Father's Day

This month Garrett officially qualified for celebrating Father's Day. Although I've always bought Garrett a present for Father's Day as the Future Father of our children, I usually did it just because I love any excuse to surprise Garrett with a present. This year he has graduated to Expectant Father, so I decided to surprise him with something to prepare him for that role (along with the dvds I bought him). During our usually one-sided discussions about baby gear (I bet you can guess who does most of the talking), Garrett mentioned that he didn't like the Moby wraps or sling carriers because they look too "girlie." So I showed him a slew of other baby carriers, and he decided he liked the Beco in Panthers the best as a more manly but still fun baby carrier. Before Father's Day, he really enjoyed holding my cousin's little baby, and when I asked him what he was most excited to do with our baby, he said he couldn't wait to hold the baby. That was just so darn cute! So I bought him his beloved baby carrier. He's going to be such a great dad, and I can't wait for him to be able to use his present. I wish I had a picture of Garrett wearing it with one of Lanna's baby dolls in it, but I still haven't unpacked our camera so you'll have to enjoy the stock photo.

It's a BABY!

Today I had my ultrasound! I don't know what I expected to see in there, but I was completely surprised to see a baby. Last night I was thinking about all the possible horrible things they could see on the ultrasound. Maybe the baby would be missing the top of its head, or have pterodactyl wings, or be some sort of weird misshapen lump. I know those are all pretty ridiculous, but I was so relieved and surprised to see this cute busy baby in there. We have officially dubbed the baby "Bob Baby" while it is still in utero. Bob Baby was rolling around and stretching and playing with its hands and knees. It was so surreal! I am so excited.

Just to put your minds at ease (or to drive you crazy), Garrett and I did not find out the gender. We are keeping it a surprise; though if you are really intent on trying to find out, we do have the ultrasound on videotape. Feel free to stop by, watch the video and try to spot the baby's genitalia. Good luck!

Back in Bountiful

Where the people are nice and the mailmen are just a little too helpful! I've really been enjoying living back at my mom's house. My mom and I get to hang out in the evenings, and Mom's a great gym buddy. But there is one hugely annoying problem with being back in Bountiful... the mailman keeps delivering our mail to the wrong places!

As most of you know, I married my neighbor. My mom's house and Garrett's parents' house were on the same street, two houses apart. When we lived at my mom's house the first time, the mailman always delivered our mail to my in-laws house. Rather than delivering the mail to the address on the package, he would always take to my in-laws because we have the same last name.

This time the process has become much more complicated. In the past couple years several things happened: Garrett's brother and his family moved in with my mother and father-in-law, then my mother and father-in-law moved into a new house and Garrett's brother and his wife moved into another home in Bountiful. Confused yet? So was the post office. Now they are delivering our mail to Garrett's brother's house! Garrett called the post office, and I hope we don't have any more problems, but I wouldn't count on it.

The mailman wasn't the only one who messed up though. I'm sure you can imagine the expression on my face when I pulled this movie out of the package:

Mom and I thought it was pretty funny to tease Garrett about his secret love of cheesy romance novel movies. Here's the movie Garrett ordered:

If you haven't seen this movie, I would definitely recommend it. It was really freaky!

On all our recent exciting news...

First, I wanted to tell you all the cute stories about telling our families that I'm pregnant. The best reaction was Garrett's. When we did the test, Garrett and I sat in the living room and waited for the timer to go off. When the timer beeped, Garrett ran into the bathroom and grabbed the test before I could see it. He wanted to be the very first to know. Then he read it and a huge smile started spreading across his face. He turned it around so I could read it, and I gave him a great big hug. Then I made him hold still so I could take a picture. It was very cute.

For the future grandparents, I made them all small accordion scrapbooks. They said "In a little while, just a little while, Garrett and Sarah will be one, two, three!" And on the last page there was a picture of the pregnancy test, and "Baby Box coming November 2010!" My mom was the first to get hers. We slipped it into her Easter basket. Even though I was only 9 weeks, she definitely had some suspicions. When she read the book, she said "I knew it!" She and Lanna were both really excited. The next week we gave my Dad his book. His reaction was pretty funny. He was happy, but more shocked at the idea of being a grandpa. Then we gave Garrett's parents their book. When Garrett's mom got to the last page, she closed the book and smiled at us. Then my sisters-in-law let out a very excited (but also kind of scary) scream and ran over to hug us. It was a lot of fun. I'm 15 weeks now, and still feeling pretty nauseated. But the baby (who we have temporarily named "Bob Baby") is doing great.

In other exciting news, I graduated last week. Hooray! Law school really seemed to fly by, and I really can't believe I'm finished already. One thing that was really exciting for me was that I finally got to have stripes on my sleeves. When I was little and went to my parents graduations, I loved learning about the different graduation regalia and what it all meant. I knew that I wanted a hood and stripes when I graduated, and last week I got to wear them. It was a great day. Now, Garrett and I are getting ready to move this weekend. That's the downside of graduating; no more cheap student housing. And now I'll have to start paying those student loans, so we'll be moving in with my mom. I hope she's excited about having a little crying baby living in her basement this November.

