I am 14 weeks pregnant! It feels like it’s going by SO SLOWLY and at the same time, too fast!

I wanted to share some of my favorite maternity things from the first trimester (I’ll probably also be doing a YouTube video, so stay tuned for that) and give a little bumpdate!

Symptoms: I’m still not super sick, but randomly will feel nauseous. Especially if I’m moving really fast which is ridiculous, so running and working out hard has become not possible! I have been getting some headaches but as I keep drinking water they go away pretty quickly.

Sleep: I sleep pretty well at night, but am SO tired all the time! I go to bed early and still wake up tired! They weren’t joking when they said this is exhausting work!

Baby is: The size of a troll doll or a beet! It’s crazy that it keeps getting so big! I feel like yesterday we looked at our app and baby was the size of a poppy seed. All of the limbs, organs and everything are developed, and will just keep growing bigger!

Gender: We will hopefully find out this week! Crossing our fingers that baby cooperates!

Dad is: SO EXCITED. Randy is SO sweet about the baby and every day just says he can’t wait for the baby to be here, and wishes it would come sooner. He is carrying around our little plush alien toy from Toy Story and pretending it’s the baby, practicing how to hold it and do things with only one hand hahaha.

Mom is craving: Not really anything, but it’s so strange that chocolate (my normal love) isn’t always on my mind. It’s very weird not to need a piece of chocolate during the day the way I normally would! I eat less at each meal because I start to feel too full, but still need lots of snacks between meals, which is funny. I’ve been craving sour things most of the pregnancy, acai bowls or sour gummies. There are these amazing sour dolphin gummies at a candy store in our mall that I’m OBSESSED with. I randomly craved pie crust cookies about 6 weeks in, and when we didn’t have the ingredients I started BAWLING. I also had a funny hankering for Frosted Mini Wheats that made me bawl, because I was so excited to know what sounded good!

Funny things this week: I keep thinking I feel the baby move, but Randy doesn’t believe me! Maybe I am, maybe I’m not…who knows! I’m emotional ALL the time (even more than usual) and even cried a few weeks ago when I heard a goose in the sky, all by itself. I was so worried it was looking for its family.

My first trimester loves:

I have had a few things that I LOVED during my first trimester, here they are!

This weekend was CRAZY. Friday entailed celebrating a friend’s birthday at Bombay house, a treat with my family after half of them went to see The Nutcracker, and getting to bed SUPER late.

Saturday, Randy and I went to go see The Nutcracker put on by Clytie Adams School of Ballet.

I feel like I write the same thing about this every year, but I really don’t care.

I’ll keep it short and sweet. Basically, much of my childhood and teenage years were spent in one of four little dance studios. I can’t honestly put into words what that ballet school means to me. I knew every picture on the wall. I had a spot on the little bench where I would put my things. I learned how to fail, and how to succeed. I learned that correction comes when teachers care, and that I could do things even if I wasn’t sure that I could. I learned that hard work and practice pay off.

I started out every holiday season wearing curlers to school and running around the Val Browning Center, buttoning up costumes or pinning in hairpieces.

I know nearly every step to every dance in that whole show. I know every note, every crash of the cymbal. I know the moments in dances where you gasp for breath because you are SO exhausted. I know the fear of slipping on a fog-covered floor and the loudness of the downstairs dressing room.

When Clytie came out this year and talked about those feeling nostalgia, remembering putting on their makeup and worrying they’ll someday forget the dance steps, I lost it.

I will forever be so grateful for the years I spent in those dance studios, and on stage doing something I loved. And I will forever be so insanely grateful for teachers, and Clytie, who made ballet so much more than just an extracurricular activity.

I feel like since we announced our pregnancy, life has been crazy! I have barely had a minute to think.

We had a great Halloween dressing up like John Lennon and Yoko Ono (Randy wanted to be the scariest thing he could think of – so he chose to be the woman who broke up the Beatles)

We’ve been having relaxed weekends, going to dinner with friends and having movie nights, spending lots of time with family and it’s all been awesome. I’m going to be better at regularly updating I promise!

I have been SO lucky and haven’t been feeling crazy sick with the pregnancy, which has been amazing. I have random cravings (ask Randy about the time I cried when we didn’t have ingredients for the cookies I wanted) and have been SO tired, but feeling really good and very lucky!

