We made it!

It was definitely the most stressful month of my life, but we made it! I don't have internet at our new house yet (comcast is the devil) so I'm currently at my gracious brother Kevin's house since I'm theoretically back at work again today and needed internet.
We arrived at our new house at 1 am Friday night. Kenny drove the whole way expect for one hour (I drove from a rest stop to another rest stop in the middle of nowhere so Kenny could nap). The entire length of the uhaul plus the car trailer was probably about 45 feet, so it was definitely a daunting thing to drive, but Kenny did marvelously.
We love our new house and are already 70% unpacked, I'd say (mostly Kenny's doing). All we are currently lacking is a stove (which should arrive today) and internet. Houston is great and sunny and warm(er).
I'll post more later went things have calmed down, I just wanted to briefly post and say we made it and we are happy. Christmas was great, the move was as good as it could be, and we are just feeling so blessed.
P.S. Today I hit 20 weeks of pregnancy- I'm halfway done! I'm finally showing, too.

Congrats, Husband!

Today is Kenny's last day of classes ever! Well, the last day where he'll be the student. It's been an awful semester and it honestly feels like I'm finishing classes too, with how much it affects me. I'm so proud of him, he's such a hard worker. I don't think I could handle his schedule, and he's been such a trooper and still managed to take care of me.
And, a week from today is my last day in my office ever! After that, I'll be working remotely. And a week from today we close on our house. Big exciting things are getting closer!

More pictures!

Well, I made it back from Quebec 20 hours later than planned, just in time for my work party which was a blast. I'm so glad to be back home with my wonderful husband (who cleaned the house for me while I was gone, yay). If only I could get rid of the 5 inches of snow:).
So, I have one exciting pic- I'm finally showing, at least a little:). Here's a pic of me at 16 weeks in my hotel in Quebec. I have some bare belly shots (nothing too scandalous), too- you can click on the pic if you're the type to care about pregnant tummies.

Let's see. Other pictures. Here we are at Thanksgiving- Ben, Aaron, Kenny and I. We had a great time, with a delicious ham (and a chicken, but no turkey). We'll miss our friends a lot when we move.

Here is our friend Amos the mouse. He lives in our stove, and is too smart for traps. He pops his head through the elements occasionally, whack-a-mole style. For this pic, both Kenny and I were within 5 feet of him, discussing him in normal voices and taking pictures. This little guy is fearless.

And here is why I'm convinced Kenny will be a great daddy (forgive his bathrobedness while he was doing homework):

And here is our Christmas tree (fake tree from Walmart, a bit too big for our current apartment):

For any more pics, feel free to poke around my web album.

Trials make us learn

What I've learned this week:
-If you are traveling to Canada, and your passport is in your maiden name, your tickets must also be purchased in your maiden name (would have saved me one hour and $75).
-Red-eye flights aren't that bad when you have room enough on the plane to sleep. Red-eye layovers are the things to watch out for.
-When one arrives in Canada on business, one should lie and say they are there for pleasure (would have saved me 2 hours and $150).
-You may be old enough to have a baby and buy a house, but not old enough to rent a car without paying extra and getting your car selection greatly reduced. (A brand new charger in 2 feet of snow...)
-While the Hilton may sound nice, a place with free internet and free breakfast would be nicer.
-Sometimes a Valet is the only option, no matter how much the frugal part inside of you cries against it.
-When planning outfits for a trip, make sure every article of clothing makes it into your suitcase. A beautiful outfit left on the bed won't be much good for you.
-Always go for the GPS unit they offer you when you rent a car. A good sense of direction is useless in a blizzard in a city that likes quaint little non-through streets.
-The quebec airport, though similar in size to a large bus station, has two very nice features: 1, free internet (hence this post) and 2, they play delightful classical christmas music, mixed with occasional holiday songs sung by my french-canadian friend, Bruno Pelletier (of Temps des Cathedrales fame). Nothing could have cheered me up like Bruno could have.
-Getting from Salt Lake City to Quebec (or back) takes, on average, 3 flights and 12 hours in either planes or airports- both ways.
-If you have a squishy carry-on for a pillow, any airport bench without armrests can become a decent enough bed.
-Being 4 months pregnant should not hinder one's sense of "adventure". Yeah... adventure...
-Though not extremely comfortable, pregnancy is a blessing. Just when I was feeling so alone, and thought things could get no worse, my baby kicked! It was only the second time I had felt anything, and it was at a moment when I needed to not feel so alone. Thanks, little one.
-My husband is now a part of me. When he's not near me, it feels like something is missing. I am so very excited to see him again! (You'd think 3 days would be no big deal, but we hadn't spent more than 24 hours apart since... well, since before our engagement, probably.)

With any luck, I'll be back in Utah tomorrow night for my work's Christmas Party. Then I have one weekend to pack, then Kenny's finals, then we need to find a place to stick a puppy for four days, then a drive to California to spend Christmas with my husband's family, a drive back to Utah on Christmas day, one day to pack up the uhaul, and a two-day drive to Houston. In other words, I hope to once again be a pleasant person to be around sometime around January 1st. Thanks, everyone, for being patient and helpful!

The Entertainer

Last night I got to finally fulfill a dream of mine: I got to see Billy Joel live.
In 7th grade, I got myself his greatest hits albums. I remembered listening to the song Piano Man as a kid, and one of my new friends, an odd fellow named Jonah, was a huge fan. Within a few years, my sister and I had every album and every word memorized. He's the first musician that got me passionate about music. He also convinced me to stop listening to the radio.
My junior year of High School, Billy was on what was supposed to be his last tour ever as he slipped into retirement. Lori, now in college, and I decided to spend our life savings to see him perform at Madison Square Gardens in his home town of New York City (mind you, I grew up in Washington State- it wasn't exactly something we could make a road trip out of). It took a lot of saving and a lot of convincing my parents, but we got it all planned and flew out.
We got to see the sites of manhattan, and I got to see Les Miserables on broadway, which is still one of the highlights of my life. However, the day of the concert, we found out it was cancelled. Billy was "sick". And by sick, I mean, probably too drunk to perform. It's something I've been bitter about ever since: Billy stood me up, and I lost my one chance to see him live.
Well, in the years since, Billy has cleaned up a bit. It would appear he's running out of money, as well, so he's touring again. His recent compilation album, "My Lives" was a compilation of his favorite but more obscure songs (much better than his greatest hits- in my opinion, Greatest Hits are seldom an artist's best songs). And this tour went along the same theme. In truth, I've moved on to other artists lately and don't listen to Billy much anymore. I went to this concert mostly to be able to say I finally saw him live, not because I'm passionate about his music anymore.
Then I saw him, and I heard him, and I transformed back into an excitable 13 year old girl, screaming my heart out and nearly bursting with music. The show last night was AMAZING. Honestly, I couldn't be happier with it. His voice is back up to par, his piano was of course incredible, and his song selection... words can hardly tell how happy it made me. The first half hour of the show was particularly good- he even did a song from his first album, which is perhaps his least known album, but my personal favorite. Among my favorites of the evening: The Entertainer, Everybody loves you now, Angry Young Man, Vienna and... well, he didn't actually play it (he let the audience vote and another song won), but the fact he even mentioned Summer Highland Falls made my heart jump.
Now, if only I could get Led Zep to tour in the US again, or make Joni Mitchell 30 years younger...

Things I'm grateful for

This is a great thanksgiving for me- so much to be grateful for!

• I'm grateful for my sweet husband. He takes such good care of me and always makes me feel special and loved. He's a hard worker and we always have fun together.
• I'm grateful for my puppy. Lucy has grown up to be a great dog- literally, nearly no complaints from me. The energy level has calmed down a bit, she doesn't whine anymore, and she obeys all directions really well. And she's adorable! Lately she likes to carry her towel/doggy blanket around with her in her mouth- just like a baby blanket, always dragging around. It's so cute.
  
• I am so grateful for my job. I am so lucky to have found it, and that they are going to let me work remotely when we move. I never thought with my linguistics major I would find a job like this.
• I am grateful for our home! The loan stuff came through this week and we got a really good deal and I'm just feeling so blessed.
• I'm grateful for my baby. It's amazing how emotionally attached I've gotten to this little alien parasite growing in my tummy. We're so excited to have her (or him) join us.
• I am grateful for our health. Especially with the kind of care I take of myself, I know I have an amazing guardian angel.
  
• I'm grateful for my family. I love that we have all stayed close into adulthood. I love that I still consider my parents some of my best friends. I've been so lucky to have Lori nearby, and to have Becky a short IM/phone call away, and we are so excited to be moving closer to Kevin and his sweet wife Candace. And Chris- well, someday we'll see Chris again:).
  
• And last but not least, I am so grateful for my church and my testimony. I can't imagine living without the direction, love and guidance that Christ and his gospel give me.
  

I hope everyone has a wonderful thanksgiving!

We own a home!

After two intense days of searching, we found the home of our dreams. It's a brand new home in a brand new development, just under 2000 square feet and cost us 138,000 (which was 25k down from its asking price). It has 4 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms. We also get a 42 inch LG plasma HD TV as part of the deal. :)

OK, so I don't LOVE the exterior. I really wish the bricks connected from one side to the other just above the garage, but it'll do. For all the photos plus a walk-through of the house, go to our web album.
Things we love about this house:

• It's in a great location, about 15 minutes southeast of my brother Kevin (more towards the city). Kenny's commute will probably be about 20 minutes, maybe less. The development we're is only about 10% built, so the land will be appreciating. We'll have one of the cheaper houses on the block, which is nice for reselling. We won't be in Kevin's ward, but we will be in his stake. We're very near a shopping center, right on a main road, and there's a huge mega church across from us, so we know that that land nearby isn't going to be turned into a shopping mall anytime soon.
  
