because we love utah so much that its unhealthy.

while jon was having the timeeeee of his life on his annual moab offroading trip, i spent monday-saturday slaving at work, wishing the days away so that i could be in beautiful utah with my babos and so many of my loved ones!!!!!!! luckily, the week wasn't that bad for me as i revert to deployment/self reliance mode quite quickly and i actually enjoyed the free time i had to take the dogs on walks and talk to myself in our bedroom. 

finally saturday evening came when i was landing at the salt lake airport to be picked up by jon! the weather was perfect. the mountains were perfect. and the streets were perfect. (i mean, where else do people know how to drive and are spoiled with really nice freeways/roads?) we met up with kalie and spencer at cafe rio right before they spent ten days (the whole time we were in utah) in mexico, lucky!

the next day we went to church with jon's family and shared the good news! then my babies came over and we all got to enjoy gary's cooking and the dog/poop free backyard. a couple notable things: i asked gary to make his infamous beef jerky that he hasn't made in 10 years and when i walked in after jon picked me up from the airport, there my dad was making me jerky. another, audrey pretended to read me a story/note and said "dear aj. you are the best, greatest aunt ever! i love you sooo much! love audrey." i have the best niece and nephews in the whole world because they make me and my sisters all feel like we are their favorites. they've mastered that early on and i love them for it.

about 15 weeks. 

(in my new dress and necklace from my sisters on my dads perfectly manicured lawn!)

monday morning jon and i thought it'd be super fun if we drove up the canyon and hiked to lake mary. jon was yelling at me because i was 'running late' and i was getting mad because i kept telling him we had no where to be so why are you rushing me!!!? he said "i want to beat the heat!" you guys, he really said that. we are so not used to winters. we got up to brighton and the ski lift was obvvvvvvviously covered in snow and our attire obviously didn't work with that. jon quickly apologized. i understood since we usually really do have to 'beat the heat' here in texas. we found a little trail to hike called dog lake. we only walked for a hiked for a little bit as we had things to do, people to see. it was so nice to soak up the view of the mountains from the mountains and see the wildlife. we saw two deer so close to us that didn't mind our presence at all.

food photo #1: i meant to send this to emma but now she gets to see it here. i know corn dogs aren't the greatest for humans/pregnant women but my goodness had i craved these and she understands.

food photo #2: Maceys? never heard of it but best  <$2 i've ever spent.

huge!

this was the almost end result. we shared!

the next day was cutie girls preschool graduation. she was so cute singing her songs and although it seems like a little thing, i was so grateful to be able to go to it since we've missed so much living far away. 

we celebrated afterwards with rita's custard which was good not great but i couldn't handle watching this baby eating my ice cream with such joy.

katie claims she is done having babies which breaks my heart but at the same time makes me happy because i can't imagine spreading my love to one more of her adorable children. it is a good thing for me because she saved all of her maternity clothes and baby clothes/items for us and i am so happy!!!!! we aren't going to find out the gender of our little one which makes buying clothes for him/her interesting. she sent us home with a tub of girl newborn clothes and a tub of boy newborn clothes. (along with blankets, hats, burp cloths, accessories…i could go on and on)

so what will we be donning on little hagerman? these:

or these:

audrey was cute about our baby/my belly the whole time we were in town. she would come up and rub my stomach and ask about the gender. she thinks the birds are going to have a boy and we are going to have a girl. we'll see!

speaking of the birds!:

we spent a night restaurant hopping with them and had so much fun. we started with apps at the dodo which i couldn't be happier about. kim on the other hand thinks it was the culprit of the night spent tossing her cookies. 

our next stop was up the canyon at ruth's diner. jon and i shared a burger and we all shared fried pickles and okra which we obviously didn't love. our final stop was A&W for root beer floats/freezes. mike was making me absolutely sick with his driving but was surprisingly sweet when he let us go to a&w instead of where he wanted to go for dessert. maybe he won't be such a bad father after all…….
more to come on the rest of our trip!

first trimester blues.

To sum up the first trimester in one word: hell? 

