Pat on the Back

I have been pretty hard on myself lately, so it's time I give myself a pat on the back. Feelings of inadequacy have taken over my life between worrying about whether I will be a good mom, teaching a sub par lesson in Relief Society, not being able to sew or make a darn thing for my future child, not having the desire or energy to cook, and therefore being left with the wonderment of what on earth my talents are! Oddly enough I rediscovered one talent I have this last week and that is to do simple canvas drawings. (Note the emphasis on the word simple.) One of my co-workers had her first son a year ago in January and over lunch was venting that she has not been able to do any wall hangings for his nursery. I told her about how I did some canvases for my sister's twins, so she asked if I could do that for her son. Now that I am off track, I finally got around to painting them, and it was a fun and fulfilling experience.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Well, I can't believe another year has come and gone and surprisingly I am still unashamed to say my age. I recently turned 31 and as always I felt so spoiled. The Sunday before my birthday, we had a wonderful dinner with my side of the family, which is always fun because I get to share the celebration with my niece and nephew, Will and Sophia. On my actual birthday, my sister invited Jordan and I over for dinner, which was delicious and a relief to both Jordan and I that we didn't have to worry about cooking dinner after a long work day. Okay, let's be honest, Jord was relieved, he has been doing the cooking around here lately! What a husband! Then the following Sunday we celebrated with Jordan's family, where they all pitched in and made a fabulous dinner, can you tell I am in love with food right now. I am definately eating for two!

Anyhow, everyone gave me a hard time, but when asked what I wanted for my birthday, I simply said, "Anything baby!" Well, my wish was granted as I received a pack 'n play, baby monitors, onesies, binkies, tights, books, and the list could go on and on of cute baby items that were gifted to me. Others found that foolish and so kindly spoiled ME with hand-made watches, maternity clothes, gift cards, and Jord's gift was quite unique. He had grown tired of me hoisting my pregnant self up onto the bathroom counter every morning in order to put my make-up on, so he bought me a vanity mirror and a little seat. It is the cutest thing, though we both agree that something has to be done about the color.


It was a fantastic birthday and also commemorated entering into the third trimester of my pregnancy. It's all down hill from here!

Award Winning Husband

I couldn't be more proud of my husband. This last week he successfully put together Roxey's crib (which ironically is called Roxanne), despite the fact that all of the reviews online sang it's praises as to how it looked, but that it was a bugger to put together.

Prior to this, he also carved the most clever pumpkin for work and of course went on to win the contest. They have still not determined what he won, but the glory seems to suffice for my sweet husband!

Bitter Sweet

So in the last two weeks, I have headed back to Herriman for two baby showers for my close friends Sarah and AnnMarie. It was so exciting to be there and fun to think that we are finally having babies within months of each other after what we have been through, but it was also hard to go there and be surrounded again by all the wonderful people in our old ward we had to leave behind. We loved our Legacy Ranch Ward so much and it is amazing to see how things have changed and progressed for so many out there in the short time that we have been away. I would like to think that we have progressed too. We are six months pregnant now, our new house is somewhat in order, and we are taking "baby steps" towards preparing for January. We have had fun visitors come over and if you haven't come yet, well then shame on you and we need to do it soon. This last weekend we had the Furner's and the Wood's over for dinner and games which compelled us to tidy up the place a little, so I took advantage of that and shot some photos of our home now decorated. Of course I am itching to still do a million things with the place, but I have told myself that any further money expenditures must be spent on the baby. Speaking of which, I am going to slip in a picture of AnnMarie, Sarah, and I and our cute baby bellies.



Notice there is not a picture of the nursery. That is definately a work in progress, but my sweet mother has agreed to make the crib bedding, so the ball should get rolling here pretty soon! Therefore, to be continued...

Baby Update

I am now 19 weeks along and so I was able to go in for an ultrasound. I had Jordan take a little video because I knew that we would only get pictures back. I will admit that I was paying more attention to what the guy was saying because I wanted to know everything about our baby, but I am glad that Jord was patient with me and still caught some amazing stuff despite my incooperation. The first film shows the baby's heart beat and then it yawning. That was my favorite part.



Now you will get to hear the gender of our baby....


Yea!!! We are so excited that baby Roxanne will be joining us in January.

