*Sigh*

Hello all -
I finished the week of teacher workdays, and with a few exceptions, I think I am ready for school to start. This last week was exhausting - meetings and in-services. Full days spent in meetings while stressing over the lack of time to do all of the other million things I needed to do before school starts. But I think I got pretty much everything done. And if there's a glitch or two within the first few days, that's to be expected.

Last night was the Pep Band's first performance at a football game. We weren't going to play this game because school hasn't even started yet, but last Saturday I started making phone calls, by Wednesday we were having rehearsals, and on Friday we had 25-30 kids ready to play the game. (I use the term "ready" quite loosely) We played the national anthem, the school fight song, Seven Nation Army and Louie, Louie. Obviously we will have to have more in our repertoire as the season goes on, but that was enough for the first game. I think it went well. It certainly could have been worse. The athletic director and other staff I have had to talk to to get to this game seem very supportive of the Pep Band, so hopefully we can only go up from here. Our team won, by the way, so that was an exciting start to the season.

Once we get into the swing of things, I think my schedule will calm down a bit. Luckily, I can do most of my prep work at home (score study, etc.) and I shouldn't have a ton of grading to do, except for midterm and final when they'll have written tests.

In other news, Jermaine is headed for the hospital soon. (or maybe the morgue...) On Wednesday, Chad got him home from work with a little bit of a struggle, and then on Thursday (Chad's day off) he wouldn't start. Chad spent the morning doing what he could to fix him. This included replacing the fuel filter. But alas, he could not be started. Later that day, Chad came to pick me up for lunch, and he was driving Jermaine! He started up just fine, and was doing well ever since. We drove him downtown with no issues, yesterday Chad drove him to work with no issues, and then we drove him (packed with instruments and stands) over to the football stadium (our "home" stadium is at the other high school in our district - about 10 minutes away) where we unloaded him, parked him, loaded him back up again, and drove him back to the school after the game. Chad had him parked up on the sidewalk to be closer to the building, and when everything was out of the car, he started him up again to go home. Except Jermaine wouldn't start. He put it in neutral and rolled down the slanted sidewalk back into the parking lot. We had Leonard there because we originally had to take 2 cars to the stadium because Chad got off work after I had to be there to meet kids. So I got in Leonard, and we pushed Jermaine home. Luckily we live really close to the school and it was 11:00 at night, so there was hardly any traffic. It was a little scary, and bumpy, and Jermaine's back bumper has a few scratches from Leonard's license plate, but we got home okay. So, if we want him fixed, we have to call AAA to have us towed to the garage, and then replacing the fuel pump (which people seem to think is the problem) will cost us $400-500. Who knows what's actually wrong with him. We were hoping the cars would hold out for another year while I worked my new job and saved the money for a car. The Subaru is running just fine after we took it in earlier this summer and had the spark plugs/wiring (or something) replaced - but the check engine light is still on. I'm not too worried about it, since when we took it in, they couldn't find anything life-threatening to fix. He's probably just requesting a breathing tube or oxygen tank or something, but he gets on just fine without one. We're trying to decide where we draw the line between paying $3o0-$500 every few months to keep the cars running, and just buying a new car and putting that money into payments. (I really wanted to pay for a car in cash... )

But what with that, and the baby on the way for which they are calculating we will owe around $4000 (plus who knows how much), we are quickly watching our expected "extra" money disappear. And it looks like we won't be headed to UT next weekend for the baby blessing... We are blessed though, that Jermaine made our trip to California/Utah and back, and to Yellowstone with Mollie - instead of stranding us somewhere along the way. Besides dying in the driveway, it probably couldn't have died closer to home. We do have the extra income, we just didn't want to have it spent as soon as it came in every month. And Chad and Lady and I are in good health and the house isn't falling apart, so things could be much worse.

In less depressing news, the baby is moving a lot now! His little jerks make my whole belly jiggle and that's kind of weird to watch. I had to go buy some new maternity work clothes and got lucky with 3 pairs of pants from Ross for $40. They all look pretty much the same, but at least I will know I'm wearing clean pants, even if no one else does. I packed away all of my non-maternity work clothes to make some space in the closet - I accumulated most of them after Christmas last year with shopping money from mom. It was sad to know they only got worn for a few months and then I had to replace my whole work wardrobe again. Being pregnant and having babies is expensive business!

