It Has Been Declared!!!

Kaylee has decided that KIM is her favorite aunt!
(of the week. . . .and mostly just to bug Paige)
Congratulations, Kim!

Our first Christmas

This is Kaylee's first Christmas as well as mine and Joel's first Christmas married. I'm excited! I took some pictures of some of our fun decorations. Click on the picture to enlarge it and see the caption.

Our poor little girl

Anyone who has met Kaylee so far knows what a mild baby she is. She is just so sweet and hardly cries at all. Well this past week that's changed a bit. In the evenings she's been fussy and not as easy to calm down as normal. Turns out our poor baby has colic. I checked the symptoms on the internet and she's got them (except the crying for 3 hours straight part, thank goodness).

I actually didn't realize what colic was until now. I thought it was just what they called babies who cried a lot for no reason. I didn't realize they cried from pain.

I feel so bad for her! I just hate knowing she's in pain and not being able to make it go away. One website said that colic generally peaks around 6 weeks. Kaylee is 5 weeks, so I'm hoping it won't last too much longer (though it might get worse before it gets better). She's actually still very mild and doesn't cry that much. In the evenings we just have to be holding her and comforting her constantly until she falls asleep and then she'll be okay through the night and next day until evening comes around again. You can see on her face when her pain gets worse. It's so sad! I'm going to try to figure out if something I'm eating is hurting her. Hopefully she'll feel better soon!

Disney Cruise

I realize this was from a long time ago, but it was so much fun and I love the pictures!

We almost died at Denny's!

Okay, not really, but there was a fire.

Tuesday night Joel and I went to Denny's around 10:30. I got some hot chocolate (which they now put in a fancy little glass cup thing instead of a boring mug... it looked very pretty) and bacon cheese fries (yum!). Joel got a strawberry lemonade (the good kind with real strawberries and not just some flavoring squirted in) and a hamburger that had hashbrowns and an egg on it (it fits Joel so well you'd think he'd invented it). Kaylee had a pacifier.

We really enjoyed ourselves and our first time going out to eat since Kaylee was born. We got a box for our leftovers and were just finishing up when Joel noticed people pointing out the door. Our cars (yes, 2 cars... we met up there after I spent the day at my families and he had some Quick Wits shows) were parked right outside of the doors, so Joel went to check to make sure everything was okay. Turns out there was an electrical fire in one of the lights in between the glass doors.

We could smell it at that point and it smelled horrible! There weren't many people in Denny's that late (it was a little after 11 at this point). There were maybe 4 employees and less than 10 customers. The employees called 911 and were running around trying to figure out what to do. One of the customers was giving orders (turn off the lights, get everyone out, etc.). He was nice and told us we better get our baby out so she didn't have to smell the smoke. They turned out the lights and were getting everyone out. They said we didn't have to pay and they'd take care of it, but Joel felt bad and paid anyway.

So that's how we almost died. It's not actually that exciting of a story, but I found the whole thing to be quite funny and thought I'd share.

Time for more Kaylee pictures!

Ok, Ok, I Got "Tagged"

I'm not trying to push the baby pictures down, but I got tagged by Kim and since she's pretty cool (and since Beth made me) I guess I'll acknowledge the tagging and answer the questions. :)

