{Situated}

We have now been here in Chicago for 2.5 weeks and it's been wonderful! We are situated about 1.5 hrs west of downtown Chicago, and it's really nice.

The family for whom we are house sitting was here for the first week that we were so that they could show us the ropes and help get us settled. They are quite a lovely family with 5 sweet children. It was a little tricky sharing the house with them, but we had a good time. They have now left for their extended vacation in Utah and we have the house to ourselves.

The Husband is absolutely loving his job and I do as well. He has this wonderful thing called summer work hours which means he gets to come home at noon on Friday. Holla! I'm loving it. His office is so close it's wonderful. Sometimes I drop him off and pick him up from work, and other times I sleep in :) After having applied for a couple summer internships, jobs, and nanny positions with no hits, I took it upon myself to completely enjoy this summer. No, that doesn't mean be completely lazy, but it does mean to read a lot of books, bake cookies, sleep in, take bubble baths, work in the garden, crochet, take multiple trips to the pool, and grow a baby. It has been absolutely wonderful - lemme tell ya! :)

We love the wonderful ward  that we have landed in. There are many young couples our age as well as some awesome older couples that we have spent some good times with. It's interesting to get out of the BYU bubble and be a part of a real family ward - we're loving it! We have already enjoyed a ward party a couple dinner parties as well. The husband and I also have new callings - Primary Workers!! We love it. We aren't assigned a particular class but will just be shifted around all summer to help wherever we can when people leave for vacation or what have you. Last week I was in nursery and the husband was team teaching the 4 year olds. SO FUN!

I think that's it so far.

{Nauvoo Trip!}

Our last stop before Chicago was Nauvoo. Nauvoo was also an important spot for the early Mormon pioneers. Back in the day Nauvoo was the 2nd largest city in Illinois - a growing vibrant city. Now there a dozens of missionaries who give tours of Nauvoo, put on musical productions, and teach about the church. We had such a blast here!

On a wagon tour of the city:

 Nauvoo Temple! It was beautiful! We were able to visit and do a session at the temple - it was so wonderful!

 Another tour:

 Young performing missionaries:

 Houses and shops as they would have been back in the day:

 Missionaries putting on a musical production:

 Sean thought that this was funny:

 Beautiful temple lit up at night:

 This is where we camped..... It stayed dry long enough for us to set up our tent before it started pouring.... Yes, we camped in a thunderstorm - this is how cheap we are :)

{Minuteman Missile Site}

Another stop that we made on our trip to Chicago was to the Minuteman Missile Site. It was quite fascinating. We stopped there on June 8 and spent a couple hours touring the site. Our tour guide was actually a minuteman back in the day and shared a lot of cool information with us. Here's some pictures of the trip:

{Pregnancy Update}

So, I've tried not to have this blog be completely overtaken by our pregnancy, but I feel it's time for a little update.

I am now around 26-27ish weeks pregnant so just coming into my third trimester. CRAZY. I cannot believe how quickly time has flown - it's seriously blows me away!

I have gotten quite the belly [see here and here for some pictures]. Sometimes I feel still pretty small, and other times I feel absolutely ginormous. Some days I feel happy with how my body has handled the pregnancy and that  I'm looking as well as a 6 month pregnant lady can look, but at other times I feel like a swollen balloon and that I shouldn't be looking so huge. Anyways - overall good. The extra weight sitting straight out in front of me is starting to take a toll on my lower back, but thank goodness the husband is good at back massages :)

Strangers now feel comfortable asking me when I'm due and if I'm having a boy or girl. Some people's reactions are so cute. People have given up their seats on the metro here in Chicago for me all the time, and that's pretty nice. Downtown last weekend Sean asked someone for directions and that cute old black man just pointed at my belly and said "OHHHH!!! Lookie there! Congratulations!" while his wife gave us directions. It was so funny. Another fellow gave up his seat for me on the metro and then spent about 10 minutes talking to us about his family and how great it is to be a parent and how "there is nutton bettah than holdin that lil gurl in yo arms n' jus lovin her." He was so funny :)

Our Little Angel is quite the mover. She has pretty regular sleep/awake hours and it's fun to feel her move around. I'm getting used to it now, but sometimes she takes me by surprise and I occasionally let out a little yelp when a big kick catches me off guard. She is most active right as I'm going to bed at night - that's a little bit annoying.....She's not even born yet and we're on different sleep cycles hahaha.

Besides being able to feel her move, you can now see her move. Yes, you can see little punches and kicks through my belly - that's totally crazy.

The Husband and I have a name picked out for our Little One that we adore. I'm not going to post it on here though because I don't want you to steal it.

The husband is such a cute dad already. He talks to her all the time and rubs my belly while he talks to her. He also tickles me and tries to say that he's just tickling our little girl....tricky guy.

Ummmm I think that's it for now. Just a couple more weeks until we get to meet our cute little baby girl! She is currently about the size of an eggplant and weighs just over 2 pounds.