• It has a GIANT backyard. I mean, HUGE. We'll need to lay down sod in the backyard, but Lucy will have more room than she'll know what to do with. I'll get to go to town with landscaping and gardening (Already got myself a Texas Gardening book).
  
• There isn't a space in the house we can't think of a good use for. Most of the houses we saw had a dining room/parlor area that we just wouldn't use or have furniture for, or didn't have enough bedroom space, but this one is just right.
  
• We LOVE the kitchen. It will come with upgraded black dishwasher/stove to match our black/stainless steel fridge. The cupboards are the nice 42" ones. The sink has a drinking tap with purified water. The countertops are some nice near-granite stone. The breakfast nook will suit our table perfectly.
• The master bedroom itself was very big but nothing too notable. It is on the first story, so we'll be downstairs and the other bedrooms are up. Both of us will have our own large, walk-in closets.
  
• The master bathroom is, like all new Texas bathrooms, wonderful and big. I've got a huge giant bathtub with a separate shower, 2-sink vanity with a place to have a chair in front of the mirror... so fancy.
• It's boring, but the home is way energy efficient. We got the fancy appliances, the fancy insulation, the fancy A/C, the super sealant on the double-paned windows... all will definitely help keep utility costs down.
• It has 4 bedrooms- the master, two "unnotable" but big enough bedrooms upstairs, and one really big one upstairs. We're thinking the big upstairs one will be a nursery, one of the average rooms will be my office, and the other one will be the guest/random junk room.
• It has a good gas fireplace- not a gas log one, but one where we put in our own wood, which I prefer.
  
• As part of the move in, we got to choose between upgraded appliances/2-inch plantation blinds throughout/shudder on that front window vs. having sod in the backyard. We chose the first option and we'll take care of landscaping and sodding the backyard ourselves.
• The seller is helping pay the closing costs and set us up with their own lender. We're hoping to qualify for a good FHA loan.

So that's the general idea. Here's a link to the map of where we are. We are both so very happy and think this will be perfect for us. The closing date is December 20th but we probably won't move in until the 27th-29th.

Excitingly terrified

So, I'm realizing more and more that I'm terrified of all the exciting stuff coming up. Excited, but terrified.
We leave tomorrow to Houston for 3 days to find a house. In essence, we have two days- two whole days to find our first home, where we'll start raising a family. In a state we've only visited once. We're SO excited, but I'm feeling the pressure a bit too. We've just about lost patience with our current apartment, and as the winter comes I'm excited to escape the cold as much as possible. Lucy is excited to have a yard of her own so she never has to sit in her kennel for 9 hours again.
A lot of the homes we've been looking at online are great. Mostly 4 bedroom, 2 story, built in the last 5 years... for 120-140k!
Which raises the next thing I'm afraid of. We're using my stock options to help come up with money for the down payment. I vested (my options became available to me) on November 6th- the day the stock market took a turn for the worst. And, unfortunately, a 1% change in the market comes out to a 5 or 10% change in my company stock... and it went from 36 to 26 in about a week. It's gone back up a little, and it may go up more between now and Dec 15th when I go into a company blackout period (to prevent insider trading), but... I feel so unlucky! Had I vested and exercised my options just one day sooner... we'd have probably 6k more to work with! At the same time, I feel so blessed just to have the options and with how the timing worked out. Pray for the stock market for me (ironically, it's down because of the low housing problems right now).
I think my other big fear/excitement surrounds the baby, or rather, parenthood. Obviously, I'm thrilled we're having a baby. This has been the biggest thing for me to look forward to over the years. But yeah, it is a little scary. Aside from the fears about if the baby is healthy, if I can make it through labor, if I can keep a baby alive... the big picture of being a parent is so big I can't wrap my head around it. And the fact that Kenny and I both grew up seeing very different parenting styles (heck, between my two parents I saw totally opposite parenting styles) makes me curious to see how this will work out. I have no doubt he will be an amazing father.
So please, share in our excitement, but pray that we'll be able to make a good choice this weekend, and tackle everything coming up:)

So I think my blog needs more pictures

Blogs with pictures are the funnest, so I need to spice mine up a little more. Please note you can click on any of the images to see a bigger version. Here are some Halloween pics from the party at work:

Ten points to anyone who guesses what either of us are (it shouldn't be hard). Here's friend Jer, who won the $1000 grand prize for best costume, was Optimus Prime from Transformers. I thought it was pretty kickin:

The CEO, his wife, and the executive team dressed up as Prince Charming and Snow White, and hired 7 midgets for the day to be the 7 dwarves. Apparently each year the CEO figures out some way to incorporate midgets into his costume, to the point that the midget community looks forward to it and vies for the position each year.


Let's see... other good pics... well, I should post the pic of my ultrasound the other day, but I still haven't scanned it. Here's a pic of Kenny and I just before we went to a friends wedding the other day. Note that I still look completely unpregnant:

And here's a pic of a random cute baby beaver, who makes me happy:

Scary day with a happy surprise

First let me say this post may have a little too much info for those who don't know me well or just don't want to hear about such things. I'll try to keep it as ick-free as possible.
So, we had a scare this weekend. I had my first real appointment with my midwife last friday and they did typical poking around in awkward places. They warned me there may be some spotting, and there was on Friday/Saturday, but nothing notable.
Then Sunday night, it got a little worse. Monday morning, it was REALLY bad. So I called them and got an appointment for an Ultrasound, but the earliest they could do it was 3 pm. So all day I was at work, trying to not think about all those late miscarriage stories I'd heard. Yesterday was my 12 week mark, which is in theory the "safe" mark (chances of miscarriage drop to like 3% or something). I didn't have any cramping or something, which was some consolation.
And, of course, Kenny forgot his cell phone yesterday. So I had to email him updates.
So, 3 o'clock rolls around, I ditch my clients, and go for an ultrasound by myself since Kenny had class. The last ultrasound (at 9 weeks) was such a quick thing, and the baby didn't look like a baby at all. This time, I got about 15 minutes worth of looking at a perfect little human from every angle. She (and I will call her "she" for the sake of ease of communication) was all stretched out, as if on a hammock. She had arms, legs, a little pot belly... I think she even sucked her thumb at some point. The midwife said it was one of the best 12 week ultrasounds she had seen- usually the babies are all scrunched up, but mine was putting on a show. Everything looked 100% ok.
And then the technician did something strange. She said "would you like to guess the gender?" "Um, sure. I think it's a girl."
Then she said "well, it's obviously too soon to be sure, but I think you're right. Look at this". And she showed me in the baby's genital region 3 little white lines. She said those white lines are what they look for to tell if it's a girl. She hadn't ever seen them so early, but they were pretty clear. She said obviously don't go buying girl clothes yet, but she's 80% sure this ones a girl. I'm gonna try and not get my hopes up, but since I already thought it was a girl... it's gonna be hard to not permanently think of this baby as a girl. Only 7-8 weeks and we can know for sure.
The midwife has no idea why I was spotting so bad, but it stopped yesterday. She put me on "pelvic rest" for 2 weeks and told me to take it easy for the next few days, so today I stayed home from work (or rather, I stayed at Lori's home, since my internet doesn't work and there's some odd smell wafting from our landlady's half of the house). I'd love to post a pic of the ultrasound, it really was incredible, but got to wait til my internet at home gets working. Anyways, thanks for your prayers, I think everything will be ok and I'm feeling great about this pregnancy.

This week in our lfie

Today we got to hear the baby's heartbeat again- a healthy 170 beats per minute! No pics this time, as we didn't get an ultrasound- just some uncomfortable prodding for me.
I'm still down about 13 pounds, but my appetite is pretty much back as of last week. I probably look less pregnant now than I did when I started, but I can notice a difference below my belly button. The baby is about 2 inches long right now, can wiggle and flex his hands, and has a less alien look these days.
Aside from the pregnancy, we got a lot going on. Halloween was awesome. My office went all out. Honestly, if you told me my company spent 20k on halloween decorations, I wouldn't be surprised inth e least. Each department had something big going on. I hear marketing even had a petting zoo. Not an ounce of work was done the whole day (except for me, a client exploded in the morning) and everyone brought their families for the party all afternoon. I dressed up as the witch from Monty Python's holy grail. For those who hadn't seen the movie, I was just frumpy looking. But about 10 people got it without prompting, which made me happy. Kenny came in the afternoon with a great Dr. Mario costume.
Poor Kenny. This is going to be an awful 6 week block for him. He's on campus from 8 am to 4 most days, then has to squish in 20 hours of work each week, working around evening classes and other obligations. He's definitely showing the wear. He doesn't complain and just keeps chugging along, but I feel awful for him. I wish there was more I can do to relieve his stress. Fortunately, it's only for another month or so, then we're done! In a little less than two weeks we take a whirlwind trip to find our house in Houston. We're so excited!
Anyways, there's the recap.

A post about Husband

My sister in law Margie did this on her blog, and it seemed like a good idea. Instead of a blog post about me, here's one about my husband.

