25 weeks

{december 15, 2015}

today i am 25 weeks along! what an adventure this sweet pregnancy has been. 

first off, i am having a BOY! 

20 week scan :) 

to be honest, i wanted a girl, so finding out it is a boy was almost emotional! but i am seriously so excited to be having a baby, so it's all good. 

as you can see (maybe?) my placenta is inbetween baby and my stomach, so i haven't hardly felt much movement aside from a little tingling in my lower stomach every so often. it is becoming stronger, but still just in my very low abdomen. it is such a special, tender time in our home these days.

baby boy's bedroom is all set up just awaiting his arrival :) just kidding. we just set up the pack'n'play, and are slowly filling the room with baby clothes and decor.

baby's room, complete with a painting of daddy <3

luckily we only have 2 days left of the semester, and then its Christmas time! im getting so excited to see all the siblings and nieces and nephews, and even skype our missionary brother. 

Christmas is such a special time of year. i have felt a special bond with Mary, the mother of Jesus, being pregnant with a little boy. how scared, excited, and honored she must have felt to be carrying such a babe. im not carrying Christ, but i am carrying a choice son of God, and hopefully i can raise him to be a positive influence to this earth. 

thoughts (october 27, 2015)

today i am 18 weeks pregnant with little peanut. we find out the gender in 2 weeks and it is seriously the longest 2 weeks of my life!!! pretty exciting times around these parts :)

to start off my trail of thoughts, i have been thinking a lot about social pressures and societal acceptance. growing up (especially freshman year of high school) i felt so much pressure to be this idea of "skinny". what even defines this "skinny"? where did i even get this desire to be skinny? when (if) i ever reach 'skinny' how will i know? will i finally be happy with myself just like that?

im thinking it's a lot to do with self confidence/self image which is honestly the hardest thing sometimes. i sometimes wonder why it is that some people seem so confident in their own skin while others are so clearly fighting this battle. maybe everyone is fighting the battle, some just hide it better?

so when did it all start? i can still remember a few occasions when i was younger that someone thoughtlessly said something regarding me being fat. when i was 9 i was at my bff's birthday pool party and one of her friends' little brother was there. after we finished singing happy birthday he kept singing the "and scoobydoo on channel 2..etc" part of that song. when he got to "...and a big fat lady on channel 80" he looked at me saying "and YOURE the big fat lady". i was so confused. i can honestly say that i never saw myself as fat up to that point, and i sometimes wonder if i EVER saw myself at that age.. i really was the chubbiest kid ever. what can i say, i LOVE food. on another occasion a friend on my bus ride home from school told me i was a "big fat liar, especially the fat part". where do kids even come up with such awful things to say? still it took me until i was 14, going into my freshman year of high school, to really see myself as "too fat". i was in freshman p.e. and it was our day to run the dreaded 1 mile...24.5 minutes later i finally crossed the finish line, surrounded by all the fit kids cheering me on and running beside me. "you can do it heidi" "you got this". while you'd think this would be so encouraging, but to put it plainly i was utterly humiliated! so that experience, along with a young women activity on healthy eating convinced me it was past time for me to get skinny. at first i would just work my tail off in p.e. and do the best i could. as far as eating goes...basically i started cutting out sugary foods: ice cream (which is a big deal in my family!), brownies, cookies, etc. then i would only eat salad or a salad wrap for lunch with minimal dressing. one day i decided that since my p.e. class is right after lunch i couldn't eat lunch anymore or else the physical exertion of said p.e. class would make me sick. sometimes i would just nibble on some jalapeno potato chips until lunch time was over to avoid all the questions. soon it became a game of how long i could go without eating. i would sleep in so i "didn't have time to eat breakfast" and just take something on the way and shove it in my backpack. then i would pick at my food all lunch time, or just skip it all together. i would come home from school obviously exhausted and sleep until i was awoken by hunger pains or the smell of dinner cooking. i remember trying to fake sleeping so i could avoid the dinner table all together, but that usually didnt work--either my mom or siblings would come wake me. i was never a calorie counter and honestly never could be! but i would be so picky at dinner and just say everything made me feel sick. that was a lovely fight. but honestly eventually certain things really did make me sick, i just never could pin point what it was until my first thanksgiving home from college. now obviously this sort of eating habits cant last long, and my parents would often threaten to charge me for every skipped meal "to pay for hospital bills", or they would just tell me theyre taking me to the hospital if i didnt eat. so i would eat in front of them, and then summer came around and it was a lot harder to go without eating. i lost over 60 ibs in that one school year, but i honestly never once felt "skinny" or in love with my body. i still felt just as fat as i did at the beginning of the year.
basically what i am getting at is that i have almost always had these self-criticizing glasses on, and it's extremely hard to take them off! i have heard countless talks and quotes about loving yourself, "you are you", you are special, you matter, etc. but nothing seems to stick for very long. i guess it's like anything in life; if you stop working on it, it dies.

