California!!! Oh, I missed you...

Eldon and I are visiting my parents for a week before school starts, and it's been so fun! I hadn't realized how stressed I'd been until I felt the weight of new job, pregnant-sickness, moving, and everything else lift from my shoulders when I woke up on Monday morning in my old bed, with sunshine tickling my face like the old days. Our vacation has been a life-saver for me.

On Sunday we started our 11.5-hour drive from Provo to Concord, and we saw the funniest sign I'd ever seen. Only in Utah would you see a "Yield to Pedestrians" sign changed to "Yield to Satan". :) What made it especially funny in a guilt-inducing kind of way is that we saw it during our Sabbath Day visit to the Burger King drive thru ... Yes, it was there as we were appeasing our burger-craving appetite of the flesh. A little ironic, don't you think? My goodness. But in our defense, we had to travel that day, and we hadn't been able to pack food for the trip due to all the wedding preparation, and we had to eat at some point. Hmm.

Yesterday we went to San Francisco and I loved showing Eldon some of my favorite places. We went to Muir Woods, Pier 39, Lombard Street, Amici's (our family's favorite Italian restaurant), and everywhere in between. It was a long day of walking and sun exposure, but we loved it. Here are the pictures!

Muir Woods: Eldon never did find the walking stick he was hoping for. :)

All of us that day: Note the large and spacious pregnant shirt...It will fit me until we meet our baby, I think. :) But I love it. I'd thrown up just an hour before these pictures were taken, off the side of the road actually, so forgive my colorless face.

The Golden Gate: Eldon was surprised by how windy it really was.

My hair kept tickling him due to the wind factor. :) What a DARLING man I married!

Oh, my father: We left my dad in the restaurant to pay the check and we were going to bring the car around. But apparently it went more quickly than we'd all anticipated because he wasn't very far behind us. But only he knew that. My mom was trying to unlock the car and it wasn't working. Weird, right? She has a history of being silly, and we (in all our charity) thought it was an operator error. But little did we know that Dad was hiding behind the stairwell, locking the car with his clicker every time she UNlocked it with hers. All of a sudden she whirled around and yelled, "DAD's doing this!!" as realization struck her - much more quickly than it struck any of us - what was REALLY happening. Dad was so pleased with himself. :) Note his face, red from laughing.

Pier 39: We loved walking up and down, eating mini donuts and watching all the people. There are some CRAZY people on the pier. Eldon kept stalking all the Italian speakers he'd hear. :) It was so funny. I tried to talk to one in Muir Woods, but it didn't go over well. I don't think the lady enjoyed being less anonymous that she'd thought she was. Eldon also enjoyed watching the sea lions play "King of the Hill" on the docks. I loved watching him be so happily amused. That was my favorite part of the whole day.

We had a major fly infestation in our house when we got back ... We're not sure why. My mom didn't even know where the fly-swatter WAS because we never use it. Turns out it was still in the packaging in the garage. :) But Eldon was our hunter and is certain he killed over 20 of them. We haven't had any more after that, so maybe we left the door open for a little bit while we packed the car to go. Who knows? Anyway, he was our hero for the day. Even if one of the ones he snagged flew and landed on my hand. Gross!!

Anyway, it's been a good two days and we're only anticipating more fun. Going home is so therapeutic. My poor mom is dying that soon she will have an "empty nest" because Shauna only has a year left at home. But I told her that she should know she did a good job because we all love to come back so much. I wake up (without an alarm clock) at 6:30am every morning, but I don't go back to bed just so I can have more waking hours here. If our kids can love coming back home as much as Eldon and I love coming back to ours I'll know we did something right.

Woah...

Did you just see our baby get bigger? My goodness, I looked away for two days!

I'm changing jobs, we're moving in a few days (in every sense of that phrase), I'm still sick all the time, Eldon just decided to do another year at BYU taking graduate-level course work before graduating and taking the MCAT (now our plan is radiology), we have tons of stuff in our house we don't need, I'm sitting on the couch eating ramen noodles and orange juice because NOTHING else sounds good to me, I just turned off the AC and now I'm getting hot again, I look like trash because these days unless I take pains to make a decided effort to look cute I don't, and I didn't, something in our house smells like mold, actually everything smells bad to me these days, one of my toenails doesn't have two coats of polish for some reason and because it's lighter than the others it drives me crazy, I sliced my thumb open this morning washing the cheese slicer (because we don't have a dishwasher), we had names picked out but Eldon doesn't want to name our first daughter Isabelle anymore because of the stupid Twilight books (he thinks everyone will think we named her after THAT Bella), my favorite shirt needs to be ironed before I can wear it so I'm never going to wear it, I bit into a tomato this afternoon and found HALF of a strange rotten something-or-other and almost threw up while spitting out the bite I'd taken, my books from Amazon came for a class I don't think I should take, I haven't cooked for Eldon in 5 days and the guilt is mounting too quickly to stop my tears, I tried to play the piano the other night and I realized I'd lost my talent, Eldon works every Saturday at the pharmacy (which he hates) from 9am to 7pm, so I don't get to see him unless I go stand in line with the sickies and wait my turn, I found two more library books I forgot to take back this morning with all the others, I fell down some stairs onto concrete the other night and shredded my legs and now that the scabs are healing they ITCH like nothing else but I can't scratch them, I need to continue packing and organizing our apartment (while Eldon is working, you'll recall) and yet I'm writing this blog, but you know what ... life is still good. :) Really good! Isn't that funny?

