33 weeks

We now have less then 50 days until the due date! I haven't taken any pictures lately because I am really just getting bigger and bigger! I think I have, or Jared has hit a growth spurt I feel him poking me in the ribs all the time and it doesn't feel good. But that's okay because that means that Jared is growing and that is good. We don't want him to stop now! I have my last doctor's appointment in Greeley on Monday and set up an appointment with a doctor here in Colorado Springs for the 14th so by the time I meet this new doctor we will be just one month away from having Jared. So I am really looking forward to that appointment and hope I like the doctor.

Once I reached 32 weeks I understood what all the people were talking about when they said that being pregnant was hard. I think pregnancy should just be 32 weeks! I am feeling way more tired, it could have something to do with the fact that I can never sleep for longer than 2 - 3 hours at a time now. If we go to bed at 10:30 I wake up at 12:30, 3:30 and 5:30. Everyone keeps telling me its to help me prepare for the baby and that is fine but I think I could have gotten it down around weeks 36 -40 not 32. Oh well. My feet have started swelling too. I am so thankful that this summer has been as mild as it has. Overall I still think I have had a really easy pregnancy and hope that the next 7 weeks or so go well.

Oh I also got my haircut. I was quite brave and had the lady give me bangs! Just a few, I think its called swoop or maybe slide? Anywho these pictures don't show it too well but I am really happy with the haircut. Its fun. Normally the bangs are straighter but it was really windy today. I haven't had bangs since middle school and they were definitely not this style. They were rock hard from all the hairspray I put in them to keep them puffy!

P.S. If anyone knows some cute "pregnancy poses" I would love to try them out, these are getting a bit boring and never turn out how I want them too but at least I was outside today!

Happy 5 years to us!

Today is our 5 year anniversary, 5 fantastic years of marriage. I love being married to Mark!

Saturday August 21, 2004

Here are some of the happenings/accomplishments/adventures of the last 5 wonderful years:
2 Bachelors degrees (BYU Idaho) and 1 Masters degree (AUC)
Lived overseas for 2 1/2 years or half of our marriage
Have visited 10 countries together
Filled up entire passports
Completed 32 weeks of pregnancy
Moved 6 times: Idaho, Utah, Egypt and Colorado
Ridden camels, elephants, planes, trains, boats, hot-air balloons and cars
Climbed mountains and pyramids
Scuba dived and snorkeled in Thailand and Egypt
Mark's first salaried, very own classroom teaching job
Fallen more and more in love
The list could go on and on! Its been wonderful. We are really looking forward to this next phase in our marriage. It has been wonderful to have all this time to enjoy each other and get to really know each other but we can't wait for Jared to join us.

I am so thankful for Mark. He still buys me flowers and opens doors for me and treats me like I am a princess. Being married to Mark has been so fun and really not difficult at all. He has accepted my near obsession with decorating for holidays, taken me on numerous weekly drives to see the fall leaves, forgiven me when I've thrown something somewhat important away because I can't stand clutter or helped when I want to re-organize things (another near obsession). He is always willing to help with dinner or chores when I ask him, I don't even have to ask a lot of the time! As my older sister put it "April, you won the marriage sweepstakes." I completely agree. Thanks for 5 amazing years Mark, I can't wait for the rest of them, forever and then some!

Mr. Spencer's Classroom

Here are some pictures of Mark's classroom. He likes the school and his classes just fine. He is pretty tired at the end of the day, kids are really draining especially somewhat needy 6th graders and having 27-30 of them. But he is doing great!

Mr. Spencer hard at work!

His really cool Egypt picture on Papyrus and to the left is all his storage.

The front of the room.

His word wall and Grades/Assignments Calendar

The back wall, it is a collapsible wall (but he doesn't hear the other classes) and the teacher next door is very nice. It is the math teacher on his team. We had her (Jen) and her husband over for dinner last week. They always open up the door on the right after school so they can talk about their students or Mark can get answers to his questions.

