Happy Easter!

For Easter Ethan got to meet some of his cousins. Well I guess I should say that they got to meet him. Ethan sleept through the entire dinner.

Goodbye Pregnancy, Hello Ethan!

We did it! He is finally here! I couldn't be more in love. Even though the last 10 months were hard, I would do it all again because I have never laid eyes on anything as beautiful as my little boy.

Everything with the surgery went well. It was a very relaxing day for me. I can't say the same for Aaron who actually had to watch the surgery. We went in to the hospital at 11 to get ready. By 1:30 I was in the operating room. Then at 1:49 Ethan was here. Aaron recorded the surgery on video. I have yet to watch it, and I am not sure if I will ever have the guts to do so.

Ethan did have to spend his first night in the ICU. He struggled to breath because of some excess fluid in his lungs. He is doing great now. We spent from Friday to Tuesday in the hospital. They kept me an extra day because I would get dizzy while walking around. With my history of passing out they were nervous to send me home. We are all home now and we are all doing great. Recovery has been a breeze. I count it as a blessing for the last 10 months I've endured.

Check out some of his first week...

In case you're now on Ethan overload, an Ethan blog is under construction. I'll give out the blog link soon. Thank you for all the support over the past 10 months. Ethan is finally here!

First Comes Love

First comes love...

Then comes marriage...


Then comes...


Ethan Strong Hunt

Born 1:49 p.m. 7 lbs 8 oz. 20 in.

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish... New Fish! -Dr. Seuss Baby Shower

I have been spoiled when it has come to baby showers. So far I have had 2 showers and a possible 3rd one is in the works for next week.

Baby Shower #1: Brunch with the ladies. I had such a fun time getting together with some of the girls in my ward for a Saturday afternoon lunch. It was good food and great company! Thanks girls! I wish we had an excuse to get together every Saturday!

Baby Shower #2: My mother went all out for this! The baby's nursery is Dr. Seuss themed (and if I ever finish decorating it I will post some pics. I'm just waiting for the nesting to kick in.) In honor of the Dr. Seuss nursery I was given a Dr. Seuss baby shower. It was so fun! Check out all of the awesome cupcakes and cool decorations! Thanks mom!

I still can't believe that Baby Hunt is almost here! Only 18 days to go!

Echo's, X-rays and EKG's... Oh my!

In exactly four weeks from today I will have a baby boy of my very own. March 26 to be exact. This is fantastic news! Granted this means that I will have to have a C-Section, which has taken me a few weeks to come to terms with. (Who would have ever thought that I would be sad about not being able to deliver the other way.) I have been having plenty of contractions this past week, nothing too painful more just annoying than anything. But there was one that killed my back and it totally freaked me out. So maybe this C-section is a blessing in disguise because who knows if I can handle the more natural way. I am also currently under the impression that having this baby boy on the outside will be a lot better than having him on the inside. This C-Section will help get that done sooner. Although, people keep telling me to get ready for crazy days and sleepless nights. And though this may be true I am sticking to my naivety because I am done sharing my body!

I know that I haven't blogged much about this pregnancy; this is mostly due to the fact that I don’t want to remember it. Besides the wonderful fact that this baby has grown to be perfectly healthy and strong, nothing about this pregnancy has been normal. That is why I take comfort in complaining about ugly maternity pants and my inability to put on shoes these days because it makes me feel like I am just another typical pregnant woman. But even with all this crazy sickness that has been thrust upon me these past months I would still like to have more kids someday. So I figure that if I don't write down what I have been going through chances are I will be less likely to remember. Then someday I may actually try this whole pregnancy thing again.

But I feel like sharing with you the events of this past week/month. I don’t think writing them down will hinder my chances of having more children in the future. In fact I find them kind of funny. They really aren’t funny and they could have been potentially fatal for the baby, but I still can’t help but find humor in the situation. Or maybe I am just going crazy which could definitely be an option here.

