Oh BOY!

Oh BOY oh BOY! Friday, Jan 30th, I had the BIG ultrasound and the doctor interpreted the grainy black and grey images and told me it's a little BOY in there! Hurrah! It was fun to feel the little squirmy baby and SEE those same movements on the screen at the same time. His name will be Joseph Argyle White unless he's born on June 1st, (Jeff's birthday), in which case he may be named Jeff Jr. The "official" due date is June 4th, so we'll see! I only posted 2 of the ultrasound pictures, because in my opinion, if you've seen one, you've seen 'em all. Here he is:

This his little bent leg--the femur bone looks like it's just floating there!

Tilt your head to the right, and then pretend it's Halloween-- can you guess what this is? It's his face! I didn't know they looked so skeletal in there.

This is the external view-- my stomach has really taken off since last we documented it! This is at 22 1/2 weeks (the dress is courtesy of Em--thanks!). Only 17 1/2 more weeks left! (technically)

Rounding out

Well, folks, nothing photograph-able has been happening around the Nook lately, unless you count my bulging belly: this picture was taken today (Jan. 14th), and my tum-tum is 20-22 weeks along here. We find out the more precise due date and if it's a BOY or a GIRL in there on January 30th!!! yippeeee!

Big but small

On Sunday, I was trying to get dressed, and I noticed that my stomach has rounded out significantly in the last few days. Jeff and I decided that it has doubled in size since Christmas! Holy Cow! Monday I immediately went to Em's house and raided her maternity clothes. Oddly enough, they are mostly still too big! Dilemma: tight regular clothes, baggy maternity clothes, or sweats and a t-shirt? Every day but Sundays, sweats and a t-shirt win out. I must confess, I was quite used to my marathon-body, so looking down at this little bump is WIERD!

Jeff duly documented the growth-- this picture was taken Tuesday, Dec. 30th. The doctor still is not sure how far along I really am, so I could be anywhere from 17 to 19 weeks along in this picture--almost half way already! I know my stomach isn't very big at all, and it'll only get bigger... but it still feels so... round!

Merry Christmas!

December 25th, 2008, 5:00am-- I woke up to go to the bathroom and eat a snack, and then I was wide awake. So... I tapped my sleeping husband and asked him if he wanted to get up and open presents. He was awake in no time. On came the Christmas music and out came the stockings. Merry Christmas! We increased our game collection quite a bit with Mad Gab, Deja-Moo, Go Nuts!, and Clue on the Go. We love games!!! Now we just need a family to play them with...

Us on Christmas morning, around 6:45am

Jeff's parents sent us a Rosettes Kit, and Jeff promptly whipped up some perfectly star-shaped Rosettes. Mr. Gourmet Chef Jeff.

For Christmas Dinner, we went to Em and Jesse's house 30 minutes away, and ate yummy ham and cheesey potatoes and played games with a ton of fun people. Merry Christmas!

Laurs is BACK!!!!

My BEST (non-husband) friend in the whole wide world (and my roommate for 2 1/2 years), Lauren DeNys, got home from the Baltic States Mission on Friday, Dec 12th, 2008!!! So, I drove the 7 hrs to Nebraska for a little visit on Dec 17th-19th. It was so good to see Laurs again! We were both tired the whole time (she was jet lagged and sleep deprived, and I am a pregnant lady), but we did manage to go on a nice long 4 mile walk and go to the Winter Quarters Temple in the short time I was there. I LOVE YOU LAURS!!

Best friends!

Some things never change...

Ready for the temple!

The night before I left to drive home, there was a huge sleety winter advisory storm where the DeNys family lives, so it took a good half hour to defrost, de-ice, and chip the car out of the whiteness.

Must Be Santa!

Special night, beard that's white.... MUST BE SANTA! Ok, I couldn't resist quoting one of the greatest Christmas songs ever written. Here are a few random pictures of what's been going on in and around the Nook this month:

Our finished Christmas tree, complete with garland, my old favorite ornaments that Mom mailed us (thanks!), and some presents... a few of you may recognize some of them because I wrapped all the ones I'm going to mail and put them under the tree to give it a happy Christmasey look.

I used our Christmas Tree's clippings to make a rustic wreath for our door-- wreath-making is a lot harder than it looks if all you use is yarn to tie the green stuff together!

Out here at the Boone Home, the first 2 weekends of December are Candlelight Tours!! Jeff spent the last few weeks washing thousands of mason jars and a couple hundred lanterns for the event. Unfortunately, I am rather bad at taking night pictures, and Jeff was only able to leave his duties briefly, so we have this one ok picture of the little Boonesfield Village lit up with candles. It was pretty pretty.

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The other reason Jeff didn't take more pictures of the candles is because on the 3rd night of the event, he managed to accidentally dump a gallon or two of boiling hot chocolate on his foot, and we spent that evening visiting the hospital. I think his ballooning blisters are too disgusting to post straight onto this blog, so you strong-stomached few may view them by clicking on this:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/photo.php?pid=30227127&id=116900710&ref=nf

And now for the Must Be Santa portion of our program: I found a cute craft idea online and adapted it for my own purposes: a tin can Santa! Yep, there are tin cans underneath all of those cotton balls! Last week, Em, Cammie, and I made lots of English toffee, so I put some of it in the Santa-heads under the hat for gifts to some friends!

Em-- I TOLD you they'd be cute!

If you want to see the site where I found this idea, feel free to check it out:

http://crafts.kaboose.com/tincansanta.html

So when you are lucky enough to have the cutest nephew on the planet, it only makes sense to post a picture of him every now and then, even if Em does do an adequate job of photographing him. So Steve has learned all about my "bag of tricks," which means he knows that since I'm a pregnant lady now, I never come visit him without bringing a bag full of my snacks. Steve loves to explore my bag, pull out a baggie of cereal, bring it over to me, and do a cute little begging dance until I share some food with him. In this picture, he is anticipating some Honey Nut Cheerios.