Lady and I are currently lounging on the couch like the good ol' days. My side has been hurting since I woke up this morning - kind of like when you get a cramp when you're running or something - but it won't go away. I'm hoping laying still for a bit will do the trick.

Next week is the Eastern Idaho State Fair. We will have to see if we can squeeze in a trip to replace my lack of the Big E.

Piano lesson to teach in a few minutes. What I really wanna do is take a nap...

Summer is... Over.

I am in mourning. Today is the first of a week of teacher work days/ in-service days. School starts next week. My summer is over.

I had to leave the puppy to come to work, and I felt so bad. I will miss the days of lazing around the house with her, watching TV, doing laundry, napping, and other such summertime activities. I always just let her in and out of the house on her tie-out leash - she'd mostly sleep on the porch all day. She won't be used to being stuck inside at home by herself for hours at a time... She's a good buddy.

I know, I know - leaving a baby is going to be 100 million times harder - but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Working Woman

Hello all!
Since you last heard from me, we spent a lovely week in California visiting Chad's family. I think I have a total of 1 picture to document our time. We played games, ate good food, went to the mall, visited Wal-Mart and got many baby-related items. On our way home, we stopped in Provo to see Erin and my mom for a few days.

I interviewed for the job at Hillcrest on Friday morning, August 5th, before we got in the car and drove all day to get to California. On Thursday, August 11th, they called to offer me the job! I am officially a part-time band director at Hillcrest High School in Ammon, Idaho. This was bittersweet for us, because we had a trip planned for the second week of September to go back to Connecticut and see my family, visit the Big E and do other fall, New Englandy type things. Now I have to be teaching school. :o( No chocolate eclair for me. I was excited to go to Cape Cod, Lyman Orchards, Friendly's, XPect, the Goodspeed, and in general, enjoying the season of autumn which is nearly non-existent here, but as they say, life gets in the way.

The job at the high school is only part-time, which is good for me with a baby on the way. I will still have time to go to appointments, go shopping, etc during the second half of the day during which I will not be teaching. I will also be doing pep band which earns me an extra stipend. I am excited to be back at the school working with a lot of kids that I already know. I will be teaching Band, Jazz Band, Beginning Guitar and Percussion Ensemble. It is a lot less intimidating than a full-time teaching load. It is gratifying to finally be using my education and doing what I wanted to do since middle school. It's just weird that I'm going to be actually doing it. Being a band director was something I was going to do when I was all grown up. Wait a minute...

My life has become busy almost overnight.

I had new teacher orientation this morning, and then I went over to Hillcrest to see if I could get some keys and get into the building. The head custodian knows me from my student teaching (and happens to be the brother of a guy in my ward) so he set me up, and took me down to see the room. Holy cow, is there a lot of work to be done. Not that I'm surprised. So I will be spending most of my free time this week at the school. Next week begins teacher work days/in-service days, and then school starts on the 29th! I am excited to have a job, but I wish I had more time!! So between now and then I have to clean up the room, create syllabuses (syllabi?) for each class, pick music, decide how I'm going to grade each class, and decide classroom procedures. In addition to that, if you'll remember, I'm in the midst of choosing music for the children's choir and attending "open registration" days for that.

So, here I am, having been sitting at home all summer, with little to do and now I will be working 2 jobs. I have to say, I will miss the days of lazing around the house with the puppy. I was getting pretty good at it! And it will be hard to leave a new baby with a babysitter, if even only for 4 hours a day, 3 or 4 times a week. But at least I'm not driving to and from Rexburg to do it all. It will be nice to be able to come home and be somewhere close enough that I can run back over to the school if I need to.

Anyways, I am enjoying my last few moments of freedom where I can get them. And currently Judge Judy is on, so I bid you adieu. And perhaps I will enjoy what may be my last nap of the summer.

You GUYS!!!

We will miss this this year, as we will be on our way home from California.
:o(

Oh, Idaho...

