The Bump

This is the moment you've all been waiting for...well, some of you anyway. I've gotten more than one email and threatening phone call saying that you want to see just how much of a heifer I've become during the last 8 months. I'll admit, I was one of you, begging for pregnancy profile shots, until I became the bulbous profile; now I'm all about hiding out in my over-sized maternity clothes and willing myself to go into labor.

Long about week 18 of pregnancy, James and I got the great idea that we should take a mug shot every week in the same shirt to track my hugeness. By 18 weeks I was already pretty huge. That's one of the perks of having a torso so short that my ribs and hips are normally about an inch apart. I had outgrown my pants by 6 weeks and, even though I didn't really keep a meal down for the first few months, I've done a masterful job of packing on the pounds (and inches). My doctor is so proud of my weight gaining skills.

And so, here we are at 34 weeks. I haven't seen my feet in quite some time and I'm quite sure that I now weigh more than James. The baby now weighs about 5 lbs. Explain the other 30!

***WARNING***

Most of these pictures were taken in an un-airconditioned apartment in the middle of summer. No make-up. Definitely no hair stying. Just look at the belly and ignore the head s'il vous plait.

It's a boy!

We were in Italy this week. No sticky notes for week 22. Also the last time my feet were small enough to fit into anything but flip flops.

This is the week we started moving. No pictures on the wall, yes piles on the floor.

New apartment!

And here is my condition as of last Monday. Man, that thing protrudes! No wonder I'm always burning it on the stove and getting stuck between the shopping cart and the check-out counter.

Mentos and Diet Coke

Ever since he saw a video about making rockets out of Mentos and Diet Coke, James has pretty much been obsessed. We found some Coke on sale, he borrowed some Mentos from work, and we even made a special trip to Home Depot for PVC pipes in preparation for the big day.

The next step was finding partners in crime. We chose our friends Jarom and Stephanie Brown because a) we like them. b) they're not afraid to get sticky. And c) every time we see them a new invention seems to hatch (i.e. giant hamster ball that propels itself across the water).

Jarom and James got busy making a PVC pipe launcher.
Trying to speed the hot glue cooling process in the freezer...
...and with a fan
We had to drink 2 liters of root beer during dinner to get another bottle top of the right size...just to make sure the aerodynamics were just right. Stephanie made some nice cardboard fins to help this puppy fly.
We drove around for quite a while trying to find a place to make our mess where we wouldn't get arrested. We settled on a field by a high school. There were sprinklers going all around us, so we hoped that the coke smell would be gone by morning. The first attempt proved to be the most successful, flying up about 15 feet.
The boys were completely soaked in artificially sweetened stickiness.

We tried smaller bottles to see if they'd fly higher. No luck. Our parking lot got its share of sticky puddles though.

So Coke and Mentos rockets = big mess and not a lot of flying. I'm sure this is only our maiden voyage though. Watch out Utah!

Forgot the Camera

Happy first anniversary to us! We got married last year on Thursday, August 13 because really, really wanted to celebrate our first anniversary on Friday the 13th...that's not why we got married; that's why we picked that day. Anyway, it turned out to be quite the fun adventure.

I packed the car with everything we might need (including a hideous stuffed cat to remind us of the creepy kitty in the B&B where we spent our wedding night that scared us to death every time we walked by it) except the camera. So sad.
James got off work a couple of hours early and we hit the road for St. George. It turns out that it's pretty far away. We misjudged the distance and had to floor it the whole way there. No speeding tickets though. We got a room at the first decently priced hotel we found, and only got mildly lost on the way to the Tuacahn theater for our Tarzan show! It turns out that we completely missed the dinner that we paid for, but oh well. The show was awesome. The actors were really talented singers and dancers. They had erected quite the labyrinth of zip lines and there we monkeys flying all over the place during the whole show. So fun!

I think the Comfort Inn had pregnant women in mind when they designed their beds. I was in heaven with the soft sheets, supportive mattress, and about 10 squishy pillows wedged all around me. Delicious. They even made the pillows small enough that James didn't get shoved into the crack between the bed and the wall. Genius. It was so nice that we didn't set an alarm, slept through breakfast (second meal we paid for and didn't taste), and didn't even touch the pool.