Stephanie Meyer

Oh. My. Gosh. I'm sure Stephanie is a wonderful person. She lives with her husband and three sons in the glorious state of Arizona, as do several other admirable people I know. I read her first two books and while I was unimpressed with her style (understatement of the month) I appreciated the originality of her plot line. Girl falls in love with vampire could work, but I think she should have sold her idea to another author and had THEM write the books. I laughed with a few co-workers about these books (that we still ALL read!) and someone shared this link with me, and I had to include it here. In Meyer's defense, I doubt she thinks she's great. I bet she and her husband laugh at their success, shocked that her books, and the millions of silly girls who buy them (with whom I do not classify myself, though I do read them), have made them so much money. As an aspiring writer myself it's almost offensive. :) Whatever.

We should all just read this blog: http://otahyoni.livejournal.com/130432.html

I laughed out loud, over and over, at work while I read this. It's just so...true. Enjoy! :)

P.S. Look, even our baby is bobbing in agitation!

We're going to have a baby!

Eldon and I have been so quietly happy and excited about our new little one for the last 11 weeks ... Well, not every moment has been blissful, but not even the misery can drown the joy. :) I have such empathy for all the pregnant women before me ... my goodness. It's certainly a challenge. It's hard for Eldon too, bless his heart, because he doesn't like to see me white as a sheet and groaning with sickness and pain. I think his role is harder, in fact, because he has to just watch me suffer. Poor thing. I sure appreciate him.

But now that our first trimester is winding down I do feel much better. I sleep through the night sometimes now, and I don't feel nauseous every minute of every day. Some women have morning sickness, but for some reason I was blessed with all-the-time sickness. :) But it doesn't look like the whole nine months will be this way, so I'm grateful for that.

Sometimes it makes me wonder that the world can go on looking the same, and being the same, when our lives are so changed by our baby. I care about the world more, because it is going to be our child's home, and I worry about how dark and fearsome it's becoming. I care about politics, and air pollution, and all sorts of things I didn't care about before. Mostly I care about Eldon and me, our spiritual growth and our capacity to love and nurture Heavenly Father's child. We talk about names and traditions, parenting styles and ideals, and we talk about us. I think we're growing a lot of faith that our relationship can be a kind of haven for this little one, and we've never been closer or happier.

I'm crying now, which is just so funny to me. I've always been a crier but I've become even more emotional these days, crying at little things and bigger things with the same insistent tears. :) But I cry when I'm happy too, and as scared as I was to lose this baby, my hope wins more often these days, and I cry with joy that in 6 1/2 months I'm going to hold this baby I already love so much in my arms. But only for a minute before I hand our baby to Eldon, when the child we prayed to have is finally here...

P.S. Sometimes it makes me nervous how fast that little baby picture to the right turns around in the womb. It makes me panic a little, which I know is unreasonable but I can't help it. It's like I want to put a hand over my stomach and say, "Woah, slow down there, kiddo." That can't be healthy. I mean for the baby ... to twirl around like that ... unsupervised. :)

Shelli tagged me...

Three Joys

1. Getting As.
2. Finishing classes.
3. Shelli.

Three Fears

1. Getting A- s.
2. Living past 55.
3. Needles.

Three Goals

1. Get straight As.
2. Find a career I enjoy.
3. Be exalted.

Three Obsessions

1. Getting As.
2. Food.
3. Finding a career.

Three Surprising Facts

1. I have a scar on my right foot.
2. I knew I was going bald at 15. People think I'm 30...3.
3. I'm going to be a daddy on approximately March 1st.

Good Things in Threes

3 Joys

1. Eldon. He is honestly like a soothing balm when my heart is struggling. I love the way he gets excited about things I’ve never even considered caring about (like liquid nitrogen and throwing rocks). I love the way he comes up behind me when I’m doing dishes and plays with my hair or rubs my back. I love that it doesn’t tickle me when he rubs my feet. I love how happy it makes him to come home to a hot meal and a hug. I love how his gentle voice calms mine and we don’t fight. I love watching him walk, and study, and play with his nieces and nephews. I love the joy I can feel because of how completely I trust him.
2. Reading a really great book I can lose myself in.
3. Making goals and then accomplishing them!

3 Fears

1. Losing my husband. I’ve been having awful nightmares of being a young widow and it’s just devastating.
2. Sin.
3. Being unhealthy. Not taking care of my body and having trouble when I’m old. I want to be able to romp around with our grandbabies!

3 Goals

1. Raise children who love the Lord.
2. Write children’s books!
3. Be able to summarize every chapter of the triple combination (and possibly the New Testament).

3 Current Obsessions

1. Learning about vitamins and health.
2. Learning to budget.
3. Studying women of the Bible.

3 Random Surprising Facts

1. I have terribly ugly calluses on my toes from my mission. All that walking (and running for buses) left me scarred.
2. I have irregular tooth enamel, and as a consequence my brackets would never stick to my teeth when I had braces. So I had to have bands cemented around LITERALLY every single tooth. I was the epitome of a metal mouth. Not cute.
3. I always wanted to have cats when I was a little girl. My mom is allergic so I never got one. I was 8 years old when I made the decision that when I was grown up I’d have three kittens named Faith, Hope, and Charity. Then I went on a mission and lost any inclination I ever possessed to own a feline. J Too many claustrophobic, I-can’t-breathe-anything-but-cat-smell moments.

I tag and Camilla and Eldon! :)