It is a really nice school, probably the best Middle School in the district, largely because the administration really does back up the teachers. Quite a few teachers we have talked to have mentioned that they will be really upset when the/if the principal leaves. We are just so happy that Mark got the job here!

I often go walking

What do you see when you take a walk?

This summer I have been taking many many walks. Last week I found this great park here in Colorado Springs that has an amazing view! I love seeing the mountains! Over where the trees start is a frisbee golf course so its funny to walk by and hear people yell,"Fore!" It really is a pretty walk and people are so friendly. In Greeley I walked with some great girls each morning so its nice that people here are friendly, I do miss the Greeley walking girls though. Each day I drop Mark off at school around 7:15 and then go take my walk its a great way to start the day. The Springs (look at me going local) are beautiful!

What a storm!

So I know that I talked about a couple of storms in Greeley this summer but yesterday we had a crazy storm here in Colorado Springs it was wild! There was so much hail and it was so cold outside. Around 6:45 we heard some thunder and then all "hail" (hahaha) broke out! Here are some crazy pictures. We just couldn't stop taking them.

From our entryway

I have never seen this much hail before.

The bark beneath our apartment.

It was an awesome storm and now we know what it will look like here after a short snow storm!

Happy Birthday to Mark!

Sunday was Mark's birthday so we went out and celebrated Saturday (Trip to the temple and Thai Basil this really great Thai restaurant near Denver) but saved the cake for Sunday. This was not your ordinary birthday cake. When Mark was growing up his family was often visiting his Grandma Spencer in Rigby, Idaho during or near his birthday so his Grandma Spencer baked a special chocolate cake for him. I personally have only had the cake once (when we were dating in 2004) but decided I would try to make it for Mark this year. (Thanks to Mark's sister Shannon who sent me the recipe) So Sunday morning I got up and started baking and ta-da! The cake turned out wonderful. There were a few tricks to it but nothing too serious. I don't know if it was as good as when Grandma Spencer made it (probably not) but it has been at least 4 years since Mark has had it so he said it was just as good.

Happy Birthday Mark!

The funny thing about this was that 10 of the candles were trick candles! What makes this funny is that we didn't know. I went to the store to get the candles and grabbed a package of 20 and a package of 10 because he turned 28 so that seemed the easiest way. Well, the package of 10 were relighting candles only neither of us knew. So Mark got them all blown out and then they re-lit and then they re-lit a few more times and we finally just got a wet paper towell to put out the rest. I really didn't do it on purpose. You can see in this picture that Mark is thrilled by the relighting candles.

Anyway, Mark had a nice birthday and I am so happy that I get to celebrate all his upcoming birthday's with such an amazing guy!

We also went to a Colorado Springs Minor League Baseball game Friday night. Mark's school bought out a level of the picnic terrace so we went to watch the game, eat, and visit with teachers from his school. The game wasn't very exciting (we lost) but the fireworks were great at the end and it was fun to visit with some of the teachers he works with.

Our new place

Here are some pictures of our new apartment. We are really happy with it. Mark has been busy at school and I have been busy trying to stay busy, and doing a pretty good job of it too. It is so strange that he is back at school working and I am not. Its also pretty nice too. It is also really making me look forward to Jared's arival, not that I wasn't already but it is sort of the reason I am not working. After school each day I head over to Mark's school and help him in his classroom. Its been fun to get to meet the teachers that he will be working with. Next week or so I will take some pictures of his classroom but for now here is our new place that we both love.

I am sure I will get pretty tired of these stairs when I have a car seat or other baby stuff to carry, but I do prefer being on the second floor so I can have our blinds open and people are not walking right by us.

Here is the view from our balcony, no mountains but it is nice to have the grass instead of the parking lot. I thought the playground would be really loud but now that school has started it has been nice and quiet during the day.