See this past week has warranted two trips to the hospital. I have been having these fainting spells recently. I have passed out 5 times in the last month. And on a regular basis I can get pretty light headed. Now I doubt that I would have ever thought to go to the hospital for this, but the first time this landed me a night at the hospital I happened to be there taking a tour of the labor and delivery wing with my childbirth class. We were walking along, everything was great, and then I felt it coming on. First I start to get really hot. Then comes the weakness and dizziness. Next I start seeing white spots and that’s when I know that I need to brace myself because I’m going down. Luckily Aaron was right there this particular time so he grabbed me a wheelchair just in time. But of course the doctors wanted to check everything out to make sure we, the baby and I, were alright. And we were.

Then a week goes by, and it was a tough week. I think I had the flu because I was back to being constantly nauseous and I even threw up a few times. Yuck! Then on Tuesday I headed to my latest prenatal appointment which went great. But before leaving the office I thought I would take one last trip to the bathroom so I could run some errands on the way home. As I started to head to the bathroom I could feel all of the symptoms coming on. I figured that I still had plenty of time before I would faint, but this time it all came on so fast. The last thing I remember was walking into the stall and then I went down. On the way down I hit my nose, so hard, on the toilet seat. (See isn’t that just hilarious!) But after I was discovered and cleaned up-there was a lot of nose blood-I was shipped on over to the labor and delivery wing again to make sure the baby and I were alright.

I don’t remember hitting my belly on the way down, which the doctors were most concerned about, but I also don’t remember hitting my knee which has been in some serious pain since the incident. So now I am doing the pregnant waddle with this sort of limp plus I have a swollen nose. I am all sorts of attractive these days.

They did x-ray the nose and it is broken. It’s nothing too bad or that may even require any fixing. I don’t even have a black eye. Although, I wish that I had taken a picture of myself yesterday morning. I woke up with my eyes pretty much swollen shut and my nose so huge it was taking over my entire face. (Again quite hilarious!)

I spent a sleepless night at the hospital hooked to monitors making sure the baby was alright. I can’t tell you how many times I heard the phrase, “the baby looks great!” So I was thrilled. They performed numerous tests to try and figure out what could be causing the fainting. Echo, EKG, and all sorts of blood tests. The current diagnosis is that I am having circulation issues in my legs and that apparently I am having trouble getting the blood from my feet back to my heart and brain. So for now I get to wear these super attractive compression tights, which supposedly my Grandma Pearson also wears (again so funny!) These will hopefully solve this fainting problem.

So I am just going to be taking it easy these days.

One Week and Two Years

For those of you that don't know the story of how Aaron and I got together, let me explain. It was pretty simple. I walked into church one Sunday. Aaron saw me from across the room and immediately fell in love. (Can you blame the guy? ;) I didn't have that same immediate reaction, but it only took me a week later to catch up and start feeling the same way.

Our story basically went like this...

We met on Sunday. Aaron asked for my number on Monday. He called me on Tuesday and asked me out for Wednesday. (I then canceled that date to go out with someone else, whoops!) We rescheduled and then went out on Thursday and again on Friday and Saturday and Sunday... and the rest is history. 6 months later we were engaged and 2 years ago today we were married!




Happy Anniversary!

We celebrated by spending the weekend at the Warwick Hotel just relaxing, watching the olympics, and ordering tons of room service.

LIVE... Finally!

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*Disclaimer* My pregnancy and my blogging have not exactly gotten along. I used to love blogging. I would sit down to write and the words would just flow. It was so fun. These days I will sit down to write and nothing comes. I just get frustrated, give up and find something else to do. So blogging has taken a back seat for the moment. But this is a post that I need to write about. Yes, it is a month over due. I have sat down to write this post a couple of times, but I just can't find the words to describe what I experienced. So if my pregnant words don't do this justice, just know that Saturday, December 12 ranks up there as one of the best nights of my entire life!

Now on to the good stuff...

Growing up I remember our family room being filled with music. It was the only room in our home that had a CD and tape player. Yep, that is right tapes... remember those! We loved listening to Wilson Phillips, Milli Vanilli, Ace of Base, and I even remember a Michael Jackson song from the Free Willy movie soundtrack that we would rewind and listen to repeatedly! It was in the family room of that house on Natchez Trace Circle in Naperville, Illinois that I grew to love one particular man... Garth Brooks! We listened to his No Fences album and I fell in love while listening to The Thunder Rolls, Friends in Low Places and Unanswered Prayers.

