Possible Hairstyles

Alright. So I've basically made up my mind to cut my hair. I was trying for a more exciting cut back in November, but it ended up being the exact same style, just a few inches shorter. I was pretty bummed, but it was a free haircut so I just sucked it up and dealt with it.

Usually, it takes me a while to make a decision like this, since I'm really attached to my hair and I'm afraid of doing something that would ruin it for any length of time. But technically, I made the decision back in November to get a better cut. It just didn't happen in November. So now all that's left to do is find a picture of the cut that I want, take it to the salon and get my hair cut!

These are the cuts I'm considering:

So far, the front-runners are #1-the Eva Longoria, #7-the...some one whose name I don't know, and #8-the Kim Kardashian. I must say, for the record, I can't stand Kim Kardashian, but I really like her hair in this picture. Jeff's faves are #1 and #7, but I'm still really partial to #8.

What do you think? Which of these is your favorite?

25 Weeks

I just realized that I'm wearing the same shirt in the 24 weeks pic as I am in 25 weeks pic. But this time, we decided to take the pictures in front of a beautiful, blossoming tree in the park up the street. I think that this made us feel the need to take multiple pictures, instead of just one or two.

 We were having so much fun that Jeff just had to get in on it!

I told him that he was really silly.

"Me? Silly?"

We had fun doing our little photoshoot in the park, but I think that some of those pictures will stay with us rather than being published. :)

Also, I'm bored with my hair. I don't want to/won't dye it, but I want to get a better, less boring cut. Any ideas?

1st Bonfire of the Year!

So Tuesday night, we had our first bonfire of the year in our backyard pit. Yes, friends, we have a pit in our backyard. We originally dug the pit in order to have a pit BBQ for labor day last year. We're also incredibly fortunate to have a landlord who goes along with our exciting ideas (see my post about the living room redo and you'll get an idea of what I mean). So Jeff and I (but mostly Jeff) dug a pit that's about 3 ft. deep, and 4 ft. wide and across, then found some free bricks from Freecycle, and lined the pit with them. So the put looked about like this:

Jeff then procured some free firewood from a man who tore down his barn and didn't have any use for the wood (maybe because it was riddled with rusty nails....). So we built up a huge fire to get the right amount of coals to cook our 200-lb. pig.

We decided that we needed to roast a few marshmallows over the fire before it turned to coals. No sense wasting a perfectly good campfire, right?

We cooked the pig, pulled it apart and shared the meat with 30-40 friends.

 So yes, we have a pit. After the pit BBQ on Labor Day we had a few bonfires until it got too cold to have them. It was really exciting to have our first bonfire of the year Tuesday night. The weather has been so nice that we just couldn't stop ourselves. We invited a few of our friends and mostly roasted hot dogs. I think only 3 of us had s'mores.

Clayton and Brittney are so adorable!

My cousins Camille, Emery and Ryan. The guys were down visiting from Boise.

Dan, Dan, the mustache man.

I'm really excited to have more bonfires this year. I love roasted hot dogs!

On an unrelated note, Tuesday night was also the night of the scout's cake auction! I mainly wanted to go so I could support my friends who are scout leaders, but it ended up being really really fun! Clayton was the auctioneer, and they couldn't have picked a better person for the job! So hilarious! I ended up with this cake, made by one of the scouts who pretends not to like me, but secretly does.

Isn't this such a cute little Easter basket?

The cake had a thin, chocolate torte on the bottom, and cupcakes, green coconut, robin eggs, and peeps on top. Jeff ate all of the peeps before we even got the cake home, so that's why they're not in this picture. This was the first cake to be auctioned off, and it was the one that I wanted, so after I snagged it I got to just sit back and watch everyone else fight it out for the remaining cakes.

I know next to nothing about scouting, since I only watched my brothers do it and never participated, but it was fun to get a glimpse into that world before we're thrown into it in about 8 years. It's exciting to think that we'll get to help our little man do things like that someday. :)

Blog changes

Hey all!
I wanted to let you know that I decided to change up the security features of the blog, making it viewable by the public, but not searchable by search engines or by other blogger.com users. This makes it possible to put it into your google reader, which makes it more convenient to check up on the blog, since you don't have to make a special trip over to the website every time.  I'm hoping that this helps ya'll keep up to speed on the blog and read it more frequently.