P.S. I finally got help from Jord in posting the videos which ended up having to be done through You Tube, so I apologize if anything inappropriate pops up at the end of ours. Also, this meant that I was able to finally put up a video of our house, but it was placed when I originally posted it down below our Family Reunion post. Sorry for my laziness in not wanting to figure out how to move it up!

Adams Family Reunion 2009

So now that I have most of the photos, I thought it would be fun to write about our wonderful family reunion. It was seriously the best! This is a picture of where we stayed up at Wolf Creek. From the front it doesn't look like much, but it was three stories with 8 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms. It was perfect.

The first day we all met at Fat Cats in Ogden and played around there for hours.

The next day we had fun at Pineview Reservoir. Many went water skiing while other remained at the beach. I think we had the best spot.Then we were able to go to the dinosaur museum in Ogden.
Also, we were able to go swimming at a pool that was part of the resort.
The rest of the time, we just lounged around the beautiful house we stayed in.
We had the best time and to finish things off, we played Bunco amongst the "adults". It was a tie between Alison and I, so we arm wrestled for the awesome prizes my mom provided.
But the photos that win it all from this trip would have to be our monumental family photos and this random one which oddly enough is showcasing four painted toenail feet, two of which belong to boys. One being William and the other strangely enough, my husband. He let Callie and Ashlyn have a contest to see who could paint his big toe nail the best. Jord is going to be a fun dad!


Oh, the memories!!!

New House Video

So, here it is, our new house! We took this video after the final walk through and once we are brave enough to put holes in the walls we will post some more pics with decorations.

Breaking the News

This last week was full of excitement. We had a wonderful reunion with my side of the family up at Wolf Creek, which I will post later when I have all the photos; however, I do want to talk about our first day all together. We were able to get almost everyone together to go to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple Open House. It was amazing and beautiful and so fun to see all of my nieces and nephews in awe of actually being inside the temple. Afterwards my mom had put me in charge of picking a place to eat lunch since I know that area pretty well. We picked Chick-fil-A and decided that would be the perfect place and time to break the news of me being pregnant since I had my 3 month appointment with the doctor just that morning. My wonderful graphic designer of a husband concocted a survey that looked like Chick-fil-A printed it themselves and discreetly gave them to one of the employees to hand out to my family. She did a perfect job, once our meal was wrapping up, she brought the basket of mints around and asked each adult if they would be willing to take a survey. Everyone of them said yes, but I nervously watched as many of my siblings just set the paper aside. That changed very quickly once my mom read it promptly and started crying. This made everyone else curious as to the contents of the survey.
Then it was time to tell Jordan's family. Sadly his father had just left town the night before and we weren't confident in announcing until after my doctor's appointment, so we simply wrote him a note to read once he was in Alaska. As for the rest of the gang, Suzy loves to fill the front of her fridge and cabinets with photos of loved ones and uses sticky notes often as friendly reminders, so I posted our ultrasound from my last appointment and put sticky notes all over. Suzy is so used to seeing those types of things on her cabinets (not as many of course), that at first she walked right on by, that is until Nate asked if she had read them. She was on the phone at the time and the poor person on the other end got a loud scream into the receiver once she read the contents of the notes.

It was so much fun breaking the news to our families and it was even more fun to go and see our house later on that week and realize that it will not only be a wonderful place for Jordan and I, but also for our children. Exciting times! Our house is very near completion so again I will have to post them later, but we do have updated photos.

A Weekend of Celebrations

Well, Thursday was my last day of school, and if it weren't for Jordan I think it would have been the worst day of school. It was hard enough that we were ending on a full day rather than a half day. I was quite proud of myself and the fun activities I had planned throughout the day, but the last hour to two hours of the day were suppose to be a school wide water day, that is until is started raining. The school then simply put on a movie; however, I could not get my projector to go on. In mere minutes my class was sheer mayhem as I was trying to get the movie on. Finally, I asked my class to sit down and was hoping that by some miracle an idea would come to me to entertain them at least for 5 minutes while I figured the movie thing out, but let's get real, it was the last day of school, I was fresh out of ideas. Then in walked my miracle, Jordan. His boss had told them all to go home and get ready for the holiday weekend, and rather than going home to veg out like I think I would have, he brought me flowers and tootsie rolls for my students. He entertained them until I got a movie going. He loves playing with kids. It was kind of a boring way to end the school year, but we can't control the weather. They all gave me a group hug and as I sent them out the door, I found it hard to believe that I have now completed my 7th year of teaching.
On Friday, since my husband and I both had the day off of work, we spent it doing what we do best, eating, watching movies, eating some more, and playing games. It was a blast to be together and oddly enough for once I saw a movie that I liked the screen play better than I did the book, just a little tidbit about My Sister's Keeper for those who might want to see it.
Saturday was fun packed as we were able to go to the Stadium of Fire with Jordan's family. We couldn't believe all the Jonas Brothers' fans. Honestly, Jordan and I cheered louder once they stopped playing. (As you may tell from the video, Jord was more excited about Glenn Beck.) I don't know what all the hype is about, but then again we don't have kids. Needless to say, the fireworks were amazing and made all the waiting worth while!!!

