Graduation, Graduate School, Pregnancy and The Nursery Ubber Long Post life Update!

You guys, this is going to be one big dump post, so feel free to just scroll through the pictures if you want. I'm at least warning you, right?! It’s going to be long!


Where do I even begin? I'm not very good at this whole blogging thing, but I guess I should get better at that, since Mark got accepted to the University of Western Florida! I'll need to be better about updating our lives.


Life Updates


Mark and I graduated with our Bachelor’s degrees from UVU on May 27th, this was a big accomplishment for both of us! It took me 7 years, for various different reasons to get this degree, and I'm so proud of myself for sticking with it, even when at times I wanted to give up.


It wasn't easy, but I think it was worth doing.


The things I learned during my time at UVU have helped me grow as a person so much, and helped me get out of my comfort zone and think outside the box, acknowledging that with hard work and dedication the things you want can become a reality. I've also learned the value of team work in the real world ( at least as a community Health Major) and how helping each other really benefits us all when it comes to achieving goals, and getting things done.


Mark got his bachelor’s degree of science in Environmental Science, and I got my bachelors degree of Science in Public and Community Health Education, we both graduated from the School of Science and Health. It was fun being able to walk together.


Brennan, my Brother in Law also graduated on May 27th with his Bachelor’s degree from the school of the Arts at UVU. He is an incredible Artist, and I have no doubt he is going to do great things in the world of art. His art speaks to the soul.

The year 2016 is going to be a very eventful year for us, lots and lots of changes are happening. Most of them are exciting, and scary. Like Graduate school. Graduate school was just a little Idea that Mark started tossing around about two years ago. I remember Mark and me walking around Provo, talking about our future, just around a year after we had gotten married.

 He mentioned that he may want to go to graduate school, and my heart leaped with anticipation. I wanted to be a supportive wife, and I didn't want to push him to do anything he didn't want to do. There were so many benefits in the long run for graduate school, including better job security, and more of a possibility, if I wanted to, to be a stay at home mom. I felt selfish for hoping that he would choose to follow through with this idea. Here we are, two years later, and that little Idea has turned into reality. It seems surreal.

We talked about moving out of state, and knew that graduate school would be an opportunity and good reason for us to move somewhere different, and hopefully near the ocean. When Mark was applying for graduate schools, he looked at schools near the south (warm weather), and near the ocean. Florida, San Antonio, and Corpus Christi Texas were our top three schools that we were really excited about. Mark had been talking back and forth with these collages to get all the papers in and things he needed to apply done. It seemed like so much work for him, and I couldn't really help him with any of it, which sucked because I didn't know how to help him feel less stressed and worried about applying.

He was pretty worried that he wouldn't get accepted to any of the schools, which I knew was not going to happen. My husband is a ninja when it comes to school, and even though his first semester of school (18 credits) was a total flop, he brought his GPA up to a 3.00 by graduation, which is a pretty damn big accomplishment, given the hard classes he took, like chemistry, and statistics, hydrology etc... He is incredibly smart, and has made sure to do things to help himself stick out to graduate schools. So I wasn't worried. Anyhow, the director of the University Of Western Florida (UWF) seemed to really take an interest in him, and even called him to make sure he got all of his paper work in on time.

I took this as a good sign, and it was! A few weeks later he got an offer from them that included a 10 hour externship, instate tuition and a mini grant. The offer would allow us to cut out half the cost of attendance for graduate school, and was an answer to our prayers, because let’s be honest, when it comes to graduate school you are biting off a large lump sum of money, swallowing it and just accepting that you will be swimming in debt up to your eyeballs for at least 5 years after wards. This offer helped us out by thousands of dollars financially, it was also at one of our top pick schools and allowed us to be just minutes from one of the most beautiful beaches in Florida.

So Mark accepted the offer, and waited for his formal acceptance letter. It arrived just a few weeks ago, and we couldn't be happier! There are a lot of fears associated with moving across the country, 30 hours away from my family with a newborn, but I have a good feeling about it, and I am hoping my family will come visit us. I know we will be visiting Utah too a few times during Graduate school.

Pregnancy Update

With the third trimester came fatigue. It isn’t horrible, but it really is noticeable. I sleep a lot, and I don't sleep soundly. I'm hot all the time and I pee almost religiously around 3:00 am in the morning.

I did really well with going to the gym and Pilates all the way up to 37 weeks, by this point my Pilates class was getting really exhausting for me. I had my last gym workout at UVU the week of graduation, and I decided that I would get back into weight lifting after the baby was born. This has been a big pill for me to swallow, because I am so used to lifting, and I worry about the bounce back and losing my muscle. However, I've still been able to walk 2-3 miles a day, by the end of these walks my feet are usually pretty swollen, and my hands, my lower back aches sometimes too. I’d like to add this, every pregnancy is so different, and we all have a duty to our bodies, to listen to them. Mine was telling me that it was time to take it down a notch as I got nearer to the end. Some women can work out until the day they go into labor. I wanted to be one of those women doing weighted squats and lifting heavy until the very end, but I am trying to listen to my body, and what its saying is that it’s tired, and needs rest. So I’m doing what I think is best for me. Pregnancy is amazing, and I’m proud of what I have been able to do so far.

