Family Picture

So this is our second Christmas together as a married couple and we still haven't done a family picture. Not only am I too lazy to do it, but it's way more exciting to do when you have kids... so hopefully I'll get on top of that next year. My family, however, requires a picture from us for THEIR family picture so the day we left for California we scrambled to get one.

We set up a little station so we could use the timer on our camera. Obviously they didn't turn out too great. We literally took 35 pictures and I'm not really happy with ONE of them. But we ran out of time and had to settle for something a little less than perfect.

While I was trying to set up the camera, Darren was posing so I could make sure everything was in the right place.

Obviously this is the heart on the stomach pose... haha

And the model shot... (don't hate me for putting this on here Darren!)

My husband has a really hard time smiling for pictures. No matter what he does, you can tell that it is forced. I'm working on positioning his head right (though I have so far been unsuccessful) and will hopefully one day get him to smile like a normal person.

After so many shots of Darren NOT smiling I yelled, "JUST SMILE!" and this is what I got...

So anyways, it was quite an unsuccessful photo shoot. I can only imagine how much harder it's going to be with a crying kid next year!

California

Well, this month has been INSANE to say the least. It started off with finals for me. Luckily I had prepared myself and flew right through most of them with no problems :) The day of my last final, we flew out to California with Cory, Lindsay, Brooklyn, and Kevin. Naturally, our flight was delayed and delayed again. This would have been perfectly fine, but the plan was to surprise Kandi, Carson, and Maddi (who, obviously, didn't know we were coming) which was becoming a difficult task since it was getting late and we were a few hours behind schedule. Luckily, it all worked out just fine! Kandi and Maddi were surprised and shocked to see us walk into their living room. Carson, however, wasn't because a couple hours before we got there, Marci asked him if we were there yet... nice one Marci! haha

Of course, we left our camera home on most days, but we remembered to bring it with us once! We got to California late Wednesday night so the fun mostly started the next day. Thursday was the only sunny day we had while we were there so we were lucky we chose that day to go to the beach!

Yes, we desperately need a tan! This was the only picture I got of Darren and I at the beach... thanks for posing for the picture Darren...

Maddi is one brave girl! Not gonna lie Darren... that's kind of a weird face...

As I said earlier, that was the only sunny day. Apparently we brought the rain with us because the day after we left, it was hot and sunny... real cool. But we still had tons of fun! We got to go to Kandi's first ultrasound, saw Maddi's Christmas performance at school, went out to eat a lot, went shopping, watched movies (even got to see Twilight for a second time; way better than the first!), went to Sea World (got to touch a dolphin for the first time!), got in the hot tub most nights, and ate lots and lots of junk food! I know we did more... I just can't remember at the moment. Anyways, it was amazing! Thanks Ryan and Cindy for making this trip possible! You guys are amazing! Hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!

Fourth and Fourth

Ok, so a while ago, Alix tagged me and I'm FINALLY going to do it! Aren't you so proud of me Alix?! So here's what you do: go to the FOURTH file in your pictures and then pick the FOURTH picture. Post and explain. So here it is!

Nice huh? :) Last March, for our one year anniversary, Darren and I stayed in Seattle. We spent most of our days riding the bus around (my first time on a public bus, I might add!) and walking all over the place doing crazy things and taking a bunch of fun and random pictures! This is some statue in Seattle and Darren was trying to make the same face as him... do you think it worked??

Now I tag: Brooke, Kandi, Melody, and Sarah

GIRLS NIGHT!!!

So I'm a little late in writing about this (what's new?) Girls Night, but I wanted to wait until Sarah posted about it so I could get some of the pictures she took on her phone. Well, just over a week ago, Darren was having a Guys Night with a bunch of guys in the ward. They played games and went to see the new James Bond movie! I took this lovely opportunity to hang out with the girls! Sarah has been trying to get me and Bailey together to do pedicures forEVER and finally we were able to do it! Although our condo is amazingly fun... right... :) we decided to do the girls night at my parents house! We started off with some pistachio chicken salad (probably one of my favorite meals!) and then got on to pedicures. Sarah had a special kit that she was kind enough to share with us! After soaking our feet we put on an exfoliating masque which made our feet feel really cold! Naturally I had left the camera downstairs and I couldn't let this photo opp. pass me by so I went on an adventure! Since I had the masque on my feet I couldn't walk on the carpet... so I crawled. Not the easiest thing to do when you're pregnant and your feet can't touch the floor! But the girls got a good laugh out of it! This was the view I had when I returned:

Bailey's look explains it all!

