The Zoo and other happenings

My friend Amanda is moving to another town pretty soon and she informed me that if we were to stay friends, I would have to get a zoo membership. :) Tuesdays are Nate's days off and he hadn't been to the zoo in Tucson since he was 12. So we tagged along with Amanda and her cute little girls with the intentions of 1)getting out of the house, 2)letting Nate relive his childhood and 3)buying a zoo pass to keep our friendship in tact. We are now Tucson Zoo members people!

Amanda's girls: Nora asleep and Lillian with her shades

Lillian calls the giraffe Melman from Madagascar

Nate and Lillian telling the llama to wake up. "Wake up mama!"

Amanda and Lillian enjoying In and Out afterwards

She was doing elephant tusks

This is the coolest frog fountain. I really wanted to see some little kid get it in the face!

So I know that it seems we took a lot of pictures of Lillian... and we did. :) Don't worry parents of America, when we get our own kid we'll stop taking so many pictures of yours.

In other news, we had a doctors appointment on Tuesday and nothing has changed on the progression front so they scheduled us to be induced and the earliest they could get me in was the next Tuesday, March 3. For some reason this really upset me that he is going to miss the month of February all together and would now be a March baby. Nothing against the month of March at all, it's just that they told me February and it should have been February! So fine, he was going to be born March 3. But then they call me the next day and say that I have been bumped. Do they have an induction waiting list that and can you jump said waiting list? How do I become a Induction VIP and jump to the head of the line? How do they know ahead of time that there will be no room for me?? So they bumped me to Thursday the 5th. In the words of Amanda, "Do they know?? Do they know that's two days later??" Grr... my frustration. Today is February 28. If he doesn't come within the next 6 hours, he will be in a completely different month! 6 hours buddy! Come on!

Had to share...

So I hate the pre-labor stat posts that people put up but thought this was slightly amusing/sad.

Last night I started having contractions but since we are both pretty new at this we didn't know if these were real or not so we went to the Womens Center anyway. Of course, by then the contractions had stopped. They hook me up, I sit forever feeling stupid and that I'm wasting people's time/energy/resources while the women in the other side of the curtain is having huge contractions and is being life-flighted somewhere. We sit and sit and then the nurse comes in and says we need to wake the baby up to get a better reading on his heart beat. So she brings a little thing over that looks like a phone receiver and puts it on my belly and ZAP! She sends the vibrating waves through me. Well let me tell you, he woke up. He JUMPED to the opposite side of my stomach and his heart rate went from 150 to 180 in a heart beat (yes, pun very much intended!). Poor little guy! She had scared him awake! He stayed at 180 for a little while and then you could tell he was slowly calming down. I felt kind of bad for him but chuckled at the same time. Needless to say, I'm 1cm dilated and 60 effaced and they sent me home. Fine by me. I'm not ready for him to come yet. Nate was a little disappointed but he can wait a little longer. In the words of my mom to Nate via text message, "Tell Rachel to keep her legs crossed for at least another week!" Will do mom.

Our life since Christmas

It has been a hectic Christmas season.

-Finishing up school semester (btw, I got straight A's! In my Anthropology class, I recieved the highest grade on the final! A perfect score! Tooting my own horn here, TOOT TOOT!)

-Getting nursery ready for Baby. Didn't realize how much stuff you actually need!

We love everything IKEA for the baby room!

-Progressively getting bigger

At Nate's grandparents house with Nate's cousin and her babies, aunts, mother and grandma

Sunday before Christmas

-Nate switched to a new branch that he really enjoys

-Baking all the time. For Christmas presents for everyone, I made red velvet truffles, English toffee, and sugar cookies, so I was in the kitchen alot

-Christmas day!

Gah! Pardon the look... it was 6 in the morning and I had slept in a sleeping bag on the floor!

Testing out the towel and washcloth puppet the baby got for Christmas

-Emma came to visit

We got our nails done

At the nail place

At the snow on Mt. Lemmon

-We flew back to San Francisco together and my moms friends had a baby shower for me. We had crepes and fondue and played some games. He got more clothes than he'll ever be able to wear!

My friend Kelsey

Our good friend Lisa

Mom, Emma, Emily, Lauren

Yes, it was a Christmas themed shower.. ;)

-My good friend Nadine flew back out to Tucson with me after the trip to California

We went out to dinner at this hip burger bar called Zinburger. 

Nate was watching ESPN on the T.V

All in all it's been a really fun but busy holiday season and hopefully we will be better about posting now!

"Santa's coming! I know him!!"

Christmas is almost here and I am dying from excitement!! It is my favorite time of year and I started singing Christmas songs at the beginning of October. We have one Christmas radio station in Tucson and it's the only thing on in my car. We started decorating and everything looks so cute! I'll add more pictures later but I'll give you a preview.

Very flattering picture of me and the nutcracker...

Halloween!