The first few weeks I was mildly sick and very hungry but by the time 6.5 weeks hit, I was bed ridden. I am notttt the type to stay in bed or on the sofa watching movies and shows all day, but for one month straight that’s about all we did. Jon loved it! He could watch movies for days!

my shifts at work are either 730am-230pm or 230pm-9pm. My ‘morning’ sickness was especially bad at night, but mornings were awful too. I would wake up and try to get ready but end up just sitting on the rug in my closet trying to get up the strength to put clothes on. Since I work at a hair salon, I’m supposed to have my hair and make up stylish and look like I paid between $45-65 for makeup and between $43-63 for my haircut. That’s a lot to ask a newly pregnant woman. If I wasn’t sitting in the closet, I was sitting on the toilet (lid down..) doing my hair and makeup as fast as I could while I sat. one morning in particular I had slept in, giving myself only 5 minutes to get ready before I had to leave for work. I am always the first one at the salon and the only one with a key to let all the stylists in, so it’s pretty important that I get there on time. I had to eat every hour and a half (not an exaggeration) and if I didn’t, I was pretty much crippled. When I woke up late, I was freaked out because I had time to brush my teeth and get dressed and would have to do my hair and make up at the salon. Jon had woken up with me and I was an anxious mess because I didn’t have time to eat breakfast. He made me toast with butter and sent me on my way. Although he was making me late, he leaned in my window and reminded me to breathe and told me “you’re really worrying me”. I drank water and took two bites of toast on my way to work. About 3 minutes from the salon I pulled over and threw up in the sonic parking lot on a busy street. What interested me the most was the fact that I had eaten almost every hour the entire day before, and had eaten a full dinner RIGHT before I went to bed (like 9pm) and had woken up to eat a granola bar around 1am but the only thing that came up was water and my two bites of toast. That’s a fast metabolism, my friends.

So mornings at the salon were hard as well as evenings, since that’s when I was typically the sickest. I was nauseous all the time and although I knew I would briefly feel better if I ate, it almost made me cry every time I tried to eat something because the thought of eating while nauseous was so bad. Even now, at 15 weeks, jon can barely make suggestions on what or where to eat or talk about food in general because it makes me feel so yucky. I’d wake up almost nightly with hunger pains so bad they’d bring me to tears. Jon was such a sweetie to walk four flights of stairs down to the kitchen and four flights back up to force feed me while I moaned and groaned in the wee hours of the morning. He never complained or made me feel like I was ‘playing it up’ or anything.

We went to Disneyworld when I was about 7 weeks pregnant with my cousin john robinson and his wife kat. We hadn’t told extended family or friends we were pregnant, but obviously we had to tell them!!! As we would be spending four days straight with them and they’d wonder why I was crying in the middle of the night and why jon had to feed me like a little baby 15 times a day. So for three days, I rode rides, took zofran and tylonol as often as healthy and ate. Non. Stop. my cousin is a big boy who loves food. Everytime I had to stop and eat, he ate as well while our spouses watched us. on about day 1 and a half john r. said to me “aj, I’m really trying to keep up with you”. I was very grateful to have an eating buddy, although it did seem to pain him almost as much as it pained me to eat so much so often, haha! He also said to me “I am going to be so mad at you if this whole pregnancy thing was fake and just a good reason for you to act like a super baby.” He was joking of course and I apologized profusely for being a bit slower than I’d normally be and requiring more rest stops for eating but he assured me that I was a ‘champ’.

At the 13 week appointment my doctor told me I should start feeling a bit better. She gave me medicine (diclegis) that has helped A LOT and said I can start weaning off of it within the next few weeks. I’m already feeling better and I can tell because before I came to utah I did laundry, vacuumed and cleaned our room! Man, during the first trimester all I did was work, then come home and moan and groan in bed. Jon would drag me out to go on walks, which really did help. On one walk, we went too far before turning back and I got so hungry that I had to sit on a rock and try not to cry while he hurried home to get the car to drive me to freebirds to get a salad that i don’t see myself ever wanting again.

