Announcing Our Pregnancy

Ok so since we knew we would be in Utah for early Christmas we knew we had to tell the family that we were pregnant.  It was earlier than we wanted but we figured they would get mad at us if we waited a few weeks longer and didn't say anything while we were visiting.  Anyway over Thanksgiving Chase and I decided that it would be fun to make a photo flip book.  We planned it all out and did many trial runs before we went to Stoney Creek to take the pictures.  It was pretty darn cold but we braved it and even changed into summer clothes at one point.  I'm sure everyone thought we were crazy.  Well after we got that all taken care of we tried to assemble a book at the last minute before heading out to Utah but it didn't work like we wanted it to.  Since we had made a video of our flip book pictures and sent them to Chan we figured that we would just figure out a way to share our video with everyone.  First up was my parents.  After they had gone to bed we put the video on my dad's ipad, wrote a note saying to watch our video on top of the iPad and left it on the kitchen table where we knew they would find it the next morning.  I had just so happened to wake up right about the time I heard them watching the video.  It was funny hearing them be quietly excited.  Next was Jamie and Adam since they came over to spend the day with us.  I had taken pictures during my last stay for Myles and Lyla's birthday, so I figured this would be a great way to get them to look at the computer.  I told them that I had a really cute picture of Adam and Myles together so they both needed to see it.  Lo and behold there was no picture just our video.  They were excited for us and excited for the fact that Jamie is only due a month before me.  Everyone was of course sworn to secrecy because we didn't want the news spreading past the immediate family.  Later that night we had our group dinner which is when we told all of the Birks' minus Carissa, Chip and Riley.  This one we knew would be a little tricky getting all of them to focus on the computer at once.  We came up with the idea to tell them that we had a tour of our house and told them all to watch.  We got congrats all around and shared in the excitement with everyone.  Since Carissa, Chip & Riley weren't there to see the video, I emailed it to them and told them to watch a tour of our house.  Now you're probably wondering about Tiff and Rob, well…... they already knew.  Earlier when I was trying to figure out presents for the parents I had asked for pictures.  Tiffany called me up to talk about it and guessed that I was pregnant.  Lets just say it's really hard to keep such a big secret from everyone!  It's a good thing we live in Michigan otherwise I'm sure the secret would've been spilled long before it was.  I'm glad we got to share our news while we were there and that we could all share in our excitement.

The grandparents all got a phone call as soon as I was in my 2nd trimester, which then meant the news was free to be spread.  :)

Love Day

Valentines this year was just as lovely as it has been in the past.  I know a bunch of people think it's dumb that we are told we have to celebrate our love on a certain day, but I think it's a fun opportunity to do something out of the ordinary.  This year we decided to forgo the presents and plan a date night instead.  Chase planned a lovely cheap date for us which was awesome!  He was able to get free tickets to the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, which was really fun to go to because it was something different.  I unfortunately was not ready when Chase got home from work and I was having a hard time finding a dress to wear, which made us leave too late to go to dinner, so we stopped at Arbys'.  Chase had made a joke at work earlier asking the boys if Wendys' was fancy enough for our date, of course they all said no, so it was funny that we did end up eating fast food.  I was completely ok with it though and not disappointed one bit :)  The Orchestra was down town which is always an adventure since were not comfortable with the city.  Getting there turned out to be easy and we weren't scared since we were in the middle of the college area and there were plenty of people walking around with ease.  Going home was a different story though.  It was nice and dark, and the the street signs down there are pretty much nonexistent.  Needless to say we missed the onramp for the freeway because it was not marked at all and hard to spot.  Which then as soon as we missed the onramp we ended up in some creepy poorly lit area, not even a mile past the on ramp.  It's amazing how easy it is to feel unsafe by making one wrong turn (or not turning).  While we were trying to get back to the road (we had to make a loop because of the one way streets) we ended up hitting a car swallowing pot hole.  We hit so hard because neither of us saw it since the road wasn't lit, that we were afraid we broke Chase's.  Luckily all seemed just fine :) Even though we had our exciting make my heart race out of fear part to the night we still had a very fun night!  I'm glad that Chase had the great idea to do something outside of the norm.  It really was a fun night.  We haven't gone on my date night yet, because I'm waiting for the temperature to be warm enough to be outside at night.  We might be waiting a long time though ;)

Yeah, looking down at the camera makes for very attractive pictures. 

We did have a fun Valentines night though!  We made our favorite soup (asparagus soup) that we only get once in a blue moon and made fried ice cream.  It was definitely a tasty night :)

Like I said this Valentines was just as lovely as the rest! :)

New Years!

