It's Happening...

Those side-effects I've always equated with pregnancy are finally kicking in.  I have become one snarky pregnant lady, believe you me.  I mean, let's be serious, I've always been a very straightforward, tell-it-how-it-is person, but I think I'm becoming extreme now.  I need to have some sort of filter or something!

ALSO-- two nights ago we were supposed to have a hot dog and marshmallow roast up the canyon with DJ's siblings, but my body was just so exhausted that I wanted to stay home.  I told DJ that, and explained that I wouldn't mind one bit if he still went.  Naturally, he opted to stay home with me.  That made me feel a little guilty, so I started being moody (like the, I-feel-bad, I-might-cry kind of moody).  Then he asked what we should eat for dinner, and I started crying, because, "We don't have any food!!!" (In reality we did, just nothing that either of us wanted.)  In the end I ordered a pizza for DJ and ate plain white rice myself.  It was just ridiculous that I even cried?  It was an emotional night.

I feel like I've aged about 10 years.  Or 50, I'm not sure.  My knees and feet have been KILLING me!  A few nights ago I colored, cut and styled both Nikki and Keesha's hair (which, for the record, looks pretty awesome!), and that's usually no big deal.  I obviously love doing hair, and had a blast doing their's, but man did I ever feel it that night and the whole day after!  I came to the heart-breaking conclusion that I'm probably going to have to call doing hair quits until after Lexsi comes.  So sad!  But my poor body just can't handle it along with a full time job and full-time baby growth.

Apparently, I've become a snorer.  Poor DJ!  I've never been a snorer unless I was SUPER tired or something... apparently I've been snoring every night for the past week or so.  I really do feel bad for him, but what can I do?  I just don't know.

All of things are not necessarily ideal, but I don't mind them.  Remember how I chose to have a baby?  Oh yeah, that means I chose everything that comes with it :)  I sure do enjoy this crazy ride!!!

Things that weren't funny at the time but are now.

Today, I've had lots of funny thoughts about things that were either annoying, sad or frustrating at the time.  I'm a firm believer in laughing at yourself, so I'm just going to make a list of things that are super funny to me now that were NOT at the time they happened.

1- When we first moved into our current ward (which I lived in as a teenager), everyone was calling me "Ashleigh Kaiser-Savage."  I was constantly upset that people were hyphenating my name, when Kaiser was no longer my name!  Clearly, they were just clarifying that I was the same person they knew as a teenager, but for some reason it really irked me.  Now I realize how ridiculous I was being.

2- Getting broken up with over a text message while at Niagara Falls with my family, a few hours before heading to the airport to fly home to Utah and see this boyfriend, who I hadn't seen in a month because I had been living in New York, participating in the Hill Cumorah Pageant.  Yeah.

3- When DJ and I were dating, I was always the first one to text him in the mornings (because he got up at like 4 to do janitorial work, so I'd text him when I got up and was on my way to work).  One day I thought I'd just not text him and see how long it took him to text me instead.  After waiting about an hour, I texted him and I was SO upset (Nikki is my witness) that he wouldn't text me first.  Of course, why would he, I'm sure he thought I was still asleep???  Silly girl.

4- That one time I ran over Adam's car.  Seriously-- I backed my Durango over his Neon.  Like, well over his hood.  It was SOOOO not funny at the time.  I felt like such an idiot.  Especially because he wasn't even engaged to Meggin yet.  But now-- every time I see the State Farm commercial where the girlfriend is ragging on her boyfriend for backing over another car in a very similar fashion-- I can't help but laugh about it all.

5- Moving into Nikki's apartment and the two of us not liking each other-- because I am assertive and she was not, and she didn't like that I was older than her (cause in her mind then she thought the oldest was the boss, or something?).  Good thing I ended up with her brother-- in some strange way that eased the tension?

6-  As children, Meggin and I were in bed one night when the fire alarm went off.  Naturally, we thought it was a real fire, so we army crawled across our bedroom floor, grabbed our porcelain dolls (what???), tested the doorknob to see if it was hot, and proceeded to crawl down the hallway.  It turns out Josh was playing with matches and threw something in his garbage can or something like that and it set off the fire alarm?  But man, had it been an emergency, at least we had those dolls!

7- Last Thanksgiving Eve, walking down Main Street in Lovell with Nikki late at night, in the bitter bitter cold, both of us crying our eyes out about our terribly hard lives, and me yelling at the sky, "I'M A BARREN WOMAN!!!!" I'll be honest-- this was a tiny bit funny even at the time.  But now it's even awesomer.

