Gobble, Gobble

We had a great Thanksgiving. We feasted at Grandma Ruth's where she had homemade rolls, stuffing from scratch, and three kinds of homemade pie (even the crust was homemade). It was amazing. She's a very talented cook. Mitch made the mashed potatoes and they were awesome. Natalie made her famous yams, which Mitch says might as well be pumpkin pie filling; they taste like dessert! So yummy. Of course I forgot to take pics while everyone was still together, so this is the only one we ended up with:

Grandma asked us to each say what we're thankful for. I said I am thankful for my husband, our baby, and Mitch's great job. Of course, I could make a whole list and include our families, our Savior, the Gospel, our nice home, our cat, my education, the opportunity I had to serve a mission, the opportunities we've had to travel, etc. but it would take all day to list everything I'm thankful for. Let's just say that I thank Heavenly Father every day for the very many blessings He's given me. I feel so blessed every day.

I love that Thanksgiving gives me an excuse to overindulge. I think I ate so much that baby gained some major weight. We've been waiting for her to get big enough so Mitch can feel her kick. Thanksgiving must have gave her those extra ounces she needed ... Last night I got up and went to the bathroom at 3 a.m. When I laid back down she started going crazy and was moving around everywhere. I put my hand on my belly just to see if I could feel her move that way and I could! I was so excited because that meant that Mitch would finally be able to feel her move. But, I decided not to wake him up since it was 3 a.m. and all. I figured he could feel her move in first thing in the morning. She's usually really active when I first wake up. Well of course today was one of the few mornings when she wasn't moving. We poked my belly, I moved around and tried to wake her up, but got nothing. Now all day I've been telling Mitch to put his hand on my stomach, but every time he does, she stops kicking. She's already a little stinker. But we love her. I can't wait until Mitch will be able to feel her kick. Soon I'm sure. It finally feels real now and we're both SO excited! Here's a fairly recent pic:

We spent Friday shopping. Seriously, the entire day we were out and about, finding the perfect gifts for everyone. We left our house about 9:00 a.m. and got done about 4:30 p.m.. Mitch is such a good sport about the all day shopping event. He even lets me drag him around to all the shoe stores while I try on shoes. I know he doesn't love it, but he's a good sport about it. I like having him go with me so we can decide what to get our family members; it's easier to have us both decide than having one person decide what to get everyone. We got 98% of our shopping done; we just have some odds and ends to take care of. It was exhausting, but I like getting it all done at once. Now I don't have to worry about it anymore. And we bought some adorable hair bows for baby. The humongous flower bows. I hope she doesn't hate me when she's older for making her wear them. Ha,ha.

We put up the Christmas decorations Friday night. The tree was up for less than 20 minutes when Harvey jumped in it. He's such a noddy cat. Although he hasn't been as bad this year as he was last year with the Christmas decorations. But it's only been 3 days, so we'll see.

Saturday I went and saw "The Blindside" with my fam. I totally recommend it. I loved it. Mitch watched the UofU vs BYU game with friends. Go Utes! Too bad they lost. Next year, Utes. At least the Jazz won! By a lot too. Mitch and I went to the game and it was fun. The Jazz were up by 20 most of the game.

On a random note, I had 3 bloody noses yesterday. It wasn't fun. Dry air + pregnancy = bloody nose, apparently. No bueno. They weren't too bad, but I did sleep with a humidifier last night which helped a ton.

We're both sad to go back to work tomorrow. Long weekends are divine. Plus, in my line of work, no one has much work to do from Thanksgiving through the New Year. It is SO boring! Hopefully we can get something going ...

My Grandma Always Said Mormons Don't Bet

I distinctly remember my Gma Miles always getting a little upset when my brothers and I would say, "I'll betcha ..." She would always say, "Now, now, Mormons don't bet." I didn't understand that as a kid. Why did it matter if we bet on who could run the fastest or eat the most of Grandma's after school snacks? (We lived at Grandma's while my dad built our house. I loved it because everyday after school my Grandma would make us a snack.) Anyways, now that I'm older I see her point. I wouldn't go to Vegas and blow all my money, but I do enjoy a good little bet every once in a while.

So, we started a little wager with my family. We each guessed what the baby's birth date, weight, and length will be. We each put in $6, $2 for each category. Eleven people guessed, so the person closest in each category will win $22. The only rule was that you couldn't guess what anyone else had already guessed. We each signed the back of the paper to make it official. (That was either Brock's or Jordan's suggestion. They said they didn't trust anyone else to own up. Ha,ha.) Here are our guesses: (btw, my actual due date is April 2.)

