evan, lindsay, nina, elena and esther

Yesterday my suspicions were confirmed, I've got it again! It just feels so soon!! Am I already 26 weeks along? I guess so, I'm almost waddling, I'm heartburning, I'm mildly braxton hicks-ing, and I'm starting to toss and turn to find a comfortable position each night. Did I mention my back is hurting a lot? Sorry if i'm whiny, this is my update. And this girl is kicking my sides all the time!! (it's fun)

You're at a higher risk for gestational diabetes each pregnancy as your pancreas gets worked out from having it the time before. This time though, I don't feel quite as beat up about it. It didn't surprise me. I'm just going to deal with it and poke my finger a lot every day. Hopefully I won't be tortured craving lick-a-stix, airheads, donuts, cinnamon rolls, pumpkin pie, and sour patch kids as much as I did last pregnancy. (those of you who know me know that I'm not a sugar-holic, so this is weird for me) Twelve weeks sounds like a long time but I'm sure it will fly by. There will be more to pass the time what with being excited to venture outdoors and enjoy the summer.

I'm SOO excited for this semester. Evan has been rocking the getting ready to find a job process and we're excited to find out where we'll be and what we'll be doing come graduation! The rexburg farmers market is starting this friday. Nina is the best 16 month older in the world. I've got new motivation and ideas for using our letterpress. Old and new friends are in town again! Evan's schedule is way better than it was last semester, I feel. Life just feels good.

We have sooo much to say about our trip. And tons to share from Nina's experience being away from us and now being a family once again. Till then

I flew into the newark airport on Thursday and met up with Suvi at Penn Station close to where she had been working that day. I was dazzled by the city and my heart was racing! I couldn't believe the flood of people pouring past me as I rode the escalator up to ground level. What a contrast to rexburg. We made some dinner at her apartment in Brooklyn and then hit up a Hall & Oates tribute concert in Manhattan where Suvi's friend played. Came home and this pregnant lady crashed.

Friday was the day Evan would arrive, but not till 7 pm. So it was just me and Suvi's subway guide book all day while she was at work! Went shopping, learned the subway a bit better, rode her bike down the street in brooklyn, and walked a lot. I love brooklyn! It felt like I'd already seen sooo much - Empire State Building, Grand army station/Brooklyn Library/Prospect Park in brooklyn, brooklyn bridge, a peruvian band in the subway (I was hoping for that somewhere along the trip, to remind me of being home in seattle), and lots of other sights you expect to see in ny. Suvi lives on a great little street with a blooming magnolia tree and brownstone apartments. Met up with Evan at Penn Station and found our bus to Boston. The ride to boston was 4 hours so we got to get a feel for the area passing by. We also made friends with three other people who invited us to play Catch Phrase on their iphone with them! It is SOOOO weird not to have Nina with us. It breaks my heart. I can't say this freedom isn't welcome, but it has a cost. Dave was kind enough to pick us up downtown at 1 in the morning.

Saturday we got to sleep in, hallelujah! That day we got a driving tour of Brandeis University where Dave studies, walked around Harvard and Cambridge, the Harvard Museum of Natural History (awesome). and through the nifty shops around there until we got on the subway to go into the city. Penny was with us and this whole time she's been such a good baby. I wish Nina could play with her. In the city we followed the red freedom trail through from Boston Common to Paul Revere & Samuel Adam's graves, the former's house, this perfect little alleyway used bookstore with awesome old books and prints, a farmers market, Mike's pastry shop, and other stuff. Loved the north part of the city filled with italian influence and old italian men chatting on benches on the sidewalk. On the subway back, this guy playing a guitar in the subway sang Till There Was You, I'd never heard it in spanish. On the way home we had Blue Ribbon BBQ, Evan was in heaven. Best bbq he's had since his mission.

