We are Having a Baby!!

Yep, it is true!  Baby Taylor #1 is on its way!  We are so very excited and feel so blessed!  We went to our first doctor's appointment a couple of weeks ago and got to see the little wiggle worm.  It made it so real!  We finally told all our family members.  It was so fun to tell everyone!  This baby is going to be loved by so many!

I've heard my whole life how motherhood is a great sacrifice, and I completely understand that.  We sacrifice our bodies, our time, a lot of our desires, and a whole lot more to bear and raise children.  I thought I was mentally prepared for this.  I had no idea it started when they were the size of a green olive.  Holy smokes this baby has turned my world upside down! I don't want to sound like I'm complaining because it is completely worth it, and I know many women who would give anything to have morning sickness.  However, I do want to document how pregnancy has changed life in the Taylor household.
I have been so incredibly blessed to be able to work from home.  Being ten feet from my bed and five feet from a toilet has been a gift.  There have been days that I stumble out of bed, work a few hours, puke, work a few more hours, take a nap for lunch, work a few more hours, puke, and then go right back to bed.  Most days have not been that bad, but I miss feeling normal.  I miss being able to exercise.  This baby will have none of that!  I tried many times and it would throw my day into a downward spiral.  So for now, my exercise is growing this little one.  I am so tired of eating.  Never in one million trillion bagillion years would I ever have thought I would say those words.  I have to eat something every 1-2 hours to keep something in my stomach or things get ugly very fast.  The problem with this is that nothing sounds good.  Entering the kitchen makes me gag especially our pantry.  I have to go downstairs with a definite purpose in what I'm grabbing to eat and not think about it or breathe out of my nose.  This is what my desk looks like most days...

Look at all that sugar!  This kid is going to be addicted before birth.

 Mornings are the best time of day for me.  I feel worse as the day goes on, with the worst time of day being about 4-7pm.  I usually finish work and head straight down to the couch.  I don't leave the couch (except to pee, which is just about hourly) until we head to bed.  James has been incredible!  This has been my view almost every night...

 He comes home from work and makes us dinner.  What sounds good an edible can change in an instant.  One night all I wanted was chicken fajitas.  James came home and made delicious fajitas.  By the time they were ready, I wasn't sure I could eat them.  I hoovered one down anyway just to put something in my stomach.  It came right back up within minutes.  It was the most barf I have ever seen in my life.  All things that I once loved sound terrible...cold cereal being the big one.  Oh and ice cream too...who doesn't want to eat ice cream?  Absurd!  Needless to say life is so weird right now.  All I do is eat, work, eat, barf, lay, watch TV, barf, and sleep.  I feel useless.  James reassures me all the time that I'm doing the most important work for our family right now.  I want to cook and clean and make our new house a home.  So far all my time in the new house has been yucky.  Wowsers...it has been rough!  The one good thing is that as long as I'm sick, I know the baby is in there and growing, and we are so grateful for that!  The light is at the end of the tunnel as the first trimester is coming to a close soon.  Let's keep our fingers crossed that I'm not one of those rare women who is sick the whole time.
We can't wait to find out if its a boy or girl!  That should happen in mid-December.  We love our little green olive baby!

Our First Anniversary

I can't believe it has already been a whole year, but we celebrated our first anniversary over the weekend.  James came home from work on Friday with a surprise for me.  He had ordered a re-creation of the top tier of our wedding cake from the same place that made our wedding cake.  It was coconut cake with pineapple filling and it was just as delicious and beautiful as the first time!

Then we headed out the door to the temple.  We want to make the temple part of our anniversary traditions every year.

I love this place!

Our next stop was Midway, UT.  We planned a little weekend getaway at the Zermatt Resort.  It was so beautiful there and the resort was awesome!

This was the view from our window.

We ordered room service that night and watched football.  I was a little under the weather, so I wasn't much fun, but it was still great to get away and just hang with my best friend!  The next morning we wandered across the street to the Homestead Resort for breakfast.  Then we wandered around Midway and Heber trying to find a pair of cheap flip flops for me.  I had only remembered to pack my church shoes...not awesome!  It turns out that flip flops aren't readily available in mid-September, so church shoes it was for the whole weekend!  Midway is one of my most favorite cities in all of Utah!

That afternoon we had a BYU football game to attend.  It was so, so hot, but the Cougs won!  That was a great anniversary present!

The game was a white out, and James and I had no while BYU shirts.  We just happened upon these ugly ones at the grocery store for $4.99.  Matching ugly t-shirt day!  Be happy you can't see much of them.

After the game we headed back to the Zermatt and watched more football.  James had made reservations at a fancy restaurant at Deer Valley that evening, so we spruced ourselves up a little and took a beautiful scenic route through the mountains to the Stein Eriksen Lodge for dinner.  Holy smokes it was the fanciest place I've ever eaten and it was delicious!  The chef even sent out an amuse-bouche (A single, bite-sized hors d'oeuvre. Amuse-bouches are different from appetizers in that they are not ordered from a menu by patrons, but, when served, are done so free and according to the chef's selection alone. These, often accompanied by a complementing wine, are served both to prepare the guest for the meal and to offer a glimpse into the chef's approach to the art of cuisine...thank you Wikipedia!).  I have been watching past seasons of Top Chef lately, so I actually knew what this was when they brought it out.  It was very entertaining to people-watch here.  In typical Utah fashion, there were people in gowns and others in t-shirts and jeans.  Love it!

It was so fancy, I was a little embarrassed to take pictures of the food, but I did it anyway.

I can't even remember what we each ordered, but they were awesome!  The waitress surprised us with this after our dessert...

They were champagne tarts.  I couldn't fit in another bite, so James ate them.  We aren't quite sure all the champagne was cooked out.  James said they had a little zip to them...haha!

We got up Sunday morning and headed to the Grossen's to babysit while Amy and Dan went to the first Ogden Temple Dedication.  We went to the afternoon dedication.  It was such a fun weekend.  I've heard some people say that the first year of marriage is the hardest as you try to blend two lives together.  I can honestly say it has been a seamless transition!  Maybe it's because we are both a little older, more mature, more ready to not be living a "me" life, but I like to think it's because we love each other more than anything else and would rather be together doing anything and everything.
I love him one zillion bagillion times more than I did on this day...

...and that's saying a lot because I loved him to the moon and back a million times that day.  The first of many, many more anniversaries to come!

Labor Day Weekend and First Home Football Game

We loved having my parents here for the long weekend!   We planned to do a bunch of unpacking and organizing around our house, but we ended up mostly playing, which is just fine with me!  We did find a rug for our family room while they were here. 

Wore my dad out!  Hahaha!

 We played at the park.  Look at all those big kids on the toys!

 

 And we had to go to Cafe Rio of course!  Lukester loves it!

 The first home football game was this last Thursday night, September 11th.  We started the evening with O'Crowley's Irish Tacos.  I love them!  We didn't even make it to our seats before I had to hoover them.  We set up shop on the nearest trash can.

 I thought BYU did a nice job of remembering and honoring this important day.  It was pretty powerful and I may have shed a tear or two.  God bless America!  And let's hope for a great football season!  We won this one...a good start!