Brian the DIY king

Our garbage disposal at the Little Flower house has been dead for a long time, and since we moved back in earlier this month, it's been a bigger and bigger hassle living without one. Brian finally got fed up and decided to use his engineering degree and man card to investigate (and I carefully read how-to books and instructions alongside him). Turns out the cheap flippers who "fixed up" the house before I bought it put in the smallest capacity disposal available, which probably led to the early death of said disposal. So Brian found a bigger disposal on Amazon, and installed it with only two trips to our awesome 10th & Arlington Ace Hardware housed in an old movie theater. Behold the process:

And it works great now! Go B go!

Five weeks down!

Be careful what you wish for...

Because I'm a planner who's been hit with a 280-day, largely uncontrollable and unknowable situation (hi Tank!), I've been worrying about every twinge and feeling. Lately I'd been worrying that I DIDN'T have as much nausea as I had two weeks ago - this despite all the advice reminding me that many pregnancy symptoms come and go, and that morning sickness typically sets in around 6 weeks. Well, this morning I woke up feeling icky. Problem solved. At least I'm not barfing, and I can still get my required calories and food groups down. Once I get a full stomach, I almost always start feeling better.

No baby bump yet; still just my gut...

Who IS this girl?

I have always been a terrible eater. When I was little, I was so picky my mom basically gave up trying to get me to eat a balanced diet. As an "adult", I've often subsisted solely on breadsticks and cheeseburgers for weeks at a time. Even over the last year, as I've lost 41 pounds, my diet (except for cheat days where I pigged out) was really repetitive (frozen Weight Watchers or Lean Cuisine meal for lunch, frozen meal for dinner, same yogurt for breakfast every day), which made "points" counting easy but probably didn't do much for my nutrient balance.

But then came the positive pregnancy test. I found a great, free website, http://www.choosemyplate.gov/supertracker-tools/supertracker.html, from the USDA that will let you track foods you've eaten and tallies up your calories and food groups. My nutritional needs are customized for my first trimester. I don't think I've ever eaten this well in my life! I hope Tank appreciates it - I know I do!

Our wedding photos made it into St. George Weddings!

Our wedding and photos made it into the St George Weddings blog! To access the blog, go to http://stgeorgeweddings.com/audra-brian-zion-utah-wedding/

Zion Overlook I Do’s {Audra & Brian} | Zion Utah Wedding Photography

Tyler Rye Photography has sent over a great Zion Wedding today and we are excited for you to see it…

Audra and Brian live in Indianapolis and in her words we live in Indianapolis where everything is flat, so the scenery around Zion was the reason they chose to get married in Zion. Audra and Brian really like going on hikes together and just being out doors. They fell in love with Zion and knew this was the place they wanted to be married. Their ceremony took place on the edge of a cliff over looking the beautiful Zion National Park. The clouds offered perfect soft lighting and made the ceremony even more perfect. But the weather is unpredictable in Southern Utah, and 10 minutes later it started to rain. But we are loving the images we do have to show off…and the rolling clouds in the background are gorgeous!

PHOTOGRAPHY: Tyler Rye Photography
FLORAL: Bloomers Floral
HAIR & MAKEUP: Sarah Gardner of Varsity Cuts
OFFICIANT: Steve Masefield of Zion Weddings

I Found a Reason

For Tank... and for B

Well, THAT was fast!

So in my last post I said I wanted to restart a blog because we were going to start trying for a family. Since I'm 38, we thought the process might take a while. Well... wrong. Starting a week or so ago, I began having some of the typical symptoms of early pregnancy... dizziness, breast tenderness (sorry), peeing constantly (sorry), and fatigue. Though I wasn't even late, I couldn't wait any longer, so Sunday, November 17, I woke up early to pee and decided to take the test. The instructions said to wait three minutes, but within 90 seconds.... BAM!

 Poor Brian was still asleep and couldn't figure out why I wanted him to read the test result... "NOOO! I've got two more minutes to sleep!" Once I convinced him to look, though, we were both thrilled and stunned. We went out to dinner with Mom and Dad and Luke and Sarah that night for Luke's birthday, and it was soooo hard not to spill the beans!