Quick Visit to Cali and Starting a New Job

Last Friday I finally finished my internship and so Adam and I decided to go on a quick little trip down to California to see my family. We drove all day Friday, spent Saturday and Sunday there, and then came back Monday. This was our first road trip with Ellie and we were a little nervous at how she would do, but she ended up doing really great and just slept most of the time we were driving.
On Saturday, we all went to I Fly, an indoor sky diving place. Of course I could not participate being pregnant so I hung out with our niece and nephew and cheered on the rest of the family while they were in the wind tunnel. Adam had tons of fun flying and it was a blast to watch him. I will definitely try it out one day when I'm not pregnant.

Later that day we headed over to Babies R' Us where my mom and sister helped us register for all of the things we will need. While it was so helpful to get their insight (since I don't know what I'm doing), I do have to say that it was a bit overwhelming thinking of all the things we need to get before the little girl gets here.
On Sunday we went to church and mostly just relaxed. We took Ellie to the dog park twice that day and she loved it. I really wish we had a dog park close by. Sunday night we had an early birthday party for Adam with all of his favorite foods, including a birthday cake.

We were only able to take a quick little trip because I started my new job on Tuesday. I am working as the health coach for the Educators Mutual Insurance wellness program. In general, I will be providing consultations on nutrition, exercise, weight loss, disease prevention etc. to participants in the wellness program. I am really excited about the job and think it will be a great fit for me.

We are having a girl!

I just had my 20 week appointment and found out that we are having a girl! This is shocking to me because I was completely convinced that we were having a boy. I just figured by how much the baby kicks me that it must be a crazy little boy in there...but I was definitely wrong.

The ultrasound was awesome. They had a huge flat screen that we were able to watch on, which was nice because we were able to see all of the different body parts really well. Right away the woman doing the ultrasound knew it was a girl because the baby was sitting with her legs spread wide open.

Throughout the entire ultrasound our little baby was moving around like crazy (I think she takes after her dad, he was an energetic little kid). Most of the time she had her legs up by her head. We were able to get really clear shots of her heart, spine, and brain and everything looks great! The baby weighs 11 oz and seems to be just the right size for 20 weeks.

After the ultrasound I met with my doctor. I have gained a total of about 6 lbs. and everything is looking good. They sent us home with tons of pictures from the ultrasound and a DVD. We even got a special picture for each set of grandparents.

It was so fun getting to finally see our little girl and we can't wait until she comes. Now we can begin all of the work on the nursery!

Moab

Last weekend we went on our annual trip down to Moab. Each year we go with Adam's aunt, uncle, and cousins for a weekend of rock crawling. This is one of Adam's favorite weekends of the year. Luckily this year the weather was pretty nice. Unfortunately, I had to miss out on Friday since I had class, but I met everyone down there Friday night and spent Saturday on the trails.
Adam has put so much work into the Samurai, so it always does really well and feels so much safer. Between all of the jeeps, we had a few broken parts and scratches, but that is typical for a Moab trip.
In other news, Adam bought me a new vacuum (the dyson DC14) for mothers day. Finally all of the Ellie hair is out of my house!

Grandma's 90th Birthday!

This past Saturday we celebrated Adam's grandma's 90th birthday! We had a huge party at Adam's parents' house with the entire Fowler family. Tons of family were there, including a few cousins that I had never met before.

Of course we had lots of food, as usually for a family party and I made mini raspberry buttermilk pie tarts. They turned out pretty good for my first time making them. Family parties are always a good excuse for me to try out new recipes.
Grandma Fowler is an awesome lady. She is in great health and completely active. You would never guess that she is 90. She is a great example to us of joy and strength and we are lucky to have her in our lives.
We had the chance to take a few family pictures during the party, so it was a good time for me to document the slightly growing baby bump.

Happy Easter...and Baby!

Adam and I have some exciting news.... We are having our first baby!
I am 13 weeks along and the baby is due October 11. The doctor thinks it would be pretty cool to have the baby on 10/10/10, but I have a feeling that it may be coming on my birthday 10/16. Either way it will be an awesome birthday present.

About two weeks ago we were able to hear the heart beat, which was really cool and made things feel much more real. We find out what it is at the end of May and will keep everyone posted. I think that Adam is secretly hoping for a boy and I am secretly hoping for a girl (surprise surprise)...but we will be completely happy either way.

