2.01.2017

Birth Story (5 months later...)

I'm the worst, and my baby is five months old already (tomorrow)!! I wrote this in my journal a while ago, but I thought I'd post it here because I know some people are interested in this stuff. My personal recommendation - write it down SOON after, because you'd be amazed at how fast you forget all this stuff!!

A little background:
 
I was due September 5th. 3 weeks before, I had an appointment, and we did our last ultrasound. They took some measurements and estimated baby's size. She was measuring on the large side, but my doctor wasn't worried about it.  We got this cute picture, which made it feel really real! (Also, she STILL eats her arm like that all the time). 



 I was dilated to a 3 at that point. Based on that, and baby's size, the doctor and the ultrasound tech both said they'd be surprised if I went all the way to my due date. Also, I was born three weeks early, so all of that had me pretty convinced that I would be having this baby sooner than later. I had contractions on and off most nights, so I was sure it'd happen soon. For the next few weeks, I got everything ready, and tried a few things to get labor going:

- Walking - Molly got more walks that month than she's ever had! And I would walk from my work to Brian's most nights, because I got off a little earlier than him. It was about a mile, down hill, but that's plenty when you're 9 months pregnant in August! I actually had a nice old man stop and offer to drive me once, because I probably looked pretty miserable. I told him "No thanks, I'm trying to walk this baby out!" He just laughed.
- Spicy foods - this did give me contractions, but I had already been having them off and on, so not really helpful.
- Pineapple - Smoothies are tasty, but other than that it didn't do much for me...
- Exercise ball - nope

When I was 38.5 weeks, I had another appointment. The doctor was really surprised that nothing had happened yet, and said she'd strip my membranes and see if that worked. I think it gave me more contractions, but nothing new.  

My last appointment was at 39.5 weeks, and it was basically just a repeat of the last one. But that's when things finally happened!!

09/12/2016
We have a baby!


I had an appointment on Thursday morning. Before I went in, I was having some contractions, and thinking they were maybe more serious than the ones I had been having, but not getting my hopes up. I went to my appointment. I was still dilated to a 3, I think she said maybe a stretchy 3 to make me feel better. She said we could sweep my membranes again, and if I was having contractions still that evening to come in, because she was on call. She said if I didn’t go into labor we would have an appointment on Tuesday, and talk about if we wanted to induce or what our next step was after that.

I went to work after my appointment. I was having contractions, and they were actually kind of uncomfortable, which was new, but I didn’t want to get excited about it. When I got up and walked around I couldn’t feel them anymore, which was how it had been for weeks, but I was still having them, so that was a good sign. After work, I walked to Brian’s work. It was kind of awkward, because I had to walk through the tailgate party at the football stadium, and I saw a few people I knew. I had been trying really hard to avoid all unnecessary human contact for the last few weeks, because I was huge and scary. Walking through a huge crowd of college students was super fun.
When we were driving home I had some really good contractions, but once we were home and moving around I couldn’t feel them again. I was trying to time them, and they seemed really close together, but I couldn’t tell when they were starting/stopping very well. I didn’t want to go in and not have it be anything, so we waited for a while. I tried more walking and laying down, but the contractions still weren’t stopping, so I finally decided we should go in.

We got to the hospital at 8:45 ish. We should’ve gone to the hospital and scoped it out at some point, we weren’t even sure which building we were supposed to go to! But we made it with plenty of time, so it was fine. I was dilated to a 4, and they admitted me.

I was debating if I wanted to get an epidural. My contractions hurt but weren’t awful, and I thought it might be kind of cool to try it without one. But then another girl showed up at an 8.5 and was screaming and crying, and I decided to get it earlier rather than later. I went to the bathroom and my water started leaking, my doctor came to check and broke it the rest of the way for me. They gave me an IV to get me ready for the epidural, and it took them four tries to get it in. They kept hitting valves? It was the worst. They tried in both arms, my right wrist, and then gave me the choice of putting it in my left hand or trying another vein, so I just let them do it in my hand. 

My contractions were getting more intense at this point (they told me they would once my water broke). The anesthesiologist finished up with the girl down the hall and came to give me my epidural. Apparently I was just in for being stuck with a million needles, because he had a hard time getting that in too. He had to try twice, possibly because I have mild scoliosis. He was surprised by how many contractions I had while he was trying to get it in, but he was able to do it without too many problems. It felt pretty weird, but getting it in wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be.

