Pregnancy over time ;-)

I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas...and other things

Ok folks, I am a slacker. Not a part time slacker, but at consistent slacker. I've come to this conclusion because of how little I have been putting on our blog. We have been so blessed over the last several months that I don't really know where to start. Adrienne is doing great with the pregnancy. She never had morning sickness and all our visits with her doctor show the baby developing perfectly. Ade is definitely more tired than normal, but I try to help out where I can.

Our good friend Henry gave us tickets to a BYU Football game back in November. The weather was great and we sat near the front at mid-field. I took a couple of pictures to commemorate the event. I think the final score was 55-7. It was tons of fun and we even got to bring along a couple of our friends, Jeff and Julie (who took the photo of us).

Both sets of parents were came out to Utah over Thanksgiving and I cooked up most of my usual fare. The turkey was yummy! So were the potatoes, stuffing, cornbread pudding, and everything else. It was really fun to get to see family over the holidays.

Henry has also sent us to a few basketball games. I went to one with my Dad around Thanksgiving and two with my wife...who has become a huge fan of BYU Basketball. The team is 10-1 and really plays well together. Great intensity on defense without fouling and nice offensive rhythm.

The third picture is from this morning. We got about 8 inches Sunday night...which I cleared. Then last night we got another foot or 18 inches. Anyways, this is a shot of our driveway with a friend and I clearing it. I'm sure the snow plow made my driveway impassable while I was at work and I'll have to clear it out again when I get home. TONS of snow...to say the least.

Due Date March 10th!

I have been holding off posting on this blog for a while because I wanted to wait a little longer to post about Adrienne's pregnancy. She's nearly 22 weeks now and last week we found out she is having a boy! The important news is that everything is progressing well and the baby is healthy and due on March 10th.

I have included a scan of a few ultrasound photos below. Thank you to everyone for your thoughts and prayers!

Jason and Adrienne

Photo Problems

Why can't I get photos to post right the first time?

Anyways, 2nd try.

Tuacahn and Zion's National Park

We took a weekend trip down to St George and stayed with some old friends. When I say old, I've known them since I was 9 years old. I was even at their house when my little sister was born. We stayed with Allen and Tammy (the parents) but most of the kids live down there now as well.

Friday night we went to the Tuacahn Theater and saw Tarzan the Musical. It was amazing, fantastic, exciting, phenomenal....you get the idea. Just imagine an outdoor amphitheater surrounded by beautiful red rock cliffs with a natural river that can be diverted to flood the stage. Apes swinging all over the place, people singing, dancing, fun for everyone. I think I was most impressed with Turk. Imagine swinging upside down, while spinning, and STILL SINGING ON KEY. It truly was impressive.

Saturday was a free pass day at all National Parks. We drove up to Zion's with my friend Brad and we (Adrienne, Brad, and I) all hiked Angel's Landing together. The guy who named the peak said that to get to the top someone would need "angel's wings". Here's a couple shots from the hike.

This first shot makes it look much worse than it is. This shows approximately the last fourth of the hike (time wise). You have posts and chains to hold onto and the footing is very solid.

This is one of the views from the top. Absolutely gorgeous. If you look closely you can see the buildings at the start of the hike waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down below.

Here's one with Ade immitating the warning sign. I've even got Brad looking on behind her to the left.

Last, but not least, here is Brad on a part of the trail that is called "Walt's Wiggle". It's a series of small, but extremely steep switchbacks at about the halfway point. I've seen pictures of it from above and it looks kind of like a zipper. I had to include it in honor of my dear Grandpa (who's first name was Walt).

Lake Powell Photos - Click for bigger images

I realized a little late that I didn't upload the images at the size I normally do. You can click on them now to see them full screen.

Lake Powell 2010

We had another great vacation with our cousins at Lake Powell this year. A couple more storms than usual, but they didn't stick around. Beautiful skies, smooth water, and an overall good time was had by all. We were there from the 11th through the 20th of August. Joining us on our "cruise" this year with Eric and Machelle and their three kids were some other cousins, Marci and Evan with three of their kids. We hadn't seen them since the last time they came out to Lake Powell 8-10 years ago.

I've got a bunch of pictures I would like to share. I'll see how many I can get in this post.

It will be tough to narrow down the choices. The first shows off the latest thing in boating...it's called wake surfing. You can actually surf the wake behind a boat if it is going the right speed (8-10 MPH) and you have it weighted right (all on the side you are trying to surf. It's a blast and falls don't hurt at all because the speed is so much slower than other activities.

Picture #2 shows off just how beautiful the sky can be at Lake Powell.

Ade and I went on a hike with Machelle, Matt, and Robbi (Kayla). Here's a shot from the top of the ridge we climbed.

And here's another shot from almost the same vantage point. You can see our ski boat (Wipeout) way down below on the lake.

It has been a few years since I tried slalom skiing. They have a beginner ski and Eric's ski. The beginner ski hurts my back foot and Eric's ski is pro level (very very difficult). I had never tried Eric's since everyone basically said it would be virtually impossible for me to control it coming out of the water...well after 3 tries I proved I could. By the way, I was being pulled at 34 MPH at this point. I didn't wreck, I just got too tired and let go. This really works your core muscles.

And here is Eric showing how slalom skiing is really done on his own ski. He is usually being pulled between 38 and 40 MPH depending on how smooth the water is.

Summer of Slack

I decided that I have become a complete slacker on my blog...to make up for it I've redesigned the background. Come to the blog site and check it out!

We've been busy with last minute family visits, callings, recovering from surgery, and all sorts of other things. I signed up for a city league soccer team and can't wait to start the season tomorrow. It's been about 12 years since I played on a team of any kind (BYU intramural) and 18 years since the one before that.

