We're having a...

For those of you who haven't heard through the grapevine and those of you who have...it's true... we are having a baby!

Ryan had a dream that it would be a 2yr old boy with blond hair and blue eyes...lets just say we won't be making any decision based off his dreams. We're having a GIRL! She's measuring small for the original due date of April 24th. From the measurements taken today it's now May 3rd...I guess she'll come when she comes.

She's also a little stubborn thing. We poked and prodded...she waved, but wouldn't roll over so we could get a look at the heart and umbilical cord connection. We'll give it another go next month.

Long Awaited Update

We've gotten a lot of complaints about not updating our blog. I guess from the lack of comments, we weren't aware that people actually read this thing. Here is a much delayed updated...starting back at Halloween.

Halloween
My work has a huge Halloween party each year. Each team decorates a area the day before Halloween and then the day of, friends and family come and Trick-or-Treat. My team did "Super Mario Brothers":

As the only girl on the team, I dressed up as Princess Peach. I tried finding a dress online, D.I., and various costume stores with no such luck. Who thought finding a pink dress could be so difficult? Well, my mom had given me a sewing machine for graduation, so I decided to give sewing one a go. I thought it turned out pretty well. Dana even tried it on...one size fits all...how nice it that?

Iron Chef Competition
We had yet another iron chef competition. We did it a little differently this time. We took a crayola box of 64 crayons, mixed them in a hat and each couple chose 2. Each couple made a main dish and then either a side or dessert. Ryan and I had bear hug (grayish purple) and brown (forgot the crayola name). We made black bean dip and fajitas. Our dip matched amazingly well, however the meat didn't really get the right brown, so we ended up making the onions in the fajitas the brown. The only pictures I took were of Kourtney and Brett's food. They did a red velvet cake and pumpkin soup in yummy little bread bowls.

Thanksgiving
For thanksgiving Mom and Michelle came down to Utah, however, the day they came in, we left for Folsom, CA (outside of Sacramento) to visit Ryan's cousins. We had a great time and especially loved exploring and playing games. It was a great break.

Some of the highlights:

• Jelly Belly Factory
• Muir Woods - Aunt Denise Kissed the Slug
• Golden Gate Bridge
• Slides
• China Town - huge pot stickers, fortune cookie factory and candy
• Pier 39 - Christmas Decorations, Sea Lions, Sourdough Bread Bowls
• Ghirardelli Square - Sundaes and samples
• Gingerbread house - 12 feet tall, all edible
• Sneaking around the Weston to by-pass security and get to the off-limits glass elevators to see the view of San Francisco from floor 32.

Thanks Millett Family!

Blast from the Past

Through all the moves, Ryan's parents have been nice enough to keep 3 big tupperware buckets of stuff plus a slightly smaller one full of select past Sports Illustrated. While we were there, his goal was to downsize. We ended up with only 20 Sports Illustrated (all basketball editions...go figure) and 2 big tupperware buckets (all of which we left there).

The tupperwares were way heavy. First, Ryan unloaded everything onto one of the couches....lots of books.

Below are the shoes from his mission (Las Vegas Nevada West). Lots of walking and hard work.

3. Him with his letterman's jacket, honor cords and graduation stuff from High School.

4. A priceless picture...this was quality. He had jaw surgery when he was a 18. Here's him current (24.999 years old v. after jaw surgery at 18). It kinda reminds us of Jared from Subway.

Erin's Birthday...one that will NEVER be forgotten by me or her

As Erin turned 24 on August 19th, we had quite the memorable moments from her birthday hear in Myrtle Beach. These moments could be classified as moments of the "South". Before we get into that, we had a fun time for Erin's birthday. She got a new road bike a couple of weeks ago for her birthday and went shopping with mom for some awesome kitchen gadgets she loves . Pictures of her and her new bike will be shown in a future blog once we get back to Utah.

But for now, here are the two funny moments.....

(1) Happy Birthday song sung by the local singer, Johnny Cobb, at the Creek Rat restaurant. Here is his version

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday dear Erin

That sounds like a stripper song (commented interjected by Johnny to add some spice)

Happy birthday to you

As you probably can tell, he wasn't our favorite singer at the local seafood restaurant in town. He did mention as we left to Erin, "Goodbye birthday girl" in a nice southern accent.