To ring in 2014 we celebrated with our friends Ryan and Jess.  It was pretty low key but at least we had good company, yummy food, a yummy drink concoction, and a movie to keep us up late enough to watch the ball drop and to receive a new years kiss.  It was a good night and we were glad to make it back home to our bed safe and sound :)  What a great way to start off our new year.

This is obviously not from new years! :)

2013 Christmas

Alright heres another late holiday post.

For Christmas this year we decided that we couldn't afford the plane tickets to go to Utah during Christmas and since the Johnson clan would be in Cincinnati which is only a 5 hr drive that our Christmas would be a little different.  So we headed out to Utah a few days after Thanksgiving and stayed a week.  Here's how our festivities went.

First off we had a heck of time getting out to Utah due to Expedia messing up.  Which caused for a very long day and a very grumpy Morgan.  Chase said he was surprised at how mean I was with Expedia when I myself worked at 1-800 Contacts, but this whole debacle is a whole other story in of itself.  So onto our week.  We ended up getting in around 11 or 11:30 pm, it's too blurry to remember.  The next day Adam had taken off of work to spend the day with us so dad got off early and we all hung out during the day.  Eventually we split off and the boys went to play with the airplane while us girls went shopping.  Later that day we had a group dinner with both sides of the family.  I love doing this because then we get to see everyone right when we get there and right before we leave.  Of course this was the day that everybody found out that we were pregnant :) so exciting.  The next few days we did a lot of hanging out and enjoying our time.  Saturday was set aside for Christmas with my side of the family.  Mom had also set it up to have the Larsen family $10 gift party.  It was a day of fun! :)  Sunday was Christmas for Chase's side.  We all went to church together which was fun since theres a good group of us and a handful of kiddos.  It was a lot of fun though being able to go to church as a whole family, minus Chan of course.  We also had a lovely Christmas there, but then it felt like Christmas was all over with, expect for the fact that it was the beginning of the month.  Whoops.  The next couple of days we did a lot of hanging out, visiting with friends and visiting those who requested a special visit ;) We even went to see Frozen with all of Chase's family minus the kiddos and my parents. We then ended our stay with another group dinner and getting in our goodbyes.  All in all we had a very fun and lovely visit!!!
(I didn't take any pictures :( oops.  I'll add some if I can get my hands on some.)

The next part of Christmas was spent with Tiff, Rob and the girls in Cincinnati for the actual Christmas.  We had a lot of fun down there as well.  We went and saw Frozen on Christmas Eve, made ambrosia, read the story of Christ's birth and acted it out, set out cookies for santa, ate the reindeer poop, watched the girls open all of their presents from Santa and family, skyped with Elder Chan and all of Chase's fam, went to the zoo, played at the park, made cardboard cars for our drive in movie, watched lots of movies, ate yummy food, and had ourselves a good ole time.  We enjoyed our time down there and loved that we could all be together for Christmas!!!

This Christmas was definitely different from all of our past Christmas' but I'm so glad that we still got to be with all of our loved ones to celebrate the season.

I wonder what 2014 will be like? :)

Flashback to Thanksgiving

Alright so since this was our first Thanksgiving in Michigan I feel like I need to write it down even though it's been 3 months.

Thanksgiving this year (2013) was very different from the Thanksgivings we are used to.  To start off we were going from one celebration to the next, so we ate a lot less food this year.  Which also meant that we weren't surrounded by our families.  In fact Thanksgiving day for us was kind of weird.  We ended up needing to run to the grocery store to buy a couple of things non-Thanksgiving related, which felt so weird shopping on the holiday.  We then ended up having hot pockets and mashed potatoes for dinner.  Talk about lame and pretty funny all at the same time.

 Luckily though we had a real Thanksgiving dinner to go to the next day.  Well I thought it was going to be dinner but found out a couple of hours before that the "dinner" was actually an early lunch.  Yikes.  Needless to say my plans of baking a pie went out the window and costco came to the rescue with their delicious pumpkin pie.  Mmmm.  So this dinner was with our friends and their family.  We were kind of the odd balls out not knowing anyone other than Ryan and Jess and we sat at the extra table with just Ryan cause there wasn't room on the big table but that's ok.  We got to know the others a little bit and had a good day.  The food was delicious and we enjoyed ourselves.