A couple of months ago, I received a letter from our power company stating that they are soon going to raise our rates. Of course, they were inviting public input on this process. However, I am sure that this will go about how our public meeting went before they raised our water rates. Everyone came to this huge town meeting, expressed how we were mad that because the city kept putting off it's payments, now we had to have a $10/mo. increase. The board listened to ideas to pro-rate or otherwise makeup the funding, said they would "take these into consideration" and then, obviously, the next month (and every month since) we all saw a $10/mo. increase on our bills. So - I know that when they say they will "do everything we can" to prevent rate increases, I know they're full of crap. So anyways, I wrote my letter explaining that the increase would not be financially easy for us (it's not huge, and we will be able to pay it, but I think it is beyond annoying to open bill after bill only to find that everyone's increasing their rates and we are not getting paid any more than we were before) and sent it off to the Idaho Public Utilities Commission. I got an automated response letter along the lines of "Thank you for your input. We take all comments seriously. We provide you such awesome above-and-beyond service, I'm sure you will understand why we have to raise our rates for providing it." Pretty much what I expected.

Then today I got a more personalized letter from the "Executive Assistant" (uh... secretary?) at the Idaho Public Utilities Commission that tells me "We know what these increases due to families such as yours." DUE you?! If you're going to send me a consolation letter, at least use proper grammar. Now I REALLY don't want to give you my money.

*sigh* It is Idaho, after all.

Somebody's Sleepy...

It is a rainy day here today - perfect day for a nap.

It is humid here today!

The floor feels sticky, the sheets feel damp, the air feels thick.

I love it!!!

Purchases

Now that we know we are having a boy, we can buy cute little boy things! (The pictures are a bit blurry, but you get the idea.) And we got them on super clearance at Sears and paid $12.00 for everything. So far they have the cheapest baby clothes we've found.




I also bought a Minkee blanket kit from Porter's, so now I can make one of those too! So SOFT!

Video Debut

Introducing....

Charles (Charlie) William Busath!!!

Little fingers in the center

Foot
Profile
Creepy baby

Video will be forthcoming - it is taking forever to upload/process.

Megan's Life Lessons

1: Do not EVER wash a shirt or towel that someone has just worn to get their haircut with other laundry (namely your undergarments) because you will be ITCHY ITCHY ITCHY!!! (I hope only until you wash everything again.)

2: Maintaining a constant body weight/build is the easiest way to save money on clothes. I have clothes that I wore in 8th grade currently hanging in my closet. (Although I am slowly weeding them out because I recognize my 8th grade wardrobe needs to be updated, to, oh, I don't know, something a little less 10 years ago) Gaining baby weight is making it very hard for my old clothes to accommodate my growing belly - and I am having to spend money on new clothes. Which would be great - if I could wear them for more than just a couple of months.

3: Thank you mom and dad for making us do our chores or clean our rooms before we could go do anything we wanted to do. (Or at least it seemed that way.) It is a) a motivator to get my self-inflicted chores done now that I am taking care of a whole house and b) way better to come home to a clean home than a dirty one. Even if just cleaning up one mess/project before beginning another, or cleaning up the kitchen after you're done making cookies. Now if only I could teach this principle to Chad.....

4: Pictures/updates from our trip to Utah for Will and Sawyer's birthday are currently being processed by the in-house video editor.

5: Coming soon to a blog near you: Baby Busath makes his/her video debut!

P.S.

In the realm of TMI - my belly button is getting shallower. I am not happy about this. I don't want an out-ie belly button!

Also - isn't it weird how a smell can bring back a memory more vividly than anything else? Remember that time I was sick on Chad's birthday, and spent the day barfing? Well, we had just put a new air freshener gel thingy in the toilet (thanks to BzzAgent). Several times that day it seemed like that "fresh clean scent" was the last little bit it took to push me over the edge and induce vomiting. Well - that was a while ago, so I thought maybe we could try putting another one in the toilet (because we still have several "uses" left, it was FREE, and it did keep the toilet clean and smelling nice - until I started associating that smell with vomit.) But I think I will have to scrape it out and throw it away because every time I walk in there, I can almost taste orange juice or ginger ale on it's way back up.

