Update

Our lives can mostly be summarized in one word: AMBERLY

We are so in love with our little Amberly Brielle! I feel like my days (and sometimes nights) revolve around her. She's the first thing I think about and hear when I wake up and the last thing I'm usually thinking about before I fall asleep. I love being her mother. I feel so privileged to take care of and learn from this sweet little girl. She has both her daddy and I wrapped around her little finger, and doesn't even know it...yet!

Fun facts about our little girl:

• She is smiling all the time now! Sometimes is seems like her little face can't contain her huge toothless smile. She's started wrinkling her nose when she smiles and both James and I can't stand it, it's sooo cute!
• She is sleeping through the night! And I mean, ALL through the night. She generally sleeps 8-10 hours, wakes up to eat and will sleep for another hour or so. She doesn't take regular naps yet, though.
• She is 11 weeks old and growing fast!
  
• She is still wearing newborn clothes for the most part, but started wearing 3 month-old sleepers just this week!
• She loves bath time!
• She is cooing and babbling all the time. This little girl has plenty to say already and I love it!
• She LOVES playing with her tongue. She's always sticking her tongue out and playing with her bottom lip. As soon as she learns to grab things with her hand, then she'll be chewing on everything!
• She has dark blue eyes, that often look wise beyond her age. Sometimes when she gazes at me i feel like she's looking deep into my soul!
• She still likes to be swaddled at night!
  
• She loves to kick her legs and move her arms and bounce in her bouncy chair. And I love that she loves this, since now I can get things done while she just kicks and kicks!
• She is such a sweet, calm baby and we just can't get enough of her!
  

Other happenings in our lives:

• We had Amberly's baby blessing last Sunday and were so grateful for so much family support and love. It was such a lovely day and a beautiful blessing and our little princess looked so pretty in her white dress!
  
• James only has 5 more days (and 3 finals) before he is DONE with the Junior Core in BYU's Accounting program. Woot, woot! I'm so proud of his hard work this year. It's been extremely challenging with never-ending homework, but he's excelled in every class and really enjoyed it overall! He deserves a break this summer!
• James just finished applying to the Masters of Accountancy program! He'll here back by June, but I'm sure that he'll get in, based on his grades! Just two more years to go...
  
• In 7 days we're moving to California for the Summer! James has a tax internship with Disney, so we'll be living in LA for the Summer. We're excited for trips to the beach and hopefully a trip or two to Disneyland!
• I just celebrated my 26th birthday. For some reason 26 seems sooo much older than I feel. I guess this is why people don't seem to like getting older. Somehow our perception of age does not coincide with how we personally experience it. James was so sweet and put together a little party with balloons, streamers, fun party-paper plates and cups and party hats so that I didn't feel like I was getting old. I loved it! It was actually my first birthday party with party hats! He also made some delicious peanut butter brownies, thumbprint cookies and gave me new running shoes (which he picked out and I love!)
• We participated in We Witness Music's production of "Lamb of God" by Rob Gardner by singing in the choir. It was such a beautiful experience! Lamb of God is a musical production depicting the end of Christ's life, his death and his resurrection. all from the point of view of his closest friends. The Spirit was so strong during all of the performances and it really made Easter come alive to me this year.
  

Some pictures:

My birthday party!

Just sittin...

Helping Daddy with his homework

Doing her "exercises"! She always scoots way down...

Cutest bum ever!

Sound asleep...

LOVE this smile!!

Beautiful in white!Lamb of God carpool group, plus Nettie and Jarom

Pumpkin Carving & Corn Maze

Even though my only posts have revolved around the coming baby, we have been busy at work and school and have also managed to squeeze in some playing in our spare moments. Here are some overdue pictures of our October celebrations.

Pumpkin carving with my siblings was really fun!. Here's a sample of the participants and finished products:

We also went to a cornmaze! These are Nettie and my lost/confused pictures (we really did get somewhat lost for a while and kept wandering around in circles!

I managed to prop my camera up on a corn stalk and take this picture on timer!

Bigger baby bump!

