26 Weeks!

How far along? 26 Weeks!
Maternity clothes? Yep! Still digging through my new stash to find things that don’t make me look like a tent, but I definitely don’t fit my normal clothes anymore.
Sleep: It would seem that Nathan’s evening dance party is scheduled between 10 and 10:30 pm – right when I’m trying to go to sleep. And then his morning martial arts workout happens at 8am. I totally love feeling him go crazy in there, but this also means I don’t get much sleep ;)
Best moment this week: When this happened (this is a facebook status update):
Pregnancy Brain strikes again! I'm making twice baked potatoes for dinner tonight and turned off the oven after the first bake. Got my yummy potato mixture all ready and back into the skins and popped them back into the oven for 15 minutes. Where they sat. In the oven that I had turned off. Dinner is going to be a little late tonight.
And I hate cooking bacon. I always set the fire alarm off. Tonight was no exception.
Miss Anything? Nothing in particular. Except maybe the snow. It melted. But we have a nice new pond in the grassy field behind our apartment!
Food cravings: Still no cravings. Maybe I should just make one up. I think I need ice cream. All the time. ;)
Anything making you queasy or sick: Nope, and it has been so wonderful!!
Have you started to show yet: WARNING - Hormone-Induced Rant Ahead!: (don’t say I didn’t warn you) Yes. I am showing. Regardless of what anyone might think, I look pregnant. I am quite surprised at the lack of tact among the general public regarding appropriate comments to make on a pregnant woman’s appearance. Everyone seems to know what to say (and not to say) to a non-pregnant woman, so why do all the rules go out the window when she’s pregnant? Because really, you have NO IDEA how she feels about her body while pregnant, so it’s best to keep those comments generically positive. Such as “You look great/beautiful/wonderful!” etc. There’s really no need to go beyond that. I’m not fishing for compliments here, but if you feel the need to say something, stick to something simple. There are women who feel like they look huge and don’t need to be told “You are so big!”. And then there are women like me, who being on the smallish side, don’t show as much. But that does not mean you get to tell me I don’t look pregnant. Because I don’t look like this normally. You might not notice, but I DO. Someone made the offhand comment to me last week “I look as pregnant as you do! What part of you is pregnant?” What part of me is pregnant?! Every single part of my body has been telling me I’m pregnant since 6 weeks! I spent 8 weeks nauseous and sick. I have to eat 3 times as often as usual. I no longer fit into my normal clothes. I’ve gained 20 pounds. I have to wear my glasses everyday because my contacts don’t fit properly (little known fact – pregnancy can mess with your EYES too!). I can barely get my shoes on! So please, on behalf of pregnant women everywhere, don’t tell us we don’t look pregnant. Don’t tell us we’re huge either. (we’re still women, remember?) If you must say something, tell us we look fabulous and leave it at that. And by doing so, you spare my poor husband this rant (because he gets it more often than you do). And that is all. ;)
Gender: Crazy boy!
Belly Button in or out? Still an “Innie”. Barely. Give it a few more weeks.
Happy or Moody most of the time: Happy! Now that we have a definite place to move and a date for moving, my stress levels have definitely improved. Whew!
Looking forward to: My brother gets home from his mission in Spain in 10 DAYS!! So excited to see him!!

A January Update

So it’s been way too long since I’ve posted the general happenings of our lives. Granted, not much happens daily to necessitate a blog post *sigh* so I guess that’s why they are few and far between.  ;)

But given it’s been a while, I now have enough schtuff to tell you. Yay!

How about…CUPCAKES?!
I have been having a fantabulous time making things with my silhouette cameo and I made some more cupcake onesie gifts. Tis the season of babies – seriously! It’s awesome though. I went to a baby shower for our Young Women’s president earlier this month and made some onesie cupcakes for her (complete with packaging/this awesome cupcake box made by my cameo):
And since I can only fit 4 onesies, and the packages always seem to come in sets of 3 (why is that?! Why are there no sets of 4?! Oh well, I found them at Target on clearance – score!) I bought 2 sets and had a couple of extras. If they hadn’t been girl onesies, I would have just kept them, hee hee ;) but we have some more friends in Utah having a baby girl so I made little individual cupcake boxes for them, and found this SUPER ADORABLE purse toy to go with. *I may have been wishing we were having a girl for the simple reason that we could have been able to keep that little purse. SO CUTE!*

I’m loving my little set up: I think this is going to be my go-to baby shower gift :)

