Lots and lots of baby updates

I hit a big milestone on Friday. It was June 13th and with my due date being July 13th I was officially one month until the due date. It's amazing to think that in 4 weeks(ish) I'll be done being pregnant and be the mom of a little boy. I'm so excited to meet him and I definitely can't wait to feel relatively normal again. It's hard to remember not being pregnant but the end is in sight!

Our little guy is still pretty active and since he's run out of room I can feel his movements all the more. I'm convinced he's trying to create more space since a lot of times he sticks out his foot and pushes hard and just stays like that for awhile unless I push (gently) back. Not so comfortable but his moving around always helps me feel like he's doing just great. Heartburn's been striking with full force and I've had a bad cough for the last little while but other than that I've been spared a lot of the unpleasantness of pregnancy. I haven't really had any problems with swelling, stretch marks, sleeping through the entire night, back pain, etc. so I have lots of blessings to count.

I had another appointment with the OB/GYN last Friday. I was shown right to the room where she saw me but didn't see her until an hour later. Sitting on a table for an hour when 8 months pregnant is not comfortable so I wasn't very happy about that. It was my luck to be right after some girl who had an emotional breakdown and took the doctor's attention for 45 minutes. Grrr. Seeing the doctor this whole time has been pretty uneventful since there have been absolutely no complications. (another blessing) She even told me last time that I was really easy because there was never anything for her to do. My visits with her rarely go over 5 minutes.

The baby's heartbeat is "happy" according to the doctor and I'm assuming that's a good thing. I don't get told the numbers but it sounded good and strong. Also in good news the baby is head down and I've dilated to 1 cm. It sounded like that was good for a first time mom. With any luck this baby will come a little early. I'm just praying he doesn't come late though I know that's really common with the first.

Also on the baby front Derrick and I took a tour 2 weeks ago of the labor and delivery area of the hospital I'll have the baby in. It felt good to pre-register and see where exactly we need to go when we're feeling a little rushed. It felt funny to be walking around with a small group of very pregant women and their husbands. It was good to hear a little more about how the whole process works. After hearing about some of the different parts of the process I've decided that I'm going for the epidural. I'd considered seeing if I could tough it out for awhile and have the epidural as back up but I'm thinking I might just skip to the epidural. We'll see. My one complaint about the visit was that the "tour guide" kept joking about things which got confusing since I'm so new to this whole thing and had a hard telling when she was joking or really telling things as they were. Yikes.

As a final note, Derrick and I have been spending the last week decorating the baby's room. We decided to do a tropical/beachy theme to the room instead of the traditional pastels. We had fun finding great deals on wooden shades, fake flowers, and other decorations. Because cute baby bedding is so expensive we decided to make some of our own. Derrick helped me pick out different blues, greens and tans from the fabric store. He designed the different panels for the crib bumper pad on the computer and since then I've been creating the patterns and making them. It's been a lot of fun for me to figure out how to do this since I haven't done too much sewing. I've got half of the panels done and I'm really excited about how they're turning out. We'll post more pictures once I finish.

Belly pic at 8 months (the first day of week 37). The background shows how we decorated one of the walls in the baby/computer room. Yea for small apartments.

Down to One Job

So after working for 3 1/2 months in a preschool class at Farrer Elementary School for children with autism, I am done. The school year ended the last week of May and I don't think the timing could have been much better. Working two jobs everyday and needing to get down on the ground with high maintenance kids for one of them was starting to take a lot out of me. The kids were really cute and it was fun to learn the best ways to interact with them. Each kid was so different and figuring out how to keep them happy and doing what they were supposed to be doing (instead of inciting tantrums) was always an exciting accomplishment.

I think I was the most excited about the progress I made with a little boy named Jaxton. He never wanted to stop moving so keeping him focused on his work was frustrating and I'll admit I usually tried to let the other aides deal with him. After working with him for a few months I learned to love his quirks and we became good buddies. He was one of the kids I most looked forward to seeing and he went out of his way to make sure I was the aide who was helping him.

I was usually too busy to take pictures during work but I did get some from the last day. A few of the kids are missing. It was hard to get most of the kids to actually look at the camera. I've added captions to the pictures in case anyone's curious which one is Jaxton.

Trip to the Cabin at Fish Lake - May 23-26

So I'm finally getting caught up on blogging about the vacations Derrick and I went on in May. For Memorial Day weekend we went to the cabin Derrick's maternal grandpa and his siblings built at Fish Lake here in Utah. It's a 2 1/2 hour drive south of Provo. I was surprised to find that Spring hasn't reached Fish Lake yet. It was still really cold and even snowed a little on some of the days.

We met Derrick's parents and the Sessums, a family from their ward, at the cabin and had a lot of fun with them. Over the weekend we made s'mores around the fireplace, watched movies, went on 2 walks/hikes, and played lots of games. We went to church at the lodge there (about a 3 minute drive from the cabin) and during the sacrament a bat started flying around the room. I'd never seen that before! Also, it was so cold in there that most of the women didn't bother to wear skirts and most people brought piles of blankets with them. An old lady sat next to me and threw one of her blankets on top of Derrick and me because she brought so many. She was pretty funny to talk to before church started.

