I love my parents, especially in person

As soon as we came home from Georgia we were greeted by my parents who had already spent a night at our house. The next day we immediately went to Costco to buy some beds. My parents buy us kids two single beds (which makes a king when put together) when they come to visit so they can have a king size bed to sleep on when they come to visit and we get two single beds for our kids when they aren't visiting. It's a great deal if you ask me! They justify the purchase by saying it saves them money because a week in a hotel would cost more than the beds. I'm excited because I'm going to start Jade in a big girl bed in the coming weeks and now I have a bed to set up her big girl room! My parents know how to cheer up a sick pregnant lady and an exhausted law student. We went out to eat everyday and tried all the restaurants around our house we have been wanting to try. They spoiled us with all sorts of NEW things for our house. I capitalize NEW because we never buy NEW. So it is a real treat to say we have some quality stuff around here. Jade was spoiled with attention and Canadian candy obviously. She still screams PAPA and MAMA even now that they have gone. It's kinda sad. She is now experiencing a candy detox :) We went to the Henry Ford Museum which contains million dollar vehicles throughout our history. It was a really neat place to read about all the different progressions and inventions our world has made. It's insane to think about. It had airplanes from the beginning of the technology to now. It had so many things that it took us hours to go through. It had fun kids sensory sections for Jade and electric scooters my parents insisted on me using. It actually did help because I didn't waste any calories or puke through the entire experience. Little successes matter! We tried several pet stores to find a free "zoo" for Jade. The pet stores around here were sadly stocked but Jade still got to see puppies and that is all that matters to her. I was also able to go to a million doctors appointments which sounds lame but I don't usually have a car during the say so we have to plan a lot just to schedule appointments. It was nice to just get a lot of that type of stuff done. While at my OBGYN appointment, my doctor suggested going to the hospital over night to get hooked up to IV's and you can read about that experience here. It was nice to have my parents to take care of Jade while I was in the hospital and Alex was at school. The iv's helped and I haven't puked since! It has been two days and it feels awesome! I unluckily came down with a cold and sore throat which was passed down to Jade, so I haven't been able to fully appreciate not puking after meals. But my cold is nearing the end of it's stay and I'm excited to feel completely healthy! A nurse is coming to our house several times a week to keep the iv's in my system on a regular basis so I keep down calories and nutrients. It's definitely gonna take some getting used to with me doing my day to day stuff wrapped up in cords and iv bags but I'm glad my doctor is looking out for me and taking needed action.  After I was discharged from the hospital my parents took me for ice cream and then we all went to a Redwing's game. It was such a good game that ended with a wing's win! We went out for pizza in down town Detroit before the game and it was fun to finally experience this place we have been living in for months now and had yet to really see. Alex drives through the city to get to school but never has spent time walking around and I spend my days at home with Jade. It was fun and a great way to finish off their visit. We love when family comes! Now my parents are 2 hours away in Ohio with my sister Natalie and her family and will be back next Friday to go to ANOTHER wing's game with us before they fly home.

Halloween 2015 in Georgia

We were able to go to Georgia to attend our newest niece, Gwenyth Nyali Steven's baby blessing! Tasha and Ben came back to the States from Africa to have their beautiful baby girl! She is just so well behaved and easy and not to mention flawless. We spent a night tending her and only woke up twice for 10 minutes to feed her and BAM she was back sleeping. Her blessing was wonderful and the visit was FUN FUN FUN! We got there Halloween morning and relaxed while at the same time ooing and awwwing at little Gwen. Then we went out to a BBQ place which was a great introduction to Southern food. In the community that Tasha's parents live they use golf carts like vehicles. I kid you not, we went to the grocery store in one and they have specified parking spots for golf carts and everything. So for trick or treating, everyone decorated their golf cart spooky and went door to door. It was quite the experience and our little chicken enjoyed her first Halloween out on the streets. We also visited the Georgia Aquarium which was the highlight for Jade. She loved all the "shish" :) And then directly after we went to the world of coke museum. THAT was a delicious experience where they have taps of all the different coke products that are offered around the world. It was YUM YUM YUM! Tasha's family was so good to us. I always love being around that family because they are such a good time. Alex's parents and his little sister Natalie were also there for the blessing and it was so good to see them. Jade gets so much attention from them and Alex and I forget we have a child when we are around them. Jade is always taken care of :)  It was sad to leave our African family which has now expanded to 3. The only thing that made the goodbye tolerable was that we are all meeting up again at Christmas time.