When we finally did heave ourselves out of bed and back into the world (when we could hear vacuums all around, we figured they'd break down the door soon), we put on our Sunday best, (i.e. I shoved my swollen feet into something prettier than filthy flip flops) and went to the St. George Temple. I thought ahead enough to find a couple of family files to do there. It's a beautiful temple and we highly recommend it.
We had lunch at Cafe Rio for the first time since our first date. Aaawwww.

We did a little more sightseeing at the St. George tabernacle and Brigham Young's winter home before hitting the highway back home. This time we weren't in a rush, but we did manage to get a speeding ticket. The little stinker cop pulled us over for going 80 seriously 300 feet before the speed limit changed to 80mph. Whatever. We had such a fun weekend that we didn't even care.

Italy!

Yay DigiCert for flying us half way around the world! We had a whirlwind week-long trip to Italy as our summer vacation/last hurrah without a baby (or at least one that cries and requires a stroller).

In order to maximize our days in Italy, James worked a double shift, meaning that he was up all night long, then flew for 14 hours. I don't think it was his favorite day ever. When we arrived in Rome we found out that our 2 hour layover was extended to 3 and then 4 hours. By the end of that, he had firmly decided that he didn't like Italy and it would take some seriously good food to convince him otherwise.

We did finally make it to Palermo. We had to take a web of buses to get to our hotel, and when we finally got there, James crashed. I would have too, but my stomach won the battle and I went in search of a fruit guy and some bread. That day we polished off our first kilo of tomatoes.

Later in the evening, we managed to rip ourselves out of bed (beds, actually. The whole trip we slept on 2 single beds shoved together), and get enough food to keep ourselves from being sabbath breakers the next day. We walked along the waterfront and found this great little outdoor pizzeria.

One bite into his delicious pizza and James informed me that all the hate he had for Italy was gone. It was good stuff.

The next morning was the reason we came to Italy to begin with. Sicily finally pulled it together and became a stake! It was an excellent conference and everybody was so excited. I think there were around 850 people in attendance, including some previous mission presidents. (One of them from 32 years ago came all the way from Argentina!)I had a blast seeing everyone again and James was a trouper. He perfected his Italian skills for introducing himself and saying "E' maschio". They were all thrilled as he is that it's a boy.
Here we are with my mission president and his wife (they got home before we did!) and the Harris's. Bro. Harris is James's old scoutmaster and their families go way back. It was pretty neat to see them on a mission.

And here we are with Lea and Andrea, my favorite people in the world. They got our baby a Catania soccer bib, just to put him in his place. The greatest thing for me was to see people we had taught on the mission still progressing and active in church. These guys are rocks. So awesome.

The Harris's gave us a ride from Palermo to Catania which was SO nice! We went to Monreale on the way back and saw this amazing cathedral. It was built in 1172, I believe and the entire ceiling and all the walls were covered in mosaics. So all that stuff that looks like gold leaf and paintings is actually a bunch of little tiny pieces. It was incredible.
We spent the next day in Catania. (This is a picture of us being elephants.) I could've spent the whole week there, but then we would've missed the rest of the amazing trip. We went to Catania for 3 reasons, Savia (best arancini in the world), Ciocolato e Gelato (ditto ice cream), and to see people. Well, the first two were closed, which was a real dream wrecker, but we did get to see a lot of neat sights and spend the evening with Lea, Andrea and Francesca.

During the morning we made a run to the market for some more tomatoes and ties. I think we bought 8 ties. Later, we went on a little tour train around the city and I left the bag of ties on the train. Sad day! Just as I was feeling really awful about it, we saw the train go by again with another load of tourists. We went screaming down the street and Andrea stopped traffic so that the train would have to stop. We made a really big scene. Anyway, may wonders never cease, the bag was still on the train with all the ties in it! Best day of my life. Thanks, Andrea!
The next day we took a train to Siracusa and spent the day walking our feet off. We went to the Greek Theatre and all the old stuff that goes with it. Here's James taking a lovely zombie picture in an ancient sarcophagus. About 2 seconds later he got kicked out by the sarcophagus guard guy. (The resident sarcophicer, if you will.)I think that was his only job. I mean, they could put up a sign or ropes, but paying a guy to pace around is good too.

