Due Today

--Morning--
Today is my due date! It came so fast! Oh and I finally got that burst of energy, the "nesting" phase. Saturday and yesterday I have been doing things all day to get ready for baby: laundry, dishes, hanging pictures in the nursery, packing the hospital bag, making to-do lists of all the things I still need to do... I honestly don't think she is going to make an appearance for another few days though, so maybe I'll be able to finish my list.

Bryce is done with classes and finals for this semester - Hurray!! What a relief that one more semester is over. Tomorrow he takes the Praxis exam (so baby cannot come tomorrow), and then he has one more semester (which will include his student teaching) and he will finally be done with school! There are some lucky kids out there - one day they get to have Mr. Ransom as their teacher :) I took cookies to his last day of his practicum class at the elementary school this semester and the girls all gave him a group hug, while the boys gave him 'fist-bumps' (since they are too cool for hugs), then this one boy started chanting - "Handsome Ransom! Handsom Ransom", and the whole class took it up. It was so funny and cute. The kids obviously liked him. Handsome Ransom was actually a nickname missionaries would call him while on his mission, so I asked Bryce as we were leaving if he had told them that - but he said no, none of the kids had known. Well, it's no surprise to me they thought of that by themselves - he is a pretty handsome guy!

--Evening--
So I wrote the above early this morning but didn't have time to post so I thought I'd write a little more.

We had a check-up today but I didn't want to know what/if any progress there was so our midwife didn't tell us. I did ask when she thought the baby would come and she said definitely in a couple of days. It seems so surreal that here in a couple of days we're going to have a little baby to take care of, to play with, to cuddle with... :) :) How exciting! (and overwhelming!!! I don't know if I'm ready... guess it's too late now though). Even though I do have some worries about being a parent I am really looking forward to meeting our little girl. We both are. I guess we're just playing the waiting game now - the goal is to make it to Wednesday at least, Friday would be best though (can't be tomorrow since Bryce is taking the Praxis and Wednesday and Thursday our midwife won't be available so....). And who knows, maybe she'll wait for Christmas.

I'm sure another post will be coming soon once we have our little one here.

We got a Crib!

We ordered a crib and mattress combo from Walmart about two weeks ago for only $139. It arrived and we finally got it put together :) I'm pretty excited! It looks so good! Of course I'm sure it will look even more awesome once we get bedding.

And now for a pregnancy update: 

Here I am at 28 weeks. I am still waiting to get the extra energy I keep reading about - seriously, where is it? While I haven't had the 'hanging-over the toilet' nausea, I have felt more nausea's lately. Baby Girl is moving a lot more - which is still a very strange feeling. I don't know if it will ever be something I get used to. 

I am now at my 2 week doctor appointments. Hurray! It is helping the time to go by a lot faster. Not that it was really going slow. Honestly I can't believe it's fall already. The leaves are already turning and the rodeo was last week - so yep, it's official, fall is here. Which reminds me... 

Here it is the end of September and once again I did not get very far on my task list for this month. I still have some tasks from August I didn't finish too ... sigh. . . Sometimes I feel like I have no time to do all the things I want to do. If I start to dwell on it though I'm just going to get depressed and even more stressed out, so I am not going to think about my huge task list and instead go look at our nursery with our awesome crib. :)

Boy or Girl?

Wednesday was the big day! We went in for our ultrasound and got to see the baby's heart and brain, the face and tummy, and... We found out we are having ...

Profile of Baby (notice the legs going up above the head)

4D pic of Baby's face and arm

Front view of Baby's face

Same view but just Baby's lips are showing

Another front face view (the Alien version)

Another Profile view

Legs & Bum view (It's a Girl!)

We're having a Girl! 

I was pretty surprised because I thought for sure it was a boy but I am happy and excited. I can't wait to dress our little one up in bows and dresses :)

Half Way?

Who decided that 20 weeks was the halfway mark of pregnancy? With 5 months still to go that is a very discouraging thought. Plus, yesterday I decided that I needed to compile all the things I need to do before the baby comes... wow. There is a lot to do. Unfortunately many of them are "time sensitive", as in I can't do them now - I need to wait until we get a bit closer.

Here is my task list for this month:


AUGUST (Weeks 21 – 24)

• Week 20
• Find out baby’s sex (Hooray!)
• Continue to consider name possibilities
• Plan out nursery colors
• Week 21
•    Start registering for baby shower gifts
• Week 24
• Find a pediatrician

This month is pretty easy. The list gets longer each month we get closer to December. I got most of my "to-do" items from the baby books and websites I've been reading, as they all have their own lists etc... and I knew I wasn't going to remember everything. 

