SOOO Many Updates

** Warning, details about labor below, and I am not shy! **

SOOO We did get into our house and then have our sweet little baby the next day!
It ended up being 11/1/12 at 5 pm that we signed closing paperwork, we moved our bed and bathroom stuff into the house that night (we had already moved what was in our storage unit into the garage thanks to Hubble letting us do that early!) and went to bed around 11 p.m. At 3 a.m. I started having contractions about 3:20 or so Josh woke me up telling me I've been having contractions every 5 minutes for the past 20 minutes so I need to wake up and pay attention so we know if we need to go to the hospital or not! Not that I wasn't waking up for each contraction I just kept going back to sleep not realizing how far apart they were.
I told him I didn't think they were real and they would go away so we got up, packed up a few things just in case, had some cereal and the contractions started coming about every 3 minutes! So we left for the hospital at about 4 a.m. and were there by 4:30. (We were going from Caldwell to Boise). I was scheduled to be induced at 7 a.m. anyway so the nurses let me get checked in w/o seeing how far dialated I was.
First thing I did was have a warm bath drawn up and I soaked in that for probably about an hour. Around 8 or so the doctor came in and checked me and I was only 1 cm more than I had been at my appt the previous day! At 9 they checked me again and I had gone maybe another 1/2 cm. At that point she broke my water to try and get things going a bit faster. Well this made the contractions WAY more intense and I broke down and got the epidural. I think about an hour after that they checked me again and still not much progress so they started the petocin (sp?). By this point the epidural was working it's magic so I slept pretty much all day waking up to have some water now and then. At 1 they checked me again and I was at 7 cm or so. YAY progress finally, I was thinking I'd have the baby by 5. Well sometime between 5 and 6 they checked me and I was fully dialated but wanted me to labor down for a while. (For those that don't know, this is where they told me they were going to let the contractions do the work of pushing the baby down the birth canal to make it easier when it came time for me to push.) At About 8 pm. I told the nurse I was feeling a lot of pressure down there and they told me if I wanted to I could start pushing but that it'd probably still be a while.
The nurses had mentioned earlier as well as the doctor that since I was a first time mom pushing could take 2-4 hours!!
WELL I started pushing and w/in 25 min or so they told me to stop until the Dr got there! And can I just say how UNCOMFORTABLE that was! They did say I could do little pushes, but those didn't help the pain much. haha. While we were waiting they were commenting on my babies dark hair and how much of it there was and pulling on it to show how long it was to each other! haha WEIRD or what?? Well finally the Dr showed up, got scrubbed in, and w/in about 10-15 minutes our sweet little princess, Jyzelle Aurora, mader her apperance into the world!!! It was absolutely amazing!!

Well, I think that's a good update for now... even if it is 6 months after the fact! haha. I'll try to post again soon-ish but based on my history that could be a while.

:)

as you can see she was 8 lb 4 oz and 21 inches long :)

House Update

Well, permits for the house came back a week later so we were pretty excited that they hadn't taken the full 3 weeks. This was supposed to mean they break ground on 7/2/12. Well they didn't actually break ground until the following Monday 7/9/12. We went out every week and took pictures and at the end of July got an update from Hubble saying the house was to be completed on 9/24/12. This was a bit past the 65 days the builder had said it will take from the time they broke ground but I was just happy to have an end date in sight!

Well, we continued to just work and live our life with nothing too exciting going on and going to see our house every chance we got and the progress being made. Well on Labor Day my mom sister and I made invited for my baby shower with the address being my new address. On Tuesday I asked for an update from the builder to make sure the expected closing date was to be 9/24/12. This is when we found out there had been some type of delay (they said due to HVAC installers) and that estimated completion date was middle of October.

The next week consisted of fighting with the builder and trying to figure out what they were thinking, how this happened, and that was too late. All we wanted was to get us into our house. Well after a lot of phone calls and meetings they agreed to a date of Oct 8th. (Yes I had to redo all the baby shower invites, luckily my sister in law who was throwing the shower for me had just bought some so we used those.)