Canadian Thanksgiving In Stow Ohio

We traveled to Ohio this Canadian Thanksgiving weekend to be with my sister Natalie and her family. We love being around them because their kids are so full of life and Nat and Dave are so similar to us. We found out last minute that Landon's soccer game was canceled so we made the most of it and had some fun family soccer time in the indoor field together. Both Landon and Easton are very athletic. Landon even got to 100 goals before we left :) We put together Thanksgiving dinner and endulged in it non stop for the entire weekend. It was fun to be pregnant with my sister again! We were able to talk baby a lot while our husbands could talk sports, careers, school and other less than fun things. We did an early gift exchange for Christmas because we were sure when the next time was that we would see each other. It was fun until Alex and I unwrapped the new and improved Christmas "pooch". In our family we have this famous "pooch" that someone gets every year for Christmas. It's funny because we always forget and then BAM someone is unwrapping this cheap dog stuffed animal as a gift. The story behind it goes all the way back to when I was 10 years old and had a paper route. I had gotten one of my school friends a dog in a purse stuffed animal for Christmas as a gag/inside joke gift and mistakenly forgotten that I had left it on the kitchen counter while I went out to do my paper route. While I was gone, my sister Natalie and brother Jordan discovered the ugly creature and got out a sharpy and proceeded to draw unibrows and chest hair all over my friend's gift. They had a good time laughing at all the things they thought up to draw on the poor pooch. When I got home from my paper route I discovered my graffitied gift. I showed my mom and she tried not to laugh as she investigated around the house and talked to possible culprits. Natalie and Jordan confessed and said they thought it wasn't a big deal because they didn't think anyone cared about the ugly stuffed animal and just had some fun with it. I was so upset because I had specifically bought this gift for a friend and I was 10 and everything was a big deal I guess. They bought me another pooch and then we all forgot about the experience. Little did we know, my mom kept the vandalized pooch because she thought the whole story was pretty funny. She wrapped the gift and addressed it to Jordan and Natalie. On Christmas morning Jordan and Natalie noticed this nice looking present addressed to them that  they thought was probably something awesome. When it came to opening the gift they were sorely mistaken. It was the pooch coming back to haunt them. Every Christmas since my family wraps the pooch up for one unsuspecting family member. SO this year Alex and I opened up a gift that was in fact the pooch but instead of the original pooch it was a singing and dancing pooch that was also vandalized in a similar fashion. Jade cried every time we turned it on and it started singing. I don't blame her because it WAS quite frightening. Anyways...it was a good time. Hopefully we see them soon. It's so nice only living a couple hours from family.

Nat and the gang visit the "ghetto"

My lovely sister Natalie and her kids came to visit us. We were so happy it was that weekend because Alex had it all off for the long weekend. We imagined a total party and that's what is was. Within a day of their arrival we found this huge kids pool for my backyard at a garage sale! Since I don't have a car most days, it's important to me to find things to do around the house. We set it up for some of the last rays of summer sun and enjoyed for hours. The boys kept asking to "check on the pool"  the next day on Sunday when we were restraining the urge to party in the pool for the Sabbath. They were so patient and just stared at the glistening water all Sunday even though they knew how fun it was the day before. I just love them. We ordered pizza, got ice team cones from the local dairy and went garage sale shopping. It was a short weekend but we loved having them here and i'll post soon about when we visited their neck of the woods for Canadian Thanksgiving weekend!

