The joys of being a mother

"The love of a true mother comes nearer to being like the love of God than any other kind of love." -Joseph F. Smith

I sit here with my dear Elsie beside me. She is kicking her legs and arms wildly about. Her strawberry blonde hair is sticking straight up in the back, and her beautiful blue eyes are staring at me. She is so sweet and innocent. I love being her mother. I love the smiles she gives while we are laying in bed in the morning. I love how relaxed she gets when we give her baths. I love to calm her cries when I pick her up. I am truly grateful for the divine calling in being a mother, and the opportunity to continue on with Alan in building our eternal family.

My Amazing Wife!!!

Each morning I am amazed that my wonderful wife can still put on a smile. I know she is uncomfortable and that she didn’t sleep very well last night, or the last 20 night for that matter. She works literally all day from the moment she wakes up to the second she crawls back into bed. She does all this mind you while six months pregnant. But it’s not just that she is surviving. She is radiant with a fire and a passion. It might be a love for me ;), but I doubt it. This fire showed up in her a couple of months ago.

Ally has so many goals in her life, professional, educational, and spiritual. The fire that I see though and desire that shines through brightest is her desire to be a mother. She gets so excited about dressing her up and cuddling her and making everything in the world pink. She is amazing and it is such a challenge to keep up with her. Although right now she may not think so, she is more beautiful than she has ever been to me. I know she is going to be an amazing mom. I just hope I can at least keep up.

P.S. Ally is going to school full-time, working, and tending her sometimes/most times needy husband. INCREDIBLE!!!

Wait...You're Pregnant?!?

Alright, since I have had some people complaining about reading about 21 year old bums for the past three months I will post a new little diddy.

(Drum roll please....sound the trumpets....and cue the angels singing) That's right my dear sweet wife is pregnant.

"How far along is she?"

"About 20 weeks."

"Wait...How long have you known?"

"About 17 weeks."

"And you are just now telling me."

"I don't really like you that much."

I'm just kidding we mostly just told close family and left it up to them to get the word out. So really you should be blaming my family.

Things are going well with the pregnancy. We are scheduled to have an ultrasound this Friday to find out the gender, and make sure everything is going well. Ally is doing amazing. I find out everyday just how amazing she is. She is finishing up her second to last semester and working at an Elementary school, and taking care of me (making sure I eat my veggies, shower, and other basic things). She loves to feel the baby move inside her and says that it feels like there is a little fish swimming inside her. She is due April 4, which will make for an interesting finals week. We are excited, scared, anxious, and nervous but we hear those feelings go away after the first 32 years.

Alan's 4 Student Housing Observations:

4. No one really has any concept of time and really don't think it's that big of a deal to knock on your door at 3 in the morning. "Wait, you weren't awake?"

3. Gates and locks don't necessarily mean you can't go in there. "I didn't know I was tresspassing."

2. They really think you can't see them making out in their car when it's dark.

1. They can go without food, water, or heat for days, but when the internet goes down. IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!!!

Wiping 21 year old bums!!!

That sounds absolutely preposterous! Right?!? That’s what I thought too. But that’s what Ally and I feel like every night. 1100 ridiculous college aged kids that honestly don’t know what to do with themselves without their mommies. So, for that reason their mommies call, and for some reason believe they are above the rules that everyone else has to obey. Enough about the schmucks!

Ally and I are doing well (minus what is mentioned above). Ally starts her new job this week, and we are both back into school. Ally tells me we will one day finish school but, I’m not so sure yet. I am busy as ever at work, we just had our annual mass exodus and are recovering from that.

We are planning on taking a vacation away from civilization sometime soon, probably just camping or something for the weekend, but none the less a vacation.
Well we hope to see everyone else’s posts soon because we are kind of tethered to Provo, but would love to read the new happening in everyone’s lives.

Back from the Cruise

Don’t worry everybody. We made it back from our cruise. We had a wonderful time, and are rejuvenated for work and school. Ally and I both enjoy people watching and the cruise gave us plenty of opportunities to sit back and watch. The people we were able to watch were certainly a bit different from the people back in Utah. These are the favorite things we noticed on our trip:

1.There is a generation of 40-50 year olds that have been divorced and are back out on the market. The women all have boob jobs and belly button rings and the guys all have tattoos.
2. ANYONE can where a bikini. It doesn’t matter if you are 90 lbs or 300 lbs.
3.When you are on a cruise the best time to drink is all the time. Start of the morning right, you can order it to your room in the morning.

I posted the pictures to my facebook if you want to see them check out my profile.

Sun light in a world of darkness and gloom

With all the wars, crooked Politians, bailouts, and every other horrible thing the media has to say about the world we live in it can make it a pretty hard world to live in. To add on to this each one of us has our own little trials we go through. However, there are still rays of sunshine. Every day the sun still comes up. We still have beautiful families to come home to. We have wonderful memories of good times we've had. In reality the list of good things could go on much longer than all of the bad things the media and the world could possibly cook up.
Ally and I found a little ray of sunshine just outside out apartment window. The view we used to not pay any attention to has a birds nest with five baby birds in it. The parents work hard all day long to bring enough food to their babies. Every five minutes or so they show up with food, usually they both come at the same time. The mother bird usually feeds and the daddy bird keeps an eye on me to make sure I'm not going to do anything.
It's the simple things in life really. Sure we have an apartment that we can barely fit all our stuff into. Sure the people that live around us keep the hours of a rock band. It all just seems to become background to the little rays of sunshine we are trying to find. I guess it all comes down to perspective. If you let the small apartment or neighbors with weird hours rule your life than they will and the rays of sunshine that will come regardless of whether or not we notice them will become the background and will remain unnoticed. But, if we focus on those rays of sunshine it can change the picture entirely. It makes the sunshine the focal point and allows everything else to fall into the background.

New Semester

Well May has come along with a new semester for both of us. I finished up doing pretty well in my classes last semester. Ally is very excited to be going back to school and finishing up her degree. She will finish up classes this December and then do her intership next spring. I am taking a full load and working as well just trying to chip away at school as well. I'm sure one day it will be done. Right?
We are both counting the days until our cruise on the 31st of this month. We can hardly wait just to be able to relax and not have to baby sit 1000 college students every night. Which by the way is going well. We got through the change in semesters which is usually the peak time for us.

Funny story about that actually...every semester because of move-ins and move-outs we change the parking permit that is required for the students, so those who lived hear during the school year need to get a new one during the summer. To avoid problems we put up signs, send out e-mails, and remind everyone that they need a new permit, but inevitably there are always a few choice individuals who ignore all of the reminders and still get booted. At 5:00 Wednesday morning we received a call from one of these choice individuals parents. Side note-The majority of the people living at Glenwood are students and most go to BYU. They take classes like O-Chem, Adv. Calculus, and other classes that common folk like you and I don't even understand the title of. Continuing-5:00 Wednesday morning Ally answers the phone and it is the mother of this resident who was booted and she is LIVID. She takes turns yelling at both Ally and I, all but insulting both of our mothers. After dealing with her Ally and I both laughed and joked about how it would have been if our parents called and yelled at anyone any time anything went wrong. We can hardly wait until this resident gets married and the mother calls the spouse in a yelling fit because he/she has left there underwear on the ground or is squeezing the tooth paste from the middle. Moral of the story, Thanks parents for letting me grow up and although sometimes it may have been rough to watch I think it has made me a better person.