*How long have you been together? We've been together since 6-6-06 (if you include texting)
*How long did you date? I've been dating since I was fifteen, but I won't admit that to my parents and/or children.
*How old is she? She's old enough for me and young enough for her.
*Who eats more? Me. Totally. Although she has been eating more since she had the baby.
*Who said I love you first? Me. I had to otherwise she was going to beat me up.
*Who is taller? Me. Unless she has on her ultra-high stiletto Spice Girl platform heels
*Who sings better? I don't know. She won't sing in front of me. I lean in during church and she sings softer.
*Who is smarter? I plead the 5th on that question. (See! I do know law terms, Beth!)
*Who does the laundry? The machine at my parents' or her parents' house.
*Who does the dishes? The machine at our house with the duct tape on it.
*Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? Which way are we facing when asking this question? At the foot? At the head? On the left side? On the right side? Where?!?!
*Who pays the bills? Our landlord. Sweet!!
*Who mows the lawn? Probably the plane mechanics. I'm not sure.
*Who cooks dinner? Lately? The relief society.
*Who drives when you are together? Me. Beth gets too distracted when I'm sitting next to her.
*Who is more stubborn? Me! It's been me and it'll always be me! Me.
*Who kissed who first? According to Newton's 3rd law (For every force acting on an object, the object will exert an equal, yet opposite, force on its cause.) When I kissed her, she was kissing me back with equal and opposite force. So it was a tie.
*Who asked who out? I asked her out. She hesitated.
*Who proposed? I did. I totally tricked her into thinking I wasn't. Ha!!
*Who is more sensitive? Me. I cry everytime I see that last play from the 2006 BYU vs. U of U game. It was so beautiful. So beautiful!
*Who has more friends? She does. She has Tyra, Regis, Kelly, Oprah, Elizabeth, Whoopi, Barbara, Joy, Joey, Chandler, Ross, Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Chuck, Ned, Olive, Emerson, etc.
*Who has more siblings? She does. . . for now!
*Who wears the pants in the family? All my pants are in the hamper. :(

Here's What You've REALLY Been Waiting For!!!

Kaylee Jane Hilton was born Weds, November 14, 2007 at 4:15 pm.

She weighed 8 lbs. 8 oz. and is 20 inches long.
She is an angel!!!

Kaylee Jane

This slide show is of the pictures Joel's family took. I can't figure out how to change the zooming effects so that it doesn't cut Kaylee out of half the pictures, but I'm leaving the slide show in because it still shows her some and it shows what was going on after she was born (me with my swollen face chowing down Fiddle Faddle, our amazing view of the temple from our room, our wonderful family loving the new baby, Joel adoring his new daughter, Kaylee getting her first bath, etc.)

Here's What You've Been Waiting For!

Hello everyone!

Sorry that it has taken so long for us to get this post up. As you know things have been a little crazy lately and our life is finally semi-slowing down.

This was such a wonderful event in our life that we had to share it with everyone out there. Many of you have already heard the events and the stories, but, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Well, I won't tease you any longer, so without further ado, here are the pictures. . . . .of our Halloween costumes. :)




I was Sweeney Todd. Beth was Mrs. Lovett with her "special" pie.

Happy Halloween everybody!

Kaylee's Nursery

I said a long time ago that I'd post nursery pictures and I finally took some. It's really white because the walls and furniture are all white, but oh well. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.



Her name is above her crib.

This table is between her crib and changing table. Here's one of the basket/box things I talked about in a previous post. For now it's just filled with some toys and such.
Here's a close-up of the lanterns so you can see the cute pink beads on the fishing line.
Changing table.
One of the box/basket things I made. Much cheaper than buying one of the cute baskets! This is tupperware from the $1 store and the other one is a toaster box.
Close-ups of the pictures. (Notice the frames have the same design as the letters in Kaylee's name).
My mom made this cute towel (it was hanging on the flower hook in a picture above). It's so cute and goes perfect with the colors and theme of the room. Thanks mom!
Another picture I painted. I think I need to move it a little to the right. Thoughts?
Her crib. It's not done. I still need to make the bumper pads. I've set up the material I'll be using for them. It will be tied on with pink ribbon.
I painted these, but haven't figured out where to put them yet. Any suggestions?

Joel is Slacking!

I can't believe Joel hasn't posted anything about his Halloween costume yet! I'll post a picture of the meat pie (aka: cheesecake) I made for my costume, but he'll have to be the one to explain what we were. I made 2 cheesecakes. One was a Twix cheescake and one had cherry on the top. Those gummies sticking out are supposed to look like body parts. Hopefully Joel has a picture of the other one 'cause it might look better. Anyway, being able to make a dessert as a prop for my costume convinced me to be who I was.