All those weeks that I was so sick and feeling so unlike my usual self, I just kept thinking about all the women who have had it much worse in their pregnancies. I felt stupid for letting the morning sickness keep me in bed and thought about those who threw up constantly, not being able to keep anyting down. I was so sick, but only threw up 2 and a half times. (half time was when I ate too much cereal then brushed my teeth right after and brushed my tongue too thoroughly then half burped/half threw up into the sink. Not pleasant). As sick as I was, I wasn’t getting dehydrated from loss of fluid and wasn’t making any hospital or doctor visits. In those short weeks that I was eating just to survive, I thought about how emotionally draining (damaging even) a difficult pregnancy would be for those who don’t get better after the first trimester. I was never angry at the baby or angry about being pregnant, however and always felt blessed to have this opportunity to carry this tiny baby. Thinking back on my sad, sick, unrecognizable self, I recall one of my favorite quotes from one my favorite books, the perks of being a wallflower. Charlie says "Even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have. Good and bad." And it is true. I wasn’t as sick as I could have been, but I was so sad that I couldn’t laugh and joke around with jon, go out and see friends or enjoy things I’d normally enjoy. yes i could have had it worse, but it doesn't change the fact that i was sick and sad. 

at the time i really didn't feel like i was being that needy during the first trimester, but looking back…wow. jon would wake from a dead sleep and feed me food that i did not want to eat. he'd look at me so helpless and sick in the kitchen chair and just have to guess what to make me for dinner that i could choke down. he let me mope and whine and get frustrated and was always there to listen and encourage me. he's been excited about our baby since the very beginning and always says "i can't believe you're pregnant" when there is a lull in conversation. 

all in all, the first few weeks were rough but we are on the up and up! we're in utah now visiting friends and family and been so fun to talk to them about the future mr./ms. hagerman. we've gotten a few gifts even!!!!!! plus my sister let me go through all her baby items and take anything i wanted, which is not only a big help but is very, very sweet of her.

it is 10:04pm which means its 34 minutes past our bedtime. goodnight.  

4.29.14

12 weeks.

babies on the brain.

if you know jon and i at all, you probably know that the thought of children practically repulsed us for the first three years of marriage. sure, i could picture us having a baby someday. someday wanting to wake up multiple times through the night to sooth a screaming baby/eventual child. but life in san diego was perfect as it was. just the two of us to worry about. taking weekend getaways, going to mcdonalds at 10:30pm even though we were already snuggled into bed, saving money and even spending money on silly things like iPods and fancy watches. life was pretty good with me and my lover spending all our time together, not having to share with anyone.

the first thing that started to change our mind was jon's dad. the man is a self proclaimed grump, but when he is in the nursery at church he is all smiles. it was fun (and weird) to be in the same ward as our parents when we moved here, and sometimes we'd stop at the nursery door to peek in at john at kathy with the kids. the little kids love john and he loves them, kind of heart warming really. 

but what really did it was the ward trunk or treat. it's this stupid thing that mormons do to get all the kids together to have safe fun. jon and i went to ward activities just the two of us for three years in san diego and never felt weird or out of place! maybe it was our matching skeleton costumes or the fact that jon's was a tiny bit too revealing, but the moment we pulled up to the activity we felt like complete and utter creeps. how weird is it that a mid-twenty's couple was showing up to the kids activity and not only that, but dressed for the occasion! with no kids of their own! i sat in the passenger seat giggling and blushing (if i could blush) while watching jon struggle to remove his skeleton outfit to put on regular clothes in hopes of not appearing so creepy. i've never seen the man more embarrassed in my life. not even one of the first times we hung out when he spilled water on the carpet at my dads and he kept saying repeatedly "I'm so embarrassed". unfortunately for him, he really does have the potential to blush and boy was he! his face was bright red and he was not laughing. needless to say, we stayed in the car to change into normal clothes, briefly discussed going to the event, and quickly decided to leave before anyone noticed we were there. that night we talked about why this activity was different from all the kids friendly activities we attended in san diego. we both knew that it was not because we were at the age to have kids (some couples can't or don't have kids until much later and some have four by the time they're our age!), but because we were at the point that we were both ready for kids. it was a weird thing to discuss having a baby with jon and not having either of us cringe and roll our eyes, although there was much nervous laughter.