Oh I almost forgot.  Chase had a corvette over the holiday and because we got a nice snow storm on Thanksgiving day we were a little stranded at home because both the corvette and Chase's car didn't have snow tires and my car was locked up in GM's parking lot.  Ooops.  That's alright though because the rest of the time we had the car the roads weren't slick so we were able to have some fun driving it.  I even got to drive it and I felt so cool :) haha

So that was our 2013's Thanksgiving in a quick rundown :)

Michigan and Winter

I'm not one to complain about winter, because honestly I love all of the seasons.  However living out in Michigan I'm getting really sick of winter.  I want warmer weather so that I can be outside soaking up the sunshine.  I'm tired of hibernating and hardly seeing the sun (the sun seems to be always hidden behind a gray sky)! I feel this way because I feel like there is nothing to do during the winter in Michigan.  Yeah sure I could go skiing on their bunny hill, if I wanted to drive a few hours north.  Maybe I could've bought myself a pair of ice-skates since the great lakes are 92% frozen.  Speaking of frozen lakes, maybe I could've gone ice fishing, but in all honesty though non of those sound fun!  They don't appeal to me and quite frankly I haven't wanted to be outside in the negative temperatures this winter.  What I'm trying to say without offending my new state is that it's a boring winter state.  Plus it doesn't help when we ask people who are from Michigan on what to do during winter and they can't tell us anything, (unless of course we want to drive a few hours north).  Needless to say Michigan you and I are starting to get on bad terms, so you better bring warm weather and sunshine my way so that we can get back on good terms.

Oh Baby

Ok so for the few people that I actually know who read my blog this is for you because I'm sure you've been waiting for it ;)

(While writing this post I couldn't decide on how many details to include.  Having a baby is a very personal decision between a husband, a wife and Heavenly Father and nobody else.  For that reason I couldn't decide on how much to share with everyone.  However knowing that I use this blog as a journal and knowing that anyone from anywhere can read my blog I came to my decision.)

Baby News!

Alright lets start from the beginning.  When Chase and I got married we decided that we wanted to wait to start our family until Chase was done with school.  This way if it all worked out as we wanted I could be a stay at home mom and we wouldn't have to figure out the whole babysitting fun.  I'm especially grateful we waited because looking back being away from my baby for 10 hours a day sounds painful to me.

So school was nearing an end and of course we were getting the pressure, but it still wasn't right.  Good thing it's our decision and not everybody else's.  So we continued on our way living in Michigan knowing that it would happen sometime soon but when, we didn't know.  Until one day Chase and I were talking and we decided that now was a good time to start our family.

YES, I'm a nerd and had to document us making this decision. 

Which brings us to where we are now.  Surprisingly to me we got pregnant pretty darn easy.  I have always had a worry in the back of my head that we would have a hard time getting pregnant.  This worry of mine comes from the fact of knowing many couples who are dealing with this struggle.  My heart aches for them because I know it must be hard watching others get pregnant.  So like I said I worried we would be in the same boat, which is why I was surprised.
The day I found out I had woke up in the morning and couldn't help myself and just had to pee on a stick to know.  I knew the test could be negative since I was too impatient to wait for a missed period.  But lo and behold it said I was pregnant, so of course I had to take another test.

 I had many emotions run through my head, but most of all I just couldn't believe that I was actually pregnant.  I decided I was going to tell Chase once he was done with work and at home.  I knew we would be keeping it a secret so I didn't want to call him up while he was at work.  Right after finding out I was pregnant I headed out the door to go running and take a few pictures with my friend Danielle.  Man was that hard keeping such a big secret!
Since I had taken pictures that day I figured I'd tell Chase I had a picture to show him.  He came home and I told him to look through my pictures on the camera and then to come see the picture I took with my phone.  Ha, like a phone can take a better picture than a camera.  Anyway, he came to look at my phone, saw my picture and kept on scrolling through.  Haha I laughed and said "really?" and went back to the picture and told him to read it.  He had thought it was just something I had found on pinterest.  Once I told him to look at it again he got excited and also couldn't believe that we were going to have a baby.  He laughed and mentioned that it probably wasn't the reaction I had been hoping for since he just scrolled on by the picture :) I mainly thought it was funny that he just scrolled on by.

So we knew based off of the online calculators that we would be having a baby in July.  We then had to decide when we would tell our families and friends.  We figured that since we would be going out to Utah in December that, that would be our best time.  It was however a little earlier than I wanted to tell but we figured they wouldn't be very happy with us if we didn't mention anything and then a few weeks later spilled the beans.  Since we told earlier than wanted everyone was sworn to secrecy until I said they could talk.  From what I've heard the parents did a really good job at keeping the secret.  The siblings on the other hand….. I have no idea if they were good or bad.  Everyone else found out once I had reached the 2nd trimester.
So there we have it the news of baby Birks coming around July 17th 2014! :D