Mountains, May, and Mother's Day

 May was full of some amazing moments!

For Mother's Day, the kids drew me some exceptionally stellar cards. I love Kate's "jellyfish" family!

Jon had the kids list some things that they love about me. It just made me melt! By far the best gifts ever. :)

For dinner we had a garlic herb salmon over brown rice with asparagus and homemade artisan bread. It was so delicious that I forgot to take a picture before we ate it all! My mom came over to share dinner with us, and we wrapped up the evening with a rich dark chocolate cake with dark chocolate buttercream, which was all made from scratch. It was seriously the best, and will be the only chocolate cake recipe I ever use for the rest of my entire life.

I even made cupcakes out of the extra batter so that the kids had easier to devour hand-held desserts. It was a hit!

My mom also got me this gorgeous bracelet: *swoon*

And I got this really awesome card from Jon's parents in England. A lady in their ward hand makes them!

It was really great getting to spend the day together :)
Mom, Kate, Me, and Wynn:

The most surprising thing about Mother's Day was that it was a nice and sunny morning (we even got to take a family walk after church) and then hailed like crazy during dinner! It was extremely windy with marble size hail coming down for at least 5 minutes. It was nuts! Thankfully things cleared up again for mom to walk back home :) I'm glad we didn't have anywhere to drive that night.

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May also brought a fantastic weekend at the first annual Ammon Scottish Festival, where Jon competed in the Highland Games :D This was at the coaxing of his good friend Stephanie that he works with at Porter's. She's legit.

Jon was super out of his element, but he kept trying! He got a marked distance/height in every event, which was cool. It was really fun to watch the games and spend our day outside. We only got rained on a little bit in the afternoon. Totally worth it. :)

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Near the middle of the month, my mom and I took the kids to Utah for a few days where we visited my Grandma Carolyn (the kids' last-living Great-Grandparent). We had an excellent time exploring Provo and enjoying the company of my Grandma :) We were also able to see my Uncle Carl and cousin Nathan Hardy. The kids had a blast!

View of the original Provo Temple from Grandma's porch:

This cracked me up! I asked Kate to make sure she took off her shoes and put them by the door... she took me very literally. ;)

Gram playing blocks with Kate:

Uncle Carl hiding under the coffee table with Kate and Tortoise:

Family selfie! (I love Kate's arm around Edwin. She totally did that on her own)

One of my favorite parts of trekking down to Utah was getting to see the Webers who now live in Springville:

Their backyard opens up to this awesome park with a stellar playground and mountains just behind :D

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When we got home from Utah, my dad came to visit for a day. (ignore Kate's evil glare here, and the fact that my dad is sleeping...) It was a whirlwind trip, so I wasn't very good about taking pictures.

We have been so blessed by friends and family this month, we have really felt the love!

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May wrapped up with some picnics at the temple:

date nights:

space helmets:

Helping make dinner:

and FINALLY some warm weather, which means the return of evening walks and excellent Idaho sunsets. There is just no way to accurately capture how fantastic the sky is here. It is incredible:

I guess you could say we've had a pretty nice month! Idaho is treating us well :)

January - The Month Of...

Sculpture!

 

 

Jon and I have both always wanted to try sculpture. After looking into the different materials and forms, we decided to go with 3-dimensional round sculpture style using clay.

 

At first we decided to each sculpt animals... then it turned out that we were basically planning to make the same thing - and oh yeah I HATE CLAY.

 

I just didn't feel like it really did what I wanted it to. It was all together too soft and too firm at the same time. What I decided I really wanted to use was play-doh. HAHA

 

 

After abandoning the animal plan, I decided to make something that would make me happy... snack foods :) So I modeled a triscuit with tomato, lettuce and cheese toppings, a fig newton (dang, I love those!) and some fruit snacks. It turns out I found my calling in clay sculpture world = snack foods.

 

Jon was having a great time with his clay and actually did really well with his animal plan!

 

 

There's his little sleeping fox behind my triscuit creation.