8- The night before I was going to Lovell for the first time and DJ and I had a talk, basically with me saying I was ready to get married and him telling me he wasn't quite there yet-- and me having a COMPLETE come-apart.  The next day, while I was working at the MTC, I was texting Nikki about it and accidentally sent the text to DJ, then I started bawling, thinking he was going to hate me or something, so I called him in a panic and cried to him, and called Nikki in a panic and left her the most distressed voice mail of life, and all this time I'm outside the building the barbershop is in, and Elders are walking past looking at me like I'm crazy.  Let's be serious, I was crazy.  But now?  This is high comedy.

9- When I was in 5th or 6th grade and Josh was in high school, we had gotten in an argument (which was typical-- he always knew how to get under my skin, and I was the annoying, sassy little sister), and I was so flustered and frustrated that I screamed at him, "It's your OWN--- FAT--- FAUUUULLLLLT!!!!!"  He thought this was hilarious, because it was the meanest thing I could come up with at the time.  I did NOT think it was funny, cause I was fuming.  However, this has become a much-used family phrase, and has also caught on in some of the Savage Family as well.

The moral of these stories is-- learn to laugh at yourself.  Even tough and upsetting things may end up making you laugh one day!

Conference Crafts

DUH!  I never even showed you the stuff we did last weekend during General Conference!

The entirety of my Saturday was consumed with making this puff blanket:

I do love it, but MAN it took much longer than I expected.  It's also very small.  But it fits perfectly in our little cradle:

DJ and Keesha took it upon themselves to make Alexsi a blanket as well, and clearly it's just their style:

Haha I love them!  On Sunday, my carpal tunnel was acting up (no seriously-- I really do have carpal tunnel), so I couldn't make another blankie like I wanted to.  So, I did a few easy crafts instead.  First, this flower hanger/wall art:

I know, it's slightly ridiculous that I have so many flowers for my little girl.  But, in my defense, I got them for ridiculously cheap off alwaysunderpay.com, and you have to have an order of $35 I think.  So, I had to buy a lot since they were so inexpensive.  And I definitely don't regret it!  I can wear these in my hair as clips and I can clip them to her headbands.  She's going to be one stylin little girl!  I also love that I can hang this on the wall in her room and it will double as a decoration!  To make this, I just took the glass out of a picture frame, then hot glued ribbons across it, then clipped the flowers to the ribbons!  Easy-schmeasy.

My second project on Sunday was this:

This picture does not even do justice to how adorable these letters are!  I'm going to hang them on the wall in her bedroom.  The wooden letters are from the Hob, and I just covered them with scrapbook paper.  Easy and cute!

Along with our productive crafting, I must say that I LOVED Conference (no surprise there)!  My favorite talk was probably Neil L. Andersen's.  I also loved that Sister Dalton spoke directly on how to raise daughters.  Elder Holland's talk in Priesthood Session was incredibly powerful, and anyone who hasn't watched it yet really needs to!  I love that we have such inspired leaders to tell us exactly what we need to hear!  I'm also thrilled to hear about the second Provo Temple!  I told my mom about a month ago that I thought they should build a temple where the tabernacle was, and I was so excited to hear that it's actually going to happen!  Of course, I won't be in Provo anymore when it all comes together, but I'm still thrilled that it's happening!  I'm also excited for the first Wyoming temple!  Even though I'll still be going to Montana to the temple when I live in Lovell-- because Star Valley is about 4 hours away (or is it 6-7, Nikki?  Bahahaha!)-- it's really cool that the first temple in the state is on it's way!!!

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changin!!!!

If you're in Utah County, you can feel the awesomeness of fall in the air!  It's been raining for a couple days, and I've been able to bust these babies out:

Oh, how I love my galoshes!!!    Today, it snowed in the mountains.  SNOW!   In the first week of October! Do you realize how amazing that is?  I seriously LOVE weather.  I love all the changing seasons.  I love sunny days, rainy days, cloudy days, windy days, snowy days--- everything about weather just makes me so happy!  It reminds me of how much my Heavenly Father loves me!

And speaking of changes-- with fall in the air, I felt the need to change my hair.  I decided to go with a dark brown underneath, leaving it blonde on top.  What's funny is, I ended up with this:

Yep, I'm a redhead.  Totally unintentional.  Here's the thing:  My hair has NEVER taken red very well.  So this time, I decided to color it straight red first, which I expected would end up pretty streaky, then color my brown over the top.  Well, I colored it red, and for some strange reason, it actually TOOK the red.  Vibrantly.  I blame it on the pregnancy hormones raging through my body.  Do you know how many pregnant girls' hair I've colored with no crazy effects?  Yeah, I'm the first with the madness.  So-- I colored brown over the red.  I also had to color my blonde a dark blonde/light brown, because some of the ends had turned pink from the red underneath-- nice.  Well after round 2 it still was quite red, so I had DJ color over the red again with a golden brown, hoping to cancel out some of the red.  He did a wonderful job, I must say :)  Well, it's clearly still red. But, surprisingly, I LOVE it!  It took some getting used to, but I'm super happy with it right now.  Zac told me it's "much more better," so I feel like I got the seal of approval ;)  It was funny how all the girls at work reacted-- everyone loved it!  One lady told me it made me look young.  Hmmmmm.... I'm only 24.  Was blonde making me look like an oldie? Cause, I'm naturally blonde.  Another lady told my I looked "hip."  That was probably my favorite compliment of the day!  Hahaha!  ALSO-- the red makes my eyes look fabulously green.  Gotta love that!

