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I can't believe it took my parents this long to
write on the blog again.

It's been about 3 months since we last blogged and, as always, a bunch has happened in the gap. Andrew has the summer off from school but is going back in fall to tentatively continue studying comparative literature and cultural studies at the University of Utah. Emily is also planning on returning to school this fall to continue her studies in business and accounting.




We've been doing a lot of work on our house including painting and remodeling the railing around our stairs (as you can see in this picture). The new paint looks great and thanks to Jesse, the new railing looks awesome!  We are currently borrowing a piano from Ashley and Brandon Bickham while they
don't have space for it, and it looks great in our home--
even if it is horribly out of tune. It is finally summer time and that means 2 things: First, yard work. We have a ton to do on our yard this year and Andrew has been spending a lot of time trying to move the dirt around to level it out. When they dug out the basement of our house years ago, they just left the dirt in the front yard. While they may have had a plan with the dirt later, for us it is just a mess! AND full of weeds. With the help of some family, we are making it look loads better. We are excited to show you the pictures when it is completely finished.

The second thing that summer time means is ROCK-CLIMBING!!! Earlier in the spring we left Sterling with mama and papa Smith and went on an awesome climbing trip. We spent a day in Maple canyon, near Ephraim, and did lots of lead climbing and top roping on the cool conglomerate rock. The next morning, we left to go to Joe's valley which is a couple hours east of Ephraim. For those who don't know anything about Joe's valley, it is pretty much a mecca for climbers in Utah and around the U.S. We spent two days there to boulder and it was a total blast! We cant wait to go back and try the problems we were unable to finish soon.

Where did all my blocks go?

Ahh duh duh duh!!

Sterling is super happy and healthy which makes us super happy! He is growing SO fast, it is hard to keep up with him. He is about to turn 9 months and seems to be about on schedule. We will find out for sure when we see Dr. Carter next week. He spends his time rolling around and trying to figure out how to crawl. His favorite things to do right now are play with his drumstick (which he bangs on everything including his parents) and blocks--keeping the blocks where he can reach them has been a struggle for him, as you can see in this pic.

Thanks everyone for all that you have done and continue to do for us! We appreciate all of you more than we can express :) Thank you.

February!

It's been 5 months since we've posted, 5 months since Sterling was born, and 3 months since we bought a house. Sterling is just under 20 lbs. with a couple of teeth popping out, Andrew is studying another semester of school, and I've gone back to work and gotten a promotion at Jamba Juice (woohoo!).

Our house is in Taylorsville, Utah where Emily grew up :) It's a cute little home with wood floors, colorful walls, and a cute nursery that Sterling's grandparents helped to create. We love it, and the neighborhood is quiet and quite perfect for our little family.

Sterling's cousins are turning 4 years and 1 year during February and March, which also marks his 6-month birthday as well! Wow, time flies. For 4-year old Ryker's birthday, we went up to Soldier's Hollow for tubing :) It was cold, but the hills were well-groomed and the automated lift was pretty fun (we did think it went a bit slow considering we could have probably walked up the hills faster). But, all in all it was a great afternoon and birthday activity. We're probably going to go again with friends early March.

We had a great couples retreat Valentine's Day weekend. We let my sister Melinda and her husband Rob babysit Sterling while we travelled up to Midway with some cousins and their friends to play games and enjoy each other's company :) We played fun dance games on the Wii, shopped at the Park City outlets, played some new card and board games, and also a little bit of Texas Hold 'Em. It was an awesome time, and a well-deserved vacation for Andrew and I.

Sterling talks a TON to himself, and makes lots of goos and gaas for us. He loves eating his carrots, sweet potatoes, and butternut squash. He hates tummy time, and loves pretending that he can walk. AND he has the most infectious smile I've ever seen! I've learned to make his baby food at home which saves a load of money, and isn't very difficult. We switched pediatricians recently to a friend of Andrew's family, Matt Carter--he's about a million times better than the last place we were going and we feel a lot more comfortable taking advice from him, which is important for first-time parents.

We don't blog enough, as you can see! But we'll try to be better. Thanks for reading!

