Until We Meet Again

My dear sweet Grandma Stum passed away last week on Friday. She was almost 93 years old. It is very bitter-sweet. Of course we are happy that she is finally with my grandpa again after 9 years but we are also sad that she is no longer with us.

Playing scrabble at the cabin this summer.


The worst part is that my mom is so far away in Hong Kong and can't be here with her siblings during this time. Grandma had a very fast decline which is all anyone could ask for. Just 5 months ago she was living on her own, driving a car, working in the temple, attending water aerobics every day, and about a million other things. She was always so active and healthy. She never stopped learning and was a perfect example for all of us on every level.

Me and Grandma at the cabin last summer.


There isn't enough good you can say about Grandma Stum. She was a big part of every one of her grandchildren's lives. My grandpa built this cabin over 30 years ago and all of us spent our childhood summers taking trips to the cabin. We also used to have sleepovers at Grandma's house all the time. And she was always planning outings and camping trips and other things for us to do.

Grandma playing Uno with Heidi and Brandon.


I was fortunate enough to be able to spend a lot of time with Grandma over the last few weeks of her life. We had her over for our family dinner just 3 Sundays ago. She was hospitalized for a few days over Thanksgiving so on Thanksgiving Day I went and stayed in her hospital room with her to help her eat her Thanksgiving dinner from the hospital.

After that she moved to a different facility for the last week of her life and I was able to visit her there a few times although she was mostly sleeping during my visits. On Friday I went to visit her again and I was with her as she took her last breath. It was a very sweet experience. Her funeral is this Saturday and I'm really looking forward to it. We will miss you Grandma.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving weekend was awesome. What's not to love about FOUR days off of work? We slept in every day and just relaxed with family playing games and watching movies and anything else we felt like.

We had our official Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday night.

Here are the peeps:


The food and activities:

We played Disney scene it and Battle of the Sexes after dinner.

We also went to 2 BYU basketball games last week.

We saw Blind Side on Saturday and Brandon went to the BYU Utah game.

And I'm sure we did a bunch of other stuff but that's all I got for now.

Still Here

I know I should probably update my blog but I really don't have anything to update it with. I looked at my camera today and the only pictures I have on there since Halloween are of this crazy double egg that Brandon cooked the other day. He pulled an egg out of the carton and it was huge and he was like weird, should I cook it? And I was like sure. So he cracked it on to the frying pan and it had 2 yokes in it. It was kinda crazy. He told me to go get the camera so I took a picture of it. And nothing else has happened to take pictures of. See why I haven't updated this thing?

We really have just been relaxing, sitting at home every night on the couch watching TV. It totally bites that it's pitch black outside by the time we leave work. I absolutely hate it. It makes me feel like staying in all night, and that's pretty much what we do.

Yesterday was my 16 week mark and I celebrated it by throwing up all day. I may just be one of those lucky girls who is sick the whole 9 months. Oh well, I'll take it.

I don't want my blog to be full of nothing but ultrasound pictures, but I just couldn't resist. She is getting so big! It's crazy to see the difference just one week can make.


You'll have to click on this one so you can see her adorable little footprint! I am so in love with it.

Baby Girl Says Hello

We do have proof other than the pumpkins that this child rolling around inside me is a girl.



It is so fun (and surreal) to watch her kick around inside me and move all over.


If you saw this live, it really does look like she's blowing kisses!!


It's hard to believe that in 6 months she'll come out and we will be able to hold her and kiss her.

Happy Halloween!!

Happy Halloween everyone! I love dressing up. This year Brandon and I were Jessie and Woody from Toy Story.


Shannon's octo-mom costume ROCKED! Jason fit his costume a little too well...


We went to a party at Jason and Shannon's last night and had a really good time.

For the first time, I made home-made root beer. Okay, Brandon might have been the one to do the actual making of it, but it was my idea!


We also made our own individual pizzas. They were so good!

Russell's spider web guacamole:

The best group shot I got.

We played a really fun game with quarters and dice and we were all way too in to it to take any pictures.

Then we had donut-eating contests, couple style. It was so funny to watch!!!

Me and Bran.

Sara and Spencer.

Russell and Aubrey.

Dallin and Shellee.

Thanks Jason and Shannon for the fun party!

Carving Pumpkins

Last night Brandon and I carved pumpkins. I guess since it was Monday you could say we did it for FHE, but who are we kidding, every night is FHE because we always do something together. We can't let a Halloween pass us by without carving pumpkins.

Brandon getting started on his pumpkin.


Me with my pumpkin.


I always love how much better they look when they're lit up.

Brandon's pumpkin:


My pumpkin:

Yes, that's right folks, we are having a GIRL!!! And we are soooooo excited!

I Love Birthdays!

If any of you remember, I had an awesome birthday this year! Brandon totally spoiled me and I had the best day ever. At the end of my post I wrote that it was the best birthday I'd had...yet.