Then finally, on Sunday we were able to celebrate my mother's birthday. For her sake, I won't mention her age, but I do have to say she looks fantastic for her age! We selfishly gave her games for the adults and grandkids to play now that their basement is finished and we can all hangout together down there.

We are so excited for our Adams Family Reunion coming up and look forward to being with everyone, except Scott whom will be greatly missed.

Progress on the House

Well, Jord was able to do the 4 way walk through on our house today. I can't believe it is already to that point. We are filled with excitement as the progress continues. Stay tuned...

Yet Another Wonderful "Staycation"

As mentioned in the last post, we were able to close on our house recently. In celebration of finally receiving the money from our buyers, our realtor let us go stay at a place he owns up in Midway for an extended weekend. It was at a place called Zermatt which is located right across from the Homested.

There was so much to do there and yet not enough time!

When we went on a family cruise, Jordan won the gold medal in Shuffle Board. He was in seventh heaven when he found they had a shuffle board court. There was also checkers and chess, a carousel, and an indoor/ outdoor pool that were connected, a hot tub with a waterfall, tennis courts, and the list could go on and on. Our friends Jeff and AnnMarie were able to join us. We went to a fantasatic buffet dinner where the boys were loving life there was fresh sushi and they both served in Japan. AnnMarie and I on the other had were drowling over all the choices at the dessert table. On our last day, we were able to go on a fantastic bike ride, but we don't have photos from that yet. It was amazing and made me realize that I need to exercise more!

Celebrations

Yea!!! We finally closed on our Herriman home. Well, at least on our end, their loan hasn't cleared yet, but let's not go into that and take away from this happy moment. Things have been so busy and I have lost track of how many times we have had to clean and move things out of that house, but we can wash our hands of it all now. I don't think Jordan and I are going to know what to do with ourselves. I can say this much though, we will be driving up to Farmington a lot since we are now proud owners of a hole in the ground there.
We are so excited to move to Farmington and hope that it will be a wonderful place to stay for many years to come. I'm guessing that moving has been compared to giving birth at times. This process was very painful for us and we vow that we will never move again, but give it some time and we may be open to the thought someday far down the road of life. Anyhow, our realtor was awesome and he was so kind to offer his time share up in Midway to us for an extended weekend. We are excited to go in a couple of weeks when I am off track. We are all about "staycations" these days. They are fun to get away, but you don't have to worry about costly airfare, rental cars, etc. For our 3rd year anniversay at the beginning of April, we were able to go and spend a night in downtown Salt Lake. We didn't have anything planned for the first night there, so on our way to dinner, we stopped and put our names in for a raffle to get tickets to Wicked. Our names were not called, but that didn't put a damper on our evening. We simply carried on to Macaroni Grill where we had a fantastic meal for free. Food always tastes better when it's free! The following day we were able to go and do a session at the Salt Lake temple which is always amazing and brings back fond memories of our wedding day. Then we went to see Phantom at the Hale Theater. I love that my husband appreciates the arts, we have so much fun together on all of our adventures. Here's hoping for many great times to come!

Happy Birthday Jordan!

Well my husband really knows how to throw himself a party! I didn't have to lift a finger and he was quite content planning it all. The true festivities began on Sunday as we celebrated both Jord's and my sister Heather's birthday. Ironically their birthdays are on the same day. Then on Jord's actual birthday, I was able to take him out on a little date. He has been dying to see Mall Cop (don't ask me why); whereas, I have been unwilling to pay full price to see it, so when I found a 5:55 showing which would allow it to be a matinee, I took him willingly. After laughing more at Jord than the actual movie, we headed to his favorite restaurant, Texas Roadhouse for some good eats. Now comes his well planned party. After work on Friday, everyone (well almost everyone:)), met up at the Oliver Garden for dinner. Then it was off to the batting cages where we all gave it a whirl. Finally, we were able to enjoy the delectable carmel cake. I do have to make a small note how Jord's presents seemed to take on a theme- odor fighting products. It is apparent that he is a thirty something now.