Oh, Tannenbaum!

Deck the halls! We got our Christmas tree this weekend! It was our first live tree, so we also had to get a tree stand and some ornaments. Our cute little douglas fir is about 5 feet tall, and its trunk is slightly S-shaped so it looks kind of crooked from some angles. Here are pictures of the tree setting up process:

Putting the slightly stubborn stand together

Bringing in the tree

The Lowe's man cut the tree bottom crooked, so Jeff had to saw it straight. One problem: we have no saw. Jeff got out his Leatherman fold-up tool, which has a small finger-sized saw in it. He managed to saw the bottom of the tree off! Nice work.

Bringing our Christmas tree home made the Christmas Spirit extra strong here at the Boone home... it snowed that night! Jeff woke up Sunday morning and took a few winter wonderland pictures. burrrr

Our cute little Christmas nook: Sunday night, we decorated the tree and hung the stockings that I made last week over the "fire"... Jeff found a 10 minute fire video on youtube and we played it on repeat on the TV all evening. Even though it wasn't warm, it really added a nice ambience to our decorating. Christmas, here we come!

Happy Thanksgiving!

For thanksgiving this year, we made everything but the turkey: rolls, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and 8 pies. Dr. Knotts kindly gave us some turkey meat, but we ended up without any gravy!!! We had: Jeff's brother Sam, his cousin CJ, and our friends Jan and Jordan over for dinner. It was quite good, even if it did turn out a tad dry without the gravy!

Shaina made most of the food in the toaster oven in the Nook, and then we loaded it up in the car and drove it over to the empty Van Bibber house 1/2 mile down the road to eat at the big dining room table.

Everyone but Jeff before the big meal... we weren't all paying attention!

PIE TIME! Shaina's favorite: Pumpkin cheesecake, Jeff's favorite: Pumpkin apple, Sam's favorite: Sour cream apple

Jeff ate the most pie.

First photo

On Friday, Nov. 7th, I had my first-ever ultrasound! and.... look who's in there! Jeff says he/she looks like a mole or a shrew. At my doctor's appointment a week ago, they said I was almost 12 weeks along... however, the ultrasound man said I'm only at 10 1/2 weeks! The new due date is June 4th, 2009 (the old one was May 21!). I couldn't get this picture to turn sideways, so... you'll have to turn your head sideways instead!

The Monumental Challenge

Hello! It's Shaina, and I have a STORY for you! It all started in May this year, when I began training for my first ever marathon. I have always said that I'd do a marathon before age 21, so I had to get moving.

SO: on Saturday, October 4th, I finally ran my marathon. It was the hardest physical thing I have done in my whole life so far... possibly because I trained in flat, 700 feet above sea level Missouri, and I chose to run the Mt. Rushmore marathon in the Black Hills of South Dakota at 5,000 feet. Well, to make a long story short, the marathon was painful! My race had 62 finishers, (18 of which were women). Only 9 people ran the 26.2 miles in less than 4 hours! I managed to heave myself over the finish line at 4:30.39, and I was the 4th woman finisher, and I was 20th overall! LOCO! My quads and achilles are SORE! The results can be viewed at:
http://mtrushmore.allsportcentral.com/results/results.cfm?EventID=18257



The beginning of the marathon was cool and pleasant, and I was happily smiling at Jeff, who was my photographer-- he drove all over the place and sprinted around to get over 100 pictures of my first (and last?) marathon-- what a devoted fan!


I was so cheery at the beginning of the marathon that when I saw a little man taking a picture of the racers in front of him, I offered to take his picture... during the race, while we were both running! He was grateful.



Mile #6: Pain has not set in quite yet...


Mile #15: Heavy, sore legs won't move very fast...the sun came out, and it got up to the mid 70's! I started taking 2-3 minute walk breaks at mile 17 up in the trails of the mountains. Walking was not much easier than running-- it just took longer!




Mile # 22: a nice man hobbled along with me and chatted far too cheerfully--this was his 28th marathon! I managed a few conversational grunts and "oh's" but that's about it.


Mile #26: The finish line is near...finally!



There I go crossing the finish line. (the clock was pointing the other way for some reason). Finishing did not feel good at the time-- I had been restraining sobs of aching pain for about an hour or more, (you can't breathe when you're crying), and they came out at the finish. Once I stopped running, the pain did not stop! BUT, after a shower and an ice bath and a nap, (unfortunately the nap occured half way through the afternoon session of General Conference),
I felt much better.



Maybe the elevation profile above helps illustrate the pain in my quadriceps!
Well, I made it! I told Jeff right after I finished: "I am NEVER doing that again!" but now that I think about it, in a few years I may be tempted to train for another marathon, but I will definitely find a FLAT course to run!

Mt. Rushmore!

On Thursday, Oct 2, we drove 15 hrs to western South Dakota to the Black Hills for Shaina's marathon. We enjoyed the lovely scenery. Mt. Rushmore didn't look quite as big as Shaina expected. Jeff had been there before in his childhood, and even he said it looked smaller than he remembered/expected. BUT, it was still so cool to see those faces carved into the mountain! We had warm, sunny weather for our picture taking. We visited Mt. Rusmore and Crazy Horse Memorial on Friday morning before Shaina's Saturday marathon.

The Mountain

5 great men

We love our camera's zoom!

George Washington's profile from the road

Welcome to the Nook!

Hi guys! Here are the long-anticipated pictures of our new home, which we have christened "The Nook." It is in the attic of the 150-year old carriage house, above the Boone Home Gift Shop. We LOVE it!

Home sweet HOME!!!