Where did you meet your husband?
Freshman year, probably at either ward prayer or at my neighbor's apartment. My roommates weren't particularly social and made stinky food, so I frequently escaped to Apartment 126 next door- a couple of the girls were in my french class and we made fast friends.. Kenny was in their FHE group and was over there a fair amount too, so it was inevitable that we'd hang out a bit. The girls tried to fix us up, but I didn't think we had enough in common.
We did go on one date, though. Freshman year he invited me to see the Jazz group perform on campus, and that was technically a "date", but apparently I talked about other guys (my High School guy friends) the whole time and it was a bit of a turn off for him, so things didn't really move forward after that, though we did spend Thanksgiving alone together since the rest of the ward had gone home. At the end of the year, he went on a mission and I pretty much forgot about him, though I occasionally heard news from our mutual friends.
After his mission, we saw each other at a Freshman reunion (whose sole purpose was for us ladies to meet up with all the RMs). I remembered that Kenny had been a Tolkien fan and figured he was on his mission when Return of the King came out, and I had been wanting to watch it, so I asked if he had seen it and if he wanted to come watch it. He lied and said he hadn't seen it, and two or three weeks later he came over and we watched it together. I remember when I dropped him off that night, he asked if he could take me out to dinner the next night, and I said yes. After he got out of the car, I was giddy all the way home. That was nearly 2 years ago today.

What was the first thing you said to your husband?
Probably "Hi, my name is Jenn". He said something about my transformer's t-shirt, which I had "borrowed" from my sister Becky (and still have).

Where was the first kiss? First date?
Ha. I like the order of this question. As I said earlier, we did go on a "date" freshman year, but it hardly counted. After we watched Return of the King together, we went out to the California Pizza Kitchen the next night (November 5th, 2005). We were inseparable from there on out.

The first kiss was a couple weeks later. We were watching Big Fish at my place, and afterwards we just cuddled on the couch. I had sworn to myself I wouldn't initiate the kiss, but I didn't realize that Kenny didn't have much experience or courage when it comes to such things. Anyways, I was doing everything in the book to try and get him to kiss me, and finally I asked him what he was thinking about. He said "I bet you could guess what I'm thinking about". And I said "I bet I could. I'm just wondering why you don't go ahead and DO it". After a few more minutes of him pep talking himself into it, we both leaned in. I think it's fair to say we both initiated the first kiss.

Did you have a long or short courtship? Engagement?
We dated from the beginning of November through Christmas. I think over Christmas break, while we were in our respective homes, we both started thinking more seriously about things. Then we both came back early from home and spent all day every day together for like a week before school started. I think it was during that time we first mentioned marriage, so technically it was about 2 months (geez, that sounds short). He proposed about a month and a half later (February 18th). We didn't get married until August 19th, so we were technically engaged for 6 months, had dated for 9ish months, and had known each other for 4 years (2 of which, Kenny was on a mission).

Where did you get engaged?
We had gone home to meet my parents. I knew after he spoke to my dad, a proposal wouldn't be long coming. We had already picked out the ring, though Kenny made some great additions to it. So, we went home and Kenny had a long talk with my dad. The marriage bit of it wasn't a big deal, my dad liked Kenny from the start. Unfortunately, my dad felt it necessary to initiate Kenny into the family by discussing politics for 4 hours, while forgetting poor Kenny hadn't eaten all day. Poor guy.
Anyways, that night, I took him to see the Portland Temple. On the drive back, the freeway spat me out int he middle of Portland somehow, right next to my favorite fountain. Kenny couldn't have planned that, but he did expect me to take him to this fountain while we were home, since I'd talked about it so much. He had planned on getting down on one knee int he water. Unfortunately, it was the middle of the winter and the fountain was turned off. Even with the water off, it's a pretty cool structure so we just played around for a while anyways. I think I knew it was coming and was trying to make it easier for him. Eventually, he did get down on one knee and asked me to marry him. I think I cried, I can't remember. We were both really happy.

Where did you get married?
The Portland, Oregon LDS temple.

How did the reception go?
It went great! I was sooo happy with how the flowers and cake turned out. My mom and her helpers did a great job. I loved all my little nieces and nephews in matching outfits, and I'm really glad all my siblings got to be there.

How was the honeymoon?
It was amazing. The first night we spent in a fancy hotel in Portland (which looked much fancier online), then we drove up to my parents timeshare Condo in Victoria, Canada. It was the perfect town for a honeymoon- very pretty, but not so much to do we felt obliged to do anything. We were there for 4 days, I think, then we traded with my parents and they came up to Canada while we drove down to their house in Portland. Yeah, it's weird we spent some of our honeymoon at my parent's house, but it's not like anyone else was there, and there was a lot about my hometown I still wanted to show him. We got to go to the zoo and had a great time.

It's been over a year since we married, and things are still great!

A Healthy Baby Peanut

I had my first doctor appointment today. It was supposed to be pretty boring- just give them my medical history, some blood, pee in a cup, and call it good. But this morning I had had some very light spotting, and that, combined with me passing out and hitting my head yesterday morning (just a head rush, no big deal), got me an early ultrasound! Typically I wouldn't have heard the heartbeat for a couple weeks, and wouldn't have actually seen the baby until 20 weeks, so this is huge. Especially with all my online friends who have miscarried (we lost 3 yesterday), it was worrisome and I was eager to make sure I had a viable pregnancy.
They squeezed me into the ultrasound at the last minute, so it was real quick. I still haven't even met any of the midwives I'll be working with. That appointment is November 5th.
I've got a healthy little baby in there! I got to see it, it fluttered around, was a little over an inch long, and had a heart beat of about 180 beats per minute (it seems high but is the upper range for babies at 9 weeks- it'll drop as time goes on). I'm still right on track for my original guessed due date of May 20th.
Here's a picture of the picture. The little peanut-looking thing is the baby:

So everything's great, and I got an early look at my healthy baby. Definitely worth a morning of worrying.

A random thing on my mind

In retrospect, my last blog was a bit whiny. So let me say this: yes, it's a bit of a pain, but I LOVE being pregnant. And I actually like having symptoms because that means I'm baking a baby, and that's a good thing. And I know things could be so much worse. And my husband has been amazing to me this whole time. And I'm finally eating a bit again. So yeah, things are good.
Oh, and we got happy news that we are unofficially prequalified for a decent sum of money for a house, and with a good interest rate. And my company stock is doing pretty well (all of our house plans are counting on that stock staying above the thirty. Obviously, the higher the better). Yay! I'll fly down next month and pick out a home.
This is going to be a really random blog. I've been thinking a lot the last couple days about a certain painting. See, some punks broke into the Musee D'Orsay museum in Paris and punched a hole through a Monet. I'm not blogging about that, sad though it is, but it reminded me of something. I used to visit that museum a lot- it was my second favorite museum in Paris and was free on Sundays (the Rodin museum was my first favorite museum. That puts the Louvre in third).
There was one painting at the Musee D'Orsay, kind of in a corner, that is one of my all time-favorites now. It's called "Les disciples Pierre et Jean courant au sépulcre le matin de la Résurrection" or, in English, "The disciples Peter and John running to the tomb the morning of the Resurrection", and it's by some fellow I hadn't heard of named Eugene Burnand.
Here's the low-quality pic I took of it:

It is my favorite religious work of art (I'm generally not a fan of the genre as a whole, with some of my least favorites, Gary Olsen and Minerva Teichert, a bit overrepresented in Utah).
They look so hopeful, and worried, and excited, to get to the tomb. And they look like real people, vulnerable and worried about a friend. I don't know why it moves me so much, but I wanted to point it out to the world.
I hadn't ever heard of it, nor has anyone I've talked to except when we visited Kenny's sister Jeanette in Dallas, she had a beautiful print of it up on her wall. I was thrilled to see a copy of it again, and thrilled that someone else as cool as Jeanette liked it to.
Anyways, for some reason the painting has been on my mind and now I want a print to go up on my wall someday. Keep an eye out for it.

The things they don't tell you

So, as far as I know the pregnancy is still going well. Here's what I've learned about pregnancy that I didn't know before:
-It's completely normal to LOSE weight at the beginning of a pregnancy. I've actually lost 10 pounds since I found out. This is to make up for the eventual weight I am sure I will gain. Remember 2003 when that medicine made me pack all that weight into my cheeks and bum? (It was the same summer that I overplucked my eyebrows.... not a good summer for me.) Yeah, I'm terrified of that happening again... all the weight going into my cheeks or something. My limbs have never picked weight up much and I fear being disproportionate.
-Morning sickness isn't just in the morning. Well, I had heard that before, but I figured they meant "you can feel sick at night instead". What they actually mean is "you will feel sick all day every day for the next 3 months". To be fair, I'm lucky- I haven't vomited. I just hate food. I actually gag when I try to swallow stuff. No wonder I've lost weight.
-I will cry if I'm out of bed past 10 pm. I don't need a reason. Kenny will look over, bless his heart, and go "is everything ok, sweetiie?" and I'll just be a puddle on the floor. I've never known exhaustion like this.
-You get dumber. I can't remember stuff, I can't spell anymore and I can't focus enough for even some video games.
-Apparently blood pressure goes down for the first trimester. Go figure. Whereas I used to get dizzy one out of ten times of standing up, now EVERY time I stand up, I immediately fall right back down, usually with some sort of dazed dopey look on my face.
-Every one you know will tell you horror stories about pregnancy. "I was in labor 28 hours!" or "I miscarried at 5 months". All stuff that I don't particularly want to hear. Like I've said before, I'm terrified of miscarrying. The less I think about it the better.
-The world doesn't slow down for your pregnancy. Not every one will guess you are pregnant, and not every one will treat you like you're amazing for putting yourself through this. As a matter of fact, women go through this every day and it's apparently not earth-shattering (these women, all mothers, are now my heroes).
-I've learned some other things and read a frightfully honest pregnancy book that let me know what I was really in for, but I want to shield the rest of the world, particularly my wonderful husband, from some of the more gory or depressing aspects of it, so I'll wrap this up.

