It's a girl!!!!!

So I'm a really bad blogger, but with all the last-minute Christmas preparations we've been really busy. I didn't even get Christmas cards out, but maybe I'll get some New Years ones sent. Anyway, on Friday the 19th we finally went for our big ultrasound. The biggest news: we're having a GIRL!!!

We are so excited! Everything looked perfect, and we are so grateful that everything has been going so well. Our little girl weighed 11 ounces and measured at 19 weeks, 6 days (I was exactly 19 weeks on the u/s day) so things are coming right along. I was just thinking about our little picture we got of our embryos, and how strange it is that just 4 months ago, our baby was a microscopic little thing, and now she is a little human being, complete with arms and legs and everything else. How nice it is to finally be able to refer to our baby as a "she" instead of an "it". Now the big debate will begin between Jeff and I for baby names.....

BCS Busters II

Well, you all know the 2008 Holy War ended up in the Utes favor, and we couldn't be any happier! We had a great time at the game, witnessing another undefeated season for the second time. We are so excited to be going to another BCS bowl game, and that it is going to be somewhere warm in January!

I'm 30 and still alive!

Ok, so after dreading my 30th birthday for so long, it turned out to be fantastic! I have the best husband in the world, who made it so special for me. For the weekend, Jeff reserved the presidential suite at Johnson's Mill, a bed and breakfast in Midway. The grounds there were so beautiful and everything was so nice! My family all stayed the weekend there too. We had so much fun just hanging out together. I loved it so much. On Saturday, Jeff's family also came up, and all of us crammed into our suite to watch the Utes destroy SDSU. On Sunday, my actual birthday, we sadly all parted ways and Jeff and I went home and took a nice birthday nap, and then we got a very relaxing couples massage and ate at my favorite Chinese restaurant. On top of all that Jeff did, he also got me some really nice maternity jeans, which I needed, but yikes! I am in this awkward stage right now where most of my jeans are kind of uncomfortable, but then I feel like the maternity ones are a bit too much. This is definitely unfamiliar territory for me. Anyway though, thanks Jeff for making my 30th a memorable one! I had a great time! And a quick baby update: I had an appointment today, everything looks great. The big news is that I got to schedule my ultrasound to find out the sex! Woo hoo! It's not til December 19th, and I think I might die in anticipation! But at least it's scheduled.

November fun

I have officially entered into the 2nd trimester! Can you believe it? I can't believe I have made it a third of the way. Yet May still seems wayyyyyyy far away. The good days are becoming more frequent now, although I still have the occasional bouts of emesis. The newest and funnest thing that I have discovered is our Sonosite at work. It is an ultrasound machine, really meant for finding blood vessels for central line placement, so the picture quality isn't the best, but it still gets a fair amount of use from pregnant nurses. Here I thought my baby would be too small to see, but last week we decided to give it a go, and there was my little bean! It looked like a real human being, complete with a head, arms, legs, and I think I could even make out tiny little fingers! It was so amazing! Obviously from the first ultrasound I had at the doctor's office (which you can see in my posting below), you can't make out anything, so this was my first real look at a miniature person. I called Jeff and he came in at the end of my shift. It was so funny, he and I ultrasounding my belly with a handful of nurses I work with. It was so cute to see how excited he got....he called his parents and his sisters right there. We sat there and watched the baby bounce around and stretch for a long time, and I am so amazed that I can't even feel any of it. I know it will be soon enough that I will be wishing for it to stop kicking me in the ribs. But I still can't wait! Now it's so tempting to take a peek every time I work, but I've got to practice some restraint. We won't find out the sex until my December appointment, which should be the week before Christmas. It won't come soon enough, because I am itching to buy stuff!

The other fun event in our lives this past week was the U's victory over TCU! What a great ending to an otherwise frustrating game. I am so excited for our last home game, the big rivalry! And I don't want to hear any trash talking either! Jeff and I were looking on stubhub.com to see how much seats near ours were going for, and they were $950 apiece! Holy crap! We could pay for our season tickets, with a little extra to spare. But would we? Not on your life. We are going to a BCS bowl! And we wouldn't miss it for the world!

2nd appointment

It's time to update the blog again. It's sad...now that I have to think of material for an update, I realize how boring my life is these days, thus the long lapse! Besides work, my days basically consist of laying on the couch. My life is still being run by 24-7 nausea and fatigue, so unless you want to know how many times a day I've been throwing up, you'll have to settle for few updates. I'm really counting on feeling better in the 2nd trimester, since according to everyone that's when you feel awesome. I'm going to be really upset at you all if you've been lying to me.