{Complaints against Pandora}

Let me start this post by saying that I love Pandora. I listen to it all the time and have lots of stations. I have pandora on when I get ready in the morning, when I drive, when I do homework, when I clean the house, when I cook dinner.. I listen to it a lot. It's great because you can have a style/theme of music play for hours without having to make your own play list. It also introduces you to new music and you can customize your stations with the nifty thumbs up/down buttons.

Now, here's the beef that I have with Pandora: It never stops. It always searches for "similar" music - ALWAYS! That's great for the first couple hours of listening to a particular station because you can customize it and get a good vibe going on a station...but sometimes the station wanders.

One of my most favorite stations [Sarah Bareilles] is now completely ruined. I had it perfect - I loved the whole tone of the station and the songs that it played... It introduced me to a few new artists and I love them and it was great. This was one of my "go-to" stations. I loved it. But, over the last few days I've noticed that it has been ruined. Pandora just kept searching for more "similar" music and it got way off track. No matter how many thumbs down I give it I'm afraid my station will never be the same. I'm so bummed. If you delete a station and then add it again it doesn't change anything - it still has the same settings and thumbs up/down that you previously had given it. SAD!

I'm so bummed.... I had worked with that station for months to get it just how I wanted it....and now i'm past the point of no return. *tear*

I wish there was a "STOP SEARCHING" button that I could click that would force pandora to just play the songs that I have given a thumbs up to or songs that have previously been played on the station that I did NOT give a thumbs down to. that would make me happy. But, alas, there is no button and now I have The Beatles playing on my Sarah Bareilles station. Don't get me wrong, I love The Beatles, but they don't belong on that station.

{Car Shop}

I did a grown up thing today. I went to the car shop all by myself. Yup. This is a big deal [whether you believe it is or not]. I have an irrational fear of car shops....well, used to I guess.

The week before we left for Chicago the husband thought it would be a good idea to take the car in and give it a "check up" before we took it across the country. He suggested I do that since I was not working at the time and therefore it would be more economically beneficial for me to do it. I may or may not have put up a massive fit...and I don't mean fit as in I was crying and screaming while pounding my fists on the ground, but more of a in a very grown up and not whiny at all voice said "No, I don't think that will happen" while explaining all of my fears of going to the car shop. Some of those thoughts included:

I know nothing about cars.

What if they rip me off?

What if they laugh at me?

What if they ask me hard questions that I don't know the answer to?

What if there's a sign that says 'Boys Only' and they kick me out?

What if they steal all my stuff out of the car?

Will they make me make the funny noise the car makes? (see video from :43 - 1:40ish)


What if I say the wrong thing?

What if I accidentally pay a bajillion dollars to fix absolutely nothing?

What if they won't give me the car back?

What if it takes them weeks to fix the car and I have no way to get home?


See how troubling this was to me? Now, some of you might think that none of those make logical sense, well, I did say it was an irrational fear, didn't I?

So after running through this list of worries and many more with the husband and his hopeless attempts at reasoning with me, he decided to take his lunch break at that very moment, drive me over to the car shop, and show me that it wasn't scary.

We got there, filled out some paper work yada yada yada... no one laughed at me, no one kicked me out....nothing terrible happened. I sat for about 30 minutes reading those fashion magazines I never buy and eating popcorn. POPCORN! The husband says that that's quite normal for car shops. Cool. Well, after they checked it out, they asked the husband some tricky questions which was good that he was there because I woulda just said "Ummmmm............" and that's it. So, overall experience - not terrible. I was not laughed at, they had magazines and food, but there were some tricky questions asked that I'm glad I did not have to answer alone.


WELL, last night the husband suggested that I take the car in this morning because funny noises were coming from the tires..... I thew a tiny fit this time... knowing that many of my fears are ridiculous, but still there all the same.
Long story short - I went. I made the husband send me an email with all the things I was supposed to say, all the information I would need about the car, price ranges for services, basically everything. After an encouraging phone call from the husband, a couple dozen huge deep breaths, I did it.

I walked in, told the first guy everything [including the sound effects the car was making] and it turns out he was the cleaner janitor guy [yes, just like the brian regan video...] and he pointed me in the right direction. After retelling the whole thing over again, he went to go check it out. There was no magazines, no pop corn, and no chairs to wait in. But, barnes and noble was right next door so I spent some time over there.

Anyways, to cut to the end of the story, no one laughed at me, I did make the car noises [3 times...], no one kicked me out of the story, I wasn't asked any questions I couldn't answer, the husband was helpful in answering my questions via text and phone call, it didn't take days to fix, I didn't get ripped off, and it was overall a successful experience. I bought 4 new tires and received all 3 of the discounts I was supposed to [benefits from the husband's job!]!!!

So there! Tada! Hoorah! The car is happy, the husband is happy, and I am happy.

{Random from the trip}

Here are some pictures of our campsite at the Badlands:

Tin foil dinners and corn on the cob :) YUM!

Ready to learn about one of my favorite games? It's called "Take a bajillion pictures of your husband while he's driving to capture all of his funny faces!" It's a pretty self explanatory game and keeps me entertained for a while :) See for yourself:

Here are some pictures of flooding that we saw on our way to Iowa - it was pretty crazy!:

And here's where we camped at Lake Manawa: