Suprise! It's a...

Now that we've told our families, we've decided to make it public that we already found out the gender of our baby! Due to a scheduling conflict with our 20 week ultrasound and Jon's calculus final, Jon will not be able to attend and he really wanted to be there when we found out the gender of our baby. So, we decided to find out early- 5 weeks early! Yep, we could tell at 15 weeks that we are definitely having a baby... BOY!!! It's so much fun knowing the gender because he just feels so much more real now. Also, we've decided on a name- the only boy name we both really loved- Aaron. We still aren't set on a middle name, but we've got a while to decide.

At the beginning of the pregnancy Jon and I both thought it was a girl, mainly because a lot of people we know are having girls this coming year. After our twelve week ultrasound though, we both started thinking it might be a boy. We were happy to have either a boy or girl, but now that we know it's a boy we love the idea and love him! We're also excited because he will have a boy cousin on both sides of the family only 10 months older and a girl cousin on the McLaughlin side only 2 months older. For anyone who is interested, the ultrasound video is posted on this blog. It was the easiest way for us to show our out of state family. It's 8 minutes long and the first two minutes are just the doctor finding out the gender, but I loved when it finally came to showing his darling profile, arms, legs, fingers and so on. The tech even showed us a couple of minutes in 4D just for fun! As another update, I've finally started feeling him move. It's so much fun and such an exciting feeling. The first time I felt him for sure was after I drank a cup of hot cocoa! Here are a few pictures of our precious baby boy. My twenty week ultrasound is on the 15th of this month, so I get to see him again pretty soon.

I loved how we could see his little heart beating. He moved a lot during the ultrasound!

He is sooo cute!

A little hand reaching up.

At this early stage in pregnancy the babies still look really skinny in 4D, but it was fun to see him anyway because in the movie we could see his legs, feet, arms, hands and you can even see some of his fingers in this picture.

Jace

I'm currently studying in one of the labs at BYU and my phone just rang. It said the caller was my sister in law, Jeannie. I answered and said, "Hello" and heard this cute little voice say, "Hey, Aunt Aubrey! Um, I still have your train at my house." Then in the back ground I heard Jeannie say, "Jace, did you just call someone?" I got a good laugh out of this because Jace, my three-year-old nephew, must have just been pushing random buttons and called the last person on Jeannie's call list. He had no idea who he was calling, but somehow from "Hello" he figured out that it was me. I just thought it was hilarious and cute that he recognized my voice AND was able to think quickly enough of something relevant to tell me. Anyway, just a funny moment I had to share. I love that kid!

Thanksgiving Week

We spent Thanksgiving week with Jon's family this year and had such a wonderful time! Jason, Tae and their two boys, Kenshi and Yuushi, drove from Portland to Utah to spend some time with us. We all stayed at Aunt Carrie's house. It was fun to see Jon, Jared and Jason together. They had fun beating each other up, arm wrestling, playing Nintendo and doing other guy stuff like talking about electronics. The girls- myself, Jeannie and Tae- had fun shopping, doing crafts, talking and playing with the babies. We also did a lot with everyone together such as playing games, eating delicious meals and going to Temple Square. We had a really great week and were sad to see it end. I am thankful for families and holidays when we can all be together!

Baby Yuushi is such a joy! He is such a smiley, happy baby and he loves talking and cooing.
Kenshi was tired out from late nights and playing hard. He was fast asleep during our entire Thanksgiving Day walk.

Aunt Carrie and Jeannie getting ready for our "Turkey Trot". We didn't make it in time to go with the rest of the group, but we went on a nice long walk anyway.

Jace kept asking where the all of the turkeys were.

Kenshi is such a doll!

Jace settled for ducks and geese since there weren't any turkeys out.

The Gateway Mall was very festive with lights and a choir singing Christmas songs.

Jason and Kenshi at Temple Square.

Jon and I at Temple Square. I really liked the pink lights they have this year.

Tae painting her countdown blocks.

We decided that the less children each person had, the faster they finished- just less interruptions. I finished first(baby on the way), the Jeannie(Jace and a baby on the way) and then Tae(who has Kenshi and Yuushi). Luckily we were all able to finish them and they turned out great!

The brothers had fun playing Smash Brothers.

My completed countdown blocks.

Our First Baby Purchase

Yesterday we made our first baby purchase... a CRIB!!! Although we have about 5 months before baby is born, we found the crib we like and it was on sale at Walmart. The same crib sells at other stores, like Babies R' Us, etc, but it's a lot more and it seems to sell out pretty quickly. I noticed it at Walmart a couple months ago but didn't want to get it yet. Then it sold out and was out of stock for over a month. I kept checking back and yesterday they had it in stock, and the price was right, so we decided to order it. It's made by Storkcraft and we got it in the color Espresso. It had great reviews and we look forward to seeing how it looks when we get it and set it up!

Pregnancy Fitness Laugh

Those of you who know me know that I enjoy working out and I like to keep it interesting by participating in a variety of workouts; yoga, Pilate's, running, swimming, workout movies, Wii fit games, Zumba, weights, etc. I had a hard time doing much of anything my first trimester, because I felt so sick, but I still tried to get some walking in and either do my YBB prenatal workout or play WiiFit a couple times a week. Now that I'm feeling much better I am able to vary my workouts more and I tried a new movie today by one of my favorite instructors, Denise Austin. It was a lot of fun, and a pretty good workout, although these days working out tends to zap my energy pretty quickly.

Anyway, tonight I decided to step onto the Wii Fit board and do the "body test." Probably not the best idea. I think I've gained an average, healthy amount of weight thus far in my pregnancy, but it is weight gain nonetheless and the Wii Fit did not like it. It asked me to pin point the cause of the weight gain. Unfortunately, there is no "I'm pregnant option", it just assumes you've been overeating, lazy, etc. Trying not to feel too bummed out after a berating from my Wii board, I decided to search the Internet to see if there were any options out there for pregnant women to play the Wii without feeling like crap. This is the funniest solution I found and I just had to share because it really cracked me up. One person posted,

"Remind yourself that the board does not procreate and has no idea why you are not normal anymore."

What a great way to look at it! At least it gave me a laugh and made me feel a little better. I just need to keep a good perspective and not take what a computer game says personally.

Love

Can I just say that I already love this growing little baby so much! I really didn't know it was possible to love someone you haven't even met so greatly, but I feel like my love for this little one grows every day. I can't even imagine how I'm going to feel when I finally get to hold this precious baby.

Salt Lake Weekend and Disney on Ice

Jon and I spent some time in Salt Lake on Saturday of this week. We walked around the Gateway Mall, Jon's first time, and spent some time at Temple Square. We enjoyed a delicious lunch/dinner at Tucano's and then headed to the Energy Solutions Arena for Disney on Ice!!! The show was really enjoyable and entertaining. It lasted about two hours, but went by too fast for me! I couldn't get over how graceful and talented all of the skaters were. I was extra impressed by the ice skaters in huge bulky costumes, like the dwarves or the Beast, who could still skate and jump all over the place. All of the Princesses were beautiful and of course I loved seeing Snow White and her Prince! It was fun to see all of the little girls that came dressed up as their favorite princess. It brought back a lot of great memories from my time working at Disney World. Unfortunately, we left our camera in the truck all day and didn't get any pictures. Here are a few pregnant pictures though, one which was taken in the morning before we left (15 wks). We had a really great day and I'm glad I was feeling well enough to enjoy everything. Jon is completely over his fluish-cold-bug thing and mine is almost gone, just a bad cough left, so we are glad about that.

14 Weeks Pregnant

15 Weeks Pregnant