Weight: Length: Birth Date:

Mitch 6.9 pounds 17.7 inches March 18

Lacey 7.4 pounds 18.25 inches April 2

Doug 6.3 pounds 17.5 inches April 1

Lorraine 5.1 pounds 18 inches March 2

Brock 5.7 pounds 17 inches April 3

Natalie 6.11 pounds 19.5 inches March 13

Jordan 5.9 pounds 18 1/8 inches March 26

Mickayla 6.2 pounds 16 inches April 4

Ruth 5.8 pounds 18.5 inches March 12

Michelle 6.1 pounds 18.75 inches March 24

Alex 7.25 pounds 19 inches March 23

Sorry, Grandma. I know this goes against what you tried to teach us. But don't worry, we would never gamble away all of our money. We just like to have a little fun ... Best of luck to everyone! You'd better all pay up when it's time!!!

A Few Things To Remember

There are a few things I haven't blogged about that I want to remember:

1. Mitch and I went in with three other couples and bought two season Jazz tickets. We will go to 5 games. We've been to two already and it is SO much fun! I've never been that into the Jazz, but I like watching the games, I actually understand the rules (thanks to that 1 year of cheerleading), and the atmosphere is always exciting. Plus Jazz Bear is funny, though I hear the guy who is the Jazz Bear is a jerk in real life. Anyways, I love it because we have an excuse to go out to eat at the Gateway and enjoy time in little downtown SLC. I hope the Jazz do well this season!
2. Lately I've been making Gingerbread Pancakes on Sunday mornings. SO yummy. Here is the recipe. I usually make the batter the night before. I think they're better that way.

3. Mitch was out of town this week for work. I went to SLC one day to chill with Britt. I spent that night at my parents' since I was already down there and Mitch was gone anyways. The most hilarious thing happened ... while I was waiting for mi padres to come home from work, I was sitting in the living room. Twice I saw something run across the room. I thought, "there can't be a mouse in here. Their house is so clean." My mom came home and confirmed the truth: a mouse in the house! She was SO embarrassed. She kept saying, "Our house is always clean and there's no food lying around." Which is true. But, there are fields around their house with lots of mice and this poor little mouse just wanted somewhere warm to stay. We bought mouse traps and set them, but didn't set them quite good enough because the mouse stole two pieces of bread off two of the traps and didn't get caught! It was so funny! And we saw the mouse peek out from under the stove at one point. My dad wasn't home to help us, so my mom shoved a yard stick under the stove and I was on the ground with a tupperware, ready to catch it. A screw came flying out from under the stove and we both screamed so loud! It was so, so funny. We didn't catch it and now the mouse keeps stealing the food, so my parents put peanut butter on the traps (that was probably my dad's idea, knowing him). Steal that little mouse! You're pretty smart, but you're doomed! My mom actually just texted me and said, "Fievel is extinct!" Yay!

4. The other weekend we were at my parents' house. We were talking about the baby and couldn't remember the word, "amniotic fluid." My brother, Jordan, said, "phlegm," thinking that was what we were talking about. We all laughed pretty hard. My mom said, "No, phlegm is in your throat." So, he kept calling amniotic fluid "belly phlegm." Ha,ha. Funny, but kind of gross. The whole conversation was hilarious. I was crying from laughing so hard by the end. If you know Jordan, you know what I mean. Funny kid. Now he's calling it "belly jelly." Ahhh, I'm so glad for a bro like Jordan. He always keeps us laughing.

5. I think I felt the baby do a double back flip in the belly phlegm/belly jelly today. I've been feeling her move, but she must have done something crazy today because it felt SO weird! The other morning I woke up and had to go to the bathroom pretty bad. I laid there and tried to fight it because I was still so tired, but then the baby started kicking and must have been right on top of my bladder because I jumped out of bed so fast it wasn't even funny. What a little stinker. I do like feeling her move though. It's weird, but exciting. It seems her most active time is between 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. then she's tired in the afternoon. Mitch said she must take after me since that's pretty much my schedule. Ha,ha.

BoB

Hello everyone this is Mitch. Today we did our first official baby shopping. I have to say I wasn't too excited about spending tons of money on our baby a few months ago, since I figure what does a baby care about how nice her "insert heavily marketed baby item here" is. It does make Lacey happy though, which according to MasterCard is priceless.

Anyhow, a few months back Lacey started to tell me about BoB strollers (Beast of Burden in case you were wondering). How you can jog with them and how nice they are. She also mentioned how expensive they are, which didn't make me too happy. I figured we could get by with a stroller like the one I had ....