Sarah kept trying to eat her feet... :)

Feet shot!

Ok so it's not the cutest picture, but you can see my belly nicely!

Washing the masque off

So after our feet were all exfoliated, we put on some amazing lotion stuff. Sarah, being the sweetheart she is, massaged my feet with it. I don't think my feet have ever felt so soft! After the amazing massage, we topped it off by painting our toe nails (I discovered that this too is no longer as easy as it used to be!). Once the pedicures were done, we headed downstairs. After gathering as much junk food as possible, we headed down to watch a movie in the theater! What a blast! Thanks Bailey and Sarah for the Girls Night! I had so much fun!

Oh yeah, see http://sarbear0616.blogspot.com/ for more pictures.

26 Weeks

Recognize this shirt? Fits a little differently from the last time you saw me in it huh??

Ok, I'm late AGAIN! But this time I have an excuse... our internet has been down since last Thursday morning. SO... this is a picture of me at 26 weeks (6.5 months), but now I am 27 weeks. My body couldn't have changed that much in just one week right?? :) Actually, that's probably wrong. However, I just looked at last months picture that I posted and I kind of look like I haven't grown that much. Well, IN PERSON you would notice the difference! Bailey (my younger sister) seems to think I get bigger every SINGLE day... and I agree with her! School is starting to get a little weird though... being that I'm not at any BYU school, I'm the ONLY pregnant person on campus. I'm finally to the point where I can't hide it under my fleece anymore. More and more people are realizing that I'm pregnant. I try to make sure I always have my wedding ring on so they don't think I'm just another teen pregnancy! :)

Things are going smoothly and I'm mostly feeling great. However, it's getting much harder to sleep and my back aches more and more every day! Luckily I have the best husband in the world! He gives me back massages whenever I ask and doesn't complain one bit! How did I get so lucky?!

Halloween Part II

It's Darren again! Since I finally got Brandi to start blogging, she took over as I expected so it has been a while since I have posted. This post is about the Halloween party we had down south with my brother and sister-in-law Cory and Lindsay and my parents. No fire alarms were set off this time! So you will notice that there are no pictures of Brandi in here. She was a really hot pirate but apparently she doesn't think that the pictures we got emphasized that so I was threatened that she would erase any post with pictures of her on it from that night...unfortunate. As you can tell all the costumes were thrown together very last minute but it was still fun. I wasn't sure when else I would use my Google stuff so I thought it would make a good Halloween costume; I made a pretty good (very accurate) software engineer. My dad was a Polynesian which brings him back to the days he spend living in Samoa as a young child. And Cory's outfit earned him an extra picture. His wife just had a baby so he was a pregnant lady this year. Wow. The last picture is of the cake that Lindsay made...yes, cake. As good as it was, it was kind of hard to stomach due to the incredible resemblance. Good work Lindsay!

So our ward had a Halloween party last Saturday. Darren and the young men were in charge of a Spook Alley so our house was very busy before it started. We couldn't think of what to dress up as, so Darren grabbed some of his snowboarding things to be a Snowboarder. I know... good one, right?? :) I was planning on being a Power Puff girl, but after searching the house up and down I realized I had given it back to my parents to put in their costume box. What a letdown! I had no idea what to do. My backup plan was a pirate, which I was last year, but with no other options, I started to get ready. I put on my pirate tights (black and white stripes) and started to run around the house to find the rest of my costume. Darren saw me and busted up laughing! He told me I looked like a Who! And it hit me. Why didn't I think of that before?! I have been a Who a number of times. In college, my roomies and I would dress up as Who's around Christmas and bring cookies to our favorite boys and sing them a little Christmas Who carol :) Oh how I miss those days! Don't worry Darren, I love these days too! But they might be better if you dress up as a Who with me :)

Side note: The party was great! We had a blast! Even though my husband set off the fire alarm...