My half-birthday (no, I don't celebrate those but yes, I always think about them) isn't even until tomorrow, but I can't help thinking about my next birthday already. There's a possibility it might be even better than my last.

Why?

Because.....

For my next birthday.....

I'm getting THIS!!
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We are finally going to have a baby! And I couldn't be more excited! My due date is actually 6 days after my birthday but what do due dates mean anyway? Babies come when they are ready. Should be sometime at the end of April.

It's hard to believe that this sweet little thing is swimming around inside my belly. Brandon and I are so grateful for this miracle.

I'm 13 weeks today and hoping and praying that the morning sickness will go away before the baby comes! I've thrown up about a million times it seems like. But it's all for a good cause.

Vegas Again

I'm starting to see a pattern on my blog. I only blog about stuff that happens on weekends. Life is good during the week too, but apparently it's not exciting enough to take pictures of and blog about...

Anyway, so this last weekend we took a trip down to Mesquite and Las Vegas. The main reason we went was to watch the BYU game. But of course we had some fun on the strip while we were there.

I am so in love with the Bellagio. Maybe one day I'll actually stay there. I love the display they always have and I love seeing it change. We were there just 7 weeks ago and they've already got it all decked out for Fall. I wonder what it will look like for Christmas...



This was the first time I'd ever seen the water show in the day. Still just as cool.


Looks like Brandon forgot to smile...


I could sit for hours and just watch the shows over and over. But we only watched this one.

I love seeing places all decked out for Halloween. The other 2 M&M's at the front were dressed up like Elvis and the Phantom. They looked so good!

Watching the 3D movie in the M&M factory that we never knew was there.

And yay, the lions were out this time at MGM Grand. We even saw the trainer in there with them throwing bones to them and stuff. It was cool.

This guy just slept the whole time. They also had two little lion cubs but I didn't get to see them. :(

We had awesome seats for the game on the 6th row. And the weather was perfect! So nice to wear a t-shirt and flip flops again.

I think there might have been more BYU fans than UNLV fans. And for good reason! We kicked their butts.

After the game we went to Raising Cane's for a free meal. Everyone in the stadium got it since UNLV ran back a kick off for a touchdown. We got a few boos when we walked into the restaurant since we were wearing BYU shirts but the food was amazing so it was totally worth it!

Me and Shellee chowing down.

Not pictured: My AmAzInG pretzel from New York Pretzel inside New York New York and our squished hotel room where all 5 of us slept on 2 queen beds pushed together. Yeah, it was nice coming home to our own bed again. :)

So...I guess until next weekend...

Conference Weekend

Well, this last weekend was Conference weekend. And that's pretty much what we did - watched conference. It's all good though. Anything that involves not having to be at work is good.

On Friday night we babysat my 3 nephews while my brother and his wife went to the BYU football game. The boys were so much fun!

Ocean loves Brecken and would always walk up in front of him and then back up to sit on his lap. So stinking cute!


Kai kept saying he wanted something cold on his head because he had a headache.


This was my favorite. Ocean would crawl up the stairs pushing the exercise ball in front of him, and then when he got to the top he would yell for us until we looked at him and then he would throw the ball down the stairs. Over and over. Oh, to be entertained like a kid again...


We watched a couple sessions of general conference at Brandon's parents house and had a good pizza party over there after the Priesthood session. All in all, it was a good weekend. But aren't they always?

True Supporters

We spent a lot of time this weekend watching sports. Which is fine. We have a lot of different teams we cheer for though. This weekend it was Utah State Aggies, Provo Bulldogs, BYU Cougars, then Utah State Aggies again.

Thursday Chan had a game vs the U of U. They played it in the Rio Tinto Stadium and it was a lot of fun to be there. We did get kicked out of our seats a couple times which was strange because there were so many open seats, but they would only let us sit in certain sections. Weird.


Anyway, Chandra's team won in overtime with a really sweet goal.




Can you tell Chan is excited that they won? :)

Friday night we went to Lehi to watch Lincoln play football against them. I felt so bad for them because it was their Homecoming game and Provo slaughtered them. Lehi didn't score any points at all. :( I didn't take any pictures at that game.

Saturday we watched the BYU football game at home on TV and then later that night we went to BYU to watch Chandra's team play soccer against them. BYU beat them. It was a sad game. Although the ref's had a big part of BYU's win. Notice in this picture how three of the four ref's are not placing their hand over their heart? Yeah, I'm pretty sure those were the three ref's that decided to be on BYU's team for that game. So lame.


Me and Bran at the game.


Sunday we went to Church with Brandon's family to support his dad in his new calling as Bishop of the ward. We had an amazingly yummy dinner at the house afterwards and then played cards all night. We had such a good time. (Notice how Brandon is the only male helping out in the kitchen? It's like that every time we have a family dinner. He is so good and I'm so glad he's mine!)

Now back to work. Yuck.