Finally, I am 99.9% positive we are having a boy. So if that ultrasound shows that we are having a girl, I will be 99.9% shocked.

News

Hello all!
You are hearing from the new director of the East Idaho Children's Choir. There are 3 age groups and they each meet once a week, following the school calendar. (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Parent/Teacher Conferences mean there are no classes that week) We have 2 concerts - one in January and one in May and then have the summers free.

It is only 155 hours for the whole school year, but I am excited. I substituted for one of the classes when the previous director had a baby. It should be pretty fun. Plus, it brings in some extra cash!

No word on the high school part-time band director position.

P.S.

A woman in my ward brought over a high chair and a Pack and Play that she no longer has a use for. This whole baby thing is starting to feel a little more real!

Megan's Book Review

I have finally finished the interminable "Look Homeward, Angel" by Thomas Wolfe. Maybe my brain is too unsophisticated or immature to handle the epic writing of this book, but I found myself closing the 522 page beast thinking "What the heck was that?" The author had several favorite words that found their way into the story many times, including "inchoate". Everything was inchoate - spring, happiness, education. And his onomatopoeia for laughter was "Wah Wah". Now, who laughs like that? I'm pretty sure, even in the 1920s people did not laugh like that.

Supposedly the book is highly autobiographical, for which I pity the author. It sounds like a pretty dismal life - abusive and alcoholic father, loveless and penny-pinching mother, sickness, death, inescapable failure. The book follows the character Eugene Gant from birth to 19 years, at which point he seems to go crazy. And then his brother dies, and the book ends. Like I said - "What?"

If this were in a public school library, it would probably be censored or removed from the shelves thanks to the use of the terms "niggers" and "darkies" and to their little neighborhood as "Niggertown".

Anyway, there were, however, two passages that I actually found amusing.
One was his description of his father who used to tell them "When I was your age, I had milked four cows, done all the chores, and walked eight miles through the snow by this time." To which the author adds "Indeed, when he described his early schooling, he furnished a landscape that was constantly three feet deep in snow, and frozen hard. He seemed never to have attended school save under polar conditions." ... Dad, I'm looking your way...

The second was his description of a teacher at the university telling him that if he just quit cheating (he was not cheating, he was just better than everyone else at translating/reading in Latin) he wouldn't sound so pretentious, and he could actually take some pride in his work:

"But I think it's a pity, Mr. Gant," said the professor, gravely, "that you're willing to slide along this way. See here, my boy, you're capable of doing first-rate work. I can see that. Why don't you make an effort? Why don't you buckle down and really study, after this?"

Eugene stared at the man, with tears of anger in his eyes. He sputtered but could not speak. But suddenly, as he looked down into the knowing leer, the perfect and preposterous injustice of the thing -- like a caricature -- overcame him: he burst into an explosive laugh of rage and amusement which the teacher, no doubt, accepted as confession.

"Well, what do you say?" he asked. "Will you try?"
"All right! Yes!" the boy yelled. "I'll try it."

He bought at once a copy of the translation used by the class. Thereafter, when he read, faltering prettily here and there over a phrase, until his instructor should come to his aid, the satanic professor listened gravely and attentively, nodding his head in approval from time to time, and saying, with great satisfaction, when he had finished: "Good, Mr. Gant. Very Good. That shows what a little real work will do."

And privately, he would say: "You see the difference, don't you? I knew at once when you stopped using that pony. Your translation is not so smooth, but it's your own now. You're doing good work my boy, and you're getting something out of it. It's worth it, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Eugene gratefully, "it certainly is --"

... I'm looking at you, BYU-Idaho... or at least some of your professors.

Now, if those two excerpts make you think, oh, that doesn't seem that bad, trust me, it's like the trailer of a really bad movie - the only 2 good scenes are on the trailer and the rest is boring/trash. There are pages of "stream of consciousness" writing that make no sense at all.

I'd skip this one if I were you.