I got sick and threw up at some point after that. Just a little bit, and it only matters because I made it through almost my whole pregnancy without doing it!

After that, they just had me lay in bed while I continued dilating. Brian and I watched some TV, and I was able to sleep on and off. Apparently pretty soundly, because I snored enough that Brian had a hard time sleeping (they also had the world's smallest couch for him, so it wasn't 100% my fault!!). They came and checked on me and woke me up periodically. I was fully dilated at around 3:30 AM. They had me prop my legs up for “rest and descend”  for an hour after that, first using the stirrups and then using a peanut ball when that was kind of uncomfortable. I had a ton of nurses, it was kind of hard to keep track of everyone. Plus it’s a teaching hospital, so there were a bunch of nurses in training there too. I thought I would be concerned about how many people were there, but you get over it.

When ‘rest and descend’ was done, we started pushing. My epidural was done really well, I was able to move my legs fairly well by myself and I could feel my contractions and the urge to push, which were reasons that I had thought about not getting one, so I was glad. We tried pushing for two hours, and baby would move down a little and then move back up after the contraction, so we made almost no progress and I was very frustrated.

Also, my contractions were crazy. Watching them on the monitor was really interesting. When I was having contractions before labor, I had a hard time telling when they were starting and stopping, and that’s how they were in labor as well. I would get into a contraction, and then it would stop for a bit but not get down to ‘resting’ state, it’d start going back up at like half way down, and I’d have three or four like that before it did go back down, and then not a very long break before it started again. Also, they were really long. Normally, they try to have you do three distinct pushes each contraction, but we had enough time to do four during each contraction, so we were trying that. The nurses said that it looked like I had been put on pitocin, and if I had been they would be turning it way down because they worried that it would distress the baby. But because I wasn’t on pitocin, and this was how my contractions were naturally, they couldn’t really do anything about it. They tried pushing fluids to slow them, but baby was doing fine (her heart rate was totally stable, except for when they would feel to see where her head was, she would get excited feeling it and move around a little bit more, which I thought was cute!) so it was more for my sake than anything. I was so exhausted that when my contractions would go down, I would fall asleep (like to the point that I would snore some more, with everyone in there trying to help me, so embarrassing). I don’t know how people do it when they labor for longer than that (especially if they don't get an epidural)!!

Anyway, after two hours and no progress, the nurse thought maybe baby was a little crooked and she called the doctor to come see and possibly turn her. The doctor showed up and said that she was in a good position, and that she could let me try pushing for a while longer or she could use the vacuum/suction cup thing to help me, but if we were going to do that we should do it now because I needed to be able to do the majority of the work still. She was worried that if we waited, I’d be too tired for that. I was a little afraid at that point, and worried about the baby, but she said it wouldn't hurt her, and I was so tired that I couldn’t even think about two more hours of pushing, so I agreed to let her do it.

It was like 10 contractions and 20 minutes later, and baby was here! My doctor was reallllly surprised at how big she was. The poor training nurse was trying to put a newborn diaper on her, and was having a really hard time (that was the only newborn diaper she ever wore, we had to give a whole case of them to my sister because she started out big enough to be a size 1). The other nurses reassured her that they are normally a lot easier!! Anyway, they were all taking bets on how big she’d be, and everyone was pretty surprised when it ended up being 10 lbs 11 oz!! 


After we got baby out, and the doctor finished stitching me up, they gave the baby to me to hold skin to skin for a while. That was a little weird, because I wanted to look at her, but I couldn’t really sit up well at that point and I couldn’t see her well while she was laying on me. It felt really weird to actually have a baby! I had a really hard time visualizing an actual baby the whole time I was pregnant, and I thought that would go away right away when she was here, but it still took a minute to wrap my head around!
Oh look! There was really a baby in there!
My mom was there at that point. Actually, she had been at the hospital basically the whole time. She left Vernal when we got admitted and got to the hospital at like midnight or sometime after that. She waited in the lobby for a while, and then they let her come back to the delivery rooms and she sat outside in the hall and didn’t tell us she was there. Brian was in charge of communications, so she wasn’t getting many updates (next time I'll have to be more specific). She said she just waited outside until she saw that the nurses were taking the cart in and then she listened while the doctor was helping me get the baby out. Then after they were finished with everything we told her to come in. I think I was a little fuzzy at this point, I don’t really know what she did while we were in there.