After all my whining, I'm thrilled to have symptoms because that means the baby is growing and my body is responding appropriately. I'd be more freaked out if I lost my symptoms. My baby this week is about half an inch long, has a heart, lungs and some brain, and flippery-dos for limbs.

What a great day

First, if you're looking for the big news, it's a couple posts down.
Well, about a week ago I emailed my boss with two huge bits of news: 1) I'll need maternity leave next spring, and 2)I'm moving to (I mean, may I please move to) Houston and and working remotely. It was a terrifying email to write, but I needed to know about working remotely and didn't want to have him jump through those hoops for me and THEN bring up my pregnancy. I figured this was the fairest way to do it.
Well, it took him a while to get back to me, because he had to clear it through all levels of bureaucracy, but today I got the OK to continue my position from Texas. I don't know what we would have done with another response, since Kenny already submitted his application, but I have a huge load off my shoulders and feel kind of special- it's a big deal to have your superiors decide you can handle working from your home. My boss has been way supportive and we're so lucky.
Now, if only I could figure out how to even begin thinking about moving so far away and finding a home of our own.
I scheduled my first doctors appointment for October 16th. I'll be 9 weeks along and will hopefully get to hear a heart beat.

More big news

Well, to start with, I'm still pregnant, which is a very good thing. I'm terrified of miscarrying. No real reason for me to fear it particularly, aside from this has all seemed just too easy. So far, still no real nausea, just an overall aversion to food and feeling of queasiness. I have gagged a couple times while trying to eat, but so long as I'm not vomiting I'm happy.
So here's the other big news: Kenny has applied to do student teaching in the Aldine school district in Houston Texas. This means that rather than moving next august, we will move in late December/early January. He'll still graduate in April, but will already have a good standing with a district in Houston- a district that happens to pay about 45k/year for a starting HS math teacher. That's insane for a new teacher! However, the district has a very high minority rate (something like 90%) and is kind of rough.
So we're looking at houses and will hopefully move into a house of our own within 4 months or so! Our very own house! We'll be away from the screaming girls upstairs, the falling apart apartment, the Utah winter...
We've prayed about but we're too biased to get a real answer. It's a bit late to change our minds now, but we're so excited.

The big news (that everyone already knows)

First let me preface this by saying I am the worst secret keeper of all time. OK, well, I wasn't even really trying. Now that the cats pretty much out of the bag I might as well make it official:
I'M PREGNANT! We found out last Sunday. I'm 5 weeks along next Monday, and the baby should come sometime around May 19th.
So, pretty much ever since we got married we've both planned and tried to figure out the soonest time we could start trying without having the baby while Kenny was still in school, or before we had a chance to really get good at this marriage thing. Well we just finished the first year of our marriage and things couldn't be better. Kenny graduates in just under 9 months. And we have enough money saved up to not only have a baby but to also move into a real house within the next year (thanks to my company stock). I got it all planned out in my big fancy budgety spreadsheet. In July, we prayed and fasted and both felt that the time was getting right. Of course, I knew I'm biased, so I left it up to Kenny. Once he gave me the go-ahead, it became this all-consuming thought. I charted my basal temperatures each day to figure out when I was ovulating (not like it really changed how we do things). My temps showed that I ovulated really early in my cycl, which theoretically means a positive pregnancy test could come much sooner than the end of my cycle. What's often referred to as the dreaded"two week wait" ended up being a three week wait, during which time everytime I felt slightly funny I'd think "ooooo, maybe that means I'm pregnant!". And then came the craziness- "I bet I'm not pregnant and I'm just imagining I'm feeling nauseous."
To keep myself (and Kenny) sane, I started spending a lot of time on the bulletin boards at pregnancy.com, chatting with the other girls TTC (trying to conceive). IT really helped to have someone to talk to without bugging Kenny all day with "oh, I'm craving yogurt. Maybe I'm pregnant!"
In retrospect I stressed about it way too much- eh, who am I kidding, I knew I was stressing too much at the time, but what can you do? I'm just so excited! Anyways, after 7 home pregnancy test, taken every-other day BFNs (that's Big Fat Negatives), I finally got a faint line on Sunday and a stronger line on Monday. Meaning three happy things:
1) We don't have to go through this craziness next month
2)I wasn't crazy that whole time, I actually did feel symptoms of pregnancy!
3)WE'RE HAVING A BABY!

It was all too easy (though obviously the hard part has yet to come). I feel so bad for all the girls on the TTC board who have been trying for 2 or 3 years. Especially since I've had ovarian cyst trouble and have never been particularly healthy, we just feel so lucky and blessed.
I know it's standard practice to keep a pregnancy a secret for the first 12 weeks or so, in case you miscarry, but I just couldn't. If Kenny had told me not to tell anyone, I might have been able to... then again, maybe not. Most people who know me well at all know how excited I've been for this, and how it's a HUGE deal for me. The only person who can't know yet is my boss, and it's nothing personal- I just don't want him to know until the next round of promotions and bonuses come out in October. Some of my coworkers guessed, and I was hardly being sneaky on facebook, so pretty much everyone knows now.
I still feel foolish for letting on so early- if I miscarry I'm sure I'll really regret it. But we're so excited, and even if I miscarry, I think it'd be nicer to not feel completely alone and secret about it. Fortunately, we know that getting pregnant wasn't hard, so if we do miscarry, we'll be sad, but it won't be the end of the world. I don't want to think about that right now though. I want to go back to thinking about how tired I am, how hungry I am without actually wanting any specific food... and how very, very Happy I am.

The Bad Blogger

OK, so I'm a bad blogger. If I get even a little behind, I give up. That said, I have big news, which I'll blog about next. For now I will just get you caught up:

We hiked timp together. I thought I was going to die but we made it it to the top just in time for the sunrise. It was beautiful, and I was so proud of myself:


We went camping in Zions for our first anniversary. We had so much fun. We hiked the Virgin River Narrows and had the puppy with us... it was a great experience.


Kenny has started school back up. His schedule is AWFUL. Each day we drive in between Lehi, Provo, and Orem all day. The puppy trades hands and gets too much alone time. And Kenny hzsn't gotten to really relax since the weekend. Poor boy. Fortunately it's his last semester of classes, and none of the classes are hard- just time consuming. I think it'll be a rough few months but we'll get through it. Oh, he had to shave his beard off too, for school.

I think that just about sums things up. I'll save the biggest news for the next blog.

What's new pussy cat, woo-o-o-o-oah!

Nothing too exciting to report on. Sister Becky is in town and we've had fun playing with her and her family. We've done some seriously cleaning and now have grass out front (pray to the grass gods that it will live). Lori comes into town Friday night and stays with us for a week. Also, Friday night we are hiking mount timp with Kenny's Cousin, Grant. Then the following weekend we go to Zion's to camp and celebrate our one-year anniversary. No news about the weird neighbor situation. Apparently they know they can't prove it's Kenny and are hoping the situation just magically goes away. Not exactly ideal, but so long as they aren't telling people in the ward of their suspicions (and it would appear they aren't) I'm ok.
Last night I read a 600 page book in one sitting. It's book three of a series I was just introduced to (thanks, Anna Rose) and it just came out yesterday. The series, which starts with the book "Twilight' is impossible to describe without making it sound dumb, but I've loved reading them. And I was very pleasantly surprised to find out the author is Mormon and graduated recently from BYU in English- living my dream. You wouldn't guess she's Mormon by her writing, but I'm glad to see an LDS author hold their own without writing for just a Mormon audience. I'm also reading the latest in the Thursday Next series, which I adore. Lots of reading, since Kenny has been working overtime lately.
I'm dreading the school year because I'm going to be practically husband-less for fall semester: Kenny is taking 18 credits and planning on still working at least 20 hours/week.
Oh, and a few of my best friends from former years are visiting Utah this month. Oh, and my company stock (omtr) is going crazy in a very exciting way (our house plans rest on my stock options).
That's all I got. In an effort to make my blog more interesting, I'm going to include fun things at the bottom. Here, have a photo of a happy swimming elephant:


And a quote:
95% of the world lives with their eyes closed. The other 5% lives in constant amazement.
-Anonymous

Take the good with the bad

Let's see. There's not much of an update on the story with the neighbors. We found out some more details from the bishop (who's been wonderful) and decided to be as supportive to them as possible without actually communicating with them in any way. This mostly means just grinning and bearing it. Kenny hasn't been arrested yet, so we're not too worried. As of last Monday or so, we kind of stopped caring too much.
Aside from that, things have been "ok". Actually, this week was pretty poopy, so this might come out as a bit of a rant session. Let's talk about the good things first:
-Lucy graduated from puppy school. She won the "come-when-called" competition (quite a surprise for us).
-We saw Harry Potter 5 on Friday and quite enjoyed it
-In the last week, I've read: Wicked (I give it 5/10), Jane Eyre (9/10), Harry Potter 7 (7/10), the Eyre Affair (9/10), and most of Twilight (so far, 8/10). I bought a couple new books with my birthday money yesterday, including Alice in Wonderland and a "Musee d'Orsay" coffee table book (the muse d'orsay is my second favorite museum in Paris, second only to the Rodin Museum.)
-Kenny is wonderful
-I bought Civilization 4 for the computer and quite like it (though, in game play, it's very similar to Civ 3, which was also good)
-My' work threw a kickin' party on Thursday at seven peaks. They rented the whole park out for a day and had free food and entertainment. We even got free massages. It was a lot of fun.
Alright, so now for my rants:
-Kenny and I had the biggest "fight" of our marriage on last Sunday night. It wasn't even really a fight, really- there was no yelling, no hard words, just a misunderstanding and hurt feelings, all revolving around the sticky neighbor situation and how to handle it. We both behaved badly but we got it resolved before falling asleep. I think the tensions were just too high and we were both so tired. I think that was the breaking point- after that, we stopped caring about the situation because we both know Kenny is innocent, and we know God knows that, and that’s all we have control over.
-Since Lucy is growing up, we decided to let her start sleeping in the bedroom with us. Until yesterday, when the smell of dog pee was so strong I could barely walk past the bedroom. Apparently, she has been going under the bed to hide it from us. Mind you, to get under the bed, I have to army crawl without using any limbs and twist my hips 8 different directions, but I finally got down there and sprayed it with doggy-pee-cleaner and febreeze like mad. The smell is better, but it'll need another treatment tonight. Lucy, on the other hand, is henceforth banned from the bedroom.
-Lucy got in trouble for something else yesterday too. She likes to play chase, and once she has it in her little mind that she's playing chase, there's nothing we can do to get her back. Unfortunately, chase yesterday consisted of running in front of 3 moving cars. I was furious and frustrated, all the while she thinks this is some fun game. *sigh*
-Work is getting more and more frustrating. I have literally nothing to do that I can bill to clients, and it's only Monday morning. And yet coworkers in other industries are drowning in work. It's nobody's fault- it just means there are too many people in my industry and not enough financial service clients. Still frustrating, though.
-I've felt sick since last Friday- very sore (like, I can't sleep because my back hurts too much), very tired, and on-and-off headaches.
I think that about covers it. All in all, the good outbalances the bad. And we have a lot to look forward to: this weekend, sister Becky and family comes to Utah, then next week, Lori moves back, then the next week is our first anniversary- we're going camping in Zions. Yay! I feel better no, after posting this. Things really aren't so bad.

What the...?

So tonight, what might be the strangest (and not a good strange) experience of my life happened.
It started out well enough. I told Kenny that because he got a scholarship, he could spend 800 bucks on a new speaker system for our entertainment center. Such things don't matter to me at all, but he's wanted one for a while. So he went and bought a nice one and was setting it up while I played guitar and sang (I may or may not have been in only my underwear, fresh out of the bathtub). Then we heard a knock on the door. I figured it was landlady Lori coming to ask about Ikea (she's buying us new counters for the kitchen, yay!). Anyways, I retreat to the back half of the house to get decent. When I come back to the front, Kenny is outside talking to someone with the door closed (and Lucy was whining like mad that her daddy had stepped out without her). So I poke my head out the door to say hi to landlady Lori. But it wasn't lori, it was two cops. Kenny tells me to go back inside. I do, and listen through the door.
Apparently, Kenny answered the door to meet one cop, asking for Kenneth Kunz. He said "that's me" and steps out to see another cop to the side of the door (as if to ambush him if he acted up). So there are two cops.
There are some nice people down the street who live in our ward. I've chatted with the mom on several occasions- they are remodeling their house to accommodate baby number 3 who is coming any day now. Her name is Jenna. I offered to babysit her kids. She later told landlady lori that she thinks we are a lovely couple. Kenny hasn't met them, though they've seen him in sacrament, I'm sure.
Well, they now say (through the cops) that they have security footage of Kenny coming and knocking on their door at all hours of the night on multiple occasions. If Kenny does it again, the cops will take criminal action against him. (!)
I have no words for the absurdity of this. Kenny has never knocked on their door. Hasn't even met them, or been on their property except for to pass by while walking Lucy. Lucy hasn't even pooped on their yard.
The cops haven't seen this footage, but it was hard to convince them that Kenny is innocent and bewildered, to say the least. They advised us to just never go on their property again ("we can't go on their property less than we have, because we never have").
Kenny jokes about how sometimes he sleepwalks and the cops tell him "that would never fly in court"(duh) to which Kenny stops laughing and says "um, no, of course not."
So the cops left with many warnings (including the command not to contact these neighbors in any way) and Kenny and I just stare at each other, dumbfounded. I can't help but laugh at the absurdity, while Kenny has trouble keeping his dinner down.
He calls his dad (who went to law school and is a wise fellow when it comes to such things) and I call my mom (the source of all wisdom) and they're both flabbergasted. Kenny calls the bishop while my dad tells me that unless they have darn convincing evidence, we can take them to court.
The bishop, who is great, by the way, says he'll try and get in touch with them so he can mediate this a bit. Kenny and I go over the fact that Kenny couldn't possibly be leaving at night (even sleepwalking)- he'd wake me up, he'd wake lucy up, not to mention the fact that the cops didn't mention that Kenny was caught walking around in his underwear (which is what he would be wearing in the middle of the night. Heck, we're newlyweds.)
So, Kenny is probably going to shave his beard to make him less mistakable for the mystery man. It's a shame, his beard had just gotten back to it's original fullness (after the mustache-shaving incident.) We have to wait til Sunday for bishop to set up the mediation. In the meantime, Kenny can be arrested if the Fluckigers (yes that's right, their name is "fluckiger") think they caught him again. In the meanwhile, we won't be able to sleep.
Honestly, their are no words to describe just how weird the whole thing is. Poor Kenny.

Birthday!

Today is my birthday! And it's been great. Yesterday we went tubing down the Provo river with 2 married couples. I found a cousin of the whomping willow, the whomping river shrub, and made good friends with it, leaving with it a chunk of my chin. That's ok, it added to the adventure. We had a great time.
For my birthday, I've gotten 4 new books (including Jane Eyre, and Wicked) and 5 new movies. We also got a new board game called "Ticket to Ride", which we played for the first time last week and loved. Kenny bought me roses yesterday morning and treated me like a princess all weekend (sunday birthdays make the whole weekend fun).
Friday we went to a ward swim party and had a good time. Tuesday was my friend Chelsy's bridal shower. Wednesday we went on a ward service project to an LDS handicapped center and pushed around wheelchairs for their "dance". All in all, a very fun week.
Other happy news: I think I may be getting new position at work. A Team Lead in another department has been jokingly offering me a job for a few months now (ever since I tested really well on the product his team supports) and I think I may actually take him up on it. I told him I'm planning on having a baby next summer and moving to Texas and he said "if they can get me just for 6 months, great, or he'd be happy to set me up to work remotely for however long I want. my pay would probably only go up a little, but I'm getting less and less happy with current boss, so it might be a good option.
Anyways, things are great. Gotta go eat my Birthday ham!

The news

The good news:

• We loved Texas, and are oh-so-excited to move down there in a little over a year
• We had a letter waiting for us after our trip: Kenny got a full-ride scholarship for his lasst two semesters at BYU! That's 4000 dollars we can save!
  
• We've seen (and enjoyed) Ratatouille, Surf's Up and Transformers. I'd recommend any of them.
• Kenny has been so sweet- he wants to take me to France (and other parts of Europe) for our 5th anniversary. Yeah, we're planning way in advance. He's even learning French! We bought a $17 French program he practices each evening and all day asks me French words and stuff. It's good for me, too- I'd hate to forget it all.
  
• My company stock is going up, up and away! I get to buy 2000 shares at 11 bucks a piece, and currently could turn around and sell them for 23! Woot!
  
• We went to a Trendwest condo timesharing presentation and nearly bought in- it sounded like a great deal, and we actually could afford it- for now. But in the end, Kenny thought to pray about it, so we did- on the balcony of a trendwest condo in Midvale. We both instantly felt it would be a very bad idea, and promptly left, feeling very glad we didn't do something stupid.
• We bought Stranger Than Fiction and The Prestige, our two favorites movies from the last year. They were both even better than we remembered.
  
• We found a natural water slide in a canyon near our house. We took Lucy so she could go swimming for the first time. The water slide is just a 20-foot chute carved by a stream out of rock- it looked painful but it wasn't. We had a good time.
• We've now been married almost 11 months! Next month is our anniversary!
• Next Sunday is my birthday! Kenny's planning some big surprise, and has already got a bunch of presents. I'm excited.
• Lucy is completely potty-trained and coming along on other training, too.
• The fourth of July was great- we didn't do anything too exciting, but had some friends over for some fireworks.
  

The bad news:

• I'm less and less happy at my job. My new boss has no idea what I've been doing for the last 8 months and uses me as his personal tech support. Oh well. Still infinitely better than Heritage.
• I got my haircut for the first time since last September- it ended up being a little more helmety/frumpy-mormon-mommyish that I would have liked, but it's ok. I've had worse.
• I had a minor flu this last week
• Kenny's superscope for his super Nintendo no longer works. That's the bad news he suggested for me to post on here:).
• We had to buy Lucy an anti-bark collar. She barks nonstop, but only when we're gone, because she missed us. Since we aren't there, we can't train her not to. I'm sick of feeling uneasy about her bothering the whole neighborhood each time we leave. Fortunately, she's only worn it once, with it on the lowest setting, and she seemed to get the idea so we won't need to use it again.

That's all I have for now.

The Texas Trip

I'm going to try blogging every Sunday so I don't go this long between posts in the future. To start with, the Texas trip was great. We got to see Kenny's sister Jeanette and visit her lovely home in Fort Worth. I got to meet her husband, Jeff, at last, too. We look forward to living closer to them in the future.
We also visited Lori, Kevin and my parents. It was great. Let's see... the run-down: first, we got to drive a dark red '07 Ford Mustang while we were there. We paid for renting a dodge neon, but when we got there, we had a very nice cashier who felt bad for us having to pay an extra 10 bucks a day for being under 25. So she gave us a free upgrade to a Ford Mustang. Kenny enjoyed driving it, and we sure felt cool, but I think we'd both be content without ever owning a sports car.
Wednesday night we got to see Kevin and my parents for dinner at their lovely home, then drove to Lori and Sam's, where we stayed. Thursday we took off early for Sea World. Lori gave us some CDs of Harry Potter (books 1-3), so we had something to entertain us while we drove about. Sea World was great fun. We saw a great shark exhibit (Kenny's favorite) and dolphins and penguins and a good dolphin/beluga whale/synchronized swimmer/acrobatics show. Actually,the first thing we did when we got there was hit the water park, since we figured the lines would be better in the morning. We were right- we had virtually no lines the whole time. And just as we hit the last water attraction (the lazy river), a storm broke. Mind you, everyone is in swimsuits, and the rain is hardly cold, but sure enough, every one ran for cover. Kenny and I enjoyed walking in the warm rain.
I stayed in my swimsuit the rest of the day (got to work up a tan/burn somehow) but Kenny got into his dry set of clothes, which backfired when it stormed again in the afternoon. We had actually waited in line for a roller coaster for a half hour or so, and when we were the next to get on the ride, it started pouring and they closed the thing down. Oh well. We caught it later in the day.
So yeah, Sea World was great. After that, we went down the street to Kenny's friends from his mission, the Dahle's. They had a nerdy/cool 6 year old boy (he walked around "force lightning"-ing everyone with his fingers) and an adorable little 4 year old. I had a great time talking to Heather, the mom. It was great.
The next day we drove back to Houston and chilled with Lori. She bought me some birthday clothes (yay) then we went to dinner with the whole Ball gang. Then we when back to Lori's and watched Pan's Labyrinthe.
That's a whole blog post unto itself. The movie came highly recommended from many sources, but we all fervently HATED it. We were expecting a fantasy film- perhaps weird fantasy (Tim Burton style, perhaps), and got a depressing, disturbing war story with some depressing, disturbing horror fantasy on the side. Bleh.
Let's see- Saturday we went to Galveston. The weather wasn't great (apparently we misseda tornado), but the water was warm and it wasn't too crowded. We saw a great school of fish do some acrobatics just a few feet from us in the water. And, of course, I love playing in sand. That evening we visited some of Kenny's high school friends, now engaged and living about a half hour away from my brother Kevin, in a BEAUTIFUL wooded area (appropriately named the Woodlands). We went to Chili's and enjoyed just chilling.
Sunday, we drove to Fort Worth/Dallas to see Kenny's sister. We chilled all of Sunday and got to relax and chat with them, who we hadn't seen since before the wedding. Monday we went to Six Flags. Jeanette has a season pass and managed to get us both in for 25 bucks, total! Of course, when we first entered the park everything was shut down because of a threatening storm, but in the end that was a good thing because there were fewer crowds all day. We had a good time.
Let's see. Tuesday, we went back to Houston. My brother Kevin set us up with one of his ward friends who teaches High School science so we could ask him about teaching in Texas. We got some great info. Then my sister-in-law, Candace, set us up with an appointment with a Realtor so we could check out some houses. He was very helpful and showed us two lovely homes, each fairly new, with 4 bedrooms, beautiful master bathrooms (I'm big on the master bathrooms) and amazing prices- 120,000! We could EASILY afford that. Yay!
Then we flew home. By the way, United airlines sucks. We nearly got to stay the night in Denver. But we did eventually get home and got to see our sweet puppy. It was a great trip!

The great sprinkler explosion of 07

First, let me apologize for the little javascript alert that's been popping up on my blog. I was running some tests for some script I wrote for a client. I didn't realize the code was affecting my blog- it was supposed to just be my own website that no one looks at anymore. Anyways, I got the code to work and can now market it to clients to save them a couple thousand bucks. I'm pretty excited about it.
So, all sorts of excitement around here. First, more new pictures here. Second, my parents sold their house, at long last (after 8 months on the market- apparently no one needs a six bedroom home anymore)! Yay! I'll miss that house, but I'm happy for my parents.
We had some yard fun this week. Kenny has been reshaping the dirt outside our door so we could make a proper lawn out of it.
He had noted the sprinkler system looked fragile so he was working very carefully around it. He needed to move some dirt so he gently dug it out under the sprinkler pipe, which was about half an inch beneath the surface.
I was being lazy, inside, watching TV. All the sudden, Kenny opens the door and screams, "Get me a flathead screwdriver!". Didn't seem like the type of thing to question,s o I start running in circles thinking, "if I were a flathead screwdriver, where would Kenny put me?" I finall find the righgt toolbox and grab 10 screwdrivers or so, hoping that the bunch included the one kenny needed. I open the dor and run out, only to find myself in six inches of water, rapidly heading for my poorly-sealed front door. When Kenny had lightly brushed the pipe to move some dirt, it just burst. Suddenly Kenny had the equivelant of a dirty firehose on his hands, so powerful the two ends of the pipe couldn't be brought together. Mind you, this is all happening at the top of a retaining wall to keep our dirt/house from falling onto our neighbor's lawn.
Fortunately, the oldest daughter was home upstairs and helped me get the water turned off while Kenny wrestled with the hose. The result:

So, we've got it all back under control and finally have a walkway and grass seed down out there. Kenny's also working on a dog house for Lucy. We take her to puppy school each monday night, where she embarrasses us by being the most playful, energetic, hard to control puppy there. She did, however, get "lay down" faster than anyone else. She's a good dog. Kenny has so much patience with her. Me, I just clean up the pee and poop without complaining. Training for motherhood, right?
Anyways, we're preparing for our trip to Houston next wednesday. I'm sure I'll have updates then.

For Shame

Alright, alright. Today I realized that it has been a month since my last blog post. I don't have a great excuse, other than I've been busier at work. In other words I can't justify spending company time blogging. Then I get home, and want to be anywhere but in front of a computer.
Anyways, news from may- this is the recap I sent my sister-in-law for the monthly family newsletter:
-We went to Hogle Zoo for the first time and really enjoyed it.
-Lucy hurt her paw really bad at Kenny's work and limped and cried for about a week. She's all better now.
-We discovered that Lucy loves to go down playground slides and have been exploring the parks around our new home looking for bigger slides for her.
-Kenny's birthday went great. We threw a big party- 18 or so people came, and at any moment we had probably 6 video games going on various TVs. It was a lot of fun.
-Kenny got a pair of prints from his favorite artist, Brom, for his birthday. They are currently getting custom frames and we have eagerly cleared space on our wall to display them proudly.
-Kenny sold his vespa! While it will be sorely missed, we just weren't using it anymore and Kenny got a great price for it. We were able to spend some of the extra money on some new games and clothes for both of us.
-We're enjoying teaching the 6 year-olds in primary- they love to see Kenny's drawings and sit on my lap.

I'll just leave it at that for now. I'll try to be better about mor blogging, but don't hold your breath:).

Be careful what you wish for

Last week we got a call that the Bishop wanted to meet with us- surprising, considering he had met with us last Sunday as a welcome-to-the-ward meeting. So we figured, yay! we get callings. We mused all week about what callings we might get. I asked Kenny "How would you feel about a primary calling?"
"Are you kidding?" he says, "That would rock!!!"
Yesterday morning we got set apart to be Primary Teachers for the Valiant 10 class. :). We're quite happy about it, and to be in a ward that's so on top of things.
Other happy news-
Kenny looks quite handsome with his beard. And his usually-upset neck skin is happy and relaxed, which he is quite excited about. I just have to get used to the pokey kisses.
We saw the opening showing of spiderman 3 on Thursday night (technically Friday morning). It was good- definitely on par with the other spiderman films.
Saturday, we started our new role-playing group. I get to be a superhero with mind tricks and invisibility and stuff. Kenny is the group healer. I've never done an RPG before, so this is a whole new level of nerdiness. We had a lot of fun, though. However, it was the longest that Lucy had ever been left home alone- 7 hours. The poor thing. She had made quite a horrifically stinky mess of the bathroom and then walked all over and tracked it over her whole portion of the house (bathroom, laundryroom and hallway, fortunately all tiled.) So I had Kenny keep the now very-excited-to-see-us puppy entertained while I cleaned up (gag) and mopped the whole back of the house. Kenny was sweet and mopped the front half later in the day in preparation for company.
Then, this week, Kenny's parents are coming to town. I'm really excited and yet pretty scared- I'm thrilled whenever I get the chance to be with Kenny's family, as I feel we haven't had much of a chance to connect yet. But at the same time, I'm scared because I know I haven't always met up to expectations. They mean a lot to Kenny and I and I just want them to break whatever barriers there are and be able to act like family. I think the plan is to go out to dinner with Kenny's mom and dad (and little brother) on thursday or friday, then on Sunday we'll go up to Logan to visit the rest of the family in the area- I'm pretty excited about that, because I've already spent time with Margie and Bryce and their families and feel comfortable with them and have always had a good time in the past. Kenny always loves the chance to talk to Bryce about video games, and now we can introduce our puppies- they are pet-cousins, after all.
All in all, lots going on right now, mostly all good things.