(2) Another gift I gave Erin for her birthday was to cut my hair. As many might not know, I haven't cut my hair since April. The last time I had long hair was when I was younger, like 8 or 9, and so I decided to grow it out for the summer (prior to school and work). For her birthday she gave me the haircut I never could forget.

We started with the 4 months worth of hair all safely attached. Did some triming with a 2 on the sides and 7 on top to make the mullet and mohawk. Not to shabby thus far...we thought about stopping here just until we left Myrtle Beach (I would have fit right in...and looked a lot like the Johnny Cobb).

Picture describe what happen next the best:

The expressions on Erin's face was priceless when she realized she was shaving the top of my head with a #2 and not a #7. The pictures below depict the whole experience. Luckily, I usually wear 1 out of 127 hats, so most people won't see my hair during the week, except on Sunday. The nursery kids will wonder who their new leader is.
Yep...oops. Erin had just piked up the clippers and forgot that the 2 was still on...once that happened, there was no way to fix it, so we just kept on going. Lucky for us everyone was in the bathroom examining the mullet/mohawk so we got some good pictures.

Here is the side-by-side before and after.

My hair went from the longest I've ever had to the shortest I've ever had, not by choice.

Anyways, it has been fun to spend time here in Myrtle Beach and we had a great day celebrating Erin's birthday.

The day ended with the famous symphony bar brownies and cookie dough ice cream with the fam:

The Bike Ride

We flew into Seattle Thursday afternoon and were able to watch Michelle's (Erin's youngests sister) swim meet...and of course take a muscles picture.
On Saturday, the main event took place. Erin, her dad, and brother (Logan) participated in the STP. This is a one day bike ride from Seattle to Portland (204 miles). Erin had talked about participating in this event again (she did it 3 years ago), so for this past Christmas, I signed her up for this bike event. After her first time completing it, she had said if she did again, her dad was going to do it with her. He was game so they both got signed up.

Erin started diligently exercising on a daily basis and began biking to work a couple weeks before the ride to get prepared for this event. Finally, during the 2nd weekend in July, we went up to Seattle and Erin borrowed a friends road bike to participate in the STP. They started riding at 5:00 am and rode throughout the day. Here's a before picture and some break time picutres...Dan could be on a Wheaties box don't ya think?

It was quite hot for Washington the day of the ride, which made it for some nice sunburns. Erin's mom, sister (Michelle), and I traveled from checkpoint to checkpoint providing any necessary things they needed (food, water, etc.). The bike ride took approximately 16 hours and everyone made it to the end. It was a great event for everyone; however, one that won't be done again. Here is Erin and her dad with their "One Day Rider" badges and her parents.

And here's one with the person who got them signed up for it!

Summer Memories w/ Erin's Family

As the Fourth of July weekend began to approach quickly, Erin and I had to figure out something fun to do. She had recently been offered at work an opportunity to take two vacation days and receive one personal day if used in the month of July. We felt it would be good to take advantage of this and hadn't seen the Erin's sister and her family, the Olson Family, in a long time; thus, we made a road trip. We left at 6 pm on Wednesday and traveled all night to South Dakota. We arrived at 5 am and ended up surprising Erin's sister. It was a great surprise and had a fun time spending the weekend in South Dakota. Below is a list of fun activities we did.

• Fireworks on the 3rd of July at Mount Rushmore
• These fireworks ended up being quite exceptional. We saw the fireworks in Washington, D.C. last year and got to see the fireworks this year at another grand national monument

• Lighting fireworks and throwing pop-its.

• Hiking in Black Hills Forest

• Eating @ Stamfords
• My custodial boss completely loved this place, so we thought we should at least try it out. It was quite good.
• Resting...don't we look comfy:

• Playing with Eden and Andrew (our niece and nephew)
• Playing at the park, in the pool, enjoying exciting kid games (hullabaloos sp?), having muscle flexing contests etc.

• Jacob's baby blessing (Scott & Lani's recently newborn son)

We had an enjoyable time with the Olson family and glad we took the opportunity to do so.

There is one more major event this summer Erin, Dan (her dad), and Logan participated in just a week ago; however, we will postpone the posting to allow you to catch up on this post and the last post I did today. Enjoy the updates!!!