8 months and a baby shower

My awesome friend and neighbor, Jen was kind enough to throw a baby shower for little Bentley and I on June 11th. The whole thing was adorable, the invitations, the decorations, the games-it was a blast. I felt a bit embarrassed because people typically don't get a baby shower for their second child, but I was really grateful that everyone came and supported us so thank you so much to all of you!
The food was amazing! She made Bruschetta burgers which I had never tried before but am now a big fan of, homemade fries, red velvet whoopie pies which I had never tried before and also love and Kim brought cute fruit skewers. YUM!

A few people left before we took this picture, but here are most of the lovely ladies I am lucky enough to be friends with. Notice the cute paper lanterns, those have always been a favorite of mine.

And the 8 month pic. I have sleepy eyes and not the best hair day, but the picture was necessary. Pregnancy is such a short little part of life that I feel like it is better to take pictures even if I don't love how I look in them, cause it is super easy to forget. I count the forgetting part as a blessing though, pregnancy and I are not great friends. I do have to say that this is probably my favorite part of the pregnancy. I am close to the end, I feel pretty well and I can feel my little guy kicking all the time. I am sure next month I will have had enough though.

Abnormal

Sometimes life takes looking back to realize that your perspective although it was reality to you was not in fact reality.
I used to work with a lady in her late 50's, short, skinny and a totally different personality than me. We had our share of run-ins and of course none of them were my fault. She was the old ornery one not me. I am sweet and loving right?
Well I got pregnant about a month after I started working there and in the summer when I was around 7 months along I would come into the office and the temperature would be super hot (like 74 degrees). I would get SO irritated. Who keeps an office this hot? It was just ridiculous, plus we had a wall of windows that let all the hot sun in right at our backs. I would huff and puff and turn the air up a bit thinking to myself what a loon this lady was while giving her the stink eye for the first half hour of work.
The whole time I thought she was the crazy one and I could not see that I was actually the one in the wrong.
Now I am pregnant at almost the same time again. I share an office with a short, super skinny lady in her late 30's who is ALWAYS cold. Bad luck. Seriously, I think that about 50% of women who have to work at a cubicle for 8 hours a day are.... plump. Why couldn't I share an office with one of them? We could run our fans and keep this office at 60 degrees and love life but no I got another skinny, cold one.
Luckily I have come to the realization that not everyone is as boiling hot as I am. Pregnancy makes you feel about 10 degrees warmer. I was the crazy pregnant lady with the raging hormones who tortured that poor lady not the other way around. I can't even imagine what she went home and told her husband about me. Well, not this time. This time I will be turning on a fan by my feet in hopes that my legs don't explode from edema, but I realize that I am the abnormal one, not everyone around me.

(On a happy note, the good news is that lady and I ended up on pretty good terms. I had a baby and cooled down and we were both able to work through our differences and enjoyed working with eachother. Luckily that poor lady made it though my life lesson and didn't have a heart attack from stress)

7 Months

I have hit the 7 month mark and I am feeling good. This pregnancy has been such a blessing but has also brought a mix of emotions. I am realizing that Jayda will no longer be our little baby, this new little boy will require a lot more attention and holding. Will I neglect Jayda because I need to pay special attention to a newborn?
It also makes me realize that Jayda is getting close to being out of the baby stage where she cuddles and needs me and I can carry her around. I'm afraid having a newborn around will only speed up the process of her growing up. I am excited to have our little boy join our family but also sad because I know I will never get this part of my life back. It will never just be the three of us again. It's bitter-sweet.

Below are evidences of our little baby growing up:

Not quite the same..... She had a little princess party with her cousins and her friend JoJo. She got this outfit for her first birthday and I thought she would NEVER fit into it.

She is learning how to take off her clothes and also put them on.

I guess there is still hope. This kid never grew up :)

Easter Happenings

Bryce and I were excited for Easter this year so we decided to make it festive. We took Jayda to another Easter egg hunt in Farmington. Since Jayda had her warm up the week before we thought she might understand a little better this time.