16 weeks

I am addicted to babies. I love them. But they don't love me back all the time. This week my OBGYN sent me to the hospital to get hooked up to iv's over night. I'm currently writing this as I sit here at 6 am, because hospitals have a law to never let you get some shut eye. The iv's I'm getting include: electrolytes, fluids, calories, anti-nausiants and prenatal pills. After this my doctor is working on getting me at home care to get iv's a couple times a week until the baby is born. I guess I should explain why it's necessary. With Jade's pregnancy I suffered with HG the whole time and lost a lot of weight. This pregnancy I'm starting out at a lower weight and don't have much body fat to give. I can't keep a lot of anything down and my days consist of running to puke and wondering when I'm going to puke next. Not fun. Either is this hospital visit. I'm hoping it helps. Or at least helps baby #2 get some good nutrients. Alex stayed with me until late last night and as soon as we both knew he should probably leave in order to get sleep for school tomorrow I started crying uncontrollably. Alex and I have spent almost no nights a part from each other since we've been married. We don't like it, in fact we hate it. But here I am at 6 am the next day and I've made it. Now I'm just hoping I get outta here by tonight because we have tickets to the redwings game and a cute baby I already miss terribly at home. Maybe I will feel good long enough because of the iv's they are giving me to enjoy and keep down some greasy game foods too. In the mean time I will just torture myself and watch the food network while I'm on this liquid hospital diet. Sounds smart right?

Big "surprise"..I'm pregnant again.

I am currently 14 weeks pregnant but I thought I should reminisce about when we first found out about baby #2.

The first Sunday after moving to Michigan I found myself puking at church. I instantly suspected I was pregnant. I did not forget the feeling of pregnancy enough to deny it. I somehow managed to keep my puking inconspicuous because Alex never clued in. I was trying to hide it so I could go home and take a pregnancy test to confirm my suspicions and then tell him in a funny way. I wanted to make up for my spur of the moment "I'm pregnant" text I sent him while he was in class when I found out I was pregnant with Jade. Not exactly a text you see everyday and not cool. Just not. Cool. When we got home from church I quickly took a pregnancy test, took a deep breath, saw two lines, sat on the floor and collected my self. I was so anxious to tell Alex so I quickly wrapped the pregnancy test with a note and stuck it into his guitar hole. He is always shaking things out of his guitar so I knew he wouldn't think anything of it when he found something rattling inside. He was really excited and partially disgusted he was holding a used pregnancy test. But everything aside, we are really excited for this new bundle of sleepless joy!!...and Jade is too :) After experiencing the unbelievable joy Jade has brought us we are so excited to experience it again! Family is everything and the more the merrier! We can't wait until April!

Our new adventure... Michigan

Our trip to our new home in Detroit was eventful to say the least. It started out with sad goodbyes(with my family), then there was a lot of hard work packing our belongings into the moving truck in Rexburg and then it turned into a much needed break in Utah to visit Tom, Ramona, Tina, Niz, Stacey and Kamrie, Pax, Sky, Linds, Cathryn, John and Colby. We played games, relaxed, held babies, ate and caught up. It was so nice to see them because it has been too long. Then only a couple hours out of Utah, our truck broke down. We glided into the shoulder of the freeway and called budget trucks. They sent out a mechanic that took 3 hours.3 HOURS!!  He spent an hour under our truck to only figure out that the oil ran out because budget never checked the oil before they gave it to us. Vehicle 101, I'd say. The engine was shot which he told us was a 22 thousand dollar motor. Yikes! Then they told us they were sending out a tow truck to take us to the nearest hotel. Which sounds nice right? Well that only took 5 more hours. We tried to entertain Jade in the ditch and in the hot smoldering truck with no AC. Finally the tow truck came and he took over an hour to hook it up and then FINALLY took us to a hotel. It was an insanely tiring day. The next day it took them until 5:30 pm to get us another truck and to transfer our things to the new truck. We were two days behind on traveling and sleep. Finally we were back on the road! We met up with our Realtor to get the keys to our house and we found out that we needed cashiers checks for our rent and couldn't do cash. One thing. after. another. Our realtor failed to mention this and all of the banks were closed for the night so we were stuck getting another hotel only blocks from our new home. It was frustrating but the next morning we switched our bank to a bank recognized here on the east coast, got cashiers checks and met to finally get our keys to move in. Relief! We lacked help moving in so it took us all day just the two of us moving in all of our things. Let's just say Jade was neglected that day. We worked with budget to get a discount on our truck and reimbursement for food and hotels. That helped heal the wound that they caused and we kinda laugh about it now. Kinda. Now Alex is at school everyday, learning the law or something. But Alex is actually enjoying his classes and his schools. We are almost completely unpacked but we have a lot of organizing to do. Jade loves her backyard! So do I! We love the plentiful trees, melting pot of ethnicities, neighbours, our ward, and the weekends that we get to spend quality time with each other. This adventure started out rocky but is turning into a dream come true! Cheer to the next 3 years.