If you didn't notice, this week is 'Week 20' which means... we are going to find out if we are having a boy or a girl!Yep we have an ultrasound appointment on Wednesday and I can't wait. We have a tally going at work of what everyone thinks we're going to have and right now it's at 5 guesses for a girl and 8 guesses for a boy. We will see.

Until I have the revealing photos however, I thought I would finally post the pictures from our 10 week ultrasound back in May. So here is a glimpse of our little peanut :) Enjoy!

  

Positive!

Many of you who read this blog already know this, but for those of you I haven't seen this past week or so... I'm pregnant! Bryce and I are so excited and so happy!

The ironic thing is, after a year of trying to conceive, I had just gone to the doctor to start getting "tests" done to see what/if there could be a problem.

Long story short: A few days after getting some blood work done, and an ultrasound, and beginning some medication to hopefully "help" (and spending a lot of money to do all this), I had this feeling and a few symptoms suggest to me that I should take a pregnancy test. Well low and behold, it came back positive!

Unfortunately, getting the positive result back did not go at all as I imagined it would. Instead of being able to be happy, I was very nervous and worried due to the fact that I had been taking the aforementioned medication that of course said, in big bold red letters, "Do Not Take If Pregnant". Luckily, the nurse at the doctors office was very kind to help calm my fears and I was able to get some blood work done to confirm that all was well.

Now, I am just dealing with the morning/all day sickness. Thankfully, I can still function and go to work. I just don't feel that great, all.day.long. After hearing stories of my mom, her sisters and my cousins and how horribly sick they were during their pregnancies I am grateful for how mild mine seems to be in comparison (at least so far). If this is as bad as it gets then I will be very thankful (knock on wood).

Baby Ransom is due in December!

Meal Making Marathon (Mmm mmm...)

Last month my Mom and I set out to make 4 different recipes to give us 18 freezer meals each.

We bought all the groceries/ingredients Friday night, and then started the cooking and assembling  process Saturday morning.

6 hours later (not including clean-up), we ended up with 22 meals each.

What we made, # of meals we thought we would get, # we did get:
Chicken Enchiladas, 4 meals each, 4 meals each
Chicken & Biscuits, 4 meals each, 8 meals each
Chicken Pillows, 8 meals each, 7 meals each
Meat Loaf, 2 meals each, 3 meals each

Aside from our calculations being a little off, and having a lot more food than we realized it would be, it was a good day. We got a lot of food to eat and I'm super excited I won't have to cook as often.

Also, I want to give a shout out to my AWESOME husband, Bryce who got me an AWESOME brand new KitchenAid for Christmas. I got to use the KitchenAid with this project and believe me it would have taken us a lot longer than 6 hours if we hadn't have had it. Bryce also was a huge help in cubing some of the chicken for us and cutting the onions and other fun jobs like that, so THANK YOU Brycie!

Vacation to Idaho

Our road trip to Idaho over Fall Break was a lot of fun. We went and stayed with the Nygaard family and had a great time. We split the drive up there into two days but on the way home we decided just to tough it out and drive the full 8 hours.

Here are some pictures of the drive up:

It turns out that it was the end of the Spud Harvest in Rexburg while we were there, so we were able to get a tour of a Potato Farm in action.

Here, the trucks that have just returned from the field, back up to the conveyor-belts to empty out all the potatoes.

A truck emptying it's load of potatoes.

The potatoes go from the truck to the conveyor-belt and workers stand here and watch for and pull out items other than potatoes (i.e. rocks, dead birds, dead skunks, etc...).

The potatoes then go up this conveyor-belt into a new container.

The conveyor-belt would then bring the potatoes through the little enclosure which helps hide the workers from the outside elements. Inside the enclosure workers are pulling out any unwanted items off the conveyor-belt that may have been missed.

The conveyor-belt then takes the potatoes into the cellar where they are kept in a temperature regulated environment until it's time to be shipped for sale. 

This is inside the cellar - see the mountain of potatoes at the back.

I have never seen so many potatoes. I have also never thought about all that goes into getting potatoes - before this, if I wanted some potatoes I would just go to the produce aisle at the grocery store and that was that. 

After our tour of the potato farm we stopped to look at a cellar no longer in use.

Here is the outside view - what you can't see is the roof. The roof is covered in dirt and sod.

This is the inside view.

Here we are standing underneath where the roof caved in - very safe.

Bryce went on a ride with Josh in one of the trucks that was out in the field getting potatoes from this other truck/machine that was pulling the potatoes out of the ground (not sure of all the technical/correct terms). Each trip to the field took about an hour so while Bryce was doing that I went with Heather to walk around BYU-Idaho. I wish I had had the camera then because the gardens there were amazing! 

We played a lot of 'hand and foot' with the Nygaards and now we are determined to play more - so as soon as we got home we went out and bought a few deck of cards. 

It was only a few days, but the trip was a nice break from work and school for both of us and we hope to be able to go up again.