 

 

We still have a TON of clay left, so we will probably be making more things. One thing's for sure - sculpture is not my favorite art form. At least this kind. Maybe someday we will take a class or try for metal or glass sculptures. I could see that being fun. This is the year of exploration after all!

 

***

 

In the middle of January I also took a spontaneous trip to Utah to visit my best cousin, Megan. Kate came with me for the short weekend. We had a lot of fun, but were literally in Utah for less than 48 hours! Short short trip.

 

Here is Kate sleeping in my arms on our first flight together, which had a layover in Portland.

 

 

She is such an amazing baby. She was cooperative the whole trip. 4 flights total in a 3 day period!

 

I got sick on Friday after we landed, so after lunch at Cafe Rio I slept the rest of the afternoon and evening.

 

On Saturday we went out to lunch at Zupa's with my Grandma Andersen. Afterward we spent some time at her home visiting and looking through some family history. Kate napped on the couch and was happy enough to sit for a couple pictures with me and Great Grandma!

 

 

Saturday night we went to dinner with my Aunt, Uncle and cousins Chelsey and Megan at Rumbi Island Grill. It was the closest thing I could get to a Teriyaki Chicken Bowl since Hogi Yogi no longer exists. HAHA I am so happy to say that, although I miss their food a little :)

 

Chelsey and Kate:

 

Andersen & Nielson families with Kate:

 

Sunday morning we left really early for the airport. We had connecting flights from SLC to LAX and then SMF.

 

Me, Megan and Kate:

 

 

Kate and I got a window seat from LAX to Sacramento:

 

It was totally adorable to watch her in wonder looking out of the plane window:

 

I also let her try a little orange juice on the flight. She definitely LOVES it!

 

We had a great time seeing some snow, visiting cousins and relaxing in Utah, but we are so happy to be back home in California where it is warmer! Here is Kate with the blanket and burp cloth set that Great Grandma made for her. We love the puppy dogs! It is so cozy.

 

 January has definitely been adventurous.

Bring it on, February!



April Showers and May Flowers

As April ends and May begins - here is a little of what we've been up to!

California weather can never make up its mind this time of year, so we've had a pretty varied month of cool rainy rays and HOT sunny days. Last Sunday in particular was AMAZINGLY perfect. No breeze, just the right amount of warm and cool. We sat outside without needing sweaters, and I felt absolutely great!

Jon was working on some wood carving:

and I took some pictures around the yard:

I just like to capture sweet days like this, because I know that someday I will look back and appreciate the beauty and simplicity of it all. I also love thinking of taking pictures as a way to tell our kids who we are and where we were before they were born. It's like a step back in time.

Also, I will appreciate that at 6 months pregnant I could still see my toes.

I love how Margo and Shasta are such good friends! Shasta came and tumbled Margo over in the grass while she was mid-run and Margo retaliated with some jumping and twirling at Shasta's face! The pictures were blurry, but they cracked me up - I just couldn't resist sharing :)

Shasta is always so good at letting Margo share her toys.  She hardly even bats her paw.

During the rest of the week I went with my parents and sister to my cousin Chelsey's wedding in Utah!

 My hair for the wedding. I am getting pretty proud of my swooping french braids!

The wedding was absolutely gorgeous. I loved being in the sealing room at Mt. Timpanogos with my family, grandmother and cousins. The day started out drizzly and when we left the temple it was beautiful and sunny!

There was such an awesome spirit there and it almost felt like watching my sealing day all over again. I especially loved when the sealer talked about Heaven having their eyes on Philip and Chelsey and Heavenly Father having a destiny for them. I am so thankful for the temple blessings we have here on the Earth to create eternal families. It is amazing!

Unfortunately the only pictures I got were a few with my cell phone.

Michelle and me in front of the temple:

At the reception:

Holy moly, their cake was amazing!

 Here are some of Philip and Chelsey's bridals. Their photographer is amazing! And the earrings Chelsey is wearing were made by her younger brother Dallin. I can't wait to see all the finished pictures from the wedding day :)

Oh, and remember my recent sewing project? Well here it is all finished!