Anyway, I am nearing 11 weeks, and my due date is May 15 (I forgot to mention that in the 1st post). Also, we will be delivering at St. Mark's. Today we had our 2nd appointment with Dr. Watts, who by the way, is the best OB in the world---I love him to death. After last time, I really wish we could have an ultrasound with every appointment, but we did get to hear the heartbeat with the Doppler, and there it was at 165 bpm. Jeff laughed at me when I said, "It's still in there!" but besides feeling like crap all of the time, how do I know? I mean, of course I know it's still there, but until I can feel it move and I start looking like a house, it still doesn't seem real. Thank goodness for the Sonosite at work....it really is meant for finding veins for central lines, but all the preggo nurses use it for the occasional free ultrasound! I can't wait til the little bean is a little bigger so I can use it too!

I guess that's it for now. Oh yeah, one other highlight of my life....the Utes are still undefeated! And not BYU! I can't wait for the game vs. TCU on 11/2! Go Utes!!!

In August, we did our first round of IVF. What a long and arduous process! Everything went very well for us and we transferred 2 very good embryos on August 26. On September 7, we went in for my blood draw to see if we were pregnant, and then we waited the LONGEST 4 hours of our lives until the nurse called and said, "Congratulations!" I just started bawling, I couldn't believe it! Jeff thought I was nuts.

Today we had our much anticipated first ultrasound and we were pretty nervous about the chance of twins and of course hoping that everything is going ok. I think we were both relieved and maybe just a bit disappointed that we saw one precious little baby instead of two. (I wondered if it was LeBron James or Deron Williams, as Jeff named our 2 embryos.) We both immediately noticed it's little heart beating away and it was the most amazing thing! Then, just as I was asking my doctor when we would be able to hear the heartbeat, he turned on the volume and there it was, loud and clear! It was the most beautiful thing I have ever heard. It just makes this all seem so much more real. There really is a tiny little life living and growing inside of me! I am so grateful that we finally have this opportunity to have a baby of our own, to start a family together. It has been a long, and often heartaching road, but during these 6-1/2 years, we have both learned so much and have had so many opportunities to do things that we wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. My heart has never been so full and happy for the miracle that we have received and I am so grateful to so many of you, our dear friends and family, that have been giving so much support, praying for us and cheering us along throughout this process.

Our first post!

Well, here we are on blogspot...we succumbed to the pressure and joined the bandwagon. I decided to make our first official post pictures from our most recent trip to Spain and Morocco since I hadn't posted them yet on our other (soon to be former) site. To give you a quick summary of our trip, we flew into Barcelona in July, where we had 2 full days before we rode a night train down to the southernmost tip of Spain. From there we rode a ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar into Tangier, Morocco. We then jumped on a train to Fes, where we finally arrived at 3am. We spent time wandering the narrow streets of this medieval city, taking in the sights and sounds of the markets and vendors, and drinking mint tea with some locals. After a few days we rented a car and drove south for about 8 hours to the Sahara desert. Luckily we got there at around 5pm, because at mid-day the temp had reached over 120 degrees. It was still hot enough for us though, and we left at 6:30 for a 2-hour camel trek into the desert, led by a couple Berber guides. We got caught in a sandstorm that was something like in the movies The Mummy or Hidalgo. It was pretty intense for a while, but definitely a unique experience. We ate a delicious dinner prepared by our guides, and spent the evening hanging out with some fun people from Spain that made up the rest of our little group. We spent a toasty night in a tent and returned back to the main hotel in the morning. It was definitely our favorite part of the trip. We then drove to Ait Benhaddou, one of the biggest and most famous kasbahs in Morocco (many movies have been shot there, including Gladiator and the Mummy), and stayed in a hotel near there. The next day we drove to Marrakech, which we liked but it was SO touristy. I ended up getting sick there so we didn't do a lot. From there, we rode a train to Casablanca, where we spent the night to catch our flight in the morning. We did eat dinner at Rick's Cafe (mostly for our parents sake), and were relieved that not once did we hear "Here's looking at you, kid" or "Play it again, Sam." We were sure that all of the tourists eating there would be quoting the movie non-stop, but it actually was a pretty nice place. We flew from Casablanca to Paris, where again we had most of the day and a night layover, but by then we were too tired to do much at all.