4 Crazy Months

Time really flies! We had such a fun summer that obviously I did a really bad job documenting... One of the highlights was my family reunion. We started having a Tressler family reunion with just my immediate family about 4 or 5 years ago and it has been an awesome tradition. We started the reunion  at the Living Planet Aquarium. It was awesome! I was fascinated with all the animals and the kids all loved it. We then had a 3 on 3 basketball tournament for the adults.

My team didn't win... But it was a really fun time.

Some of the other events of the weekend were Seven Peaks, hiking, sleepover in my parents backyard and a movie on the projector, homemade ice cream, and a BBQ at the park. We have so much fun being together and I look forward to many more reunions like this. 

In June, Justin and I decided to buy a house. It was something that Justin had been wanting to do for a while and he finally convinced me it was a good idea. We started looking and found one pretty quickly that we really liked, and it was also a great deal. When we started looking we thought we might get stuck with a condo or townhome which neither of us were thrilled about. We loved this house because of the awesome backyard and long driveway. It's also just down the street and around the corner from Justin's parent's house, and we have an amazing view of the mountains. 

Our cute little home!

There are a lot of things we want to remodel/fix in the house and before we moved in we did a TON of painting and had new floors and carpet put in. I had a really hard time deciding on a paint color, but we ended up choosing Benjamin Moore Beach Glass, and i'm pleased with how it turned out. Here are a few before and after glimpses of our upstairs living room.

We love the new gray-ish floors

It was nice to do the floors last because we didn't have to worry about getting paint on the old ones!

It has been so fun to be homeowners and know we can do whatever we want with the place. We have several more projects to work on but we look forward to continuing to make it ours. 

We moved in around the middle of July and just a few weeks later this happened... 

We weren't really trying, and not really preventing at the time so it shouldn't have been as big a shock to me as it was. With the whole moving and house stuff I had totally forgot when my last period was so it hadn't occurred to me that I was late. Well, it finally did occur to me on August 2nd at about 1 AM. I happened to have these pregnancy tests from when I thought I might be pregnant last year so I was able to test right away. I woke up Justin and we were both freaking out. He was so excited and I was also excited and also terrified! I didn't sleep one minute that night. 

We were both so excited to tell Justin's family that we ended up doing it just a few weeks later on Kim's birthday. This will be their first grand baby so we wanted to tell them in a special way. I got a onsie off Etsy that said Arriving April 2015. It was so fun to see their reactions. 

Now I'm going to feel sorry for myself for a minute and explain my terrible first trimester. Weeks 5-14 were horrific. At first I just felt nauseous and had no appetite, then I started throwing up several times a day, I could barely eat so I started to get really weak and couldn't walk around or even stand up for more than a minute or two at a time. I couldn't go to work, and I was just a complete mess! I ended up losing about 35 pounds during those weeks. I tried 3 different medications to no avail... I even had to miss the Katy Perry concert that Kami and I got tickets to all the way back in January! It may seem silly, but this was super devastating for me to miss it.

I finally ended up at the ER one Friday night for IV fluids and medicine. That was the first time in weeks that I felt some relief.  

It was 2 or 3 in the morning so I think Justin was a little tired... haha

This would be a good time to talk about how amazing Justin has been through this whole thing. He is currently working at least 45 hours a week and going to school. Since I got pregnant he has also been doing the laundry, the dishes, cleaning our house, doing yard work, making (or buying) his own food, and cleaning up countless throw ups by me... (sorry if that's gross!). He has been so amazing. I spent so much time pleading with Heavenly Father to help me feel just a little better, and a few times wondering why it seemed He wasn't helping me at all. I felt like what I was experiencing was more than I could handle. Now, looking back I realize how blessed I was/am to have Justin and that Heavenly Father was helping me through him. 

One of the many sweet things he did/does is leave me notes in the morning.

Instant Breakfasts were one of the few things I could handle.

My worst fear was that I would stay sick my whole pregnancy, and although I still don't really have an appetite and get nauseous occasionally, I am doing SO much better. It was like magic. When I hit my 15th week I was all of the sudden SO so so much better. Yay!! 

We are finding out the gender on November 4th and we are soooo excited! Despite how hard things have been so far I already have such a great love for this baby, and am truly soooo excited to be a mom :)

Spring Time!

These last few months have been filled with lots of fun family time. We did an Easter egg hunt for my nieces and nephews that turned out really fun. It was the first time we've done it, but I think we'll make it an annual Easter occurrence.

Kami has the cutest little baby bump!

Apparently Easter weekend at the sand dunes is a big deal. Every year Justin and his dad, Mark make their way down there to race their spiffy 4-wheelers. 

They go pretty fast!