we were training for a half marathon on november 17th and another on december 7th. i would graduate soon after the 7th, so we decided i'd cease birth control very soon after that. one day after school, jon and i pulled into a hotel parking lot to call the hospitals and discuss their baby plans. after we made the appointment for my iud removal, we just sat there in silence. once we had decided we wanted to have kids, we wanted one pretty darn soon! it was weird to be thinking about having a baby so seriously when for so long it'd been the last thing on our minds. 

so we 'tried' in december and the symptoms of being off birth control for the first time in four years were similar to the signs i thought i'd see when pregnant. one in particular was my hunger. while i was in utah over christmas, my dad (very condescendingly) said "ugh. you act like you haven't eaten in three days!" 

i started my period at the airport in baltimore, maryland a couple days earlier than expected and jon and i were surprisingly sad! again, i started my period in february. i was so emotional that jon asked me if i was upset that we weren't pregnant. in all honesty, i told him no, i wasn't sad yet. i expected getting pregnant to be difficult and to be a long process. i told him it would be alright if it took a few months because it would give us time to save some more monies. 

another week later, we had a biggggg fight. we rarely fight, and this was a big one. jon wanted to buy this old $2,000 truck and i wanted to put that money elsewhere. we were going on a walk together and i was crying so much. i told him i was very, very unhappy and that i wanted to see a counselor to talk out my issues. i really felt like i was depressed and had been for a long time. isn't that crazy how that works? i wasn't depressed, and although it was a very difficult transition moving in with the in laws, i was actually happy to be anywhere with jon. but at the time, i actually felt very sad. well, that was me like 2 weeks pregnant!! 

i was supposed to start my period on a friday and the sunday before that, i told jon that i wanted to take a pregnancy test. when we decided to start trying for a baby, we bought a single pregnancy test that i would take if and only if i missed my period. i had not been feeling like myself (remember our unusual fight?) and my stomach had been feeling really bad. earlier in the week i told jon that if i wasn't pregnant, something was very wrong. so i took the pregnancy test and waited. two minutes later: a faint positive sign. i couldn't believe it and jon couldn't either. we'd been trying for three months?? this doesn't happen. so we went to target to get another pregnancy test and some ingredients to make this awesome corn and jalepeno dip in the crock pot. I’m the first to say that keeping the Sabbath day holy is not our forte, but living with the parents we’ve tried to be better about it (or more discreet?). that Sabbath though, we openly went to target and bought ingredients for an appetizer I didn’t need to make. When I got back, I told john, my FIL, what I was making and he said “just had a craving?” again, if I could blush I’m sure I would have.

 About a week and a half after we found out (and two positive tests later), my dad came into town and we decided that although I was very early on, we wanted to tell him in person. So we did! And his first reaction was “what are you thinking?? (with a big grin)” I mean, valid question. Living with the parents, no real job or insurance and all… he hugged me and said “that’s exciting!” and immediately got his phone out to start researching options as well as pretend to tweet to the whole family the big news.

That same week, john asked jonathan if I was alright. If there is a nice word for ‘complainer’, that’s me. So when I’m sick, it’s hard to hide it. I have perpetual stomach issues anyway, starting from when I was young, but he noticed that lately I had been sick and said to jonathan “she’s just so hungry”. We told his family the day my dad left and I told my sisters later that week via snail mail which kept me bed ridden for a full day thanks to morning sickness/anxiety over their reactions. Katie called first and when I said hello she said “HELLO?” I said “hello?” and she said “hello??? That’s how you’re going to tell me?? I almost didn’t get the mail today!” happiness, excitement and congratualtions ensued. Amanda called me the next day with yells/screams that I could not make out but it was all in excitement! Two days later, lizzie hadn’t gotten her letter yet so jon and I skyped her and told her the good news “face to face”. It’s safe to say she did NOT expect that! I loved seeing her reaction and hearing my other sisters reactions. Kim and alex were next which were also over skype and kim screamed. Very shortly after we told her she asked jonathan very nonchalantly if he could finish his school at the universeity of utah. It was all very sweet and something I do not want to forget.