Halloween was very fun. I always get a lot more into it than any "grownup" should. I love to decorate and dress up and I would still go trick or treating if that wasn't so frowned upon. We bought pumpkins and carved them. This was basically the first time Nate had ever had his own pumpkin. He didn't really know what to do and then was so grossed out by the "guts" that he made me scoop it all out. I didn't mind. I get sort of a sick pleasure out of it! :)

I was a fairy... very grown up I know. I had worked all week on this stupid costume and then had to improvise at the last minute. I made the tutu and was sewing little sleeves for this spaghetti strap shirt but the sleeves didn't work out so I turned it into a little caplet. We had a ward Trunk or Treat and we ran the Fishing Booth. When I was getting dressed 10 minutes before we had to leave, I realized that the caplet would work with my fairy wings! So I had to ditch the caplet and wear a T-Shirt with the wings. And then I put the tutu on and never realized how.. ahem.. see-through it was. So I had to stick a pink frilly slip on underneath. Sigh.. I wonder if Tink ever has these issues when going out...

Didn't mean this picture to be so serious... I didn't know Nate was taking a whole face pic, I thought it was just the eyebrows like this one:

The ill fated caplet...

Nate was a homie of sorts... He served his mission in the Bronx so he had his costume put together before he even got off his mission. He wore his Phat Farm jumpsuit, a du rag, and his Bronx, Boogie Down NYC hat. He looked very authentic ;)

Our fishing booth at the Trunk or Treat. Nate hooked the fish and I directed traffic. It was a very fun event for the kids and we ended up having a lot of fun too! Afterwards, our bishop had a grown up party at his house. It was a small dance party sort of thing and it was nice getting to be with more adults.

At the party with our friends

All in all, it was a very good night!

The Weekend

This past weekend was so much fun! Unfortunately, we lost our camera battery charger so we couldn't take any pictures! Grrr I hope we find it soon but I'm not holding my breath because it's been missing for 2 months! So anyway, on Friday we went to Sweet Tomato which is like my favorite place because of their AMAZING chicken noodle soup with fresh, huge, thick noodles and HUGE slices of rotisserie chicken and nothing else! I love it! I hate veggie chunks in my noodle soup in fact, funny story, one time when I was like 12, I tried making dinner for my family and I wanted to make just broth because I loved the broth out of the soup so much. So I heated up broth and served it and it was nasty! Needless to say, my mom made something else. Aaaaanywho, Sweet Tomato is like the Fresh Choice of California or the nicer Golden Corral or something to that effect. So Friday I ate my fill and more. Then Nate and I went bowling at this place called Bedroxx which is a Flinstone-esque bowling alley. Very fun! The best part is that above every lane is a big screen where they play 80's and 90's hip hop and pop songs! So we were bowling to Billy Jean, Too Legit to Quit, Bust a Move, and Whoomp There It Is. It was pretty funny. We learned that I am the weakest bowler ever. I can't hold the ball right so I stick my fingers in the holes and the just swing my arm back and forth picking up momentum until the ball is carried off and down the lane. I look stupid.

Saturday we went to our friends house to have dinner and play games. They made homemade pizzas and threw them on the grill and it was soooo good. Then we played Phase 10 and Nate and I came in 3rd and 4th. Lame. But it was still a really fun night.

Sunday we went to some other friends house to have dinner and play games. Getting the picture we are kind of moochers? We had mac n cheese and played Ticket to Ride. Very fun, but very hard for me. I came in dead last. :(

Monday I was going to run some errands and I opened up my front door and there was a package for me but I couldn't tell who it was from. I thought they were some shirts I had ordered so I opened it up and.... Fisher Price Little People Nativity and Thanksgiving sets??? I didn't order these!! I finally discovered they were from my mom. So I called her up to thank her for the package and she had no idea what I was talking about! I said "The Nativity Set??" She said "Ohhhh I forgot to tell you about that... You're welcome!" She had forgotten all about them! But they were soooo cute!

That was a really long story but it has been a super fun weekend that Nate and I can't stop talking about. Thought I'd share. :) Hopefully pictures will start coming back into blogs soon. Cross your fingers.

ANNOUNCING.......

TA DA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Trip to Summerhaven

So we went up to the mountains for the day a while ago and just have not posted. So here ya go!

Thought this was hilarious.

The most glorious, cheesy goodness of a pizza.

Seriously the best I've ever had. And we didn't mean to focus

in on that lady's bum... how embarrassing...

The Uber Macho Chest Rug. Perfect.

Summer trips Part 2

So after California we went to Idaho to visit friends. We stayed with our friends Susan and Nick and it was SO much fun (at least for us!)

And yes I got a little carried away with how cute Calvin is... I could make a whole photo album about him!

They both look very uncomfortable with each other.

Calvin looks like a rock star sticking his tongue out and look at his hand!!

We also worked on a few sewing projects. I got kind of grumpy because mine sucked. :(

So cute.

Went to Craigos. Like ya do.

Ha! So when he was born, I bought Susan some Pee Pee Tee Pees. Hilarious. And we put one on his head to make him look like a wizard!

Susan and Calvin in the pool. Of course I pulled out my camera at the end of all our swimming.

At the park after dinner

One angry lion.

I seriously have like 10 more pictures of him... but I'll restrain myself. :)