Freaky Friday

So last night Chad and I went to the cannery to reinforce our emergency food supply. We got back around 7:45, had pizza and watched a movie. We went to bed around 10:45 with the dog asleep at the end of the bed. At about 3:00 she woke up and decided she didn't want to be in our room anymore. She might have been cold because we had the fan on blowing in cool air from outside and it got pretty chilly. Anyways, so she woke us both up, we put her in her cage in the kitchen, and then neither one of us could get back to sleep.

Sidenote: I have been feeling the baby move for about a week and a half now. At first, I thought it was just stomach gurgling but it persisted until I realized that must be the baby moving.

So I laid there feeling the baby squirm around for about an hour, with no luck falling asleep. Then I finally felt like I might be dozing off when we were both jolted back awake by one of the most awful sounds there is - a cat snarling in a fight with something (if it was 2 cats, one of them didn't cry at all) right outside our window. It scared us both half to death. You could hear it squeal as its body was thrown up against the house by who knows what. Now, I've heard cat fights before. The roaming cats in our neighborhood at home used to duke it out under the streetlight in the middle of the night. But if it hadn't been for the wall, we would have been 4 or 5 feet away from the whole thing. It was a pretty nasty sound and it took me another 30 minutes to fall back asleep after that. I half expected to find a dead cat in our flower bed when I got up this morning.

That's all. Pretty exciting, I know.

Bored

Hello fellow bored internet surfers...
Chad is at work, Lady is laying out in the yard (her favorite pastime) and I am doing this.

As some of you may know, the final Harry Potter film comes out tonight. Some of the young women in my ward are going to the midnight showing. Chad and I thought about it except that he has to work tomorrow at 8:00am. But - this is kind of the end of an era! I feel like I grew up with Harry Potter. I read the books when I was little, and bought the later ones at midnight and stayed up all night reading them. We bought and brought one to Erin when she was in the hospital after having Will. Mollie and I drove to KMart at midnight only to find that we were pretty much the only ones there when they were obviously expecting a much bigger crowd, and it was... well, awkward. And Mollie freaked out because there was an employee dressed as a witch outside the store and she had just watched The Grudge with some friends.

The first book came out in 1998 when I was 10 and Harry was 11, finding out he was a wizard and getting his first invitation to Hogwarts. I think I even did a book report on one of the first books before they were huge.

Then the movies came out. The first movie came out the summer after 7th grade and had to have been one of my first boy-girl outings. I remember the 3 girls whispering about how we were going to sit so we didn't have to sit next to the boy we didn't want to sit next to. I have journal entries about the occasion! Several of the movies came out while I was in high school, 2 came out in college, and 2 have come out since then.

We grew up with Harry Potter! While I was going to high school, he was fighting evil things at Hogwarts. So when I see all these 15 year olds raving about the last Harry Potter, I get this odd sense of ownership - like they don't have any idea who Harry Potter is because they were 2 when the first book came out.

Anyways - I know that's dumb, but I was just thinking about how I could chronicle my life by who I saw the Harry Potter movies with.

That's my random thought of the day.

Also - I think it's stupid that people are holding their breath to find out who lives and who dies in the last movie. Uh... you could've read the book about 4 years ago - the cat's kind of out of the bag at this point. Was anyone wondering if Frodo completed his mission in The Lord of the Rings or if Alice ever made it out of Wonderland?

But Chad is among the movie-watchers who haven't read the books, and so he doesn't know what happens in the end. He has an idea, but doesn't know any of the specifics. So no spoilers in this household, please!

I think I should go mark this occasion with some butter beer (which, apparently, you can get at Harry Potter World at Universal Studios). Maybe I can wave my conducting baton around shouting "wingardium leviosa!" at things until something finally levitates. It could be awhile...

Update

Hello all. I am trying to kill time for a few minutes. BYU-Idaho is hosting an alumni concert for anyone who ever played with the Symphony Orchestra, which happened to include me. We had a rehearsal this morning, this is our break for lunch, and we'll have one more rehearsal and then a concert this afternoon. It won't be anything stellar, but it's fun to play again.

