A Few More Pics

I had taken a few more pictures of Alexa before bed tonight, so I thought I would put them up. Here they are for your viewing pleasure. :) The first two are from when I was holding Alexa and she was just looking at me. I loved it. The last is Alicia holding her.

Alexa Catherine Bevans

She was born this morning at 9:19 at 8 pounds 11 ounces, 21 inches. She was quite a big baby (seeing that I was told she would probably be 7.5 pounds). She was also born with a full head of black curly hair, which the nurses styled after her bath and put a bow in. The only slight complication that occured was that she had some fluid in her lungs, but she was able to cough it all up ok, so all is well. Mike and I are doing well, we're both just exhausted, and I'm a bit sore. Thank goodness for epidurals is all I have to say.

Counting down the minutes eagerly....

This is officially my first post. Till now I have let Alicia do all the blogging. She is the more creative one, and the trend seems to be that the wife is the blogger. There will have to be an exception made this time, however, because she is currently lying on a bed with a tube sticking out of her back and two monitors strapped to her belly...and is 8cm dialated! This is an exciting time! And as I sit here and wait excitedly, I thought I would update the blog so that everyone who happens across it knows that the big event is finally happening. Our baby is coming! Assuming all goes well, we should have pictures and stuff up here tomorrow...unless this becomes a marathon pregnancy. Hang in there...if I have to wait so do you!

No baby....

How depressing. Here it is, my due date, and no baby yet. Hopefully soon, because I don't want her to have a Christmas birthday. And I'm pretty tired of bing pregnant. Next time I post, hopefully it'll mean that she's here!

The loss and regaining of respect for man-kind

Mike and I have had an emotional couple of days. Well, the emotional part was mostly on my side, although, one part did get him as well. I blame hormones. And being a girl. And stressed and a big lack of sleep. Anyways.

My mom's company threw her a grand-baby party, right? Well, one big chunk of that was a $230 gift card for Babys R Us. Last night Mike and I went to get all those little things that you need and were definitely spending the entire amount, and then some. When we got to check out, two other gift cards were fine, but that $230 one had nothing on it. We figured that someone messed up when ringing it up and just didn't put the money on, or something like that. We called customer service, but they were already closed for the night, so we just put everything on hold until we figured it out.

Today Mike called them again and found out that the money had been put on correctly, and that on Nov. 29 someone checked the balance and used the card. This opened a whole can of legal worms for the store, and they said they'd try to figure it out and let us know if we could get a new card with the money on it. Needless to say, I reacted emotionally, Mike not so much. I tend to panic more than him about stuff, and the other afore mentioned factors caused me to pretty much lose it. Both of us were just disgusted because the customer service person guessed that someone used it online and just sat there typing in numbers until they hit a real card with money. How can people do something like that? Apparently there's some scam where people have managed to duplicate gift cards and make fake ones and use them after the real card has been activated.

Now here's the really good part. The part that restores our faith in the goodness of people, and then some. We happened to have the receipt for said gift card, and Babys R Us wanted us to fax it to them. Not having a machine ourselves, we went into work at the traffic office a little early to use the one there. Naturally, it raised a little curiosity, and we ended up telling a couple of people what happened. We don't actually know if that is connected to the next part or not, but we think it probably does. Sgt. Vest called Mike into his office and gave him an envelope. He said that someone put it on his desk and told him to give it to Mike. In that envelope was a blank card and a $100 bill.

With the job that we work we see a lot of selfish and self-centered people every day. We see tons of people that think they're the most important person, that they're the exception to everything. Today I feel like the exception. I feel like in a world where so many people just don't care and where so many people feel unloved, we are the exception. Someone really did care, and not just that, but they did such a wonderful act of service and don't even want recognition. That is the true meaning of charity, and the best part is that I know it doesn't have anything to do with the time of year, it's something they'd do if it was summer time. All I can say is, Merry Christmas, and remember what this season is all about!

Snow/ 38 weeks....

Ok, so this isn't a picture I took myself, but it gets the point across. Mike's winter was made happy this weekend when we woke up to snow on Sunday, then to more yesterday, and then even more today. I heard it's supposed to snow more this week as well. The snow is certainly pretty on the mountains, but my biggest peeve with it is that Provo is terrible at clearing roads for some reason. You would think Utah would be on top of things, wouldn't you? Mike and I agree, however, that our hometowns in OR and VA are both way better at clearing the roads.

