We MAY be crazy...

So this may come as a shock to a lot of you, since it was pretty much out of the blue, but...

WE JUST PUT OUR CONDO ON THE MARKET!!!

Yeah, it's true. Ever since we first started living here (almost two years ago), we have been looking at options for our next place. It's not that we don't like it here, we actually have grown very fond of our little condo and especially the ward we are in. But if you know Darren, this won't come as a shock to you. You'd think once he bought a car, he'd be happy with it for a while, but I swear... the next day he's online checking out cars that he could buy. Apparently it's the same with our home. Maybe it's a guy thing?? Anyways, back to the condo. For the past little while, we've been rearranging our rooms and de-junking to try and find space here for the baby. It hasn't been easy. Then we started talking a little more seriously about our desire to have a house. We figured that we should try to buy a house while prices are so low, since (hopefully) we won't lose too much if we sell our condo (which is comforting in such a terrible market!).

So this is how it came about. We saw a house online that we wanted to check out (which, by the way, we won't be getting) and called up our previous realtor who immediately put things into action. This isn't exactly what we were expecting, but within a few days of talking to her, our condo was put on the market! Weird how things happen with one little phone call!

And yes, we ARE crazy for putting our place on the market right now. Especially since I'm due in less than 3 WEEKS!!! It seems like every time we have something big happening in our lives, EVERYTHING happens. Last time it was getting married, my family moving the day before our wedding, Darren starting a new job and buying and starting to remodel our condo. At least we get things over with all at once! :)

Anyways, with the market the way it is, I'm sure we'll be here for a while. But it will be nice to have the first three weeks (which are apparently the most busy) done with before we have the baby... unless, of course, I pop early! Guess we'll just have to see what happens! But when things feel right, you've just got to do them! It's fun having things so "up in the air" and not knowing what our lives will be like in the somewhat near future. We'll keep you posted on any action... assuming there will be any... :)

Here's a link so you can see pictures of Our First Place! Make sure to click on the link BELOW the picture (not the actual picture) to view them!

Alright Already!

So I've been really bad. I would give you all my excuses (which I actually had... until a couple weeks ago...), but I'll spare you. Long story short: I don't like taking pictures of myself. Darren is ALWAYS trying to get me to take these prego pictures and I always tell him no because I don't have makeup on or my hair is not done or any other excuse I can think of, really. But it's been too long and people keep telling me I have to put pictures up, so I finally caved last night!

This is me at 35 weeks. I can't believe we've got just over a month to go! CRAZY! It's hard to believe that I could POSSIBLY get any bigger, but from what I hear, it's going to happen! But currently I just feel like I'm running out of room. I don't have good posture and slouch when I sit, but have to stop myself from doing so because it hurts my ribs. My stomach is frequently going lop-sided and bulges out in random places. Darren and I get a kick out of watching the different shapes my stomach makes :)

We've finally started buying things (we were putting it off as long as we could because we don't have a lot of room and needed to do some rearranging) and it feels good to get some of our big purchases out of the way (though I've found that the hard part is not forking out the cash, but MAKING the decision... I hate making decisions and so does Darren... bad combo...). We are so excited! It's hard to believe that he will be here so soon! We can't wait!

SNOW in SEATTLE???

As you may have seen in a previous post, we were in California until the middle of December. When we got back, it was snowy and until about a week ago, we have been living in a Winter Wonderland! I (totally on purpose) got us stuck in Sammamish at my parents house for most of it! Darren was able to work from home and I wanted to be able to play while he was doing so... can you blame me?? Obviously we weren't actually STUCK in Sammamish, but I liked to pretend we were so we couldn't go home :)

Anyways, while we were there, the boys made a jump in the snow and had a blast going off of it! Here are a few pictures (wish I was better at photography, but you get the idea):



My baby


Benny Boy


Brock, right before he eats it! I have other shots of him, but he spins the other direction so they're all of his backside...

Being out in the snow is not nearly as fun when you can't do anything...

Bailey was nice enough to keep me company while the boys played in the snow. Yes, I AM in rainboots and no, my jacket doesn't zip up...

Is it just me, or do I look really big next to him?? haha


Darren made a snowman in honor of me this year :)

Christmas

I realize I'm a little late, but better late than never, right??

Christmas this year was great! Things got a little crazy when it started snowing and we couldn't do our last minute shopping like we normally would! Just like last year, we basically lived at either of our parent's houses for the weeks surrounding Christmas and New Years, though I think we did so more this year because of the snow. But even with our two-wheel drive, we were able to do all the Christmas activities we normally would have:

Christmas Eve with my side of the family: Fancy dinner, white elephant gift exchange (Darren got a Costco thing of Jelly Belly's and I got The Sandlot DVD... which I brought!), and just hanging out with the family. My dad and Brock, however, had to help us get unstuck before we could head home :)

Christmas Eve NIGHT: Darren and I like to do this part with just the two of us. We spent the night wrapping presents while we watched Elf in our room.

Christmas Morning: We woke up bright and early to open present with each other.

I got my favorite thing: MOVIES!!! I also got a few other items and money to go shopping for new clothes after the baby gets here :)

Darren knew a few big presents he was getting, but for the first time since we've been married, I actually surprised him! I normally don't buy him clothes without having him try them on because he's so dang picky about how they fit! But I decided to go for it and actually did pretty well... if I don't say so myself! He was pretty excited :)

Christmas Day: After opening presents, we headed over to the Litchfields. Snow was already covering the roads, but as we drove, it started coming down hard... so unlike Seattle! It was fun until we barely made it through his parent's neighborhood! Darren and his boys play football on Christmas morning (along with Thanksgiving and New Years) and thus far I had managed to make it to all the games... until today :( It was snowing so hard and while I can handle being cold for a few hours, I didn't want to be cold AND wet. So for the first time since we started dating, I missed a game. And it would have been the perfect game to get pictures at too! Apparently the field was literally FILLED with snow and they were rolling around all over the place! While the boys were gone, Cindy, Lindsay and I watched Sweet Home Alabama and ate a delicious breakfast! When the boys got home, they hopped in the Hot Tub and proceeded to play in the snow in their swimsuits. (I wish I had pictures of that on my camera, but I don't.) They had a lot of fun! We spent the rest of the day playing with Kevin's new Wii, going to the movies, and getting Chinese for dinner (Litchfield family tradition), but unfortunately the restaurant didn't have their Karaoke machine up... they promised they would next year!

Christmas Night: After spending the day with the Litchfields, we headed over to the Beeson's for Christmas night. We had a gift exchange (all gifts provided by my parents... just the way I like it!) where I got some jewelry and $10 and Darren got The Dark Knight. He couldn't have been more thrilled! After that, we basically just hung out and watched a movie (all of us falling asleep before it was over I'm sure) and spent the night.

Christmas this year was absolutely wonderful. I love being with family almost every day and feeling the Christmas spirit! Next year is going to be so different with a little kid... we cannot wait!

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!