Just kidding. My stroller was way more ghetto than that. But seriously, look at how happy that baby is. All kids love adventure, and what is more adventurous than rolling around in something that could take a finger off at any time!

Lacey didn't seem to think my ideas were very good, so being the understanding husband that I am, I went with her to check out strollers. We found the BoBs in the back of the USA Baby store in SLC. The BoB is pretty cool with shocks and inflatable tires. It also has the ability to convert from a regular stroller to a jogging stroller with the drop of a pin. What sold me was the pop and snap action when you want to take it out of its stowage mode and do some strollin! You just grab the handle and pop, then snap! It is ready for some hard-core walks through the park and awesome jogs through the neighborhood. It also bounces pretty sweet.

Well, Lacey did what is impossible, she got her husband excited about a stroller. We didn't get it right then. We shopped around online and found a great deal. The USA Baby store had a big sale (at least they called it big, 15% isn't that great in my mind) today and we went to pick up a few things and we looked at the BoB we wanted. It was still $10 cheaper online even when they had it on clearance, so we decided to pass and go with the better deal. On the way out, I saw a sign that said they would match internet pricing, so we showed the online cheaper BoB to the manager and he gave it to us for the internet price! Cool.

Here is a picture of our newly-assembled BoB.

And for those of you who want to see how great it is to fold/unfold check out my Billy Mazing-esque demonstration of the BoB.

It even has a spot for Harvey to take a ride.

It's For Sure A Girl!

We just got back from the doctor; baby girl is healthy as can be, which is great news! And the baby is for sure a girl. During the ultrasound she had one hand in front of her face, trying to suck her thumb. The problem was she couldn't quite get her thumb in her mouth. Ha,ha. It was pretty cute. I'm sure she'll figure it out soon enough. We both thought the 4-D ultrasound was a little weird. Cool, but weird. It was easy to see her features, but hard to tell what she looks like at the same time ... if that makes any sense at all ... but her heart and spinal cord and whatever else they checked are all normal and healthy. The whole thing happened so fast it was hard to tell what the technician was looking at. But she said everything looks great and my due date is still April 2nd. I feel like this 9 months is going by pretty fast. I definitely look pregnant now, which I have mixed feelings about. I know it's healthy/normal/expected to gain weight during pregnancy, but that doesn't mean I enjoy it. I mean, who enjoys gaining weight at a rapid pace? At least it will be worth it in the end. And she'll be here before we know it! We are SO glad everything is going so well. Here are some pics. The 4-D one is at the bottom. It's kind of weird, huh?

It looks like she has an up-turned nose, which neither of us have. And no one in our families have an up-turned nose. Maybe her nose isn't finished cooking yet and she'll look completely different when she's born. But either way, isn't she cute???

We haven't really done anything to get ready besides the furniture that Mitch finished. We decided to wait until after the holidays since the holiday season is already such a busy time. However, I did go shopping with my mom to look at crib sets. She pointed a really cute one out that happened to be on sale. Because they only have 2 left at the store, it was a final sale and you can't return it. I was worried I would buy it and then find out it's not a girl and not be able to return it. So, I put it on hold until we found out for sure that it's a girl. I guess we can buy it now. Here it is.

I think it's adorable. I like it because it's not pink. Nor is it completely babyish. The little flowers on the bumper and quilt are actual fabric flowers that pop out of the fabric. And the butterfly wings are also fabric wings that are 3-D. It's pretty much adorable.But, other than this crib set, we'll probably wait until the new year to do much else. I just want to enjoy the holidays and worry about everything else later.

The Rest of Our Trip

Okay, so I didn't write a daily log of the rest of our trip after Paris. And I'm too lazy to keep doing this everyday, so I'm going to summarize the rest of our trip in this post.

The rest of our trip was pretty chill. Mitch had his conference for 1 1/2 days, so we didn't do much those days. We did go on a tour on Sunday. We went to Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, and Bath.

• Windsor Castle: pretty much a castle straight out of a fairy tale. So pretty. The Queen lives here almost every weekend. She was there while we were there; too bad we didn't see her! There is a doll house of Buckingham Palace, which takes up an entire room, floor to ceiling. It has electricity and plumbing. Everything is sized to scale. It is so cool. (Sadly, they don't allow tourists to take pictures inside the castle.)

• Stonehenge: it was too cold and windy for me to love it. Maybe I complain too much. It wasn't nearly as cool as I was expecting. You can't get very close to the rocks and there were people everywhere. I guess they're going to bury the road and path around it so it will seem more authentic; however, that will require a 2 mile walk for tourists. (At least we didn't have to walk that far.) Maybe more authentic would mean I would have enjoyed it more. It was very interesting and I still don't know why it was built ...

