Thoughts on waiting for BABY.

On our front, Justin is well into the swing of things and being successful : )

I am patiently waiting 2 more weeks+ for baby to come and have not had very much discomfort. More water weight issues than anything else, but my blood pressure is fine so the doctors are not worried about preeclampsia. At last check on last Tuesday my cervix was still completely closed. I still have a few nursing items I need to pick up, mainly, and then finish packing snacks for the hospital and we should be good to go.

Delnor Community Hospital is gorgeous! I took a tour this passed Thursday and was so impressed by the facilities and the little purks like flat screen TVs in the birthing rooms and snacks constantly available at snack stations, oh, and a free massage for the mother postpartum in the hospital. Those will be fun things to help ease the more difficult circumstances.

It is so scary to think that I am going to be a Mom, like giving birth automatically qualifies me for it or something...I guess I really only see an official Mom as one with several kids who can already talk. I am excited and scared for this grand event but what scares me most is that unlike other grand events, this one has a beginning but then will not end. Justin is very excited and we are both so happy and nervous to welcome this little one into our lives.

Wow, where is the time going?

Can you believe it? Just one week left of classes. I feel massive! Justin started sanding down our hand me down crib and dresser. I am so excited! I just don't know whether to paint the bedroom or not. If I paint the room should I use one of the many colors already in my home, or use a new one...I think that would make too much color.

So before we leave for the summer we need to get things ready here, have things ready to go, finish classes and finals and send in my residency application. It seems like so much when I think about it but when I put it in a concise list like that...not so much!

Now what to bring for the baby and what would be best to get over there. The baby shower is in two weeks so I cannot decide too much before then. I think things are starting to feel real.

I have been terrified about baby coming out of my belly, but the other day I finally had a good dream about the experience. What a relief.

Spanish is treating me well. Spanish 101 and 102 at BYU have been very rewarding but now I need to think more in French, I think my accent is spoiled.

To tell you the truth I am greatly anticipating the summer in Chicago. I loved it last year, especially the big city feel, I feel in my element. Poor Justin! I cannot tell him how excited I am because I know that my excitement is not only matched but doubled or tripled on his end by anxiety and nervousness. I know he will do great though, as long as I encourage him. He has the talent and he is ready to work hard.

I must say becoming incorporated is the greatest thing!

Okay, enough of my soapbox and intimate feelings, sorry.

How well do you know me?!

1. What time did you get up this morning?
10:50 A.M.

2. Diamonds or pearls?
both

3. Last movie you saw in the theater?
Transformers

4. What is your favorite TV show?
NCIS

5. What do you usually have for breakfast?
Cold Cereal and juice or fruit.

6. What is your middle name?
Martha Mary

7. What food do you dislike?
any seafood or strange animal parts

8.What is your favorite CD at the moment?
the radio

9. What kind of car do you drive?
Mercury Mountaineer

10. Favorite sandwich?
Jimmy John's veggie

11. What characteristics do you despise?
lazyness, overdramatic

12. Favorite item of clothing?
jeans and jacket

13. If you could go anywhere in the world for a vacation, where would
you go?
Europe, canary Islands for Justin and France and Italy for me

14. What color is your bathroom?
grey blue

15. Favorite brand of clothing?
best buy for the quality

16. Where would you retire?
Wherever family is and we decide at that time.

17. Most memorable birthday?
my 22nd, special romance in Chicago : )

18. Favorite sport to watch?
Basketball

19. What is your favorite saying?
Awesome!

20. When is your birthday?
July's second to last day

21. Are you a morning person or a night person?
Evening, somewhere in between.

22. What is your shoe size?
8

23. Pets?
None, hair free.


24. What did you want to be when you were little?
Professional athlete, skating or basketball.

25. What are you today?
Student, engineer, future Mom

26. What is your favorite candy?
ferrero rocher, belgium chocolate with hazelnut

27. Your favorite flower?
the rose, the romance

28. What is a day on the calendar you are looking forward to?
any holiday or excuse to celebrate...in this case easter and baby day

29. What are you listening to right now?
HGTV

30. What was the last thing you ate?
super rich chocolate cake, death by chocolate at the RS birthday celebration

31. Do you wish on stars?
no

32. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?
Yellow or red, I am so indecisive, why be limited to just one?