What you see right when you walk in. The hallway leads to the bedrooms and bathroom but they aren't really very exciting so no pictures.

Our comfy chair. Its great for reading in.

Also, the stand the TV is on is one we got Tuesday at ARC (a thrift store in Colorado). The one we had in Greeley wouldn't fit in our new place so we left it there and found this one that we like even more for 15 dollars! The funny thing is that the one we bought in Greeley at the ARC there also cost 15 dollars. Such a deal.

The dinning room and kitchen. This is taken from the comfy chair corner.

Dining room. Its also our international corner because it has the pictures of all the places we went (Left wall) and our Egypt pictures/camel clock! We love that clock.

The Kitchen. Our kitchen in Greeley was so small. With my expanding belly Mark and I could barely be in there at the same time and if the fridge door was open I could no longer walk between it and the counter. We love that this kitchen is so open and so much bigger.

*If Peggy B. reads this then yes those are the adorable cherry placemats you made us when we got married and the recipe book is in the corner by the sink. They are so cute!

We made it!

We have now lived in Colorado Springs for 4 days and are really happy to be here. I love driving down the road and seeing the mountains or checking them out on my morning walk. (I miss the Greeley walking girls so much and Bittersweet Park, all the parks by us are really small so I need to explore some more. ) We are mostly unpacked and really like our new apartment. We have a few more things to unpack but then I can put up pictures of the new digs. Its sort of hard to unpack the second bedroom though because it is going to be Jared's room but we haven't really gotten any furniture type things for him yet so I don't want to unpack our old office stuff because I will just have to repack it. So for now it has a desk and lots of boxes.
Mark has been busy setting up his classroom and yesterday I went in to help him. It was really fun and I love hearing him tell me about his teammates and how excited he is to start teaching. There are one or two kids in our ward who will be in his class. Hopefully they like him or parent teacher conferences could be a little awkward. Our new ward seems really friendly. Its sort of funny because so many people are Air Force or Military that we sort of feel like we are still in Egypt, being around all these people who get posted to different places around the world. We are looking forward to getting to know them better.
I really do think we will be really happy here. Its beautiful, the church is really strong and people have seemed so friendly. We went for a walk Sunday and there wasn't a single person who didn't say hello to us. Its nice. I have been trying to learn my way around town and have only gotten lost once, and it was today coming to the library so I could use the internet. We are not sure when we will get the Internet in our apartment so these postings may be a bit sporadic. But we are enjoying settling in and are so happy to be here.
As of the first we have been in Colorado for one year and are glad that we are here. Last summer my Mom and Dad drove out with us and this is how much stuff we had.

My Dad and Mark packing up in California

Yes, all our stuff fit in the back of my Dad's truck and our Corolla.

39 of our 45 boxes.

I meant to take a picture of the truck with all our furniture/boxes inside of it but ran out of time. We had a 16 foot truck and filled it up pretty well but still had space left. The people who helped us load and unload the truck really liked us because we apparently do not have very much stuff, I am sure that will change once Jared arrives. While I was packing the whole apartment by myself last week I felt like we had way too much stuff! We left Greeley at 8:30 (p.m.) and got to Colorado Springs at 10:40 (p.m.) Not bad at all. We had to drive through this awful rainstorm. I had never seen so much rain in my life! There was so much water on the road, imagine pouring rain and then multiply it by like 10! You couldn't even see the lines on the road anywhere. I was driving our car and was sliding (hydroplaning?) all over the place. It was super scary but we made it here safely and the next day lots of people from our new ward came to help us unpack. It was a nice welcome.
Today I went to my first ever play group in the park and it was funny when people asked me which kids were mine, the one inside me! They seem really nice and I am looking forward to getting to know them. There is another Spencer family in the ward too so that is weird especially since they just had a baby this week, when we were at church and said we were the Spencer's everyone thought we were related to them. There is a lady due in Septmeber and one in November so I am sure I can find a good doctor here which is the next thing on my to do list.