BABY BOY!!!

I am pregnant with a baby boy!!!! We found out last Wednesday! I'm only 15 weeks along so its still really early to tell, but My doctor said that he is about 99% sure its a little boy. We are really excited. We still can't believe we are going to be parents, in only 175 days. I'm due at the first of May. If anyone has any suggestions on names, we would love, love, love to hear them.

Halloween

Trying to decide what to be for Halloween each year is always a fun and taxing process. This we decided to be Dorothy and The Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. Well I decided and Tommy will pretty much go along with anything. I pieced our costumes together and ended up actually sewing my dress, with the much needed help of my wonderful mother -in-law (she had to tell me what to do every step of the way). Both of our costumes came to about $20.00. We ended up at a party at Jamie’s house. It was a good time.

Velvet's Darling little London dressed as a butterfly!!!

Zeus and Hera, The Joker with an 80's girl, Chuck Norris with a Pirate, Mario with his Princess, and Dorothy with the Scarecrow

Before and after the donut eating contest on a string. This was a couples activity and it boy was it difficult. What a sticky mess!

We are officially owners and operators of a new computer. It would seem to good to be true to actually be in bed while writing a blog post but its true, I am literally sitting in my bed right now. I love early Christmas presents, to myself.

Jamie this one is for you

With constant requests to blog more, here I go…. My life over the past 6 weeks has been somewhat uninteresting. I finished summer semester, luckily without developing any life threatening stomach ulcers. I greatly disliked my physiology class, not so much the material, but the way it was presented, the speed, and the lovely French teachers accent. All these factors added up and caused me a great deal of stress! And only by god’s good graces did I somehow end up pulling an A- out of the class. After school was over I had 2 weeks to read Breaking Dawn and Fablehaven (The grip of the shadow plague). I know it’s for children but Brandon Mull does such a good job at reeling you in, even if you are almost 23. I Started school again today. I’m only going part time with anatomy and Pathophysiology. It should be an interesting semester full of studying and dissecting dead bodies. As for my social life, Last week we got together with a long lost friend and her darling boy Aiden. We went to the pizza factory and caught up on all we had missed in the years of absence. It was fun to hear what is going on in Megan’s life and to she her beautiful boy. We all rarely all get together and it was entertaining to see everyone. After dinner before Velvet dropped me off, a few of us stopped by her new house in the works. How jealous am I that she is building her own house. Ok, ok I am happy for her too. It is coming along fast and they should be in it by October. However if you are inquiring about Tommy, and me I can assure you that we will never have such extravagancies, or at least not for years and years and years to come. I am extremely happy for them and their darling little family.

As Dave would say " A Series of Unfortunate Events"

