Hey there...

...Mother Nature. I have a bone to pick with you. I'm not really sure if you think its funny to make me be wide awake after four hours of sleep these days but I don't find it humorous. What's that? You are trying to make up for the first 6 months when I slept a ridiculous amount and got nothing accomplished at all? Thats funny.... what exactly am I supposed to get accomplished at 4:30 in the morning besides watching infomercials (which I must admit are entertaining but are not productive) and updating my blog with pointless posts? You can go ahead and add these shenanigans to the "Not Okay List". And while you are at it, can you talk to Old Man Winter about doing his job and getting us some snow, not just frigid temperatures, for Christmas. Thanks.


So... I am wide awake and have been since 4:30. This is really weird for me. I have never had problems sleeping. If anything I have a problem with sleeping too much! So I am sitting here boring all of you with my pointless rambling and watching Babies: Special Delivery on Discovery Health (which, by the way, I am quite annoyed that Oprah decided she needs to take over to make her own network! Really?? Discovery Health? Couldn't you have picked another channel like The Fishing Channel or one of the million other channels available?? Boo Oprah. Boo.). I would upload a few more pictures for you to enjoy but they are on our other computer, which Dave used to buy my Christmas presents and I am being a good wife and trying not to accidentally see. Anyway, I have been very productive lately! We are planning on doing some baby gear scouting this weekend in SLC but probably won't buy anything until after Christmas.

This is my 26 week picture...

I guess I will answer some of your questions. Lindsy, you asked if I was pregnant when you were here and we went to dinner. I was but I didn't know it yet. So I guess when you were asking when we were going to have a baby and I said we are getting old so probably sooner than later I really meant it! :)
I haven't had any heartburn yet! I just have that thing where if I eat too late and then lay down I feel like the food is in my throat! But it doesn't burn so I'm assuming that is not heartburn. I've never had heartburn before but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it probably burns. :) I am loving buying little girl things! There is SO much cute stuff! And I love the pink too! I am not totally anti-pink as some may think. Yesterday I had to go get some labs drawn and a little probably 4-year-old girl came in with her mom and she was dressed in a full-on princess dress. It was SO cute!! And I had an epiphany that I really don't care if I my little girl wants to dress as a princess or wear dresses all the time or is a giant tomboy like I was. If that is who she is and it makes her happy then I will be happy! :)
As far as names go, we have a name pretty much picked out. We are keeping our options open but this name has just kind of fit since the beginning and obviously even more so since we found out what she was a girl. I am still contemplating sharing it with the world for some reason but I will tell you that her middle name will be June. It was my Grandma Alley's middle name and is super cute with the first name we have picked if I do say so myself. :)
I think those are all the questions so far, right?
One thing that I have noticed and Dave has definitely noticed is that I am a bit ornery since I have had pregnancy hormones rushing through my body. I have never really been one to be super emotional or hormonal (I don't think??) but being pregnant makes me a bit PMS-y kind of all the time. :) I really am not a fan of it. I know Dave is not. I think it makes it even harder for Dave to understand and deal with when I was never a moody kind of girl before. Even Michelle has said that I am a feisty pregnant lady and she wants her laid back, agreeable Ashley back. :) Sorry folks, if I could change it I definitely would! I do try... I guess I am just no competition for pregnancy hormones!
On a side note, I would NEVER allow my deliveries to be filmed! And Dave would DEFINITELY not be down with it! He is trying to ban any pictures at all in the delivery room... haha... He said that my mom is going to get patted down before she can come in. I am okay with pictures a few minutes after birth as long as none of them have my lady parts in them.
Well, I guess I will stop pointlessly rambling now. We will be taking a 28 week picture tomorrow and then I will post it and probably have no words since I just went off and covered pretty much everything I can think of for the time being. :)

PREGGO!!

Hello friends! I am a sucky blogger. I think we can all agree on that. BUT at least I am updating now right? Right? I totally left you hanging after the initial announcement so I will try to fill you in on everything now.

I am 26 weeks today. Until about 13-14 weeks I pretty much felt like I was going to puke constantly. I only actually threw up twice which I am grateful for but the nausea was horrible! I could hardly brush my teeth without gagging. It was awesome. I was also SO TIRED. I felt like I couldn't even stand up for 5 minutes without wanting to lay down. Now, I am feeling pretty good except that my skin is super, super dry. I put on about 3 layers of lotion several times a day. It doesn't really help to live in Idaho where the humidity is 0%. I'm still sleeping a lot but I don't feel as exhausted. I think its just from being pregnant AND my sleep schedule being crazy from working nights. I haven't really had any super bad cravings. When I was really nauseous I ate a lot of Jimmy John's and Ross Park Drive-In and grilled cheese sandwiches though.

We found out that we are having a girl! I have been feeling her kick and move since about 17 weeks. Dave can feel her move now too which is so exciting! She is one active little girl! The ultrasound tech lady could hardly get her to be in one position long enough to get the pictures she needed! I'm hoping that she is getting it all out now and she will be just a calm, sweet little girl. HA! I know that is wishful thinking but I can hope right?

I hope you all appreciate these pictures because it took FOREVER to upload them!

Here's one of the ultrasound pics. Isn't she so cute already?? :) The girl parts picture is clearly girl parts so I'm not too worried about her coming out and actually being a boy. Plus, my mom, my bro-in-law and I (or is it me?.... to be grammatically correct) had dreams that she was a girl. Also, pretty much everyone just assumed she was a girl as soon as I told them I was pregnant. Kind of weird right?

