It's the MOST WONDERFUL TIME.......... of the year!

I do love Christmas time, and when I think about it that song always gets stuck in my head... but only that part because I don't know the rest of it. Sad.

I feel bad that I haven't updated our blog in so long. I can Facebook for an hour, but spend 15 minutes to update my blog? Apparently not. So...

Last month I went to Atlanta for the National Society of Genetic Counselors annual conference. It was wonderful. Spending time with my family and having them love Sammy so much was fantastic!

For Thanksgiving, we drove out to Colorado to spend time with Ryan's family. It was the first time for them to meet Sammy, which of course was very exciting all around. Rusty and Chrissy are so great, letting us all stay at their house. My nieces Falon and Rebecca are absolutely adorable! Falon loooooooved her new cousin! She always wanted to be around him, even when his diaper was being changed! Very cute. It was great to hang out with Richard again, I miss having him around all the time, like when we all lived in Fort Collins. And of course, we were so happy that Grandma Penny finally got to see Sammy. It is so sweet how much she loves her family.

I finished my rotation at Huntsman Cancer Institute, and am now back in a prenatal setting at Intermountain Health Care. I really like it. I get to travel between their different MFM clinics, which is great because I get a look at how different clinics operate. I really think that I want to end up working in an MFM clinic, though I would also pretty much take any job I can get right now :0)

Sammy is learning all kinds of new skills. He rolls over all the time now to reach toys and other "fun" things he sees. He can even sit up on his own! He's still kind of wobbly, so we don't let him sit up without supervision or the Boppy pillow. Next week he will be 6 months old, and we are going to start feeding him vegetables. He's been doing really well with the rice and oatmeal cereal, so we think he'll love some new flavors.

Ryan and I went ice skating with our ward last week. It was Ryan's first time ice skating. He picked it up quickly, although he did hockey-check me into the wall a few times "because he lost his balance." Riiiiiiiiiight.

And now for our token picture of Sammy!

For our next adventure, we will fly up to Anchorage for Christmas with my family. Stay tuned!

Halloween and Other Scary Stories

For Halloween, we decided to theme our costumes. Ryan was a farmer, Sammy was the scarecrow, and I was the crow!

We went out to a corn maze on Halloween. We love corn mazes. Definitely a favorite fall tradition. Sam loved seeing new things. What a good baby he is!

Sammy has recently discovered his toes. It's really cute. He loves grabbing his feet when he's on his back and rolling on his side. Unfortunately, we didn't cut his nails until a few days after he made this find, so his ankles have all these nasty cuts on them. I'm pretty sure he can't feel pain in his feet, however, because he smacks his feet really hard into the ground all the time and it doesn't seem to bother him at all.

On Thursday I'm going to the National Society of Genetic Counselors conference in Atlanta. Sammy is coming with me, and we're meeting my mom, her mom, and Aunt Dori down there for the weekend! It's going to be a lot of fun- I get to hang out with a thousand other genetics geeks and my family!

October 17th was the 5 year anniversary of my baptism into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This Friday was Ryan's 10 year anniversary. We got together with the two missionaries who taught him, the girl who was baptized the same day, and the ward missionary who helped them both. It was great- all 5 families had kids, and the 5 reunion-ees all had such a good time reminiscing. Sammy got to hang out with Amber and Tyler's son Josh, who is only a few weeks younger than him.

This is why I hand out sandwiches

I have a sad story to tell. So, whenever Ryan and I go to the temple, I make a sandwich for this homeless lady who hangs out on the corner. I don't like giving cash to homeless people, because I never know what they are going to do with it. I give food instead. Tonight we went to Wal-Mart to get some things for Sammy's Halloween costume. As we walked in, two girls approached us and told us a sad story about the one girl's boyfriend ditching them in Salt Lake and they needed to get back to Ogden tonight. They said they didn't have any money on them to buy their Frontrunner (train) tickets. I didn't have a dollar, but I gave them a five because I felt bad that they got ditched. Later, as we were perusing Halloween costumes, I saw them picking out decorations and carrying a bunch of stuff. So much for not having any money for the train... I just bought Halloween decorations for two tramps instead of for our little apartment. This is why I will not ever hand out cash again! Sandwiches are still a go.

In other news...

Sammy went on his first hike in September. We took him along on the Genetic Counseling program hike up Catherine Pass. We took a bottle for him, but it didn't warm up by the time he was ready to eat... so we detoured off the trail so I could breastfeed him!