On other news, I am just over 38 weeks now. At my appointment this week the doctor told us that he never lets people go over 41 weeks, so Dec. 28 would be the latest I could possibly go, and because of the heart issues I've been having with the pregnancy, he doubted that they'd let me go that long. So, I'm still hoping and assuming that we'll have her before Christmas! That would be especially nice since delivering on our anniversary would be kind of a bummer.

We're still rather nervous, but I at least, am feeling more prepared in the baby stuff area. I worked at my mom's company (API) for several years through middle school, high school and college, and since it is not a very large company, I knew everyone that worked there, and they all pretty much considered me a daughter. So, when they found out that I was pregnant, they planned a Grand-baby shower for my mom. We got so many great things from them, it's amazing how generous they were! That helped a lot with making me feel more prepared! We still have to go to Baby's R Us sometime this week to use gift cards and get the last things we need, and then I think we'll be set! Any recommendations of things that you've really liked having or wished you had? Or things that have a lot of hype but aren't really that great? We'd love any help and advice!

37 weeks...

And counting. Boy, people aren't kidding when they tell you that by the end of the pregnancy you really don't care about labor anymore because you're just so ready to have the baby out of you!Don't get me wrong, there's some great things about being pregnant. I feel so close to her, but really, 40 weeks? That's enough!

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun. We had three friends that we work with come over and we all split the cooking, which made it a lot easier and less stressful for me! We didn't get much of a vacation though, as there were two basketball games on Friday, plus the big U of U vs. BYU game on Saturday, and we had to work on Sunday as well. But, it was our last football game, which is good because I'm definitely to the point that working for 8 hours and being on my feet most of that time just isn't good. (have I mentioned that there's only like 3 weeks left?)

Yesterday we started putting up our Christmas decorations, finally! I'll take pictures and put them up later, as the decor is not complete. We got an artificial tree this year since we'll be staying in Provo, and started decorating it, but neither of us have our ornaments out here. Hopefully we'll get those soon so we can finish and our apartment will be officially festive! I've been able to get most of my Christmas shopping done as well (thanks largely due to Black Friday) which is nice because it will be less to worry about later. Just three more weeks!

Costumes!

We thought we were pretty creative/innovative this year. I figured, hey, I have a huge belly, may as well use it, right? Right! So, I was a pumpkin and Mike, deciding that he wanted to match me, was a pumpkin farmer. We were pretty proud of ourselves.

Besides that, not a lot has been going on here. Some of you may know that I was wearing a heart monitor for 2 weeks because my doctor was pretty sure I had developed SVT. We got the results back from the cardiologist a few days ago, and apparently everything was "normal". We're not quite sure what "normal" means as of right now, because something is definitely going on with my heart, but I guess it's just not diagnosable? Or something like that. My next doctors appointment is a week from today, so hopefully he'll have some more ideas and we'll be able to figure this thing out, because right now it's just really annoying. My graduation once again is being pushed back another semester, and once again its because of health. It's just getting old!

On other news, we finally have the baby's room cleared out of everything that needed to be cleared out. I'm pretty happy about that, although Mike is sad because it meant selling our love seat. That's the problem with small apartments though, no room for anything! I'm eager for her to come and to, some day, be able to have a full nights sleep again. I know, I know, it will be awhile in coming, but, it will come!

Halloween

Those are our really cool pumpkins. Mike's is the one on the left and mine is on the right. We have a lot of fun doing things like that, although Mike gets kinda sick of cleaning out the pumpkin goo, since that's his job for both pumpkins. Of course, when we have a kid next year, he'll get to do three then!
Once again he didn't quite make the openings on top big enough to easily light the candles inside, but at least this year neither of the pumpkins became a flaming inferno (although that was hilarious). Maybe next year he'll finally learn and make it easy on himself by making them wide enough to fit his hand and then some.

Did you know when you save a draft of an email on hotmail, it doesn't save attachments? I just found that out, because I don't have a picture now of our costumes with me. So, our awesome Halloween costumes will just have to be posted later!

