ZOO Lights

I love Christmas time. I love the Music and I love lights.

On Friday we went with our friend Mike to the Zoo lights.

I was really impressed with their light display.

This guy made a really cool ice sculpture of a reindeer.

Matt always loves playing on the playground.

There were not as many animals as in the summer time but they has some that were

winter animals or animals that were kept inside.

And then of course the lights.

This was really fun. If you are looking for something to do in the Salt Lake area this week I would for sure recommend this!

Giving in

I finally gave in and took a picture of my baby bump. I am 22 weeks along now. I have felt pretty good lately. I feel like I am getting bigger everyday. It is getting harder to sleep comfortably, but other then that things are great. It is just so exciting getting closer to having this baby boy join our family.

And the Winner Is...

BLUE!!!

We are having a Boy! We got to see our little guy this morning in an ultrasound. It was so great to be able to see that everything looks good and heathy. He already has the cutest little body. I especially liked seeing his little hands and feet.

We had a great Thanksgiving. Thanks to my Aunt Pam for inviting us over. We alway love spending time at the Hicks home with everyone. We had fun making a Thanksgiving theme cheese ball. I have so much to be thankful for!

It has been so cold here. Below are some pictures of us in the snow. The other day I had to park at the bottom of Capital Hill by the temple and walk up the hill because my car would not make it up the snow covered hill. And Matt has been so so great about waking up early and shoveling the walks.

Boy or Girl

We find out the sex of our baby a week from today so if you have a guess speak now! Lets make it fun by having you guess and then give a name you think we should use if you are right.

Being Pregnant

Ok so this is going to be a boring post so you don't have to read it. I keep saying I am going to start a baby journal to write down my feeling on being pregnant so far. But I have not so I want to write a few of my thoughts before I forget them.
So about at 6 weeks of being pregnant I started to get really really sick. It unfortunately started on a weekend so I went about 3 days with throwing up about every half an hour. I could not keep anything down and felt like crap the whole time. Luckily when that weekend was over I was able to get some medicine from the Dr. that made this sickness a bit more bearable. I still felt sick and nauseous all the time but I was throwing up alot less. Nothing ever sounded or tasted good I sort of just ate to keep something in my body. I lost about 14 pounds in all during this time. People kept telling me it will be done soon. So I was hoping at the end of 13 weeks it would stop because I heard it would just be the first trimester. Well 14 weeks came along and I was still a little miserable. It was about 16 weeks to the day that I started to feel much better. So for about 2 weeks now I have been actually enjoying my meals and keeping them down. I still get nauseous if I don't snack on something every hour or so. But it is so much better then before.
I am now at 18 weeks and 2 days. I am back to the weight that I was when I first got pregnant so that is good. 2 nights ago I went to bed at about 10:30 with a really bad pain in my back. I just thought is was sore because I am trying to get used to sleeping on my side. It continued to get worse but was traveling. At about 12:30AM I started to get worried because my chest had a sharp pain in it. My arms were achy and I had a major pounding in my head. I got on my phone and started looking on WebMD at the symptoms I was having because I was kinda nervous I was having a heart attack. So here I am sitting up in my bed balling my eyes out. When it hit me that it could be heart burn. I had never had heart burn before so I never know how horrible it was. After reading up on how to help heart burn I went down stairs for a glass on milk and it went away in about 20 minutes. Let just say the next day I had Matt get me some Tums so keep by my bed just in case.
It is crazy to me to think about how my body is making a baby inside of it. How many things it effects in my body. Like sickness and heartburn and making me tired all of the time. It is just so crazy to think about.
Now that I have told you all the things I have to complain about let me tell you how grateful I am. I have heard that you can not know a love that a parent can have for a child and my child is not even close to being here yet and I already love it so much. It is the greatest miracle that my best friend and I can make a little person together. I am so happy that Heavenly Father has blessed us to be able to start our family and to have this time together before the baby comes. Matt has been so so great. He does pretty much everything for me. He cooks cleans works and goes to school and much more. I can't even imagine what I would do without him. I feel so bad sometimes that I do pretty much nothing but I am so so grateful that I am able to come home from work and sit on the couch and relax when I get home instead of doing house chores. So thank you to my wonderful husband. He is going to be a really great DAD. The other day I told him I read that we need to start talking to the baby so he sat and talked to my stomach telling the baby all the fun things they were going to do when it gets here. Of course they were all really manly things and he called the baby a he even though we don't know what it is yet (we find out the 29th woo hoo).
All the crappy parts of pregnancy are going to be so worth it was this cute little thing comes to join our family!