Well as it got closer to the 8th the builder called again saying the cabinets were on back order and was going to be another 3 week delay. Our realtor let them know that of COURSE this was not ok, that would put us at my due date and we needed in the house before the baby comes! They allowed us to upgrade our cabinets, and it was also with a different company. Josh went and picked them out and we continued on. Well then they said there was a delay with those cabients! Luckily it was only a couple days. Soooo after all was said and done the house was completed and we had our final walkthrough on 10/12/12 and were supposed to be able to close with the bank on that day as well.

Unfortunately at this point we ran into ANOTHER hiccup, this time with the bank. To make a long story (and more than our fair share of phone calls and e-mails) the Processor at the bank hadn't been doing her job, none of our paperwork had been sent to underwriting, she finally walked out on her job, and someone new took over. (this was after about a week of phone calls and e-mails trying to get a hold of her to get a real story, and then another week of phone calls to the bank to get the story about why we weren't closing on our house) so now it seems progress is finally getting made on the underwriting and we're in a race to see which comes first... moving into our house or the baby coming. We're hopeful that it'll be, we sign closing paperwork, then that day or the next we get to have our baby!

Needless to say because of all this work with our house it has been hard to be excited just about the baby. Next post I'll give an update on how the pregnancy has been, since we're now finally up to date on the "living" situation of our lives. HAHA

Big News

SOOO on to the next update in our life, which happened on February 27,2012, we found out I was pregnant!! As excited as we were, this meant we really needed to consider what our next step in life was going to be to help take care of this little bump! And so we decided to buy a house!

Well, we have tried this once before, last summer, and we did not have much luck! It was frustrating, but luckily I think we stopped looking before we decided to never try that process again. So, with this new goal in mind, we went back to our bank and applied for another loan just as we had before.

After getting out loan approved about the middle of March we began looking again. Between Josh's and my schedule there wasn't many days we could go together, so he went with our realtor most of the time to see what we could find.Well the pickings were not near the same as they had been the year before and we weren't having much luck yet again. So we decided to look into just building a home.

After looking around we decided to go forward with building ourselves a cute little starter home, and signed papers for this on 4/28/12. The gentleman with the company told me "I can only move as fast as you can move" and so on 5/2/12 we went to the designer show house to pick all our colors, for cabinets, counter tops, and flooring. It only took about an hour and we were so excited when we left!

Well after a week we still hadn't heard anything from the builders. After numerous unreturned phone calls and e-mails we finally went down to the office again. There was another gentleman working and he was with other clients. We told him we didn't mind and we'd wait until he was free since leaving "messages" never got us any results. Once he was finished we informed him what we were waiting on and he told us to pick the colors and stone for our exterior. Josh and I drove around their subdivisions for a while looking at what we wanted then went back to the office with our selection.

This 2nd gentleman found our file, put everything together, confirmed our final selections and said we'd hear from them soon to confirm the blue prints.

Well it took unil 6/22/12 to finally approve the blue prints. We found out the reason for this delay later was they "lost our paperwork" which believe me we were calling and looking for updates at least twice a week, so I have NO idea how this was possible.

Well once again I wasn't able to be there so Josh went to the meeting with the builder to approve blue prints. Everything looked good so we gave the go ahead. We were told it takes about3 weeks to get permits back and from the time we get permits back it's 65 days until the house is complete. we were SO excited to have things finally moving, and this meant that we would be in our house middle of September!

(Also, in May we found someone to take over the lease for our apt and so moved in with the parents so that we didn't have to worry about paying rent on an apt and a mortgage.)

In other news during this time frame, on 6/13/12 we found out we are having a girl!!

We also went to St George June 8th or so for my cousin Lasca's wedding and to see family. This was a lot of fun and we enjoyed our weekend away and seeing family! There are pictures of this on my facebook page.

Will post more updates soon... hopefully sooner than 3 months apart. I hope to have this blog caught up to real time in the next couple weeks!