Kim Tagged Me

Kim tagged me, which means I need to post 6 things you may not know about me and then tag 6 people who have to do the same. She's in big trouble because I don't know what to put! I'll tag my people first: Joel, Iva, Josh, Krista, Mike and Shaina (sorry Joel, I totally took your friends because I don't know many people who blog). Now I'll give the 6 things a try (everyone probably already knows these things, but oh well)...

1. My favorite hobby makes me feel a bit guilty. I love making chocolates and desserts and sharing them with everyone, but I know it's so unhealthy! Why can't it be as fun making healthy food as it is to make sweets?
   
2. I love reality tv. Not the Dancing with the Stars type or even American Idol (I get bored with those). I like the competition ones where the show is only one night and America is not doing the voting: Survivor, Biggest Loser, Beauty and the Geek, etc.
   
3. I absolutely love Elisabeth Hasselbeck from "The View!" I recently started watching the Hot Topics segment of the show and I love her because of her conservative views and the way she stands up for them when everyone gives her such a hard time. Plus we're both having a baby this month. And if that wasn't enough I found out yesterday that she has celiac disease! I love anyone who is living a gluten-free lifestyle because they understand what it's like for me!
4. This was sort of said in #3, but I have a sensitivity to gluten. Don't know if it's actual celiac disease or just an intolerance, but I don't eat any gluten (it's found in wheat, flour, barley, rye, and most oats). It's been one of the hardest things in my life, especially during the early months of pregnancy, but it's getting easier. Everyone probably already knew about this, but you might not know that I love talking about it with everyone who will listen and I really think that a lot more people have it than realize. I try to convince people to try it out.
   
5. The hardest thing about making dinner is deciding what to make. Once I decide, I enjoy making it, but I hate hate hate deciding.
   
6. One of my favorite things to do is walk around Michael's or Robert's craft stores and dream up all the things I want to learn to do. Kinda nerdy, I know.
   

Look how fat!

I've finally got a picture up! We just took this today, so this is a picture of me just over 8 months. My belly is HUGE!

Muffy

We have a new pet. His name is Muffy. Muffy is a mouse. If you come visit us today you'll see the fancy schmancy mouse trap Joel set up for him. The thing about Muffy is, even though he's an uninvited pet he's super cute! We're wanting to catch him and release him in a far away field rather than kill him. It's so cute when we chase him around and he does a sharp turn and slips on the linoleum. And how he peeks his head around the corner to watch us.

Joel may have caught him already... we're not sure. There are mouse prints in the flour we put right outside its hole, but we don't know if they came from Muffy or another mouse before Joel closed the hole up with a tin can lid and duct tape. Hopefully it was Muffy and (as cute as he was) we've seen the last of him.

A month to go!

My post won't be as entertaining as Joel's, but I figured I'd give an update. We're still waiting on internet, but we're going to be able to get it for free, so it's been worth it. We really ought to have it any day now.

I'm not doing anything too exciting with my days. Basically just preparing for Kaylee. I can't wait! The nursery is coming along. I'm trying to be frugal with my decorating and it's actually been quite entertaining for me. I'm learning how to sew and have made a crib skirt from a pattern and 2 basket type things without a pattern (hard to explain... I'll put up pictures sometime). I've also painted some pictures and little wooden critters. The colors are brown and turquoise with a splash of pink. And as of now the theme is little critters (turtles, butterflies, snails, fireflies, etc.).

I've also been reading books to prepare for delivery and bringing Kaylee home. I'm halfway through a DVD called "The Baby Whisperer." I'm really liking it. I'm going to make Joel watch it too because it has ways of doing things that I hadn't heard of (like a different way of burping your baby).