Ryan carried Sam in the Baby Bjorn. He got to face forward for the first time. He LOVED being able to see things. Now we carry him that way all the time.

All tuckered out!

We watched General Conference the first weekend in October. Our traditional tent got moved to Sunday morning, because Ryan played football before the Saturday morning session. Sam got to hang out in the tent for the first time! I can't wait til he is old enough to play in the tent.

Don't forget, most of our good Sammy pictures are on our Facebook album. You can also watch video clips of Sam at Ryan's MobileMe gallery. We will soon have the clip of Sam rolling over online! He rolled from his tummy to his back for the first time on October 4th.

Sam's next well-baby visit is Friday. We hope he gets to start solid food soon!

Sammy is 3 months old!

To celebrate Sammy being 3 months old, we took a family trip to Hogle Zoo. There was a new baby elephant and a baby giraffe, which meant that Ryan and I had spasms of joy!

My favorite zoo animals are giraffes, and Ryan's favorites are the elephants. The zoo babies are only a few weeks younger than our baby! To finish the celebration we had ice cream and pizza using left over gift cards from Ryan's birthday. Yum yum.

Last week, Sammy and I were both getting over a cold. We felt so crummy over Labor Day that we mostly just hung out on the couch and watched TV. We watched a couple hours of Cake Boss on TLC. Ryan and I got so inspired that we decided to make cake decorating our shared hobby. Well, cake making and decorating is not cheap or easy. We spent 3 days on our first (also last) cake. Here are some pictures from the creation of our "masterpiece".

Fondant is very hard to work with!

We have added more pictures of Sammy to our Facebook album. You don't need to be on Facebook to view them, just click here!

Happy Birthday Ryan!

Today is Ryan's birthday! He is 29. Sammy and I got him a birthday card. Sam picked it out because it had a picture of a baby on the front. We don't know what we're going to do to celebrate, but last night we ordered pizza so we'd have pizza for lunch today.

Sammy has a cold :0( He has a boogery nose and a cough, and he's really fussy. He wants to be held all the time. Poor little guy! He is taking a nap right now. I hope it makes him feel better.

Two weeks of school already down. Only 13 more to go! I'm glad we have a three day weekend. I hope Ryan picks something fun for his birthday celebration!

Ryan finally posts!

Hello everybody in blog world. I thought I would do the posting this time because, although her belly is considerably smaller, Kara now has one less hand with which to do things. I am glad I can do the heavy lifting for her ... like blogging!

Our first wedding anniversary was such a great time to reflect on how far we have come, plan for the future, and, most importantly, get a sweet gift. Kara's parents got a SUPER cool GPS unit for us. The Garmin Oregon 400t. Be careful not to drool on your computer. I hear that our previous GPS was actually used by cavemen to track dinosaurs.

We went to Kincaid Park to take our first family pictures. We plan on taking a family picture every year on our anniversary. I love my family so much!

Kara and I went to watch Harry Potter and The Half-blood Prince on the night of our anniversary. It was our favorite movie of the series.

We are loving the experience of watching our little boy grow. He has nearly doubled in size. He follows people around with his eyes and smiles when he likes something. Kara's family is just loving their time with Sammy, too.

After my salmon fishing experience on Bird Creek yesterday, I can say that I am now a fishing fan. Both of my parents love to fish. I hope they are jealous that I got to fish Alaskan Salmon!

We look forward to a new year with many exciting developments in each of our lives. Thank you for following our blog!

I want my baby back... ribs

With barbecue sauce!

Sammy's 1 month "birthday" fast approaches. I cannot believe how much he's changed in the past 4 weeks. Wow! Our little man is growing up so fast! I never thought I'd be the cheesy person saying that, but here I am!

Our 1 year anniversary is on Friday. The gift for each other for 1 year is traditionally paper, so we gave each other tickets to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Cassi said it was pretty good. We're also going to take family pictures with Sam. I hope they turn out well! My parents are going to take the pictures for us.

My genetic counseling rotation is going well. I've had some challenging cases, and I'm glad because I think my usual tendency would have been to just let Audrey do them with me observing. I'm pleased with myself for stepping up to the plate, so to speak. Speaking of stepping up to the plate, I am so bummed that the American League won the Midsummer Classic! Brad Hawpe was totally robbed of a home run, I was so angrified! We'll get 'em in the Fall Classic... aka World Series.