In the market we met this cheese guy. He was awesome and cut us a sweet deal on some ricotta for lunch. We put up a couple of pictures of him on Facebook and it turns out that he's pretty much a Siracusa legend.

We spent the evening with Gianni and Patrizia, a really awesome couple that was in my English class. They went all out for us. The drove us around to all kinds of awesome sights (my favorite was a to-scale model of the Madonna delle Lacrime church made entirely of match sticks. So stinking cool). They took us to their house to meet their dog and parrot, took us out to eat an amazing meal, and drove us all the way back to Catania. I'm not really sure how to make it up to them because I'm not ok with giving them our baby. We'll have to think of something else.
The next day we spent mostly on the train to Naples. We got kicked out of our seats twice before we realized that we had been assigned a seat. OOooohhhh. I didn't think transportation in Italy was that organized. Naples was awesome. Very narrow and dirty, but we loved it. We walked our feet off, once again, and vowed to buy walking shoes for our next vacation.
A friend told us where to go for real pizza napoletana, and of course we did. It was delicious, naturally.

We managed to hit a few museums and cathedrals in our short visit there. There's so much to see that we'll just have to go back again. We're pretty proud that we didn't get robbed or even seriously ripped off while we were there.
We spent our last day in Rome. The Patane's from Ravenna drove 4 hours down to spend the day with us. It was so fun to have some traveling buddies that kind of knew what was going on. We destroyed that city and saw everything that was free.
Rome was a very clean city, at least compared to what we'd see earlier. Here's proof that it's still Italy though. It looked like the car on the right was rammed from behind by someone who drove away. That caused a 3 car crash, no body can get out, and who gets the ticket? The car that got mashed from both ends. Nice.
The only thing we had time to see in the Vatican was St. Peter's Basilica. It was seriously impressive though. Here's Michaelangelo's Pieta'. I think you could spend a whole day just seeing art in the Vatican, but we were hungry and so we left. Besides, you have to pay to get into the Sistine Chapel.
Here we are in front of the Trevi Fountain. You can't see it because of the mobs of people, but it's really nice. According to the travel book (Provo Library has a billion, if you're interested), when Bernini was building it there was a barber that came out and gave him a hard time sometimes. The barber didn't think the fountain would work out for him. Bernini showed him by not only building an incredible fountain, but he also sculpted this random pot on one side that completely blocks the public's view of the barber's sign. It's still there, the barber is not.

Another, more recent, story is that, since people toss money into the fountain, a local bum collected it every day with a magnet. He made over $1,000 a day, but gave it all away to other homeless people. They tried to arrest him, but couldn't because it's not illegal to pick money up off the street. When they came out with the Euro, his magnet didn't work on it anymore so I guess he had to find a new job.

And there you have it. We ended the week so tired that we didn't even mind the eternal plane ride home. We're ready to do it all again though (with walking shoes this time).

Baby Makes Three

No more font options. This is some kind of joke, isn't it.

T'was the night before James's birthday (Feb 22, 2010) and I was busily planning a surprise birthday bash and attempting to make a Baked Alaska big enough for 30 people. James was at work for the night (I'm SO glad those night-shift days are over!) and it was my only time to be sneaky.

I had no inkling that I could be pregnant, except that we had stopped trying not to be about a month before. I had a couple of pregnancy tests hidden under the bathroom sink, the temptation was too great and the timing was too perfect; I had to take them. So I read the instructions: pee on the stick, set it down for 10 minutes, if there's a vertical line, even ever-so-faint, you're probably pregnant. Ok.

And ever-so-faint it was. Probably because I was like 2 seconds pregnant and the hormones that make you crazy and sick hadn't taken over by body yet. I took the other test to be sure. Same ever-so-faint line. I started to doubt my generic Wal-mart brand, but by then the grocery store was closed and I had to wait out the night. At 6am I was up and running to the store for another test. Different brand, same result. Oh yeah.
So I made James a birthday card...
...from the fetus, of course. We had already decided that Sveinbjorn makes a nice name for a fetus, so signing it was no problem.