This is the bedding we got! And if you are wondering if that is the farthest we have gotten on the nursery the answer is yes! In our defense, we are going to base the rest of the decor of the nursery on the bedding and we just got it the other day! So thats my current excuse. :)

This is just an update from our life in non-baby news. We went to the Giants first two playoff games in October or whenever that was.

This is a pic from the second game. Pretty good seats!
Pic from the first game... about as far away as we could have been from the field and still be in the stadium. Haha... it was still way fun!


These pictures are from our trip to Antigua! It is in the Caribbean. We stayed at a Sandals and pretty much just laid and the beach and read for 5 days. It was awesome! My older sister's advice shortly after I told her I was pregnant was to go on a vacation before the baby comes! So we did! It was amazing and beautiful but we probably wouldn't go back to a Sandals. It was a little bit fancy schmancy for us. :) I am not really one to want to wear a prom dress to dinner every night. It was nice, just not really our style.



My birthday was while we were there and Dave arranged a candlelit dinner on the beach for me! It was AMAZING!!! Who would have thought that on my 27th birthday I would be having a romantic dinner on a tropical beach with a hot guy who also happens to be my husband? :) I am one lucky girl! It was a five course meal and my belly was about to explode by the time we were done!

Here are the much anticipated prego progress pics. I look like a retard in the first one but whatever. Don't look at my face... look at my belly... or lack thereof I guess. Pretty sure Dave was making me laugh. I think this is at 10 weeks.
14 weeks maybe? I could look it up on my computer but I don't wanna...
18-20-ish weeks... :)
24 weeks... while we were in Antigua...
Welp, there you go! If I have left any vital preggers info out just let me know and I will let you know next time I update my blog... which at this rate will be after the baby gets here. :)

mini update

i know i am terrible for leaving you all hanging for so long and i promise i will d a real post very soon. this is just basically to tell you that we are having a girl... and if i was at an actual computer and not on daves cell phone there would have been an exclamation point at the end of that sentence. kind of an anti climactic and punctuation deficient post. sorry about that but at least now i can stop feeling guilty for not updating this silly thing. next post will be stellar i promise. that was an exclamation point too.

By the way...

Here are a few more pics and a video of our summer happenings...

Very fitting fortune cookie... for once...

Pictionary while camping with my family...

Dave's rock show with his fam...

First family race...

Wow. I am a slacker.

So. We haven't dropped off the face of the Earth. We have been having too much fun this summer to blog about it I guess! Actually, I am just not going to school anymore so I am not at the computer hardly ever and have no reason to use blogging as a means of procrastinating. And since I got a job, when I'm not working we are playing. Anyway, we have done a lot of fun things this summer and there are a lot of pictures to prove it. It took me forever to upload the pictures I did and they don't even do our summer justice. But here are a crapload of pictures from the last three months! Oh, and they are in reverse chronological order... most recent to uh... most not recent... :)

This is a picture of my fat ankle/foot/leg from a vicious bee sting I sustained while camping this last weekend. That little bugger must have been really angry with me or I am developing an allergy to bee stings because my foot swelled up like a had sprained it! I promise my cankles aren't normally THAT bad! :)

Dave and I went to Denver this past weekend to go see a concert at Red Rocks Amphitheater and it was AMAZING! That venue is incredible!! AND we went to see one of my all time favorite musicians, Ray Lamontagne. I love him. And he was with David Gray who is also great.

Yeah, that is the Denver skyline in the background. And I saw an incredible shooting star. this place is like a natural amphitheater that they just enhanced. Oh man, it is awesome.

It is quite a hike up to the stage but SO worth it.
On the drive up to the amphitheater...
Just before we went to Denver we went camping with the fam! We camped by Pineview Reservoir. It was super fun! This is where I sustained the traumatizing bee sting.
In "Nana" and "Papa's" camper... (aka my madre and padre)
My precious Pa and little Lincoln...
Earlier in the summer we went to northern Idaho with Dave's fam and rode the Hiawatha Trail on our bikes. It was SO gorgeous and perfect weather! Me and Dave's family are so similar. It is awesome to have in-laws that I love so much!
Dave's ma and pa...
Me being mad that I don't have a swimming suit on so I couldn't get into the crystal-clear, perfect-temperature water. I am a sucker for a mountain lake. I don't think there is a better body of water than a clear, clean lake. If I hadn't had a white t-shirt on I would have totally gotten in fully clothed.
On the trail, looking off one of the many bridges...
One of the tunnels we went through...
Part of the Bates fam (Dave's sister's familia) on a bridge...
The beginning of the trail... this tunnel was about 2 miles long and it was FREEZING inside it!
Martin!
Hanging out at the campsite...

We took our pups to play in some water somewhere between our house and Dave's parents house. It is some random reservoir that I cannot remember the name of at the moment.



WAY back in June we went to San Francisco and ran in a half marathon. It was put on by the San Francisco Giants. We got to go to a couple baseball games, toured Alcatraz, went on a trolley ride. It was a blast!

This is me at Alcatraz, it was windy and cold out there!
Dave on top of the Macy's building where we were eating lunch at The Cheesecake Factory.
A cell on Alcatraz...
Alcatraz...

Trolley ride..
B-ball game! In the background you can see the fair that they had going on for all these weekend festivities...



Some sweet dreadlock-wearing sheep at the fair...
So, that has pretty much been our summer presented in a random array of reverse chronological pictures!