I also wanted to update you on the heartburn situation. I ended up getting a few hours of sleep yesterday morning while sitting upright in our bed against my pillows. I ate bland foods during the day, but still dealt with some painful heartburn. On a scale of 1-10, the heartburn that kept me up at night and made me throw up was a 10, but during the day it had calmed to a 7 or 7.5. Until two nights ago, I haven't experienced more than about a 5, and the 5 was plenty painful. I'm grateful to report that I ended up trying omeprazole (the generic of Prilosec, I believe) on the recommendation of my sister-in-law who is also pregnant, and it helped so much! I took the pill at around 6:30 last night, and by 11 or so, I was able to sleep lying down! Today I haven't felt more than about a 2 or 3 on the heartburn scale,  and I consider myself extremely blessed that the medicine worked for me!

Even though the heartburn can be agonizing, I am hoping that it is all for a noble purpose: growing hair on little Henry's head. I read in this fascinating book called "Do Chocolate Lovers Have Sweeter Babies?" that the hormone responsible for fetal hair growth can frequently cause maternal heartburn. Meaning, when I'm feeling the burn, hair is growing on my little man's head. This, of course, is true of populations rather than individuals since there are many women who have hairy little babies, but never feel the heartburn, or vice versa. From what I understand, that's just because hormones react differently in different women's bodies. This is obvious when you see the variation in pregnancies from woman to woman. The same hormones are in play, but they make some women (like me) super nauseated/pukey, heartburn-y, and...irregular (TMI again?), but have little to no effect on other women (lucky saps).
So while the heartburn sucks (for real!), I'm hoping that it's a result of hair growth happening for my little Henry. I would love for him to come out with a good amount of hair on his little head, since I think that hair adds to overall newborn cuteness, and is just so soft and smells so good!!

Have and of you ladies noticed a link between heartburn and hair growth?

Burning

It's 4am. I've been awake since 2. I'm really tired, but I can't sleep. "Why's that?" you may ask.
The culprit is heartburn.

I've had some uncomfortable and even painful experiences with heartburn during my pregnancy, but tonight has topped them all. This is, hands-down, the worst heartburn I've ever had in my life. The only other times that the heartburn has gotten pretty bad, I threw up and everything was alright again. Not this time. I threw up an hour and a half ago, I could throw up again at any time, but that doesn't seem to matter whatsoever. I've taken my trusty Zantac, I resorted to taking Tums, which I haven't taken since I was 5 weeks pregnant since they grossed me out, I tried eating some bread-which did not go well, and I tried mixing a small amount of baking soda with water and swallowing that-which I think brought on the puking. I've been praying and begging for relief, I got on the computer to look up any other remedies I may have neglected, and the only thing I had left to try was almond milk. Fortunately, I love almond milk and almost always have some on hand, so I've been gradually sipping lots of almond milk for the past 20 minutes. I still feel like I'm going to throw up every couple of minutes, but I've kept it down so far. It's supposed to work because of two things: 1) Almonds are widely considered a remedy for heartburn, so almond milk would have the same effect 2) Calcium, which is found in antacids, is also considered to be effective at quelling the torrent of unruly stomach acid, and almond milk has about twice the calcium of dairy milk. I do wonder, though, how much of it I'm gonna have to drink before this nightmare is over and I can get some sleep.

I also wonder something that may seem unrelated, but for sure is. You know how in love songs, the singer will say something like "I'm burning for you" or "I burn for you"? Do you think that their burning is anything like the raging inferno of heartburn that I'm experiencing? For their sakes, I surely hope not. It would help me empathize with them a bit more, though. It's rough enough to be filled with intense love for some one who doesn't reciprocate, but to add burning into the equation? Yikes.