Ivan Spudnik and Barby Q

So, I have to start off bragging a little bit. Ever been to Olive Garden for their soup, salad and breadsticks deal? We love it. Mike's favorite soup there is the Zuppa Tuscano. Last night I tried a recipe I had found online for Zuppa Tuscano, and it turned out great! Mike said it tasted just like Olive Gardens', which I take to be a huuuuge compliment because Olive Garden is a place of happiness.
Next is a belly shot. Taken today, I am 32 weeks. Almost there! And let me tell you, until I was picking a picture to put up of my belly, I had not realized how much weight I've gained in my face! So, ignore the face and focus on the belly!

Now the main reason for the post! Thursday night Mike and I went up to Kaysville because our friends Rachel and Craig were hosting a murder mystery dinner party thing. Mike was Ivan Spudnik, a Russian scientist, and his accent was the hit of the night. It was pretty bad.... I mean good, it was good! Haha, he practiced all day and got some tips from a friend that served his mission in Russia, so he actually did pretty well.

My character was a bombshell divorcee named Barby Q, but my costume wasn't nearly as entertaining as his, and like I mentioned before, I'm suddenly a lot more self conscious about putting pictures of me on the blog! The party was so fun though! I had never done one before, so it was a new experience and I was kind of nervous about it at first, but it was totally worth it. And no, neither of us was the murderer.

And now on to a question. I'm rather naive when it comes to all the blogging stuff, and I've been trying to figure something out. When I leave a comment on someones blog it makes the name all funny. It shows up as "Mike & Alicia" and I have no idea why. Ok, and the new and weirded thing is that I can't get it to show up how it looks when I leave a comment. Just imagine that after the and sign it has "amp;" For some reason this post keeps automatically taking that out, but it definitely shows up in the name on our comments. (Just to let you guys know, this is also why I don't leave a lot of comments, it always just looks weird) Anyone know how to fix it?

Work, work, work

So, here I am at work, being extremely bored because things got very messed up today and so I wasn't prepared to be where I am. This weekend is Homecoming at BYU, which you can probably imagine means a lot of work for Mike and me seeing that we're both working for BYU Traffic. As if Homecoming and all that it entails (Spectacular on two nights, a parade, run and game tomorrow) isn't bad enough, ESPN Game Day has also decided to come this weekend. Which means closing down parking lots and guarding lots and trucks all day/night today and tomorrow as well. So, basically there are a ton of posts that no one wants. So what do they do? They mess up our shift to cover things, and half our shift isn't here anyways.

The "flu" has been going around big time in the office, and so literally only four people on our shift came in today- keep in mind that both Mike and I came in, so that's half the people right there. Some of these people were signed up for posts tonight as well, so now there's no one to cover those. So, just to make this confusing, I'll explain a little of what happened to our shift. There are three traffic booths that get manned during our shift, then there are usually 4 people on patrol, including the FA (the person in charge of us). So, three of the people on patrol called in sick, and one was told that he had to work a Homecoming Spectacular post instead of working his normal shift. So basically we had the booth people and that was it. Mike and I came in seperately, and when I was walking in to the locker room another girl was coming in and said, "Oh, you're here! They had me close down 2V, so I figured you were sick, too!". At this point I was quite confused because no one had told me they were changing where I was supposed to be. After finally finding the person in charge, he told me that he was putting me in the booth that Mike was supposed to be in and putting Mike at a barricade for the ESPN thing. So right now, there are 3 people on evening shift officially, and one of them isn't even from our shift because they put two of us on special events posts.

To top it off, the guy in the other booth just radioed that he has to be somewhere at 6:15 (our shift ends at 7) so he wanted to know if he should try to find someone to take it or just close down the booths. The FA replied, "Well, there really isn't anyone to take it so we'll have to shut down I guess". So now I have a half hour break before my special event post, I guess. Now everyone that's here is just hoping that no one is going to call in sick tomorrow, because that would be terrible.

Anyways, I just thought I'd let everyone see a little bit of the inner workings of the traffic office at BYU. Crazy, isn't it?

Brown paper packages tied up with strings...