Ryan is playing some shoot 'em up video game on the Playstation. Sammy is asleep on his lap. What is it with boys and violent video games?

We have an album of Sammy pictures on Facebook that you can check out by clicking here. As I've said before, posting multiple pictures on the blog is a pain in the neck, so to see more pictures, check the Facebook album. You do not need to have a Facebook account- just click the link and save it to your bookmarks or whatever. But here's one picture just because I can't resist!

Not cute? What! The grumpy disco dancer is adorable!

Our Baby Story

Our little Sammy is finally here! He is almost 6 days old, and finally sleeps enough after a feeding that his mommy can get stuff done! (like updating the family blog)

Sam didn't feel like coming out on his own, so I was induced on June 18th. Let me tell you, an induction is no fun. Avoid it if you can! I got the first pill around 11:30 am. After the pill, they don't check on you for 4 hours. Mom, Ryan, and I played cards and watched the Rockies game on TV.

At the start, I was feeling pretty good. About 2 hours into the pill, I started having contractions. When they checked on me, I was dilated to 3cm, so they started the Pitocin. I decided to get an epidural at that point- I couldn't imagine going 7 more centimeters and then having to push if it already hurt that badly. The epidural made the pain manageable, but you can still tell I'm tired a few hours later.

A little after 8pm our doctor told me that I could start pushing. Oh man. That sucked like nothing else. We tried a lot of different positions, but for some reason the whole time the backs of my legs were tingling and it was so uncomfortable. Yuck. And then the last round of pushing came, and Sammy slipped into the world! Wow! He got whisked away by the pediatrics team right away, which was hard for me because I wanted to hold him right away. When I finally did, it was like magic. My little kicky-wicky, in the flesh!

Samuel Grayson Reynolds, born at 10:04pm on Thursday June 18, 2009. He weighed 7 pounds 7 ounces, and is 19.5 inches long. We love him so much!

It has been quite an adjustment for us. We're trying to get the hang of breastfeeding and not sleeping for more than 3 hours at a time. Our little Sammy is totally worth it. We call him "The Grump", "Grumpkins", and sometimes "Grumplestiltskins" because he scrunches up his face like he's glaring when he eats. SO CUTE! I wanted to put up a picture of the grump face, but my camera isn't cooperating right now. Stay tuned, Sam Fans.

Having my mom here to help us was amazing. We had a blast spending time with her, and really appreciated all her help. It was nice to have an experienced person around every time we freaked out about something (like not pooping, or pooping too much...). Thank you for being here, Mom!

Here's a picture of the (very) proud daddy with his little boy:

Still no Sammy

Aside from the lack of baby (grr...) this has been a good week. My mom is in town now, awaiting the arrival of the baby with us. She's being a good sport about hanging out in our tiny apartment while we wait. It has been raining a lot here in Utah, so we haven't been able to do as much walking as we would like. Yesterday we went geocaching. Ryan found both caches, good job honey!

Today I went to the Kura Door spa to have a special pregnancy massage. I really want Sammy to come soon, so we have more time together before I start my clinical rotation. I've heard a couple people swear by getting a special massage that hits certain pressure points, so I decided to try it out. It was really enjoyable, even if it doesn't help Sammy to get motivated to come out. My masseur really hit the pressure points at my ankles, hands and collarbones hard- I had to keep telling myself "contractions will hurt worse!!" to get through. Afterwards, though, it felt awesome. After the massage we went to the Farmers' Market in Pioneer Park. It was really cool, even though it rained on us a little. Mom bought Sammy a stuffed piggy that Ryan has named Snort. I think I may have to sneak it away from Ryan, he's very attached to Snort! Hopefully I will have some pictures soon of Sammy and Snort! For now, here's a picture of me, sad to still be pregnant.

Ward Photo Booth

Our ward had a Hollywood dance last night.  I can't exactly dance at the moment, but we stopped by to help out with babysitting.  One of the girls in our ward is a photographer, and she had a neat set up for people at the dance.  Here are our pictures!

Pregnant Brain Strikes Again!

I completely forgot to let the world know that Ryan passed his Praxis exam, and is now qualified to teach English in the state of Utah.  Congratulations, honey!  I'm proud of you.