I was in the delivery room for 2 hours after she was born, just holding her and hanging out. They gave me pitocin in my IV to help my uterus shrink back down. They came in every 15 minutes to rub my belly, which was the worst. The nurse that was in charge of me did it WAY harder than everyone else did after that. Not fun. But that’s her job I guess.

They transferred us to the recovery floor. I had my own room, and baby stayed there with me the whole time, except for when they took her to do her hearing test and a few other things. I don't think I left the room the whole time I was there. Brian had another teeny tiny couch to sleep on there, so he stayed with us too. We only stayed one night, because insurance covers 24 hours after delivery, and she was born at 7:27 AM, and I guess getting discharged in the morning is hard, so we just left the night before.

It took us a while to officially decide her name. First of all, there were so many people there that we couldn’t really talk about it in private for a while (we had lots of visitors in and out, plus nurses, plus lactation consultants, plus doctors, plus people bringing food, and I slept a lot when people weren't there). Second of all, I’m indecisive. But we ended up sticking with Juniper Jade, which was what we had pretty much decided once we found out we were having a girl, but hadn't officially settled on. I thought we would be able to decide more easily once we knew what she looked like, but that definitely wasn't the case. We did manage to get it all ironed out before we brought her home, so it all worked out.

That's about everything! Well, not really. There were a million other little things that I feel like we didn't do a great job of documenting. I should've taken a lot more pictures... As always, I'm hoping to improve in that area, but no promises.

****After I posted this, my mom sent me some recordings she did from out in the hall. She got the actual moment that I had the baby!! All I can make out in that one is the doctor counting while I pushed, and then when I actually had her I said "Holy cow!!" (proof that I never swear. Even when I'm birthing a baby). She got a little bit of June's first cry, if I can figure out how I'll post it!
 
 

5.09.2016

We're pregnant!! (23 weeks)

I thought for sure I would be more on top of blogging once I was pregnant, but... I'm not. I have been journaling better, which is good, but I'm more than halfway through and haven't blogged yet! Whoops...

Finding out:
I was actually very surprised to learn that I was pregnant. I know a lot of people who have taken a few months or longer to get pregnant, so I was fully prepared to have to wait patiently. But I knew there was a chance, and I thought I might be a little late, so I decided I'd better test just so I knew. I went to the grocery store to buy a test and some groceries alone. Brian said later that he should have been suspicious at this point, because I usually make him go to the grocery store with me... but I didn't want to get him unnecessarily excited/scared/whatever emotion I thought he'd be when we found out we were pregnant, because I was really pretty sure that I wasn't!
Anyway. I came home, and immediately locked myself in the bathroom. I waited the 3-5 minutes, fully expecting a negative. I actually thought it was for a minute, because it wasn't very dark and didn't show up right away, but then I started to see a line. Then I panicked. I don't know why, but I was very worried that Brian would be upset for some reason. Brian never gets upset about anything, so I think I was mostly just freaking out. After a minute or two of that, I decided I'd just go out and tell him. He didn't freak out at all, and it was great!

ALL the pregnancy tests... I was crazy!
I think we were both a little shocked... we talked about it a little - when I thought I'd be due, that kind of stuff. Brian decided we should commemorate the experience somehow, so we got takeout and rented What to Expect When You're Expecting. That was about the extent of our celebration. I think we were both excited, but it was just so weird! I definitely didn't feel pregnant, and I had been pretty certain that it wouldn't happen so fast for us, so it didn't feel real at all. I actually ended up taking several  other pregnancy tests in the next week or so, because I just couldn't believe it.



Announcing:

I've only been the baby for six months!!
We told Molly right away. She's a dog, so we knew she could keep a secret! After that, she went missing for a while, and we found her contemplating her impending big-sisterhood under the piano bench. We think she's warmed up to the idea a little, but it was a lot to take in at the time.

I was going to wait to tell any humans until WAY later. I know a lot of things can happen in early pregnancy, and I was sort of in denial still... At one point, I wanted to wait until I had been to see my doctor, but that was way too long. We decided to announce a few days later on New Year's Eve.