• We had lunch at the George Inn. They have the oldest liqueur license in England. They also have the only remaining dog spit in the world. A dog spit is a device they used to turn the meat as it cooked over the fire. Basically, they put a little dog in a big wheel, put a piece of hot coal behind the poor dog's legs, and made it run to turn the wheel. How cruel! Of course they don't use it anymore, but it was interesting to see. The town was only four streets and it was SO tiny! All of the buildings looked like they would crumble at the slightest push. I told Mitch that if we lived in one of those I would be afraid of getting consumption and dying. Seriously, they would have been torn down ages ago if they were in America. Cool to see, but I'm glad we don't have buildings like that here.

• Bath: this is a Roman city that was originally built as a spa resort. There are multiple hot springs that were believed to revive youth if you drink the water. We could have paid to drink some of the water, and would have supposedly felt 10 years younger!, but they said it tastes like sulfur and neither of us felt that a 10 year age reduction was worth the nasty taste, so we passed. It was really cool to see how the Romans built the spa and what they used each room for. It was A LOT bigger than we expected. Oh yeah, we also bought some fudge at a fudge shop in Bath. The flavor was Belgian Chocolate and it was ridiculously rich. And Mitch seriously ate more than half of it all at once. I don't know how he didn't vomit. He LOVES sugar. It made me laugh.

The rest of our stay in London we saw some more cathedrals and more of the statues, etc. that we wanted to see. While Mitch was in his conference, I went on a bus tour of London with one of the other wives. It was fun and I learned a lot of random facts about the city. Did you know that the original London bridge was sold to the state of Arizona for just over $2 million?

I went here while Mitch was in his conference:

It was pretty lame, which is to be expected considering that Holmes wasn't even a real person.

And of course we went to the conference dinner. I wish I would have taken a picture of us! We looked pretty snazzy. I like going to the dinners; everyone dresses up and I get to meet some of the nerds, I mean people, that Mitch works with. Ha,ha. Actually, I'm always very impressed by their intelligence. Most of them were British at this conference, a few Americans, and even few French. The dinner was kind of gross (again, British food is nasty), and the dessert was hilarious. The menu said something like, "Apple and pear streusel with clotted cream." Sounds pretty good right? Except, what is clotted cream? Oh, don't worry ... it looked exactly like a giant scoop of vanilla ice cream. I dove right into mine, it looked SO good, but I soon realized that clotted cream = butter. Sick. It was funny to see the Americans' plates afterwards, none of us ate our "clotted cream," but all of the British did. Gross.

We also went to the Shakespeare Global Theater (it's actually just a replica, but still cool). I love Shakespeare.

Another cool thing we did was attend Evensong at Westminster Abbey. It's a mass/program put on by the Church of England. They had a choir singing and the priest spoke. It was interesting to say the least. I thought it was pretty, especially the choir. Mitch thought it was a little dark, but I thought it was nicer than the Catholic masses I've attended. It was cool to see inside of Westminster Abbey. And this is definitely the way to do it since it's free (otherwise it's like $15). The cathedral is completely full of graves with fancy headstones and statues. Sir Isaac Newton is buried there. It's really neat to see.

And we went to the London Natural History Museum. The Human Biology section was SO graphic. Seriously, they had things I never wanted to see. Think "adult content." It was shocking and kind of funny.

Here are some of the funny signs we saw in London:

Yes, that is a stained glass window of the Michelin Man.

Humps or speed bumps?
To rent or to let? As a side note, in England they don't say "restroom" or even "bathroom," they say "toilet." Every time I saw a TO LET sign, I thought it was supposed to say TOILET and they I was missing. I would get so excited, because you know, pregnant women ALWAYS have to pee, but then I would realize that it just meant "to rent."
This is just funny.
Instead of "exit" it's "way out."

Anyways, the rest of the trip was great. And the way home was AWESOME because Mitch got bumped to first class on our flight from London to New York. So, he rode first class the first half of the way and I rode the second half. It was divine; my seat laid completely flat into a bed. Not to mention all the food and drinks you could want. It was so sweet.

We got to New York that night and went to our hotel, another Marriott like we stayed at in London. Only there was one difference: New York Marriott did not have a free continental breakfast. Too bad we didn't know that when we loaded up our plates! It ended up costing us $38!!!! What??? For breakfast??? Yeah, I usually love Marriotts, but they just went down one notch in my book.

Anyways, we spent most of the day in New York. Here's a few of the things we saw:

• Wall Street

• We saw the 9-11 site. You couldn't see too much; it's still under construction. We did go to the temporary memorial site. It made me cry.
• Rockefeller Plaza. Guess how much it is to go ice skating here? 30 bucks a person!

