A Baby Shower and Some Snow Storms

All though I had hoped spring was here since it was a toasty 78 degrees last Friday, the weather has again disappointed me. This morning we woke up to more snow - the second snow this week!!! Complete crap. Jammie and I both have spring fever and want nothing more than a nice, ice-free walk through the canyon. Oh well.
On Sunday the girls from work threw a baby shower for me. It was very nice. Several of my neighbors surprised me and attended as well as a new girlfriend. I have to share with you the best baby shower game EVER!!!! 10 diapers were passed around each containing a melted chocolate candy bar. You can smell all you want but the only way to really discern a Fast Break candy bar from a Reese's Cup Crunchy is to taste. That's right ladies -DIG IN!!!! And they did. Pictured below are the hilarious results.


The girls were very generous and we received lots of things for BeeGee. Of course Jammie made the cake. It was modeled after the bubblegum pink and brown invitations made by the hostess.


Other pictures:

News and Pics

As promised, here are some pictures from our big cupcake adventure. Due to the large volume of cupcakes, we baked them off at the base in Salt Lake City, transported them back to Logan, iced them at home, baked and iced the wedding cake, and then transported them back south. A word of advice to future brides: If you're going to invite 400 people to wedding, choose a sheet cake rather than 400 individual cakes. The whole process was a lot of work!!

Now that's a lot of frosting!!!

200 white and 200 chocolate cupcakes

And the best part is?......cleaning up!

400 cupcakes loaded into the backseat of our Passat!

Jammie piped and I smoothed

The final blue and orange cupcakes

The cutting cake they requested. Jammie came up with the blossom design since the wedding had a garden theme. It turned out really cute.

Jammie and I have continued packing and organizing. We've lined every empty wall with boxes from floor to ceiling. We are both relieved and excited to organize and purge all of our junk. My official date to leave Logan is June 3rd. Jammie will follow with the cats and the moving truck around July 1st. We're both so excited to see our family and friends again!!!


Yesterday marked our "6 weeks 'til D-Day" (delivery day)! I'm starting to really slow down - bending, stooping, and squatting have become so difficult. Everything seems to be progressing perfectly though. My last blood results were normal and my glucose level was perfect. Thank goodness- I don't think that I could cut out those Frosty's!!!

And finally, the newest belly pics. Boy am I getting big!!!!! I insisted we take these pictures after I realized that even my maternity shirts aren't big enough to cover my giant bulge. Absurd!! Only 5 weeks and 6 days to go!!!!

I can hardly believe how much time has gone by since I last posted. Jammie and I have begun organizing and packing again for the long journey home. Even though we have several month to go, we want to get as much out of the way as possible before BeeGee gets here. Speaking of, yesterday was our eighth month mark!!! Wow!!! We are now seeing the midwife every 2 weeks and are gearing up for our home visit soon. At the home visit she'll check to make sure that we have accumulated all of the supplies needs as well as give us the birthing pool to set up. So far BeeGee and I have both been growing just as needed and I can tell from the stretching and kicking that we've got a healthy, playful little girl on the way. Last week Jammie and I finished our birthing classes and also attended a support group for home birth parents. We gained tons of valuable information that I'm sure we'll be using in the next few months.
While I've been doing all things baby, Jammie has kept himself busy with designing the perfect cloth diaper, making sausage with a friend, and making 400 cupcakes and a small wedding cake!! I'll post more pictures soon!!!

A lesson in temperature inversion

Since no one from Indiana has heard of the inversion that I keep referring to (I only learned of it recently myself) I thought I would give a quick explanation as well as some photos. According to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, "A temperature inversion occurs when air close to the earth is cooler than the air above it. Under these conditions the pollution cannot rise and be dispersed. Cities surrounded by mountains also experience trapping of pollution. Inversion can happen in any season. Winter inversions are likely to cause particulate and carbon monoxide pollution. Summer inversions are more likely to create smog." (http://www.lbl.gov/Education/ELSI/Frames/pollution-outdoor-f.html
In past weeks, inversion has caused the air quality to deteriorate to levels below EPA standards. This has wreaked havoc on my poor asthmatic lungs and causes people without respiratory illnesses have all sorts of problems. If you can imagine the valley as a bowl with plastic wrap over it. Below is a picture of our valley as we are driving home one day. You can see the ugly inversion below the arrow.

Below is a picture of the Bear Lake inversion. Beyond the brown weeds you can see white puff clouds. Don't be fooled, it's only inversion.

Here we are driving into the inversion. One minute the sun is shining and the day is beautiful and the next minute, the temperature is 10+ degrees colder and the sun is gone.

I don't know the correlation with inversion and wind but there is little to no wind allowing really amazing ice crystals to form everywhere. They grow out like little platforms all over the ground.

Giant puff balls on a pine tree. Every needle is coated on all sides with little crystals

A better picture of that bald eagle we saw.

Sunday adventures.....and chicken

Jammie and I went on an adventure on Sunday for something to do. We drove to Bear Lake about an hour away and saw tons of wildlife. Jammie also played photo shoot with me and he did such a good job, I had trouble choosing which ones to post. So here are a bunch of random ones of me and my ever expanding belly.
Bear Lake is under the clouds in the background. Inversion at its best.

Standing at Bear Lake. The crunchy weeds were beautiful too!

Such a Vanna!

I knew my Mom wouldn't like this one.....

The other day we went to local market and bought 97 lbs of chicken for $30. YES!!! That's 19 chickens and a whole ton of meat!

Jammie cooked chickens for HOURS and HOURS!

A bald eagle. I forgot to crop the image. Poo.

Jammie at Bear Lake. It was cold but the lake wasn't frozen.

Oh DEER!! We saw over 50 mule deer on our drive around the lake.

What are people thinking? There was an old lady that lived in a shoe..... There were shoe laces painted on the front and fairy tale people crawling out of fairy tale windows.

Welcome home!!! Breathe the fresh air and inversion. (Driving back into the valley.)

New Horizons....and Old Ones

Tomorrow I will begin my THIRD TRIMESTER!!! I thought the first would never end and my second flew by! Let's hope that the last is just as smooth as the second. We have our next midwife appointment on Tuesday which will begin bi-monthly appointments. This is just another sign that BeeGee is on her way!!

Jammie and I have decided that we are going to move back to Indiana. With a new baby on the way and absolutely nothing working out here, we must move on. We are both so excited to be near our family and friends again, we can hardly wait! We haven't set a concrete date but it appears that Jammie's obligation with the military will keep him here until the last weekend in June. We haven't decided when the baby and I will fly home. It will probably be a week or two earlier. (We don't want to attempt driving home with the cats screeching and a newborn needing fed every two to three hours. It would take us a week of driving!!!.... AHHHH!!!) So the plan is underway. Another huge purge will ensue. I'm looking forward to seeing some Indiana sunsets soon. We'll keep everyone posted.

Random Pictures

After scanning through pictures during our extended weekend, I found some that I hadn't posted.

These are the newest pictures of me and my growing baby belly- 6 months already!!!

She is REALLY kickin'!!! The other day I discovered that not only can we feel her kicks but now we can see them too. My entire belly spasms for nearly two hours each night during her aerobics time. I think she's training to be a gymnast in there!!!


Jammie loves these pictures and was insistent that I post them. Don't let these pictures fool you, I'll be his wing girl but I won't shoot at anything.

I never post pictures of our cats, Fritz and Fraulein, but I think they deserve some blog space. So cute. They are in for a shock in a couple of months!

Barfing Cat Sequence: Fritz celebrated a little too much this New Years....



Fraulein- if it's a nook, she's in there.