Time is flying by! I'm nearly 6 and 1/2 months along, which means I've only got a little over three months to go. Crazy! Baby has been growing like crazy this past month. I feel like my tummy is poking out a lot more now than just a couple of weeks ago. She's also become even more active and I feel her move frequently throughout the day and quite a lot when I'm laying down at night or in the morning. I've also been able to feel little hard parts of her body in my stomach at times, which is fun. It's been especially fun that James can feel her move now too, so we can both revel in the reality that a new little person will soon be joining our family. We love her already!

25 Weeks

Baby's first pictures!

Look at our beautiful baby girl. She's cute already, huh? I can't wait to meet her! I love that you can see her little fingers and her profile. The ultrasound was amazing. The technician was so detailed and measured everything on her little body. My favorite part (other than finding out she's a girl!) was seeing her heart beat on the screen!

In Memory of my Soap Collection

Growing up, I had a soap collection.

That's right.
A SOAP collection.

Weird.

What kid has a soap collection?

Well, this is how it happened. Somehow, my mom had a small collection of pretty shaped soaps from her childhood, including one hand-painted soap bar from her grandmother. As a child I was fascinated with these soaps and because of my enthusiasm I inherited them from my mother. And, as the years went by my soap collection expanded. I got little soaps in my stocking from Santa or picked them out as souvenirs on trips.

Over Christmas break last year I went through a box of treasures from my childhood including dolls, stuffed animals, paper dolls, and my soap collection. The soaps smelled so strongly (that's a nice way of describing their stink...) that they'd made everything else in the box smell as well. Somehow at that point I couldn't bear throwing them away because they brought back such sweet memories from my childhood. So, I threw out some of the newer ones that I'd collected and slimmed my collection down to fit in a small shoe box. I double wrapped everything in plastic to try to contain the smell.

Then we moved. And I had to face my soap collection again. My goal during this move was to get rid of things that we didn't need, but when it came to my soap collection, it was still hard for me to cut the strings. Even though it really didn't smell good.

I was talking to my sister Marnae last week and I told her, "Marnae, talk me into getting rid of that old soap collection I have." To which she responded, "You still have those gross old soaps?!" When I told her that I couldn't bear to get rid of them in party because one of them had belonged to Great-Grandma she said that fact made it even more gross. She led a very compelling argument, ending with, "Besides, they stink!"

Marnae suggested that I take pictures of the soaps to preserve the memories I have and then get rid of them. I took her advice and I haven't regretted it. I'm still glad that I have the pictures though! I'm sharing them so that you can see how cute they are, especially without having to stand the horrible smell!

This is the hand-painted one from Great-Grandma.

These were my mothers.



And these are a couple of my favorites of the ones that I later got.

Moving

We just moved to a new apartment in Provo. Even though we only had to move about 10 blocks, it's still taken us two weeks to finally feel mostly settled in. We've been playing the KSL/Craigslist game of searching for furniture, since we didn't have any before and our apartment now is unfurnished. We've gotten everything we need except a washer and dryer. After going to the laundromat last week and spending a fortune doing 4 loads, we're hoping to get a washer and dryer before we're forced to do laundry again. Finally, though, I'm starting to love our new place. It's got more closet space and more shelves and has a little deck with a sliding glass window that faces East, so our whole house is flooded with light in the morning. Our front room is a little bigger than our last apartment and we have two bedrooms, which will definitely be great when the baby comes.

Before we finally found a table, we ate off of this cardboard box for a couple of weeks--oh the joys of moving!


Now we've just got to hang pictures...

More pictures of my bump!

Here are a couple pictures of my bump that's starting to show a little more.

This one is at 16 weeks.

This one is today at 21 weeks.

Baby is moving a LOT lately! I absolutely love it. Baby's still so small that it it's continuous movements don't bother me at all--they just remind me that there's a little body growing and learning to move inside of me! It makes me think about Baby a lot and wonder who this new little person is going to be. On Monday we go in for our first ultrasound and we'll find out if it's a boy or girl! We can't wait!!!