Here we are waiting to be set free! She was confused as to why there were so many eggs laying there in front of her and she couldn't go out and get them.
Once they let the kids go she had a nice little area all to herself and went to work. She definitely remembered what she was supposed to do!

After about 1 minute she decided it was easier to sit down and grab the eggs. But soon the other little kids had cleared the rest of the eggs out and were coming for hers. This little boy came over and grabbed one that was right by Jayda and his mom was being so nice saying "no, let that little girl have it". As she is saying this Jayda stands up and grabs an egg out of his basket! I guess she can take care of herself. I made her put it back, especially since the poor kid only had about 3 eggs and Jayda's basket was full.

She was exhausted even before we started the hunt so we took her home afterwards for a nap. Unfortunately Daddy gave her a little too much candy and the sugar high hit her. This is our little mischief maker when we went back in to get her.

On Easter morning I was the one who woke Jayda up. I was excited to give her basket to her. We went downstairs and let her find her pig. She got books, coloring books, chapstick, stickers, a new dress and Bambi. My mom also got her this GORGEOUS picture of the Savior which is in her room. I am going to post pictures of her room once we get everything all situated.

After church on Sunday we had spaghetti. I have never seen her shovel food in like this before so I had to get a picture.

We went up to Nanny and Papa's house to color eggs and then go down to Aunt Rachel's house for dinner and another Easter egg hunt. While Jayda took her nap the rest of us colored eggs but...

Every party has a pooper!

Not us!

I think a lot of the reason we kept this tradition alive was for Jason. He would not have been accepting of canceling the egg dying.

These were my beauties. I am not the artistic one in the family.

Here is Landon and Jayda at Rachel's house getting ready for her 3rd egg hunt.

Macie, Hunter and Jayda all lined up and ready to go.

One thing I like about our little Jayda is that she is very cautious. She walks slow in the grass and even on the sidewalk. She took her time walking around in the grass and made me hold her hand most of the time while the other kids ran around. She would stop and watch them and I think she was more interested in playing than in picking up the prizes on the lawn.

And this is me yesterday at 6 months. Bentley is moving around like crazy which I love. Sometimes I will be stressed out about things or angry and I will start getting little kicks all over the place that completely divert my attention.

Easter Egg Hunt

Dick's Market had a free Easter egg hunt on Saturday so we walked over to see how Jayda would like it. Holidays are so much more exciting now that we have her around. I feel like it is better than when I was experiencing it as a kid. This is before we left the house. She was just excited to be going on a walk and had no clue what she was getting into.

The Easter Bunny came out to say hi right before it started and she was going crazy trying to get to him, so we took her over so she could say hi. I love her look of excitement in this picture. There is no fear with this girl. Bryce and I give the credit for that to my brother Landon. He lives in our basement and he will sneak up the stairs and growl and try to scare her but she just thinks it's funny. It's hard to be afraid of big furry animals when you have grown up with one. ;)

They asked us to let the little kids go by themselves if they could walk so I let her go, but she wasn't quite getting the concept. She just walked around and looked at everything. Occasionally she would pick something up, look at it and then put it back down. Once I got in there to help her out she started to understand she needed to put the candy and eggs in her basket.

After the hunt they did pictures with the Easter Bunny. Once again we could barely keep her back while we waited in line. She was squirming to get down and kept saying "munny, munny". When it was her turn we put her down and she walked up to him with her arms outstretched and let him pick her right up. She loved him so much, she was touching his chin and gave him a kiss on the cheek. She would have hung out with the Easter Bunny all day if she could have.

After the hunt we went to Nanny and Papa's house to tell them about it and show them the pictures. All of us had been up late the night before so it was time for a nap shortly after that.

It was so nice to spend a Saturday as a family. I am grateful for these days when Bryce isn't working and we can make the most of it. After our naps we went to Shantaye and Mike's house for a BBQ and then to a movie. It wasn't a very productive day but I am actually happy for that.