Also, I'm really impressed that Jeff has slept through all of this. I sat straight up in bed at 2am because of the pain, which usually wakes him up, but didn't this time. I've been in and out of bed at least 10 times, I threw up, I've gone to the bathroom, and I've been rummaging around the kitchen for medicines and almond milk. He must be exhausted. I hope he doesn't feel left out tomorrow, but I really didn't see any point in waking him up. He can't do anything for me, and he needs his sleep so he can be productive at his job tomorrow/today. I might leave him a note, though, telling him to let me sleep as late as I want to because I had a rough night. That sounds good.

Oh, hey-since I'm awake, I've really wanted to share this awesome video. Remember that Gotye video I posted before? Well, I still love that song quite a bit. It actually gets stuck in my head all day every day for days at a time, but that hasn't made me love it less. So my brother-in-law (Jeff's little brother), Patrick, showed me this video and I LOVED IT! It's a Gotye cover (of which there are many), but it's by Pentatonix-the winners of the most recent season of "The Sing-Off." They're SO GOOD, and this cover rivals the original, and even eclipses it in many ways. Actually, in my opinion, the only two ways that the original is still better are 1) Gotye's voice on the chorus has such a raw, unique quality to it that kind of puts his fingerprint on the song 2) Kimbra, the female vocalist in Gotye's original, has such a distinct sound. Her voice has a special element to it and gives the vocals a haunting feel. The female vocalist from Pentatonix (Kristie, I believe) has a nice voice, but it doesn't have anything special to it. It feels like something's missing from her part, and if you've heard Kimbra sing it, you know exactly what that is. All that said, it's a phenomenal cover and I recommend you check it out. Right now.

....*sigh* It is now 5am. I've gone through 3 glasses of almond milk and I still can't tell if it's doing anything. Well, crap. I guess it's over to facebook or pinterest.
Or not. I just threw up again, and the heartburn tide has ebbed. I'm gonna capitalize on it and try to get some more sleep. Later.

Chicken Enchiladas Recipe

I'm on a roll today!

My friend Amanda recommended that I put my recipe for Chicken Enchiladas on my blog after I fed them to her and her husband Mike for dinner tonight. So, in case you're interested, here it is!

Kimberly's Chicken Enchiladas:
Filling:
1-1/2 lbs. chicken
2 1/2 tsp. chicken buillon (you can also use Caldo de Tomate, which you should be able to find at the grocery store)
2 tsp. garlic powder, split into one tsp. portions
3 oz. cream cheese (I also use Neufchatel cheese, which is usually a bit cheaper and has 1/3 of the fat. It tastes exactly the same to me, and I'm very picky about the flavor of "low-fat" options)
1/2-3/4 c. your favorite salsa (the exact amount depends on your preference)
15-18 corn tortillas, warmed

Sauce:
2 tbsp. veg. oil
2 tbsp. flour
2-2/12 tbsp. chili powder*
1/2 tsp. cumin
1 (15 oz.) can tomato sauce
1 c. water
1 tbsp. garlic powder*

*you can add more if you feel like it. I usually feel like it :)

Topping:
Any kind of cheese you'd like to throw on top of the enchiladas. The amount is a matter of preference. We also like to use some of the extra salsa, guacamole, sour cream and lettuce to put on top of the enchiladas as we're eating them. 

Assembly:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Bring aprox. 5-6 c. water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add buillon and 1 tsp. of garlic powder. Cut the chicken into small pieces, about the size of your thumb or a bit smaller. Add chicken to the pot, boil until the chicken floats, remove it and place it in a medium-to-large mixing bowl. If you would prefer for the chicken to be more shredded, you can mash it until it looks like you want it to. When all of the chicken is in the bowl and has the desired consistency, add the remaining tsp of garlic powder, salsa, and cream cheese. Mix thoroughly, until there are no visible chunks of cream cheese. Set mixture aside.
Warm the corn tortillas by placing them in a pan over a medium-low heat (I warm mine on a 4), and wrap them in a towel to keep them warm (unless you have a tortilla warmer). The tortillas wrap much better if they're not brown or crispy. Keep in mind, you're not really cooking them, just warming them up so that they won't crack and break when you wrap them around the meat. I've omitted this step once before, and it was bad news. Take the extra time and warm the tortillas. For real.
Fork out a decent amount of chicken mixture into the tortilla (you kinda have to eyeball this part), roll it up and stick it into the pan fold-side down. Line them up in whatever pan you have available. This recipe makes enough to fill a 9x13 pan leaving 4-5 enchiladas left over in a separate pan. Try to use all available space in the pan so that the outlying areas don't get burned.