Moving. Yep. Again.
More news is that we’re moving. Again. I know. We’re crazy. (Okay, I’m crazy, but this wasn’t just my idea for once) We haven’t been too thrilled with our current apartment, especially in the last couple of months. Our bikes were stolen off our 2nd floor balcony (yes, that means some creepers climbed up to our balcony in the night) last month. I was already not feeling too safe around here anyway, and that just made it worse. And although we didn’t expect management to be able to actually do anything about it, when we emailed to just let them know we were filing a police report, we didn’t get so much as a “oh, so sorry your stuff has been stolen” back! Lame. Then when we came home from California for Christmas, we got home at about 1am New Year’s day and there were FIVE police cars in the parking lot and someone was getting dragged out of the building 2 doors down from us. I don’t even want to know how often that happens without us knowing about it. I mean, it’s not like we’re usually out in the parking lot at 1am! And then there’s the usual paper thin walls and we can hear everything (and I mean everything) that’s going on with our neighbors. And the water damage on our bedroom ceiling that maintenance just painted over. Classy. Or the people who drive their minivans around the parking lot BLASTING their super hip rap music (you know, because they are so cool). Even better.

So we are just done. After a couple of weeks of seriously stressful discussions trying to figure out our options and what we wanted, we finally found a place we both really like about 8 miles north(ish) of where we are now. We’ll be in a different city and unfortunately, a different ward. But we are very excited about our new place. It’s a brand new complex and we’ll be the first ones to live in our unit. How often does THAT happen?! We’ve been over there at night and we’re both comfortable with the area and it’s QUIET. So, so quiet. So nice. We’re really hoping this is a better match for us. So we make the move at the beginning of March. You better believe I’m counting down the days (especially when the Crazy next door starts singing…like as I’m proofreading this…).

Fort McHenry
We finally had a chance to go out and have another little adventure on Saturday. We went up to Baltimore to see Fort McHenry. (After getting lost by actually listening to our GPS – figures…) And for those of you not as familiar with American History, the battle fought here in September of 1814 is that battle the inspired Francis Scott Key to write the Star Spangled Banner. So cool! They had some exhibits at the visitor center and we learned about the war of 1812 (neither of us knew much about that particular war) and then you can go out and walk in/on/around the fort itself.

Some non-period-accurate cannons

It was verrrrry windy and a lot colder than we expected

Zombie Prom
This past weekend we also went to our first ever Zombie Prom. If you’ve never been to one, it’s as weird as it sounds ;) So fun though. One of our friends – who loves zombies (obviously) – did this for her birthday party. And since I have never in my life ever considered dressing up as a zombie, I had no idea how to go about doing so. So we didn’t dress up (we weren’t the only ones, thank goodness ;) and we joked with the birthday girl that we were the ‘living victims’ for the zombies present. Those who did dress up (namely the birthday girl and her husband) went ALL OUT! There was lots of pictures, but I don’t have them yet. And when I do get them…I probably won’t post them, due to the weak constitutions of some of my readers (like my mom and sister ;). We’re talking liquid latex, gory/bloody makeup, and even contacts to make eyes look cloudy. It was terrifically freaky. I haven’t had nightmares yet, but I’m pretty sure there was at least one undead person in my dreams last night. But watching them all dance around at the party was probably one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while. Do zombies even dance?!

I made a fun tumbler gift to take to the party. The birthday girl loves hockey, so I found some fun hockey images to cut out with vinyl to stick on there, and finished it off by filling it with M&M’s. Simple, yet awesome (if I do say so myself ;)

Misc
And apart from accidentally setting my scarf on fire while making dinner last night, that’s pretty much it. I’m fine by the way, it was just the scarf and I managed to get it off right away. We’re very thankful that I (and baby Nathan) didn’t get hurt, and my scarf is even okay too!

I’ve been trying to pack away a few things already and we’re pulling together a bunch of things that we are going to store at my parent’s place (thanks Mom and Dad!) because our storage space will significantly decrease in the new apartment. I’ve been brainstorming (aka scouring Pinterest) for nifty organization tricks to pack more stuff into a smaller space and not have it look like the place has exploded. ;)

Baby Nathan is doing great, he’s so wiggly these days, but I love it. The really funny thing is whenever he’s going crazy in there (or whatever it is that he’s doing), I’ll try to call John over so that he can feel it (because we can feel it from the outside now – so crazy!) and as soon as John gets his hand on my stomach, Nathan will stop kicking. Kinda like “What? I wasn’t doing anything!” Little stinker. ;)