I'm pretty big. Once we get our internet I'll post a picture (I'm at my in-laws right now). I'm feeling pretty well. I'm just having all the usual aches and pains that come with being 8 months pregnant. The heartburn is awful, but I'm quite blessed with how smoothly everything has been going so far.

Anyway, things are good. Joel is doing well at work. I'm loving his work schedule because it means we have every evening and weekend together (we didn't have that luxury while he was doing security). Well, I hope everyone is doing well. Let's all hope we get internet soon because I miss chatting online with everyone.

Light at the End of the Tunnel

Update time!

So we're settling in to the airport and I finally got my clothes moved from the dining room to the bedroom. We're also getting a table with matching chairs (yes, we have moved on from the college years) from Spence and Tiff. So the place is really coming together.

We don't have internet yet. We would have, but we've been bounced back and forth like a ping-pong ball. We were going to go with Webwave, and when the guy came to set it up we found out that the airport already had Webwave. So the installer-dude told us that we could just use the airport's internet, if it was alright with them.

Beth talked to the airport and they said they didn't mind at all. So she called up Webwave and the lady told her that we could NOT just get free internet and that we had to pay the full amount and get a 2-year contract. Beth stood her ground and told the lady that the installer said it was ok and the airport said it was ok. The mean lady told Beth that she'd talk to the installer guy. And then they said they'd give us a discounted rate. . .but we'd still have to do the 2-year contract.

THEN, when all was planned out we had our maintanance guy come by and installed the other half of our closet rod (hence, why I was changing in the dining room) and said that the airport was going to get new internet and he thought we should just hook on their new internet stuff.

So we're still waiting.

There's your update!

Yes, We Have No Internet

Our posts on this blog are going to be limited for the next little bit while we decide which internet provider to go with. We're looking for a fast, efficient, reliable provider. . .that's cheap and available in our area.

In the meantime you'll just have to be satisfied with our posts while we do our laundry, because we do that at my parent's house.

We've organized the bathroom, kitchen and living room so far and we're working on the master bedroom and the baby's room. It's turning out to be a nice place to live. And we've got rabbit ears on our television so we don't feel quite as cut off from the outside world. Well, I've still got internet at work, Beth is the one who is cut off. (P.S. It is still REALLY weird to me that my new job is actually paying me for Labor Day when I'm not working. It's an odd concept to me. I guess this is a "grown-up" job now.)

So. . .our first day at our new ward was. . .interesting. First of all we had to find our church. I google texted (since we. . .well, see the title of this post) to see what churches were nearby. There were four that came up. I called my dad and found out where it was. We had to pass a perfectly good church to get to our church. It was only a five minute drive or so, but Beth says we still can't walk (darn pregnant women).

They have sacrament last so Beth and I had to separate first thing. That's always a bit stressful. Elder's quorum was normal, except that there were two other new people in addition to myself. From what I hear the ward just split and they're probably going to split it again soon. With the new developments popping up this ward is growing fast. Sunday school also seemed normal. Then. . .sacrament meeting happened.

The first thing that struck us as odd was that, even though it was early and not many benches were full, there were scriptures, coats, purses and bags all over the place. People were SAVING seats for sacrament meeting. I've seen that before in movie theaters and in concerts and plays, but I've never seen that in church before. Weird.

Then came the children. Like a hoard of zombies they came waddling into the room en masse and filled the seats. Seriously, the ward is about 80% children 6 and under. There was no silence in sacrament meeting. There was constantly crying, yelling, talking and laughing. At times it was hard to hear the people bearing their testimonies.

Which brings me to my next point: the testimonies. For every one adult there was about 6 kids who bore their testimonies. And while most of them were the standard "I'dliketburymytestimonyandIknowthischurchistrueandIlovemymomanddad" variety, but there were a couple that made me belly laugh.

My personal favorite was when a little boy got up there and put his mouth over the microphone and yelled "HI!" so loud that everyone in the congregation jumped and dropped their tupperware full of Cheerios. He proceeded to bless the congregation which was quite entertaining. I don't think he's got the difference between bearing testimony and saying prayers down yet.

