Halloween (Costume Success)

After not feeling like dressing up for Halloween last year G and I started brainstorming months ago about what to dress up as this year. We went Halloween costume shopping multiple times and nothing caught our eye. We decided that we wanted to have a family theme and so we tried to find costumes for Mario, Toadstool and Princess Peach (video game characters) but we did not have much luck. Ultimately, we decided that it would be entertaining to dress up as Mayo (G), Ketchup (Me) and Fry Sauce (Mr B).

As you may have guessed, Mayo, and Fry Sauce are not your average Halloween store costumes and so they would need to be handmade. This would be no big deal had the years of my mom trying to teach me to sew left me with an "an actual ability to sew" rather than the "ability to plug in my sewing machine and stare at the thing." Nonetheless, I decided it was high time that I conquer my fear of my sewing machine, take the thing out of the box, plug it it and actually sew with it.

G took pity on me, and googled how to operate my sewing machine and youtube (the internet video site) had a video that could help us. So with the machine set up I was ready to go. Well almost, because our costumes were so unique I had to design the costumes myself and so I painstakingly cut of pieces for each of our three costumes (I am incredibly scissor challenged so this was the hardest part by far).

I started sewing Tuesday night and about 5 hours later (over that night and the next two) I finished. As seen by the pictures they are of questionable quality but they were entertaining. So much so that we won the ward costume contest award for "most creative." That should have been what left me feeling proud, but I am above all else proud that I finally conquered my fear of sewing, and actually completed my first "unassisted project" and it feels great. I know actually want to sew things, my next project is a BYU carseat cover for Mr. B (hopefully it turns out well).

Farewell Single Student Housing: Hello Married Apartment #3

I am not sure if G and I mentioned it yet, but anyhow it is definitely time that I mention that we no longer manage student apartment complexes. The whole thing began early in September, when we started toying around with the idea of moving and leaving our jobs as apartment managers. at that time we did not find anywhere that fell into the category of somewhere where we could both afford and enjoy living in.

About a week after that G brought up Wymount (BYU's married student on-campus housing), I had been there before and thought that they were a great place to live, so we began to see if they had any openings. Since Wymount is notoriously hard to get in to, we feel incredibly blessed that an apartment opening was posted while we were online looking. Low and behold it was opening up on September 17th and so we could move in the next week.

We are so thankful for all the friends, family, and ward members that pitched in to get us moved in record timing. Not a small feat given that we moved from and to a second story apartment. I ended up needing to work for part of the morning that we moved and so I was super impressed to hear that it only took an hour to unload the moving van, and this was not do to a lack of stuff, but rather was the result of substantial teamwork.

We have been settled and unpacked for awhile now and we are loving our new place. Although I continued to return to the complex to train my replacement, as of Friday I completed my last day of work and I am now a stay at home mom. It has already been so delightful to spend my mornings walking around the beautiful paths at Wymount. I shamelessly try to strike up conversations with all the women I meet. Although I feel like its hard to be new in a place where there are so many other "new people" (as married student housing has a huge tenant turnover from month to month) we feel that as we continue to meet our neighbors that we will begin to love it here, even more than we already do.

Typing One Handed

Mr. B was blessed Labor Day weekend, the Bury bunch came from Denver, it was a fantastic weekend.

Adoring Our Little Guy

As time passes we are enjoying getting to know our little man. With each new day we are getting to see more and more of his personality. For starters we have learned that his favorite hobby has switched from sleeping to eating. His second favorite hobby is gaining weight. Not only did he reach his birth weight by the two week mark (newborns lose about 7% of their birth weight in the first days of life), he reached in under a week.

Now at a month old Mr. B weighs in at a little over 9 pounds. Our little man that once swam in newborn sized clothing and diapers is sporting a double chin, chunky cheeks and adorable fat rolls on his thighs. As he is our first child (and he has a photo happy mother) Mr. B is photographed as often as most movie stars.

Overall it has been an amazing month, G and I have absolutely adored being parents, and we absolutely in love with our little guy.

Assorted Mr B Pictures

Dear Mr. B - Week 1

Dear Mr B, Mommy is happy to feed you whenever you would like, but when she does please please please try to stay awake for more than 2 minutes, lest you wake up again in 10 min still hungry.
Love,
Mom



Dear Mr. B, Mommy absolutely loves your darling facial expressions. I enjoy pretending that I know what each of them means, maybe someday I will figure it out.
Love,
Mom



Dear Mommy,
My throwing up on you twice last nice was me telling you how much I love you! P.S. Thanks for cleaning me up.
Love,
Mr. B

Dear Mr. B,
As previously mentioned I am happy to feed you whenever you would like, but please please please try to sleep at least an hour between said requests. Parties from 11pm-2am are not our idea of a good time.
Love,
Mom and Dad

And Baby Makes 3 :)

It has been far too long since we have updated this, and for anyone who knows us there is definitely a lot that has gone on between June and the present. Instead of catching up we will just cover the basics, basically we are now a happy family of 3.

We welcomed our son Mr. B into our family at 12:06pm on Sunday July 25th. He weighed a tiny but healthy 6 lb. 14 oz. 19 inches long. He has beautiful dark blonde hair and plenty of it.

As new parents we spent the early part of July constantly wondering when the adorable Mr. B would make his debut. I had always joked that I wanted to have him on pioneer day. We spent the 24th in Salt Lake hanging out with family and had a wonderful time. As we were leaving Si's (G's mom) house she teased us about not having Mr. B tomorrow or on Monday because she would be tempted to still go on her annual Lake Powell.

Although the comment was made in complete jest Mr. B took him seriously and at 3:15 Sunday warning my water broke. I had only a handful of contractions so I tried to go back to sleep, it did not work as I was far to nervous/excited so I got dressed put on makeup (because I am weird like that), cleaned out the fridge a little, at 5:40am we made our way to Timpanogus hospital. By then my contractions had completely stopped, which made the ride much comfier than I had anticipated.

They put us in a room, confirmed that my water had broken, and then began what began an epic attempt at putting an IV in my arm. Two nurses and 7 stabs later they finally got the IV inserted, it was terrible. It took almost an hour, by then they were concerned that my contractions would not start up again so they started me on pitocin (so essentially they "induced me".

They continued to get closer together until they were back to back, at that point I requested an epidural (thankful the anesthesiologist was much better at inserting that particular needle). I was annoyed that the epidural made my legs feel like I was at the dentist. The nurse informed me that it was actually a good sign that I had feeling from the waist down (no pain though), and she was right.

About 10 minutes after the epidural we had a five minute scare, (Benton's heart rate dropped) thankfully our prayers were answered and everything went back to normal. That was at about 10:00am and after the ordeal I was at 5cm halfway there! The next two hours flew by, the nurse checked me at 11:55am exclaimed that I was done, we did not not know what she meant but then she pulled G and had me try to push. She said that I was so good that she was calling the Dr. immediately. 11 min and 2 pushes later we were parents!