• We ate at the famous Carnegie Deli. I have never seen bigger sandwiches in my life! And if you think the New York Cheesecake Factory's cheesecake is good, you should try REAL New York cheesecake. It's AMAZING!

Mitch was SO excited to eat here. It was really good.

• Central Park was stunningly beautiful. I LOVED it!

• The LOVE statue thing. It was kind of random. It just appeared out of nowhere.
• This is the only horse I have ever seen that is this color. Isn't it pretty?

• And of course, Times Square
• My only regret is that we weren't able to see Wicked. When we actually had time to see it, it wasn't playing in London. We should have planned a little better I guess, but we figured we could just see it one day while we were there. It never worked out. So sad. Here's my frowny face.

Despite not seeing Wicked, it was an AWESOME trip. Trip of a lifetime. Seriously. Hopefully someday we'll be able to go to Cambodia and the Baltics again. But until then, I'm so grateful for the traveling we've been able to do. I love seeing other parts of the world. For now I'm content to stay home and relax with our little family. Until our Panama 2011 Family Reunion that is!

Paris

Today we went to Paris. We woke up at the super early hour of 4:30 a.m. to catch our train to Paris by 5:30. We had to catch the night bus in London to make the first tube train of the day from one of the stations. Once we made it to the international rail terminal, we ran around to try and find the counter that we were supposed to meet at, which was nowhere to be found. We tried the electronic ticket desk, and that didn’t work. We asked a worker who told us to wait for our group, so we did. We waited and waited. Finally, a little after 6:00 a.m., one guy showed up under a different company name than our tour company to start checking people in. It turns out we are on the 6:55 a.m. train and this guy was able to check us in.

The train ride was pretty cool. We went through the Chunnel (the channel tunnel), which is a tunnel underneath the English Channel, and we got to see some of the English and French country side on the way into Paris. The train went at 150mph, so it only took about 2 hours to make the journey.

We opted for the Paris at your leisure tour, so we got to do whatever we wanted. We started off seeing the Arc De Triumph, which was a lot cooler than I thought. It was huge. It is basically a big archway with war memorials all over it. It has a large statue depicting Napoleon as Cesar as well.

After that we took off toward the Eiffel Tower. On the way we stopped at a café for some lunch. We got ham and cheese crepes, which may not sound that great, but they were amazing. We also got a sweet crepe with ice cream and chocolate on it which was so good I can’t even put it into words.

We then got to the Eiffel tower. We walked up the first two floors of the tower as it was a lot cheaper than the elevator. The views from up there are amazing. Paris is a very big city. It stretched as far as you can see. From the second story, we rode the elevator the rest of the way up. The view from the top is great. It was super crowded up there, but it was a cool thing to do.

After the Eiffel tower, we jumped back on the subway system and went over to Notre Dame. That was a super cool cathedral. Quasimodo (or someone dressed like him) was out in front of the cathedral getting pictures with children. The inside was very dark and gothic, but was really neat. It made me mad that all the tourists were taking pictures of everything, despite the signs asking you not to. It would have been a much more reverent place.

After Notre Dame, we spent the last of our time in Paris at the Louvre. The Louvre used to be the French King’s Castle, which evolved into a huge palace, and now is the biggest art museum you could ever imagine. It was humongous! We spent over 2 hours there and only saw the bottom floors of 2 of the 3 wings. We did see the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, and Hammurabi’s code. We also saw tons of old Egyptian, Persian, Roman, and Greek statues and artifacts. It seems the French have a knack for stealing everyone else’s national treasures. We also had dinner at one of Louvre’s 3 restaurants; some, frankly speaking, crappy sandwiches, but a really good crepe for dessert.

After that we were suffering from an overload of art and we started heading back to the train station. Overall, Paris had some cool sites, but was kind of a dirty place. The people on the subway were rude sometimes. It isn’t as nice as London, but has some cool things to offer.

On the train ride home we sat directly across from some RAF (Royal Air Force) cadets. This is due to the awkward seating arrangements that are in the middle of the rain cars. At least we were facing forward this time as we faced backwards on the way there. There were drinking champagne and one of them got a little out of hand and threw his phone on the floor calling it a piece of sh*t for not getting service in Paris. His friends managed to calm him down and saved his phone from being destroyed.

We got back to London a little after 10:00 at night. We were a little hungry after our trip back so we got milkshakes at the store. Mitch’s was a fudge brownie flavor and was incredibly rich. With that in our stomachs we hit the bed for some much needed sleep.