The cabin is pretty rustic. The only sources of heat were the fireplace and a wood burning stove. We got to climb ladders to get to the lofts we slept in at night. There was some question before we got there as to whether or not I could handle the ladder but luckily there was no problem. I'm glad I can still do a lot of the things I could before I was pregnant. One of the biggest things I miss is being able to bend over. Tying my own shoes without difficulty is one thing I won't take for granted anymore :).

We didn't take very many pictures during the trip but I did want to show what the cabin looks like, especially the ladder and the loft. As a disclaimer on the pictures, we were semi-roughing it so showering and using makeup were not regular occurrences over the weekend.

New Job

So, I'd been doing some freelance work for different companies (mainly little web based projects in php) but 2 weeks ago or so they started to thin out, so I thought I'd check out a more solid job. (Actually a bigger issue about it was that I would have to spend a certain amount of time looking for opportunities, which is time that I wouldn't get paid for...) So on a Monday I sent out my resume to a bunch of places, and by Wednesday I'd landed a solid web developer job at a local company called Cleantelligent.

Cleantelligent started out as an in-house web tracking system for a janitorial/facilities management company called Bear Com. They needed a system to track customer work-orders/emergencies/outages and there wasn't a commercial product that really fit their industry. After they had done a significant amount of development, they realized that they could profit more by selling the system as a service to other companies than by the simple competitive advantage, so they split off the software division into it's own company.

Being a custom system, its direction is heavily based on feature requests from clients. This is one of the major benefits of the program, if a company really needs a certain functionality, they can pay us to put it in there. So that's basically what I do, in short, the bidding of the highest bidder.

Since starting I've mainly done little bug-fixes and minor customizations, but now that I'm getting the hang of how the program works, I'll move on to some bigger projects. Besides the web side of things, there is also a version of the program for Tablet PCs and blackberry/PocketPC devices, mainly for on-site inspections.

The system is mainly Java based with an increasing amount of Flex, and the desktop apps in C#. In the near future we're putting in some advanced scheduling/calendaring features, multi-language messaging, and a scaled down version of the web site for things like the iPhone.

It's been really nice there so far, its pretty laid back, with all the snacks a guy could want and benefits including monthly massage and haircut (though luckily not at the same time) I'm looking forward to continuing on there for a little while.

Camping Trip - May 16 to 17

Because I'm lazy and catching up on a lot of posts, I'm posting another slide show instead of trying to artistically incorporate pictures with the words.

Derrick and I organized a camping trip to the Wedge Overlook in the San Rafael swell (not too far from Price, UT). Derrick's sister's boyfriend recommended it to us so we thought we'd try it. This place is called the mini Grand Canyon. I'm still not used to desert camping but it was a really pretty place.

The Sharps (my sister and brother-in-law), the Ropers (Derrick's friend growing up and his wife), and the Chandlers (some friends from the ward) came with us. After we sent up our tents a few of the girls came over and told us that they were there for a bachelorette party so they might get a little loud. Luckily they were never a problem though we all thought that it was pretty strange that the girls each seemed to have a dog and that they were camping for the bachelorette party.

We were all in charge of our own food and still ended up all having the same kind of tin foil dinners for dinner. The Chandlers made some really good peach cobbler with a dutch oven we borrowed and Jeremy (Roper) had a lot of fun with playing with lighter fluid and the fire after we were done cooking with it.

I was able to sleep surprisingly well considering I was 33 weeks along. I didn't feel at all guilty bringing a queen-size air mattress to sleep on.

After breakfast we drove down into the canyon and stopped to see some pretty cool petroglyphs. The signs explaining them didn't know too many details about them. Some things they did tell us were that the petroglyphs were thousands of years old, had been added to several times, and because of their prominent location, were meant to be displayed. After having a good look we found a river to play around in. Heat is starting to be pretty uncomfortable so the cold water felt so nice. After eating lunch we headed home. Showering felt so nice.

Louisville, Colorado Trip May 7 - May 13

During the 2nd week in May Derrick and I got to fly to Denver and visit my family in Louisville. Melissa and Nate joined us there and it was great having so much of the family together. Usually we drive but there was no way I was going to sit in a car for 8 1/2 hours when I was 32 weeks along. We timed the trip so we could help out with my sister's Colorado wedding reception. Because of this, my parents surprised us by buying our tickets for us. We were happy with the deal.

While there:

- We did a lot of preparations for the reception (grocery shopping, making torte, ironing table clothes, decorating the church gym, etc.) and hosted the reception. I curled Melissa's hair for her. Here's slide show of pictures Derrick took before and during the reception.



- I got a hair cut so now it's 4 inches shorter and a little more layered. The person who cut my hair was actually pretty frustrating and kept only doing tiny changes until I gave up asking her to do more.
- Derrick had someone who would actually play Halo with him (my younger brother Garrett)
- There was lots of game playing. This trip the main games were Settlers of Catan and Rook.
- We did our family's traditional trip to hike Boulder Falls then a picnic and walk along Boulder Creek. While walking around these places I got really excited to come back and show them to our little boy once he's old enough to notice his surroundings. Here's a slide show with pictures from Boulder Falls.



