Beach Trip

We just got back from a trip to North Carolina to visit Andrew's parents. They live in Wilmington, which is on the coast, so they are close to a lot of different beaches. We visited three different beaches while we were there and we loved every minute of it! This post will probably just be pictures, I don't really have much to say except that we had a really great time, and it was so nice to relax and be spoiled by Andrew's parents.

Day 1 -- We went to Sunset beach. I was pretty sure Eleanor would like the beach, but that is an understatement...she LOVED the beach, everything about it!



Have I mentioned Eleanor loves carrying things around? Purses and buckets are right up her alley.

Here's a video of Eleanor playing in the water. I tried to get a video of when she was super excited about all the waves, but you know how it goes, when you want to get a picture or video of something in particular, it usually doesn't happen. But I still think it's pretty cute to watch her.


Day 2 -- We went to a blueberry festival. I didn't get many pictures, but basically we just walked around and looked at little booths of people selling crafts and your typical festival food. I think we picked the hottest day of the year to be outside...there were people sitting down everywhere trying to fix their heat exhaustion and dehydration. I had several people tell me to make sure and drink plenty of water and sit down, I thought that was pretty thoughtful of them to look out for the big pregnant lady.

Here's Eleanor cooling off by the misting fans.

We also went to the aquarium in Kure Beach. Eleanor was really mesmerized by the alligators.


Here's a video of Eleanor exploring...


And, like I said, it was really hot outside so here we are in all are sweaty glory! Luckily when we were done with the aquarium we headed down to Kure Beach to cool off. Since it was later in the day it wasn't crowded at all.


Day 4 -- We went and walked around downtown Wilmington and got some ice cream at a favorite local shop. I think I can safely say it was the best waffle cone I've ever had.

Eleanor really just wanted to get in the water.



Day 4 -- We went down to Myrtle Beach. We first went to a little strip mall kind of place on a boardwalk and walked around for a little bit and had lunch. Then we headed over to the Marriott. They let us use their pool because Andrew's dad has stayed there for business quite a few times. So we just hung out by the pool and pretended we were staying at a fancy resort for the day.

Here's a video of Eleanor swimming in the pool...


We flew there but drove a U-haul back to Ohio with a grand piano in it. Andrew's parents are moving and their new place doesn't have room for it, so we've inherited a grand piano. Exciting, huh? Eleanor did pretty good on the drive back. She was really excited to drive in the big truck and loved being able to sit next to me and Andrew. Some movers came this morning to unload the piano and set it up. It basically takes up the whole living room, but I'm excited to play it and Eleanor seems to be pretty soft with it. Maybe I can give her some simple lessons in a little while.

Anyway, we had a really fun trip and I'm so glad we were able to take a little trip before our new baby gets here. It was nice to have a distraction so I'm not just sitting around counting down the days. I've got a feeling that July is going to be a really long month! :)

you know you're pregnant when...

You cry during a country song. :) The other day we were driving around and "You're Gonna Miss This" came on the radio and it made me cry. The chorus says:

You're gonna miss this
You're gonna want this back
You're gonna wish these days hadn't gone by so fast
These are some good times
So take a good look around
You may not know it now, but you're gonna miss this.

You probably just cried a little bit too, didn't you? haha It just makes me so sad to realize my little Eleanor isn't a baby anymore. We just moved her into a big bed and now more than ever she seems so old to me! I just want to savor every minute with her. She is such a fun, sweet, smart, energetic, and sweet little girl. Here are some of the moments I've been savoring.

She LOVES bubbles and goes nuts for them.


The long-awaited freezie pop season has begun. Eleanor isn't as big of a fan as I am.

We went to a little place called Romp and Stomp for playgroup, she was a little nervous at first and every time she would "bump" something like her elbow or head or foot she would look at me like it was a trauma and say "uh-oh", I think she needs a brother to toughen her up a little bit.


And here she is in her big bed. I was getting anxious to get the baby's room put together so on Friday I decided it was as good a time as ever to move her crib out and start her in a big bed. The first two nights/naptimes were VERY physically and emotionally exhausting, but I think now she's got the hang of it.

I put these alphabet wall stickers up around her bed and sometimes at nap time I can hear her "saying" her ABC's. It really sounds more like "c, c, c, c, c, c..."

And did I mention she goes to Nursery now! Talk about savoring a moment. It's been so nice to actually sit through Sunday School and get something out of it. Here she is after church as you might have guessed from the messy hair and wrinkled dress.

Ok, this has kind of turned into a novel, but here's one more. It has been so rainy and cold here the last week or so, but today we had a BEAUTIFUL day, so we headed outside to use the much anticipated (mainly by me, Eleanor had no idea how much fun she was about to have) kiddie pool for the first time. Despite what it may look like in some of these pictures, she really did have a fun time. We were out there almost 2 hours, and if you know Eleanor, not many things keep her attention for this long. When it was time to go in, she was NOT a happy camper and she pointed at the door and said something that sounded like "outside" the whole rest of the day. Good to know we've found ourselves some summer entertainment, especially since the freezie pops weren't such a huge hit.

I LOVE this girl and every moment with her!