Now, for the sauce.
Heat the oil in a pan on a medium heat, add flour and chili powder, cook for one min. Add the remaining ingredients and stir. If you find the sauce too thick, too salty, or too tamato-y, add water, 1/4 c. at a time until it tastes how you'd like it to. You can also add more chili powder or garlic powder. I always do.

Pour the sauce over the enchiladas, cover with tin foil and bake for 25-30 minutes. During the last 5-7 minutes of cook time, throw the cheese on top and recover with tin foil (I've noticed that if I let the cheese cook on top the whole time, it burns and ruins everything).

That's it! Mine usually look about like this:

 Hope you try it and like it!

24 weeks!

Here's the 24 week picture:

So I'm realizing that the biggest variable in these pictures is the shirt that I'm wearing. I think I look a lot smaller in this picture than I do in other pictures, but I'm actually bigger than I have been in previous weeks.

We went to the OB for our 24-week appointment, but forgot that this was the one where I had to take the gestational diabetes test. I wasn't upset about having to drink that glucola once I got there, I just wasn't prepared to go for a whole hour without eating. I was hungry when we got there, brought snacks with me, but couldn't eat them for a whole hour! That may not seem like a long time to some of you (most likely those of you who've never been pregnant), but let me assure you it most definitely is. I truly didn't mind the glucola. I thought that it tasted good. The only thing that kept me from just chugging it was that it burned the back of my throat a bit. But I finished, we got in with the OB, talked about a few things, renewed my prescription for headache medicine, listened to Henry's heartbeat, then it was time to hang out in the waiting room until my hour was up. Eventually, the hour came and they took my blood. Turns out, no gestational diabetes! Wahoo! They also tested for anemia, which was a bit of a concern for me because I've been anemic in the past, but I was just barely over the line into non-anemic territory! Everything is going well so far, which is just great news for me! :)

Good Reads

Jeff and I have recently finished our second read-through of the Fablehaven series by one of our favorite authors, Brandon Mull. The series consists of 5 books:

...and they are fantastic. We love reading together, and these have remained our favorites. We've also read Mull's "The Candy Shop War" and "The Beyonders: A World Without Heroes" Well, to be accurate, we listened  to The Beyonders, but that's the same thing.

Last week, the second book in the Beyonders series came out!

Naturally, we started reading it together immediately. It took a few pages to realize that maybe instead of re-reading the Fablehaven series, we should have re-read the first Beyonders book. It became apparent when one of the main characters was reintroduced and we looked at each other and said "Who's that guy?"
So we're trying to catch up as we go. There's also a sequel to The Candy Shop War coming out this year, but it's supposed to be more episodic than serial, so I'm not as worried about re-reading the first one before diving into the second. I'm pretty sure that info is legit, too. It came straight from Brandon Mull. When we met him. He was doing a book signing at the Orem Library a couple of months ago and we had the chance to talk to him for a few minutes. Turns out, he's a rad dude. He was excited that we loved his books so much, especially considering the fact that we were childless adults with no other motivation to read them besides our own interest in them. He asked us a few questions about who we are and what we do, he was genuinely interested in us and seemed so happy to be talking with fans of his work. He was equally gracious to everyone else, of course, but it was really great that he took an interest in us. It also helped that I was primarily there to see my high school buddy/published author Tyler Whitesides, who has become a good friend of Brandon Mull's as they've been running in the same circles in the same profession. I mentioned that I knew Ty and that's kinda when our conversation took off. I do think that he liked us for who we are, though, just to be clear. I had wanted to tell him for years that I really appreciated the witty, believeable dialogue in the Fablehaven series, and felt like so many other young adult fiction novels had the cheesiest dialogue (which is my major complaint with them), so Fablehaven was all the more impressive to me because of it. He was really appreciative of that compliment, I think because it was really specific feedback and he appreciates that in general.