- Mother's Day - Derrick and I made a fancy dinner that my mom got to choose. We ended up having steak, baked potatoes, fried zucchini and squash, fruit salad, and frape (sp?) all served on the china. We also sang songs around the piano and played extra games with my mom since she loves playing games. I had a really fun time going back to the Louisville ward. It's the ward I grew up in and I hadn't been there since last May.
- Derrick and I went to visit his younger brother Tyson who's going to school at CU-Boulder. We met his new dog Oswald, made smoothies, and watched Live Free or Die Hard.
- We received a lot of baby clothes and supplies. My mom had fun shopping for her first grandchild and got a little carried away. We're not complaining though!

XKCD

A web comic Jeremy and I like to read put up this one that seemed all too a propos:



You'll probably need either Firefox or the latest IE to see it right, and make sure you check out the tooltip (hover your mouse over the image for a lil bit).

fun times.

TIme to play catch up

So it's definitely been awhile since we've posted on here. Sorry to those who actually read this blog. Derrick and I have been getting most of our vacations in this May because we aren't sure how much traveling we'll be up for later this summer with our new edition coming this July. Hopefully, several new posts will be joining our blog in attempts to document the last few weeks.

The Sharp Wedding

My younger sister Melissa married her sweetheart Nathan Sharp, a.k.a. Natey Batey, in the Mt. Timpanogos temple on April 26,2008. Congratulations you two! Derrick and I are so excited that you'll be moving into an apartment about 2 minutes walking distance away!


In the morning we had a great wedding breakfast at The Hampton House in American Fork, UT. The food was great and lots of people from the Jones and Sharp sides of the family came. The dads both gave mini-speeches and Nate put in his few words (few being the key word here :) ). After stuffing ourselves with cinnamon french toast, seasoned potatoes, peppered bacon, scrambled eggs, cinnamon rolls of different flavors, and croissants dipped in chocolate (not your healthiest breakfast), we had three hours to do whatever before the wedding. Derrick and I went with Melissa and Nate to Nate's uncle's house in American Fork and after hanging out there awhile we went to Kohl's to do some baby shopping. We still had a few gift cards left from our wedding a year ago.

The temple ceremony at 2:00 pm was beautiful and was performed by Grandpa Jones who's set apart as a sealer at the Jordan River temple but got permission from the first presidency to seal Melissa and Nate at the Mt. Timpanogos temple. Melissa and Nate looked so happy and now get to be together for time and all eternity. The day they'd been counting down to finally came!

We ended up waiting a long time for Melissa and Nate to join us outside the temple for pictures. We saw Nate run past everyone twice without Melissa and later found out he was making trips to their car to try and find her tiara. After one unsuccessful attempt and lots of looking, Nate found the tiara.

Having pictures taken outside the temple turned out to be an interesting time because it was so windy. On our way into to temple we saw one bride's veil blown vertical. The wind hadn't died down much by the time Melissa and Nate came outside. This is what happened when they walked out.


Derrick helped control the blowing veil for a little while. Another, more efficient way was to have Nate keep his arm around Melissa and use that arm to hold it down.

Just for fun, here's a picture of Melissa, our mom, and me.

After pictures, Derrick and I rushed home so we could try and get some sleep before we needed to get to the church to help finish setting up for the reception. Melissa put me in charge of the flowers for her wedding so we was up until 5:30 am working on them. Three hours of sleep while being in the third trimester is not so fun. I made the boutonnières, corsages, and bouquet Friday night but decided to do the rest of the flowers right before the reception. Derrick was really nice and stayed up with me and even taped and wired the salal leaves for the bouquet after I showed him how. Three cheers for a supportive husband!

Our refrigerator at the end of the Friday night

We only had time to sleep an hour and then we headed to the church building here in Provo where they the reception was being held. I needed to hurry and finish the flowers for the cake, the table arrangements, and the tossing bouquet so I set up all my supplies in the Relief Society room. Derrick was sent on several errands with my brother Garrett and everything came together pretty well by the time guests were arriving. Nate's family also did a lot to help.

Here are a few pictures from the reception:

This is the first picture of the whole family we've had since before Jason went on his mission. We've had three (and 3/4 if you count the baby) new editions since then.

Daddy/Daughter dance to Josh Groban's "You Raise Me Up"

Just after cutting the cake Grandma Eddington (Melissa's maternal grandma) made and smashing it into each other's faces a bit.

Graduation

So with both high school and now college, I graduated in December and walked the following spring. My parents and brother Garrett got to Provo in time to make it to the commencement exercises Thurs, Apr 24th. Melissa, Nate, and Jason also came. Elder Bednar was there spoke about learning to love learning. Because this was the big ceremony, I decided to be untraditional and not dress up in the cap and gown and sat with my family instead. It was more fun enjoying the ceremony with them and we were able to leave quickly afterwards so we could get dinner and make it to the Mt. Timpanogos temple where my sister Melissa went through for the first time at 8:00 pm. This picture is with my mom.

After commencement exercises, most of us met up with Derrick's parents at his grandparents house and had a great dinner. We didn't want to try and mess with the crowds at any restaurants.

Convocation for the David O. McKay School of Education started Friday at 8:00 a.m. Derrick's parents, my parents and two of my brothers willingly woke up that early to come support me. It meant a lot to me to have so much family come support me even though I graduated several months ago. I graduated Cum Laude with a Bachelor's of Science degree in Communication Disorders. Elder Perry was there and I got to shake his hand after the dean handed me the folder to hold my real diploma. I think he came because he had a granddaughter graduating.

