Pillow Fort for One Please

This kid makes me laugh every day. He is always doing the craziest dance moves, doing yoga poses with me (including one legged dog), jabbering then laughing at himself, sitting on your head every chance he gets (he is laying on half my face as we speak) and running everywhere possible.  Tonight I changed his bum and was getting him ready for bed. When I went to put his jammies on he ran away. After a minute of realizing I haven't heard him running and jumping and wreaking havoc, I turn and look to see that he has barricaded himself in his very own pillow fort. Never a dull moment with Ryker B. 

Labor Day Camping Trip

Family traditions are the best! I've always had a special place in my heart for our Annual Jewkes Camping Trip. We basically sit around eating way too much all day, playing games and taking naps. It's so nice and relaxing to get out of the city hustle and away from the over-accessibility we have these days due to the constant technology overload. It was Zach (and Ryker's) first time ever attending the festivities. I think they're both fully converted to the trip! 

This Was All They Could Afford

About two months ago, I went to San Antonio for Payroll 201 and took the CPP exam at the end of the course. It was a stressful time and I studied pretty hard before. I went back to my hotel and studied after class each day, ventured the city a bit to take a break and grab some dinner, then back to the hotel to study some more. It all paid off because I passed. Only about half the class usually passes the test proctor said, so not too bad for my first try I suppose. 

Well, the other day I finally got my "award" in the mail at work for passing. Look at this prized possession! Nothing says, "Great job!!" like a tiny lapel pin. I mean, I'll totally wear this to church or something. Show it off wherever I can. Maybe have it framed. Who knows? The possibilities are endless! 

However, it did arrive with this too, so that made it feel good for a minute! 

I'm so grateful I work at such an awesome company that invests their resources into helping me be the best I can at my job. Definitely not the dream job I had in mind...I mean who really chooses Payroll? But it's been a great career thus far, so I may as well stick with it! Nashville in May, here I come! 

It's Bad to Have a Grandpa Named Derri When You Can't Eat Dairy

I don't recall the exact phrasing, but my younger cousin Cameron made a joke over Labor Day about Ryker not being able to eat dairy and that it was bad because his grandpa was Derri. Well, Ryker and I have had an eventful week. Between losing my employee over Thanksgiving weekend, full swing mink harvest, Christmas shopping and decorating, primary calling, etc., it has been a hectic time. At his wel baby checkup Monday, the doctor said we could start trying a few dairy products and to start with things like Goldfish Crackers, yogurt and cheese. Monday I gave Ryker a Colby Jack Cow Pal cheese. He seemed totally fine so I was really excited because cheese was his favorite snack before we cut dairy out for him. Tuesday I tried the same thing. He seemed fine again. But then disaster struck when he woke up screaming bloody mirder at midnight and would NOT stop. We finally gave him a bottle of rice milk and he stopped crying long enough to drink it. He settled down easier after the bottle and slept the rest of the night in our bed (that has never happened before). When I woke up in the morning, I nearly rolled on top of him not realizing he was there at first since he ever sleeps in our bed. Poor little guy. Guess we will try yogurt or crackers next and see if we have any better luck. I'm really nervous for his sake..and mine. Definitely don't enjoy the rude awakenings and the heartbreak of hearing your child scream nonstop in pain. 

Eating cheese agin for the first time. You can't tell here, but he still loved it. 

With the crazy times, Ryker and I haven't been getting home until at least 7. And Zach hasn't been getting home until 8-9. Ryker and I have been having our own little fun together. His speech is really lacking. He only really says mama and dada. He used to say dog but hasn't said it in months. And uh-oh hasn't been said since before he started saying dog. He does say a word that my parents say is "sit" but we hear something slightly different. This week we made a card for daddy telling him how much we loved him, listened to Christmas music and sang And danced, colored Christmas pictures, baked cheap sugar cookies with Christmas trees on them and have read about a zillion books. I have always read several books to Ryker. And he obliges by putting one away and getting another out. He adores books (YAY!!). We narrate everything we are doing and talk about things he points at or gets into. He has always been several months ahead in all the physical development, but he just doesn't feel like talking yet I guess (which I'm not complaining about because I love this stage and I can deny how fast he has grown if he isn't talking). I'm guessing that one day he will just decide to open his mouth and words will pour out. He comprehends everything we say to him. "Where's your nose? Eyes? Toes? Button?" "Put it back." "Do you need to go potty?" "Say please" (he does sign language please). "Are you hungry? Tired? Need a nap? Ready for bed?" "Let's brush our teeth." "Time to go." He has reactions for each and endless gibberish indicating he knows exactly what we are saying to him. But he is a stubborn boy and just won't make words. That's ok though because I enjoy "working on is speech" by letting him bring me book and after and he turns around and sits in my lap and points and "oohs" and "ahhhs" at every page. I'm going to miss this stage when it's over. Time is flying and I have no idea where it has gone. Please make it stop! 

