Boating.

John and I have often thought of buying a boat. We think it's a lot of fun. However, we also know what an incredible money suck they can be. So it's always fun to have a friend or friend who have bit the bullet! We went out to Newton Dam the other day for some fun in the water with our friends the Hansons. Well, there wasn't a lot I could do, aside from hang out, which IS fun. I didn't think wakeboarding seemed like the best idea. Unfortunately.

We haven't been in probably 2 years... so we didn't know how it would go...

So John strapped in...

And things went pretty well...

Till they didn't...

I got VERY hot in the boat... so since I
basically can't do anything remotely dangerous,
we were just going to have a very slow pull behind
the boat to cool off.

It was intensely hard to get two, too big adults
on one small tube, but it was funny anyway.

It also doesn't work very well to get pulled at such
slow speeds, as the poor tube can't really make it up out
of the water!!! Ha!

Then you should have seen us when we fell off (mind you
we didn't fall off from riding at any high speed,
but just because the balance was impossible, ha) trying to
get back on! Well John was fine, but how do you
get back on a tube, down in the water without throwing
your belly up onto the tube first?!

Poor tired boy!

Happy Birthday Hubby!!!

My most favorite-est person ever
is now 27! Happy Birthday Honey! I love you!

I like the next four months for one very important reason. For the next four months John and I are the same age, and I'm not 'the older woman'. :)

Probably it wasn't the best year for me to be making food for a crowd, because to me, everything sounds disgusting and tastes like ash. Oh well! John seemed to enjoy it, and that was the point. We got the idea to have a 'pool party' earlier in the month, just joking around. Since we neither have a pool, or wanted to go to one it didn't seem likely to happen, but it WAS really hot. So we went ahead and improvised.

The kids did not need to be told twice, they were ready and willing to jump in the water. It took Kyla about 30 seconds after arriving.

We bought some awesome painters plastic, really long and put it on a slight incline. Very fun (well so I hear, I was informed that I was much too prego for slip and slides).

Emily pushed Caden down the slide, he seemed to enjoy it alright.

Kyla was a slip an' slidin maniac. She was just going and going
and going. I love her face in this. You can see how seriously she
takes her slidin', she's got her game face on.

The less slippery crowd. And me, I'm slaving away with the cups.

After a hard days work slidin' John takes a soak in the
whale slide tub. Vance seems to think he should get out,
that he's hogging all the space.

The chow line.

The hungry, hot, masses.

The kids table was a hit. Guess we need a bigger kids table!

Happy Birthday little JOHHHHNNNNNYYYYYY!!!!

Two of the three dessert options. That creamy strawberry
pie was a first try - something printed off the internet ages ago,
and it was fortunately very delightful. Perfect for summer.

Getting Away

I love vacations! I always wondered how you became one of those people that basically traveled for a living. In fact I'm still wondering.

We left Friday with our friends the Hansens for Jackson Hole, and actually camped by Gray's river near Alpine that night as our condo didn't become available till Saturday but we all wanted to get away.

(Near our Gray's River camp site.)

Saturday we headed in to Jackson. We did some hiking and some really traditional stuff... John has been to Jackson, but he was quite young and he'd never been up to our condo, so we did a lot of stuff I've done before and enjoyed. We took the tram in Teton Village and canoed the String Lakes and hiked to Hidden Falls.

Thunder Stolen, But It's Alright...

Well, I haven't been blogging, but I haven't been doing much but puking, so perhaps you can all forgive me... For some reason, this guy:


Doesn't like it when I'm on the computer. Talk about hard to get your photo editing done!!! When you do like 2 a day you don't get much of anywhere fast.

Fortunately the fog does seem to be lifting a little. I was feeling pretty good, then I've had a few rough days of trouble keeping stuff down. I don't appreciate it, I can tell you that much.

So okay, yes, hopefully you have surmised that I am pregnant. Otherwise we need to have a discussion I guess, not that you'd understand anything I said. ;)

I am 13 weeks and 1 day, shortly to leave the good ole first trimester behind me for good! Due to my history, I had a first trimester screening that they don't typically do. It comprised of a nuchal translucency scan, done with an ultrasound where they measure fluid at the back of the babies neck (they have found most chromosomaly abnormal children have more fluid back there then a 'normal' baby), and some blood work. This testing can't give you any definite answers, the only testing that can give you surety is an amnio, but this testing carries no risk aside from a posibility of false positives or negatives, but an amnio does carry a very small amount of risk. So we chose to do this screening, combine it with the regular second trimester quad screen, and they have shown a 95% detection rate for chromosonal problems if they exsist. If they were to show worry that there were further problems we would opt for the amnio at that point.

After my first round of blood work and the ultrasound I'm very happy to say that the baby's 'neck meat' is extremely average, not thick, and overal they gave me the clearance of 'negative'.... in this case, negative being a VERY GOOD THING. Yay! I told the genetisist that this was the first time someone called me during pregnancy and gave me good news!

Our due date is December 31st, so looks like we could have the New Years baby, haha. Poor kid. I hate that he's due smack dab in the middle of the holidays, but what can you do? We'll just have to celebrate half-birthdays I guess. I say my thunder is a little stolen, because I know 3 women (besides myself) due between Christmas and New Years - evidently April was a good time! ;)

Maybe now that I'm moving and shaking a little more I'll get up pics from my trip to California, and some other things. Maybe.

What the?

I really should post SOMETHING on here.... Tomorrow maybe.

Okay, Okay, I'm finally accomplishing things.

Ok, as promised, I have moved my photography to a photography only blog. Please feel free to link me on your blogs.... any traffic I can get is good traffic!

http://christieheywoodphotography.com/blog/

My next project is to get the website updated and linked to this blog.

Also I have pics from California, but I can't deal with them because I've got to get my last wedding done before my wedding this weekend. I'm not complaining... I wanted to work, and I am.

After that I sure will try to update my silly winter header. Haha.

Re: All the photo posts.

So my husband is helping me oh so kindly make a professional blog to be linked with my actual website. So this little bloggy will go back to being personal ramblings of the random kind. I also one day may update my snowy looking header. But that's debatable. We'll see....

Some photos to update the world on ... things... but not you 'less than savory' characters.... For the ones who stalk people on their blogs to do heaven knows what once you find us on blogspot... I won't give you my address, I WON'T, so don't even ask. And for the pervs who see me at Albertson's or Walmart or Smith's... well I don't know what I'll do then, cuz that seems a heck of a lot worse than you looking at our family photos. Then i'll have to... think of a new plan.

For Easter, my Sister-in-Law Holly and I sent 'our kids' on easter egg hunts at Grandma's house. For the little kids, we hid small eggs in trees...
For the bigger kids we hid eggs in even bigger trees...

(Seriouly John is at the top of like a 12 foot ladder
in this pic. Holly and I drug that ladder over, hid an egg as far up this
tree as we could reach, and then of course moved the ladder far away
from the tree for the actual hunt to give nothing away!
haha... THAT'S hiding skill.
When he finally found the egg
he said, 'how the crap am I supposed to get that?!')

And then because I'm totally the proud parent, I have to show this very cute picture of my husband in front of a BIG ad he designed for Camp Chef/IFA...

Ahh, he looks so widdle.... :)