Derrick's and my parents were also very generous with the graduation gifts. Derrick's parents bought me a glider chair for the baby's room (I was determined to have one one way or another so this was very exciting) and my parents bought me a matching stroller and car seat. Here are some pictures with family after convocation.

With the Bowen parents

Derrick showing off my prego belly

Posing with my brothers Jason and Garrett

With the Jones parents

One wonderful year

On Monday, April 28th, Derrick and I celebrated our one year wedding anniversary. It's so wonderful being married to my best friend. It's hard for me to really put the why into words. I love that he's considerate, dependable, loving, patient, forgiving, hard working, tons of fun, creative, spontaneous, intelligent, good with money, great at communicating, has a great sense of humor, and honors his Priesthood. The list goes on. I love getting to spend time with him everyday. We have fun together whether we're doing the laundry or playing in Hawaii. One of our goals has been to read the scriptures together everyday and so far we have a perfect record. He is definitely the perfect match for me. I'm so grateful that we get to be together forever.

We didn't do anything fancy to celebrate our anniversary since we're currently on a college income. We did get to spend most of the day together and made a fancy dinner. We cooked filet mignon, baked potatoes, shrimp (for Derrick), zucchini, apples, juice. For dessert I made strawberry shortcake from scratch. It all tasted so good. We pulled out the candles and place mats for fun.

Year two of our marriage will definitely be a big adventure since two will become three. Derrick will make a great dad and it makes me so happy that he is looking forward to becoming one. I'm excited to work with him to raise our little boy. I love you Derrick!!!

Current Events

So I thought for this post I'd lump a couple different recent happenings together:

Coming to an end

So we are now at the end of another semester. Derrick is finishing up with the second half of the junior core in the ISYS program and will hopefully be starting the combined senior core and first year of the master's program in the fall. (We're still waiting to hear back about his getting accepted or not). I'm excited to have more time with Derrick in the evenings and to not need to work hard to not distract him too much from his homework. This was my first semester after graduating. It's still a little unreal to not be worrying about finals at this time of the year. I did decide about 3 days ago that I'd be walking in the graduation ceremonies. I was pretty indifferent about going through the ceremony (I did get my diploma in the mail months ago) and personally would rather skip it and have a family party instead. My parents seemed to care enough, a friend in the ward looked up all the information for me, and it surprisingly wasn't too late to order a cap and gown so I've decided to go for it after all.

ASM Closing Social

On Tuesday we had the closing social for BYU's club for Derrick's major. Apparently ASM stands for Association for Systems Management. It's a pretty nerdy club but going to club events more than makes up for the membership fee. Usually big companies sponsor cool events like high adventure courses or snow tubing. The closing social was a nice catered dinner by BYU catering at the new Hinckley building. We won a booklet of $25 in gift certificates to one of the nearby movie theaters so that was pretty exciting.

Here's a picture of Derrick and I at the dinner. I've had a really bad cold all week. I also want to add that Derrick's wearing his glasses because the shower drain ate one of his contacts a few weeks ago (he wears the hard kind).

Baby Updates

I am now in my 28th week and this last Sunday marked exactly three months until our baby's due date. Sometimes it feels like being pregnant has lasted forever and other times it's crazy to me that I'm already 2/3 of the way done! I'm really grateful that so far I've been spared a lot of the unpleasantness that comes with being this far along. To name a couple, I have no trouble getting comfortable and sleeping and I also don't have the back aches or swelling yet. We'll see how long that lasts.

Earlier on Tuesday I went to the OB/GYN for another of the many regular visits. Everything is coming along on schedule. I'm growing enough size-wise and weight-wise and our baby's heartbeat is getting stronger each time we hear it. The baby's a lot more active now and this week one of the kicks I received actually felt like it came from something shaped like a foot. It was pretty funny. I like looking at the different websites to see how developed he probably is by now and it's fun to see that he can now blink and his lungs are pretty well developed.

Now in response to many requests from my old Nauvoo roommate Megan, here is a belly shot. Derrick took the picture today when I am 27 1/2 weeks pregnant.

Not your average work day...

So I was working at my receptionist job yesterday and only had about 5 minutes left when I heard yelling just outside my window. I saw a high school age boy running up to one of the doors of our office that we keep locked (thank goodness). He started heading closer to the main door where I work and the next thing I know two policemen have caught up to the boy and with guns out are yelling at him to get down on the ground! I didn't notice they were cops at first because one of them was undercover (I could see his badge after looking a bit closer). The boy started yelling too but was forced down to the ground with his hands behind his head.

As they were hand cuffing the boy I saw about 5 cop cars and a news crew van pull into the parking lot. One of the cop cars even created its own entrance by going up and over the grass. By this time the rest of the office was gathered by my desk watching as the police started emptying out the boy's pockets which contained several large pill bottles, a pack of cigarettes, and a pretty decent sized knife.

Our building is pretty close to a grocery store called Allen's and we guessed that the boy used his knife to hold up and rob the pharmacy. I ended up hanging out at work for an extra 10-15 minutes until they got the boy loaded into one of the cop cars. I figured it wasn't a good idea to try to get to my car since all the commotion was happening right by it. We were very grateful that we usually keep two of the office doors locked and I know for next time to hurry and lock the main door if anything crazy happens outside again (luckily one of my co-workers thought to lock it this time). Who knows what would have happened if the kid had made it inside the office?