I made this apron for my cousin Megan. She LOVES to bake. Her blog is named "Raspberry Mousse" for goodness' sake. When she came out to SF in January we were talking about how she loved cute aprons. Well I've been wanting to work on my apron skills and just loved this fabric. The teal definitely made me think of her. I was glad to have the excuse of going out to Utah so that I would have someone to practice for! I was so proud of how it turned out. I lined it and all of the stitching turned out super straight. It made me more inspired to keep making things for the baby too!

Megan, modeling her cute new apron. And as it turns out, teal is one of her favorite colors! I'm just that good.

In other news: Jon is graduating in 2 weeks with his master's! I would post pictures of his recent book binding projects including his thesis, but I'm not sure if he's ready to share :) And I want to save it all for a super amazing awesome post about his graduation. I am so proud of him!!

Last, but not least:

Baby Alston and I have officially hit week 28!

Since hitting the third trimester I have popped out more. The baby is active ALL the time. We've started doing kick counts and it only takes about 5 minutes for the baby to roll, move or dance 10 times. I feel so blessed to have an active baby!

Jon says that the baby must be super awesome and over-developed though, because I've been having contractions. Previous to being pregnant, I thought contractions were a lot more scary, but here are a few things I've learned:

One - it is totally normal to have braxton hicks contractions in your third trimester as long as they are not regular and most of the time eating or changing your position will make them go away.

Two - early contractions (for me) do not feel ANYTHING like what has been described to me. I was told at my 24 week check up to be concerned about cramping. What I didn't think about is that my whole belly is baby, not just the lower abdomen, so when I went in a couple days ago for my routine monthly physical, my midwife said "Have you been having a lot of contractions?" and I said "Not at all!" and she said "Newsflash - when you laid down for me to check the baby's heartbeat, you were having a contraction."

Ooohhh! Well in that case - I have them a lot. I mean like probably about once a day. So no big deal. But she told me to just watch and if they became regular then I should call in. She told me that for first time moms it is not uncommon to be unaware of contractions because you don't really know what you're waiting for. To me, they feel like the baby is in a ball stretching WAY out and making my tummy tight. They never hurt, but I can tell when the baby seems to be "stretching".

So yesterday... I'm sitting at the computer and Jon is making lunch, and the baby "stretches". I felt my tummy and it was definitely tight all over. I drank some water, moved around and it went away. 5 minutes later, it happened again. And then 5 minutes again. So I laid down and ate some crackers and a muffin and drank some water. And by the time 45 minutes had gone by I was getting contractions every 3 minutes and they were getting tighter and tighter. I told Jon I thought we should probably call in.

The nurses didn't sound too concerned, but they told me it was probably a good idea to come in and get checked out. We were at the doctor for about 4 hours. My contractions continued the whole time. They hooked me up to some tummy monitors and checked to make sure I wasn't going into pre-term labor. Luckily the baby was super happy and nothing looks like it's progressing too soon. The whole experience basically ended up being me and Jon getting to listen to the baby's heartbeat for a few hours while I had contractions every 1 - 2 minutes that were never super painful, but they were so frequent and did get much tighter so that they started to hurt in my back quite a bit. It was like an intense pinching in my spine. They ended up giving me a shot in the arm to make the contractions go away. I call it: the miracle shot.

It made me glad that I can now recognize what the early signs of labor are like, and I just really really wanted a nap. I'm also even MORE certain that when I really go into labor, I will be getting an epidural. If those were just practice contractions, I know that I could not go through natural labor all the way. I totally respect women who do, but I was so exhausted by the end of my 4 hour episode that I slept the rest of the day.

So we are still good! Everything is fine and I feel great. I just have to take it easy and watch in case they come back again. It has been the most "eventful" day of pregnancy so far - so it felt worthy of the blog. Hopefully Baby A will chill until week 40! He or she must just be too excited to meet us :)

I mean - what baby wouldn't be excited for parents like this???

And in case you're interested - our awesome registry is now open for viewing here!