We are gearing up for the holiday season and can’t wait to find out the gender of Baby L!

If you know Randy, you know he’s SUCH a classy dresser. He loves shopping as much as I do and is crazy about making sure his haircut is right. One of his biggest complaints is that there aren’t enough options when it comes to men’s clothing. And he’s totally right! There just aren’t a lot of cool or interesting things to do with guys clothing. That is why he and I both LOVE places like Zuzu Wear because they are doing their part to give guys some awesome options when it comes to clothing. Their ties are seriously AWESOME and such good quality! I love that they are all about skinny ties (Randy doesn’t love regular or thick ties, because he’s so tall and skinny) and they always have cool patterns. They are really adding new dimensions and class to men’s fashion and Randy and I are huge fans. We loved partnering with them, and hope we can find more awesome places for men’s fashion that share their passion!

But just check out how good the tie (and the guy) look!

I’m sure most of you don’t care, but I want to document some pregnancy updates here on the blog.

Yesterday we got to have an ultrasound and see little baby L rub its eyes, punch me, flip around, and smile at us straight on. It is SO crazy how baby is already a little, tiny person. I can’t imagine loving anything more.

I’ve been lucky and haven’t felt too sick at all! I’ll feel nauseous at some point during most days, and I’m SO tired. But I’m feeling very lucky to not feel insanely sick most days.

Randy has been absolutely wonderful, cooking dinner and bringing flowers. He says once a day how much he wishes the baby was here already. We have a little plush toy alien (the one from Toy Story) and Randy has been carrying it around, practicing for the baby. It’s adorable!

We are feeling very happy and lucky, and so in love with our apricot-sized nugget!

We had a really fun time telling our family and close friends about baby Low!

Funny story, we were planning on telling my parents at the same time as my siblings, but of course, life got in the way! My parents are planning a trip to Europe with a group, and had to put down a deposit. They would leave a few weeks after our baby is due, and while I knew I still wanted them to go and they should go, I wanted them to have all the information before making a final decision! They were going to put down a deposit one night, and I was BAWLING because I didn’t want to tell them over the phone! Randy told me we could go there, we could FaceTime, whatever I wanted. So I just decided to call and tell them! They were SO excited and it was good I told them so they could book their trip knowing about the baby and everything like that.

I was having a family birthday party the next weekend so we wrapped up some onesies and baby shoes for me to unwrap as a gift from Randy. Our families were SO surprised, it was awesome! We also told some of our close friends at the fair after Alexon won a giant prize.

We are so lucky baby Low already has so many people to love!

Every year I try to do a series on gratitude during the month of November. Mostly it’s just me jotting down a few things I’m grateful for and not really much else. This year, I realized late last night that I was already behind. Already. Behind. On day 1.

I wanted to do something big and beautiful and worthy of celebrating for November, focusing in on this Thanksgiving and how extraordinarily lucky I am.

But I am already late.

But that’s OK.

So for this year’s series on Gratitude, I’m going to tell stories or share quotes or share something I’m grateful for. I’m not going to feel bad about being behind because this baby I’m growing makes me want to go to sleep at 8:30. I’m not going to play a million days of catch up when I do fall behind. I’m just going to be grateful for being grateful, and love this time of life I’m lucky enough to be in.

Today, I’m grateful for imperfection. We learn so much from the things that go wrong or the things we do wrong. We grow stronger, we become closer to others as we struggle together, we get to know the difference between feeling broken and feeling whole. Imperfection is beautiful and there’s a reason we are all imperfect. It’s so when we do eventually become perfect someday, we understand the difference, and we appreciate the struggle.

Randy and I are SO thrilled to announce that we are having a baby! Baby L will be joining our family in May, 2018 and we are seriously over the moon.

I wanted to share part of the story of finding out I was pregnant because it was seriously the best day ever! We also have a video of me finding out and telling Randy, all real life! It’s a video I will seriously treasure forever.

Randy and I had been trying to get pregnant for a few months, and I was convinced it wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. But it just so happened that my 24th birthday was the first day I could take a test for that month. I didn’t think it would be positive, but I knew I’d spend the whole day wondering. I also thought it would be fun if I did happen to be pregnant, to find out on my birthday, so I just decided I would take a test and see.