And then one day and I cannot remember where or from whom I was told this, but I was told that Garth Brooks was even more incredible LIVE! And that was when the dream began. I could not wait to grow up so I could go to my very own Garth Brooks concert. But in 2001, at the age of 14, my dream was dealt a devastating blow: Garth Brooks announced his retirement. I thought that I would never get to see him perform in person.

By this time we had moved out of our house on Natchez Trace and had moved to another house on the other side of town. Tape players were almost non existent and almost every room in our house had some sort of CD player, plus portable CD players were on the rise. I was starting high school and I went to High School in Naperville, a suburb of Chicago. Chicago is not exactly known for its country music, nor was country very popular. So with all the peer pressure and the freedom of listening to my own music in any room in my house, plus knowing that my childhood dream was down the drain, Garth and I took a break. I do remember listening to him occasionally during my high school years, but only if I happened to be in the car with my mother.

It wasn't until college that Garth and I got back together. I will never forget that night my freshman year that my next door neighbor introduced me to a Kenny Chesney CD. I have been hooked on country music ever since. I also knew at that time that I needed to get reacquainted with my old friend Garth. That is exactly what I did. I made multiple mix CD's of all of Garth's songs. Those CD's were a life saver on numerous occasions. I remember a 28 hour road trip that my mother and I took. We were driving my car from Illinois to Idaho so I could have it with me at college. On about 97% of that trip we listened to Garth. I also remember a semester in college where I worked at KFC. It wasn't exactly my proudest or skinniest semester but Garth got me through it. As I would go to open the store every morning I would play Garth to get me pumped up for the greasy chicken filled day ahead.

Even with all of the good times that Garth and I were having there was always the depressing knowledge that I would never get to see him perform live. That was until last October. One day I received an email from my husband. It was titled "Garth Brooks" and when I opened it there were no words, just a link, this link http://garthbrooks.com/. Of course I clicked on it, and I could not believe my eyes! Garth Brooks was coming out of retirement!

By some magical amount of luck, we were able to secure tickets when they went on sale... it took several hours of being on hold along with 2 computers feverishly refreshing browser windows, and the ticketmaster elves let us through to purchase tickets for Garth's opening weekend.

So about a month ago, Aaron and I headed to Vegas for what will probably be our last out-of-state adventure before the baby comes. It was Saturday, December 12 and Aaron and I headed to the Wynn Encore Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas strip for the least-typical Vegas show that has ever existed. We walked into the very small theatre. It fit only 1500 people. On stage was just a bar stool and nothing else.

Then Garth walked out on to the stage. It was just him and his guitar. He was in jeans, a sweatshirt and a baseball cap. For the next two and a half hours we just hung out with Garth. He told stories from his childhood. He sang his favorite songs from singers like James Taylor, Billy Joel and George Straight. And then for an hour he took audience requests. Whatever we wanted to hear, he sang. There were songs that he admitted he never learned to play on the guitar, so he just sang. His voice was incredible. I got teary eyed during "To Make You Feel My Love." Aaron commented after the concert that I was glowing throughout the entire show. (Not the pregnancy glow either, I don't seem to have that) I really don't think that I stopped smiling once during the entire thing. I could have sat there for hours just listening to that man. He finished by bringing his wife on stage (Trisha Yearwood) for an amazing finale.

(This was the only picture that we got from the concert. They were super strict about not letting you take any photos. We almost got kicked out for this.)

Silly dream? Maybe. But it sure was exhilarating experiencing my childhood dream become reality. And Garth mentioned that this is just a warm-up for the second half of his career. So maybe this wont be the only time I get to see him live! In honor of this I have officially dubbed it Garth Brooks week on my blog. I have narrowed down my top 20 Garth songs. I still can't believe I narrowed it down that far. They will be playing all week. So if at anytime this week you feel the need for a little Garth in your life, just head on over to our blog!

A Look at our Christmas

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Christmas at our home...


Christmas morning at my parents home...