The cat's out of the bag!

Now that all the future grandparents have been informed, it's time to let all of you in on our good news!


By now you've probably figured out why I haven't posted in a while. I've been too busy being sick and sleepy! As I type this, I'm struggling to keep my eyes open and sipping a Slimfast to quell the nausea (THANK YOU Julie for that awesome suggestion!). Garrett and I are super excited! Baby Box is due to arrive around the first week of November. I'll post some cute stories about telling the families later. For now, I really need some sleep! Good night!

One of my new favorite things!

***The subject of this post is a menstruation product. If that totally grosses you out, stop reading now.***

I hope you are not all freaked out now. Let me explain. I started thinking about menstrual products last summer, when I attended a great relief society meeting on food storage. One thing that was emphasized was that we should not just store food, but should think about the other things we might need in an emergency, i.e. diapers, toilet paper, hygiene products, and menstrual products. The mention of menstrual products concerned me because I knew that if there ever was an emergency, with my luck it would happen during my period. Garrett and I live in an itty bitty apartment, and we don't have a lot of room for our regular food, let alone food storage, but I have at least been working on us having a 72 hour kit and a little food storage. Problem is, boxes of pads or tampons take up a lot of space! And what if I couldn't store enough and ran out?! If there ever were an emergency, the last thing I would want to be worrying about was having enough tampons!

My first thought to solve this problem was to sew some reusable pads. But I was kind of turned off this idea when I started thinking about how much work it would take and envisioned trying to wash them out during an emergency. Gross! Thank goodness I came across the menstrual cup! Most people don't know about cups (I didn't), even though they've been around since the beginning of the 1900s. I think the reason that they are not well known is because disposable pads and tampons have been such big business, while a reusable option does not generate the same kind of huge repeat business. Here is a picture of the brand I chose, the MeLuna:

A menstrual cup is a cup, usually made out of silicone, that you fold and insert basically like a tampon. It holds more than a tampon. You can't feel it when it's in. Most people only have to empty it every 12 hours (awesome!). When you empty it, you rinse it out in the sink, wipe it out with a piece of toilet paper, or (think in a dire emergency situation when you don't want to waste your drinking water) can even pee on it (I know it sounds gross, but we're talking major emergency and pee is sterile) to clean it before you re-insert it. And best of all, you can use the same cup for 10 years! Here's a picture of what one looks like folded:
So instead of packing boxes of tampons, I only have to pack one little cup. That's it! And even though I bought the cup as a back-up, once I started using it, I loved it. I will never use tampons again! Most cups cost between $20 and $40. Although the initial cost seems a little steep, once I added up the amount I could spend on tampons over 10 years, it is definitely worth it. There are several brands. Before choosing one, I suggest checking out this comparison website and this forum. Here is a website that sells many brands (don't be scared b/c it's a UK company, they ship here and there's a button to change all the currency to dollars), and if you decide you like the MeLuna, you can get a slightly better price from the MeLuna website (it's a German website, so click on the little British flag to see the website in English). The MeLuna is one of the cheapest, has great colors, three sizes, and four different types of stem so you can really choose the exact one that you think would work best for you.
I hope I haven't grossed you all out, but this is an item that I really love. It works better than a tampon, is better for the environment, is better for my checkbook, and helps me be more prepared in an emergency. I hope you all check it out!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Garrett and I had a great Valentine's Day this year. Also a very laid back one. Because Valentine's was on a Sunday this year, we kind of spread our Valentine's celebration out over Friday and Saturday. Garrett had to work Friday night, but when he got home from work, he brought me some beautiful flowers and yummy heart-shaped chocolate covered marshmallows. Isn't he sweet? That morning I had a doctor's appointment where I ended up have a mole incised, so I wasn't having the best day (think lots of pain, bleeding and stitches that looked like mutant whiskers on my face). When he got home, I started crying because he totally made my day.

On Saturday, we got up early and celebrated my brother-in-law's birthday at Garrett's parent's house. It was so much fun seeing our cute nieces and nephews! We took a great Valentine's Day nap that afternoon, then Garrett revealed my Valentine's gifts. He bought me this lovely purse (my favorite color!):
And also this great spoon bracelet from etsy:
My hubby has such good taste! For Garrett's Valentine's present, I chose three seasons of Garrett's favorite tv show, Get Smart. He loves it! We've been watching episodes ever since.
For dinner, we went to one of our favorite casual dinner restaurants, Red Lobster. Their biscuits are so yummy! And Garrett really loves the crab linguini. I love eating pretty much all underwater creatures. Yum! We had such a fun Valentine's day. I'm so glad I've got such a great guy to spend it with.