The Housewife

Happy Winter! Well I haven't updated the blog in a bit and quite a lot has changed! Indeed I have become a housewife. A few weeks ago I went to work and was informed by my manager that our headquarters in Chicago were shutting down our west coast channel. This includes the offices in the pacific northwest, the bay area in California and our whole building here in Layton. What a surprise! Obviously a layoff is never good news and Brad and I were scrambling to try and plan out the future without my job, insurance, and being 32 weeks pregnant. I planned on working until the baby comes and then taking maternity leave and using my PTO time, but that all changed pretty quickly. Although Maternity leave and PTO time are both hard to let go, our biggest concern is definitely the insurance factor. As of my last working day, the 13th of November, (Friday the 13th, how ironic!) we were without insurance. Thank goodness for Cobra! We are still in the process of getting Cobra set up and hopefully we will qualify for the government's subsidy program but it is still a scary time with a baby coming so soon. Even though times are uncertain, we feel really blessed to have all that we do and for all the opportunities that are out there so that we will be OK. My sudden dismissal from work has been kind of a tough transition as I am so used to being overly busy. Now I am finding that I have a LOT of time on my hands, but I feel like this is also a blessing as it is helping me prepare for when the baby comes. Brad has two part time jobs and is still looking feverishly for something he enjoys a little more and that offers insurance. He is such a huge support and I am so thankful for his work ethic and positive attitude.

He makes me feel like a good housewife as he is always very appreciative of my recently acquired cooking skills, and squeaky clean house. Like I said, lots of time on my hands... I am doing hair more and I continue to advertise and spread the word about my salon so that I can help things out by doing hair. I truly love doing hair and am excited to continue building my clientele. I have finally decided on a name for my salon... and it is SalonKae.
Kae stands for the names of my sisters, Kirsten, Amber, & Erin. My website is currently being worked on and I'm really excited for it to be finished as I think that it will bring in more clients.
We are looking forward to Thanksgiving this weekend. We are having my family at our house this year, so that should be tons of fun! I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving and that life is treating you well. Thank you all for your love and examples. We find so much strength from our amazing family and friends.

Happy Halloween!

My sister sent me the link to make the video above and I think it's pretty hilarious. Check it out! Well Brad and I had a lot of fun on Halloween. We have a tradition now of passing out candy AND Hot chocolate for the parents which is pretty fun. (We try to entice more people to come down our street) We absolutely love seeing our cute neighbors bring their kids around all dressed up. I hope you all had a fun Halloween! I'd love to see your pictures.

Still loving fall...

We've done a lot of fun things this fall and I'm really enjoying it. First we went to the corn maze with Adam and Megan. It was pretty fun except for the fact that we were BY FAR the oldest people there. The place was infested with junior high and possibly high school kids which made it kind of interesting. :) So there were two huge slides that you could go down and Brad and I decided to do it even though I'm kind of large right now. (We're just trying to break in our child...you know, prepare him for roller coasters, etc.) I was kind of nervous and the bumps were a little uncomfortable but the hilarious part came when I tried to stand up. Notice Brad just hops up all excited and I'm stuck. HAHA! This picture makes me laugh because I really did have quite the time standing up.

We've also made candy apples, carved pumpkins and we went to the Pumpkin Walk up in Logan. the pumpkin walk is the best! Each year there is a theme and this year's was TV Commercials. People put together displays of pumpkins that they have painted and you walk through all the displays. My personal favorites were The Geico Caveman, The Mac & PC Guy, the Michael Jackson Thriller dance, and Where the Wild Things Are. Some people are really creative. This is the second year that we've gone and it's a lot of fun.
We can't wait for Halloween. We LOVE handing out candy. Our neighborhood is loaded with cute kids so I'm stoked. Everyone with kids should come to our neighborhood because we will have hot chocolate for all who come to our door. :) Happy Halloween!

Fall 2009

I love Fall! It is beautiful here this time of year and we have really enjoyed the weather so far. We went on our annual car drive to see the leaves. We have done this every year since we were dating and it is one of my favorite traditions so far! We went up to Snow Basin and it was gorgeous there! Hopefully we can hold on to this weather for a while because I'm not sure if I'm ready for snow. Here are some of the pictures Bradley took.

It's been forever!