Ode to Kangaroo Zoo

So I was recently off track and as always it went by too quick. I was able to do lots of fun things though like shopping in Park City, breakfast at Sill's, dates with Jord, gymnastics with Madison, and last but not least I went to the Kangaroo Zoo with Heather's kids. I love that place! If it weren't for mean kids, it would be an injury free zone. When Jord and I were finishing the basement, we debated lining all of our walls with padding so that our kids wouldn't get hurt. Maybe with our next house we can put some of this stuff down there! j/k Sorry the second video is sideways. I don't know how to fix it, also Sophia is going through a "must wear skirt" phase, but I couldn't resist the "He eats me" clip!

So I'm not Ansel Adams

Okay, these photos are proof as to why I signed up for a photography class. I always take the lamest pictures. An assignment in our class was to take some action shots, so Jordan and I went to the batting cages (doesn't he look cute!). Anyhow, I thought I would just have to have the stupid cage in the pictures because there was no way I was going to risk my life and go in the cage with Jord to take his picture. Well, then I was up to bat next and my brilliant husband simply came close up to the fence and put the lens part of the camera through one of the holes and went into the other cage to get a different angle. Maybe I didn't need to pay money to take this class, maybe I just need to get some common sense! Does anyone know where I can pick some up?


P.S. Sorry, I found the title of this post comical inasmuch as my maiden name is Adams. :)

Where Can I Turn For Peace

So I have to admit, it is getting harder to go out into public and see pregnant women or newborns as what was my due date in April vastly approaches. Also, I do enjoy living with the Sorensen's, but as every bill comes in, I am reminded that it wasn't suppose to be this way. Then to top things off, work used to be my peaceful solace, but even there, the tensions are high due to the changes coming about soon with the school/district boundary changes and our principal wanting to know what teachers are going to be staying. So I wondered the other day, where can I turn for peace? Every aspect of my life seems so crazy right now. Fortunately, I have a loving husband who after work on Friday whisked me away on a date, just the two of us. It was so nice to be together. Then Nick and Kate invited us to go snow shoeing on Saturday up Provo Canyon. It was so beautiful and nice to get away from it all. Yes, reality does bite a little right now, but still in all I have a wonderful life thanks to all of you that make it such!

Hiatus

Well, it has been a while since last I wrote. This is reminding me a lot of my journal writing, of which I thought blogging would be easier, but it turns out it isn't. It seems that just when you have something to write about, you don't have time to write! So now I must play catch up.

For starters, Jordan has started at his nice new job as a graphic designer in the training department for MonaVie. Don't worry, because he is an employee, he can't sell their product; however, he does get 4 free bottles every month, so don't be surprised if we try to give you one.

Then as many of you know, we had sold our house back in December, sadly the sale fell through, after we had been released from our callings, moved all of our bedroom furniture to my in-laws, put a bunch of storage in my parents unit, and had a very large POD placed in our drive way. We were just days away from signing, so you can imagine how we took the news.

We decided to go ahead with our plans inasmuch as we were already half way moved out. Now our house has to be shown empty and I get depressed every time I have to go back and look at it. Currently we are living in the Sorensen's basement which is quite a nice set up! We are very happy here, we already have callings in our new ward and it is fun to spend more time with family, but everyday we wonder if we will be able to sell our house again or if we are going to have to eventually move back with our tails between our legs.

There is much that we miss about Herriman already. Moving was easier when we had a destination in sight. Now it just feels like we are in limbo. Anyhow, we hope that we are able to keep in touch with the many wonderful people that we left behind. I have already made it a goal to go to dance each week atleast while I am living in Holladay. The last time we had dinner at my parents' house, all my nieces (and even one nephew) put on some of my old ballet costumes. So I thought it would be fun to take a picture of me at my dance class for them to see. The tutu was for special effects, don't worry I didn't dance with it on the whole night, though I greatly wanted to! :) Thanks dance gals for putting up with doing ballet every once in a while!