Snowbird!

This big boy always has to walk out the door and down the stairs to the car by himself every day. He usually walks right to his door and teachers for the handle. But today he bolted out of the garage and into the snow and started dancing and playing in it. I am so thankful he loves being outdoors even when it's cold. He is one adventurous little dude! 

Utah State Fair 2015

Ryker has officially tackled the "Big Yellow Slide" for the first time. We took him to the fair last year but he was not even 3 months old at that time. He absolutely loved all the animals. He had to touch every single one he possibly could get to. We thought for sure he would love the carousel ride since he loves riding horses and his rocking horse but he hated it! I jumped on the horse with him so he would at least ride the horse and the guy totally stopped the ride and came up to me and said, "Ma'am, you can't ride." Apparently there is an age limit...but not a weight limit. Sticklers! 

Blessed

As usual, I have fallen severely behind in my blogging. It all started with pregnancy. I was so miserable I became a hermit and didn't really go many places or do many things worthy of blogging about. I do wish I would've been better about writing things we experienced and the emotions we felt during my pregnancy and hopefully I can play a little catch up and fill in some of the blanks. But for now I better pick up in the present. 

My precious little man is already almost 4 months old. That is 1/3 of the way to being one year old. I cannot believe it! I've been back to work for a month now and while I am entirely exhausted from all my duties as a wife and mother and just a darn good neighborly citizen, I do find it so incredibly enjoyable to pick my sweet baby up each evening and see him light up when he realizes I'm there. There's not really anything that compares to not seeing your baby all day and then seeing that adorable grin and hearing his infectious laugh. It melts my heart every time. Every. Time. 

I have so many things to be thankful for and feel so lucky with how fortunate I've been to have the husband I do and the little man I do. I wouldn't trade either of them for another man. 

Cabinet Facelift

When we bought our house, the cabinets in the bathrooms were pretty hammered.  My mom started sanding the guest bathroom for us with a hand sander when she came up to help us work on the house one day.  She only got the faux drawer done before she said it was taking too long.  Only more than a year after moving into our house, I finally finished the prep work and got it all ready to be stained.  I did the 3 coats of gel stain and since I have been all-too-tired to do much of anything, I asked Zach to do the first coat of poly for me.  The next night I came home and he had the next coat done too.  The next day, I came home to pack for our trip and put the bathroom back together before we left, and he surprised me by putting all the doors, drawers and hardware back together for me.  I think the much needed facelift turned out great.  Now, to get the time and energy to do the master!!

Before photos:

 

After photos:

Cat's Outta the Bag

We finally decided to tell our families.  I would have liked to wait longer, but my boss had been mentioning her vacation to Hawaii was in the works for August.  Well, baby is due at the end of July so...I didn't have much of a choice but to tell her as soon as we were out of the clear for miscarriage and had a chance to tell our families.

I had my first ultrasound and prenatal visit on January 15.  After I scheduled it, I told Zach when it was and that he was welcome but not required to come.  "Oh, I'll be there. Don't you worry!" I think he would have gone by himself three weeks earlier if he could have.  He measured me at 12 weeks 4 days and my best guess was 12 weeks 2 days, so we have been pretty close in our thinking all along (which was great news because if I was LESS than what I predicted, I think I might have died knowing I had extra suffering to endure than I had originally thought).

Now, I've never been one of those women that gets overly excited about every little thing or was so incredibly excited to even BE pregnant, but, there's actually not a lot that compares to the excitement of seeing your baby (or rather alien-like ball of static-TV fuzz) on the screen and hearing the heartbeat.  It makes it all a little more real.  Our baby was crazy.  S/he was doing 360 spins, hiccupping (which looked like jumping jacks), kicking, punching, etc.  We got 5 pictures of our little alien static ball and learned all about being pregnant. 

 

I also picked out my "fertility God" in Dr. Anderson's office that will be little guardian angel during the pregnancy.  She is carved of dark, almost-black wood and has some spikey hair added.  She's pretty awesome.

We celebrated by eating at Dalton's, our favorite place in Payson, and having our waitress take our picture with our ultrasound images. 

I had put together more than half of the video we were using to tell our parents/families we were pregnant shortly after we found out.  I finished up the rest after we got our ultrasound and got it all loaded to YouTube.  We made arrangements to meet my parents in Price for dinner on Saturday night.  After chatting at the table for awhile, I pulled the video up on my phone and handed it to my parents.  Tayler was with us too and wanted to know what they were watching so I had her hand me her phone and I pulled it up for her too.  My parents caught on pretty quick, but Tayler kept staring at the screen really confused for quite awhile.  I think my family is pretty excited because it's the first grandbaby in the family.