What sounded like a wonderful summer vacation, turned into quite the disaster. We have been trying to plan a summer vacation with the in-laws for months. We wanted to go down to Powell but couldn’t quite work around my summer school semester. Instead we decided to go up to bear lake because it was a little closer. Friday morning we headed over to Doug and DeAnn’s, we had to take 3 vehicles up because we needed to pull the boat, the trailer, and because Tommy and I had to leave early (school bright and early Monday morning, Blaaa!) We were late getting going and when we were finally ready, we left in a scurry. As we started driving down the road I realized that Dave (Tommy’s Brother) wasn’t in our car. He had made it apparent that he wanted to ride with us and required a window seat. I asked Thomas and Matt (Tommy’s other brother) about it and they said that Dave was in the excursion with the others. I looked back and saw four heads, in my own head I counted (Ben, Josh, Staci, and Dave) “ok thats right” I thought still a little confused about why he had decided not to ride with us, as we got farther and farther away I started to rethink. We came to a stoplight and again I looked back, the excursion was closer and I saw (Ben, Josh, Staci, and STEPHEN) Hello! Of course Steve was in their car I had completely forgotten. At that instant I was anxious. I took Tommy’s phone and called Dave. When he answered he made it quite clear that we left him. I guess that he went to the bathroom and came out to see us all driving away. To make matters worse he tried to go back into the house and surprise, all the doors were locked. He proceeds to call every one of us and not one person answered their phone. Poor Dave So we took the journey back to pick him up and that was the start of the all the calamity! We had been driving for about and hour and a half, I had fallen asleep and when I woke we were all pulled over on the side of the road. The hood was up on the truck that was pulling the fifth-wheel trailer. I guess something had broken on the truck. Doug worked to fix it but he didn’t think that he should drive it much farther. We decided that we would have to get to the campground and then drive back to Ogden and borrow someone else’s truck to pull the trailer home. We finally get to the campground just to find that it is full! Doug talks to the rangers and they tell him to try other campgrounds on the other side of the lake. After driving what seemed like forever at a speed that was less then thrilling (because of a broken truck) we find a barren campground with a small boat ramp. We set up camp and want to go out on the boat. Doug wanted to drive back to Ogden to get a new truck so he trusted his son Ben with the boat. After a shaky loading we were on the water. It was cold and windy! We were out about 2 hours then we were done. The problem was that because It was so windy it was impossible to get the boat back on the trailer, and in the process of trying the prop hits what sounded like a underwater boulder. Needless to say we busted the propeller, it was bent out of shape and now Doug who just spent over a grand on a new prop, (specially for this trip) has to buy a new one. Well by this time we all are wondering what else can go wrong. We couldn’t necessarily leave because Doug and DeAnn had already paid the nice man quite a bit of money to stay at this deserted campground, and he was long gone. We head in and Tommy and I decide to go set up our tent, there simply wasn’t any room in the trailer for us to sleep. Grown men were sleeping together. We found a good spot and start to put up our new tent that we had just gotten and only used once. Well I bet you can guess what’s coming, our new tent pole had somehow warped and was broken broken broken. This was almost the last straw I was so very frustrated by this point. I really didn’t want to sleep on the floor of the trailer or in the back of the excursion. I was pretty determined to try and somehow get this pole fixed. Well we tried to fix this pole by cutting out a part that was broken. The inside of course was shredded and felt a lot like fiberglass that then proceeded to get all over me and Stephen, Ouch! And also in the process we manage to somehow cut the rope that holds all the poles together. So now we really were in a pickle. We then spend the next ‘forever’ threading this rope through all of the blasted poles, what a pain!!!! We should have just slept in the car. However we did manage to jimmy rig our tent up and had a place to sleep. The next day I believe would be a better day, Me, Steve and Dave took the mile long walk to the closest beach and spent hours in the sun as we waited for Doug and Staci to get back with the new prop. When they got back we headed again on to the lake. Now for any of you that have been to bear lake you might remember that the sun is very deceiving. The water temp and the wind make it seem like its really not that hot and that you might not need that much sunscreen…..Big Big Big Mistake! At the end of the day I was fried! Not like ‘ouch this sucks’ bad, but ‘ ouch you can’t touch me or I’ll cry’ bad. When I woke the next morning by face had literally swelled. But I wasn’t the only one; you better believe Dave was just as bad! It must have been our extra hours on the beach. So basically we are as red as lobsters, burnt, and miserable. However we still had a full day left in the sun, the same sun that had betrayed us. Before we go out Staci tells us that when she has sunburns she would soak in vinegar to take the sting out. Luckily we actually had water-diluted vinegar, unfortunately vinegar water is disgusting! We took our chances and went out back and bathed in this stank mixture. WE STUNK! It was bad. That day boating was really something else. Dave and I both were covered up like Middle Eastern women. The sun was like fire touching our scalded hides. Luckily that night we were going home. I couldn’t take the sun any longer. Needless to say back at home, Thomas and I both looked like we had leprosy, as we peeled off the rough leather that our skin had become. Tommy got blisters all over his back, shoulders and chest. It felt like bubble wrap when I would run my finger across them. So you may be asking yourself, why did I spend the time to read this depressing novel of a blog, well I do have a one Moral, MAN SOMETIMES LIFE JUST SUCKS!!!! :)