Overall, I am feeling pretty good and have been lucky that I haven't had any morning sickness with my busy internship schedule. I do wish that I had a little more time to sleep, but I think I will survive for two more months of internship.
As far as other things in life...we are having a great/relaxing Easter. It seems that the Easter Bunny came to our house last night and left us lots of candy that we have been stuffing ourselves with.
Even though it is just the two of us, we still do some fun traditions. On Saturday night, we colored Easter eggs and even made eggs for Ellie and baby boy/baby girl. On Easter morning, we woke up, ate some candy (of course) and had our Easter egg bunting competition. Needless to say...I won. Then we made a huge breakfast with waffles, bacon, and eggs and relaxed while we watched conference. Later today we will go to Adam's parents for a big Easter dinner.

Hope everyone else is having a great Easter!

Christmas/New Years

This year was our year to spend Christmas in California with my family. We have a family tradition to spend Christmas at our cabin in Tahoe with my mom's whole side of the family. We were so excited to see everyone, especially our niece and new nephew.

I went down a few days before Adam (since he had to work) and spent some time in Livermore. The first day I was there, my family and I went in to San Francisco. I LOVE going into the city at Christmas time, with all the decorations and lights. We went to Golden Gate Park to visit the aquarium and planetarium. Our niece, Halle, loved it and it was fun to see her get so excited about all of the animals. After that we stopped by China town to shop for knock of purses and then headed down to the pier for dinner at my parent's favorite seafood restaurant.

While in Livermore, I also had a chance to see some of my friends and spend time catching up. I am really so blessed to have such good friends and it is always exciting to see what is going on in everyone's lives.

A few days before Christmas we headed up to Tahoe. Adam still hadn't flown in yet and so the first day I went skiing with my family. Finally once Adam arrived (after a 2 hour delay!), it really felt like we could start celebrating Christmas. We spent Christmas Eve seeing a movie, baking sugar cookies for Santa, and having our Christmas Eve program. The Christmas Eve program is my favorite part about being at the cabin. The young kids act out the nativity while my grandpa reads the story and then each family performs a Christmas song, followed by performances from all of the little kids. Our family really stepped it up this year and came up with an original version of "Do you hear what I hear?" At the end of the night we all go around in a big circle and talk about what we were grateful for this past year and anything we are looking forward to in the new year. Needless to say, this always turns into a big cry fest, but a happy one.

After spending a few more days in Tahoe, we headed back to Livermore to get ready for my cousin's wedding and new years. It is always fun to go back to the Oakland temple and be in the exact room that Adam and I were married in. While talking to my mom and aunt after the sealing, I realized that every single grandchild in our family (that is married) has been married in the exact same room in the Oakland temple. That was pretty awesome to realize and made me really grateful for the example that my grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncles have set for all of us.

We came back to Utah on new years day. The only downside of our long trip was that we missed out on seeing Ellie for a few weeks. She had grown a ton but luckily wasn't too mad at us when we got back. So now we are back to normal life with work and my internship.

I am just finishing up my Pen Court rotation and our big assignment for this rotation was to plan a theme day at the Pendulum Court (our dietetics cafe at BYU). The theme was "A Day on Broadway." We got our inspiration after we all saw Wicked in Denver and loved it!

Our menu for theme day included: teriyaki glazed salmon with wild rice, NY pizza with a Caesar salad and tuxedo dipped strawberry, white bean chili, cream puffs with a raspberry sauce, German chocolate cookies, and churros y chocolate. We loooooved our food but it was definitely a challenge getting to that point. We made cream puffs 4 times and went through over 100 eggs before we finally somewhat perfected the recipe.

When theme day finally came we were so excited but definitely not prepared for the craziness that was about to occur. People were lined up outside of Pen Court 1 hour before we opened! Once we started serving, girls were just running all over the kitchen to keep up with the crowd. Our "made-to-order" pizza was so much more popular than we thought it would be. There is no way we could have ever survived without the other three interns there to help us. But at the end of the day we were so happy with how things turned out and treated ourselves to a soda with our teacher, Sister Mitchell.

Thursday is my last day in this rotation. I can definitely say that I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would and will miss seeing the pen court students every day and really miss the lunches.

In other news in our life....Ellie is getting big and Adam has been working so hard to try to train her. She is doing pretty well but she is still a puppy so she loves to chew on whatever she can get into her mouth. We are also getting very excited for our Christmas break and to go home to California to see our family and friends.