Here's a link to Channel 2's story about the incident.
Here's a link for any who are interested showing the boy's picture and description of his charges. By clicking on his name Derrick and I found out that this is the 4th time he's been arrested within the last year - though this is the most serious thing he's done.

Conference Weekend

I know this is a delayed post but I keep getting distracted every time I start trying to update. I apologize in advance that this post is pretty scattered feeling. Oh well. So this last weekend, conference weekend, was a lot of fun but pretty busy. Derrick's parents came into town on Friday and we had fun seeing them throughout the weekend.

On Friday night after Derrick finished a test, the four of us had Cafe Rio at Derrick's grandparents' house (they live by the stadium). After dinner, we headed over to a stake center by the temple for Derrick's mission reunion complete with slide show and other nostalgia for those who served in the New York, Utica mission. It's obvious now that I'm pregnant and at one point Derrick's old mission president's wife told me that I'm either pregnant or really fat. It was pretty funny. I wished I'd thought to play it off like I was offended and not pregnant.

Saturday morning my sister Melissa and her fiance Nate came over for breakfast and the first session of General Conference. We had homemade waffles with strawberries, muffins, and juice. It was amazing to participate via KBYU in the solemn assembly especially since I don't have any memory of the last one. I loved watching President Monson watch everyone sustain him. What a scary calling to be the prophet. I'm glad that in the solemn assembly we get to practice common consent and for those in the meeting, show the prophet that we accept him as the Lord's chosen prophet. I've grown up listening to President Monson in different conferences and meetings and I could definitely see a difference now that he is our prophet. I miss President Hinckley but I have a testimony that President Monson is the man who God has chosen to lead His church at this time.

Immediately after the morning session of conference we said goodbye to Nate and Melissa and headed up with Mom and Dad Bowen to the conference center to watch the afternoon session. A weird thing was that we never saw or heard any protesters. Maybe it was just the direction we walked.

We hurried back to Provo after the session was over so Derrick and Dad Bowen could meet up with family to watch the Priesthood session of Conference and so I could try and set up for Melissa's bridal shower which started at 6 pm. Melissa's roommate Emily was great and had most everything set up before I got there (which was good since I walked into Melissa's apartment as the shower was starting). We played some games, ate banana splits and gave Melissa presents. It was a pretty regular bridal shower but Melissa seemed to have fun and only get a little embarrassed :). Here are a couple of pictures I took:

After hurriedly cleaning up I rushed over to Kirsten (Walker) Burningham's apartment for the second half of her baby shower. I know her from my semester at Nauvoo and got to see a few other people who I haven't seen since that semester ended. It was a lot of fun to catch up and see how much people have changed. For those who also went to Nauvoo, Kirsten is going to have a boy in May and Natalie is due in August. It was actually funny how many pregnant people were at the shower. I guess that's how things work in Provo.



On Sunday morning we went back over to Derrick's grandparents' house to watch conference wi his parents. After the session was over we had a birthday lunch that Mom Bowen made for me since they'd be back in Colorado on my real birthday (the 9th). Thanks again Mom, it was really good! They left to drive home to Colorado after lunch and we went back to our apartment where we were joined by Jason (brother), Melissa (sister), and Nate (almost brother-in-law) for the afternoon session. We had plenty of food since there were so many leftovers from Melissa's bridal shower. I love having family so close by.

One thing that really stood out to me in the last session of Conference was President Monson's request that we pray for him. To put it in his words: "My dear brothers and sisters, I love you, and I pray for you. Please pray for me. And together we will reap the blessings our Heavenly Father has in store for each one of us. This is my prayer, my plea as I add my testimony. This work is true. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen." I love President Monson. He is truly the prophet called of God on the earth right now. He's got such a big responsibility and we all need each others' prayers.

(I'll admit that I "back-blogged" (post-dated) this entry:) )

For Mom Jones

So after living in their house for over 50 years, my mom's parents moved to a condo in Provo on March 29th. It's pretty weird to think that they no longer live in Sandy, but we're excited to have them close by. Moving a house-full of stuff into a condo takes some work but Grandma's made a pretty good dent in it. Here's a picture of the family room and a picture of the condo from outside.

Finished Goal

So for the month of March, Derrick and I made the goal to read the whole March Ensign together. We figured that since it focused completely on the Savior it'd be a great way to get in the right mindset for Easter. We finished the last article for FHE on March 31st so we reached our goal. One of my favorite times with working to meet this goal was when we were driving to Grand Junction Easter weekend. I read some of the articles aloud to Derrick and we got to have a really good discussion about the Savior. This was a fun experience so I thought I'd document it. Have a great day!

What I've been working on

Here is the link to the website search engine I've been creating for PBSI. fun stuff.

PBSI Presentation Search Engine

You can search by presentation, author, topic, or conference. It even ranks the authors in each presentation by the order that they helped participate.

good times.

-Derrick

Fun Surprise

So Derrick picked me up from work yesterday and had these waiting for me:

Derrick rarely buys me flowers so this was a really fun surprise. He didn't tell me he bought flowers but had fun waiting for me to notice them. We usually have 3 vases, each with a fake flower in them, where these flowers are so they were a bit camoflauged. Derrick made a few attempts to get me to look at them without realizing he was trying to get me to look. Luckily it didn't take too long.