I strongly believe exercise during pregnancy helped, and still helps me to have more energy, sleep better and have less pain. I am so grateful for the ability I have had to stay active so late into my pregnancy. Mark and I were able to get our BOB Pro running/jogging stroller, and I can't wait to use it once this little guy is here, and I'm cleared to exercise.

Chloasma, also known as the Mask of Pregnancy, which causes brown or lighter gray skin discoloration. I have this pretty badly on my face, and hands. Luckily for me, it’s kind of evenly spread out over my face and people just think I look really tan. I guess that's a good thing right? There are definitely some spots though on my face, above my lip and on my forehead and nose that are pretty noticeably darker. With makeup on it’s a lot harder to tell. Luckily this will go away once the baby is born. It’s kind of nice though too having a natural looking tan without using any lotions or being too sun exposed.

Feeling swollen and big and my lower back gets achy, I'm really excited to meet this little boy, and since I'm not working anymore, I feel like I'm just waiting. His due date is so soon! May 14th, and I'm really hoping he won't go too far over his due date. I really want to try to avoid being induced.

 

What I wish I looked like every day :)

What I usually look like ha-ha, okay maybe not so ghetto, but I'm fitting in with the ducks pretty well these days!

What 39 weeks looks like, and my scar, which is amazingly stretching so well. Knock on wood!

The Nursery

Our Nursery is finally done!!! I'm so, so, so happy with how it turned out. Mark and I had some projects we were working on, which was fun and a good way for me to not get to anxious just waiting for the little guy.

The first project we worked on was his changing table. I knew that I wanted a changing table that could be used as a dresser too because of space in the nursery, and practicality. I wanted him to be able to continue to use this dresser as he got older too. After looking for at least a week, I was able to find someone who was selling a dresser like the one I wanted, for fifty dollars on the Provo indoor yard sale. It was a still of a deal!

The dresser was in excellent condition, even though it was 14 years old. It’s made out of solid wood, which we didn't know at first. We wanted to stain this dresser a dark espresso color to make it match our future crib, but once we picked it up Mark thought it may be made out of part wood, part MDF board, so painting seemed to be a better option. Once we got it sanded down, we realized that it actually was solid wood, and we could have stained it, but by that time we had already bought paint.

It doesn't really matter though because I loved the way it turned out! We painted it a light grey, and added wooden knobs that I painted a dark, navy blue color. We figured that later if we have a little girl, we could switch out the knobs to a feminine color. It is kind of a fun idea.

Here is a picture of the finished dresser, this project took a while, probably a couple of weeks. We used a small foam roller to apply the paint, which worked great for the smaller surfaces like the drawer faces, but it didn't work so great for the top of the dresser. The paint didn't apply evenly, and it drove me crazy. If I do a project like this again, I would get a larger roller for the top and sides of the dresser, or use a paint brush on the entire thing to get the coats of paint to go on evenly.

Mark wanted to add a Changing table topper to the dresser to make it safer for the baby, so he built this little box, and made it removable. He used Velcro to secure it to the top of the dresser. This way, when Ryker is older we can take the topper off and it can just be used as a dresser. To make the table topper we followed directions from this blog http://livingbeautifullydiy.blogspot.com/2014/02/nursery-change-table-topper-diy.html, it was super easy to make, and looks really good.

The second project we worked on was a nursing chair that was given to us for free. Originally I had decided to only redo the covers of the nursing chair, because the task of sanding down all the little pieces, some of them being detailed, sounded too daunting. The more I thought about what I really wanted, the more I decided to just go for it. I have the time, and we had access to an electric sander. Even with these things, it took hours and days to finish this project. I couldn't be more pleased with how the chair turned out though.

I found the stain off a blog, when I was searching how to stain, and redo wood, the type of stain I used, that was suggested on this blog was a gel stain in the color Java. I bought the stain from the rockler.com website http://www.rockler.com/gel-stain-general-finishes-java , and I bought the smallest size, the 1/2 pint. I'm glad I only bought the 1/2 pint, because I could have easily applied two, maybe even 3 coats of stain to the chair if I had wanted to.

I ended up only applying one coat of stain to the chair, once it dried, I went over a few spots that needed a touch up. I think because I spent so much time sanding, I was able to use less stain.

The stain was so easy to apply, I used one of marks old socks to apply the stain, going with the grain of the wood, and then immediately wiped the wood with an old rag to remove any excess stain from the wood. It turned out so much better than I thought it was going to. I was worried because I didn't sand completely evenly, but I started to get anxious to get the chair finished, and decided to stain the chair, and then just reapply stain as needed. I feel like the fact that it's not perfectly even actually made the chair look more rustic, and I ended up loving the end product. The java color is perfect, if I need to do a project like this again, I will purchase this stain. The chair is smooth and looks like we put a finish on it too, which I love. I'm a total fan

 

Here is a before and after of the chair

The Nursery

Long ago at like 20 weeks Mark and me painted the Nursery room a light green, it used to be a terrible two tone yellow color, I think the Green is much better! As a side note, my sister Jana made that cute hanging name sign for Ryker.

Reading where the wild things grow.... this could be the truth about our future ha-ha

While we were in Disney World, we collected Disney pins, you can trade them with cast members for free, and it was pretty fun! I ended up getting our family. I loved these pins to much not to keep them!
I know this was a super long post, but I think I got it all caught up, now we just wait for this little boy to arrive! I hope he doesn't take too long.