I had my first doctors appointment at 8 weeks and seeing that tiny heartbeat and little bean move on the screen was surreal. I’d been so slow to accept the fact that I was actually pregnant for fear of miscarrying and some guilt. I still can’t quite understand why it is so easy for some couples to get pregnant, and so difficult for others. Honestly, my excitement was a bit overshadowed by the guilt I felt for getting pregnant so quick. I told jon so many times that I would have tried for months longer if that meant I could shorten someone else’s trying time by the same amount of months. I understand that isn’t how it works and that most women trying to get pregnant would probably encourage me to be grateful and not sorry for the short amount of time it took us to get this miracle of life and I am, I really really am.

The first appointment was interesting and had some highlights like the doctor telling us she was going to look for a second baby because I had been so sick and then not following up with “nope just one” or “yep there is two”. (I had to ask her and no, there wasn’t more than one) another highlight was when I told her I felt like I was already showing and she said “its probably because you’re eating so much”, which was/is true. Everything went well and after that appointment I felt ready to accept that we had one on the way and start thinking more optimistically.

I’ll write a post about the first trimester. We just had a 13 week appointment and heard the heartbeat! It was so fast (155bpm) and the baby was very low down in my abdomen. Hearing that he or she is doing well was just as good as seeing it move at the first appointment. Jon and I are so excited and can’t wait for the next chapter in our lives to begin in the form of a screaming, helpless little baby. Even if that means getting up more than three times in the night.

(and to top it off, we are due on veteran's day; November 11th.)

last day of our road trip! 4of4

the last day of our trip was spent driving through texas, as per usual if you live in the center of this enormous state. 

this is about how things went during the road trip.

first things first. dallas. and ikea. remember how people love to say 'everything is bigger in texas'? well yeah, everything really is. LOOK at how spacious this ikea is. jon and i laughed at the very few tiny fake apartments that were set up in this particular ikea. living in small quarters is just not the way of life here.

the main reason we stopped in Dallas was to take the JFK assassination tour. we were a bit short on time and change (…), so we opted out of the JFK museum and in to the telephone walking tour. for $2.50 we put my phone on speaker and learned about the sites all over Dealey Plaza. This Dallas County Administration Building is where the JFK museum is and is the former Texas School Book Depository where they believe Lee Harvey Oswald did the deed from the 6th floor.

here is the view of the same building. the window is on the sixth floor on the very end. it looks different from all the rest, like it is permanently open. the tour didn't give us a reason for this, so one can only speculate...

a couple blocks from where JFK was assassinated sits a nice memorial for him. it was placed there in 1970 and was designed by Philip Johnson. Jackie Kennedy approved the site herself and johnson described his memorial as "a place of quiet refuge, an enclosed place of thought and contemplation separated from the city around, but near the sky and earth." we were there on a calm day, but walking into that room quieted the cars driving by and was exactly how he described it.

view of the triple underpass jfk's limo sped under on the way to the hospital after he'd been shot.

the infamous grassy knoll.

the x's are not official markers, and no one knows who originally painted them. they were there for over 30 years before the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination when the city of Dallas removed them for an unknown reason. (they were obviously repainted, as they were there 1.5 months later when we visited). the two x's supposedly mark where jfk's limousine was when the two shots were fired. we were excited to come to this location because my dad told us that conspiracy theorists were in abundance here, ready to tell you about their view of the events on november 22, 1963. as previously mentioned in my posts about this trip, this weekend was unusually cold. hardly anyone was out and about in dallas so unfortunately, we did not speak to any conspiracy theorists. jon got this good picture of both x's and a view of the window on the 6th floor.

it was a very interesting tour. i really want to go back and go through the museum to learn more about the investigations of that day as well as jfk's life.

on our way home, we stopped at in-n-out burger in austin. i've never been obsessed with in-n-out, but it was nice to have a taste of home that we've been missing so terribly.
our vacation was a blast, jon and i had so much fun on our road trip-seeing old friends and new places. and not to mention the car! every time i get in my car, i feel like i'm borrowing an old persons vehicle, it's awesome and much nicer than i am used to. with our plane tickets, gas, hotel and food plus the sales tax that was much higher than we were expecting, the car was still a better deal than we could have found locally. so not only did we get an awesome deal on the car (jon is so good at that stuff), but we got a vacation out of it and got to break our new car in. it was excellent! 

nashville!!! 3of4!

it was cold in knoxville, but not nashville cold:

we woke up early so that we could spend a few hours in nashville before heading to our next destination. it was a bummer because the city was sort of shut down due to the time of year and weather. the grand ole opry and the country music hall of fame were both closed.

water left in the car!

instead we went straight to centennial park where there is a full scale replica of the parthenon!

it was built for the tennessee centennial exposition in 1897.

athena.

this was all very interesting to me, as we had studied the parthenon and the sculptures on the pediment and frieze in deep detail in many of my classes. 

