We'll soon know!

I had another prenatal visit yesterday afternoon. Now we start into the visits where I'm there for a whole 5 minutes and I'm out the door again! Ah, they're so much fun lol. I found out that my kidneys are doing quite well, which is good news since during my pregnancy with Katelyn, it was discovered I have a chronic kidney condition. Let's hope things stay stable and I don't have to go on bedrest a second time around! Don't want any of that. It was also a nice bit of news to know that I've only had a net gain of 2.5 lb so far, which you wouldn't guess since my stomach is expanding by the day! I wouldn't normally discuss the weight thing, but it's pretty crazy! I'm eating like I'm supposed to, so I'm glad I'm not exploding weight wise yet. I know the better part of that is awaiting me down the road! Haha.


(17 weeks, 2 days)

The baby is still a wiggle worm. Last visit the baby was flipping all over the place while the doctor was trying to take measurements. The same thing happened again yesterday when the doctor was using the heart monitor and the baby was flipping all over the place while he was trying to get a lock on the heart beat! This definitely sounds like MY child...can't hold still!

I also got my ultrasound scheduled on the 26th, a week from Monday. So, we will FINALLY know if little Snert is a boy or a girl! Katelyn told the doctor and med assistant very matter-of-factly that the baby was a boy. Of course she couldn't leave out the part that his name was going to be Carmel, funny girl.

So everyone start placing your bets! What's little Snert going to be? :D

Sights and sounds of the doctor's office

So I had to run over to the doctor's office today to have a quick (or what should have been quick) lab drawn. No biggie, really. Anyway, I had to wait 35 minutes to get my blood drawn, which then took a whole 30 seconds once I got back there. I was hard for entertainment while I sat there and waited. Options were quite thin. The first thing I got to choose from was a little family with the parents roughly my age who came and sat down next to me. Honestly I wish they hadn't. Both the mom and dad were constantly COOING at both their kids, one about 18-ish months and the other just newly born. Okay, annoying, but tolerable. Then the both of them, kid you not, bust into singing showtunes to their kids. And they weren't just singing them nice and quiet. They might as well have had their jazz hands out and started dancing as well. Shoot me now. Musicals are fine and all, but I don't want them belted into my ear first thing in the morning by the showtunes duo. Then, trying desperately to find something to keep myself from clawing at my ears, I begin looking around for something to focus on. The first and just about only thing nearby was a guy mudding the floor. Big yipee. Although, this old guy sitting across from me seemed absolutely enamored by the task. Funny. My third option is to read the old, outdated magazines (which were sparse to begin with) sitting around. Not terribly interested since all they really had out were medical mags that only had articles about studies that held no interest to me. Bah. Let me tell you, it was the most entertaining 35 minutes of my day...

Year in review

I've been very anti-computer the last few weeks with the holidays occurring and for the mere fact that I haven't wanted to even LOOK at a computer when I wasn't working, so I'm a few days late on this, but that's okay! Here's the nutshell version of anything you might have missed this last year.