I had taken the day off of work, but forgot to shut off my alarm! The alarm went off at 6:00 and I decided I may as well go take the test then, if it was negative I knew I still had a whole birthday to look forward to, I’d had negative tests before and knew I’d be ok. Plus, I was expecting it to be negative.

I took the test and went to grab my phone so I could record, just in case it was positive. I was trying to be SO quiet (so sorry that part of the video is SO quiet) because Randy was still asleep. I knew he wanted me to surprise him when we were pregnant so I found out for myself first.

I can’t even explain how it felt to turn that test over and see that it was positive. It was, and always will be, one of the best moments of my life. I couldn’t stop shaking and I was SO excited. I took another test just to be sure it wasn’t a false positive, and that one was positive too. I couldn’t believe it! I was on cloud 9. I went back into bed and Randy rolled over to say Happy Birthday. He noticed I was wide awake (the wheels were spinning in my head about how to tell Randy that we were having a baby) and asked if I wanted to get up and start the birthday celebrations. I said YES. I hopped up and went into the living room, quickly putting the tests into a gift bag and putting it next to the couch. I told Randy I wanted to vlog my birthday so we should set up the camera and film me opening presents and stuff. We vlog on occasion so it wasn’t weird that I wanted to film. I opened up the awesome gifts Randy got me, then told him I had got myself something and wanted to open it. I pulled the test out of the gift bag to show to Randy.

It took him a second to register what was going on, but then he FREAKED out! He was SO excited.

The rest of my birthday was a dream, we were just so happy and it was the best gift I could have received. Randy jokes that he didn’t need to do anything at all for my birthday, just finding out we were having a baby surpassed anything he could have done.

People always joked when we were in high school that we had to get married so they could see what our red-headed, Japanese babies would look like. We’re so excited to find out along with everyone else:)

I’m wanting to do a few more posts on our journey, and regular posts on some of my maternity favorites and things like that, so stay tuned! We also have a fun video of us telling some of our family and friends about Baby L, and we can’t wait to share that too.

We are so insanely excited for this adventure, and are so grateful for so many people loving us and showing us so much kindness and support.

We had the most relaxed weekend in the world, Friday we grabbed some In N’ Out and Cold Stone for dinner, and watched movies and relaxed all night.

Saturday we slept in, went to Salt Lake to the Church History Museum (which was SO fun) and did a little shopping. Then it was off to a fun birthday dinner for one of our friends.

Sunday was church (we’re loving our new ward!) and a long walk, some baking, chatting with family, and a little movie night with our friends. All in all it was a really relaxing, but really fun weekend.

//Currently I’m loving//

Reading Tess of the D’Urbervilles (don’t read unless you are ready to CRY)

Munching on these brownies that we made on Sunday

Getting ready to listen to Capital Gaines (I usually listen to Audible books during evening walks or during my commute – so awesome!)

Watching Boy Meets World (what a great throwback!)

Cuddling up with this blanket from Target 

And loving this foundation for the fall!

Happy weekend and happy Monday!

We had a really fun weekend, Friday night we had some of our close friends over to see our new place! Nannette was so sweet and made a pie (which was BOMB) and we ate and talked and laughed and played games until late. We are really lucky to have awesome friends who spend time with us and make our lives so full and fun.

Saturday we had a LAZY day and just laid in bed, watching shows and just talking. We really needed a down day so it was absolutely perfect. We finally got out of the house and went shopping to find Randy a new sweater, then it was off to Cornbelly’s with my family! We had a blast shooting the apple guns, eating treats, running through the maze, and playing all the basketball, baseball, and tetherball activities they had lined up. Cornbelly’s is SUCH a fun fall activity and I would highly recommend it!

Sunday we went to our new ward for the first time! Everyone was SO insanely nice and made us feel welcome. It’s always tough the first few weeks as you’re trying to remember names and know where to go, but they were super nice and we’re excited to get to know everyone better.

After church we headed to Kaysville again for some more family time, which was fun as always!

Today, we got to talk to Elder Low as he heads off to JAPAN! We are so excited for him and he sounded so awesome, we miss him like crazy but it was great to hear his voice and hear how thrilled he is to get to go to Japan.