Easter Grand Junction Weekend

Derrick and I drove to his parents' house in Grand Junction, CO for Easter weekend. It's only a 3 1/2 hour drive but it's getting a little harder to sit through as I'm getting farther along. Derrick's siblings Tyson who lives in Boulder and Tonja and Rob who live in Boston came for the week.

Here's the basic rundown of what we did. I decided to just write it down in list form since it was mostly just a nice relaxing weekend. On Saturday we walked the river trail walk, played tennis in the backyard (Rob making great comments/yells throughout), had good food complete with Rob's special dessert (brownie, chocolate pudding, vanilla ice cream, chocolate fudge, whipped cream, and jimmies/sprinkles - basically really bad for you) and watched a movie. On Easter Sunday we got to go to church, see our nephew Ryan and his mom Christa, and then have more good food before Derrick and I drove home.

Here are a couple of pictures of our cute nephew Ryan from when he came over:

With Christa his mom

With the wagon Tonja and Rob bought him

Ryan with Tyson his dad

Ryan reading with Grandma

From Zero to Two

Today was my first official day as a part-time teacher aide in a preschool for children with autism. This preschool is part of Farrer Elementary school in Provo and luckily is only a few blocks away from my secretary job. (This is very helpful since Derrick and I share a car.) It's pretty weird going from being unemployed for two months to having two jobs. Now I'll be working 33 hours a week. At least 20 of those hours are pretty low key and at a desk. I don't think I could handle any more than that with being pregnant. The kids I work with are Monday-Thursday are really cute but pretty high maintenance. We'll see how this goes.

On a side note: this job finding experience has been a big answer to prayers. I really needed the break after a crazy Fall semester. Having to pull a couple of all-nighters for projects is not pleasant but is especially hard when pregnant. It was frustrating to wait so long for things to work out because I didn't know how long it would take to work out and finances were getting tight. When the secretary job finally worked out things started happening with the preschool job opportunity. I really wanted to do both but wasn't sure how since there were scheduling conflicts. I didn't know how it could be done but prayed that somehow it'd work out to do both.

The opening I was interviewed for at the preschool were for the afternoon and didn't fit with my work schedule. I did become a substitute aide though because it was much more flexible. I substituted in various classes Monday to Wednesday of this week and a morning position opened up yesterday that needed to get filled quickly. I was asked to fill it. It's amazing how small things can fall into place and prayers answered.

Married to a nerd

I decided that since a lot of these posts end up being about me, I'd dedicate this post to Derrick and give people a heads up about what he's up to. Derrick is really good with computers and gets really excited when he thinks of ideas to network different things together and customize the way things look on his laptop or the family computer (here's where his interest in graphic design comes in). I love my nerd!

Recently Derrick's worked it so our laptops can access anything on the external hard drive from anywhere in the apartment and for his laptop, anywhere that has BYU internet, like campus. Exciting, I know :). He loves that sort of thing so we know he picked the right major.

In BYU's information systems (ISYS) program, most of Derrick's classes are integrated. This semester they are working on a project that is pretty complicated and very time consuming. Derrick's been learning how to set up a computer program/system that can do everything a venue would need to do: sell tickets, configure auditoriums, make season ticket packages, set pricing, etc. They're also making a user interface that employees can use to sell tickets and make it so the program can be used so people can buy tickets over the internet. Every other week they have a piece (milestone) of the project due. This means that every other week I get to try to find ways to entertain myself every night so I don't distract Derrick too much. The picture with this post is one I snapped of him while he was in the middle of last week's milestone.

Derrick is in his Junior year in BYU's Information Systems (ISYS) program. He's in the process of applying for the master's program which he can do concurrently with his senior year. It's nice that they work it so Derrick can get the first half of the masters program out of way while he still has his full-tuition scholarship. If he gets accepted, we'll be here in Provo another 2 years.

23 Weeks

So I figured it's about time to do a pregnancy update. I am now part way into my 23rd week and starting month 6 of being pregnant. Here's a picture from after church on Sunday.


With the 2nd trimester, I've found that I've felt tired a lot more than sick and I'm definitely okay with the difference. A couple of recent developments are: I now know what heartburn feels like, people now notice that I'm pregnant because they can see the bump, and I have now experienced seeing a book I was reading and balancing on my stomach bounce around a bit because the baby was kicking it - that was weird and pretty funny.

We're getting close to picking our baby's first name and have narrowed the choices so far to 3. I told Derrick yesterday that I'm becoming pretty attached to one in particular so he needs to speak now or forever hold his peace because I most likely won't change my mind.

Last Friday I had one of the regular doctor visits and found out that everything is going along as it should. I'm growing on schedule and the heartbeat sounds good. We've been very blessed to have a complication free pregnancy so far and I really hope it stays that way! Lately, I've also been realizing that there are so many things I need to learn about how things will happen at the end of this whole process. I think I'll sign up for a prenatal class or something.

Mom Bowen came to town

So Derrick's mom came to visit us here in Provo this last weekend. We get to see her relatively often and it's always fun for us.

On Friday night we had dinner with Mom Bowen at Derrick's grandparents house (they live by the stadium). After dinner I visited with the family that was over while Derrick got to be anti-social and work on the program he had to turn in Monday morning.