33. What is your pet peeve?
a husband that just likes to stay home, almost too much and a messy house

34. Last person you spoke to on the phone?
My brother, Jared.

35. Favorite soft drink?
I'd rather juice or milk.

36. Favorite restaurant?
Macaroni Grill, the atmosphere is exquisite and the food delicioso!

37. Hair Color? natural?
brown with a blond streak, back right.

38. Favorite day of the year?
Christmas

39. What was your favorite toy as a child?
devil sticks

40. Summer or winter?
Summer heat, no question!

41. Hugs or kisses?
Hugs and kisses, XOXOXOXOX.

42. Chocolate or vanilla?
CHOCOLATE!

43. Do you want your friends to e-mail you back?
Yes!

44. When was the last time you cried?
Saturday, Justin's b-day.

45. What is under your bed?
nothing, it's a waterbed bed frame

46. Who is the friend you've had the longest?
My sisters. Out of girlfriends, Karine.

47. What did you do last night?
Hang out with Justin, the TV and homework.

48. Favorite smell?
fresh laundry

49. What are you afraid of?
not succeeding

50. How many keys on your key ring?
two, car and house

51. How many years at your current job?
5 years as a bachelors student.

52. Favorite day of the week?
Sunday

53. How many states have you lived in?
Five

54. Do you make friends easily?
Friends at a distance yes, good intimate friends, not so much.

It's a BOY!

So I asked Justin to write in the blog...and he completely skipped over the most important event of the week, we found out Monday it was a boy! Baby is a boy! I cannot believe it, I guess deep down inside I always figured it would be a girl, I have no clue how to deal with a boy! When the doctor said, "See that, it's a boy", I was floored and shocked! Justin just had that, I told you so look. I love feeling baby boy move, it is the most amazing feeling, why didn't anyone tell me?! AMAZING!

It's cold

It's cold. And there's a lot of snow. Normally, I like the snow, but there like a foot of snow in our front yard. Last wednesday a really bad storm came through and really messed up my day. We lost power from 4 pm until around midnight. The snow was so bad, they closed some of the roads by our house, so it took Julia four hours to get home from Provo. The next day, I got our car stuck getting out of the driveway because of the snow drifts. It took the collective efforts of a few of our neighbors to get us out.

Anyway, I went to my parents house over the weekend for my dad's 65th birthday. Julia stayed home because of school. And she's tired of traveling (even though I do all of the driving). We bought dad 2 RC planes and a simulator so he could practice. Ryan brought a plane he had borrowed from some guy so we had 3 planes in total. It was a suprise party, so dad had no idea we were there. Anyway, when dad got home, instead of practicing with the simulator, we all went outside and "flew" the planes. By flew, I really mean crashed. It took us all of 15 minutes to crash all the planes. It sucked. Since we were done for the day flying, we had a lot of time to practice with the simulator. The next day we got some new parts and flew them pretty much without crashing. It was a fun weekend. Julia wanted me to write something, so I am. So there...

Before we know the gender of the baby...

We had a really good time in Disneyland with Justin's parents, his Aunt Dale and sister Becky's family. It was too cold for shorts but lots of fun and exhausting! I never realized pregnant women had to go to the washroom so often!

Montreal was super fun over Christmas! It was so great to have all the nostalgia of family tradition! The basement makeover went pretty smoothly, except for the bad wiring done by previous people. It looks splendid now and I am so happy that my parents and siblings can enjoy it. Go Justin for being so committed and a big hooray for everyone that spent so much time helping, there is just no way we could have finished it without you!

Now we are back into the school routine. Justin has all of his classes at the SL center and I am taking Spanish and Italian down in Provo. It is pretty cool that Justin has a child development class, he comes home and tells me new things about pregnancy and how the baby is developing each class. We were both very successful last semester earning incredible GPAs, yeah Justin!