 Anyway, happy fall!   It's baking weather, my friends!!!

Pregs

I realized that there are some things about my pregnancy that really ought to be recorded, both for myself and Alexsi.

First of all, uh, hello??  I never even said anything on here about our ultrasound!  I went in on September 12, and let me tell you, I was EXCITED!!!  Our tech was awesome, and she took about a million pictures before we got to find out the sex.  She pointed everything out, and I wasn't surprised that I could totally see everything she was saying until she took a picture of the spine and DJ said, "That's the first thing I can recognize!"  Haha it was pretty cool!  Alexsi kept putting her hand up to her face, and didn't want to move it.  The tech kept jiggling my stomach in the right spot, trying to get her to move it, and she would, but only for a second, then put it right back up.  I may have a thumb-sucker on my hands.  When it was time to find out if it was a boy or girl, she closed her legs tightly and did not want to open them.  The tech had me roll on my side, and then she finally opened her legs for about 2 seconds, then snapped them back together again.  We were laughing about how modest she is.  We got a good, clear picture, and weren't really surprised we were having a girl.  Ever since DJ's dream 2 years ago (which you can read about HERE), we were both pretty positive we would have a girl first.  It was so exciting (and humbling) to see that the dream was really being fulfilled.  We are finally getting our little girl that we know has wanted to come to us for so long!!!

Now, about the name.  We know it's unusual.  Most of the Alexy's you'll find in the world are Latin, and could be either men or women.  I've heard the name Alexy most in the MLB.  BUT-- seriously, how cute is it?  And yes, yes, I am well aware that I don't need to add the "s" in "Alexsi."  But come on, it's a WAAAAY cuter spelling that "Alexi," and looks so much more feminine!  Lots of people have already been calling her "Alexis" (hey, Mama Savage! ;]), and I do my best to correct them, but I'm well aware that it's something she'll deal with her whole life, and frankly I don't mind.  Ummm, hello?  Have you seen how my mom decided to spell my name?  And I wouldn't have it any other way!  I love the uniqueness of it.  And her middle name, Nicole, is obviously after my same sister and bestie, Nikki :)  We like the idea of giving all our kids family middle names, so they have someone awesome they're named after that they can look up to!

This little girl loves to move!  She usually sleeps in the morning and evening, but in the afternoon she's kinda wild.  I've felt her spinning around in there since about 14 weeks (remember I told you that?  It was totally real), but it's definitely gotten more noticeable now.  Yesterday I felt my first solid kicks, at exactly 21 weeks. While we were at the BYU game she was moving around some because of the noise, but I had been pretty quiet cause I was super tired.  Then, BYU was on defense and I started yelling, and suddenly there was a barrage of tiny fists or feet pummeling me from inside.  I started laughing my head off, cause she was obviously NOT happy with me!  Davey said she was just trying to make noise too, and DJ said she was mad cause I woke her up.  I'm going to go with the latter-- if this girl is anything like me, she will NOT be happy to be woken up!!!  Last night when I was laying in bed before going to sleep, she kicked me again, about 3 times in 20 seconds.  It was super cool!

Remember how people say the second trimester is the "Honeymoon Phase?"  That, my friends, is a fat lie.  I threw up nearly every day this week.  I've had people ask me if I really want to have a lot of kids and have them close together, with as sick as pregnancy seems to make me.  Honestly, being sick like this doesn't bother me.  I didn't sign up for this thinking it was going to be the easiest 9 months of my life!  I expected to be sick-- not for this long, but that really makes no difference.  The thing is, I understand what a blessing it is to even be pregnant, and have the opportunity to take everything that comes with it.  I'm sure it also helps that this is my first pregnancy, and I don't have anything else to compare it to.  All I'm saying is, being sick for 9 months is totally worth getting a baby!

 It's crazy how much you can adore this little person inside you before you even meet them!  But, my little Lexsi, I do adore you, and I've waited so long for you!  I can't wait to hold you and snuggle you and give you millions of kisses!  I love you, baby girl!!!