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!

My Name is Inigo Montoya...

I have to be quick with this  blog post because we are going to see the new X-Men movie tonight!  It is the second half of our date from last night.  We went to dinner at Olive Garden, and then we were going to see the movie right after, but it was sold out.  So we're going tonight!

Monday night was our last "hurrah" with our friends Joe and Claire before they moved to New Jersey.  We had Family Home Evening with them down in Provo.  Hopefully they have made it to the East Coast by now... good luck, guys!  On Wednesday we bought some flowers to put in our "flowerboxes".  The flowerboxes are these old dresser drawers that someone left on the curb to throw away.  We snatched them up, and Ryan decorated them to look cool.  He's good at stuff like that.

I love my gardening gloves.  I don't know why.  I just do.

I took my first exam on Friday.  I think it went alright.  The next one is Monday.  Then I have 2 presentations and a bunch of papers to write for Tuesday, and then I am done!

We got a big present for the baby on Friday.  Grandma and Grandpa Lauver sent Sammy a Pack and Play!  We put it together yesterday, and then I practiced taking it down and stuffing it back in the bag.  

Isn't it cute?  I wish we had a baby to put in it RIGHT NOW!  No, just kidding.  You've got 6 more weeks of growing, little one.  Stay put until your Grandma Huelin gets to Utah, please.Ryan's favorite food: Root beer floats!  He is a pro at making them.  If you ever come by to visit, ask him for one.

Good Samaritan

This was our last full week of class.  Sooo close to being done!  Hooray!

I am going to take this blog opportunity to toot Ryan's horn a little (I'm his wife, so I can do that).  On Thursday, when we were driving home after work/school, we saw a car stopped in the lane opposite us with its hazard lights blinking.  Ryan decided to flip a U-turn at the light to go ask the driver if she needed help.  We pulled up behind her, and Ryan got out to talk to her.  They decided the car wasn't really going anywhere on its own.  The woman (and her young son, probably less than a year old) only needed to go across the street- they were so close to their destination!  Ryan tried to push their car over the median into the parking lot, but after many attempts had to concede defeat (he almost had it, though).  I wasn't allowed to help, what with the whole pregnancy thing going on.  Right as Ryan was about to give up and think of a new plan, a woman in an Army uniform came running across the street to help push.  As they started to push, a guy in a little red car pulled up onto the median, jumped out, and joined them at the back bumper.  They showed up just in time for the break in traffic, and were able to push the car over the median, across the street, and into the parking lot of the building where the woman had an appointment.  Hooray!  My husband is a hero :0)

Yesterday we had a visit from our friends Al, Lucy, and Sam.  They were in Utah for Ben and Joe's graduation, before they move away (sad for us).  It is always awesome to visit with friends.  After they left I spent an hour trying to download an Apple ][e emulator so I could play Oregon Trail on Ryan's computer.  I tried two emulators, couldn't get the right ROMs for one, then couldn't find the right version of the game for the other.  Another Google search turned up a site where I could play online without downloading anything!  All that clever work for nothing... and then I drowned crossing the Snake River when I finally got to play.  Sheesh.

The power was supposed to be off at Student Apartments from 9am-2pm today.  About 30 minutes ago it went out for about 2 minutes, but now it is back.  I don't know if it will happen again.  Ryan took his Praxis exam this morning.  We won't find out if he passed for another 4 weeks, so keep those fingers crossed.

Only 7 more weeks of pregnancy to go.  I am starting to get a little nervous.  It will be nice to go back to my normal size, because this belly is heavy.  Though I will miss being able to do this:

Ha ha ha.  I don't dare leave cups on my belly for long, because the baby likes to roll around when I sit down.  I had trouble getting back to sleep this morning after dropping Ryan off because he was so darn wiggly! (the baby, not Ryan)

Here is the latest belly picture.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man

As we were at home for the Easter holiday, I decided to actually cook a special dinner.  Elisa joined us for ham, funeral potatoes (with cornflakes on top, yum yum), asparagus, and pears.  We ate on our fancy china (last time we used it was for our 1-month anniversary).We had a great time hanging out all evening.  Elisa and I taught Ryan how to play Yahtzee.  Easter is my favorite holiday.

Yesterday we joined our apartment court for a barbeque.  Grilling is great, and I think we're going to have to take advantage of the fact that we can rent grills from the Maintenance office.  Yum yum.  We really enjoyed hanging out with everyone.  Brandon and Nate did a great job of running the grill, with plenty of help from Taneill and Nancy, of course!  Today we went geocaching.  We didn't find the cache, but the walk was great!  It was about a mile and a half round trip, which is great exercise for me.

I am 32 weeks pregnant, and the baby will be here in 55 days!  Wow!  I think the little guy is getting cramped in there, as he elbows me a lot when he's rolling around (at least, I think those pointy things are elbows).  School is out in a matter of weeks, and things are looking good for us.