24 Weeks!

Holy Cow! How did I just suddenly become 6 months pregnant?! ;)

How far along? 24 Weeks!
Maternity clothes? This week was my first stint in maternity clothes (though the sweater dress in the picture isn’t maternity). I inherited an entire closet’s worth (not even exaggerating here) of maternity clothes from my Mom’s neighbor (THANK YOU Antoinette!!) and I’ve been picking through the bags and finding things that work for me at this size. I’m still not big enough to pull off a lot of maternity clothes (I look like I’m wearing a tent), but I’ve found several tops from my new stash that work right now. Yay! You can’t see in the picture, but among my pile I found some SUPER COMFY black lounge pants that I’ve been wearing for a couple of days now. YES!
Sleep: Urg. I feel like I’m losing at least an hour and a half every night getting up to use the bathroom and just trying to get into a comfortable position. I do have a body pillow now, and that has helped a little bit.
Best moment this week: John was able to feel Nathan kicking this past weekend!! It was so fun for us to experience that together! :) 
Miss Anything? Nothing really this week…
Food cravings: Still no real cravings, but I’ll take candy any time ;)
Anything making you queasy or sick: Nope, thank goodness!!!!
Have you started to show yet: Yes! And no one better ask me what high school I go to or something… ;)
Gender: He’s a boy and moving around like crazy! He’s actually really active right before we go to bed, and at like 5 in the morning (and I know because I’m up – usually just back from the bathroom…)
Belly Button in or out? My innie’s hanging in there!
Happy or Moody most of the time: Both. We’re moving apartments (again?! I know, maybe I’ll get to that in another post) in 7 weeks and that has made me stressed and moody. Not to mention the BAZILLION opinions on everything baby, from the fabric of crib sheets to use to the integrity of dirty diaper bins. (word to the wise – no offense, but I’m not sure I want to hear your opinion, there are so many! – wait till I ask for it ;)
Looking forward to: Moving into our new place. I am so sick of my obnoxious neighbors and their loud music and screechy singing. So. Done. ;)

22 Weeks!

How far along? 22 Weeks!
Maternity clothes? So I bought a maternity band from target last week and I LOVE IT! Best $17 I’ve spent on maternity stuff so far. :) And I wasn’t looking for one of those bands that helps with back pain, I’m not quite there yet – it’s basically that extra panel you find on maternity jeans but without the jeans. (the one from target came with the hilarious tagline: “Flaunt your bump, and keep your pants up!”) So I can wear it with my regular jeans and I’m squeezing a few more weeks out of them! Score!  
Sleep: No fun. Not comfy.
Best moment this week: Hm…I’m thinking when my mom came up to visit for the day on Wednesday and brought up lots of fun baby clothes she bought for Nathan, to include fuzzy monster jammies! 
Miss Anything? Sleeping on my back and being comfortable at night.
Food cravings: No cravings. Boo. ;)
Anything making you queasy or sick: Not really, though I did feel pretty sick on one of our flights back home. Thankfully it didn’t last too long once we hit the ground for our layover and I got some fresh air.
Have you started to show yet: Yep! Though I think I’ve inadvertently become a pro at hiding it with scarves and jackets, because someone at the Young Women’s activity last night asked me who my seminary teacher is…hmm…awkward…
Gender: He’s a boy!!
Belly Button in or out? In, but just barely!
Happy or Moody most of the time: Happy mostly. Kind of starting to stress about the next couple of months, but I’d be doing that regardless
Looking forward to: I’m having another ultrasound next week and I love that I get to see my little man again! :)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Alright, so I’m a little late, but I hope everyone had a lovely holiday week! Ours was jam-packed with fun while we spent the holidays with John’s family in California.

We left for CA on the 22nd and got in that evening. It felt really late because of the time difference, and it took a couple of days for my hunger pangs to get back on schedule – instead of it being 5am in MD, it was 2am in CA. Oh well. ;) Sunday was church as usual and Grandma and Grandpa Bosen came up to visit, which was very nice. We got started on some gingerbread houses and hung out for the evening.

Monday was Christmas eve!! YAY! We went to see the play production of A Christmas Carol and it was at one of those 360degree stages and that was really cool. It was a musical too and we thought it was very fun and very well done. We met up with the Mercers (Dad Moffat’s sister and family) at the play and then joined them for a Christmas eve dinner of BBQ – YUM! Our family was put in charge of entertainment that night, and Kirsten had put together a multicultural program of Christmas Carols. She and Amy sang a song in French, Amy and I sang Silent Night in German, Joseph played a couple of songs on his Ukulele, and Dad sang a song in Spanish. We finished up by reading a beautifully illustrated book on the Christmas story.