We had to be kind of sneaky, because we were having a party with friends, and we weren't ready to announce to anyone except our family. We took this picture before anyone came over, and sent it our parents and siblings at midnight. It felt kind of lame announcing over text, but we weren't going to see everyone for a while and wanted to share! Everyone was very excited. I'm a little sad we didn't share in person so I could see their reactions (I'm told a few of them were pretty entertaining!), but it was still good.

First trimester:
My first trimester was awesome. I kept waiting for the morning sickness, food aversions, crazy cravings, and other pregnancy symptoms I always hear about, but nothing happened. I'm very lucky, definitely not complaining. I felt 100% fine, which really didn't help the whole not-feeling-pregnant thing. I was pretty exhausted most nights, but that was the only noticeable difference, and it just meant that we ate out more often and I took lots of naps. I feel like the biggest jerk when I talk about this, because I know a lot of people who really struggled with morning sickness and other issues. We just got really lucky I guess!


My first appointment was in February. They did a short ultrasound to confirm my due date (I'm conveniently due on Labor Day), and we got to see baby for the first time! It was the weirdest feeling to actually see something growing in there, since I still didn't feel any different. Baby was measuring right on track, and we even got to see a few wiggles! After weeks of worrying about not feeling pregnant and wondering if everything was ok, this was all very reassuring for me, and I was sad the ultrasound was so short!

Gender Reveal:
The anatomy scan was in April, but my mom helped convince me to go to a private ultrasound place to find out what we were having a few weeks earlier. I ended up being really glad we did, because the pictures from that scan came out WAY better. Anyway, when I was about 16 weeks, we drove all the way down to Murray to see baby again. I was really nervous. We would've been happy with either a boy or a girl, but I was scared I would be disappointed for some reason. Or that we would get there and something would be wrong with the baby (I worried about this before pretty much every appointment, because I STILL didn't feel pregnant yet..).

Everything was totally fine, except that baby would not cooperate! The ultrasound technician said that baby was "lounging," arms up by the head and basically all sprawled out. We could see everything except the area we were most interested in (baby is modest I guess?). The cord was in the way, and baby was not budging. We tried for half an hour. The tech would look for a minute or two, say "nope, still hasn't moved," tell me to try something to get baby moving around, and leave us alone for a few minutes. I tried walking, lying on my side, drinking cold water, lying on the other side, praying, pleading, and threatening, but baby was comfy and didn't want to move. The tech said that she thought it might be a girl, but couldn't say with any certainty. Just that she hadn't seen anything that looked like a boy yet, but the cord could just be blocking it...

Drama Queen!!
I was pretty bummed. We had to drive all the way to Murray! Luckily we actually had a few things to do in the area that day, and Fetal Fotos let me schedule another appointment to try again the next week. I spent the weekend willing baby to cooperate. I guess the only way to move the cord out of the way is if baby physically grabs it and moves it, which was weird to think about. I bought some sugary snacks to eat before we went, in case that motivated baby to wiggle enough, because we were not going back again if it didn't work this time!

The second appointment went much more smoothly. It took about five minutes. The tech confirmed that it was a girl! And took a few cute pictures for us. Baby was being a little dramatic this time, she had her arm up over her face like "Fine, I guess you can look at me today!". I guess all my threats worked, I'm obviously going to be a great mom!


Second trimester so far:
I'm 23 weeks as of today! So I'm actually pretty close to being in the third trimester, which is CRAZY. It feels like it's going so fast!  I'm told that will stop once I start getting giant and the weather warms up, but currently things are moving right along.

The anatomy scan was four weeks ago. It was not as exciting as I had hoped it might be. They confirmed that baby is a girl, and took all the measurements they needed, but it was so fast! The tech tried to point out what she was measuring, but there were a lot of things and we didn't really focus on anything much. I'm glad that she was focused on her job, but I was a little sad, since that's the last time we'll see baby for a while. She did a few 3d pictures, but they are kind of creepy and I can't even tell what half of them are, so I'm glad we have the pictures from Fetal Fotos. We did find out that I have an anterior placenta, which was reassuring, because I hadn't been able to feel baby moving at all yet and had been wondering why.

I did finally start feeling movements last week! Just a little bit, here and there, but it finally feels real now! It would feel more real now anyway, because I'm visibly pregnant. I didn't show for a long time, but I've gotten a lot bigger in the last few weeks and feel huge suddenly, and I still have 17 weeks! I should probably be taking cute bump pictures, but I don't have any good ones to share, and I feel super bloated so I probably won't take a lot. Someone at work asked me if I was "multiplying" the other day (yay for working with nerdy people...).

