Si's First Party

Our first baby shower! Caleb and I flew home a couple of weekends ago for our very first baby shower with family and friends from the Northwest! It was a
quick trip and a lot of plane and car travel to reach our destination (my parents
house), but so worth it! We were blessed to spend time with both Caleb's and my
sides of the family as well as some great friends.

Of course, we jumped on the plane without our camera and had then, no pictures to document our trip, thankfully my mother and Becky came through for us...the

only problem is that I had to download them from a Kodak website which apparently only allowed me to save mini-pics....so happy looking if you can actually see any of these. If you can't tell, we had a great time. Some of you may
recognize yourselved in these, but maybe not! One of my friends here in AZ commented about how savy I must be with computers to figure out how to blog

and add pictures, etc....well FYI, you don't really have to know anything at all about computers or uploading or downloading anything...just somtimes you end up with mini-pics and weird spaces that someone smarter or with more time probably could figure our how to rectify. But not me, I am fine with mediocrity! So blog away folks, it's easy!

So here is the quick recap of our crazy weekend to WA...Caleb and I love to fly, mainly I think, because of the expectation and excitment of traveling in general.
So on Thursday, early in the morning we drove to the airport and excitedly got our lattes at the airport which always signifies the beginning of any trip. Then we

sat on two different planes for a total of...all day...before landing in Seattle. Got in just in time to meet Caleb's family and had a fabulous dinner with them!

Unfortunately, Thursday night, I had a HORRIBLE allergy attack which consisted of lots of misery, the inability to breathe and unfortunately quite a lot of benadryl. I

mention this just to fill you in on what I believe was probably my first failure as a

mother: I know benadryl is on the "somewhat safe list" for pregnancy, but I also realize that pregnancy-safe, with any drug really just means that drugging your baby is better than both of us dying due to lack of oxygen in my lungs.

It was a terrible experience when at 4 am I was popping my third benadryl of the night and sobbing to Caleb about the perminent damage I was likley causing to our child. It was a tad over the top in the hormonally crazy department, but really only a fairly average glimpse into my hormonal mood swings lately! I thought for much of this pregnancy that I was handling it all in stride, but about a month ago my hormones and emotional state went crazy and even I could easily recognize that I've slipped into some sort of weird psychotic pregnancy world of crying...all the time for no reason.

Anyway, after Thursday night, Josiah was definatly moving less, or at least it seemed that way to me, so whether or not I put him in a little baby coma, I am sure that anytime in his life anything goes wrong, I will blame it on the benadryl.

(or whatever I do next to inadvertantly tramatize my child).

But Friday came and baby eventually woke up and our little family drove to Yakima! We had a great time with my family, Case and Jarrad and the girls came with another good friend of ours from Tacoma and we girls took my mother out on the town for mothers day on Friday night!

We had the shower on Saturday complete with some silly games in which groups of my family and friends creatively made up songs about my growing family to the tune of "Old McDonald had a Farm" Some of my favorite lines were...

"Here a labor, there a labor, everywhere a labor, labor" "...will Shep end up in the

pound?" and "with some breast pads here and some fresh wipes there..."

It was a very entertaining game by the way.

After the shower, we let the boys come back and BBQ for us all! A great day and wonderful for us to get to share two great parties in one day with all of you who we see so rarely.

Sadly, on Sunday it was back to Seattle for another day of travel and back to work on Monday...but at least we will always have these tiny pictures to remember Josiah's first party!

April in Review...

April was an okay month...I think. I can't quite remember where it went or what I did except that I never really let you all in on what was happening. I had to take a peek at the last post
to remember what was going on...oh, six weeks ago. I am afraid I look quite different now! I am almost 28 weeks along which means that I am just starting the last trimester. Hard to believe!

My mother has now flipped her little baby widget on the blog to count down rather than up! It is hard to believe I am almost done...although, we've just entered that time in AZ where it is over 100 degrees each and every day in a given 10-day forecast...which means that I may stop believing that this pregnancy is flying by soon...I sense the dragging on and on about to set in!

I still feel great. Hardly a thing to complain about...a co-worker of mine tells me that after week 27 I will magically lose my ability to sleep. I really hope that is not true for me! I get really grumpy with no sleep but I guess I am going to have to get used to it sooner or later, right?

Last time I posted I was getting ready to head back to the doctor for another ultrasound and I was a little nervous. Well I am happy to report that although Si was still breech a month after the first ultrasound, they were able to get much better pictures of him this time and he is, I'm sure the healthiest kid ever! Seems to be growing like a champ...just like his mother!

So here is a quick update on Josiah and some photo memories of our fly-by April....hoping May brings much more down time and a little less work, no offense Catholic Charities, but I could use some down time. Thankfully they are releasing me from my servitude this coming weekend! Caleb and I will be going to Yakima for my first baby shower! How exciting! Hopefully I will get to see some of you there! And hope you read this before hand so I don't get too much gruff about not posting anything for over 6 weeks! Okay, now for the update.

Si weights over 2 pounds, so they say. I think he is likely around 15 inches long from head to foot. He is moving a ton now which is one of the most thrilling things I have ever experienced! I love to feel him move. Even better is now I can sometimes even see him move...no hand or footprints yet, but definitely an attempt to escape from the belly! A few friends even got to experience this weird "belly roll" the other day...which was a little alien. One of my favorite things so far is getting to feel him have the hiccups inside of me! WOW, babies are a miracle! Caleb and I are getting so excited to be parents and can simply not wait to meet our son!

Here are some other things that have been keeping us busy...


Caleb got the incredible opportunity to participate in the biggest sailboat race in the world a few weeks ago! We have some great friends here who have a sailboat in Newport and for several years have done the Newport to Ensenada race.

Well, Caleb apparently proved himself last Thanksgiving and joined a crew of 7 other guys to make his first international voyage.

I think there were like 500 + boats involved in the race and the boys had a great time. It took

them right around 24 hours to finish the race and then they took their time coming back to Newport from Ensenada.

I like to think of them being on the "fun team" 'cause let's just say they didn't come in very close to the front of the pack!

While the guys were sailing, I got to spend the weekend in Tucson with the wives club! We stayed in a hotel, went out to dinner and attended an amazing conference held by one of my friends' spiritual mentors.


Here are the guys after the big finish! Several of
the youth from church went with their fathers and Caleb was blessed to meet some new friends as well. I think he is hoping he'll be invited back next year!








We had an exciting weekend this past weekend
as well...we learned how to paint stripes on a wall! Finally we got around to painting the nursery! It turned out great and we love it. Caleb and I are very thankful to have wonderful and crafty friends here that are willing to help us in our time of need....if it weren't for them, we'd still have green walls and a mediocre motivation to change it. Thanks, guys!

The best part is our friends are willing to work for food! Caleb received his long awaited Traeger BBQ smoker a couple of weeks ago and since then, we have experienced a ton of productivity as we bribe our friends to help us get stuff done that Caleb and I are not talented enough to do on our own! We just promise them salmon or steak and they come right over with paint supplies and smiles! We love them very much and are so thankful for our friends here!

So here is the nursery! We love it and feel like Si will of course, move right in with thankfulness in his heart for all the work it took to put brown and blue stripes on his walls. He now has the best room in the house by far! Which is great, because I plan to spend a lot of time in that room in the middle of the night very soon.







By the looks of these pictures, you'd think Caleb was the hardest worker in the group....those are strategic, I guess. Caleb and the boys did some work on the yard and enjoined an afternoon was napping and watching golf...














This is who really made the magic happen! I am so thankful for Traci and Bethany who are expert painters and got us through our first set of stripes!