And then finally, the day we had all been waiting for: Christmas day! I was especially excited for Christmas as then we could finally tell everyone we were having a boy! :) We got all lined up per Moffat Christmas tradition for a picture before coming down for presents:
We always line up oldest to youngest (but I stick with John) and I teased Joseph, since he always gets to be in front (and closest to the presents), that maybe I needed to be in the front, since I was carrying the youngest member of the family! ;)

Amy insisted they open the Gender Reveal Box first, so let me give you a run down of how it went. (I did the same thing for both mine and John’s families) I filled a box with 9 pink balloons and 12 blue balloons:
I tried to be sure there was a mix at the top, so that they wouldn’t figure it out right away!

Then, I wrapped up the box with nice ribbon and such

And then I attached this tag with a poem I wrote :)

Cute huh? I’m quite proud of myself ;) So basically they had to count all the balloons to figure out that we were having a boy. I snapped a picture or two of John’s family getting into their box, but I apologize for the blurriness – they were really excited ;)

Then I gave them a picture of the ultrasound. You can’t tell in this picture, but I had attached a little bowtie to the picture, similar to what I posted on Christmas Day

Whew! Then it was time for all of the other presents!

John and I both ended up with lots of goodies this year, and Mama Moffat slipped a package of boy themed swaddle blankets under the tree once they all knew we were having a boy :) The resulting chaos in the living room is quite the scene to behold!

We spent most of the day just hanging out and we got to chat a little bit with my family and Jason via Skype for Christmas! I can’t believe he comes home from his mission in just a few short weeks! AH! So awesome. While we were skyping, my family opened their Reveal box and so that was really fun to do it while Jason was online. You could tell my sister really wanted it to be a girl – she insisted on counting the pink ones ;) And now you all know it’s a boy – Hurray!

Here we are sitting down to Christmas dinner :) Yum!

We also finished up our gingerbread houses that night. I’m not biased or anything, but I’m pretty sure mine and Amy’s house is the best ;) I suppose Travis didn’t help matters when he took a bit out of a wall of the other one before they’d even put the pieces together.
We went for a more classic gingerbread house look:
And Joseph and Kirsten went for a more “we survived a blizzard” look ;) And unfortunately, Travis the termite continued to eat their house before it was on display for very long. One day when she’d caught him nibbling, Kirsten asked him why he didn’t eat my house and I stepped in and said “because he knows I’d kill him if he did”, to which he responded with vigorous nodding ;)

On Wednesday, Amy, Kirsten and I hit the stores for some shopping. We were planning on doing family pictures this day, but I didn’t bring anything to go with the colors Mama Moffat wanted. (I didn’t fit into anything that I had at home that would have worked, ha!) So I was on the hunt for a navy blue cardigan. And I found one at Old Navy – the first store we went to, and it was sitting there right at the front. This never happens to me. It was almost magical. So I bought a blue one and a red one. And now that I have these awesome cardigans, I’m wondering HOW on earth I’d gone so long without such an item. Love it! I want all their colors now ;)

One of Kirsten’s friends took our pictures and the session went really well (family pictures have an infamous reputation in the family, so we are all very glad it went so well, and that it was short). And we got some great shots!
Of course, we all know what we’re really like ;)

Right before we took this picture, I had been commenting that I hoped someone in the family would marry another dark haired person so that I wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb with all these fair haired people. Then as we were deciding who would sit on the fence, Amy said something like “and we can have the dark one up there in the middle.” “Um, excuse me?! Did you just call me the ‘dark one’?!” ;) Looking at this picture though, can you blame her? ha!
You wanna know how we got this sibling picture to look so fabulous with natural smiles and all?
It’s because I was behind the photographer doing this:

So glad Dad Moffat got that shot. Classic. We celebrated our successful picture taking with a very tasty dinner at Island’s Grill. Yummy!

