I'm Back! And with a Boy!

So I have decided it's time to come back to the blogging world. But for a good reason. Jake and I are having a baby! A cute little boy to be exact, and we are so excited! We got to see him for the first time yesterday and thought it would be fun to let you see.

Here he is!

Apparently he doesn't like to be bothered...

Here is a cute profile of him with his hand near his mouth.

I loved this shot. He's already got a great looking brain. Maybe he will have a "photographic memory" like his dad. (Jake likes to think he does anyways)

For all of you who keep asking for a photo of me, and although I feel very strange taking these profile shots, here it is. When I took this I thought I was 19 1/2 weeks, but after the Dr's visit apparently I am only 17 1/2 weeks. Bummer. But actually it is great news for me because I will probably be able to finish my entire last semester Physical Therapy internship before he is born. That way I will be able to graduate on time! My new due date is December 3 and my clinical rotation will end around November 16 because I will be starting it a week early. Hopefully I can keep going strong until then!

Here are the names we like best and semi-favorite order: Bentley, McKay, Tyler, and Mason. Feel free to comment on them or give suggestions!

Busy being a PT

Turns out I haven't posted anything in probably over a month. I guess working 40 hours a week but not getting paid makes me tired or something at night? Who knows. Yeah, that's right, I am now working full time as a (student) Physical Therapist. I have been working at Orem Pediatric Physical Therapy and it has been amazing. I have learned so much, and it is crazy how different physical therapy is when you are working with kids vs adults.

Some of the things I have learned as a pediatric student PT
1. If adults have a weak trunk, they slouch and it is fixed by doing sit-ups, planks, etc. If kids have a weak trunk they w-sit (sit on their knees with their feet out wide, which looks very painful) and to fix it we bounce them up and down on a therapy ball pretending we are on a pirate ship and we can't fall on the hot lava.

2. If you have a baby that always have their head rotated one way or tilted one way when they are playing, sleeping, etc, go to the doctor! Their muscle on one side of their neck is probably tighter than the other and if you don't do anything about it they will stay tilted their whole life, have vision problems, probably have a flat spot on the side of their head, and their facial features might be uneven. Also if they have a flat spot go to the dr before they are close to a year old, because then it's basically to late to give them a helmet or anything.

3. I hope my children have great imaginations. It makes life so much fun. I was working with one girl who had a pet monkey we had to take through the jungle (running outside in the long grass) and a pet spider we had to build a tunnel for it to crawl through (her doing bridges on her back). It was so much fun

4. The parent's of children with disabilities are without a doubt the strongest people I will ever meet. Just to give you an idea, the kids I have worked with have diagnoses ranging from cerebral palsy to autism, muscular dystrophy to hydrocephalus, torticollis to hemophilia. The parents for these children never cease to amaze me. Whether the children are able to walk, only crawl, just stay in their wheelchair, have already passed away or will pass soon, the dedication and the tears that have gone in to making these children's lives the best they can be, are phenomenal.

5. As much as I love working as a physical therapist, I feel very lucky to be a woman instead of a man. Working part time as a physical therapist sounds so much more appealing than working full. time. for. the. rest. of. my. life.

6. I now notice that I have really had a lack of children in my life. Without any nieces or nephews, and being 6 when my youngest brother was born, I haven't really had the opportunity to interact with babies. Having this internship has been so good for me not only to learn important things about enhancing child development, but it has also been great for me to just be able to play with babies. Hopefully Jake will learn how to play with babies too. It's probably not a great sign when he says "Ages 2 and up, I am golden; but any younger than that are boring because they don't really do anything." Haha.


Here are a few things I have learned in the last month that aren't physical therapy related, but equally important:

1. It's not a great idea to go to sacrament meeting 1 minute late when you are in a small chapel and have 2 baby blessings that day. Because then you have to sit in the choir seats and on your way up there you might trip over one of the steps and fall on your face in front of the whole congregation. Good thing I didn't fall on my face, but it was way too close for comfort.

2. Pinterest is a great place to find awesome new recipes. Such as: homemade wingers sticky fingers, homemade cafe rio pork salad, homemade butterfingers (world's best and easiest treat), banana oatmeal smoothie, buffalo chicken grilled cheese, PF changs mongolian beef, salsa chicken, etc. All SOO good.

3. The new Draper Flow trail is a new favorite addition to our Northern Utah repertoire of mountain biking trails. But I guess any trail that you do after a one month break, when the leaves are changing, and with an awesome view of the Draper temple will easily be put on that list.

4. A fun and easy relief society activity (if you are the one that has to put it on), is a service auction. All you have to do is print out papers for each sister to fill out and get points (points are awarded for if you went to the temple in the past month, read your scriptures that day, did your visiting teaching for that month, bottled jam recently, showered before noon that day, etc). Then you bid on services people have brought or written down (homemade raisin bread, free hair cut, free interior design appointment, babysitting for a date night, desserts, etc). It was so fun!

5. Training for the Provo Halloween Half-Marathon with my friend Shauna has been a lot more fun and a lot less difficult than I would have thought. Hopefully the earlier and colder nights don't put a damper on things.

Well I think that is all I've learned in the last month, or at least all I want to write down right now.

Only one minute left in my brain.

When I'm not working 12 hour days at my internship without getting paid, eating dinner, cooking dinner for tomorrow, or cleaning, I am watching this. Ahoy dehoy!