Oh and PS. I am not putting pictures up yet cause my belly just looks like a fat roll right now so when it gets more shape to it I will put up some pictures.

Vancouver Washington

I am so mad at myself because last week we went to visit Matt's parents in Vancouver and I was so so bad at taking pictures. I kept saying I am going to take pictures but then never did. We had a great time though. We spent alot of time just hanging out relaxing at the house.

On Friday we Celebrated Thanksgiving early with them. Lets of yummy food and good company. This was one of Matt's favorite parts of the trip. He loves PIE!

Happy Halloween

For Halloween we went with our friend Mike to Red Butte Gardens. They do this thing called Gardens After Dark. It is more for kids but I like cheese things like this for halloween because I don't really like scary stuff. They had different stations set up around the gardens and each one was a different Country's traditions for haunted holidays.

This picture was one if the stations. It is an Asian thing that they decorate these lamp things and them let them go in the water. They had a pond that we got to put our lamps out on.

This is Matt and Mike in the maze.

And I painted a pumpkin.

All this fun stuff we actually did on Saturday because Halloween was on a Sunday.

On Sunday we got to celebrate at my Aunt Pams. By making Jack-O-Pizzas and Carmeled Apples! Yum

Hope everyone else had a good Halloween. At least I got this posted before Thanksgiving.

San Fransisco Giants World Series Champs

As I am sure you all know the San Fransisco Giants won the World Series this year. Matt grew up watching and cheering on the Giants so this was a very happy time at our house. Here is a picture of Matt showing some of his Giants pride.

St. George Marathon

On October 2nd Matt ran the St. George Marathon. He has done 2 marathons (Top of Utah and Boston) before this one, but he said this one has been the hardest one so far. He did so great!

He finished in 3:12:32 as you can see. Overall he finished 294 out of 5,702. In his age group which is 19-24 he finished 13th out of 123.

Every time I watch him run a marathon I can't believe how crazy it is that peoples bodies allow them to run 26.2 miles. It's just CRAZY! He loves it though so I am happy to support him in doing it as long as he doesn't expect me to do it with him haha.

California Trip

Almost 24 years ago Matt was born into the world by a woman that he has not known anything about while growing up. He was adopted at 3 months old. One thing he knew about her was that in a letter she wrote to his parents she wrote that she wanted him to serve an LDS Mission and to get married in the Temple. Matt had not thought much about ever finding his birth mom when he was growing up. When he got closer to serving his mission he started to think about her more. He wished that he could tell her how well he had turned out so far. Then he returned from his mission and met the love of his life (ME). He wished that he could tell her that he was going to be getting married in the temple.
One day last April Matt received a call from his dad. He told Matt that he thinks he found Matt's birth mom on Facebook. They new her maiden name and luckily she had put her full name on her Facebook page. After a few messages back and forth they came to the conclusion that she was who they were looking for. Since then they have had many long phone conversations getting to know each other.
Last week we took a quick trip to Southern California. The main reason that we went was so that we could meet Denise (Matt's birth mom). It was really fun to spend a few days with her and get to know her better. We are looking forward to getting to know her better in the coming years. She took us to this cool restaurant in Malibu and also took us to Santa Monica.


We then met up with my family in Santa Monica.

Friday we went to Disneyland Yay. This trip was a bit different then my passed trips to Disneyland because there were a few rides I was not able to go on because of being pregnant and I spent a lot of time sitting on a bench not feeling really great. But its ok I was just happy to be there. Halloween time is the best time to go to Disneyland with the fun decorations. The happy atmosphere at Disneyland it enough for me.



Yay for a Disney Halloween!

Yummy food. And yes Noah's cotton candy is glowing.

They have a new water/light show in California Adventure and It was so so cool. I am so glad we went and waited. It was for sure worth it. I loved the whole thing. This picture was taken while we were waiting for the show.

Then this one was at the end of the show. I know you can not see our faces but you can kinda see some of the colorful water things in the back ground.

Then the last day was beach day. We started the day with a little breakfast at Ruby's. And then spent most of the day at the beach.



My mom has all the other pictures on her camera so this is all you get. But that night after the beach we went to a mall. The mall has a Vans Skate Park in it so while Camden spent his time there skating we all go to shop. It was a great get away. I always love vacations even if I am a little sick. It is always fun to spend time with the fam.
Tomorrow we are leaving for St. George. Matt is running the marathon there on Saturday so I will try and update you soon. Until then bye!