And finally.... Part 4

I am now 5 1/2 months along. Here is a picture of me 2 weeks ago at 5 months. I have had people tell me that I don't look that far along but I have gained 15 pounds already and even though it has not gone to my belly it has definitely gone to my thighs, butt, arms and face. When I gain weight I expand from all angles! Ha! Just a few more months and we will have two kids. It's a bit of a weird concept right now, but we are looking forward to it.

Part 3

Last year for Father's day I bought Bryce plane tickets to Brazil. He has great memories from his mission and has always wanted to return. After almost a year of excitement we departed for our adventure. Layovers=cheaper plane tickets so we had about 3 each way. Our fist stop was Orlando which was great with us cause this is where we went on our honeymoon 4 years ago. Sadly, most of the fun Disney characters were gone, but good ol' goofy was still hangin out.

Second stop was Rio. We would have loved to get out and see the Christ Statue, one of the world wonders, but unfortunately did not have enough time.

When we arrived at the airport in Porto Alegre we grabbed our rental car and our google map directions and headed off to find our hotel....... A stressful hour and a half later we had found our way back to the airport and paid a cab so we could follow him to our hotel. Porto Alegre is a crazy city, with crazy people walking all over the place including in front of busses and cars, crazy drivers that will pull up in front of you when you are at a stop sign waiting to turn and crazy one-way, unmarked roads.

I knew other countries were different, but my little never-been-out-of-the-country, naive mind didn't quite understand how different things would be.

Below are pictures of our first hotel:

The windows did not shut fully so we slept with earplugs.

Pretty bathroom vanities are not the norm.

When you get into your room you have to line up a magnet in your key into this little box for your electricity to work. We learned the hard way one night that if the magnet is facing forward all of your lights and air will go off after a few minutes leaving you in pitch black silence.

Most hotels only offer double beds, but I was happy we found one that stated it had an "extra large double bed". They were actually bigger than our queen at home and pretty comfortable to sleep on.

This was the view from our hotel window.

On the streets below there was shop after shop after shop and thousands of people walking around. It was madness.

A few blocks away was a market in what they call the center. Each major city has a center which is basically what we call downtown.

Inside were meat, produce, spices, pastries, all sorts of food out for people to buy. On the outer edges there were what we would probably call fast-food type restaurants and then upstairs were the nicer restaurants. We ate at one of each.

Here is our little baby that we parked at the hotel for 3 days and did not dare use. We knew if we left the hotel we would never get back there.

For the second part of our trip we went up to Florianopolis to spend some time on the beach.

Here is a view of Porto Alegre from the airport.

Our hotel was right on the beach so on Sunday we went out and enjoyed the rays. We only stayed out for 2 hours because we didn't want to get fried on the first day, but apparently the Brazilian sun in much hotter than the American one because we should have only stayed out there for 30 minutes. (I know there is only one sun and I know that Brazil is closer to the equator, but we didn't know it would make such a huge difference)

One thing I loved doing with my dad when we would go to the beaches in California was dig for those little crabs that live in the sand. Bryce didn't know about these and there were thousands of them so he had a great time digging for them and watching them. He is my little 5 year old at heart and always will be. I love that about him. He will help keep me young and not so serious.

We loved our chalet. It had a full kitchen with a cute little breakfast nook that we would read in. We still had to sleep with earplugs but we felt much more relaxed here.

They have these gorgeous hibiscus flowers everywhere in all different colors. Love them!

The two meals that Bryce and I actually enjoyed were when we walked to the store and bought our own meat for a churrasco. Bryce was really excited about doing this because he used to eat churrasco all of the time on his mission. I think we have now been to every different Brazilian restaurant there is in Utah because he loves it. Luckily I am a meat lover too and thought it was fun.

Yes those are chicken hearts. They are a favorite of Bryce's and as sick as it is, I actually don't mind them if they are freshly cooked. I had one at Rodizios but it had been sitting there for a while and had become rubbery. Ehk!

We ate lots of pineapple on this trip. Their pineapple looks white, but it tastes just as sweet.

Overall the trip was great, there is too much to write, but it is a trip we will never forget. The Brazilian people are absolutely beautiful and the most heartwarming people I have ever met. I can see why Bryce wanted to go back.