Don't Flip Flop

At church I'm second counselor in Young Women so I'm in charge of the Beehives (12-13 year olds). They really wanted to do a "summer craft" and one girl suggested decorating flip flops with fabric. Well, I've seen those and sometimes they just look kind of messy. But I came across these flip flops embellished with balloons, so that's what I decided we'd do.

The theme for the month is Divine Nature, so I had to think of a way to relate that with flip flops. :) So I came up with"Don't flip flop on who you are!" We talked about "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" especially the line that says, "All human beings -male and female- are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny."

I loved looking on LDS.org for talks that pertained to our topic because most of them had to do with womanhood and motherhood and that's something I've really been thinking about. I am so thankful that I get to be a mother and that Heavenly Father is trusting me with his special spirit children. Here are some of the quotes I put on their handout...

"I would charge you to say again and again to yourselves...'I am a (son or daughter) of God’ and by so doing begin today to live closer to those ideals which will make your life happier and more fruitful because of an awakened realization of who you are.”
President Harold B. Lee

"To mothers, daughters, and women everywhere, let me stress the fact that because of your great potential and influence for good in the lives of all of us, Satan is determined to destroy you. You cannot compromise with him. You must have the courage, the strength, the desire, and the determination to live as the Lord would have you live – good clean lives. Girls, keep yourselves virtuous and worthy of a fine young man who has likewise kept himself clean, so that together you can go to the House of the Lord to be sealed in the holy bonds of matrimony for time and all eternity, and prepare a home where God will be pleased to send his spirit children."
N. Eldon Tanner

“Woman is God’s supreme creation. Only after the earth had been formed, after the day had been separated from the night, after the waters had been divided from the land, after vegetation and animal life had been created, and after man had been placed on the earth, was woman created; and only then was the work pronounced complete and good.

“Of all the creations of the Almighty, there is none more beautiful, none more inspiring than a lovely daughter of God who walks in virtue with an understanding of why she should do so, who honors and respects her body as a thing sacred and divine, who cultivates her mind and constantly enlarges the horizon of her understanding, who nurtures her spirit with everlasting truth.”
President Gordon B. Hinckley

And Jessie, you inspired me with your doggie cake for Naomi's birthday and I embarked on making a "fancy" cake, too! :) Here's the end result. It was fun, and now I'm excited to try out other fun cakes when my kids have birthdays.


Here are my cute Beehives!

a whole week

About two weeks ago I decided I was sick of long hair. It was just making me too hot -- temperature wise anyways :) So I asked my friend from the ward if she'd be willing to cut it for me. So she came over on Tuesday and cut almost 3 inches off. Well, fast forward to the following Tuesday, I was brushing my hair before bed and Andrew asked, did you cut your hair?? And I was like, yeah, a WEEK ago! hahaha Andrew likes my hair long, so I just figured he wasn't commenting on my haircut because he didn't like it, but really he hadn't even noticed. But, to his credit, he was in the middle of finals, so I'm sure there were more important things on his mind than my hairdo :)

Eleanor

When choosing baby names, I don't really pick based on the meaning. Well, I want to make sure the name has a decent meaning, but I don't choose the name because it has a certain meaning. The other day we were going through a big baby name book and I read the meaning of Eleanor. When we chose it, I had only ever seen the meaning as "light", but this particular book had the meaning as light-hearted. This meaning fits Eleanor to a T -- She is so happy-go-lucky and easy going!

Eleanor is growing up way too fast. She is turning into a little toddler right before my eyes. Although I miss my little baby Eleanor, it is still so fun to watch her grow and learn new things everyday and get better at communicating and responding.

-She can put her shoes in the shoe basket after taking them off and throw things in the trash for me (sometimes), which I can foresee coming in very handy with a newborn and lots of diapers!

-She talks A TON, but only knows a few words - dada, mom, some(which basically means food), no (which I'm not quite sure she understands the meaning of), bye, hi (she says hi and bye to everybody and everything!), go, uh-oh, baby, and her own version of "what's that".

-She can sign all done, more, and milk.

-I never thought I'd talk about poop on my blog, but I think it's so cute when after she poops that she points at her diaper and waves her hand over her nose and says something that sounds like stinky stinky.

-She's also gotten pretty good at a couple of animal sounds. She can tell you what dogs, cats, and cows, and sheep say. She can also identify her eyes, nose, teeth, toes, hair, head, hands, belly button, and knees.

-One of my favorite new things she does is give hugs, this totally melts my heart!

-She likes to look at pictures of Jesus. Last week she FINALLY folded her arms during family prayer. We've been working on this for a while, and it was so cute to actually see her do it on command. After we finished reading scriptures we said Eleanor, it's time for prayer, fold your arms. And sure enough, she put her little hands together and bowed her head. What a special moment!

While we were in Utah about two weeks ago (yeah, I have no pictures of my own to post, I guess we were too busy/having too much fun to get the camera out) my sister Laura took some really great pictures of Eleanor for one of her classes, check them out here.

Here's a conglomerate of pictures and videos of what else we've been up to recently...



Eleanor at bath time. This girl has a ton of hair!

