Baby, Baby, Baby ...

So we went in today for the Ultra-sound. They checked for Spina Bifida, makin sure all the limbs were there, looking at the four chambers of the heart, and checking for a "package." Turns out he's a he. Woot! We're pretty excited.

Because our minds change fairly often, and the fact that we like keeping secrets, we've decided that we're not going to tell people if/when we've picked out a name. (We gotta keep some surprise) So if you hear something, it's probably something ridiculous we made up to throw people off the track. Our current misnomer is "Gottlob Maynard."

Cheers!

Commentary on teaching in church

Does anyone else find it hard to teach people in a church setting? It feels like I've been asked to do this a lot lately - at least for a person who doesn't teach for their calling. First, Derrick and I were asked to give talks in church last Sunday. The most eventful thing that happened with that was that when I went to print off my talk 15 minutes before church by laptop freaked out. 15 minutes later we had managed to get my talk from my laptop that kept freezing to our computer and printed out. Luckily our church is 2 minutes walking distance away but there were some very relieved looks on the faces of the bishopric. Second, I was in charge of joint-teaching a mini-workshop on how to teach for my ward's visiting teaching conference. Nothing too eventful there.

With these teaching experiences I noticed that I have a lot more fun doing the research and that getting the information across to others is not my strong point. While reading up on the sacrament I kept distracting Derrick from his homework to tell him all kinds of random facts I was learning. For example, I never realized how much the ordinance of the sacrament does to help us weekly apply the atonement in our lives. I had only really thought of it as a way to remind us of our Savior and all He did for us. There were several others relating to the passover and such that I won't go into here. After finding out so many cool facts I have a really hard time condensing and piecing things together in a way that makes sense. If I can't sit with the teachees I'd much rather lead a discussion or be able to read a list like: Cool fact #1, cool fact #2, etc.

Hopefully for the next little while Derrick and I will be able to stick to our usual Sunday routine of sitting near the back and pulling faces at the babies.

Props to our ward

So Derrick and I really love our ward here in Wymount. There are so many families who are so friendly and fun. To name a few:

I love the people I work with in primary. That calling is so fun and I end up laughing a lot of the time. Today one of the activities was follow the leader with the leader holding a picture of Christ above their head for all the followers to see. The purpose was to teach the children about following Jesus. I thought it was a great way to teach that important message to little kids. Jenn definitely does great with primary. One funny thing with the game was that the oldest kid just turned 6 and several are only 3 so many of the kids really didn't understand the game. They followed around for awhile and then the game turned into a lot of random running and funny actions.

Our hometeachers, Josh Dickinson and Jared Chandler, came over this morning. We definitely get some good conversations going before and during the spiritual message part. Another great part is that they're not just our friends once a month so they can get their hometeaching checked off the list. Josh and his wife Cierra had us over for dinner tonight with Cierra's twin sisters. One definite highlight was playing Isaac Asimov's Robots Mystery Game. It involved an 80's VHS tape and different packs of clues. The video part was amazing with terrible acting, cheesy graphics, and really funny looking robots. It was pretty classic and we were successful in figuring out the clues and determining the culprit. Mission accomplished.

I Guess There Really Is a Baby Inside Me

So I'm now part way through my 4th month of pregnancy (19 weeks along now) and the baby seems to be doing great. We've been very blessed that this pregnancy has had so few complications. I felt pretty sick at times during the first trimester but now I like food again and getting sick is more the exception than the rule.

Last Friday I went to the doctor for one of the regular visits and got to hear the heartbeat again. I was surprised this time because from the past visits I've come to expect the heartbeat to be more of a swishing sound. This time the heartbeat was a lot louder and sounded much more like a real heart beat. It was pretty exciting. According to the doctor, everything is going great and is right on schedule! She also told me that this is the time where I should start feeling the baby move. I'd probably already felt him/her but it was so faint I didn't pay any attention.

Last night as I was trying to sleep I noticed that I started feeling weird little bumps in my stomach. After a little confusion (I was pretty tired) I realized that this was the baby moving around! I finally felt the baby move. I was pretty excited and sadly Derrick was already asleep so I couldn't share this new development with him. After a little while the excitement wore off because I was ready to sleep and the baby obviously wasn't. It's hard to fall asleep when someone is moving around inside you. Luckily I did finally get to sleep.

My next appointment with the doctor is this coming Friday and Derrick is definitely going to be there. This is the one we've been looking forward to for a long time. We to see our baby for the first time on an ultrasound so the doctor will also check to see how well the brain, heart, etc. are developing. Also, we finally find out the gender!!!!

Valentine Fun

So one thing about having a blog is that it gives Derrick and I more motivation to take pictures and document the things we do. They're definitely fun for us to look back on! We had a really fun day yesterday. I woke up early and for the first time made Derrick a hot breakfast before work. Usually I just wake up in time to have some cold cereal with him but this morning we had homemade waffles. The waffle iron we got for our wedding works great!

It was nice for me that Derrick didn't really have class (I think it was just a help session) so we had the whole day to spend together from noon on. One thing that we noticed when we were starting to date is that we have so much fun together no matter what we're up to. Lately, I've really wanted to get or make curtains for our apartment because the big window in our front room just has some really ugly blinds. In order to justify spending the money on the curtain project, we decided that they could be a Valentine's day present Derrick could give me. (Romantic huh?...right). Last night we went to Wal-mart to get the materials to make curtains for our apartment. Once I get around to making them we'll have to let you know how that adventure goes.

While at Wal-mart, Derrick passed by the strawberries and they smelled so strong that he couldn't resist getting some. They're definitely a favorite of his. He also got some Martinelli's to go them. Back at our apartment we were able to pull out our fondue set for the first time since we got it and try our luck with chocolate dipped strawberries. We weren't sure how well it'd work but it worked great and we had a lot of fun. I guess part of the excitement had something to do with having fancy little sticks to use.

Valentine Fun Pics

At 18 1/2 weeks

So in response to email requests to show a picture of my pregnant belly, I had Derrick take a picture and here you go. This is me at 18 1/2 weeks pregnant (a little over 4 months along). Megan, you can now compare.

Garrett, the volleyball pro

I just had to take a moment to say that my little brother Garrett is an amazing volleyball player. Yesterday, he was invited by one of the assistant coaches who either plays for or coaches at CU-Boulder to practice with the college players on Thursdays. He's only a junior and getting attention from college people. Yeah petit-frite!

Grood dinner times with the fam

So I'm definitely loving having so much of my family in Provo. Tonight Derrick and I decided sometime after 6 pm that we should probably start thinking about dinner. Derrick really wanted to make shepherd's pie. Since lately we've been catering to my cravings and more to my food aversions it was about time Derrick got his meal choice.

We figured that since we were making real food and that Melissa had a late class tonight, we'd invite her and Nate (or as Derrick would say: Natey Batey) over. While we were inviting siblings over, we figured we'd also invite Jason too. This turned out to be a good thing since Jason's dinner was so far consisting of Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch. Well-balanced meal planning such as this has led us to know better than to suggest Jason bring a fruit or a vegetable when he comes over to dinner since he never buys such things.

Well, about an hour later we were all together and it was a blast as usual. It was pretty funny to find out that Melissa used to be afraid of shepherd's pie because she had somehow associated liver with it. Apparently her roommate Laura was able to correct that thought earlier this year though it would have been pretty funny if she showed up afraid she was going to be served liver. Also, I'm glad to see that Nate fits in pretty comfortably and can joke around with the rest of us. He'll be a really fun brother in law. Congrats again Nate and Melissa!

Cabo Slideshow

This is a work in progress. Hopefully we'll get around to posting some of the fun pictures from the trip.

The First Edition

Yes, we have no bananas. Okay, that's a lie . . . we have two bananas. Welcome to Derrick and Jen's blog. As our peer group has matured, we've caved into the pressure to blog, rather than to facebook. We plan on putting all sorts of great content on here, like videos and pictures, as some of our friends and family aren't on facebook to see those sorts of things we have over there. Anyways, those bananas are a little ripe for Jen's taste. (mmm smoothie time)