Sorry everyone, I know you have all greatly missed reading about us. Dry your eyes, WE RETURN! Let me start off by sharing our huge news which most of you probably already know. We are having a baby boy! Hooray!! We cannot wait to bring him into our home and are VERY excited and happy for this new stage of life. This news may help some of you (especially women) understand my lack of motivation for pretty much everything, including updating our blog. Some of my good friends have inspired me to get back to blogging to keep them posted, so here we are! I haven't taken any real profile pictures since we've been pregnant so last night I finally had Bradley take a couple so we can document this joyful pregnancy. (Only slight sarcasm there. :) This is me at 5 1/2 months. I am so happy to be at the second half of the pregnancy. Those of you that know me well know how much I dislike winter, but this year it can't come quick enough! I am just counting down the days until Halloween... and then Thanksgiving ...Christmas... and then it will be no time before we have this sweet baby. Can't wait! A few weeks ago we had our big Anatomy ultrasound and I'm happy to report that this baby appears to be a healthy boy, and quite active! We continue to pray and have faith that all will go well as he keeps growing.
One thing that I'm pretty concerned about is the Swine Flu. I watch a lot of news and I keep hearing that pregnant women are number 1 on the list to get the new vaccine because of the risks involved in pregnant women and their unborn child. Honestly I am a little hesitant about getting this vaccine as it has hardly been tested. After doing some research I have learned that there are a lot of natural ways to keep my body healthy and protected from the Swine flu or other illnesses. If anyone has some good information they would like to send our way, we are more than open to it! It may sound crazy or irresponsible that I'd be skeptical about this vaccine but I just want to do what's best for my health and the baby's health. I promise to be better at updating the blog and letting everyone know how all of that is going. :)

In other news, let me give an update on Bradley. Some of you know that he broke his hand about a month and a half ago playing basketball. It was bad enough that he had to have surgery and since then has been slowly recovering. Unfortunately he has lost some movement in his hand and works really hard at therapy so that he can gain as much movement back as possible. A plate was put in his hand temporarily to help the bone grow together normally again. That plate should be taken out in the next few months and at that time they will be able to cut away much of the scar tissue that has attached to his tendon preventing full movement of his fingers and hand. We are really hoping that all goes well there and that his therapy can continue to help. In the mean time he is really missing basketball, a weekly tradition he has been involved in since high school. But I keep reminding me how lucky he is to spend more time with me. :)
Brad continues to work hard at work and around the house always improving things and making life easy and enjoyable. He is currently looking for other job options as the family business continues to suffer in this economy and we have a baby coming and my full time job coming to an end. I know he feels a lot of pressure and responsibility and we are hoping and praying that he can find something that he enjoys and can learn from while we wait for things to pick up.

2nd Anniversary!

When Brad and I got married, a lady in our ward told me that in marriage, the first seven years are the hardest. Haha! Hmm, That's not something a newlywed wants to here! I've also heard that the first year or even two years are the hardest. And while I can totally see how this may be the case for many couples, I'm happy to report that I'm happier than ever after being married to Bradley for two years. Each day brings new opportunities to learn and grow together and truly ENJOY life. Some of the things we like to do together are cooking, playing sports, watching movies and eating treats, going on long walks with our crazy dog, playing games, listening to music, and the list goes on. I'm so thankful to have such a fun, sweet, caring husband who takes such good care of me. Can't wait for many more years together. I can only imagine how I'll feel when we hit our 7th anniversary! :)
This year for our anniversary Brad was the planner. He took me to the Red Iguana for dinner. It was the best! We both love Mexican food, and this is tuly amazing Mexican food. It was delicious. After dinner we went to downtown SLC and Brad surprised me with Salsa Dancing! I was sooo excited! Brad doesn't love dancing, (although deep down he wishes he was really good at breakdancing, NO JOKE) so I thought it was so sweet that he would take me dancing, knowing how much I love to dance. It was such a fun night.

Poor Miss Miya

Our poor Miya lost her womanhood yesterday. We tried to breed her once but after a few days with mean ol' Koda (a stud Cocker who is much bigger than Miya who was, shall we say, "a little too" excited) and no success, we decided that we have a morally chaste dog. We truly felt horrible leaving her there growling and running for her life around Koda's house with him right on her tail. Plus Miya is pretty small for her breed and we were worried about her health should she become pregnant. SO as much as I'd love to have Cocker Spaniel puppies, it's not worth risking her health. I'll just have to go to the pet store and visit some puppies. I am trying to convince my Father in Law to buy a puppy to be a friend for Miya but he hasn't consented yet. Maybe for Fathers Day I'll buy him one... good idea!
Anyway, we set a date to take her in since she would be going into heat in the next month or two and we didn't want to deal with that again. Miya on drugs (Painkillers) is quite hilarious. I wasn't sure if she'd be able to walk, but sure enough when Brad arrived home with her I ran out to the garage to see how she was and she was dizzily walking towards me tripping up the stairs on the way into the house. We then let her go outside to do her job and she was walking sideways with her eyes half open. It took her about 5 minutes to go to the bathroom. Lol, Brad and I were trying not to laugh at her.