January 2008: My house was constantly overtaken by either family or friends coming into town, but that's okay because it was a blast! Went to the Rexburg Temple open house a few times with everyone. Countless trips to Lava Hot Springs too. AHHHHHHHHH.
February 2008: Katelyn split her lip open after face planting on my tile floor. Yikes, what a nightmare! I'm dating Nate at the time, but I'm a chicken and won't move the relationship forward. Yeah, blame me for that one. More trips to Lava.
March 2008: Went with Keegan to see C0heed and Linkin Park. Lost my voice for a week subsequent to the most amazing show ever. Went to Las Vegas with Nate, Doug, and Anna. Sweet action! I become enlightened and realize that I'm supposed to marry Nate. Oops on my part haha. We then have a hefty talk and decide we're getting married :D
April 2008: The ice FINALLY decides to melt off my driveway, of which I hadn't seen for 5 months. Katelyn turns 3. We have a pizza party, and friends and family join in on the festivities. Katelyn got her tricycle that she immediately started to pedal down the street away from everyone the second she hopped on it.
May 2008: I'm officially engaged! Nate gives offically proposes and gives me my ring I made him so painstakingly search for. Take Katelyn to the zoo with Tim and Vanessa. She had so much fun! We then make the move from Idaho to Utah. I miss Idaho terribly, but the things you've gotta do for love!
June 2008: Nate throws me a "surprise" birthday party (he's horrible at keeping secrets from me). My family happens to be in town at the time, so it was nice to have them all there to join the fun!
July 2008: This month is a little bit fuzzy since I spent a ton of it immersed in wedding plans and not much else! I vaugely remember a Herman's Hermits concert and lots of fireworks in the midst of all that. ;)
August 2008: We get official clearance that we can get married in the temple, so we're able to set an OFFICIAL wedding date. We hurry and put all our plans into action for the wedding. More fuzziness. Everyone has their babies all at the same time, from the end of July to the beginning of September...Rachie, Jen, Mandy, and Chelsea.
September 2008: We're finally married! Engagement seemed a heck of a lot longer while going so long without having an official date to look forward to for so long. Wonderful day. Nate's birthday comes along and now car insurance companies like him more because of his ripe old age of 25. Haha. I make my first trip back to Idaho Falls since moving for Rylan's blessing, unfortunately without Nate because of work. First time away from Nate since being married! Ack!
October 2008: Rollercoaster month! We get the flu bug, a moron backs into Nate's car, thought I lost my ID just a couple days before leaving on our honeymoon, found out we're pregnant, AND our apartment tries to flood! Then we take off on our honeymoon cruise. Oh yeah, all stress melts away! We have an absolute blast in Mexico and bring back some sunned skin to prove it! I blast through all 4 Twilight books in 2 weeks. I'm an addict now.
November 2008: A little bit tamer than the prior month. I drag Nate to go see Twilight with me. Thanksgiving seemed to be cut short because I had to work. Meh. Did my Black Friday shopping and came away with some wicked stuff!
December 2008: Bust out the Christmas decorations! Katelyn thoroughly enjoyed the whole month of Christmas festivities including decorating, watching old school Christmas specials, looking at Christmas lights, throwing snowballs at anyone within close proximity, and then finally Christmas day after Santa had arrived! Santa brought Katelyn a kitchen to play with and she couldn't do anything but GUSH to everyone about it! Santa is one smart cookie! ;) Made another trip to IF, with Nate intact this time! Nate is FINALLY a graduate of the University of Utah! WOO! Now the job hunt begins. I ask Katelyn what the baby's name should be and she casually answers me with the name "Carmel". HAHAHAHA!!!

I'm excited for 2009, as many other life events will be occuring. Headlining those will be the birth of baby Carmel (ROFLMAO), due June 23, 2009. Keep tuning in for all the many happenings of the Soules crew :D!

Fire Truck!!!

So I had the funniest thing happen in nursery on Sunday. There is one little girl in my nursery class who is probably just barely 18 months, but has been in there for a little while because she is just so well behaved. She really is a dream child. Anyway, she kept grabbing toys and holding them up to me, so that I could identify them for her. She then grabbed a fire truck. She held it up and I said "Fire truck. Can you say fire truck?" Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeellllllllllllllll...she compounded the words a bit. She took the "F" from fire and then took the "uck" from truck. Yeah, put it together! She then proceeded to say her version of fire truck a few times. Not sure whether to panic or fall out of my chair laughing my butt off, I quickly say "No no!!! Say fire! Fire...truck!!!" Fortunately she lost interest with the fire truck and didn’t say it anymore. The last thing I needed was for her to go to her parents and tell them the new thing she learned in nursery that day! HAHA!!!

Christmas is in the air...

I LOVE Christmas. I love decorating for it, seeing the lights, giving and watching everyone open their gifts, and on and on and on!!! I really love everything about it. Anyway, I figured I'd post a few pics that I've gotten so far of the Christmas season, most of which involve the decorating of the tree. I'm a bit of a "tree nazi" (as Nate likes to refer to me) when it comes to decorating the tree. I like to do a themed Christmas tree, usually based on color combinations. There are always ornaments that make it on the tree regardless (like Katelyn's 1st Christmas ornament), but other than that, I strictly control what ornaments make it onto the tree. How do I support this habit (yeah, it's kinda an addiction haha)? I go shopping for ornaments the day after Christmas for the following year. I swear, by the time my kids have grown up, I'll have an entire storage unit dedicated JUST to Christmas stuff. Nate's gonna despise it, but oh well. I was already hooked by the time we got married ;).

This year is a red and gold tree. I'm pretty happy with the outcome. Last year Katelyn wasn't all too interested in decorating the tree. This year she was SOOOOO excited! Even for days after we decorated the tree, she kept asking if we could put more up. If it were left up to her, I don't think and inch of tree would be left to be seen by the naked eye! In any event, she had a ton of fun decorating the tree!