I love getting packages in the mail. It makes me feel so special, especially since they're never junk mail. Getting mail in general is nice, but of course the bulk of what I take out of my mailbox is always advertisements and things addressed to the previous tenants (even though we've been here for well over a year). But packages are exciting, especially when you aren't expecting them. Today I got two! One I was expecting, and was excited for, the other was a total surprise.
This first one was the one I was expecting. My awesome sister-in-law, Julie, is done having children, so she's been working at clearing out the basement of all the kid things they still had, including her maternity clothes! So, she sent me a whole box full of her old clothes, which means I'm pretty much set for life in the maternity department! They're actually going to send us their crib as well, when their youngest gets his big boy bed. This second picture is of a really cute diaper cake that three of my high school friends sent me completely out of the blue. By that I mean I had no idea that they were sending me anything, obviously it wasn't totally out of the blue since I am pregnant... The really awesome thing is that it goes to show that some friends don't disappear. One of the friends and I had a bit of a fight after high school and lost touch almost completely. The other two I still talk to occasionally, but not nearly as often as I'd like. The group of us were pretty tight in high school though, and it's nice to know they're still thinking about me, as I do them!

I've started to get the nesting fever a little bit, although not nearly as much as Alli, which is probably a good thing since I can't redo my apartment like she did her house whether I want to or not. I have however started trying to really create a nursery, and haven't gotten very far yet. But, one thing that I've been wanting forever and finally got is a set of curtains! They're cute AND useful since they'll block out more light when she sleeps during the day.
On Saturday Mike and I had a spontaneous date evening. He took me for a drive up the mountains to look at the pretty fall colors, and we saw deer!


After the drive we went to dinner and then played games at home. It was a very nice, much needed relaxing day after the crazy and emotional week we/I had. I think I'll wait to update about that until we know more about what's going on, though, which hopefully will be soon.

Halloween is coming!

So life here has been pretty busy lately. We just had three home football games in a row, and now that both Mike and I are working for BYU traffic, we get to work all home games! So, basically we got about an extra 25 hours for this paycheck, which is nice except that we haven't had a real weekend in about a month. We're looking forward to this coming weekend and being extra lazy.

Yesterday we brought out the Halloween decorations and went crazy. This last Christmas I really wanted more holiday decorations, and Mike's mom got us a ton! Our apartment feels very festive now, it's great! This is on the outside of our door:

And this is our table. I had the leaves from last year and got the bowl on Saturday night (yay for Priesthood session and having a long needed girls night!) on sale at the Quilted Bear. The really cute placemats were part of my Christmas present from Mom Bevans.

The big pumpkin and bat both light up and were also part of the present, and the little pumpkins were just random things I've gotten over the years.

These are our two front doors (the actual front door and the balcony door) We hadn't redecorated the balcony door since the fourth of July, so it was about time!

The great thing about having worked at the Quilted Bear for so long before getting married is that when I saw something really cute come in, I could get it with my employee discount, and so had a few cute decorations coming into the marriage.

Not to mention the Christmas bonus that bought this bakers rack and then some.

Also not pictured were a couple of cute candy corn dish towels that were also part of the present. Speaking of candy corn, have any of you tried the seasonal Hershey kisses for fall? They have a candy corn one, and a pumpkin spice one. They're so good! The pumpkin ones taste like pumpkin pie and are Mike's favorite (besides the Easter coconut ones) and the candy corn ones taste like white chocolatey candy corn. Anyways, we recommend them!

Good movie, bad movie

First for the good movie: Star Trek. I was amazed, it wasn't at all like the TV show my dad used to watch all the time, and had the bonus of having an attractive main character! Mike had seen this already with my dad, but I hadn't, and he was very eager for me to see it after his first time going. Now we're just wondering if they're going to make a whole new series with these people.


Aaaand the bad movie, Night at the Museum 2. This was a big disappointment. We both loved the first one, but the second one was just lacking. It had some major discrepancies from the first movie and the things that were supposed to be really funny throughout the movie just really weren't that amusing to us. It certainly could have been worse, so it wasn't a total loss, and at least we waited until it was in the dollar theatre.

My oldest brother had given us the advice to see as many movies as we can before the baby comes because after it will be much harder to see any, and we'll get tired of Disney movies. It sounded like a good idea to us, plus a lot of movies had come out this summer that looked good, so we were excited to! This is a pretty good start, I think!

