Summer 2010

This summer has been busy but a lot of fun. It started with my Aunt Karen coming to visit us in the middle of May. But you would never guess it was the middle of may by all the cold weather, rain and snow that we encountered during her trip. Karen was a good sport though and we were very lucky that the blizzard cleared long enough for us to catch a quick glimpse of Crater Lake!
The next week in May Brannick's parents came to visit us in Oregon. After Brannick worked them over in his dental chair, he put them to work outside planting beautiful flower baskets around the office. We let them have a little fun too on a jet boat ride down the Rogue River and a trip to the fish ladder (where big fish swim upstream to spawn, and then die).

After Brannick's parents left I started a new job in the ICU of our local hospital. It feels great to be a real nurse again, and luckily I haven't gotten too rusty in my skills, but going back to working 12 hour shifts was quite an adjustment, especially being pregnant. And starting a new job really made me miss my old job and friends at UVRMC in Provo.
Brannick and I went to Nebraksa for the 4th of July, but once again brought the rain with us and ruined all attempts at harvesting hay. We still had fun setting off fireworks, feeding the animals at Cody Park, going out on a lake with friends, and especially attending my first baby shower thrown by Brannick's mom and sisters (It was a great duel shower for Brannick's sister Kristi and I who are due a week apart).

At the end of July Brannick and I went to Oceanside, CA for a vacation with my family at the beach. My brother Aaron just returned from being a missionary in Veracruz, Mexico and it was Brannick's first time meeting him. Although I wasn't able to enjoy the ocean as much as a normally do (thanks to pregnancy), Brannick had a blast bogey boarding, snorkeling, and playing in the waves. We also went to an Angel's game on "Mormon night," and the Angle's won! Coincidence? I think not. The week ended too quickly with Brannick running a 5K race along with my sister Allison and brother Aaron. The greatest part is that Allison beat both the guys, way to go Allie!

Now that all of our trips are over, Brannick and I are trying to prepare ourselves for the next big stage in life, parenthood! We are getting ready for our baby girl who is due to join our family October 10th.

Finally Growing Up

It's rare for me to post more than once in a six month time period, but these past few months have been pretty exciting for Brannick and I. Since I accidently put up the baby countdown ticker a little early, I guess it's time to announce that we are having a baby! I have finally entered my second trimester and am due October 10. And for all of you who were wondering, yes, I was six weeks pregnant when we were in Hawaii, and I did thorough research that it was safe to skydive in the first trimester (as safe as skydiving ever is). We don't get to find out if it's a boy or girl until June 15th, when I'm 23 weeks! I've felt fairly good so far, and am just struggling with having an expanding waistline and slower running times.

5 Weeks

8 Weeks

12 Weeks



The second exciting event for us is that Brannick has taken one of the final steps in becoming a grown up and has finally bought his very own dental practice! He is now the proud owner of the Harvard Dental Group, which is the office he's been working at for the past five years ago. So we are going to be staying in Roseburg for quite some time now, and hopefully we can soon take another major step towards adulthood and become homeowners (got to have room for the baby). We are both pretty sad to not be living closer to family, but are very excited for this great opportunity.

Signing papers, scary!!!

One Year Anniversary

Brannick and I celebrated our one year wedding anniversary last month. It has been such an amazing first year, filled with lots of fun, love, adventure and excitement. And in keeping with that theme, Brannick thought it would only be fitting to celebrate our first year of our marriage in the same way, with a week long trip to Hawaii! Now I know this may come as quite a surprise and shock to our family, but Brannick thought it would be fun to take a "secret vacation," so we didn't tell our families we were going. But I can't keep the secret any longer, I should have never gone along with Brannick's crazy secret idea, because what fun is it to take a cool vacation without being able to tell anyone about it. So family I'm sorry we kept you in the dark, but now you will know all about it.

We spent our first day at Pearl Harbor, and were surprised by how many Japanese tourists there were (probably more Japanese than Americans), except for on the USS Missouri (where the Japanese surrendered to the Americans to end WWII) we didn't see a single Japanese person, very interesting.
On our actual anniversary, Brannick was nice enough to go against his better judgement and let me fulfill one of my life's dreams, to go SKYDIVING! We met up with a group of kids from our ward who are going to BYU Hawaii and had so much fun! I was the last one to get on the plane, not realizing that you got out of the plane in reverse order, so I was the first one to jump. Since we were the first ones to go and there wasn't much room, my instructor and I were just sitting on the floor of the plane and just rolled out of the door, which was terrifyingly awesome! If you look closely in the plane pictures you can see us sitting on the floor, and then right as we're going out the door. The drop zone is right on the coast so the whole time you falling (we free fell for almost a full minute) and floating (a very peaceful and gentle return to the ground) you got to see the beautifully clear ocean and lucious green coastline (the company claims its the world's most beautiful drop zone). Brannick had no desire to jump, but rode up in the plane with us to be our photographer, and he ended up having a scarier ride down than we did jumping!

We spent the rest of our anniversary at the Polynesian Cultural Center, which was such an amazing testament to me of the truthfulness of the Gospel and the prophetic foresight of the leaders of the Church. Our night ended with more excitement, Brannick left the head lights of the rental car on all afternoon, so we had to be rescued by our friends Abby and Tommy and the great security guards, it was very amusing.

Our last day on Oahu we went snorkeling at Hanauma Bay and did a crazy hike up Koko crater. There isn't a real trail to the top, just old army rail ties going straight up, and remains of bunkers and stuff from WWII at the top. And because I always like an extra challenge, I forgot my shoes at the hotel, so I hiked up in flip flops.

We flew to the island of Maui for the last few days of our vacation. We drove the very narrow and winding road through the jungle to the remote town of Hana, where we stayed for one night in a sketchy cottage, but got to go to beautiful white, black, and red sand beaches, all within a few miles of each other.

Then we made the same long windy drive back to civilization and stayed our last two nights on the desert side of the island in Kihei. While in Kihie we found an amazing snorkeling spot and even saw two sea turtles! I also introduced Brannick to one of my favorite beach activities, boogie boarding. He got the hang of it pretty quick, and only got slammed by a few big waves. One of the highlights of our time on Maui was going humpback whale watching. We could see lots whales from the shore jumping and blowing air, but we wanted to get closer. So we took an afternoon ship ride and saw tons of whales, baby whales, and dolphins up close. It was pretty neat to be out on the boat in the middle of the ocean and be surrounded by these huge animals (even though I got a little sea sick by the end).

We had an overnight flight out of Hawaii and when we landed the next morning we heard about the earthquake in Chile and the Tsunami warning in Hawaii, we got out just in time. We had an amazing trip which was the perfect celebration of such a wonderful first year of marriage. I truly am the luckiest to have Brannick as my eternal companion.

Summer and Fall Fun 2009

We have a very busy and fun-filled summer, and its finally time I got around to blogging about it! It started off with visits from Branncik's parents and then my family (Brannick has to bribe people to come visit us with free dental work).
But after getting all fixed up in the dental chair we had a lot of fun playing tour guides around Oregon, including hiking to lots of amazing waterfalls, a jet boat rides down the Rogue River, and a trip to Crater Lake. Then Brannick and I went to Utah to run the Wasatch Back relay race. Brannick and I were on a team with ten other people, each running three legs, for a total of 112-miles, from Logan to Park City. It was an interesting experience, both tons of fun and complete torture at the same time.
We then took trips home to Nebraska for the 4th of July (see previous cow post) and then to Arizona for my sister Allison's wedding. And in between all of our big trips we've kept ourselves busy with canning, sewing (things I never thought I would be interested in doing), camping, triathlons, and shooting Brannick's new revolver.