happy birthday!

to my best friend and love of my life.

i never thought i'd say this...

but I'm glad to be back.

i was dreading the flight. i was dreading the inconvenience of city life, once again.
BUT as I headed down my usual route to go grocery shopping today, i found myself in one of those moments where you just stop and take everything in, and just feel. Feel warmth. Feel happy. Feel home. and most importantly, feel overwhelmed with gratitude. and I noticed things that have been here all along, but never really appreciated. the hustle and bustle. the parks. the fountains. the smells. the cool moist air surrounding me. the cute old italians. THE INCONVENIENCE OF CITY LIFE...only this time, i liked it. and i guess its not so inconvenient, after all. it's just...different. and being a person that has never been able to accept change very well, its hard for me to admit that different isn't bad. it's just different. and maybe different can be good. and yes, it has taken me almost a year to get to this point, but i think i can finally stop saying i hate boston, and start calling it my home.

that smell

my whole family crammed into a car to go to the oquirrh mountain temple open house and as we were driving, we smelled something quite foul. after the comments on the air quality outside, my little brother said:

"ew! it smells like....what's that food that mom makes?"

it's a...

BOY!

I picked up Wade from the airport last night around 12:45 with a dozen BLUE balloons and a little onesie. I was convinced I was having a girl, therefore convincing everyone else that it was, indeed, a girl. So I think Wade was quite surprised to know that he was going to be a daddy to a little boy!

a trip down memory lane.

viva and i tend to be quite sentimental. When we learned that we would just so happen to be in Utah at the same time, we planned a trip back to our roots: Logan.

The road trip, for us, is half the fun. Of course we brought our Chex Mix (courtesy of the kitchen of viva) and our best music (courtesy of my vast library).



Our first stop was Firehouse. The meeting place for the love of my life and I. Also, our favorite place to eat out and probably the best restaurant in Logan. I worked here for six short months and it completely changed my life.



We then continued on to First Dam where we spent many days studying and playing. We brought along a bag of bread that we bought just for the occasion. Apparently, there's not much to do in Logan besides feed the ducks, because everyone in the city was there doing the same exact thing. Needless to say, those ducks wanted nothing to do with our bread. They were already full.



We then moved on to bigger and better things. All the apartments we ever lived in. Our dorms were even open and we wandered inside and looked at our old rooms. It was absolutely SO WEIRD! And I can't believe how disgusting they are. I remember the days of leaking roofs, and scurrying noises in the heater vents. Oh, and the time we caught a bag of popcorn on fire in the microwave and took the entire microwave outside because it smelled so bad. And then the poor Egyptian man that lived above us came down the stairs, sniffing wildly, and said, "Izzz some-zing byurning?"

(notice the dumpster that I backed into during moving week)


Here we are at Brentwood. One time we painted a very LARGE entertainment center in the kitchen that we got for a steal of a deal at DI (I should mention that I tried to paint it outside, but it got too dark. So then I plugged in a blow dryer to an extension cord and tried to dry it myself so we could move it inside. disaster). I've heard rumors that it is still lingering in the apartment.



we met up with some old friends (whom we tried to convince, as always, that they were not annoyed to see us).



And no sentimental trip would be complete without a stop at our dearly beloved Walmart and a drive by good old Utah State University.

old friends

I had the pleasure of meeting up with these lovely ladies for lunch today. We go waaaay back....all the way to 5th grade where we all became the best of friends.

Rebecca Joyce Kali Kelly

Kelly is now going on a mission to Brazil.
Joyce just graduated from college.
Rebecca is teaching dance.
and me, well i'm larger than life and pregnant.
It seems like so much has changed...and yet, here we are 13 years later, and not really that much has changed at all.

and in case you were wondering what we looked like at the age of 13, I present to you my birthday party at Sounds Easy Pizza. Remember that place?

guess!

so......we were planning on finding out the gender of our baby on thursday after wade gets here. Well things haven't worked out quite like we wanted and it looks like I'll be going to my ultrasound tomorrow instead. I'm so excited to find out!! But I'm so sad Wade can't be here. (I'm still going to tell him in a fun way, but he has to be here for me to do it.) I'm under strict instructions that I can't tell anyone until I tell him first! Ha funny boy. So i'm interested in hearing your guesses....boy or girl? I'll let you know sometime on Thursday! Happy guessing! :)

p.s. I'm feeling the urge to blog every day this month. this could get random.