Let's see - what's new? We decided to stay in town for the Fourth of July parade this year. (Last year we drove up to Rexburg's parade) The Idaho Falls parade was bigger, but kind of lame. Except for the fact that we got there about 1/2 an hour before the parade began, and with only two adults, were able to find a tiny spot in front of a local church. The church was offering free hot dogs, popcorn, cookies and punch!! FREE! and THEN as we got toward the end of the parade, they walked around with trays handing it out. And then we didn't even have to get up to get our free food! That was pretty awesome. I felt a little guilty that I had no intention of joining their church/congregation, but they didn't seem to care. But I'm not sure we'll be so lucky to get that spot next year. If we are in a parade-going mood next year, we will probably go back to Rexburg's. But anyway. After that we came home and took a nap, went to a neighbor's barbecue (where everything was delicious!) and then headed downtown. We walked around the greenbelt for a few minutes before realizing there wasn't much of anything there besides food - and since we bought tickets for dinner/fireworks later that night, we weren't in an eating mood. We went over to the Shilo and stuffed ourselves full of salad, cole slaw, veggies, fruit, rolls, hot dogs, brisket sandwiches, baked potatoes, soda, water, brownies, pie, and all the ice cream you could want. Plus we had a nice place to sit while we waited for the fireworks to start. We went last year after spending the previous year camped out along the greenbelt (just ask Mollie) only to find that we couldn't actually see anything from where we were. It has been totally worth our money. It's supposed to include a live orchestra concert before/after dinner, but you can't see anything from our table. After the fireworks show, we thought we might be sneaky and wait out the traffic. We walked over to Denny's (along with the rest of the crowd) and waited about 1/2 hour for some chips and water. P.S. - the chips and dip was gross... We got back to the car, and traffic had not died down at all - in fact, it might have been worse. Next year we will definitely skip the Denny's trip. We're better off just getting in the traffic and heading home as soon as they're over (what we did the year before). We finally got home around 12:00 or 12:30 and then spent an hour looking for my cell phone (which included searching the local park in our bathrobes with flashlights) until we eventually found it behind the couch on vibrate. It was a late night, but still fun.

Since then, not much has happened.

Random thoughts:
1. I wish I looked definitively pregnant. I am just fat enough that acquaintances wouldn't know if I was pregnant or had just put on some weight. I am glad I am not a whale, but the in-between stage is kind of awkward all the way around.

2. Pumping gas on a hot, dry summer day reminds me of being on vacation with my family. I felt like I needed to give myself some snack money. Which made me remember the time Evan ate the honey bun with wrapper attached, thinking it was frosting. "Honeybun, coming back!"

3. I remember when "Maverik" was the weird only-in-Utah gas station down the street from grandma's house. Now I get gas at the one by my house. Weird. Whatever happened to Citgo?

4. When people ask me what I'm "up to" these days, it is weird to say "nothing" and really mean nothing! Uh... just sitting at home growing a baby. What are you up to these days?

5. Apparently the church is more "strict" (as far as following the handbook/rules) in Connecticut than it is here. You would think it would be the other way around. Maybe just because local wards (ours, in particular) have been around for so long that they just kind of do things however they do them. When new wards are formed, they're probably more careful about following the rules.

6. I am counting down the days to my 3-foot long giant eclair from the Big E.

7. On Wednesday, Chad commemorated 10 years since he got back from his mission. He pointed out that he has a wife, house, full-time job, dog, baby on the way, and a current temple recommend - so that's doin' pretty good. I guess it is.

8. We built a shed, and it's almost done. We hung the doors on Wednesday and now Chad just has to shingle the roof. Once that is done, he will move a lot of his stuff out of the basement and into the man-shed, and then I can put kitchen stuff/non-baby stuff in the basement. We also dug up most of the yard that was weeds and have tried to plant grass. We planted our garden a couple of weeks ago (last week!?) and have little zucchini plants popping through the soil!!! It's pretty exciting to go out and see your seeds growing up into little plants that will eventually overtake us with zucchinis.

9. Rexburg has changed a lot even since we moved just a year ago. There is new housing going up everywhere, they're demolishing a bunch of stuff and changing names on things. Even campus is different with the new Manwaring Center and BYU-Idaho Center.