And what’s a trip for us without a trip to the ER? Impossible, I think ;) No, not really, but you get the idea. But it was John’s turn to have a little mishap. Wednesday night John decided to give Joseph’s climbing wall a try (he has a climbing wall built around his bedroom door). John did not take his wedding ring off, so when he slipped and came off the wall…the ring got caught and ripped off of John’s finger, and cut the finger open pretty bad. It started swelling like crazy and John immediately went into shock. I’m so glad John’s dad was there to get him cleaned and bandaged up properly before taking him to the ER. As John was staggering off to the bathroom with his dad, he handed me his ring – complete with leftover skin inside. Eek! We thought for sure John had at least dislocated the finger, if not broken it. John came out of his shock pretty quickly (or he was able to stand and walk without barfing anyway, and his sense of humor was still in tact), so I helped him get changed (he had been in his PJs). They left for the ER, leaving me quite freaked out, by the way. Turns out he didn’t break or dislocate it, and he didn’t even need stitches! To be honest though, we’re lucky he didn’t lose the finger completely. He got back after midnight all wrapped up and feeling very blessed, we are so grateful it wasn’t worse.  Of course, now I’m wondering how much time I’m going to be spending in the ER with my future son…if he’s anything like his dad… ;)

Thursday was the Science Center and the space shuttle! Super cool schtuff man. We stopped by the thermal camera while we waited for our space shuttle tour. Look at how red my tummy is!! :) (and do we look freaky or what?!)

Seeing the space shuttle was really cool. The thing is HUGE! It was a lot bigger than we’d expected.

After the space shuttle, we went to see Chef Duff’s bakery in California! EEEE!! SO cool!!!
Soooooooo coooooool

I’m pretty sure I’m clutching my face and saying something like “this is sooooo awesome!”

The place is also like a paint-your-own pottery type place, so you can decorate your own cake! We got a decorating kit to go, so that I could decorate one when we got home for the day. So I got to pick out some colored frosting and 2 candies to decorate with

Now, don’t laugh at my finished product, because I really didn’t have a lot to work with here ;) And to be honest, I wasn’t that impressed with their buttercream. It kept blobbing (we’ll pretend that’s a word) up in places and even though I wiped off all the condensation from the already-done crumb coat (I’m thinking these cakes just sit in the cooler until someone buys them), I couldn’t get the final coat to stick! Very frustrating. Oh well. Everyone loved it. And loved eating it. And that’s what counts, right? ;)

Bah ha ha okay, you can laugh, because I laughed ;)

Friday John and I went in to Dad Moffat’s office and got some dental work done (love having a dentist in the family) and then we spent the afternoon meeting up with John’s friends from high school and BYU, and that was really fun. And I keep kicking myself because we forgot to take pictures all 3 times. Oops. Well, it was still nice to see you, Barlams, Satkos and Russ! ;)

Saturday we drove down to San Diego to see the Bosens (Mama Moffat’s brother and family). One cousin is getting married this month (oh! Today, actually) and another is having a baby, so we went down to see them and visit with them. Since we weren’t going to be around for the wedding, I made a family rules plaque for Heather (forgot to get a picture…but maybe you remember the one I made for us) and I painted these onesies for Jessica’s baby boy that’s coming in February!

And because I can’t help myself (and I have this really cool shape in my Silhouette library) I rolled them up with socks to look like cupcakes and made this fun cupcake box to put them in!

So fun right?! I found the idea via Pinterest (oh Pinterest, what would I do without you?!). Of course, the box totally got smooshed on the flight there…but they could still see the look I was going for ;)

We had a lovely time seeing them and then we made the 3hr drive back. We were so sleepy by the time we got back. It’s amazing how sitting in a car most of the day just wears you out!

And we’re back to Sunday again. Another church day and we got things cleaned up and packed up for our flight. Monday we made our way to LAX and through the very long flight back. The flights were thankfully uneventful, but with the time change back to eastern time, we got home around 1am (not that it bothered us, because we were still on CA). We had a lovely homecoming to 5 police cars in the parking lot and the police dragging (a possibly very drunk) someone out of the building 2 doors down from us. Our held mail from the week had been left to just sit on our doorstep – I’m pretty sure it would have fit in our mailbox…Then we got inside and found that our fridge door had come open (let me just say that I know the door had been closed when we left, because we’ve had issues with the door not staying shut – the suction isn’t very good) and all of our food was ruined. Not to mention that the fridge had leaked water all. over. the. kitchen. floor. Add that to the fact that our bikes had been stolen off our 2nd floor balcony two weeks before…let’s just say I don’t think we’re staying when our lease is up. But it could have been worse, and we are grateful the place was otherwise in tact when we got home.

We have spent the last couple of days trying to get back to eastern time and cleaning up from our trip. It was so fun to get back out to California to see John’s family and I’m so excited for all the fun things we have to look forward to in 2013!!