We told Zach's family the following week. We went up for dinner and Brent and Jan were watching the grandkids so Brock and Arin also conveniently showed up to get their kids. We were able to show everyone except Ali and Alex that night.  We showed Grandma Beckstead too.  She was pretty grateful we took the time to come show her. 

I had a shirt for Zach made that said, "That's Sergeant Beckstead to you, Rugrat!" which I later realized was misspelled, but too late to change because it was already on its way.  Either I'm the only person that didn't realize it was misspelled and nobody said anything to be nice, or we are all just a family of idiots because nobody else pointed it out.  Oh well...I get an A for effort.  The back also had print (NOT misspelled) that said "Dad to be July 2014."  Then, I had my own shirt with a baby inside the womb holding on for dear life and it said, "If these people are my family, I'm not coming out!"  It was really cute and fitting for our family.  We were staying at Grams' house on Wednesday on our drive out to Krisina's wedding in San Diego so we waited to tell her in person.  I think pretty much all the family members know now.  Tyler and Tara are expecting a baby like a week or so after us, so Grams is getting two great grandbabies this summer.

Here's the video we used to tell our family and friends our good news!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbEOW8bWH-Q

Thanksgiving Gingerbread House

After our Thanksgiving dinner at Brent and Jan's, we had a family gingerbread house decorating contest.  It was couples/families, and Clayton and Grandma Beckstead.  The unbiased voters chose ours. Probably because we had a sweet Santa on the top.

I Peed on a Stick

No literally, I peed on a stick!  So now, it's time for a little story that parts of the recount may be considered a little TMI.  I've never had much of a "schedule" when it comes to cycle time.  It just comes and goes as it pleases, but it always comes eventually every month.  However, when I realized it had been around 26 days and still no cramping, I started to panic. I kept telling Zach that I better start tomorrow or we're in trouble.  Well, tomorrow (day 27 or so) came and went. Nothing. Monday, day 28. Nothing. I have not gone 28 days that I can ever remember in my history of "cycles".  So a stop at the store on my way home from work for a stick or two was now in order.  As soon as I got home, I ripped on of those babies open and "full stream ahead," I took the 50/50 true or false test.  If you've ever taken one of these things, you know that the window starts getting darker as the window fills with liquid.  I set it on the counter and watched intently as the window filled more and more with the liquid.  Now, the horizontal line is always there if it's a test that shows + or - (some are just one or two parallel lines).  But once the liquid reached the point where the vertical line would be, it was already appearing.  I thought for sure I was seeing things, so I waited the two minutes and left the room for a few minutes.  When I came back, it looked the same.  I won't go into details of the thoughts that ran through my head but I will say that shock was the biggest.  We have always been more than careful when it comes to pregnancy prevention.  But...since we had planned on starting to try in January, November was only 2 months earlier. I guess God knows best and decided it was time for us to start whether that's what our plan was or not.

Since this is our first baby/pregnancy, I wanted to tell Zach in a way other than, "Here babe catch! It's a pee stick!"  I meant to tell him the next evening after I had devised my plan, but I had forgotten to email myself the printables I had made on my work computer Tuesday evening. I didn't want to try and re-invent the wheel so I waited until Wednesday evening to tell him.  I had bought a stuffed horse (there were only about 3 options and none were what you'd really refer to as cute), a farmer-type onesie and printed my papers.  I set everything out on the kitchen counter for him to find when he came home. 

I had dinner going and was doing some laundry when he came home.  I was conveniently in our office (soon to be nursery now).  I heard him walk in through the back door, then around the corner into the kitchen where everything was sitting.  About 30 seconds went by and I finally started to hear the papers rustle.  About TEN seconds later he hollered at me asking where I was, but by the time he finished his sentence he had already found me.  He was lit up like a little kid at Christmas. "Are you serious?!" he asked. "No," I replied, "I'm joking. Why would I joke about something like that?"  Then he just gave me a great big hug and sappy pappy told me how much he loved me and how excited he was. Then proceeded to ask, how far along I was, when we would find out if it was a boy or girl, etc. It was really quite adorable.

So...this is the reason I have not had a blog post in months. I've had nothing else really too exciting to blog about! Now I'm going to post all the glorious details that have happened along the way and everyone (all two people) who read my blog can catch up on my pregnancy woes of endless misery. :)

Halloween Time! Whoop whoop!

I don't think it's any secret to anyone who knows me that Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday.  I'm not entirely sure the reasoning behind it, but I have always loved Halloween.  We just did the usual and went to Brent and Jan's for soup.  Ali and Alex showed up as a molar and the tooth fairy. Very fitting! Scarlett and Londyn ended up having the exact same costume without even knowing it until both babies showed up. Can you say, "Adorable!"?

The "molar" and the tooth fairy!