So, to start, here is a picture proving that I least wore the cap and gown! :)
Ok, this next part is going to be pretty much completely random. Lately, with the baby coming, I've been reminiscing about our wedding. I'm not really sure why, except probably because that was a huge milestone in my life, and right around the same date, two years later, I'll be reaching another milestone, the birth of our first baby. I am so excited for her to come, and with the approaching birth, I find myself with a lot of the same thoughts and feelings that I had two years ago when my wedding was approaching. I am so excited for this new stage, for another level of love to enter into my life, but am so scared at the same time. Before it was, "what if I'm a terrible wife... what if I'm not actually a good cook and he starves or something... what if his family hates me... what if.. what if... what if..." Now its more like "what if something goes wrong with the pregnancy or labor... what if she never sleeps... what if we don't know how to get her to stop crying..." and so on.

Anyways, I've been looking at our wedding photos this week, and I realized that since we started the blog so late, we never really put any on here. So, here are a (very) select few.

And as nervous as I am, I really am soooo excited, and I know deep down that everything will be fine, but what kind of mother would I be if I didn't worry, right? And I'm so glad that I didn't let any of the wedding nerves scare me away, because I am so glad to be married to Mike. He is a wonderful husband and friend. I love spending time with him and surprising him with things (and I love it when he surprises me with things :)) He's being remarkably patient with me through my pregnancy mood swings and cravings, which I'm very grateful for, and he's going to be a great father!

Visits from family

So, graduation was the 13& 14 of August, and it was a blast! Both sets of parents, plus my two oldest brothers came out for it. I don't have pictures yet, since I was rather preoccupied with, you know, graduating and all... But hopefully they'll come soon! Mike's parents were only here for a few days, but it was great to see them again, especially since we won't really see them again until the baby comes. Mark, Shauna, and Jackson came down for the actual ceremony as well. My brothers were also here only a few days, but again, it was great to see them. My oldest brother caused a little bit of stress because he went missing for about 8 hours, but, it'll make for a good story later, right? I also witnessed my first accident, and was glad they were in the car right behind me and knew what to do! My parents made a vacation out of it, and were here for a week and a half. It was so nice to spend the time with them! I only see them about twice a year now, so it was great. My mom and I did massive amount of shopping for maternity clothes and for the nursery. We got a glider and ordered a changing table, and I'm really excited for it to come!

My parents also wanted to do a little sight seeing, so we went to Promontory Point (isn't that super old-western sounding) which is where the Golden Spike is. Here's where East met West: Here's a belly shot for those who were wanting to see it. I really just feel like I look fat right now, not pregnant...

Here's West:

And East:

And double East:

And East meeting West again!

There goes East. I thought it was pretty cool that the trains actually run, even though they're just replicas of the originals.

So, the 19th was my parents anniversary, so we went out for dinner (actually, we went out for dinner a lot... I haven't eaten that amount of food in a loooong time) to Los Hermanos. Our waitress was my freshman roommate, Kelly, and we finally met her new husband as well. Just to warn you, if you ever feel like getting nachos there, make sure you have about ten people to share with. You will never finish them by yourself, even with your husband helping you!

After my parents left, we had one day of down time, and then Kim (Mike's younger sister) and Kelly came to visit with their kids. It was also great to see them again, since it's been a year since we saw them last. We went to the zoo one day, and had a great time. Here's Mike as a turtle:

And wrestling an alligator:

And here's our mascot about to pounce at us. He seriously sat like that just staring at me for like five minutes!

Me, Mike, and baby with the cougar.

And that's all for now! Hopefully I'll get pictures of graduation soon, so that I can prove I walked!

Cupcakes and weddings

So I'm not the most creative person ever, so when I do something that is relatively creative or cool, I have to share it with the world. Our friend Brent's birthday was this week so I made him these cupcakes:

Aren't they awesome? I wanted to get cool colorful sprinkles to go on top, but Macey's has a terrible cake decorating section, apparently, and I didn't want them badly enough to go to more stores.... But anyways, I was very proud of myself, and I won't mention the number of cupcakes that I ate...

This month is a month of weddings. On Friday my old roommate, Jenn, and a boy from our freshman ward, Nick, got married. It was pretty cool because it was the first temple wedding Mike and I have actually been to, besides our own, of course. We're very happy for them, and she looked absolutely beautiful!

And, it was a beautiful day, which is great because it's been upper 90's for like a couple of weeks here.

Saturday my freshman roommate, Kelly, got married, although I had to miss her reception because the store was crazy and I couldn't get out. This coming Saturday another girl from my freshman ward is getting married as well! Tis the season!