A very long post after a very long delay

Finally, things feel like they make a little more sense again. This has been a very hard month for us, but a very exciting one too. Last night we got most of our boxes and things organized and our home is making a little more sense. Also, Lucy finally slept through the night last night with no accidents or mid-night whimperings. This is VERY exciting.
We got to officially pick up the puppy a few weeks sooner than we had originally anticipated, which was great. She is such a sweetheart, and so smart. We are VERY glad to have an all-tile floor, but she's definitely getting better about the potty-training thing by the day. She's also learned the commands "sit", "no", "drop it", "fetch, "come", "potty", and "ouch" (aka "stop biting so hard"). We finally found Kenny's camera after the move so we can start taking pictures and posting them.
So, we stretched the move over a two-week period. It sounds nice and more relaxing, but really it just means in the end that I had twice the amount of time to worry and stress and feel guilty for whatever relaxing we did manage.
The new place is working out great. We did have to buy our own fridge, washer and dryer, which was unexpected but will be a good investment in the end. It is really hard for me to spend that much money without having it all planned, though. But now we have our own appliances and someday when we have our own house we won't have to start from scratch.
Kenny has been working so hard on "fixing up" our place and making it more our style. In truth, Kenny has REALLY amazed me the last few weeks. He's dealt with finals (and did fairly well), moving, work, and has been the main keeper of the puppy- mostly because he's home more than I am. He even brought me roses yesterday:)- seriously a husband couldn't be more perfect. We had a slight incident the other evening because Kenny lost his temper at the puppy- one of the few times I've seen Kenny breakdown. I wasn't mad at all- it was just Kenny being mad at himself, which is hard to watch. We ended up concluding that Kenny was just exhausted and needed to force himself to relax. He slept for a long time then woke up just fine.
We went to our new ward on Sunday for the first time, and I'm pretty excited about it. The Bishop seems really cool- we had a good chuckle about my "calling" in my last ward (aloha committee member) and how he was going to give me a REAL calling (which I would be fine with.)
Oh, the other big news is that my department at work is going through some major re-organization to account for the major growth this year (my department plans on doubling to keep up with demand). With the new re-org, I have a new boss (Adam, a very nice fellow who works remotely from Chicago) and only 3 team members- 2 of which are more on the business side and one who is more on the tech side (like me). The four of us will specialize in Financial Services and work only with Fin services clients. I love this. It's going to be great to focus on one problem set and be able to really get ahead of the game. It also opens up a lot of career opportunities (a remote new boss means someday working remotely from home may be a possibility.) I've also been getting lots of compliments from those who work above me and it's been very flattering and self-esteem boosting (even though they are often in the form of "you are the most patient/best at handling clients so we're handing you these dreadful clients who need to work with someone like you"). Too bad all I still really want to do is go home and be a mom. Soon enough, soon enough.
My sister Lori moves to Houston tomorrow. I don't even want to think about it, or I'll break down. Lori and I have been really close. I'm just glad she'll be online all summer so we'll still talk all the time. I think it's what the move represents that bums me out more than anything (growing up, separate paths).
Well, I need to not make this blog too long, so I'll leave you with those more important updates. Hopefully now that things have settled we'll all get back into the blog thing again.

A Long post about a short and exciting weekend

The first week of April went quickly enough, and this last weekend was really great. On Friday we went to a Charity Ball at the Provo Library. It was a fancy affair- I got to wear my homecoming dress from senior year of high school. My sister Lori did my hair up and did an amazing job. It isn't very often that I like anything about my hair.
There was a live auction- we bid on and won a paragliding trip for $120. Kenny really wanted it and I figured, hey, we have the money, and his birthday is coming up. It may be the only time I actively participate in a live auction ("120 going once, 120 going twice… sold, to the lady in the blue dress!"). So that was fun. Afterwards we had Ben and some friends over and played games.
Then Saturday was also an exciting day. We got up fairly early and started packing up some of our stuff that we won't need for the next two weeks. We got up to our new apartment and got out own set of keys and everything. It definitely needs some work- one can tell that a cat got locked down there accidentally without a littler box. After attacking the walls with Mr. Clean pads and leaving the windows open, it's not bad at all. Kenny was really good about getting right to work with the cleaning and stuff. He also took care of some spider webs for me. We'll have to get some anti-ant spray- Kenny has this whole ant-phobia going on. My sister Lori came up to see the place and gives it her stamp of approval, which makes me happy.
Then we drove out to Saratoga Springs (middle of nowhere, on the Northwestern corner of Utah lake) and picked up our puppy for the day. She is now 7 weeks old and as cute as a button. We drove her back to the new apartment and played with her all day, doing a little bit of cleaning on the side. We were torn between naming her Lucy or Rosie, but our new landlady decided for us that we couldn't' name her Rosie since one of our landlady's daughters is named Rosie. So Lucy it is. Lucy Rose Underfoot.
At first she was pretty timid and hid in the corner but after things calmed down she had no problem playing with us. We took her for a few short walks and tired her out. We got three good puppy naps in- one where she slept on Kenny's arm and the other two with me. She only piddled on the floor once (hooray for tile)- seems like she is well on her way to being potty trained. We'll have some pictures once sister Lori gets them to me.
Then yesterday, of course, was Easter. I made Easter crepes (we died them pink to make them extra eastery) and put together a nice little Easter basket full of candy. We hardboiled a dozen eggs, but apparently we aren't egg experts. Both Kenny and I remember something from last year about knowing the egg is done when it floats. So we waited for them to float. And we waited. And waited. After almost a half hour, they still didn't float and our place REEKED of eggs. So we gave up and dyed them:). We then hid them from each other in the apartment- 6 each. I've had more practice hiding eggs- it took Kenny a bit longer to find the last three. It was a lot of fun. We also went folfing- I even let Kenny do all 18 holes! Mostly because he was on a role- a couple of his throws were phenomenal. We joked that he sucked what little skill I had out of me because I was throwing horribly, even for me.
We also watched Iron Giant (one of Kenny's favorites) and Alice in Wonderland. All in all, one of the best weekends I have had for a long time.

Bored at work (and general news)

One my main goals at work is to help as many clients as possible finish their implementation of our software as quickly as possible- the faster, the better, for both my company and theirs. Hwoever, getting clients to actively work on it for up to a month at a time is REALLY difficult, and I'm horrible at laying down the law and saying "look, we have a month to do this, then I have to sign off the project". But I'm learning. Finally, last week, with my manager's help, I was able to sign off on 12 projects, bringing my client load from 22 to 10. While this is very thrilling and I'm really very happy about it, it means I now have nothing to do. At all. Every day this week has been a real struggle to figure out 8 hours worth of stuff to do, and almost more importantly, who to bill that time to.
And of course, the whole time, I have this sweet little beagle puppy running around in my head, just waiting to be picked up and brought home.

Oh hey, I have good news! Kenny and I don't have to be homeless next at the end of next month- we can start moving some of our stuff into the new place in a few days and can officially move in on the 22nd or 23rd. Lori Swan (my coworker/future landlady) apparently got news from her current renters that they are moving out at the end of this month (march) and the place will be empty in april. This is happy news for us because we can now move in whenever we want and we can house the puppy a week sooner (now it's just a matter of not getting the puppy before Kenny is done with finals, or else studying will be very hard).

Let's see, other things of note:
-Kenny and I watched "I am Sam" the other night and Kenny really loved it. I had seen it before but still enjoyed it. In fact, Kenny liked it so much that afterwards he was in one of the best moods I have seen him in- and he wanted to watch ANOTHER movie. I've NEVER known Kenny to watch two movies in one day.
-we are going to a charity ball in a few weekends.
-we commenced spring activities last Saturday, with some Frisbee-golfing, ultimate Frisbee and tennis. It felt great to get out and be active again.
-It snowed today. 4 inches or so on my car. I'm pretty bitter about it.
-I get to baby-sit for a lady in the ward on Friday. I volunteered to for a Relief Society service auction. Kenny is planning on working, so this will work out nicely.

Changes

So Kenny and I have been married for over 7 months now, and I got to thinking the other day about the many ways we have changed each other o rubbed off on each other. All of the following are true statements that would have been false 8 months ago.

-I get excited/envious when I see a puppy
-Kenny gets excited/envious when he sees a baby
-I don't watch chick flicks anymore
-Kenny goes out of his way to watch movies
-I'll try any recipe Kenny requests (minus spicy ingredients, since I don't handle those so well)
-Kenny no longer does his homework 3 days before it is assigned
-I will no longer buy more than one candy bar during any supermarket trip
-Kenny shows interest in french things
-I love to Frisbee golf
-Kenny pays attention to actor's names and has gotten fairly good at the "what other movie has that actor been in" game
-I read comic books and am actually interested in the fates of Spiderman and the x-men
-Kenny enjoys sleeping in past 9 am (mostly for the cuddling)
-I now go to bed before 11 pm almost all the time
-Kenny shaves almost every day (Or else I won't kiss him)
-I no longer eat roasted garlic triscuits (Or else Kenny won't kiss me)
-Kenny watches movies like hamlet, braveheart, and boondock saints
-I'll watch movies like "iron man: the cartoon" and "titan AE"
-Kenny now technically owns goldfish
-I enjoy walking around malls (without buying anything)
-Kenny cares about politics (at least a little)
-I'm willing to camp out in the walmart parking lot for 38 hours for newest Nintendo gaming console
-Kenny likes Joni Mitchell

Fast Forward One Month

This month is going to be an impatient one.
First of all, we own a puppy but don't actually have it. We'll go up every weekend and see how she is doing. Kenny wants to introduce her to the Frisbee at a young age.
Second, it looks like we have to be homeless for the last week of the month- the darn landlord needs us out for 4 business days before new people can move in so he can have a cleaning crew come in. At this point, I'm tempted to drop a bunch of money on renting a moving truck for a week and living out of it (I'm sure we could find some good place to sleep).
Third, it's Kenny's last month of real classes. Next fall he'll be taking a bunch of "how to be a politically correct teacher" classes, then after that is his student teaching. We worked it out so Kenny doesn't have to take classes in the spring or summer, so that is pretty great.
While this is all very exciting, it's very hard to not want to fast forward one month. Only one month.
The only thing NOT to look forward to at the end of the month is Lori's moving away. That's going to be hard for me. And neither Kenny nor I even want to think about being farther away from best friend Ben.