Bed Head after pigtails.

I'm 24 weeks! and Eleanor loves Barney.

Last week they had a family night at the Student Recreation Center. They had free pizza and free admission to the pool, where they also had Finding Nemo projected on one of the walls in the pool area. Eleanor LOVED the pool. At bath time, I think she gets really confused why no one else gets in with her to play, so she loved that we were all in the big pool together.

Last week I bought some Kool Aid Jammers (basically Capri Suns, but on clearance) on a whim. I figured it would be a good way to celebrate the arrival of warm weather. So Eleanor and I headed out to the backyard and had them and blew bubbles. She was loving life!

We are so happy that Eleanor is a part of our family!

viewer discretion advised

I've been thinking lately how grateful I am that we live here. I am so thankful for my friends here that are so kind and so helpful and so caring!!

The 4 year "anniversary", I guess you could call it, just passed of my car accident that ripped open my arm. And if that would have never happened, I really don't think I would be where I am today. So as crazy as it sounds, I'm glad that car accident happened :)

We (me, my sister, brother-in-law, my niece and nephew) were driving down to Southern California from Provo for my sister Emily's wedding. About 2 hours into our drive two big semi trucks passed each other and we caught a big gust of wind from it and starting fishtailing (it was snowing). Well we went off the road and rolled and landed like this... (lucky for that fence back there that stopped us, otherwise we might have kept rolling)

While rolling, my arm either went through the window, or the window broke and landed on my arm and sliced it open like this...

Fortunately everyone else was fine. I got over 100 stitches and got all wrapped up...

and we headed back to Provo and flew to Orange County for my sister's wedding...

My niece Grace was really curious about the sling. (I think she was probably about Eleanor's age in this picture)

It was my last semester at BYU. My major was Actuarial Science (a little bit of statistics, mathematics, and economics) and my classes required a lot of writing/doing math problems, and since I couldn't use my right arm I had to withdraw from all my classes and thereby delay graduating. I moved home and went to physical therapy to regain strength and mobility in my arm. There was some nerve damage and parts of my arm are actually still numb to this day.
Here is what the scar looked like then and now.
About a month after the accident...

About 4 years after the accident...

It's amazing how resilient our bodies our!

Anyway, back to the story... Two of my classes were only offered Winter semester, so I went back to BYU for the whole school year. And this my friends, is when I met Andrew. If I would have graduated when I was supposed to, I had tentatively planned to move down to California and live the high life and become some big shot Actuary and wear suits and high heels everyday :) But Heavenly Father had a different plan for me!

So, in a nutshell, because of the accident I was at BYU a year longer than planned, I met Andrew, we got married, he applied to Law Schools (and actually only applied to Akron because he had an application fee waiver), and we ended up here in Akron, Ohio of all places! And now I am lucky enough to be in a great ward and have awesome friends!

20 weeks

The obligatory belly shot.

The best thing about being 20 weeks? Having an ultrasound!
We had ours on Friday and found out....





We're really excited for another little girl! Some of the girls names we like are Penelope, Molly, and Juliet. I'm glad Eleanor will have a little sister to be best friends with, because I know I love having sisters!

Unfortunately we also found out at the ultrasound that there are a couple of things wrong. I have marginal placenta previa which means my placenta is too low and currently blocking my cervix. This would require that I have a c-section. It's also possible that it could cause preterm labor or hemorrhaging. The good news is that there is still time for the placenta to rise on its own. So that's what I'm hoping will happen!

The other thing is that there were cysts on the baby's brain (Choroid Plexus Cysts). This could be a marker for down's syndrome or trisomy 13/18. Everything else like the heart and all body parts looked fine, which is a good indication that things are going to be ok and that she's developing properly. (It even looked like she was sucking her thumb like Eleanor -- I wouldn't mind another thumbsucker!) Apparently these cysts often clear up before the baby is born, so we'll have another ultrasound in 8 weeks to check on that and my placenta. I'm just trying not to worry about it until I have to, because I really feel like both problems will clear up. So just say a little prayer for us that both of these problems will resolve in the next few weeks!

visitors

Last weekend Andrew's parents drove up from North Carolina to visit us. We had some pretty nice weather so we took a walk to the park and showed Grandpa Doug and Nana where Eleanor likes to play.


She loves the slide...


And here's a picture from my phone of Eleanor in the bathtub after a long hard day of playing. The quality isn't the best, but I thought it was too cute to pass up.

After we put Eleanor down for bed Andrew's parents stayed home to babysit and let us have a night out on the town. I have to say, it was pretty nice. I almost forgot I had a kid for minute. We went to a hibachi grill and then we went and saw New Moon at the dollar theater. I know, I was probably like the last person on earth to see it and I think I'm ok with that :)

The next day we went and took a trolly tour around Cleveland.
Andrew and his mom before we took off.

Despite what it looks like, Eleanor really did enjoy the ride. I think she was pretty excited she didn't have to be in her car seat.

When we got back home Eleanor had some grocery shopping to do.

Here she is practicing her balancing act.

We're just really excited it's starting to feel a little more like spring around here :)