Maternity pictures

Spencer and I got maternity pictures taken a few weeks ago. Here are my favorites from the shoot!

34 Weeks

According to babycenter.com my baby is the size of a cantaloupe, I feel like he's the size of a basketball! I look and feel huge!

I am 33 weeks and 6 days in this picture.

2010

Spencer and I had quite the exciting year! Spencer turned 25 in April and I turned 24 in June. The year started out with me in my last semester of nursing school. I had a busy last semester, but it ended (finally!) in early May. We had a great time at my graduation, the nursing ceremony lasted a little over an hour and then we went to dinner at Squatters with some family and friends. After graduation, I took the NCLEX (nursing licensure exam) on June 16th and I passed! I finally became a Registered Nurse! It was definitely one of my proudest moments. :) It took a while for me to find a job as a nurse though. I started out as a flu shot nurse, I gave flu shots in local grocery stores. This lasted for about a month and a half until I got a job at South Davis Community Hospital. It's a tough job and not where I thought I would start my nursing career, but I am getting a lot of experience so I am grateful to be working there.

I am also proud to say that Spencer has been working at Marketstar for over 5 years now! There aren't many people our age that can say they have been working in their chosen career for 5 years when they are only 25. Go Spencer! <3

Here we are at my graduation.

On June 26, 2010, we officially became Mr and Mrs Smith!! We got married at 2 PM at the Union Station in Ogden. It was the perfect day, I wouldn't change anything about it! I am SO happy to be married to the love of my life!

The morning after our wedding we left for our honeymoon. We went to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for a week. We had a great time! It was so much fun to be in another country with just the two of us. We stayed in an all-inclusive resort, went on a tequilla tour, went into town a few times, went to the local zoo and held baby tigers and lions, ate at a few local restaurants and enjoyed eachothers company on the beach.

Here is a picture of us in Puerto Vallarta

In early October, we went to California with Spencer's family. We stayed with their cousins in Santa Rosa and went on a few wine tasting tours, went to the coast and saw some whales and ate at some tasty restaurants. It wasn't very warm, but it was a lot of fun and a nice weekend getaway.

In August, the Smiths and the Jones headed down to Las Vegas for the weekend. The real reason we went there was so that Lindsay and I could see Lady GaGa in Concert!! The concert was amazing! I am so glad that we went. Walking around Las Vegas was fun too, but REALLY hot! We did some shopping, saw some of the shows and ate at the Cheesecake Factory.

Waiting for the show to start in our matching Lady GaGa shirts!!

Now for the BIG announcement of 2010...Spencer and I announced that we are having a baby BOY in February! We are going to name him Dominic and we are so excited to meet him in less than 2 months!

32 weeks and 3 days

That pretty much sums up 2010 for Spencer and I, it was a GREAT year. I am sure that 2011 will be even better once our little Dominic is here :)

Christmas

We had a great Christmas this year. It started with our annual Friend Christmas party at Lindsay and Tyler's house. We had dinner, watched Elf and made gingerbread houses. We had a great time! Then we had a Christmas party with each of our families. I had to work on Christmas day this year so our day was a little rushed. We had to visit with everyone that we could by 2 PM so that I could get to work on time. Work actually wasn't that bad, it was just a normal day at work. Although, I was a little disappointed that there wasn't any dinner or dessert provided for the staff. I thought that the administration would show some sort of appreciation for the staff for working on Christmas! That was pretty lame. I'm not sure why, but I didn't end up taking any pictures this year. The only pictures were of Presley's cute Mrs. Claus outfit! She looked adorable :)

One thing that bummed me out is that when I was looking through pictures that other people took of me over the holiday, I noticed that my face is getting wider!! Ugh. I knew it would happen when I got into the third trimester, but I hadn't noticed it until I saw pictures of myself. I'm also bummed that my belly button has become an outie, which I'm super self conscious about, and people keep pointing it out! Who does that? I'm not sure why, but that was one pregnancy thing that I was dreading. lol I hate that you can see my belly button through all of my clothes, even my scrubs! Also, my stomach is getting so big that I can't wear certain scrubs anymore. I never thought that would happen. Hopefully I don't have to buy new ones :(

Pregnancy update:

I am now 31 weeks and 6 days pregnant, I have about 56 days or 8 weeks to go! It freaks me out to see Valentines decorations at the store because that means my baby will be here soon! I can't believe it! The discomforts of pregnancy have definitely set in, my ribs hurt sooo bad!! I wish they would just separate already! I have a hard time bending down, getting up from a sitting or laying position, I have to pee a lot, I get frequent heartburn, I get the occassional painful kick and I hate that I can't find comfortable pants. Maternity pants don't fit me, so I'm pretty much stuck wearing prepregnancy jeans with a rubber band. And yes, I do feel like I'm getting to the complainy stage of pregnancy. lol  

Even though I complain about all the discomforts of pregnancy, I am still super excited to meet my little Dominic. There are times I wish that he would just come already, but I really don't want him to be too early and have to stay in the NICU for any amount of time. So I try to not be selfish and think like that. But if he wants to come around 37-38 weeks, that would be ok with me ;)

Here is the most recent pic of my belly, I'm 30 weeks and 3 days in this picture.

What we've been up to!

We've been keeping ourselves pretty busy lately. We've been adding personal touches to our family room to make it more 'us', we finally printed out and framed some pictures from our wedding and hung them up. We also bought a Love Sac and Sactional couch from Love Sac, which we've been eyeing for quite some time now! We love them!

