Happy 1st Anniversary!

This last Sunday was our first anniversary! We ate our wedding cake and it was surprisingly moist and yummy. It was also my sisters birthday so we celebrated that as well. We ended up going out Monday for the real celebration. I can't believe it's been a year! Being married is wonderful.

This was our beautiful cake at the reception. Sister Fletcher from my home ward made it and did it exactly how I wanted it. It was so pretty.

This is our sad cake last Sunday. The trip from California to UT wasn't very nice to it, but I still think it's pretty. Below are a couple of my favorite pictures from our wedding. I thought a lot about that wonderful day and how special it was....(sigh) :)

My belly at 37 weeks

I debated whether to put this picture up...can you tell why? Well, if you didn't notice my slip is hanging out the bottom of my dress...embarassing. This was taken after church before I changed so I'm hoping that it wasn't this way AT church...great first impression eh? I remember on Sunday I was extra careful about making sure it didn't fall down because I knew that it was likely with my belly so large now. We'll just pretend my efforts were successful :)

My New Haircut

So lately I've been having the hair blues...ya know when you are just sick and tired of the same hairstyle every single day? I'm sure all you girls have had this experience. Well, my plan was to grow my hair out until after the baby, but as time went on I got mroe and more anxious to get a nice cut (when you find yourself picking your split ends in church you know it's time for a cut :) Anyways, about two weeks ago I just decided that it was the day. I don't really have a salon or stylist that I go to here in UT, but my mother in law and a few other family members go to a place in Orem called Stylin. I called them up, printed out a picture of the hair that I wanted, and went in. I didn't realize it but the girl ended cutting 6 whole inches off! That is a lot for someone that doesn't really have long hair. So, after a couple of weeks I have finally gotten the hang of doing it and I LOVE it. It's so good to have healthy hair that actually turns out after you spend time on it. Before, no matter how much time I would spend, it did not turn out :( Thank goodness for haircuts! Below is a before and after picture.

Before
After, sorry it's blurry. It's the best i have.

Our new chair

The past few days have been pretty busy and fun-filled for us. While waiting for the baby to come, it's good to keep myself busy otherwise it just seems like it's taking forever. Anyways, to start this blog I will share one of my "wishes" for when baby comes. I have been looking around lately for a used rocker that I will be able to use for my nursing chair to have in our bedroom. I just figured that would be nice to have for middle of the night feedings. As much as I wanted this wish to come true I didn't think I would find a decent enough one that fit our budget and eventually stopped looking. So last Thursday night, I went to enrichment night and returned home to find new furniture! Not really...Andrew had gotten some used furniture for free. One of the pieces was a really ugly worn, vinyl, overstuffed rocker/recliner (you will see in pictures below). Andrew said he almost didn't get it because he didn't think it was worth anything but figured we could just get rid of it. So, this is where the adventure began. I for one, have a thing with worn and dirty fabric especially when I don't know what it's been through; it kind of grosses me out and I just don't like sitting on dirty, old material. Not trying to be stuck up; it's just a thing. So, being all optimistic as usual :) we saw the great potential in this little old grandma of a chair. We decided to give it a chance and try and fix her up; afterall she was really comfortable and still worked perfectly fine. The next night we took a trip to Joann's where all the home decor fabric was and still is 50% off. We looked through all of it and realized that the best normal priced "couch" fabric that we could see was 20 bucks a yard...a little pricey for what we were looking for. Then as we were browsing Andrew found a soft, cream colored fabric for just 9.99 full price (so, 5$ half off). I figured it would be some cheep material since it was priced so low, but when I looked I found out it was chenille. Chenille is the type of fabric I LOVE on couches and is known for lasting a really long time. Our minds were made up. We ended up getting about 6 yards and used every bit of it. Recovering the chair was a big project but actually quite fun. Andrew and I worked on it a couple hours Friday night, all day Saturday, and just finished it off today. Needless to say, we are very proud of our work. It was fun to spend time with Andrew doing a project together. I used my sewing machine to sew a few of the parts and Andrew did the stapling with my help. It really wasn't as hard as we thought and turned out to be really nice. To me, it's just as good as a brand new recliner, only cost a fraction of the price (itty bitty small fraction). Moral of the story, I got my wish :) It is sitting in the corner of our bedroom just waiting for our little one to arrive. Everytime I walk in I have to sit down; it's really comfortable.

