regionals. For me, I want to make it mostly because it's in California, and it's another tournament to play in!

We've had the pleasure of getting to spend time with some family this summer as well! First, Chad and Charity and the kids came down for a little vacation. Then, the next week, Summer and Chris and Scarlett came down to celebrate their anniversary. We had a blast spending time with all of them, we were really needing some family time, and that helped a lot. Now we're just waiting for Ciara and Brandon to come down :).

Well, that's about it folks! Here are some pictures of the other fun stuff we did this summer :).

We had a blast going cliff jumping at a place called Nelson's Landing. Todd was so hardcore he even did a flip off of the cliff! 

I had the opportunity to go home for a weekend this summer. It had been a really long time since I had been home, and I especially wanted to spend some time with Jeffrey. He is going up so fast!

Raspberry picking! Jeffrey was a pro!

I also got to go to Girl's Camp this year as the ward camp director. Boy, was that a lot of work! But it was also a ton of fun getting to be with and get to know the girls. I was really grateful for that experience too, because now I'm an advisor in Young Women's, and it's really helpful that I know all the girls so well now. 

Some of the girls doing a team building game.

Our trip to California was long overdue. Todd had been waiting to take me to see some of these places since we had gotten married. On our trip, we went to Six Flags, the beach, San Diego Zoo, and then the beach again. It was soooo much fun! I would go back in a heart beat :)

That's all that I have! Hope you all had a wonderful summer :)