 So here's my friend Tyler (Ty, as I knew him) Whitesides, and his two novels:

I'm still reading the first one, and the second one comes out September 4th. I can't give it a full review yet, since I  haven't read it all the way through, but I suspect it'll be good :)


It was also SO GREAT to see my friend Ty. After the book signing we went to lunch and caught up/reminisced. I was so surprised and happy that he had remembered so many things that we had done together in high school, and remembered us being really close friends. I had thought so, but it was nice to hear that he did too. He's just such a great person, and I'm so happy for his success.


What have you been reading lately? Have any of you read and Brandon Mull or Tyler Whitesides?

21, 22, and 23 Weeks!

Disclaimer: I've been writing this in pieces since last Tuesday, so....if there are any discontinuities please forgive me. I've been busy enjoying the nice weather in St. George, not finishing up this blog post.

Unfortunately, I haven't been on top of things lately, so here are the pictures for 21, 22, and 23 weeks, since I'm 23 weeks along today (Wednesday the 14th)!

21 weeks (this is Jeff's favorite of all of my shirts)

22 weeks. Forgive the hair, it was late and I just wanted to go to bed.

So does it seem to anyone else like I got significantly bigger over a really short period of time? It sure looks and feels like it to me. I mean, the coral shirt definitely accentuates my curves more than the other shirts I've been wearing, but even then! 

2 days ago as we were packing for our little trip to St. George (there will be pictures...later), I was trying on some clothes to take with me and I suddenly felt enormous! I'm not, but it sure felt like it! I've already had to buy new bras (sorry if that's TMI, dudes) and a bra extender to accommodate....me because the growth is out of control! So while I was trying on clothes it became apparent that I needed some summer clothes (mostly capris or bermuda shorts, but also more short-sleeved shirts), and that nothing I currently owned would work. 

So yesterday in St. George we went to Motherhood Maternity to find some capris that have the nice elastic belly on them. The only employee working there was really weird and super rude. I asked for capris and she said "They're right here. We don't have shorts, we just have shorts, and they're here too." Which of course caused me to look somewhat confused (you don't have shorts, you just have shorts? ....riiiiight). Seeing my confusion, she then proceeded to demonstrate what shorts were by drawing an invisible line on her thigh indicating the length of shorts (because that was the issue-me not knowing what shorts were). At that point I was irked, so I just said "Ok, got it, thanks." and she left me alone. I tried on the only legit capris that they had, picked a pair (I felt a bit too big for mediums :( so I chose larges, even though they're a bit bulky. But at this rate, I'll grow into them) and Jeff went to go buy them for me while I got my own pants back on in the dressing room. He gets up to the counter where weird/rude employee is standing and sets the capris down. She looks at him and walks off! She went around and spoke with every other customer in the store before coming back and taking care of Jeff. Weird, right? Rude, right? I've never experienced customer service like that at a Motherhood store before. Everyone is usually so nice! They try to upsell me like nobody's business, but they're attentive and polite, so it doesn't bother me. I'm really glad I won't be going back there anytime soon!

On Tuesday I went on a walk because the weather down here is so nice. I walked to a nearby grocery store so I could pick up a few snack items and some much needed almond milk. The walk ended up being two miles round trip, with the return being much less pleasant since I was carrying a decent amount of groceries. I went for another walk on Wednesday, but kept it just under two miles, since the Tuesday walk wore me out completely (I sat around trying not to fall asleep the rest of the afternoon). I failed to stretch after the walks, however, and suffered abundantly for that oversight on Saturday morning. More on that later. Here's the 23 week picture from Wednesday (with my favorite maternity shirt that my MIL put in the dryer last night and now is no longer big enough for me to wear for the duration of this pregnancy :(....boo)

23 weeks

Also, have I told you that St. George was BEAUTIFUL this week? 