Bryce vs The Grand

Last week Jake and I went camping/biking/hiking at Bryce Canyon for a couple days, followed by the Grand Canyon for a couple days. It was a lot of fun, and although I have wanted to go to the Grand Canyon my whole life, I have to admit our Bryce adventure was more fun. (However I do  know that backpacking rim to rim or going to Havasupai would trump both. I just have yet to experience that).

Here were some of the good and bad about our Bryce Canyon experience
-Our campsite was awesome. Bright red rocks surrounded us right when we stepped out of the tent.
-we got kicked out of our awesome campsite because it was a double site and we only paid for a single. The next night we got stuck in a site right next to the road and outhouse with no trees. Complain, complain.
-Biking Thunder Mountain trail was, yet again, one of the best rides I've ever been on.
-We spent $2 for a hot shower (which was so worth it) and it shutting off when Jake was covered in soap.
-"The best 3-mile hike in the world" really is the best 3-mile hike in the world.
-We were always so surprised when we walked by someone that actually spoke English. The entire time we were at Bryce, maybe 5 families were American.
-I saw so many I heart NY or I heart SF or I heart HK. I thought of a new one. I heart HSWW. (.....hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry....)

Good and Bad of Grand Canyon
-We got to stay in Jacob Lake Campground. Next to Jacob Lake Inn where Jake used his credit card that said Jacob Lynn Layton and they thought it was a company card. Jake went along with it.
-Both nights families decided to pick the campsite and set up their tent literally 10 yards away from us, when they had probably 45 other sites to choose from. That site didn't even have shade.
-We made the ultimate smore's. A layer of peanut butter under the chocolate + my fine roasting skills = the best s'more you will EVER taste. "Peanut Butter makes the world go round" -Jake
-We made friends with some Spaniards on our bike trail. Jake fell in love with them and talked with them about European soccer for like 20 minutes (so they thought we were pretty cool). Than they gave us the t advice to start hiking Grand Canyon later, like 10, so when you come back up it will be like 4 and be really shady and nice.
-We followed their advice and started at 10. The only problem is, apparently we hike a lot faster than them because we were hiking back up at noon. Lets just say that wasn't the best 5-mile hike in the world.

Biking Failures

So the past THREE times I have tried to go mountain biking I have failed in some way or another.

Last Friday: My little sister came down to Provo to go on a great trail in American Fork Canyon with us but we had a series of unfortunate events. We woke up late, had to stop at the ATM to get 1 more dollar in cash to pay the entrance fee, didn't know the construction up the canyon would give us a 30 minute detour, and our car was almost out of gas. So by the time we got halfway up we had to turn back around because we didn't want to run out of gas and Jake was going to be late to work. Instead we went on a smaller, but still fun trail, where my sister had to sit down for 10 minutes because she was so dizzy/dehydrated. We failed.

Last Saturday: We went to Snow Basin Resort and paid for a day pass to go up the lifts and ride down the biking trails. It was fun, but a lot more rocky and less flowing than we had expected. Also on the last ride down only my sister and I went, and my bike got a flat tire. We soon figured out that my extra tube had the wrong type of valve; good thing Rachel had a spare. Although my bike failed and the flow failed, we still had a  grand time.

Today: Jake and I tried to go BACK up American Fork canyon to the trail we tried last week. We had no setbacks until we got onto the trail. 100 yards up our tires, chains, and brakes were so caked in mud that our wheels wouldn't turn. I guess it poured up there last night without our knowledge. We had to carry our bikes back to the car, and spend 30 minutes de-mudding them.

I wonder if I should just quit trying. Hopefully tomorrow in Park City will be more successful.

Yosemite

Over the weekend we went to Yosemite park. Because my camera now has a failure to thrive, I had to steal pictures from my family members if I want to document this trip. Thus I don't have many pictures. However, my mom misplaced her new camera right before the trip, and not being able to go to Yosemite without a camera, naturally she bought a brand new and improved one. So if I search her house high and low and find the misplaced one, it's mine! So I know what I'll be doing this weekend.
The trip started off great when we saw Jimmer at the airport and got a picture with him. I will need to download that picture shortly. He didn't seem too excited to stop and get his picture with us, but to quote my friend Shauna "part of me feels like he deserves it for being so good."
The weekend proved to be just as exciting. We stayed in a cabin in the park, went on multiple hikes, one of which was to the 5th largest waterfall in the world, and the other I kept my eyes peeled to find the bodies of the 3 people that went over Vernal Falls last week.
Overall the hikes, playing in the river, car games, and songs (I know, we had to pass the time somehow) made quite the memorable weekend.

Also I cut my bangs. Literally, I did. I am proud. 

And Jake got new glasses. 

This is where hikers would have seen 3 people going over the edge. So scary.

Learning to be a girl

So I have a problem. I feel like I need to cut my hair. I don't know if I need to go to a length I have been before, a new length, need to add layers, add real bangs, grow out my bangs, or just learn how to do my hair (I blame this on my younger years when I would never let my mom touch my hair. Thus i don't know how to curl or french braid my hair. So, basically what I'm saying is I don't know how to be a girl). Should I go back to a length I have had before? Or should I do something new?

 I know you can't see this one very well. But turns out lately I don't 

have many pictures of me with my hair down. Sorry.