SO my goal is to work really hard on loving myself in this precious transitional time into motherhood (pregnancy), so that i can have a positive experience and love myself as a mother. obviously i will still have hard times, and down days, but i never want to be so sick that i would justify starvation or hurting myself or my baby. I am enough! I am beautiful! I am literally growing a human being inside of me!!

introduction: i learned in english you're supposed to start everything you write with an intro

we just celebrated our one year anniversary. go us! 

our marriage story:

we got married in salt lake city on october 11, 2014 surrounded by our families and a couple friends.

from there we set off for a winter in southeast georgia with detours to park city for a few days, a night at my sister's in spanish fork. 

we then decided to purchase a tent and other camping necessities so we could camp overlooking lake powell. we drove through south grand canyon, celebrated our one week in tuscon, and then continued on through new mexico and half of texas til we arrived in beautiful san antonio. we enjoyed the alamo, the river walk, and fine dining before we continued on our way. 

we drove all the way to the koa in scott, louisiana where we rested up, reorganized and did laundry before we finished the trip and landed in st. marys, ga for the rest of winter. eric began as a painter {for five days}, and later worked as a porter (maintenance) at a local gov't-subsidized apartment complex while i worked as a waitress at a near by restaurant. and by near by, i mean i drove our golf cart the mile to work most days. at the beginning of the year i took a job at a ferry reservations call center for cumberland island, the most dreamy, uninhabited island (beach!!!) i had ever seen. 

march rolled around and with it came spring. time to leave our dear georgia family. we quit our jobs on a friday, visited cumberland island on tuesday-wednesday, and set off back across the big u.s. on thursday. detours on our way back consisted of the avett brothers concert in south carolina (+ some touristing in the area), drop by my little missionary brothers apartment in tennessee, 

rest day in scott loisiana, the houston rodeo, 

a couple days' stay at aunt deb's ranch house in spring branch texas, a night in albuquerque new mexico, four corners, a stop at cousin aimee's in cortez colorado, blitz to provo to enjoy froyo with my sister, with a red eye arrival to nyssa oregon at approx 3am. we made it. 

we spent a couple weeks helping out with the brand new nephew archie before heading up to ferndale washington: tree farm. 

after a few days at tree farm, we set off for our grand adventure in alaska, usa. we met up with some friends who drive their big motor coaches up every summer, so we had free lodging once we got all our car issues taken care of :) did i mention we took my dad's 1998 gmc suburban with over 320,000 miles on it before the trip. it was fun.

alaska was a dream! i worked as an extra set of hands at the inn at tern lake, a bed and breakfast on tern lake. it was gorgeous. we made beds on the daily, prepped garden beds, planted the gardens, weeded, and watered. we moved rocks, thousands and thousands of rocks, and pulled/cut the overgrown willows and aspens mostly. once summer kicked in to full force we did weddings just about every weekend. and by 'did weddings' i mean set up tables and chairs, set the place settings wine glasses and all, cook the food, serve it, collect dirty dishes, and clean up. this process usually took about 6-10 hours. eric worked part time (3 long nights a week) maintenance at a lodge owned by a cruise line, and the rest of the time worked with jeff at the inn doing outside man stuff. we often had time to ourselves to enjoy the vast wilderness surrounding us, and visit and enjoy other cities around the kenai peninsula. it was fantastic.

while in alaska, we had a lot of time to think about our future plans and goals and reevaluate what really matters most to us. in this time, we talked a lot about starting our family. and, well, we felt it was time. we got pregnant right away, and unbeknownst to us, with that would come weeeeeks of bed-ridden morning sickness to the point where i couldn't even go to work i was puking so much. sweet rose, my boss, was so understanding and happy for us that she found substitutes for my absence and even threw me an early, gender neutral baby shower the day before we left. did i mention i met my very best friend i ever had while i was there! she lived next door, and we did weddings together. i don't talk about it much, cuz im still getting over the fact that i had to leave her. 

because i was so sick, we decided it would be better that i fly home and eric take his time driving back on his own. i was planning on spending at least a week at my parents' home before eric made it, but he got bored after the first day, so he booked it home and made it in less than 4 days! it was a true miracle cuz i was missing him like crazy. we spent another week at tree farm going to all the appointments--gastro, family doc, and ob. it was nice to get all that checked up on before we had to go back to school.

we drove to nyssa for a week, and then settled ourselves in to our new, permanent home in rexburg idaho where we will be attending the university for what seems like the rest of our lives.

today i am 16 weeks and 5 days pregnant with our little angel. i literally just started not feeling like puke everyday which is a blessing! i am about to loose my brain of anxiousness as we await the ultrasound appointment at which we find out the gender. unfortunately it's not til november 12. just shoot me now. but not really cuz then baby would die too, and that is never a good idea. i absolutely love my midwife. she is the coolest-- so understanding and really good at what she does. 

basically i don't have any local mommy friends yet, and all my friends/sisters get so annoyed any time i bring up baby, so i will attempt using this blog to let out all my pregnancy thoughts, feelings, frights, and excitements so as to not bore my lovelies to death with baby mama drama. 

xoxo.