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 :)

Summer time, and the living's easy

Hello one and all! I can't believe it's already June! That means we've been in Vegas exactly 6 months. It hasn't felt like that long at all though, time really has flown. Todd and I are still loving it here... except maybe the heat. It's already way too hot for me at times, and I know this isn't even close to the worst of it. I still prefer this to the bitter cold of Idaho, so I just have to remind myself of that any time I'm sweating bullets in this heat. 

So last post I mentioned that I might take over for a math teacher who quit. Well, all went according to plan, and I was able to start teaching my own class. It was SUCH a challenge because the kids that I had, had not had any discipline or structure all semester. Since it was a Blended Learning class, they all learned on the computers, and there weren't any formal lessons by me. I found this picture to describe my experience.

Notice how the teacher is attempting to help one student, and the rest of the class gets off task. That was basically my struggle. I tried to help as many students as I could, but it was impossible to keep them focused and working if I was doing that. Though, it really felt more like this:

Anyway, I really can't complain too much. Not only did I get paid, but I got to finish my student teaching early to get paid. The extra income was SUCH a blessing. And while so many of those kids made me want to rip my hair out, they really were sweet kids. They just needed structure, and someone who showed them that they cared. My patience was undoubtedly tested, but it was definitely a learning experience for me. Not only for teaching, but also parenting. 

So now that school is out, I'm just working at a little tutoring company a few miles away. It's only part time, but at least it's something for the summer. I've been looking for something else, but I can't find much that I could do for just a few months. Starting next school year, I will be working at this tutoring company, and tutoring for the high school I was working at. They started hiring "certified tutors" to be there during school hours, and paying them $22/hr. That's like almost equivalent to what I could be making as a teacher, and much more enjoyable. I could have taken a teaching position there, I declined the offer for a few reasons. The biggest reason is that Todd and I may not be in Vegas for a whole school-year. I also just don't feel like it's worth all of the work and the stress if I'm only going to do it for one year, and then potentially have to start all over again once we move. Besides, I have a great alternative of tutoring both at the high school, and with that other company. We feel pretty good about it. 

So that's all that's new for me. Todd is still working at the Plasma center. He doesn't enjoy it all that much, but is happy that it's giving him the experience he needs for grad school. Speaking of grad school, he is hopefully going to apply to five schools this week! We probably won't start hearing from them until the Fall, but it's exciting that our end will be done! Then we just have to keep our fingers crossed that he'll get interviews, and get in somewhere! 

So back when we live in rexburg, Todd and I used to go on little Sunday drives. We realized that we hadn't done it in a super long time, so last Sunday, we went on a little drive to see the Hoover Dam. It was cool to see and think about the history behind it.

Thursday was my last day at the school, and I got home a little early. To celebrate, and to get out a bit, we decided to check out Mount Charleston. We went on a little (tiny) hike, climbed around in some caves, and enjoyed the scenery. It was nice to finally see some forested areas after so long of being in the desert.

So those are the most recent updates. On top of that, and in no particular order, here are some other things we've been up to since our last post :).

One of my students won free motocross tickets, but couldn't go because of prom. She gave them to me, so Todd and I got to watch this awesome event for FREE. It was awesome, I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would.

Todd and I got to go camping and go to Utah during Spring Break. It was so nice to camp/fish again (even though it was only one night), and it was so great to see family for a bit. Also while we were there, Summer took some 2-year anniversary pics for us. They turned out so great, and I can't wait to get a bunch of them framed for our house :)

These are the pics Summy took! Aren't they amazing??

We also got to help with the little Easter Egg hunt with the kiddos. So much fun!

On a completely different note...

Do you remember about a year ago, I posted on here about our new chairs for our dining table that we got for $25? I was looking at that post just now, and I saw that I wrote this: "One of them is a little rickety... It feels like it might snap in half, but as long as you don't lean back it that one, it's good." 

Well, as luck would have it, it turns out I wasn't exaggerating all that much. The other night, I was sitting in one of those chairs, leaned back just a little (putting the weight on the back legs... doing exactly what I said we shouldn't do) and SNAP! One of the legs literally snapped in half! So now I guess we're in the market for a new chair or set of chairs. :(

So that's about everything! We miss and love you all, and can't wait till we're all near each other again.

The Eighth Move!

So in our short two years (almost) of marriage, Todd and I figured out that we've moved 8 times! A huge reason why we've moved that many times is because we would always go to Utah in between new places. We still count it since we still had to load up all of our things that many times. First was Alaska, Utah for a few weeks, Idaho for school, back to Utah for a month or so, Oklahoma for Todd's internship, Utah for some down-time and Christmas, then finally Las Vegas.

BUT, since we took over our friend's contract that expired in March, we had to move YET AGAIN just recently. So that was move number eight! We found an apartment that was right across the street from our first vegas apartment, so it worked out that we would get to stay in the same ward. That was really nice, and besides that, we just really like our location right now, so we were happy we got to stay.

I'll try to be very brief with other updates, but life is going well for us out here. Todd got a job working as a paramedic/medical supervisor at a plasma center. It's not nearly as exciting as working on an ambulance, but the pay is decent, and he likes it enough to survive a year there :).

Student teaching has been a really great experience for me! I have some of the coolest kids, and I love them all so much! I'm going to miss them like crazy! We even started a little ultimate frisbee team... well, it's not really a team, they just like to go out and play (don't care much for the rules). I also have an incredible mentor teacher. I don't know what I would do without her. So student teaching is supposed to end May 16th, but the school had a math teacher quit recently, so they want me to fill that position. There's a whole bunch of logistical stuff I need to do, but basically (if all goes according to plan), starting right after spring break, I should be getting paid for
the rest of the school year! I'm really sad to be leaving my classes that I have now (and scared of my future kiddos), but I am stoked that I will be working and making money!

Anyway, those are the most important updates ;). Here are some pics of our new apartment!

The Living Room! Look how perfectly that TV fit, haha!

A look from the living room to the kitchen

This is the living/dining area :)

I went a little crazy at Ross the other day to deck out our bathroom. I love it!

Our little spare bedroom with a door to the porch.

A look out at our view from our porch! Not much, but we like it :)

So that's pretty much it! We're happy to finally be settled in a place long term (well... at least a year seems long term to us). We're also loving Vegas and loving our happy lives together! We're coming up on our second anniversary and I can't believe that 2 years have already gone by. Time has just flown unbelievably fast! I couldn't be happier, and I feel so grateful I get to spend every day with such an incredible man! We look forward to our lives here and Vegas and whatever our future holds after that!