And there was a cute little girl that got up there and said, "Hello. My name is Madison. I like to color. And I like arts and crafts and in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen." I was touched.

And the sad thing is that any time someone bore a real testimony it almost felt inappropriate because there was so much noise and no spirit.

It was definitely an interesting beginning to this chapter of our life.

This is our airport apartment!

20070822JoelBethany

(the transitions in the slideshow kind of cut off the bottom of the pics, but it'll give you an idea of what it looks like).

We live at the airport!!!

That's right... me and Joel just signed a contract to live in an apartment at the airport. LOL. How awesome is that?! No, it's not some aparmtment complex next to the airport... it's in the actual airport terminal!

It's actually quite nice and spacious. It used to be the airport owners apartment. I'm not positive, but I think we may be the only tenants to live there since him. He would just sleep there occasionally. They were going to turn it into a lounge for pilots, but decided to rent it out. It's on the 2nd floor of the building. Below us is a main office and on our floor there are classrooms for the flight school and some administrative offices. The airport is small and basically for single-engine planes and a few helicopters.

If anyone wants to visit, there's plenty of parking... we have an entire parking lot :). And you just have to look for the big red and white tower: we're right next to it.

It's pretty awesome. The biggest pain about it is no washer/dryer hookups and DSL doesn't go that far out, so we might have to figure out some kind of satellite thing. Otherwise it really is a great deal! Yay! I'm so excited to start moving in!!! We'll start next Monday and have to be fully out of our current place by Friday the 31st.

I'll post pictures within the next few days.

You've got to be kidding me...

Kim and Brooke convinced me to create a blog and I finally had something semi-exciting to post about (mine and Joel's new apartment), but that will have to be another time because I have something else to post. Here's my frustrating story...

I was driving to meet Joel at our new apartment to sign the contract. He was just getting off work and I was leaving from his families house in Layton (I hung out there all day after seeing the apartment that morning). Rob was going to come with me to see the apartment and then we were going to meet up with Renae for dinner. Thank goodness she suggested dinner!!! Since she did, Rob just came in my car and was going to ride back with Renae. Brent and Mike also came with us.

We were heading south on Highway 89 and getting onto the ramp to merge onto I-15 and were stopped in traffic. It was stop and go and so frustrating! 25 minutes later we were still making our way on the on-ramp... and then my car died! Can I just say I AM SO GRATEFUL FOR FAMILY!!! The check engine light popped on and my car just turned off. I couldn't get it to start again, so Brent and Mike jumped out and pushed my car as much on the shoulder as they could (there's construction going on, so it was hard to get very far off). Can you imagine what I would've done if I had been in my car alone?! The jerk behind me started honking and yelling at us (what the heck... he was mad he couldn't drive ahead 10 feet just to be stopped again?).

So yeah... my car is dead. Someone from my in-laws ward saw them on the side and stopped to help. They gave me a ride to meet Joel in Woods Cross so we could sign the contract before the place closed (I was supposed to be there at 6pm... it was almost 7 and that's when the guy is done with work). Rob, Brent and Mike stayed behind with the car to see if it just needed to cool down. Turns out it didn't. Renae picked them up and they all met us at the apartment and then we went to Lorena's for dinner.

It was close to 9 by this point and we went back to the car. We got it towed to a place in Centerville and spent the night in Layton. Today I'm just waiting in Layton for them to call and tell me what's wrong. I so so hope it doesn't cost too much! We just put down a deposit on an apartment (that's more expensive than our last one since it's 2 bedroom) and we have my tuition to be paying for, extra gas money while we drive back and forth moving, and a baby coming. We really really don't need this right now. I'm just a bit frustrated.

But with all that it has made me appreciate my in-laws even more. I've always loved them, but this has just made me so much more grateful for them and how helpful they are. I truly am lucky to have married into such a great family!