Monday is the day I have been looking so forward to. I have been feeling the baby moving every so often for the past couple of weeks and now we will finally know the gender. I think the best part is that Justin will be there and it will all feel much more real, we will start to figure out names etc, because so far we have had more discussions of which names we do not want than do.

I have also been working on that pesky residency application, so much paper work and red tape, not to mention the cost!

But we do look so forward to becoming huge and feeling fat, ... I mean having the baby grow and become strong. The official due date is June 21st, Chicago baby here we come!

What's going on

Well, nothing really new is going on here. We are finishing up another semester at BYU. Who knows how many more I'm gonna need before I graduate. Julia's taking classes just for fun, and because it's about the same money for her to go to school and get health insurance through the school as it is for me to go and get insurance for both of us. Julia had her second appointment with her doctor last Friday, so I went with her. It was cool to see the baby in the ultrasound. He's gonna be a football player and make tons of money.

I'm flying to Boise this weekend to help my brother finish his ceiling. Over Thanksgiving, I helped him install a bunch of lights and, in the process, fell through his ceiling twice. They were planning on redoing the whole ceiling anyway, so it wasn't that big of a deal. We are getting excited to go to Montreal for Christmas this year. I enjoy going there, even though it's a little hectic. For Christmas, we are working on my in-laws basement to make it more liveable. It'll be a lot of work, but a lot of fun. Other than that, not much else going on. Hopefully something exciting will happen in the near future, so next time I will have something better to write about.

Back into the routine

It has been really fun coming back to Utah. I had such a wonderful time with my family touring and celebrating graduation. It was great to see Mom and Dad, Anne la banane, Jared and Kristina and my 5 month old nephew William, who was 4 months at the time. We went to Nauvoo first and camped in my parents new tent, the weather was so nice we barely needed a blanket. We toured the temple visitors center and did a quick drive by of all the buildings we had previously visited 6 years ago. Then we headed out toward Martin's Cove to pull a handcart. The weather was hurricane like and so we stayed in hotel that evening, oh how fun! When we arrived in Martin's Cove we had the opportunity to stay at a campground again, the wind blew really hard and mom took some really funny video, it is great, when Mom starts laughing, she cannot stop!!! That morning Lynda was supposed to call us with her mission call but unfortunately we had no reception. She did record it and put it on Utube if you would like to go see it. So a wonderful missionary lent us his phone to call Montreal, but we were too late and had to wait anxiously for the evening. We pulled a handcart for about half an hour. Jared and I at the helm, Kristina and William in the cart and Mom and Dad tumbling after. To Dad and Mom's disappointment we did not have enough time to walk and see the new monument that had been placed to honour the three young men who helped the handcart companies across the river, but once we returned to the visitor's center, it came to us that we could ask to be driven there. That was a humbling and grand experience. We were fortunate to stop at a little cottage where a woman told her story of the amazing trek. We are so blessed, that was a very spiritual experience for all of us. Then we set off to join Anne in Utah. Yeah! Mom and Dad had plenty of time to go to the Family History Center and took time to weed our poor lawn and flower beds...they are amazing! Graduation was a surreal experience and I realized I was not ready to leave BYU quite yet.

Now we are back. I have painted a couple more rooms and am loving my classes. Geology is bringing us on many hikes to hidden places in the Wasatch mountains. This week I went swimming in a crater in 97 degree water! Lynda, my other sister was able to come along for the ride but unfortunately was not able to swim because she was set apart as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Oh, yes, and where did she go? Japan, Sapporo mission, the furthest north island in Japan, brrr. Justin and I had the marvelous opportunity so see her off in the MTC yesterday, Wednesday Sept 26, also my mother in laws birthday. Oh so neat and she was asked to say the closing prayer for the meeting. We will truly miss her.

And that is another day in the life of the Butlers two.

A new day...

Justin and I have combatted the flu, thank goodness we were not sick for the Six Flags adventure Tuesday! It was a blast! We went on so many roller coasters and then enjoyed the water park, the rides and water slides were so neat! And so I open our first blog...