The flowering plum trees were so beautiful! I hadn't yet seen those in bloom in St. George.

So back to Saturday morning. I had been struggling with heartburn throughout the wee hours of the morning, and eventually just dragged myself out of bed and took something for it. Not long after I got back into bed, the muscles just below my calf on my left leg seized up. It is among the most painful experiences I've had in my life so far, and it caused me to panic. I jumped out of bed and onto the floor, trying to stretch or rub it-anything to make it stop-and I woke Jeff up with all the commotion. He was a bit bewildered, but jumped right in and asked what he could do to help. I suggested he rub it, but that didn't do a lot, and eventually it stopped cramping. Even though the immediate, panic-inducing pain was gone, my leg still hurt quite a bit and I was a bit traumatized by the whole incident. I was scared to fall back to sleep, because I was sure that at any moment the cramp would come back and I would be helpless again. So every couple of minutes, I would stretch my leg and tell myself that as long as I kept stretching it, everything would be okay. The weirdest thing to me, though, was that the pain didn't go away. It's now Tuesday the 20th and my leg still hurts! I've been stretching it, Jeff has massaged it several times, but it still hurts a lot! I asked my friend Alaina, a personal trainer, what the deal was, since I was stumped. She told me that normally she would just say potassium and water, but she read an article recently that recommended soaking the area in water and epsom salts, because the root of the problem is magnesium, and the water and salt draw out the magnesium. I'll be trying this later, and I'll let you know how it goes. In the meantime, I just keep stretching and hoping that it's enough. 

Saturday afternoon my MIL threw me a baby shower because there was a family reunion going on down in St. George. It was really fun, and everyone was so sweet. There was, however,  this one game...

My mom drove all the way down from Logan to come to the shower! So cool!

...which was totally disgusting.  Grandma hated it, which is evident in this picture. After two chocolate-filled diapers, she just couldn't do it anymore (which is completely understandable, since it's beyond gross) and sat the rest of the game out. 

I also got to open presents, which was super fun (who doesn't love opening presents, right?). Henry and I got some really great stuff. My favorite gift, however, was from Jeff. 

That paper says "Good for a $1,000 pre-baby getaway! Choose your destination:" with several places that I've talked about wanting to go listed beneath. The list consisted of great places such as Seattle, San Diego, Portland, Toronto, ON,  Victoria, B.C., Dallas/Ft. Worth, and Atlanta. The combination of hormones and the sweet gesture made me cry a little. I have such an incredible husband! He warned me that I was going to freak out when I opened his gift and that I was going to be really surprised. He was right-I did not see that coming. He has come a long way from 4 years ago, and seems to have mastered the art of surprising me! Oh, how I love surprises. :)

So I've been thinking about it almost non-stop since Saturday and last night I finally decided that we would go to.......

TORONTO!!!!

I'm pretty dang excited. 

In case any of you were unaware, Toronto is where I served my mission, and it is dear to my heart. There are so many people that I want to see again before Henry comes and it gets a lot harder. Most of the destinations I could choose from were in the western U.S., and were really great places, but it seemed like most would be much easier to visit post-baby than Toronto would be. So we're goin' for gold! Toronto, here we come!

(I'm sure I'll tell you more of the details as we get closer to it but for now that's all I got.) 

Two quick highlights from the St. George trip with my little sister-in-law Meghan, who is 16:

Meg: Hey, wanna learn how to do a sock bun?

Kimberly: Yeah, sure!

Meg: Yeah, me too.

Kimberly: (during a song on Dance Central2) Why on earth are they singing about cheesesteaks?

Meg: (after her laughter dies down) They're saying "G-6!" 

(I surmised that this is a part of pop culture that I missed out on. If any of you are in the same boat, here's what that's all about)

Also, I feel like I need to just post this already, since it's now Thursday the 22nd and I have officially dragged this out for waaaay too long. I'll post a 24 week pic...whenever I decide to. 

What do you think? Where would you have gone if you'd been given the same choices of destination?