 

as you can see, it is not an exact replica. both long sides of the building were straight here, unlike the parthenon in athens. the greeks built the original parthenon using 'optical refinement' with curves to make the building look well balanced.

(i saw this little picture after our trip and immediately thought of our time in nashville)

we decided to go to the johnny cash museum because a. we like him and b. it was the only thing open! we loved learning about him and listening to his hit songs. my favorite part about the whole museum was the section where they had an american flag hanging with the lyrics to 'ragged old flag' along with a video of johnny reciting the lyrics. i had never heard this before, and i loved it so much. jon liked walking through the hallway where all of johnny's records were hung. that johnny was such a babe.

downtown nashville. 

i kept hoping we'd run into taylor swift or in the very least rayna james so i could tell her how pretty she is for an old lady.

does this give you an idea of how cold it was? the water fountain was frozen! i couldn't stand to look at the statues feet too closely because they were covered in ice and it made my own feet hurt!
nashville was a cute little city, i wish we could have spent more time there. maybe even on a warmer day…

my sister, lizziebeth, recommended we eat at the loveless cafe on our way out of nashville. we are so glad we did! the history of the cafe is so cool and the food was delicious. before we ordered they brought out hot biscuits with homemade preserves (four different choices!). they were soo good and so soft! we bought some preserves for our friends at church who taught our class of 5 year olds for almost a month while we were in utah and on our road trip, eek! if i could go back, i would have bought some for us too! it was yummy.

i loved the quaint atmosphere in the cafe. nashville was a highlight of our trip. it has a small town feel but is a big city with tons to see. we can't wait to go back.

our next stop was mephis, tennessee!! we looked on yelp to see where the best place to eat was and it sent us here-Gus's Fried Chicken. we weren't very hungry yet, but wanted to stop in memphis. all we got was fried chicken with fried pickles and we felt about as good as you'd expect we would after that meal. our waiter was a former marine who had been stationed at camp pendleton in SD. he was so kind and even offered to buy jon a beer "no homo". cutie jon politely declined because 'we have a drive ahead of us…' he was so cute though, it is such a small world!!! memphis was pretty scary and we worried about leaving our car around the corner from the restaurant while we ate. a few weeks later i talked to someone about that city and they informed me that it is a bit ghetto…we could tell by the broken windows and run down buildings. haha. as soon as we left memphis we crossed a bridge over the mississippi river into arkansas!!! it was so cool, i don't think either of us have ever crossed it before! i hadn't even seen the mississip!

Little Rock, Arkansas!! we had my dad google the best single thing to do in little rock and i think elvis's house was number one. it was late so we went with number 2: the big dam bridge. it is the longest pedestrian bridge in north america that "wasn't ever used by trains or motor vehicles" at 4,226 feet. we walked the whole way across and back, just to say we did! it was still so cold, but it was good to get out of the car and stretch our legs. was it pleasant? no, not really. it was actually very eerie. the dam with rushing water was so loud and violent. looking over the edge reminded me of the end of the new les miserables movie were the guy commits suicide. (if you haven't seen the movie or play or read the book, where have you been since 1862??) it was super creepy. we threw some change in, but i didn't make a real wish because i didn't want my wish to be sucked into the dam and tossed about. it just didn't feel right.
we really did have fun walking across and talking and laughing. it's so nice to be with jon without any worries about school or work or the distraction of technology. traveling with him is the funnest, we are always laughing.

we finally stopped for the night in Texarkana. a city that sits both in texas and arkansas and not a place i'd like to visit again. we made reservations for a room at La Quinta. we stopped at one and she said we were on the texas side of town and needed to be at the la quinta in arkansas. like we can tell the difference! we drove ACROSS THE STREET to the right la quinta! weirdest!

p.s. i put our christmas card up just a few weeks late..
here