Impatient

I had most of this week to myself, just hanging around the house, making a half hearted attempt to do research and work on homework.  Meh.  The Rockies are winning again, which makes me happy.  I like to watch their games in the evening while working on the quilt I'm making for Sammy.  I finished it a couple nights ago, woohoo!Many, many thanks to Lindsay Caldwell for guiding me along through my foray into quilting.  It was fun, and I may even have the confidence to do it again for the next baby!

We had another appointment with our baby doctor yesterday.  Here's hoping we don't have any more!  I am determined that this baby will not be born late.  Things are still looking good.  I told my doctor that I wanted to punch out the next person who says something like "The baby is due next week?  But he hasn't dropped yet!" and he laughed at me.  I think that means I have his permission to smack anyone who says that.  So watch out.  

Ryan drew this on our chalkboard in anticipation of Sammy's arrival.

I had the craziest experience grocery shopping this week.  When I got to Smith's, it was very dim inside.  A worker told me that an accident had knocked out power in the area, and they were on the emergency generators.  It was fun to shop in the half-lit store.  I was almost done when suddenly the lights went completely out.  I was in the back of the store, and it was pitch-black.  Scary!  Someone yelled out that everyone needed to come to the front of the store.  I left my cart and slowly walked up to the front.  One checkstand still had power.  Everyone was leaving, and I thought "Dang it, I want my groceries!"  So I went back to retrieve my cart.  Good thing I did, because I had left all my reusable bags in the cart (stupid pregnant brain!).  I was able to check out before the last checkstand lost power, and got home with my groceries safely.  It was awesome.  I hope the grocery store didn't lose all their perishables.  That would be sad.

Last night we went out to dinner with Rena, my mentor in the genetic counseling program.  We tried out the Rocky Mountain Pizza Co.  I had an excellent calzone.  The days of just going out to eat without serious planning are coming to an end... that will be so weird.  Not being able to do things spontaneously is going to be very different for us.  

Things I Am Excited to Do Again After the Baby is Born:

Run

Play sports (Ryan is going to teach me how to bat like Todd Helton)

Sleep on my back

Go more than an hour without peeing

Ride a bike

Walk up stairs without wanting to die

Eat whatever I feel like

Not be dependent on medicine to keep from vomiting

Wear my favorite shirt (the yellow one that says Reading is for Awesome People)

Squeeze through tight spaces

Roll over

Put on socks without it taking 2 minutes

Here's what I hope is the last belly picture on the blog.

Babies Everywhere!

One of our friends was induced on Thursday.  Another friend, whose due date was only the day before mine, had her baby yesterday.  When will little Sammy arrive?  He only has 2 more weeks to go!That's not a peace sign- that's me eagerly showing the number of weeks left til the baby comes!

We finished our lab rotation at ARUP on Tuesday.  It's nice to be done.  Ryan has been helping me come up with ideas for the papers I have to write for my online class.  I've never had school during the summer, this is all a novelty to me.  Which really means that it is hard to be motivated.

We babysat for our friends the Joys on Thursday.  Their little girls are so cute!  While we were watching Mary Poppins Sophie just slowly keeled over and was instantly asleep.  Regan did the same thing about 20 minutes later.  I was seriously amused.  

Ryan played Frisbee with me today.  That is quite a sacrifice for him; he really hates Frisbee.  Sadly Ultimate Frisbee is one of the few sports I am decently good at.  Not right now though, it is so hard to throw a Frisbee with any accuracy or speed when you have a huge belly!  Man!  Poor little Sammy was getting tossed around!  I say poor Sammy, but he probably liked it.  He's much more feisty when I'm sitting down, as if to say "Move around, Mommy!"  We ended up playing our own version of Frisbee golf in our apartment court- plenty of trees and barbeque grills to aim at.  It was nice of Ryan to play with me even though he hates it.  He's a good sport.

I am eating fruit snacks, are you jealous?

Don't lie to yourself- you wish you were eating fruit snacks too.

I have been watching the Rockies play almost every night this week.  It makes me so mad that they can't win more than one in a row.  Come on boys, prove me wrong!  

We had a ward barbeque last night, it was great.  I love hanging out with everyone.  The guys had a home run derby, which was definitely fun to watch.  Only one guy hit the ball over the fence before the bat broke.  

Ryan ran in the stake 5k this morning.  I had an excuse not to run (thank you, baby!), but I got up and cheered.  