Dave sunburned and miserable

Staci, Matt, and Steve

Tommy,Me,DeAnn, and Dave

Tommy Jumping the wake on the Knee board

Four weenie's riding a bigger weenie

Doug and DeAnn

Fathers Day

I would like to extend a thank you for all of the wonderful fathers and grandfathers out there that make my life so great. Our father’s day celebration started out at DeAnn and Doug's (Tommy’s parents) on Saturday night. Doug kids were up there (from a previous marriage) and we had a special gift to give Doug for father’s day. We wanted everyone together for that and they are always a blast to hang out with. We Barbequed, which was delicious, and had a good time. After dinner we were going to go down and watch ‘I am legend’ on the big screen. DeAnn had hidden his present in the washroom and waited for him to come back in the dining room. When he came back he looked puzzled at the garbage bag on the table. DeAnn said “ you want to come open your present?”. We all sat down and my heart was beating a little harder than it should have. OK it was beating like I had to give a talk in front of 5000 people. You see back in January, Doug’s mother had passed away, she died suddenly from a stroke and it was really hard on Doug and his family. In March, DeAnn had asked me to do a portrait of Sheryl (Doug’s Mother) for Father’s Day. I have been working on this pastel painting from that time on and praying that he would see the resemblance between his mother and this lady that I had drawn. As he opened the Black garbage sack and started to pull the 18x24 picture out he looked a little confused, this sped my heart rate up past where it is healthy. And then he started to get tears forming in the outer corners of his eyes, I had never seen Doug get remotely emotional (he is like my husband, a truck could fall on him and he still wouldn’t cry)
I was truly thankful that he recognized who it was supposed to be and touched that it touched him so much. He thanked us all and gave us hugs. The rest of the night was fun.
As the celebration continued the next day we spent time at all the many fathers and grandfathers. We finished up the night at my mom and dad’s eating apple pie and watching the boob tube. I love you dad

Camping in Fillmore Utah

So this last memorial weekend we went camping with Tommy’s mom's side of the family. It rained a lot but we had lots of fun. It was our first camping trip where we had our own tent. We played a lot of Mexican train dominoes and The Great Dalmuti. We also had a digital scavenger hunt where we were supposed to find all these different items all worth different points. The picture had to have the item and one of the team members face in it. One of the highest point items was a snake; Luckily Tommy had killed a rattlesnake earlier, while fishing with his cousin Jaysen and grandpa Bill. Our team hopped in the truck to hurry and get a picture of the dead snake, as we approached we find out that Jaysen had pitched it into the river. He's pretty competitive. We gave up on the snake and continued to find the other items. We stopped to get a picture of a culvert that was sticking out of the mountainside. Me and Doug (Tommy’s Step-father, who is also the photographer) jump out of the truck. We quickly take the picture of the culvert and run back up the mountain side, as I get to the top, ready to get back into the truck, Staci Jo (cousin) yells "Sierra, there is a snake right by your feet", I look down and can't see it until it starts slithering down the mountain, I thought to myself, what are the chance of this, so I start running down the mountainside after this 6 foot red and black stripped snake, yelling at Doug to get a picture. It was getting away and so I grabbed its tail and lifted it a bit. It scared me and I dropped it, all the time yelling at Doug to get the picture. It finally slithered into a hole and was lost forever. When we got back to the truck I was praying that Doug got the picture. Well.... he did and we won! Later that day we went on a hike. In the 70’s Tommy’s great uncle went coo coo and went up into the mountains to live. Last year we found his hide out and went back up there this hiking trip. He lived in a cave in the side of the mountain; we found a water basin, mattress, bedsprings, and lots of other cool stuff. It was pretty amazing! What a fun trip!