Katelyn insisted Rudolph be the first ornament she put on the tree. She claimed it was her favorite. I suppose I'll believe her on that one since she's watched Rudolph everyday for the past week!


Decorating the tree...


The finished product


With the flash on the camera, so you can see the ornaments better


Katelyn showing off the tree


My little cheesehead!


And a bonus for you all (who haven't seen it already)! My first preggo belly shot at 11 weeks, 1 day :)


I took this one the other day when we finally got our first decent snow storm of the year! I'm starting to believe that I live in Utah again haha. I thought it looked so cool that the snow was falling outside right behind the tree. I think it looked much cooler in person, but this is the best I could do...


(I'm annoyed, but Photobucket wouldn't rotate the last 2 pics. Cursed technology!)

I'm hoping to get Katelyn to go get Santa here before Christmas. I also want to take her to the lights on Temple Square, so I'm hoping we get the chance to take her! She loves seeing all the lights on peoples houses and on the tree, she'll go nuts at Temple Square!

What a day, what a day!

So, it's been a whirlwind the past 24 hours in the world of job hunting for Nate. He's graduating from the U here in a couple weeks, so we're trying to get on the ball and land him a job as soon as possible. Nate worked his butt off to land a couple of interviews in Portland since he has tomorrow off from work, so he figured he'd spend the day in Portland. Like I said, he landed two and we were quite happy that he was able to get those. We bought the plane ticket last night, booked a hotel room, and reserved a rental. We're all over things, right? Well then this afternoon rolled around when everything seemed to go crazy...

This afternoon, I was working on looking up addresses and directions for his interviews while he worked on getting other things ready to leave tonight. One of the companies sites was down, so I decided to Google the company to see if I could find the address. I'm sure glad I did because I found out a TON of information that saved Nate and I from a headache and a half! I come across a bunch of reports and articles, all recent, stating how this so-called "marketing" company is a scam and really tricks you into doing door-to-door sales for coupons. Yeah, don't think so! I wasn't apt to believe the first article I saw, although from a very reliable source, so I kept digging when I found more and more and even MORE info about how bad this company is. In my research, I also found out that the second company who wanted to interview him was pretty much the same crap. So then we think oh crap. We've paid for a plane ticket (which wasn't cheap buying so late) and now it's going to be wasted. Well, we ended up coming up with a plan B and we spent ALL afternoon researching out marketing and PR firms (LEGIT ones, mind you lol) in Portland, so Nate will go beat some doors down in Portland tomorrow and try to see what he can come up with.

In a way it was frustrating to find out about what we did, but at the same time I'm glad we found out before he walked in for an interview! I think with plan B now, he will accomplish a bit more than he would have otherwise. You know, get his foot in the door and his face seen in more places that he would have been able to otherwise. Here's to hoping he digs up a good lead! *crossing fingers*

Sprinklers and Shrimp

I've been a major blog slacker being how I seem to spend my days working and then being so completely exauhsted from my ever changing preggo body, that I fall asleep like an old lady at 8PM! I've got a few random tidbits to keep you all entertained until I have the time to post updates!

*Last night Katelyn was helping me decorate the tree. The ornaments I bought the day after Christmas last year for this year's tree contain a LOT of decorations with sparkles. Needless to say, I was covered in head to toe in sparkles by the time we were even half way done with the tree. Katelyn looked at me and said "Mommy, you have SPRINKLERS all over you." Snicker, snicker.

*Anybody who calls me before 8AM ends up on my evil list. You DON'T want to be on that list. My ex-in-laws seriously managed to used to do it at least once a week to me. Grrrr. My work ended up on that list yesterday, when I got a call before 8AM about something that I had sent an email the day before, so the call was unecessary. Ugh. Way to start a freakin Monday, man.

*I'm craving shrimp. BAD.

*With the Christmas decorations now up, I decided to wrap a bunch of Katelyn's presents that were hiding under my bed, so she didn't accidentally stumble upon them. They've been under the tree less than 24 hours and she's already made her first attempt at busting into them, even though I told her that she couldn't open them until Christmas. Apparently Christmas is going to be going on everyday for the next month. Haha.

* I'm hungry. Did I mention I want shrimp?

*I watched "Shrek The Halls" and "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" (old school, of course) last night with Katelyn. I love being a kid sometimes.

Okay. Now it's back to work. But I'd rather be eating shrimp...