Harry Potter WORLD!!!! and the rest of the trip

So for the most exciting day! We went to Universal studios on Tuesday and got to enjoy the Wizarding World of Harry Potter!! It was absolutely phenomenal! And must I say, I wish I could have a butterbeer with every single meal. It was just absolutely amazing and so worth the trip!!! HAHA, not that there wasn't more amazing stuff. The rides were great, had amazing technology/graphics that just blew me away. Ollivanders shop was really cool, and though I didn't buy a wand because I knew it would just get forgotten and be clutter in my house, the gentleman who did the show before going into the shop and chose the child to volunteer to get a wand did an amazing job at being eccentric. Overall just fabulous! There a a LOT of pictures for this, so I'll just refer you to Facebook where I have all of them posted. But I'll at least post the Butterbeer photos here :)

I was really impressed by all of Universal, and with Dr. Seuss land and all the amazing characters. We also had a Caricature done which was fun and something I had never had done before.

I can't remember much more from the trip. We didn't go back to Universal even though we had one more day with our tickets, mainly due to transportation. Since we had gotten through both parks already, and the tickets were only good for one park per day/no switching in the middle of the day, we didn't feel like we wanted to be there from open to close again, which was the only time the bus from our hotel went there. So instead we spent a day at Downtown Disney to get shopping done for Christmas and see a movie. The movie theatre there had a part that was dine and watch, sort of like the theatre here in Nampa, only way more high tech. There was a button on the table in front of us you'd press when you were ready to order or needed a refill or anything like that and the waiters/waitresses came to you. It was also set up Edwards style, so with big comfy seats and lots of room. We had the 4 seats in our row all to ourselves which was nice to spread out on.

On the way back home our flight out of Orlando was delayed, causing us to miss our connection in Minneapolis. So we ended up having about a 5 hour lay over there. Which gave us plenty of time to make a quick trip to the Mall of America!!! It was cool to see it, and someday we'll go back and spend more time there. We didn't get very far, and only went to GameStop to shop where I got the limited Edition Zelda 3ds. Tee Hee. :)

Well, after getting back to the airport, we had signed up to give up our seats if the flight was overbooked. Well, it was overbooked, but only because they brought the wrong plane to our gate. It was too small and there weren't enough seats for everyone! Josh and I had been upgraded to first class because of the delay before, and the 4th row that was supposed to be first class was actually the first row of coach... Well, we ended up just giving up our seats and getting vouchers for flights, food, and hotel. We flew into SLC instead and stayed the night there before finally getting back to Boise Sunday late morning. It was all totally worth the vouchers we got which helped us go to my cousins wedding in St. George in June and then also got us tickets to Disneyland this coming January :)

More to come later :)

DisneyWorld Continued

We spent Sunday At the Animal Kingdom.We went to Rain Forest Cafe which was a bad idea for lunch. We had gone to Rainforest Cafe in Anaheim when we went to Disneyland for our honeymoon and had horrible service and horrible food. Well this time we had better service but the food was still very subpar. So we have definitely learned our lesson and will not be going back!

There was a ride called Dinosaur that was pretty intense and we couldn't imagine taking children on it. We went on a "Safari" ride and saw a lot of cool animals. Ostrich eggs, the Rhino up close. From far away we saw a female lion though I didn't see that we took a picture. That was really fun. At one point the Ostrich stood in front of the vehicle so we were stopped for a while waiting for him/her to get out of the way.
Next day was Monday and we went to the Magic Kingdom. I still think haunted Mansion was one of my favorite rides because of the cool effects at the end. I have NO idea if it's like Disneyland's or not because that ride was closed when we got there. It seemed pretty crowded in the streets but it wasn't very crowded waiting for the rides.

T

The castle was of course gorgeous. Especially at night!! And I love seeing it all decorated for Christmas!! It just makes it that much better. Well this seems like enough for today. I'll post about Hollywood Studios and HARRY POTTER WORLD later this week :)

Only 9 months later...

