Active Baby and Adventure!

I think our little one is quickly becoming more and more excited to come out of my belly than we are to have her out. She is SO active and my stomach constantly looks like it picked up some extra belly dancing lessons when I wasn't paying attention. We've also discovered that moreso this past week Lynlee has enjoyed the pasttime of stretching out horizontally in my belly which is both extremely uncomfortable and amusing at the same time. Chris was able to finally snap a picture of it this afternoon. Her little head is the bulge shown on the right and her little bum is the skyward bulge on the left. Silly baby!

Also in this picture, if you look close enough you can tell how my belly button is [still] off center. I realize that with the lopsided belly this might be a bit difficult, so just pay close attention to the brown line that's going down the center of my tummy and then veers off to the side to hook back up with my belly button. :)
I'm 36 weeks today so not much longer now!

Tuesday the 20th it was exactly one month until her due date. Chris surprised me that night with a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a cute little card just reminding me of this fun fact and also how much he loves me. He is so great! :)

On another more adventurous note, Zoë caught her first mouse yesterday! Our little huntress has been stalking the bushes and weeds near the back fence for the past few months and this entire time I thought she was hearing grasshoppers or crickets moving around under the dead plants (I went out and sat with her and listened for them too one time). False. I'm now convinced that there is an entire clan of little mice out there and although I do feel bad for the little one she caught and devoured yesterday, I feel a greater comfort knowing we've got a superb defender. We live in the basement apartment and while I can handle the occasional beetle or spider down here (which she also hunts, while Zack runs for cover I might add), I'm not too sure I'd cope well with a mouse on the run!

Oh! More adventure! Chris took Nicole (my little sister from Big Brother Big Sister) and I to see Mission Impossible: 4 on Wednesday - best. movie. ever...At least of the Mission Impossible series. I was looking forward to this movie from the minute I found out they were making a fourth one (the MI series and I have a bit of a thing going on haha) and impatiently waited the however many months it took from that time to get to December. It was totally worth the wait and I'm already busting to see it again.
Something I was really impressed with with this movie was the lack of vulgarity and immorality. It seems as though in almost any and every movie nowdays the movie makers don't think their film is complete without the usual myriad of distasteful language and sexuality on the screen. I am pleased to say that this movie did lack those things (except for two swear words I caught, yet they weren't even the really bad ones) but did not lack in awesomeness. :D

Tonight Chris and I got a Tuscan 6 Cheese Pizza from Papa John's, 2 dessert pizzas, and me a Diet Coke all for under $5! Not bad if I do say so myself, and I do. :) We got a coupon from Groupon for 90% off our pizza and the dessert pizza was only $2.99 from 5 Buck Pizza. Alas! They gave us a nasty fruity kind that Chris loved instead of the deliciousness of the cinnamon kind that we had actually ordered so he went back and they made the right one for us.
The guy that made it for us was such a nice guy! He not only made us a bigger size of our dessert pizza than it was originally supposed to be but Chris explained to him that I had been craving this so when he put the cream cheese glaze on top of it he wrote "Congrats" with it. :)

I am very much looking forward to spending yet another Christmas with my sweet husband. I can't believe it's already our second one together since being married! Chris says that it feels a lot more like Christmas this year than it did last year and I'd have to agree with him (except for the part where there STILL is not any snow on the ground :/ ). I've been reading the Book of Mormon the last little while with the main goal in mind to finish before Lynlee's born and even that small gesture has helped me this season to keep the true meaning and perspective on Christmas. I am grateful for my Savior Jesus Christ. I hope you all travel safely this holiday and have a wonderful Christmas! :)

Our First Post!

This is our first post! Marie and I have never written a blog together and we are extremely excited to see what we can make of it. We want to write posts often and hopefully include a lot of photographs. We lead an interesting life and we tend to be quite entertaining so hopefully this will be a good experience for anybody who reads. If nobody reads, we're more than happy to just enjoy the experience ourselves! :o) Most likely this blog will be more of a journal of the events that surround and affect our lives and a diary of our thoughts about them.

For example, take our capricious cats. There are two of them:


Zach, the older and male cat, can usually be found afraid of his own shadow. He's really a sweetheart and loves to snuggle when the moment strikes him right. He'll also play tag with Marie - running up and down the stairs with her. When she stops, he'll playfully meow after her for a while.



Zoë, the younger female cat, can usually be found causing havoc and horror. She's adorable and loves to be loved but she is, at heart, an adventurer. She usually exploits Zach's terror of the unknown - she loves to sneak up on him. She also loves to sit in the pepper planter for hours - we're pretty sure she sometimes thinks she is a pepper.

 As I write about these eccentric two, they're sleeping. When I started writing this post, they were chasing each other (correction: Zoë was chasing Zach) up and down the stairs. They must have tuckered themselves out!

I had a good friend once tell me to raise four legs before I raised two. Having raised these two four-leggers for almost a year, what do I think? Have they prepared us for children?

Last night, Zoë kept Marie up for half the night. She likes to try to jump in the baby's crib (something we do not allow) but she isn't exactly sneaky about it. She announces her intention every time with a series of short meows; I don't think she's ever tried to jump in without making sure one of us - usually Marie - is up! We now have a squirt bottle next to the bed. This only seemed to increase the volume of her pre-naughtiness meow. I swear she only jumps up to the crib to get some real adventure out of the long, boring night.

Both cats love to wake us up during the night for other reasons too. Sometimes Zach will jump onto the bed and just stand on Marie until she wakes up. If she doesn't react to his presence, he begins to meow at her head until she responds. Zoë will attack my feet if I hang them too far off the edge of the bed while I'm sleeping and loves to chew noisily on my cell phone charger.

And, granted, they sometimes meow and meow during the day until we figure out what it is they want. But are they preparing us for children?

They have no diapers to change - no bottoms to wipe clean. They eat the same food day-in and day-out and never really complain if the food has been sitting out for several hours. They drink out of a bowl of water we change only once per day. We can leave them alone in the house for hours - no babysitter, no worry. In other words, other than affection and attention, we only need to pay enough mind to them to refill their food bowls, change their water, and change their litter box.

Babies take more time. Babies take more effort. Babies take more heart! Don't get me wrong - we love our little kitties - but they are not sufficient preparation for children. My advice: start with the real thing. Even the mandatory nine month waiting period for a new baby is worth it! Nothing has made me happier than to watch and feel my dear daughter growing within the wonderful woman who condescended to marry me.

So that's my little large soapbox.

I originally came here to excitedly tell you about our plans for Christmas and some of our traditions but these might need to wait until a post closer to the Yuletide.

On an important but lachrymose note, we had our last Sunday School lesson with our wonderful class yesterday. We were called as Sunday School teachers to the youth in September. This was so exciting for both of us: Both of us enjoyed teaching the Gospel Essentials Class in our last ward and I'd spent four years teaching the adult Sunday School in my Grandmother's ward (the ward I grew up in). We were both so excited to get started teaching the New Testament. When we discovered our new class would only be with us until the end of the year (when they would move up to the older youth Sunday School), we were distraught. We made the best we could of these last few months and they've been wonderful! Every member of our class is phenomenal and we'll miss teaching them very much. It should be mentioned that we are indeed excited to meet our new class on January 1st.

What an adventure life is! We look forward to sharing it with you and hope today proves to be wonderful for you. I need to go anyway - from upstairs, I hear, "Zoë! Get down from there."