What IS that thing?! Not gonna lie... it's a little different being a married pregnant Who...

Oh the good old days! I simply HAD to show a picture of my roomies and I dressed up as Whos! Favorite memory of this night: Tallie sticking her head out the window while she was driving because she couldn't fit it in the car :)

I miss you girls!!!

And this picture is for Brittany. I can't even tell you how excited I am to see you this Christmas! All I wanna do is play! I'm thinking we should, perhaps, try to fit in a Who outing... what do you say? :)

Getting bigger - 22 Weeks

Ok, I'm a week late in posting this, but the past week has been crazy! Anyways, here I am at 22 weeks (5 and 1/2 months)! I am now 23 weeks and I can almost guarantee that I look bigger now than I do in this picture! It's crazy how much your stomach can grow in just one week! The past couple of weeks have been a BLAST because I finally realized what it feels like to have a baby kicking inside of me. Now that I know what it feels like, I realized I had felt it a number of times before... but now, I feel it ALL the time! Darren has even felt our little guy kick and he just loves it! Yesterday was the first time we SAW him kick... what a trip! We are so excited to be experiencing something so amazing! What a blessing!

It's a Boy!!!

Ok, so we got the ultrasound last Friday. I was DYING to post and let everyone know, but Darren insisted on being the one to blog about it... well... it's Wednesday now and nothing has been posted so I'm taking action! This is my favorite picture we got (above)! He looks so cute already! :) For the first half hour or so of the ultrasound, we didn't know the sex. He wouldn't move and we were mostly just seeing his spine. So she had us go run around the office (in the hopes of waking him up and getting him to move around) so we did. We went on the elevator, ran up and down the stairs, did some jumping jacks, and got a lot of weird looks when we started dancing all over the place! Turns out that it worked! As soon as we got back he started to move and we were able to get a lot of good shots!



So she printed off all of our pictures and we were wrapping things up. Darren, being the proud future-father that he is, asked if we could get a printed picture of... his... you know. I couldn't believe he asked that! She laughed and said he wasn't the first guy to want one. So there you have it! Whether the world is ready or not, in less than 5 months, there's going to be another little Darren around!

Dates

Ever since we've started telling people that we're pregnant, we have heard the same two things over and over:

1. Go on as many dates as you can!
2. Go to the movies every weekend!

Apparently these are rare occasions once you have a kid. So after months of getting this advice we decided to take it. Don't get me wrong, we go on a date usually every weekend. However, our dates typically consist of Wendy's or Taco Bell and a red box movie rental ($1 a day baby!). So I guess you could say we decided to go on a REAL date last weekend... and still managed to spend about the same amount of money! I'm not a huge fan of Italian food, but we had a gift card to The Olive Garden that we needed to use. So the night started there. Dinner was delicious and Darren discovered that his favorite drink in the entire WORLD is Olive Gardens Orange-Vanilla Italian Cream Soda! Not gonna lie, it was dang good! After dinner we discovered that my parents and younger sister Bailey had come South for the evening for a little variety in their shopping outing. Bailey was brave enough to join her old and boring married sister (and husband) and came to the movies with us! We saw Traitor, which was pretty intense! Don't worry, we didn't have to pay for that either! We had free movie tickets that we had gotten for a Christmas present last year :) I don't remember the last time I PAID to see a movie... maybe it was Harry Potter...? Unfortunately, our "Free pass to the movies" friend just moved to Idaho for school :( What a let down! Anyways, after the movie, we went home. Darren worked on who knows what in the office and Bailey and I watched What Not to Wear and Say Yes to the Dress! It was nice to have someone watch those shows with me who actually likes them :) Thanks Bailey! It was an extremely enjoyable evening! I just wish I had taken pictures...

