It's a...

GIRL!

And we couldn't be more excited! I can't wait to buy a teeny weeny swimming suit for our little girl. And have someone to watch chic flicks and take shopping with me again, come a few years.

Home vacation

This past week Sam has been in Phoenix on a work trip, so Ash and I decided to give ourselves a mini, at home vacation, which is pretty easy to do in a place like this. We spent Saturday in Waikiki, where we enjoyed the ocean all day long, and ended at the Cheesecake Factory. Then it was home to my place for a chic flick. Sunday she spent the night at my house, and we had fun cooking together and fitting in another chic flick. We spent the next three days swimming and laying out on North Shore, and I finally got a tan! We ended it baby sitting at Turtle Bay for a family here on vacation from New York, who paid big $ and let us order room service galore. We split 3 meals between the 2 of us and mango smoothies. It was such a relaxing week, and so fun to spend time with Ashley.

Now Sam just needs to hurry home- as much fun as I had, I miss him like crazy.

The collection begins

Sam got his first board--first of many, he keeps reminding me. I keep reminding him that this board will be perfect for me come 6 months :)

Completely worth it

There were more than a few times when Sam and I wondered if all the doctor visits, heartache, and money spent would ever be worth it... every ultra sound makes me so grateful that we did! This baby is as big as an orange and I already love him/her like crazy. There is nothing I enjoy more than getting an ultra sound these days - I could lay there and watch our baby squirm around all day and be perfectly content. At our last visit, they had to measure some part of the neck to make sure baby didn't have downs syndrome, and baby moved so much that the 5 minute ultra sound turned into 45 minutes. I loved every minute of it.

Hanging out with Ashley

One of my favorite parts about living here is that I get to spend time with Ashley again. We try to meet up at least weekly for a beach day. It had been over a year since I had seen her - way too long! We were roommates while we went to college here, and we had so much fun together. It was literally non-stop fun --- I don't think we did more then half an hour of homework a week (yet somehow, we graduated). Some of my favorite memories:

• I ate a bean burrito almost every day of my college life. Ashley told some guys how much I LOVED beans, and a week later they accused me of stealing a couple cans of beans from their house - they were completely serious. For Christmas they gave me beans.
• Ashley broke up with her boyfriend, and her break-up line was, "I need to spend more time with Melissa" (yeah, he hated me from then on)
• We didn't have a car, but it didn't stop us from making it to our favorite beaches. We rode our bikes or walked everywhere, spending every afternoon in the water.
• We both worked in the cafeteria together at BYU. I told our boss, Leva, that Ashley loved cutting onions (her least favorite job - our hands would smell like onions for days). From then on, Leva would always save the onions for us.
• Also while working in the cafeteria, every shift, Ashley and I would sneak into the back fridge gorge ourself on the next days' desserts. We would make ourselves sick, but had no self control. Eventually, they put up signs saying to stay out of them. Didn't stop us :)
• I convinced Ashley to ride our rusty bikes all the way from Laie to Haleiwa and back (about 40 miles). Ashley's bike was so rusty that her seat wouldn't stay up, so she had to pedal about twice as fast as I did. The first half was an adventure, but by the end Ashley's chain was falling off every couple hundred feet and she was not too happy to say the least :)
• We would throw poppers and water balloons at people off the school roof. One time we got chased down and caught by the campus police. Just when we were about to get busted, the "cop" had to check something in his security office around the corner. As soon as he turned his back, we just started running and got away.

We are having a baby!

I can't explain how it felt to see our little baby moving its arms around at our 12 week ultra sound yesterday. To be honest, it was something I didn't think I would ever get to see. Sam and I couldn't stop smiling, and I just wanted the Dr. to keep that ultra sound going for hours.

As a lot of you know, after working with the infertility specialist the first time around, I ended up with no pregnancy and a lot of cysts, due to all the injections. They told me that they cysts would take months to go away, and due to my body's reaction, it wouldn't be safe to try again. I went in a couple weeks later, and amazingly, the cysts were gone. They gave us the option of trying one more time before our move, and we went for it. The day Sam left for Hawaii (he came our 3 weeks before me), I took at at home test and it came out positive. The next week I went in to confirm the pregnancy with blood work, and they called later that night saying I had had an early miscarriage.

A couple days later, I took another home pregnancy test and it was still positive. I called in, to see why this might be, at they told me it most likely meant an ectopic/tubal pregnancy, that would require emergency surgery, and to come in immediately. I went back to the doctors for more blood work, and they called later that night and said that the blood work had come back showing not a tubal pregnancy, but a very healthy pregnancy. They re-ran the first blood work test, and found that the lab technician had made a typo and typed in “8” rather than “608” (100 and below indicates a miscarriage). I called Sam right away, and we both just sat there on the phone, in awe.

Sam and I are more grateful than we can say for this little miracle, coming September 16th.

Happy Monday Morning

6 am at Chun's Reef beats sleep anyday. The drive over was full of yawns, and the drive home was full of smiles.

Home

We made it! Our stuff finally arrived, and now it is starting to feel like home. Boy is it nice to sleep on a bed again! I can't get enough of this perfect weather. It still feels crazy to be able to go on walks at night when Sam gets through with his studying, and have it be breezy and 75 degrees at 11 pm. Sam has been busier than ever studying for his financial adviser exams, putting in about 14 hours every day, but we still find time to make it to the beach here and there. It is a weird feeling living here in Mililani where we are 20 minutes from the ocean, as before we literally lived right on the beach. We both hope to move closer to north shore in a few years, but for now it is all work and a little play, which is an adjustment after it having been having all play with a little work last time we lived here. However, it is still HAWAII, and we are so thankful to be living in such a beautiful place.

3 weeks = 3 weeks too long

We were being completely logical when planning our move. Sam would move over to Hawaii two weeks early to find us a place to live and cars, while I would work here in Utah to earn a little extra money for the move. Well, two weeks turned into three weeks when plane tickets were cheaper on certain days, and a week and a half into it and we are dying! I miss my husband, bad. What were we thinking? Being logical is not the smartest, I am finding. Especially when it involves me staying in 20 degree weather while my husband is forced into 80 degree, sunny days. I am counting the days!

P.S. Hawaii posts may not come for a while, as I packed my camera cord and who knows when our stuff will arrive.

2010 in a nutshell!

Bates' family reunion in Park City

Skiing at The Canyons

Moved to Provo

Sam started working at National Processing

I worked as a sub teacher, Jenny Craig, then Utah County

Ran Ogden half marathon

Sam got his dream motorcycle

Sam got laid off from National Processing

Months of job searching

Lots of infertility treatment

Sam got hired with Edward Jones

Decided to move to HAWAII!

Thanksgiving with my family in AZ

Christmas with Sam's family in Rawlins

Shipped everything to Hawaii, lived without anything for a bit

It has been a crazy, good year. So excited for what 2011 will bring!