Anyway, that's about it so far. We're working on the nursery. I have quite a few projects I'm hoping to get finished over the summer. My fingers and feet are already swelling up, so that should be fun when it starts to get hot. But things have been so easy so far, a little water retention is nothing to cry about! I'll try to write more regularly about this, but no promises!



1.10.2016

Home improvement projects


    Still the worst at blogging. We've been pretty busy with the holidays and everything,  but I thought I'd post some updates!

     First, we loved our Christmas (and New Year's) decorations. This was our first year actually decorating, so I had a lot of fun getting it all together. Brian did the lights outside, I made the wreath and found most of the ornaments. There are lots of penguins (I may have a problem). We also had a few religious elements (we may have ended up with three nativities), but I put them up after everything else and failed to take a picture before we took it all down... Next Christmas!!


  (Also, I tried like 8 million times to take a cute picture of Molly with our tree. This is what we got).
 

      Our next project was the window in the spare room. It's not very easy to see in this picture, but it looks directly into the neighbor's porch! The people before us had a curtain over it, but we never got around to that. We found some film stuff to put over it, and now Brian can roam around in his underwear without fear of traumatizing the neighbor children.


      It ended up with a few seams (it was kind of tricky to apply in straight lines) but we like it!


  
   Last project: the breakfast nook! Our kitchen is pretty tiny, and we pretty much never ate in there because our table didn't fit very well. Actually, it fits into the corner perfectly, but then there's hardly any room for chairs, and forget about inviting any people over for dinner!!
Essential Home Emily Breakfast Nook- Pine 

      While we were furniture shopping, I found this breakfast nook set, and thought "That would work so much better than the table we've got!!" I was so excited that I bought it right then and there. 
      I made some bad furniture decisions that weekend! We also brought a futon, which we assembled before we realized that it didn't fit where we had intended to put it. Luckily we found another place for it, and decided we should measure the corner before we tried to install the breakfast nook set. It was 1.5 inches too small. I was very disappointed, but happy that we found out BEFORE we unpacked and assembled everything. Moral of the story: measure your house and potential furniture before you spend hours assembling things...



    Since the set wouldn't fit, I decided to make one. I found the exact same table sold separately on amazon, and bought some storage benches to use for seats.



     I decided that I wanted it to look a little more like a booth, so I made this fancy seat back. I didn't document that process very well, but I used some quilt batting, fabric, a few large pieces of cardboard that we saved from the bench boxes, and LOTS of staples. I need to tighten the fabric up a little, but we like it so far! We'll see how it holds up. It's not the fanciest, but I can mount it on the wall with command strips (because we hate nails..), and it was way cheaper than an actual booth seat!
  
    One day I'll post more pictures of our whole house, but we're still working on a few things (also it's currently a disaster), so I'll save it for later. We really love it here though!! The neighborhood is awesome, and our neighbors are great. Maybe I'll post about that one day too, but no promises.

8.11.2015

Blogging fail #3453423424

I posted that last thing about the house thinking "I'll update it next week after we're moved in." Here we are a month and a half later. Whoops.

We did get everything all taken care of. The paperwork was good to go the next day, and we started moving in that afternoon. We had lots of help from family and friends, which was much appreciated!

I'm going to put pictures up at some point. We've been mostly moved in for a few weeks, but we still need to put some things up on the wall and a few other finishing touches. Everything has been really crazy, we're going to get to it ASAP! After today, which is Brian's birthday. ASAP after that!

Soooo sleepy...

We got a puppy! Well, an almost adult puppy, but still! We named her Molly, and we love her so much! She's a weirdo and it's great.



Anyway, I really am going to be better about posting. One day. Maybe.

6.29.2015

We're (basically) homeowners!

I had planned to post this after we closed on our house, which was supposed to happen at 3:00 this afternoon... We even went to the title office and were stretching our document signing muscles, but something went wrong with the paperwork, so now we have to go back tomorrow. Supposedly this never happens, but we've had a lot of issues so far, so I wasn't surprised. Most of them have actually ended up being good for us though, so I'm not complaining! I haven't posted anything about this whole process (or anything, ever, because I'm a terrible blogger...), so here is our house-buying story:

February/March ish: We started looking for houses. Because it's fun. I don't think we actually knew at this point that we would be trying to buy a house soon, but we looked at a lot of listings and eventually went to see a few.