The Story So Far

Each year for Labor Day Weekend, we go to Moab with the Smith side of the family. We left Thursday the 1st of Sept in the evening at about 7 or 8 o'clock and arrived around midnight. In the morning, it was mine and Emily's day to make all the food and plan the days activities, so we woke up early to start cutting up vegetables and meat for the omelettes and preparing other things for the breakfast and lunches that we packed for everyone. After that we left to go hiking for the day. 1st we hiked to Corona Arch, which was super cool but also super duper hot--we all stayed very well hydrated and saw the arch and returned to our cars in safety. After the dry and hot hike to the arch, we decided to go to a more cool and calm place so we went to Mill Creek North Fork, which after about a mile has a nice cool waterhole that you can swim in. Finally we got back to our condo for the night, and Emily and I barbecued hamburgers and hotdogs for everyone and cleaned up when we were all done eating. Then after talking and planning for the next day, Emily finally went to bed at around 10:30 or 11:00 and I soon followed after her. At about 12:30 A.M. Saturday morning Emily woke me up saying that she had been having contractions. I knew that contractions could mean that you were having a baby and I also knew that there were other contractions that didn't mean a whole lot and seeing as how emily wasn't due until the 29th of Sept. I assumed that they were the not important kind, but Em told (and proved) me otherwise. So, we started measuring how far apart the contractions were getting, and when they started getting down to about 6 minutes we decided to call our doctor, Doctor Curtis, to see what we should do. Unfortunately, Dr. Curtis was out of town, but we were able to talk to Dr. Merrill (who was great) and he told us that if they did get down to within five minutes that we would need to go to a hospital. Soon enough the contractions were within five minutes and we decided to go to the hospital there in Moab--we found a brand new facility had been built there earlier this year. We got there at probably 3 or 4 in the morning and the nurses there took great care of Emily and gathered all the information they needed before telling us that it was likely that Emily was indeed going into labor but that it wasn't sure at the same time (it made sense at the time...). They told us that we had some options; we could stay in the hospital in Moab and wait for the baby to come or the contractions to totally stop, we could leave the hospital and stay in Moab and hope that Em was only going through false labor, or we could head back to Salt Lake and go to a hospital there if the contractions continued and be closer to facilities and doctors that we knew and would probably need with a possible 36-week newborn. This was a kinda tense time for us, we were worried about all the normal things people worry about when they might be going into labor, but we were also worried about the earliness of the labor (we were expecting to have 4 more weeks until the baby would come), being far from home, and not having a NICU in the Moab hospital. Not to mention the long drive home and whether or not emily would go into labor on the way back to Salt Lake, possibly making everybody end their vacation early, and finding out that it was nothing but a false labor. So, it was a little bit stressful and tiring, but we decided that we were going to go back to Salt Lake. The nurses gave emily a couple of shots of terbutaline which slowed the contractions way down long enough for us to go to the condo at 6 in the morning saturday, pack the things we needed, and drive all the way back to Salt Lake (arriving at 10-11). When we finally got home, Emily tried to relax and take it easy and sleep while the contractions increased in strength and frequency. Emily, however, was unable to sleep even though she had hardly slept at all the two previous nights. Emily decided to take a bath to help her relax but when the bath was over the contractions were so frequent and strong that she was unable to dress herself. So, after helping her dress I told her that we were going to go to the hospital and we arrived there at about 3:00 in the afternoon on Saturday. I ran inside to get someone to wheelchair her to where she need to be while I parked the car. As I followed her in I passed the nurse who had pushed emily and she told me the room that she would be in--the other nurses there told me that Emily did not look like a "happy camper" and others who were talking about her (I imagined her yelling and screaming down the hall as she got carted to her room). All the nurses took really good care of Emily and made her feel comfortable and relatively relaxed, one of them came in to feel how far dilated Em was and said that she was probably going into real labor. In Moab she was at a 2, and now she was at a 4. When it was decided that she was really going into labor they brought in the anesthesiologist and gave Emily an epidural at which point she was FINALLY able to calm down and relax while I called the families and let everyone know what was happening. At about 8:00, Emily was completely dilated and effaced (I don't know what effaced mean) and the doctor told her that some times women have to push for up to three hours at this point. So with that, Emily began to push and within 20 minutes Sterling Roark Smith was born at 7 lbs and 3.3 oz and 20.5 ". Sterling's first APGAR test score was a 9 and his second was 8 because he was having a little bit of trouble getting some moisture out of his lungs. But, he was able to finally get it all out and has been healthy and happy ever since. Emily and I spent the rest of the night, the next day, and the next morning in the hospital while the doctors and nurses made sure that Sterling and his mom were healthy. At long last we were able to go home (still living at my parents while we wait for house issues to be resolved) and my mom and dad had cleaned and prepared our bedroom for the new arrival! And that is the story so far...

August...already?

I am so excited that it's August! I'm at 32 weeks today, only 8 more to go. It's weird for me to be seeing a doctor every couple of weeks now, it's probably more than I have seen one over the course of my entire life. Things are going well though, baby is healthy and happy! We have been packing up our stuff to move to West Jordan, we're just waiting on the title to clear on our new home. I love where we are living now, but there are new opportunities awaiting us wherever we go from here that will be fun to discover as well.

I've been reading the April 2011 conference and loving every talk from it--one of my favorite quotes is by Jean A. Stevens, First Counselor in the Primary General Presidency, "It is here in our families, in an atmosphere of love, where we see and appreciate in a more personal way the divine attributes of His spirit children. It is here in our families where our hearts can be softened and in humility we desire to change, to become more childlike. It is a process by which we can become more Christlike." I know that having a baby boy will be such a blessing to Andrew and I, we will be able to see things from a different perspective and learn to appreciate each other more fully as eternal companions. I love you, Andrew! :)

Andrew goes back to school in a couple of weeks--he's pretty anxious to start up again. He already has all of his textbooks and has started studying German for fun. I keep teasing him about it because I can just imagine how annoyed his classmates will be at how overly prepared he is compared to the rest of the class...but of course, that doesn't really matter. It just makes me giggle :)

We have one trip before the baby comes in September, thank heavens. We haven't done anything outside of the valley in months and are due for a couple days off! We'll be headed to hot, hot, hot Moab for the annual Smith family outing on Labor Day weekend. At that point, I will be at 36 weeks, so I am not sure what it will be like for me. However, I am still extremely excited to get out and about before baby comes!

That's all from us now, we'll probably post photos of our new place after we actually own it!

What will baby smith's first name be?

Chocolate Covered Strawberries and a Baby Boy!

As a fun Mother's Day treat, we decided to make our own chocolate covered strawberries! Originally I thought it might be rather difficult and time-consuming, but it ended up only taking about 2 hours from start to finish and was fun for us to do. We used almond bark, heavy whipping cream, and a little butter for the dipping chocolate. For the decoration, we used Betty Crocker brownie toppers--cream cheese and dark chocolate. If you warm them up in the microwave, put them in a sealed sandwich bag, and cut a tiny triangle off of the corner, it's perfect for decorating.

In other news, we had our 20 week ultrasound last Friday and found out we are having a boy! We're thinking about names, so if you have any ideas you'd like to share, we're open to them. I am so excited to have a little baby boy in our lives--it will be a grand adventure!