We've also been turning our downstairs bedroom into the nursery, the walls and doorframes were pretty beat up, we need new closet doors and we need to paint and it needs carpet. My dad volunteered to help us turn it into the perfect nursery! So far we have replaced a door frame, changed the light fixture, and patched up holes on the walls. It looks a ton better already! Here is a before picture

Then yesterday Spencer and I started washing the walls and painted the lower half of the room blue! The nursery is going to have a whale and boat theme :) So cute!

Here is Spencer taping the walls

Here he is painting the first coat! I can't wait til the room is all done and hopefully it will be finished later this month or early January.

In November, Spencer and I went on our 'babymoon'. Which is just a final getaway before the baby comes. We spent the whole weekend together, first we went up to his family's cabin at Bear Lake, where we got snowed in, then we stayed at the Alaskan Inn. The Alaskan Inn is like theAnniversary Inn where their rooms are different themes, but here the rooms are wilderness themed. We stayed in the Kenai Lodge, which was a moose theme. Here is a picture of our cute little cabin we stayed in!

Here is Spencer inside the cabin, we got Mcgrath's Fish House for dinner and ate it at the cabin. It was a nice, relaxing little getaway.

We are now 28 and a half weeks pregnant! In this picture I'm 27 weeks and 6 days. The pregnancy is still going well, I am definitely getting more uncomfortable these days though. I mostly have a lot of rib pain, my ribs just aren't wide enough for this! I also pulled a muscle just below my ribs recently when I was stretching for something :( So no more far reaching for me! Since the third trimester started I have definitely been going to the bathroom more frequently too. It's like you're sitting around and you're fine, then BAM you have to pee right now! lol There's no holding it. I've also been really tired, the fatigue went away for the most part in the second trimester, but it's definitely back now. I even told my work that I can't work 12 hour shifts anymore, only 8 hour shifts. The long shifts just completely wipe me out!

So last week, little Dominic decided to play a trick on me. I started freaking out because I hadn't felt him move much in the last few days and then one day I didn't feel him at all. So I called and made an appointment with my midwife to get it checked out. Then when I was sitting in the waiting room I was looking at my stomach and it started moving! He decided to start being active as soon as we get to the doctors office lol So we had an ultrasound, and he was fine. And ever since the appointment he has been super active. I just have a hard time feeling him move because I have an anterior placenta (the placenta lines the front of my uterus), which cushions most of his movements so that I don't feel anything unless it's on my sides. It's very frustrating.

November Crafts!

I've had some of my hours dropped at work, so I've had some free time lately. I've been getting pretty bored so I decided to work on some crafts.

I got the idea for this first craft from a craft blog that I follow, it was originally done with trucks and cars as the picture. But since my little boy's room is going to have boats and whales in it, I decided to do a whale picture. I wasn't sure how well it would turn out so I only did one. I think it turned out really cute, so I'm gonna do a second one now. For the second one, I'm gonna do the background blue and paint the whale (a different whale stencil) either white or green! So much fun!

I got this second craft idea from my mom. She used to make beautiful and elaborate wreaths. I always loved them, so I decided to try it out for myself! I tried to make this one a Thanksgiving themed wreath. I think it turned out pretty good! I didn't have as much fun making the wreath as I did the whale picture though, so I'll probably stick to projects like the first one. But it was still fun to do something that my mom used to love doing. It's nice to do something that reminds me of her. :)

October

Well October has been a busy month for Spencer and I. Spencer is busy as usual at work, he ends up working late several nights a week and goes in early too. I understand that he's busy, but I get really lonely when he's gone all day. I also got a new job! I am working at South Davis Community Hospital. The job is pretty intense and I only got 6 days of orientation (most hospitals offer 4-6 WEEKS of orientation). So I feel like I got a little jipped. My first day working alone was pretty bad, I had 12 patients and it took me about 3 hours to pass their 8 AM meds! And that was with the help of 2 other nurses towards the end. I have worked 2 more shifts since then and I have my 8 AM med pass down to about 2 hours and 15 minutes, that is an improvement! It's kinda funny because Spencer and I had decided that I would only look for a job until October, and if I didn't find one I would just start applying for jobs after the baby was born. So I ended up getting hired on September 28th lol. I was a little bummed to get a job, but it's nice to have 2 incomes. The worst part is that my maternity leave will only be about 6 weeks since I haven't worked there for 12 months and FMLA kicks in after 12 months of working.  But I am still happy to finally be working as an RN!

Spencer and I have also started our hypnobirthing classes, we have class once a week for two and a half hours for five weeks. The class is fine, we have gone over different breathing and relaxation techniques to prepare me for labor. The only problem is the instructor, she is very opinionated and I don't fully agree with her opinions. She talks bad about doctors and nurses on the labor and delivery floors. I brought up once that I was a little offended about her putting down nurses, since I am a nurse, and she got all defensive! I just don't think it's appropriate to talk badly about the nurses that are trained and qualified to deliver babies, when she isn't a medical professional. Oh well there are only 2 more classes. 

I am now 22 weeks pregnant and showing! I still can't believe that I am 5 and half months pregnant and in a few short months I will have a baby! It's really exciting :)
Here is the most recent picture of my belly, it was taken at 21 weeks and 5 days.

Here is a picture and me and Spencer in our Halloween costumes. I am a 'bun in the oven' and Spencer is a chef! Spencer made my oven all by himself, I love it!