When James got home in the morning he ate the candy before opening the card. Who does that? I was dying of anticipation. When he finally opened it, he just stared at it for a few minutes. He finally looked up at me with a puzzled look on his face and asked, "are you pregnant?" I said, "yes". He looked like he didn't believe me for a couple of minutes, but then he had a bad case of silly grin for the rest of the day.
We had decided not to tell anyone for the first few weeks. Harder than it sounds. That afternoon, James's friend (my cohort) took him to a movie while I packed 30 people into the bedroom. When they got back, I asked him to go get some folding chairs out of the closet. Everyone screamed, "surprise!" and scared the living daylights out of him. I think he almost punched our home teacher. Oh yeah, go me. Here's a picture of my mom with Elena and Amanda, a couple of my awesome mission companions who made the trip from Salt Lake for the event. I think they were James's favorite guests because they both brought him candy.
Here's the famous Baked Alaska. It actually turned out quite well. Sure, it was a little melted on the sides, and frozen solid in the middle, but everyone ate it.

Disney!

So now the font changing option is back and all is well in Zion.

Here are a few pictures of our Disney adventure. We went there in December (courtesy of DigiCert) and had a fabulous time! I'm really glad that the company signed a 10 year contract with Disney. Yay for going back every year for free!

I'm not scared of very many things, but ferris wheels and wild boars make the list. Crazy roller coasters, yes please. Somehow I got on a ferris wheel. Here's me biting James for rocking the basket. The only thing that makes a ferris wheel more terrifying for me is having the cart rocked...no seat belts...I would make a horrible skydiver.
Splash Mountain has no lines at 8am because it's freezing cold. We went on it with Jon and Tina. Somehow Tina and I got totally soaked through (and were sick the next day)Jon was totally dry and James had 3 drops of water on his pants. How does that work?
Mickey and Pluto in the Christmas garb.
Can you believe that this is a painted mural? It looks so 3D.

I hope this video came through. There's an animation studio in California Adventure. This thing spins around really fast, they turn a strobe light on, and voilà, it looks like the characters are moving. Pretty incredible.

Honeymoon Adventures

Ok, I have no idea what happened to my cool typewriter font. There goes conformity.

The following is a photographic journey through our first few days of marriage. After making our escape from the reception, we went to a cute little bed and breakfast in Longmont. I'm pretty sure we were the only guests that night, and the owner took extra-special care of us.

See, she even made a congratulations sign for Mr. and Mrs. Affleck.

We stayed in a room called Kitty Korner. One of those themed things. It was very nice, lots of fluffy things like towels and sheets and window hangings, and a creepily realistic stuffed cat. It sat right outside the bathroom door and kept scaring us every time we came out. Finally, after several incidents of jumping backwards and screaming, we wised up and threw a towel over the cat. Problem solved.
The next day was filled with Southern Colorado sight seeing. Here's the world's largest rocking chair.
And probably the world's largest fiberglass beetle. We went to the May Museum and spent a couple of hours looking at exotic bugs. They were very nice. Looking back, it was a weird way to spend our first day as a married couple, but we both really wanted to go to the bug museum. What?
We had a nice little hike in Garden of the Gods. This shot took probably 20 minutes to perfect.
Climbing up a very windy tunnel thing. James got a lot higher than I did.
Here we are. James is wearing the Superman cape I gave him (too bad it's made for a toddler; it looked more like a bib on him) and it gave him super-human strength.
Two weeks after the wedding, we went to London (courtesy of Digicert). Every train platform has a sign and audio recording telling us to "please mind the gap between the train and the platform". There were also signs in the trains telling about the 42 people last year who failed to mind the gap and were injured. They mean business.
We arrived at 7am and had the wrong hotel information. We eventually got to the right place and still couldn't check in until 3pm. So, we left our luggage at the desk and wandered around like starstruck, jetlagged zombies until we could have a nap. Our hotel was near Hyde Park, and that's the first place we went. We found a lovely little folk dance group giving free lessons. Men in kilts, women in pants, we had to be a part of it. So we danced the Virginia Reel with skirted men.
This guy was our favorite, probably because his tie matched his kilt, and he remembered long socks. Very classy.
Double-decker bus! We never did figure out the buses in London. The tube was much easier (not to mention more fun to say). We did ride one, just to say that we did it. I think we got on 2 stops before the end of the route and everyone had to get off.
Telephone booth. Some of them actually have pay phones in them...what a novel idea!

