Baby Boy Payne, Buckets of Joy, and Easter Celebration

I had a short week at school and had Easter break the rest of the week. It was so nice to sleep in and do some things that I have been wanting to get done around the house. Derek still had work and school like normal but he had a very productive week and we had a lot of fun things this week that we were able to do.

Thursday especially was a fun day for us because we were able to find out the gender of our baby! If you don't know yet we are having a ..................baby boy! We are so excited. His name will be Keaton Max Payne and we are so thrilled to have a baby boy join our family soon. The ultrasound was really fun to see how much he has grown! We both had a feeling it would be a baby boy. We are so excited to have that special spirit enter our home and we are doing all we can now to help prepare to receive him and prepare to be his parents. Here is one of the pictures we got form the ultrasound. Just a good profile shot of Keaton.

Thursday night when we got home we were able to participate in Bucket of Joy day. This is the second annual Bucket of Joy holiday that we celebrate in honor of my cousin Jared Lyman who passed away last year of a brain tumor. He was always writing silly songs, one of those being called "Bucket of Joy" He talks about all of these things that he would have in a bucket of joy if he were to choose. So on his birthday we all put together "buckets of joy" and take it to a family in need. We were able to take it to a family who we know where the dad has been going through chemo/radiation to try and fight the cancer he was diagnosed with. He has several kids and out of a job. They were thrilled to receive their buckets of joy and we had a lot of fun taking them and talking to them. Here is a picture of us before we delivered out buckets of joy.

We had our annual Mother Of All Easter Egg Hunts on Friday. It is always fun to get together with all our family and participate in the family traditions that we always form great memories with. We had dinner, did the kids Easter Egg Hunt, and then the adult Easter Egg Hunt. It was another great day with lots of laughs and fun. Here is a picture of all my nieces and nephews before their Easter Egg Hunt.

We are especially grateful for our Savior, Jesus Christ at this time of year and the great sacrifice that he has made in all of our behalf. We are thankful for our close relationship with him and we feel his love each and everyday in our lives. We are greatly blessed and are so thankful for all of the many blessings the gospel brings into our lives.

We have also been able to spend some time with friends and do some fun things with them this week. Tomorrow is back to school and back to reality after such a nice break.

The Nesting has Started and in Full Swing

Since finding out that we are pregnant, the nesting mother in me has come out more that I thought it would. My mom and I bought a few baby outfits just to get things started, I have started making a crib quilt, I have picked out some nursery colors, and making some big plans for the babies room. Here are a few pictures of a few of the things I have started to do. I will continue to post as I finish things up.

I wanted to choose something "cheery" for the baby room. I liked the primary colors mixture and thought it would go for girl or boy.

wall hanging for the nursery

I still have to bind the quilt, but its almost finished.

A boy outfit (just in case), a neutral outfit, and a girl outfit (just in case).

Derek has been sick this week. I think everyone knows when someone is sick in the house it kinda feels like you need to slow down, but life doesn't. He has been really good though to still to try to work on homework and go to a few classes even though he hasn't felt that hot.

Derek had a good spring break. He was still busy working, doing some homework, and doing things around the house to help out, but it was a bit more relaxing for him and not so demanding. We were able to spend some time with family and friends that were in town during his spring break and that was fun too.

I am getting bigger and bigger. I have grown a lot this week and had to go maternity clothes shopping for a few things.  I will post pictures next week of my growth through the weeks.

Thats all from us this week. Until next week...

Quilts, Moving, and More

I am finally getting around to updating our blog for the past week or so. It seems like every night the past couple weeks we have had some kind of project going on, out of town, or somewhere we needed to be which didn't allow me to update as quickly and kind of put us behind in our lives so we are just now catching up. Last week we decided to put up a quilt to tie for a new blanket for our bed (which is badly needed). It is a massive quilt. and very heavy. I have to finish binding it but we are excited to get it on the bed and start using it. Its very comfy. These are some of the pictures from us binding the quilt. Derek's parents let us borrow their living room, their quilting frames, and their help and we all quilted while watching a movie for Family Home Evening that night. We had a lot of fun and it got done pretty quick. 

The rest of the week was filled with the usual scheduled events that we have with meetings, work, and homework. 

I will say last Friday wasn't my luckiest day, and with my pregnancy hormones in full swing my emotions were getting the best of me most of the day. Friday afternoon I left work a little early to come into town and find my boss to let her know my decision that I would not be coming back to teach next year. It was a really rough decision that I have been trying to avoid because part of me really wants to stay at my dream job and keep working, but the other part of me (which is my gut feeling of the right thing to do) is to just stay home and be a mom to my new little baby coming soon. It is what I have always wanted to do and its a scary point in my life to move onto but we are so excited to start our family. It is a bitter-sweet feeling to leave the job that I have been so blessed to have. I was VERY emotional telling my boss my decision and then to make matters worse I got pulled over on the way to tell her which put me even more on edge. The officer I think felt badly too because as hard as I was trying to hold back my emotions it just wasn't working out well for me. He was very thoughtful and nice, but then he still gave me a ticket :(. I have taken traffic school online this week to try and get things fixed that way and now hopefully that will get put behind me. 

After calming myself down a bit and coming to grips with what I needed to do the rest of the day we got in the car and headed up with Derek's parents to Springville. We spent the weekend up there helping Derek's sister move into her families new temporary town home until their house is done being built. I didn't do much moving and lifting of heavy boxes, but we all sure did work hard packing things up and hauling things over to her new place. It was exhausting. Derek was even more exhausted than I because of all the heavy lifting involved. 

We got home Saturday night to clean things up a bit and get unpacked and then we were ready for another busy day Sunday with my moms big annual event...Her piano recitals. It may not seem like a big deal to most of you, but you won't understand until you have been to one of my moms piano recitals. There are two of them back to back and the refreshments afterwards is probably bigger than the refreshments served at my wedding reception. It is a big production that takes her and others over a week to prepare for with just the food. She has about 55 students and from setting up for the recital to taking down it was about an 8 hour event for our whole family to try and tackle. We did have fun and it was a success.

After moving family and being on our feet for 8 hours the next day helping with this huge event we were exhausted. We are still trying to fully recover but we are doing well and life is good. See you next week.