One week on, one week off

First of all, I have to wonder what in the heck I am doing up so late at night blogging when I know very well I should be in bed by now...I guess that's what I get for just taking a "few minutes" (i.e. an hour and a half) to finish a crossword puzzle I was working on.

I made it through my first week of work! I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would. It was nice to have a distraction for awhile and it gave S the chance to really bond with his little Bean-o. I feel so blessed.

I left my camera at my parents house on Thanksgiving and am so mad because I didn't get a picture of Bean's rockin' getup for the big BYU/Utah game tonight. So basically I am going to have to recreate the moment and take pictures later to put up here. She looked really cute and here's the shocker...she was mostly in red! (Don't worry too much, though, I added my special little touch to the outfit.) And might I add a "whoot" for the cougs! Soo relieved that they won.

Does anyone remember this post from a year ago? First off, hard to believe it has already been a year since that happened. Well, we got our Christmas tree yesterday. From a Christmas tree lot half a block from our home. We were in and out in under 15 minutes with the most beautiful tree and nothing tragic happened. Although, I have to admit I half expected something to happen like us getting into a car accident in our driveway. I believe in irony, remember? The tree was $79 but I (yes I) talked the dude into giving it to us for $65. Hmmm, maybe I should look into further developing my negotiation skills...Anyway, I'll get pictures of it up here also (once I get my camera back.)

I also want to mention that I haven't forgotten about this. I don't know what I was thinking agreeing to this the same year I decided to venture into motherhood because I knew it would come down to December and I am still trying to figure out what to do! But I haven't given up yet! I still have 32 days to come up with something.

A lot has happened in between this post and the last.

I am one year older (28 baby!) and hopefully one year wiser. S surprised me with a day to the spa for my birthday. Holy cow! Anyone ever done the spa thing before? I hadn't. It was a-mazing. And I get to look at my Chapel of Love (a.k.a. pink) toes to remind me of the wonderful day in the upcoming cold weeks...hopefully the fact that they will securely remain in closed-toed shoes will help them last all the longer. And naturally I got some more fun scrapbook goodies: the Crop-A-Dile Big Bite (no more ugly eyelet settings) and a Xyron 9" creative station (laminator, adhesive, magnet maker). I told S that I think I have just about every scrapbook gadget there is now. Now just finding the time to put them to use...

S is def-i-nite-ly (I should say 99% definite just so I don't jinx myself) going to medic school this upcoming January. Wahoo! He totally deserves it. Hopefully Bean will continue to be a good kid so he can get some studying done while momma is at work. He's going to do so well, I'm excited for him!

Speaking of Bean, she turned 12 weeks last week and is, I consider, officially out of the newborn phase. Kinda sad, kinda fun. She is so cuuuute!

Speaking of work (and 12 weeks) my maternity leave is officially up and I start back to the job-scene this week. My coworkers are more excited about it than I am. I keep having emotions ranging from, This sucks, I don't want to leave Bean for a full day, to, It will be nice to not have to take spit-up alert every two minutes! Really, I have the best of both worlds (I guess you could say I'm like Hannah Montana...) because I get to take a break and I still have a full week with her every other week. Plus I know her daddy is really looking forward to having his Bean days!!

Oh, and we went and got our family pictures taken. You can preview them here.

Camping and Room Service

S, Bean, and I decided to take our first camping trip as a family to St. George this past week. I love seeing the production Thriller and I love seeing it even more at the Tuacahn, so we decided to make a mini-vacation out of it. We loaded up our trailer and Bean and headed out on Monday morning.

Bean and trailer in tow.

Bean did great with the drive down. We only stopped once in Beaver to feed her and get lunch ourselves and arrived in St. George late afternoon. We stayed at this beautiful state park in Snow Canyon which is just a few minutes away from the theater. The show was that night and Bean did great. S told her to get used to hearing "Thriller" because it is one of my favorite songs. You should see my killer "Thriller" moves too. (Just don't ask S to demonstrate because it ends up looking more like a zombie version of the hula dance.)

We didn't sleep at all that night because we were so concerned with Bean being warm enough. We kept the heater on and had her bundled up (and it didn't get that cold the first night.) Still, I think Bean slept better than we did. When the storm front came through the next morning it got bitter cold and windy (the same front dumped snow back home) and S paced for awhile trying to figure out what to do. Finally he said we had better pack up and go. I only got a few pictures before we left.

Snow Canyon State Park

Bean's room in the trailer.

I figured that we would just head home but S wondered if we should just find a hotel room somewhere. I was totally game. I didn't want to go home to icky snow. We found the Marriott suites in St. George, asked if they'd mind us parking the trailer in their parking lot for the next few days, and literally set up camp in our hotel room. We brought in all of our food and everything. Bean experienced first hand the reason mommy and daddy love Marriotts so much: the bed (anyone who has slept in one of these knows exactly what I'm talking about.) Since we had a kitchen and all of our food with us, S went ahead and barbecued for us the next few nights (no, we did not barbecue in our kitchen, there was a grill poolside.) Another few perks of camping in a hotel? The room service and free breakfast!

Bean taking a very comfortable nap on a very comfortable bed.

We drove into Zion National Park the next morning. It was such a fun day! We took Bean on a few hikes (and I mean HIKES! Bean did great though!) and had lunch while some French tourists tried to take pictures of our license plates (true story.) The fall colors were amazing next to the red rocks and blue skies. We left that evening and I told S that it was one of the funnest times I've had there.

Bean sure loves her papa!
S carried her on the hikes in the SleepyWrap.

The Lower Emerald Pools. I have a million pictures
so it was hard to narrow it down to one but this give
you an idea of what the park looks like in the fall.

The next morning we headed home from what I considered the best mini-vacation I've been on. Bean did better traveling than we did I think! In fact, she literally slept the entire ride home so we made really good time. I told S I was nervous for this trip initially because it would set the precedent for future vacation plans. I think Bean will do just fine.