10. Time to go back to rehearsal.

Caution:

silly post about my dog to follow. My mom has informed me that people don't care about your dog's birthday - people don't even really care about your kids' birthdays unless they're directly related (and even then...) BUT - with no kids yet and a cute little dog, we had to mark her 1st birthday somehow. So - if you are one of those who couldn't care less about our dog - skip this post. :o)

June 30th was Lady's first birthday! Does that mean she's no longer a "puppy"? She's just so small, you can hardly call her a dog. Anyway - we lazed around the house doing nothing much of anything until Chad got home.

Chad and I ran to the store to pick up a few things, got home, ate dinner, and went to the park. Lady loves to run - and she loves to play fetch. Chad is so happy to have a dog that will play fetch with him. We didn't even have to teach it to her! She just did it. Here are some pictures:

We played for about an hour, then went for a 1/2 hour walk around the park, then played for another 30 minutes-ish.

When we got home we had "cake". (Well, Lady had cake.) I made some dog-safe "ice cream" from a recipe I found online that consisted of yogurt, a banana, some peanut butter and some honey. I froze some in a mini cake tin and scooped it out for a birthday treat. (I can't believe she let me put that bow on her head for a few seconds to take the picture!!!)
Awwwwwww.........
Anyways - that was about the extent of Lady's birthday. And in case you are wondering, dogs can, apparently, get brain freeze. (P.S. Chad is currently tormenting the dog with a marionnette which she is deathly afraid of) The next day we gave her a big chunk of "ice cream" that was more frozen, and she licked away for a few minutes until she kind of staggered away and then broke out into uncontrollable shivering. It was pretty amusing. I have some extra but I give it to her in little pieces.

3 Years = 3 Busaths

We celebrated our 3rd anniversary on Saturday, June 18th. We were on our way to Yellowstone (that's where we spent our honeymoon) and decided to stop at the Rexburg Temple to see if there were any brides out sharing our wedding day. (There weren't)
3 years ago:
We stopped and took some pictures.

And as you have guessed by now, we are having a baby! Here I am trying in vain to show a little pregnant belly. (I'm not really noticeably pregnant yet)

So we drove up to Yellowstone, and although it was chilly, we had a good time. Dogs are only allowed on the trails/boardwalks around Old Faithful - although people will be sure to give you dirty looks and mutter things like "There are signs all over the park that say No Dogs" (even though you're not the only one with a dog) - so that's where we went.

Now: (me looking oh-so-attractive)Then:

We got back to West Yellowstone with time to see a show at the Playmill where Christian is working this summer. We saw Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. (I had never seen it) The show was really fun, and the perfect ending to a perfect anniversary.

SOOOOO
The baby!!
We have known about this baby since the end of March, and it has been hard to keep it a secret what with the other pregnancies in the family. We told our families on Mother's Day and made it public at Girls Camp last week. We are excited to find out if we're having a boy or a girl - I have an appointment for July 26th! To answer everyone's favorite question (How have you been feeling?) I have been fine - I didn't have any morning sickness. I was a very picky eater, though, and was tired all the time. Those two short bouts with sickness you may have heard about were unrelated - one was food, and the other was an overactive gag reflex.

I have recently regained my energy and am happy to be keeping up with dishes and laundry and errands again. I've read that by now, the baby can hear what's going on, and you can get them used to sounds before they're even born. We're thinking about making the dog bark at me for a few minutes every night so the baby learns to sleep through it. Maybe I should bust out those bagpipes too. :o)

The baby is due December 7th and we are excited - but we'll be more excited when we know the sex, when I actually start looking pregnant and when we can feel the baby start to move. (Any day now!)

Megan's Summer Reading List:

1. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen - pretty much what you would expect from Jane Austen. Girl likes boy. Boy likes some other girl. In the end girl ends up with boy.... I guess I could be one of her characters because that pretty much describes my relationship with Chad.
   
2. Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky - not what I was expecting at all. Guy murders two women and then spends the next 600 pages feeling guilty and going crazy until he turns himself in.
   
3. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe - Just barely started this book - the jury's still out.