Well, it seems I've waited a long time to post again, and it seems I have a LOT I need to update.

So First off, we are back in Boise, actually Nampa at this point. I finally moved back to Boise with Josh over the Thanksgiving holiday. We moved into some apartments across from Chris and Jill. I went right back to Primary Health on State Street.

Our trip to Orlando was amazing! We had such a good time. We got there on Friday afternoon and after getting our luggage and our rental car made our way into town to find some grub. We settled on McDonald's, cause we're fancy like that ;-).

On Saturday morning we got up around 6 so we could go to the first session at the temple at 7:30 that morning. Orlanda has such a beautiful temple. It was such a great experience, there were only 4 of us in that session and the spirit was so strong and it was such a different experience with so few of us. Well after the session I talked with one of the ladies that helped direct the session for probably a good 20 minutes. She was so sweet and it was fun to talk to her. She told  me that the first session on Saturday was always empty but after that they never had enough room. It was easy to see this was true, the temple was packed as we were leaving and there were a lot of couples there to get married/sealed or to get their endowments. It is always such a blessing to see so many people at the temple and know it's so right :)

 Orlando Temple

 This was right after the temple picture... but I'm thinking it is from a wedding we went to summer of 2011

Me in front of the fountain at the temple

Anyway, so after the temple we changed and headed straight for Universal Studios Orlando!!

Josh does not let me take pictures often, so I'll try and add pictures of him if I ever find any...

Universal was a lot of fun. The movie scenes were so cool. The Twister was one of my favorites. The Mummy ride was impressive as was, surprisingly, the Simpson's ride. Here are just a few more pictures from this day

 This was at the restaurant we ate at. They had a lot of classic cars, as well as the dog from MIB, though it doesn't seem we took a picture of him... You'll find as this goes on we're not the best at taking pictures.

 Well, I couldn't figure out how to rotate it, but Josh is in this one!!

 The big Christmas tree. Since we came the first week in December everything was decked out in Holiday style. It was very awesome!

Well, I think this is enough for today. I'll try and get the rest of our trip up in the next week or so... This was only day one, but I'm sure the rest will go much quicker, especially as the pictures get fewer. haha.

Long Month

Well, August finally ended, I had put it my two weeks and Primary Health and September 2nd was my last day. I was so so excited with the prospect of finally getting to live with Josh full time and not have a 2 hour commute twice a week.... oh how little I knew at the time.

I also started 2 new jobs, one of which was only for 2 1/2 days. That was at the Blue Cross of Idaho office here in TWF, and basically I sat around reading books the whole time and answered the phone when it rang, which was maybe 10 times total the whole time I was there. There were also a few customers who walked through the door to drop off payments, nothing too exciting. They gave me a little thank you bag afterwards with lots of awesome goodies inside. One of which was a windshield cover thing. I have no idea the technical name for it, but the reflector thing you put in a windshield to keep the inside of the car from supposedly getting too hot? Also included an umbrella and some post it stuff, and a 2 sided pen/screwdriver thing. So on one side you take the cap off and it's a Phillips head, and then the opposite side is a Flathead. Not too shabby, we have plenty of the screwdrivers, but I was excited for the windshield shield (haha) and the umbrella.

The other job is for Transystems, which is a trucking company that hauls the sugar beets to the sugar factories. I will be working in the office processing new hire paperwork, payroll, and many more things I'm sure which I have yet to learn of. I'm pretty excited to learn more about that.

Well, all of that being said.... Josh is moving back to Boise. He was offered the Assistant Manager position at the Airport, and he accepted. This is a very good thing, and I am pretty confident he will be very happy there, as well as back in Boise. I, however, just got settled in to Twin, am not excited at the prospect of packing and moving again so soon... so we are unsure at this time what I will be doing. For now I will stay here and work. This idea however changes every few hours, so who knows what will really happen....

On a more happy note, we are just a very few short months away from our fabulous Orlando vacation in December!!!

Hope all is well with everyone!!

Love Josh and Jennifer