Ewww, the vinyl was just too gross, especially looking back on it.

I sewed that amazing cushion along the back thank you very much :)

The finished prodect!

Me in the finished product :) Not the best picture

(my belly looks shiny) and I hadn't showered for the day.

Elder Olsen comes home

This past week our nephew Steven came home from his mission to Kentucky. I had never officially met him before so it was nice to finally meet the legend.

This is Andrew holding Timmy (another nephew) with Steve. It's fun to have Steve's great missionary spirit around.

One project completed

While shopping with my mom at a bunch of craft stores we picked up some materials to make some baby headbands. Since our visit was so busy and full we didn't get time to make them so she sent the stuff back with me. A couple days ago I bought a hot glue gun and finally got around to making them. They were surprisingly REALLY easy and fast to make. I think they turned out pretty cute and can't wait to put them on the real thing. I guessed on the measurements so hopefully they won't be too small :) I just looked up the average measurement for a baby's head and went off of that. I think it was around 14-16 inches at birth. Does anyone have a different story for baby's head measurements?

Busy Weeks

These past few weeks have been pretty busy, but also very fun. I finally got some pictures to put up showing some recent events and of course my much larger belly. Less than 7 weeks left! I'll save the typing for the pictures...

This picture was taken at about 30 weeks, around April 22nd (I really can't remember exactly, it's been too long :) That is also part of our new house which I love! People at church call it the "cottage house" so I guess that's it's name. I love the ivy but Andrew pointed out that it attracts more bugs :( I hate bugs. I've been noticing more and more wasps around our house and that worries me. I don't want my baby to get stung!...or me! Good thing I have a brave super hero to shoo them away :)

This is one of the most recent pictures of my belly. It was taken at just under 33 weeks or 4 days ago. I think I'm really starting to look pregnant now. The difference between the first picture and this picture is amazing. I really grew fast these past couple weeks. Those flowers are CA poppies; my family has a tradition of taking pictures in them every year (if there are enough of them). Below is a picture of Andrew and me.

SEA WORLD

We went to Sea World last Friday and had lots of fun. I hadn't been there for a really long time and Andrew was a good sport in taking me. With just a normal park ticket we are now able to go the rest of the year for free (some special they had going on). So now I want to go back with our little girl sometime; our first family vacation :)

This is Andrew petting a bat ray. They were really cool and really fun to pet.

This is me after the shipwrek ride. Eventhough we had a huge poncho covering our whole bodies and heads, we still somehow got soaked. Oh well, it was fun.

As we were walking through the park, we saw a couple of bunnies just sitting in a small grassy area. Andrew loves animals and tried to see how close he could get. He got closer than this but this was a better picture :)

This was one of the neatest parts of the day. We were heading out of the park and the only thing I really hadn't done was to see the orcas in their underwater viewing area. We had seen the show but I wanted to see them up close. It was a few minutes past closing and I was scared that they would close off the exhibit, but we got lucky...really lucky. There were hardly any people there and we were able to watch two amazing whales that really enjoyed the people staring at them. It was really fascinating to see how much they liked to interact with people. Out of all the animals in the park that we stared at, none of them willingly came over and itneracted with us. These whales would see you and come right over to you. WOW!

This was really neat. This whale would come down to me and follow my hands, etc. then go up for air and come right back down to where I was. It was such a neat experience. I don't remember this from prefious visits. It was a great close to our day.

BABY SHOWER GIFTS

My mom threw me a baby shower while I was visiting my home in CA. After going through all of my presents afterwards she said that since I got so many cute clothes (most of which she bought if you read my previous blog) I should lay them all out and take a picture. When we got back home I started to organize them into her drawers and realized I hadn't taken a picture so, I got the camera out and tried to lay them all out...only they didn't all fit into one shot. Below are the multiple shots that I had to take to get "most" of the clothes in. After the clothing shoot, I realized there were still a bunch of outfits we had stuffed into Andrews suitcase that missed their opportunity. You can just imagine how spoiled she is going to be. Good thing she won't have memories of it :)