18 Weeks

My younger sister, Bailey, always complains that moms-to-be refer to their babies in terms of weeks. So for those of you who don't speak "Pregnant Lady", that's 4.5 months. This is the first of our monthly pregnant shots! Unfortunately, we've been putting it off for no good reason. I've actually been showing for a really long time, but my doctor said that I wouldn't start showing until about 15 or 16 weeks... so I was sucking in until I no longer could :) I swear I'm actually bigger than this picture shows... maybe the camera takes off 10 pounds...?

Sleepover in Magnolia

So... for the first time since we've had this blog, I (Brandi) am posting something instead of Darren! I know that's totally backwards, but he's the technology nerd and I just haven't taken the time to learn how to blog... but it is now being forced upon me! Well anyways, this weekend Darren and I were able to go and watch the girls I used to nanny overnight! They live over in Magnolia and have a cute little community just down the street from their house. We went and got some Mexican food, played at the park (the girls kept asking me how the baby was doing whenever I was on a ride that bounced haha), ate some ice cream and watched "Barbie and the Diamond Castle" before bed. I think that was Darren's favorite part of the night, though he'd never admit it. He was supposed to go do some work on the computer, but I think he got too involved in the movie! According to him, he was "dead tired and comfortable"... yeah right Darren! Anyways, needless to say, we had a blast! I love those girls and can't wait to have some kids of my own to play with!

You just had a feeling didn't you

Yes we are pregnant! Now, I have had a few people say, man "I just had a feeling you guys were!" Yeah right! Ok, I know one certain coworker did for sure so maybe it's possible you did too. Anyway, we are due in February and more thrilled than you could ever imagine! Brandi and I are debating the gender as most couples do. All I can say is that HE is going to be one great athlete! Maybe I just jinxed myself. Anyway, that is our big news for now! Holy crap another little Litchfield is coming...scary stuff!

New Beginnings

That's right I left Google. I have started at a really good company that has already allowed me in just a couple of weeks to expand my recruiting knowledge and skills tremendously. I do Technical Recruiting for tons of companies in the Seattle/Eastside area.

Babysitting - Good practice for the future!

Ok, I know what you are thinking from the title, but no we are not pregnant. We thought it would be fun to babysit for some friends of ours in our ward so they could have a free date night and we could have fun "practicing". Brandi has plenty of practice with her years of Nannying (is that even a word?) so this was mainly for me. It was an absolute blast!!!

Mountain Biking with the Young Men

I really wanted to get the young men in our church excited about mountain biking so as a scout troop we went. I made the mistake of letting someone else pick the trail and we ended riding straight up a mountain on a service road for 3.5 miles. At that point I started to question my own passion for mountain biking!

A Sweet Farewell

Yes I look like that on purpose. I felt really cool with that splash guard on.


So as many of you know I am no longer working at Google and this was what I did on my last day. I will definitely miss the perks but I am excited to be progressing more in the field of recruiting.

Dance Festival

So the youth in our stake and 2 neighboring stakes had a dance festival at Bellevue Community College for the community and since I am the Young Men's President in our ward, I got the "opportunity" to learn the dances to help the youth. Well, the inevitable happened; there weren't enough young men come performance time so I got the "privilege" of dancing in it with the youth. The best part was the 200 deacons that dressed up as Napoleon Dynamite and did the Napoleon dance together; classic!

Our little walk

We just decided to go on a walk one day and found a really cool trail near our house that lead to a park that we didn't know existed.

The commute kills me!

So I have been commuting to work from Renton to Kirkland on 405 North which if you don't know averages 0-20 mph most of the morning for 15 miles. One day I thought I would avoid the unusually bad traffic by taking the side streets. I must have spaced what Seattle rain can do sometimes. There is a Mercedes stuck in the middle that you can barely see. You can see the freeway off to the left...first time I ever wished I was still on it!

Adult Pinewood Derby

Ok, so I am still 12 years old at heart. Our Elders Quorum had an adult Pine Wood Derby night and it was awesome. You would think I would have learned a thing or two over the years but it didn't quite pan out how I wanted. Apparently there are people still using the cars that I am sure their fathers built for them when they were scouts, and tuning them ever since. They have most likely been entering pine wood derby races all over the nation over the years because my feeble attempts couldn't touch some of these avid racers! I think I got 3rd or 4th or something like that.