Puppy!

So we found our puppy. She is a sweet little four-week-old pure-bred beagle. We can't take her home until the end of April, though, when we will have our new house.
Here are some pictures:



Anyways, we are very excited.
On another note, we bought our tickets to come down to Houston- June 20th- 26th. Also very exciting.

Top twelve lists - bragging and confessions

Things I am proud of:
1. I handle all of our finances
2. I made 8 euros in one sitting while singing and playing guitar near the Eiffel tower in paris
3. I have read over 400 books since high school graduation (I keep a record)
4. I only missed one question on the English section of the ACTs (I got a 35/36 in English, and a 31 overall)
5. I sang solo at my high school Baccalaureate- "Forever Young" by Bob Dylan. I think it's my only public performance that I didn't pick apart too much afterwords.
6. I found my own apartment and lived alone in Paris for 4 months
7. I graduated with 123 credits- the requirement is 120. In other words, I didn't take a single class that didn't count towards graduation. This is because I planned it all out my freshman year and I stuck to my plan
8. I make awesome crepes (almost once a week or so- whenever Kenny requests them)
9. I can read novels faster than anyone I know
10. I've never met a little kid who didn't seem to like me a lot
11. I've only been in a "raised-voice" fight with someone outside of my family on two occasions, both times were with roommates
12. I cannot purposefully physically harm another person- even when I try it comes out very weak because I am so afraid of causing pain (I'm not sure if this is really something to be proud of or ashamed of- but I like that I am naturally a "gentle" person)

Things I am ashamed of:
1. I have only worn my hair down once in the last 3 months- I always do the same unnotable pony tail. I also have a horrible habit of going 8 months between hair cuts. blech
2. I get horrifically irritable while shopping, especially if it is crowded and I feel like I'm in the way
3. As I've already established, I pass out at bad times
4. I can't keep a secret very well at all.
5. I've tried jogging but never made it more than a few blocks or so- running a mile would kill me, I swear
6. I love swimming but cannot do the typical hand-over-hand stroke. However, I can breast stroke pretty well.
7. I didn't learn how to dive until I was 19- my mom taught me because she couldn't' believe I didn't know how (one of the few times that mom has mocked me)
8. I have a horrible zit-popping/eyebrow-plucking problem. (I like feeling in control of my looks)
9. Sometimes I eat sugar. 4 or 5 tablespoons at a time. straight. with cake decorations
10. Lori keeps bringing up to me the various embarrassing times I have had upset-stomach problems that led to, ummm, embarrassing situations with no bathroom nearby. And there you have it- my only real secret I don't tell anyone is now on my blog.
11. My GPA at graduation was around 2.7
12. I have the hand-writing of a 10 year old

Hurray!

Last night we found a buyer for our housing contract. The move is now official- come May 1st, we're in Lehi. Hurray!
Also, my brother-in-law Kyle graduates this week. Meaning my sister Becky gets her husband back. This is VERY exciting. Hurray!

For those who wonder

So I posted a bunch of pictures of our apartment online last night and realized many of you have never seen it, so here's your alst chance before we move. Go to this page if you want to see pics.
We've had a lot of interest- 10 or so people have come by or called since I posted it on Friday. We're hoping sometime this week we'll get it finalized.
I've already started throwing away stuff we wouldn't want to move- I went through my closet and got rid of quite a few shirts. I now have 63 shirts left, 12 of which I'll disregard because they are frumpy t-shirts I got for free that I can't wear anywhere (I hear they aren't very flattering on me). So that leaves 51 shirts. Of those, only 8 wear purchased after 2003. Most of the rest I got as hand-me-downs from my sisters in high school. Man, am I eager to sell my wedding dress and get some new clothes!
There was something else I wanted to blog about.... hmm. Kenny is wonderful. We had a delightful date on Friday night with one of Kenny's mission buddies. We went to "divine comedy"- a BYU comedy troupe that I've always really liked. It was a great show.
Oh, and I love the spring! It's 75 here today (so says google) and it feels wonderful. Work is crazy and scary because I wasn't in the office 3 days last week, but it should calm down shortly.
That's all I got for now:)

All kinds of excitement

Lots of news from this week:
1. We are thinking of moving to Lehi. A coworker is renting out her 3-bedroom basement in a nice, new house in the foothills. We checked it out on Monday with very low expectations and were very impressed. The 3 bedrooms are smaller but the rest of the place is large. Rent would be $70 or so more than what we are currently paying, but coworker Lori is more than willing to knock the rent down for any "improvements" we make.
We still need to get out of our current contract, but I posted it on craisglist on Friday and so far we've had 9-10 people interested.
The new place still needs some more kitchen cupboards and some paint and some lawn improvements, but nothing major. And having renters will really help out coworker Lori, who is a sweetie. She barely got out of a messy divorce and has 6 (!) daughters. Then we can carpool to work together and Kenny can have the car. Kenny's commute to BYU will be bad for a semester (45 minutes or so) but the following semester is his student teaching, and odds are Lehi is closer to the student teaching jobs than Provo is. In the end, the commute evens out I think. It has a washer and dryer and new EVERYTHING, but the best part is that it has a large fenced yard. Which leads us to big news #2:
2. We are getting a puppy!!! As soon as we move into the new place. We're content with a mutt, but we hope for a beagle. We know that it's probably wiser to get a slightly older dog but Kenny has never had a real pet and we figure this is our one chance in our lives to have a puppy. We can be sensible later:)
3. I got to go to my company's big fancy conference on Wednesday and Thursday and I had a good time and even got a few new clients (which may or may not be a good thing- if nothing else it should impress my boss.) Then since the conference was so successful my company gave us a paid holiday on Friday, which I used to do some chores, get a massage (my v-day present from Kenny) and help out new future landlady clean up her house.
4. I got commissioned to do a $300 website for a coworker. We were chatting at the big conference and he asked what I did before I started working here and I told him I had a web development background. He got all excited and asked if I would do a 10-page e-commerce site for him. I'm quite excited to be designing again.
I think that's all I got for now. All in all, a wonderful week.

I hate daylight savings!

So yesterday we got up at 8 and hopped in the shower in preparation for 9 o'clock church. It wasn't until we were almost done getting ready, at 8:35 or so, that we realized 8:35 was actually 9:35 and we had missed sacrament. So we missed church. Again. I swear they are going to think we are inactive. On the bright side, I managed to finish final fantasy VII and we had Ben over for games.

Other highlights of the week:

-We just started using Blockbuster's online movie service instead of netflix. We rented "On a Clear Day"- a delightful british film about a man who decides to swim the English channel. Then we exchanged that for "Mirrormask", the latest non-muppet movie from Jim Henson studios. It actually wasn't muppet-ish at all, but it was absolutely AMAZING. We both loved it. Beautifully done, unique, abstract without being weird… I hope to buy it and have it be a family favorite someday. I'd highly recommend it to anyone.

-We went to sarah's house on Thursday for a jewelry party (like a "tupperware" party). I really enjoyed it- there were some beautiful pieces of jewelry. Unfortunately, I don't have spare money for such things, so I got to look but not buy. I did, however get some Guppy fish from Sarah. Hooray! I got 3 boys, 3 girls (all of which are pregnant, I think). I can't have babies; I can't have puppies, but gosh darn it, I can have baby fish now!

-We made peanut butter cookies for the cookie jar Kenny painted to look like a Nintendo. Kenny forgot to do the fork-smashy thing on the first batch, but I remembered for the second batch. I even went all out and got a bowl of sugar to dip the fork in. We discovered afterwards my bowl of sugar was actually a bowl of salt. Anyone want salty cookies?

-We went to the temple Friday night. Kenny's sister Jeanette gave us some names that needed endowments, but the temple was VERY busy and the needed people to do sealings instead. I had kind of wanted to do a sealing anyways, and we both really enjoyed it. Afterwards we went to the Brick Oven where I got an apple cobblery desert and Kenny got a lasagna.

-My spiritual focus, especially with the temple trip, was to try and teach myself to be more flexible in my plans for the future. The other day lori was talking about how it's good to plan, but it's also good to practice faith and just know that if you are doing what you should, God will take care of you. So I'm trying my hardest now to not set too much importance on our plans while at the same time keeping us in line to be out of debt and able to buy a house in a few years. Maybe we'll have a baby as soon as we start trying; maybe God will make us a wait a while. Maybe Kenny will stay home with the baby; maybe it will be too hard for me to go back to work. We'll just wait and see.