April: We decided to do the legwork to see how much it would take to actually get us into a house. We picked a lender and went to meet with a mortgage officer to get preapproved. He gave us a budget, which was basically the same range we had been thinking about. At the same time, we started looking at houses more seriously. We decided that we really wanted to live in the island neighborhood we've been renting in for the last year, so those were the only houses we really looked at after that. We looked at one house that we liked, but it wasn't quite what we were looking for. After working with the realtor who was showing that house, we decided to continue working with her, so she started looking for houses for us as well. We looked at a few others that we didn't love, there hasn't really been a lot on the market in this area and our budget...
       The house we're buying was actually one of the first listings I looked at, so I did think it would still be on the market. We went to look at it at the end of April, and I think it went under contract a few days later. I was a little sad, but we kept looking. We found another house that was in the neighborhood, and seriously thought about putting an offer in. It was cute, and almost everything was updated (most of the houses in the neighborhood are REALLY old, so this is pretty crucial), but the layout was a little weird, and it had new white carpet through the whole house (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but we're not the cleanest people...), and it was on a busy road...

May: While we were debating about that one, the one that we're buying came back on the market. I think they had a buyer back out on them after inspection, because when they listed it again they raised the price a little and said that they were putting a new roof on it and updating some of the paint (lucky thing that went wrong #1). We decided to put an offer in and see what happened... They accepted, and we were under contract!

Since then, we've mostly just been coasting while the bank and our realtor have worked out all the difficult stuff. We had to schedule the inspection, which was almost a disaster. He was supposed to go one afternoon and meet us there later to go over the results, but he forgot about the appointment and still hadn't arrived when we got there. Luckily, he was able to come right away and finish that evening, and he did it for free because he felt so bad about almost missing it (lucky thing that went wrong #2). Nothing terrible came back from the inspection, other than the roof needing replaced, which we already knew and the sellers were already planning on taking care of. The bank did the appraisal, and while they were going over some of our original paperwork they found a mistake made by the disclosure company. Because of that, we ended up getting some extra money to cover our closing costs and a few other things (lucky thing that went wrong #3).

Everything looked good and we were excited to close today, but I guess we'll still be excited tomorrow. Also, this gives us a little time to get a few more things packed and figure out exactly how we're getting everything over there, so it's ok. The people who bought our contract aren't moving in until Mid-July, so we've got a while still. Anyway, hopefully we'll close tomorrow and move in later this week! Wish us luck!


3.18.2015

SPRING BREAK



Brian was on Spring Break last week. It was a little sad for me, this is the first time.. EVER... since I started school at least?.. that I haven't had time off for Spring Break. It was a very busy (but fun) week of fun family activities!

FRIDAY (the 6th)

We got an early start to our Spring Break Friday afternoon, when we drove down to Ogden to go through the temple with our sister-in-law Ashley. I forgot to take a picture, but it was a very special day, and we were so happy to be there with Brian's whole family! We also went out to dinner that night at a tasty Mexican restaurant, where I ate my weight in giant tortilla chips before we even got our food.

SATURDAY (the 7th)
Yay for squinty sun pictures...
We went to the Salt Lake Temple for Mike and Ashley's sealing. It was a beautiful day! We probably could've tried to take a picture where you could actually tell where we were, but it was crowded, and we were comfortable.

WEDNESDAY

My baby sister got married! It was a cold and blustery day at the Draper temple, but it was still a very happy day that we were glad to get to share with them. Her reception was also gorgeous, I'm sure she'll put pictures on her blog.

- Side note: Three new temples in one week! I had been to the temple grounds at Ogden and Salt Lake before, but not inside, so it was exciting for me.

After Wednesday, Brian stayed in Kaysville to hang out with his family. I had to come back to work, so we got to spend our first night apart since we got married. It was very weird having the house to myself for a whole night, I'm not sad that I'm not single anymore. Also, I'm glad Brian is there to feed, because when I'm just cooking for myself, I am very boring.

I went back to Kaysville Friday night, and we spent most of the weekend there with Brian's family. I didn't get any pictures during that time, because I'm awful. I finally made an instagram account because I feel like I will be more motivated to take pictures if I can easily share them with people (maybe?). We'll see how that goes.