One Year Anniversary...March 23rd

So we are a little late on the post but this is the oh so famous one year old cake that for some reason someone a long time ago thought would last for a year and still be good. Well, we are here to put that urban legend to rest; it sucks! As we expected it tasted like crap, but it was still fun!

Bowling Extravaganza

I got very lucky to have married into a family as fun as mine. My new father, new brothers and brother-in-law dressed up for a night of bowling.

Sherwood gathering means square dancing!!!

So my grandpa Sherwood just turned 100 and his party was basically a great big family reunion. A gathering of Sherwood's and Litchfield's inevitably means square dancing will be involved...and it was! Brandi stretched outside of the comfort zone as she embraced this new tradition. Welcome to the family baby!

Our Great Grandpa Sherwood, 100 years old this March!

Here is our tribute to our Great Grandpa Sherwood who will be 100 years old March 7, 2008. Please note the amazing picture of him and I pounding it last year at his 99th birthday party!

Grandpa Sherwood has always been a great example to me. He is an example of endurance, optimism, faith, commitment, perseverance, and a warm heart. He has influenced so many people in so many ways. He has also inspired everyone that he has met. Never before have I met or heard of anyone that has been able to do the things that he has in the latter half of his life. I think it goes without saying that he is probably the oldest person that any of us know, and yet he is one of the youngest. Have you ever seen a 98 year old man pull weeds on his hands and knees, or get on his hands and knees to work on his lawnmower and sharpen the blade? I have, last year when I went to visit. Have you ever heard of a 98 year old bruising or breaking a rib? How about doing it while jumping on his 14 foot trampoline that he has in his back yard? It’s not just for the grandkids! My father (Ryan – who will kill me for saying this) was struggling to read something within the last year and asked for his glasses (as most people do at his age). As soon as Grandpa heard that he asked, “What is the matter with you? I’ll read that.” He promptly took it from my father and read it to him…without glasses! I also remember, as many of you do, when he recently visited the hospital a few months ago and gave everyone a big scare. When we got the phone call that grandpa was in the hospital and the cause was uncertain, the thought rushed to my head that it could finally be his time. Low and behold his medicine was not prescribed correctly and as soon as they got things figured out, later that night, he was walking down the hall with out any assistance. Are you kidding me??? I am sure the doctors and nurses were truly amazed! Grandpa was also the one who introduced us to the all too famous “Grandpa Specials” (toast with jam on it, in a bowl of milk). Man, who ever thought bread in milk would be such a great combo? My wife is still scared to try it but one day I know we will end up passing that tradition on to our kids and grandkids. Another specific moment that really sticks out in my mind that I will never forget is when I was 14 (1995ish) and I was on a job site with my father, and Grandpa Sherwood was there working. I asked how old he was and he said 88. I could not believe that he was working on houses at 88 years old! I recall asking him years later why he worked so long and why he was so active now at his age, to which he answered that he tried to retire in his sixties once and it almost killed him. Since then grandpa has dedicated his life to being the most active person I know. Not only do most people not usually get the privilege of being on the earth this long, but most people half his age are half as active and succumb to laziness and then bad health. I honestly believe that God has a plan for everyone and that we leave this earth when God needs us, or when our work here is done. Grandpa obviously still has more lives to touch, more youth to influence for good, more people to inspire, and more young people to put to shame. Though he is not the youngest person in the world, he will still work harder, and get more done in a day than you or I could ever hope to. He is more agile and more productive than men half his age. He is the most kind, gentle, loving, witty and hilarious person I know. He is still as quick witted as he was when he was younger. We could all learn a lot from his example and from the way he has lived his life up to this point. Oh, and did I mention that he is more in style than most people in High School? See the picture below of him and I “pounding it” at his 99^th birthday last year! We love you Grandpa! Happy 100^th birthday!!!