On Saturdays, Derrick is a temple worker so Mom Bowen took me shopping for my birthday even though my birthday isn't until April. She was incredibly generous and bought me several pairs of maternity capris and a few shirts that while not made to be maternity, work as maternity ones. The dressing rooms at Motherhood Maternity were really funny. Inside there was a "fake belly" you could put on so you can see whether the clothes you're buying will fit you after several more months of expanding! How weird is that? I couldn't pass up trying it on though...now I know what I can look like once my belly pokes out about 6 more inches and if it becomes really lumpy. Sorry, I didn't bring a camera so there'll be no pictures of that. Another big stop was at Mervyn's. Mom Bowen couldn't pass up the baby section that was having a huge sale. We had fun looking at little boy clothes and she generously bought several cute outfits for our little guy. Yeah for grandmas!

I had a lot of fun getting to spend one-on-one time with my mother-in-law. I really lucked out when it comes to in-laws. Thanks again for everything Mom!

Change of Plans

This blog entry has more detail than most people will care to know and it's ended up being pretty long. I'm mostly including so much so I can look back on it all later.

So as some of you know, I graduated this last December from BYU-Provo with a Bachelor's degree in Communication Disorders (Speech Therapy). In order to do anything with this major I need to get a master's degree. When Derrick and I first got married (4/28/07) we were planning on waiting at least a full year until starting a family so I could be most of the way done with my master's degree before the baby came. After talking with the Lord, He let us know by the end of the summer that our plan regarding our family wasn't the same as His. He changed our plans so we would be starting our family more than 6 months earlier than we thought at first.

With this change of plans I decided I would just graduate and maybe think about graduate school in the distant future. I wasn't even going to try to apply, but after more thought and prayer I learned that I needed to apply for a master's program. This was a scary idea and would be a lot of extra work with having a baby at the beginning of the program, but I knew we could manage since we were trying to do what we knew to be right. Throughout fall semester and January, I took the GRE (sort of like and ACT only for grad school), got letters of recommendation, wrote an essay, etc. I only applied to BYU-Provo's program because Derrick still goes to school here and there was no way I was going to try to commute to SLC with a baby.

After I finished applying I had to wait over a month to hear anything back. This year was a lot more competitive than other years because BYU was only letting in 10 new students when the usual amount is 20. I felt relatively confident because test scores and my GPA were above the average that have been accepted in the past. At the end of February, I found out that I made the top 20 out of 50 applicants and that I was invited to be interviewed by a group of professors. This interview happened on February 28th and was a bit intimidating. I got to sit in a chair in front of 6 professors who each took turns firing questions at me. They told me I was doing well and seemed to like me so that was a good sign.

Two weeks later (March 8th) I got my letter from BYU. It turned out that I did not get accepted to the program. I was shocked and upset to say the least. I felt very qualified and it didn't make sense that I wasn't accepted (sorry if this sounds cocky or something...it's honest). I had Derrick give me a Priesthood blessing to help me calm down and I felt a little better. It wasn't until after letting the words from the blessing sink in, getting over the shock, and praying a lot that I was able to feel good about the situation (luckily this all happened by Sunday morning). I received a strong witness that not getting accepted was for my good and that Heavenly Father is in control. The applying process has been a big growing experience and not getting in gives me the chance to take a break from full-time schooling to focus on my growing family. Surprisingly, I can say I'm now grateful for the experience.

So what now? While I was wondering what I should do next with my life, I felt very strong
that I should start learning ASL again. I've taken 5 ASL classes from BYU and loved it. I only stopped because BYU's program isn't very good (they don't even offer it as a minor). Right now I'm looking into taking some ASL classes from UVSC and becoming proficient enough to become certified as an interpreter. Their program is really good and offers probably about 6 times more classes in ASL than BYU. Some perks of pursuing a license in interpreting are: I will only be taking a few classes at a time so my schedule will be much more flexible than it would have been in grad school, I don't have to do a master's thesis, I love doing and learning sign language, this would be a very flexible profession, the pay is relatively good, there is a high demand for interpreters and...I feel really good about it.

This is all still up in the air but I'm pretty excited about it. I guess I'll just have to see where this change of plans takes me now. I'm very grateful that Derrick has been amazingly supportive and loving throughout all of this (he made a good shoulder to cry on). I have a strong testimony that while it's hard when plans we make don't work out, things will work out for the best when we truly seek to find out and follow what the Lord would have us do. He knows us and our futures and can bring about amazing things in our lives. He loves each of us, is aware of all the details, and while small and maybe large things may seem to be going wrong, the Lord is really laying down the foundation for a great future.

Olive Garden

For Christmas, my Jones grandparents gave Derrick and me a gift card to the Olive Garden. We didn't use it for awhile after we got it because I was just finishing up with the first trimester of being pregnant and didn't really like food at the time. Also, around that time I had a weird but very strong aversion to most bread products. I usually love the all-you-can eat bread sticks they serve so we wanted to wait until I could enjoy them again (and no longer feel sick at the thought of them). Luckily, I have been able to enjoy eating since the end of January and recently got to the point where I felt I could enjoy Olive Garden's bread sticks again (though I still can't handle anything related to Rhodes rolls). After deciding we didn't need to wait for a special occasion, Derrick and I finally decided to go tonight and had a really great time together. The food was delicious (the bread sticks tasted great), I didn't have to cook, and I didn't need to do the dishes! Even better, the food is enough for lunch tomorrow. Thanks a lot Grandma and Grandpa! We love you!

Finally!

So over 2 months after graduating and stopping my job (it was a student job and since I was no longer a student...) I am finally working again! It's been quite the process. During most of January and part of February I was job hunting and writing out tons of resumes and letters of intent. At the beginning of February I got a call from my old job (the student one) and my old boss said that he had a spiritual prompting that he needed to help me find a job. He wanted me to come in that day so they could see what they could do to help. Wow! Only at BYU would that happen.

When I went and met with the two bosses they made some calls to different connections they had with people in my major (speech therapy) and even offered me my old job as a secretary/research assistant back. They hadn't been able to replace me and had decided to try and hire me on as part time staff employee so I could work as a non-student. After thinking and praying about it, I decided to accept my old job back. Sadly, there have been a lot of complications and I didn't get approved to start working until yesterday (Monday). I'm so excited to finally be able to work and not have to try and find productive ways to keep busy all day (like making curtains).

Though this job is somewhat tedious at times, there are a ton of great perks to working at a research branch of the McKay School of Education:
- Derrick started working there as an assistant technical support person in January so we get to pull faces at each other at work and carpool (very nice since we only have one car).
- I get to see Tara a lot more and get "story time" (basically where I hear about boys and roommates, etc.) since she is also a secretary/research assistant there. For those of you who don't know Tara, she's been an amazing friend since freshman year, a roommate, and the maid of honor at my wedding.

Here's Derrick and me surrounding Tara and pulling cheesy faces while waiting for the midnight showing of Pirates of the Caribbean 2.

- Since I stopped and came back I was offered a very nice pay raise.
- Even though today kinda felt like my first day on the job, I was able to remember everything that stayed the same since I left and even train one of the other secretaries. I think it's funny to be the one doing the training especially because I'm now the new person.
- It's a really fun atmosphere to work in with social and friendly co-workers.

Curtain Project

I've had a lot more free time on my hands since I graduated with my bachelor's degree in Communication Disorders (speech therapy) last December. Derrick still has homework so I get to find ways to entertain myself so I don't distract him too much. One of my recent projects has been to make curtains to help hide the really ugly blinds in our front room. It took me a little longer than I thought it would because I made up the pattern as I went along.

Ugly blinds before curtains
(we had to bend wire hangers to attach the curtain rod because of our
"lovely" cinder block walls)

With curtains
(Derrick was great - he attached the rod and helped me put up the curtains)

Gimpy and Numbskull

So this post will probably only be of any interest to anyone who knows my parents. I'm basically including this info in the blog for my own documentation. My parents had doctor appointments today and yesterday and both came away bandaged and/or wrapped up.

(This picture was taken a year ago at my aunt and uncle's cabin in the mountains)

My mom went to the doctor yesterday and found out that the reason her foot has been hurting for so long is that she somehow broke it at our wedding! That was 10 months ago! Being broken definitely explains why it took until 5 months after the wedding to get to the point where she could walk on it without a lot of pain. It was only finally caught because she did something to aggravate it. Now my mom gets to hobble around with her foot wrapped up and in a walking boot while she waits for the swelling to go down to see whether or not she'll need to have surgery on it. Yikes!

This morning my dad went to the doctor to have a minor surgery on his face. He's pretty funny when he's on pain meds and trying to make the best out of a situation. He sent me a few text messages while in the waiting room that said things like: "Just finished round 1 of the surgery. The score so far is: me 1, cancer 0" and "Right now I'm sitting in a waiting area with a bunch of other people with strange bandages on their faces. It'd be funny if I weren't one of them". It sounds like everything got taken care of but my dad got to leave with a large bandage and 2 inches of stitches. He's the one who made the bad pun about being a numbskull because of the local anesthesia :).

Luckily they still have one kid at home who can help out and run errands for them to help with the recovery. Good luck you two...and to Garrett. We love you!

GJ Slideshow

Grand Junction weekend

So it's been a little while since we've posted on here. We started out good but I guess once we get out of the habit it's harder to get back into it.

During the last weekend in February Derrick and I drove to his parents' house in Grand Junction, CO. Meesa (sister), Andrew (Meesa's boyfriend), Jamon (brother), Jean (sister-in-law), and Tyson (brother) all were going to be there for part of the week so we thought we'd join the party.

While there we had great food, played games (pig mania), got to see Christa and Ryan, went hiking up to Devil's Kitchen and the lemon squeezers, played 3 on 4 basketball and around the world at the church gym, and even got Mom and Dad Bowen to play some DDR (dance dance revolution).

It was really nice that I'm past the nauseous stage of pregnancy so Derrick and I could join in all the fun. I have noticed that things tire me out a lot faster than they used to and that my center of balance has changed. Good times though definitely more enjoyable than being sick all the time!

We headed back here to Provo with Andrew on Sunday morning and made it back just in time for church. We pulled into our parking lot 10 minutes before church was starting, rushed upstairs to our apartment, got changed, and walked to church arriving at the beginning of the sacrament hymn.

It's fun having family so close by and love the memories we get to make with them. Thanks for a great weekend! (We'll be posting pics from the trip in a little while).

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)