Knee Recovery and Priest Man-to-Man

It's been another few weeks since the last post so I should catch everyone up on a few things. My knee is doing much better. I've been riding an exercise bike for 1/2 hour a few times a week. I'm fine going up and down stairs and feel good doing most activities. I'm still not allowed to run (1 more week) or jump (4 more weeks). I can't wait to finally get back to my normal sports.

This last weekend we had our bi-annual Man-to-Man activity. Basically it is a huge father and son outing for all the priests (16-18 year old boys) in our stake. We went up the canyon to a camp area and stayed overnight. Friday night we had dutch oven prime rib (3 varieties) as well as potatoes, veggies, cobbler, ice cream...all kinds of yum. To finish off the evening we had a great fireside program. In the morning (after a great breakfast), we gave the youth and dads a chance to compete against each other in some shooting sports (rifles, pistols, and shotguns). The shotgun competition was the most organized. We had an elimination game with 5-6 at a time. Then we took the winners of each group and had a championship round. I snuck through my first round against some less than accurate shooters but got in some valuable practice. When it was time for the championship I surprised everyone by winning the whole thing! Pretty good for someone who hasn't shot a shotgun in about 7 years. They were even throwing types of skeet I'd never seen before. They had regulars, minis, mosquitos (very small and black), battues (very flat and black), and even a lollipop thrower. All in all it was a great time for everyone and we had a blast putting it together.

My mom had surgery this week. Nothing too serious and she is recovering well. She has a young man from the neighborhood coming by to help walk the dogs and help her out as needed.

Well, I hope all my friends and family had a great Fathers' Day. Take care and hopefully we'll keep up on this blog better in the weeks to come.

Wow! Almost Two Months!

I've been quite remiss in keeping up with our online blog/journal. I'll have to summarize several events to catch up. I'll explain them in approximately the same order they happened. Adrienne has been swamped with a couple of audits at work, so she wasn't able to go to a few of these things.

First, our dear friends Kim and Dan celebrated Kim graduating from UVU. She earned her degree in Elementary Education. I was able to go and take some photos for them and we went out to dinner later that night.

The very next week, my brother-in-law, Austin, graduated from the University of Utah with a bachelor's degree in business finance. I hadn't seen my sister and her husband in way too long. It was quite a bit of fun to catch up with them and see all of his family.

Then I headed out to Missouri and Illinois to help out my parents. My mom picked me up from the airport in St. Louis and we drove out to Peoria, Illinois so that she could sign the papers to sell their old house. Both parents were a little sad to sell the house, but it didn't seem like they would find a way to move back there in the near future and it was a bit of a hassle to keep it rented. We drove back through St. Louis the next day and continued on through to Ft. Leonard Wood Missouri (where they live now). They had been renting one home, but it sold, so I helped them move their stuff over to a new rental. My time flew by while out visiting them and soone we headed back to St. Louis to put me on a plane. Before I left, though, we stopped by the giant arch and took some pictures.

Our team finished up the Payson Coed Volleyball season by winning the middle level tournament. We had been undefeated during the regular season so they bumped us up to the Flight 2 tournament. It took all we had, but we were able to finish the championship game 2-1. We won athletic bags for each team member and a $50 gift certificate for the whole team to have a victory party at a local pizza joint.

In the Spanish Fork Coed Volleyball league we played in a much harder league (the top level). We ended up 4th during the regular season, but fought our way to third in the tournament. No prizes, but we had a ton of fun.

Adrienne had her annual MRI to check on her Multiple Sclerosis. Once again the doctor was astounded at how good she is doing. None of the lesions are progressing and some are even shrinking. It's great news for both of us. Her doctor thinks that the way my wife exercises and her diet must be how she is able to continue such positive results.

As soon as volleyball ended I had scheduled to have knee surgery. My knee has been bothering me for a couple of years and the orthopedist discovered that I have an "Osgood Schlatter's" variant...which basically means that they needed to cut open my knee and remove an extra piece of bone from my patella tendon. Fun, right? On May 18th, we went into the hospital and they performed it as an outpatient procedure.

My mom came out to visit and take care of me as I recovered (since Adrienne could only take off 1 day from work). She was a huge help for both of us and really made the whole situation better. I was pretty loopy for the first few days due to the anesthesia and lortab, but soon switched to ibuprofen. It's now been about 12 days since the surgery and I'm not even using crutches anymore. I've got a doctor's appointment one week from this Friday. I think he'll be removing the stitches. In the meantime, I need to start riding our exercise bike to begin rehabbing the knee.

Another part of mom coming out to visit was to bring out my dad's old Camry. It's one year newer than my Accord and it has about 70,000 less miles on it so we think we can keep it for a while. My parents bought my old Accord to pass onto one of my cousins. We were very grateful for this exchange because they paid just enough to cover the cost of both my surgery and my wife's MRI.

Now we are down to the two most important events of the last couple of months. Our brother-in-law Will is a Marine. He came home from Afghanistan yesterday. I am grateful and humbled by his service for our country. He got off the bus at Camp Williams and hugged his wife and 1rst daughter, then got to meet his second daughter for the very first time. It was a touching moment and we felt privilege to be there. Of course he also got to see many of his brothers and sisters and his mom too.

Last, but not least, today is Adrienne's birthday. We did most of the celebrating during the week, so today we decided to take it easy and rest.

I will do my best get back to consistency in posting on her for the future. Also, maybe I can post a bunch of pictures for the things that have been transpiring recently.

Oh, and by the way, HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY! May we all never forget the sacrifices of those that protect our freedom!