Sunday we went to Dave & Jessica's ward and then went on a drive. We went down the coast past these awesome northeastern homes towards Cape Cod. It was so beautiful out and soo warm and nice! We passed a town on the water that reminded me of Edmonds. We went to Plymouth and plymouth rock! Where MY ancestors landed on the mayflower. Pretty awesome, to go there and see what it must have been like when they reached the new world. The rest of the drive was beautiful and the end of our journey was what we thought was the quintessential east coast sandy beach that you'd just imagine from the movies. I was surprised that the ocean didn't have a stronger smell like it does in Seattle. Maybe that's just the puget sound smell. The sun went down. Driving back a lot of the homes we drove past had a candle lit (electric) in every window.

Today is Monday. Tomorrow we take the bus back to NY for Evan's first NY experience and to finish mine. We LOVE boston. We kept feeling like everything we've seen has been so iconically what you would expect to see in boston/the NE. And we've only seen a fraction of boston. Today we went to the boston aquarium and ran some errands and made sure to get more cannoli at Mike's pastry while we were there again. Ironically, we are visiting during Dave & Jessica's second anniversary which is today! Last year they visited us in Seattle during their first anniversary. Maybe this is a continuation of that tradition. haha Tonight we're splurging and eating where Jessica works - Legal Seafood, listed in that one "Top 1000 things you must do before you die" book. Hopefully I'll taste my first lobster! Then we'll see avatar in 3d at the imax. Hopefully we can make it romantic for our friends' anniversary :)

All we have to document this trip are a 35 mm holga and our eyes and a book to write stuff down in. You can see more pictures we've taken so far here and more to come!

Here are also a couple of screenshots we took of Nina when we skyped with her and my parents yesterday!





She leaned in smooching to give us a kiss!

So far they say she's doing really surprisingly great, aside from bumping her head on the corner of a table today. Great naps, great eating, playing. They walked around Greenlake and she loved seeing all the dogs there. My dad introduced her to the yard crows including rufus. She brings her coat to my dad and insists that they go outside. (she's pretty convincing) Once outside they say she just wants to sit on the brick wall we have lining our driveway where she rearranges bark and rocks and flowers. We've sent her a couple of postcards. Wednesday she'll head down to Tacoma to finish the trip there with the MacDonalds.

We're back! We had to reconfigure something in our blog. If you scroll down you can see some older posts that I just put up today.

Also, Nina had a few exciting firsts today!!! I'll start with the most important.

Her first Easter celebration! ----She was around for easter last year but this was her first with any participation. We were motivated by general conference to make this a meaningful easter for Nina, but crepes and what I call an easter egg 'scatter' (we didn't hide them, just scattered them on the floor for Soren, Clark, and her to find and open) were the best we could come up with. Maybe when she's a year or two older we'll try to make traditions that include more meaning. We don't want the easter bunny and candy to be the focus on such a sacred holiday.

Her first kiss She and Vaughn puckered up multiple times today. It was momentous. Probably more exciting to us parents than to them.

Throwing She threw her shoe into a basket and missed, and then she was practicing throwing easter candy and stuff. It was the first time I've seen her do anything close to throwing.


I have an easter side note. We had an interesting chat with a friend about Easter. Prior to him converting to the lds church in his late teens, he says that he misunderstood easter. All he knew about easter was a vague recollection that Jesus died on the cross. Essential, yes, but only a fraction of the story. In fact he said that even as a christian, his knowledge about Jesus didn't go much beyond that and the fact that Jesus' life entailed sermons and miracles. He didn't know anything about Christ's atonement in the garden of Gethsemane, or anything about Jesus' resurrection on the third day. Or what those things mean to us personally. That's a lot of the story he was missing. I found that interesting. I thought to myself why that was. It wasn't necessarily any misdeed on his part.

As we were talking I was reminded of one of the things we heard in a conference talk today - that reformers like William Tindale and Martin Luther and many others did so much to bring biblical literacy to the masses. Yet ironically now, hundreds of years later, with the bible being so widely available, there is increasing biblical illiteracy. Less and less christians are reading it or other scripture to learn about Jesus' life and teachings. William Tindale was burned and martyred. Other reformers sacrificed all and their lives so we could have precious scripture available to us. Are we using it and do we value it as much as they did? I hope to keep daily reading of the bible and book of mormon a practice in our home for our kids' sakes as we all try to follow our Savior and understand all He does for us.