It's the Mary Poppins guy!

Some genius of a street painter had finally seen enough tourists get mowed over by traffic coming in an unexpected direction. Almost every intersection tells you which way to look to avoid disaster. Some of them even have little eyeballs painted in the O's so you know which way to move your eyeballs.
This was at a Henry VIII exhibit at the Tower of London. It's a medieval blood pressure machine! Actually, I think it's to give you the idea of how hard it is to bend with a suit of armor on.

Bobbies

The Tower Bridge. Some poor Arizona man thought he was buying this when he bought London Bridge. Incorrect. He spent his fortune on a very small, very drab, stone bridge that has luckily done wonders for tourism in Lake Havasu City.
Big Ben (which, we learned is the clock's name, not the tower's) and Parliament. Closed until October. Boo.
This is a real pigeon on the steps of St. Paul's. No Mary Poppins or bird woman in sight, but I think it's proof that they're real.
We went to a Broadway Musical! (I don't know what it's called when it's not in New York. Same thing.) We saw the Lion King and it was awesome. We had some very nice "standing seats" which means you pay much less, but instead of a chair, you get a banister to lean on. The usher hooked us up with some binoculars though, and we saw the whole thing crystal clear. Near the end, some people left and we snagged their seats. We later found out why they had left early, as the metro was so crowded that it took us almost 2 hours to make a normally 15 minute trip.
We flew to Edinburgh on a quest to find Affleck Castle. We had to. You can't go to the UK without a quest. We rented a car, wrong side of the road, wrong side of the car, wrong kind of transmission. I've never been so scared in my entire life. This picture is just after James's first big success: parking without hitting anything.

Then, we went to find an internet cafe to print out a map and make our way out of the city. That was one heck of a wild goose chase. We asked directions from all kinds of people. Everyone seemed to know where one was except for us. One very drunk man (at 1pm) is still quotation material in our house. After giving us directions (slurred and completely useless), the following took place:
James: Thank you, sir.
Drunk guy: Don't call me sir! I hate it when people call me sir.
James: Oh, sorry.
Drunk guy: Well, don't apologize, you didn't know.

Long story considerably shorter, we finally got a map printed out, found the car before we got a parking ticket, drove around Edinburgh for 3 hours trying to get out (the whole place was under construction. Not only were all the main streets blocked, but the open ones weren't labeled until half a block down the street. So you have no idea if you've made a wrong turn until there's no going back). James was a trooper. He only turned into oncoming traffic once.

Once we got out of the city (after consulting a whole pub full of drunk guys...bartender's idea, not ours), things looked up. We found a darling little place to stay where they got us even better maps and even served breakfast.
And what a breakfast it was. Let me explain. From the poached egg, moving clockwise, haggis (mostly lamb lungs), blood pudding (not my favorite), mushrooms, bangers, and bacon (more like ham). Holy high protein breakfast Batman! Usually, I'm all for trying new things, and I did, but I sure didn't get a sticker from the clean plate club that morning.
After a little more driving, we found that streets were no longer labeled at all. We knew we were getting close though because there were signs with the name Affleck on them all over.
We talked to several locals and finally located Affleck Castle. Very well hidden, very much on private property. We got the owner's name and phone number. A Mrs. Fievey, described by her neighbors as "not exactly the most approachable person" and, "Oh, she's a horrible woman". James tried to call her a couple of times with no success. We finally decided that we had not come all this way to turn around and go home, so we did a bit of mild trespassing.
Here it is, Affleck Castle. The grounds were very nice, a few little cottages and outbuildings, peacocks, and a thick layer of dark mud. Someday, we hope to inherit it. At any rate, our quest was a success. We found the Holy Grail, so to speak, and brought home a rock to prove it.