Kylie's birthday was May 1st and we did the traditional Tucanos birthday dinner followed by impromptu family pictures. We sat by a family at dinner that had 2 little boys and they couldn't keep their eyes off Kylie's hair, they said they thought it was so pretty and wanted to touch it! Haha it was adorable.

Look at cha cha's cute little face! 

We had Kami's baby shower at my cousin Ashley's house in Lehi. It was fun to see everyone and she got lots of cute stuff. Now all we need is baby Ruby to arrive! 

Lucy loved helping Auntie Kami open all her presents.

The Saturday before mother's day we went to mother daughter afternoon tea at the Grand America Hotel. It was very fancy and super fun. My sisters and I are very big fans of everything Regency era, so this experience really spoke to the Elizabeth Bennet in all of us :)

Speaking of mother's day, let me just say that I have an angel as a mother. Everyone who knows her loves her. Justin and I were both blessed with very special mothers whom we love so much. 

Recently I have been thinking about a specific memory of my mom. I was probably 7 or 8 years old and my mom and I were in Salt Lake City for one my sister's basketball games or something... (I can't remember exactly). We were driving around looking for somewhere to eat and my mom spotted a woman with 3 children and a little baby walking on the sidewalk. It was winter, and very cold outside. My mom immediately turned the car around and drove to this woman. She asked her where they were going and if we could give them a ride. The woman was very grateful and they all climbed into our van. As a side note, I was a very shy child, so at this point I was horrified and couldn't believe that my mother was letting these shabby looking strangers into our car! It turned out they were on their way to the hospital because the baby was sick. We dropped them off at the hospital and my mom asked if we could wait there to give them a ride home when they were done. I actually can't remember if we ended up waiting or not, but this story has always stuck with me. At the time I didn't really understand why my mom felt the need to help these strangers, but now I realize she was so full of charity that she wouldn't hesitate to help someone in need, no matter how big of an inconvenience it may have been. 

I could honestly tell story after story just like this of my mom's unending service. I hope one day to be like her. I love you mom :)

She's also an amazing grandma!

Recent Happenings

A few weeks ago Justin and I decided to try this Whole30 diet (we made it a week). You basically don't eat any carbs or dairy or beans. So yeah... what can you even eat? Basically the whole week felt like this

 It took a few days to get the hang of it but I wanted to share our favorite meal:
Sweet Potato hash with fried eggs and avocado (avocado makes everything taste better). It was gooooood.

I went to Montrose, Colorado last week to visit my sister, Brittany and help her with her kids while her husband was away at a convention in Chicago. We had so much fun painting nails, coloring, playing Mario Cart, and watching Frozen over and over and over again :)

They are such cuties. And baby Sloan is soooo soft. I loved kissing his cheeks. Also, I think Tess looks EXACTLY like Brittany. I feel like I learned a lot about being a mom the few days I was there. Brittany is a great example. I definitely missed Justin but it was great to be able to spend some sister time together.

My family has a lot of birthdays in March so we usually celebrate them all together at Classic Skating! The skating was a blast but Justin and Alex also had a great time at the arcade.

They are so funny together. They seem more like friends than uncle and nephew, and it's pretty comical how Alex is a foot taller than Justin. ha ha

On a more sad note, I was in a car accident a few weeks ago and the Honda was totaled! We were pretty surprised it was totaled because I was just rear ended, and it wasn't too bad of a hit but I guess there was some pretty significant frame damage. Sooooo we had to say good bye to the trusty Honda. It was sad. 

The good news is that I got a new car! It's a white Ford Focus and I am really enjoying the power windows and Bluetooth. Who knew cars were so fancy these days! 

25th Birthday

Last weekend I turned 25!! I really can't believe i'm 25. It feels really old for some reason. Aren't 25 year olds supposed to be mature, have a fabulous career, and know that their life is heading in a certain upward spiral...?  Hopefully that's 26 or 27 or 28 year olds! Luckily Justin didn't make any "you're getting old" jokes, and it turned out to be an awesome birthday. Saturday birthdays are the BEST! We got to spend all day celebrating.

Justin took me to breakfast and let us listen to Katy Perry every time we were in the car, and she, very appropriately has a song titled Birthday on her new Album.

We went to lunch with Mark and Kim (Justin's amazing parents) and then we went home and snuggled in our bed to eat mint brownies and watch a movie. This may have been the best part of the day.

We went to dinner with some of my family then went to my parents to open presents and eat cake. Sunday night we celebrated with Justin's parent's. They put 25 candles on 5 cupcakes for me to blow out. 

Justin and I are so blessed to have such amazing families. They go above and beyond for us all the time, especially when it comes to birthdays. We always have so much fun. I told Justin that in 25 years, if marrying him is the only ting i've done right then it's been a successful 25 years. As corny as that sounds, it's true! He is too good to me and I look forward to lots more birthdays together.