Ryan and Rob before the start of the race.  Rob is our next door neighbor.Rob waves hi.

Ryan at the finish line.  Yay Ryan!  I had fun cheering for you!

Today was graduation for the School of Medicine at the U, which means that my class can now call ourselves the 2nd-years.  Crazy.  Who will help us with our homework, and give us advice for exams?  Our class is already planning our skit for next year's graduation party.  We were sorely disappointed that there was no entertainment tonight.

Yesterday the baby reached 37 weeks, which means he's now officially a full-termer.  If he was born tomorrow I wouldn't have to worry about him, and that feels really good.  I can't believe how soon he will be a real live person that I can play with!  (and change diapers, and clean up after him, yes I am aware it's not all fun and games!) We still haven't picked out a middle name for him yet though, so I would appreciate some comments with ideas on how to complete Samuel Reynolds.  Ryan is  championing Grayson, after a character from a book we both like, but I'm not sure about it yet.   

I know, my pj pants are AWESOME.

Feelin' HOT HOT HOT

I should be shunned from the blog circle for being 2 whole days late with my post.  A thousand apologies.  

Last week the Polynesian kids at Ryan's school put on a cultural performance with dances and costume from all the Polynesian islands.  It was neat to see the kids so excited about it.  They were great!  The Student Housing Association put on a big party for the end of the semester with pizza, ice cream, a petting zoo, a rock wall... it was huge!  We got to pet a baby camel!  That was cool.  Some of our friends did 4-way American Gladiator jousting; I was glad to have a ready excuse not to join in!  Lucky me.  Of course, my excuse meant I couldn't have a go at the rock wall, so that was a bummer.   I like these events Student Housing puts on.  They are always a good time.

My classmates and I have 5 more days of our rotation at ARUP.  In the Cytogenetics lab we got to look at our own chromosomes!  That was crazy.  They looked just like the pictures in textbooks; it was hard to identify with the chromosomes as "mine".  I still put the printout on the fridge :0)

Less than a month to go until the baby arrives.  I'm about 36.5 weeks along now.  We had an appointment with our doctor today.  He says that he's on Labor and Delivery in June, so as long as Sammy decides to come in the middle of the night, he should be around for it.  That would be great.  We really like our doctor.  He told us today that Sammy's head is down, which is good news.  Yay!  We have appointments every week now, hopefully only a few more!

Happy Mother's Day!

To all you moms out there, I hope you feel special and celebrated this Mother's Day.  I am excited to join your ranks in 5 short weeks!

The semester finally ended.  My neighbors and I threw a end of school/Cinco de Mayo BBQ out in the court.  It was fantastic to just hang out and not worry about going in to do homework!  Everyone brought food to share, and we played Catch Phrase until it got too dark.

Kristie tries her hot dog "Brazilian style" with crazy ridiculous toppings.  According to all my friends who served missions in Brazil, hot dogs taste great with mashed potatoes, peas, crispy onions, you name it!  I stuck to an onion burger.Terina with her amazing pavlova dessert.  It was quickly devoured.The crew, moving tables. Me and Jessica in our fancy cooking aprons.  Terina's pavlova is on our plates, waiting to be scarfed down.

On Wednesday 3 of my classmates and I began our laboratory rotation at ARUP Labs.  We will be there until May 26th, hanging out in different labs and practicing making a diagnosis from various lab tests.  I am learning a lot, and cementing a lot of the conditions we went over in our Biochemical Genetics class (because we've been in the Biochem lab the past 3 days).  I enjoy it, but it is definitely tiring.  We're there from about 9am-4pm every day.  There is free hot chocolate and water with the fancy ice, so that makes up for the long hours.

Ryan and I went to a breastfeeding class on Thursday.  He is being a good sport about going to childbirth classes with me, which I really appreciate.  Today we went to an all day childbirth prep class where we learned about labor and delivery.  We had to watch a video of a woman giving birth.  I was really freaked out, to be honest.  It was not pretty.  If I wasn't already pregnant, it would put me off having children.  By the end of the class I felt better, and I'm excited to use the relaxation techniques we learned.  Ryan is a great support, and as long as little Sammy doesn't arrive early, my mum will be there too.  I'll be in good hands.  I freak out about this every week, but he's almost here!  Holy cow! 

My dad's birthday is tomorrow.  Happy Birthday Dad!  See you soon!