2010

Well, 2009 has come and gone and we're into a new year. I don't like winter once Christmas and New Year's is over; it's very depressing. It's cold and it's grey and the snow is hard. Everyone's lights are gone and trees are down. So here's just a couple pictures from our Christmas this year. The top one is our tree with all our presents, for each other and family, under it.
This is the tree at my in-laws house. We had a really nice Christmas Eve and Day there with the Yeips, sans Carl who is on his mission for another year. We did get to talk to him for a while on Christmas morning and it was fun to hear the difference the last year has made in him.
Micah, Heather, Meghan and Brendan all came up on Christmas day and stayed a couple days with us. It's so nice to have in-laws who can get along so well with my family that we can feel comfortable to spend holiday time all together. Micah and Steven took Meghan out and stuck her on an old snowboard and pushed her down the little slope in front of Steven's parents house. She's so cute in all her winter gear.
Steven's parents and sister Deneal getting breakfast ready Christmas morning.
On to other topics besides Christmas, I'm officially in my last trimester now. It's very scary to me that in just 3 more months I'll have a child. It's seemed kind of surreal. It only really hit me last week that we will actually have a baby and he's not going to just stay in there forever. I look forward to so much about becoming a mom, but I'm dreading the worrying about caring for him and the decisions he'll make one day and the kind of person he'll become. I'm counting on the fact that Steven and I have turned out alright that our kids will too.
Heather is only 6 weeks ahead of me and due next month. She's quite a bit smaller in the belly than I am though. I love that we're both having boys and so close together. Hopefully Baby Boy Howard and Baby Boy Yeip will be good friends one day!
Cousins together!

2009 was a good year overall. We had a couple good vacations including one to Oregon/Washington and one to California. I got pregnant, which is probably one of the bigger highlights. I lost my grandmother, but not in some tragic way at least. The nice thing about her passing was being able to be with all my family for a few days and see my cousins who I only see every once in a while. Steven and I fortunate enough to have great friends and great families who make our lives great. We also very fortunate to have each other and to be able to have this baby together. I look forward to 2010 and the new life that will be joining us this year. I think it'll be a great year!

More Christmas Time

My mom sent us a couple Christmas packages full of presents. This box was Guster's favorite present.

We made gingerbread houses with our friends and Coy's and the Olson's. Ours looks more like a gingerbread barn but I still really like it. Steven made the lovely thatched roof and the beautiful pine tree. He made it so there's a bunch of gummy bears dancing around the tree.



Friday evening we went to a Christmas party at our friend's Meg and Mike Suiter. I stole this picture from Jen Gibb who is the one on the floor so everyone can see all the friends and their baby boys. I'm glad that our little one will have 3 buddies all ready and waiting for him!

Christmas is All Around

I just love Christmas time. It's so beautiful and everything just feels a bit better. My mother-in-law have me her old tree so now I have a nice big pretty one instead of my ugly Wal-mart special. The bad thing about such a big tree is I don't have enough ornaments to decorate it with!

We went down to Temple Square the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Deneal flew into town so the whole family went to pick her up and after a good dinner at the Red Rock Cafe we went over to see the lights.




It's quite difficult to get a good picture of everyone, but this is Denise, Deneal, Gavin, Katie, Paul, Neal, and myself. No Steven.

Guster really loves Christmas too. He loves all the boxes full of decorations I get out and tries so hard to be sneaky and get inside them. You can barely see him in this picture peering through the tree branches. He doesn't seem to realize that the tree isn't real and always tries to eat it. He's also knocked off a bunch of ornaments and batted them around and shattered a few of them. I don't really mind on the little cheap ones; at least he's getting some exercise which he is in dire need of.

My living room this year. It's much less blurry in person.

Even though it is so cold outside right now, it's nice to have a warm little house to get all comfy in. This will more than likely be our last Christmas in this house. I like it a lot even though it doesn't hold the heat very well, the doors kind of stick, the carpets are all stained and worn out, there's big stains on the wallpaper in the kitchen, the toilet handle has to be lifted up after flushing, the countertops are just so very ugly and gross with a permanent dirtyness to them, and every once in a while it smells like old people. It's mine and Steven's first home together. We've had our first Christmas there and will be our baby's first home as well, even if it is for a short period of time. I hope everyone enjoys their Christmas in their homes everywhere!

Baby Boy Yeip

Our camera isn't really the greatest thing in the world with which to take a picture of a picture, but you can get the basic gist of what he looks like. The above picture is his profile and you can see his perfect little face. It looks pretty cute to me!

And this my friends, (above) would be the picture defining his gender. It took a lot of staring at it for me to figure out what exactly I was looking at. The arrow is pointing right to his boyhood. To the right of that is his left knee and his foot and to the left is his right foot. Click to enlarge and see if you can see that too. The ultrasound technician was able to tell right away that it was a boy and so we're quite sure that he's not going to pop out a girl. She had a hard time getting this picture for us though. When she went to his bottom, he was sitting indian style and we couldn't see his boyhood at all. She used the little periscope thingy and tried to get him to move and she got that quick shot.

This picture is one of those 3D ones where the baby looks like a demon. It's really hard to tell what this is and if she hadn't been pointing everything out for us I'd have no clue. But this is part of his face. On the right edge is his nose and mouth and the rest of his face is being covered up by his hand. Most of the time during the u/s he had his hands up to his face; it was quite cute.

This, the technician said, will probably be the last full shot we'll be able to get of him until he comes out because he'll be too big to fit into a shot after this. But this is his back and it's just so amazing to me how I've got this perfect tiny little person just curled up in there! Steven and I are so thrilled to be having a boy. I've wanted a boy first for as long as I can remember because I think that every girl needs a big brother. We were so convinced that it would be a girl because we both wanted a boy and were very surprised when she told us it was a boy. I'm, also very excited that I'm going to be able to use this for our boy!

And this last little picture here is of my dear friend Wraggles modeling a baby hat I made just last night. I love to crochet, keeps my hands busy while I watch movies and whatnot. Yesterday after my appointment I went online and found a bunch of cute patterns for baby items and this is the first one I made. I was pretty excited that it turned out to look just the way it was supposed to look! So for maybe $3 or possibly less, and 1 hour of time, we have our first baby hat!

Exciting Developments

So I had an exciting moment on Saturday. Our friend's Brianna and Wade Siddoway came up for Halloween and we went to the temple for the noon session on Saturday. Bri and I were sitting together and not too far into the session I felt 2 little nudges in my belly. I turned to Bri and whispered "I think I just felt the baby move for the first time!" I pushed in with my hand where I'd felt it move and it nudged at me again. It was so exciting to finally feel it move. I'd been waiting for that to happen for a while now and it was so neat that it happened in the temple. Right now as I write this I can actually feel it moving around a whole bunch like a big butterfly is in there. I think the kiddo likes hot chocolate!

Less than a week now

November 5 is the big day where we get to find out what we're having. We both are convinced it's a girl and have been trying to come up with girl names but cannot agree on any. So it'd better be a boy because we have names for that!

For those who don't know yet:

We're having a baby!



If you look very closely, you can see the arm.
We had our first sonogram yesterday and it was really amazing to see your little baby moving around down there. It was moving it's little arm like it was waving at us and it's little heart was fluttering at 176 bpm. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen and we're so excited!