Update to now!

Well, let's be real. I'm not going to try to catch up on basically any of 2014 right now. I wanted to be up-to-date with this blog by the time baby was born and at this point, I hope I don't have enough time to do that.

So real fast update because these were cool things since I last posted:

November: We stayed in Arizona for Thanksgiving. While it was sad to be away from family, we had an awesome time. We attended a neighborhood turkey fry the day before Thanksgiving, and it was a hit! Who knew fried turkey was so good? Not me. We had a little fun run the morning of, then enjoyed dinner with some great friends and their family.

December: Christmas was spent in sunny California. As usual, we had an amazing progressive dinner with great friends. We went to the beach on Christmas Eve (family tradition). While, we missed Argentinian Ryan, we got to Skype with him. That ended in lots of tears (surprise!). Basically, we just loved being together.

February: I turned 23! Sushi dinner, a fruit pizza, and presents to celebrate.

March: I ran a half-marathon. I had the best husband who was there, cheering me on at the finish line with an awesome sign. He's really the greatest.

April 1st: I broke out into a crazy rash. Weird, right? Turns out that's how my body tells me I'm pregnant! Then a few days later I leave for a girls weekend to go run a 10k.

May: Nate finished his first year of law school. Yay! He found a summer job working at a firm close by. He's been getting great experience and really learning tons.

June: My brother Trey graduated from high school. We went home for a few days to play with everyone before he left for BYU.

July: Nate's sister, Andrea, and her family move to Phoenix from North Carolina. It's been great having them so close!

August: Nate started his second year of law school. He continued to work about 15 hours a week while going to school (BUSY!).

September: We went to the Grand Canyon for Labor Day Weekend. It was really fun to hike the canyon and explore Flagstaff, AZ for a few days. Hiking while six months prego wasn't easy, but we still managed some pretty great views.

October: We moved into our new apartment. Same complex (I didn't want to leave our friends!), just into a place with an extra bedroom for little guy and all his stuff. Moving when 36 weeks pregnant is definitely not ideal, but we survived. Nate is a trooper and basically did it all himself while I directed and unpacked.

November: We are officially counting down the days until baby is due! I finished work on 11/7 and have enjoyed the last 10 days getting ready for him. We've snuck in lots of dates the last couple of weeks, including our first ASU football game! I've also been able to do some fun decorating (my nesting instinct is kicking in...), go on lots of walks, and take care of long to-do lists.

We can't wait for baby to be here! 

Fall Break in Boise

We were able to head to Boise for 10 days in October. It was so nice to be able to take a break and spend some time with Nate's family. 

Little Easton is growing up so fast! I can't believe our little squirrel is getting so big! 

He loved carrying toys in his mouth

Snuck into the stadium when we were on campus for a soccer game

The famous blue turf

Cute little monster snuck up on me! 

Usually it takes a little convincing to get the girls invited on fishing trips, but this one was just for us! We went early to a lake along with Greenbelt. It was really slow starting off, and we were just about to give up when Rob got his first bite. After that we caught about seven more! I would like to proudly announce that I put hooked the worms, caught a few fish, pulled the hooks out, and gutted three fish!

Squirmy wormy

Fisherman Nate

My first fish

  

Rob taking the hook out

Support staff

I did it!

Our dinner

 We had a great time with Nate's family! We wish we lived closer but we always have a good time. We eat lots of yummy food, play fun games, and do lots of relaxing.

Fall in Arizona

We had a lot of fun adventures in Arizona this fall! 

Dressed up for free Chik-Fil-A

Visiting the Gilbert Temple

Nate's first day of law school!

Date night to LoLo's Chicken and Waffles and to the Diamondbacks game. It was a great night until our engine overheated! But we try not to remember that part...

LoLo's Chicken and Waffles was awesome!

Nate's pretty excited! 

Waffles-Syrup-Chicken-Hot Sauce

Date night at the Diamondback's game

Fireworks after the game

Conference at the Hymas' with friends...

Nate and Jordan were so proud of themselves for making those. All morning they kept saying, "These are amazing! You need to put these on Pinterest. Everyone will love them. How do you put this on Pinterest?"

Conference breakfast

Ward campout. It was really fun escaping into the mountains for a day. It was a beautiful day! 

The lightning storm rolled in during s'more time

The next morning was perfect! 

Ever since I can remember, Ryan and I have tried to find the smallest grape in the bunch. I found this one night during dinner and had to take a picture. Even from Argentina he said there was no way I could win because he found one smaller. Too bad he didn't have proof!

Our Summer Break

Originally, we thought that we would be able to find an apartment within the first week of being in Arizona. Well, that didn't happen, but we already planned our summer vacation trip to California, so we took a break from apartment/job hunting.

We spent two weeks at home in California and it was awesome! At first I thought that time would go slowly because we didn't have a major event (Christmas, graduation, etc.) but the time flew by! We were able to spend the mornings/days hanging out together and then spent the afternoons and evenings with the kids after school. We spent time playing tennis, watching shows, going to the beach, reading.

One Saturday my parents' ward had the men's softball game. We went to watch my Dad and the boys play. They are awesome!

Trey the Slugger

Dad's still got it!

Trey's double play

Dad's homerun! 

It was a high scoring game!

The game got pretty heated and some strong words were thrown around, but it made it for an exciting afternoon! I have missed seeing the boys play baseball since I moved away and they've grown up. It was really fun being able to see Trey and Dad play together in that game!

We also spent a day at the LA Zoo. Mom, Alyssa, Nate and I stole away for an afternoon and saw lots of cool animals. I hadn't been there in a long time, so it was a fun adventure! 

I love flamingos!

Alyssa loved this giant lizard statue 

The zebras were some of my favorites, but they just stood in the shade! 

The cute little orangutan made a show for us 

Mom and baby giraffe

The tiger was lazy in the heat

All of the elephants were painted to depict different countries

We ran all over the park to see the elephants! They are mom's favorites 

They liked to dance for us when some spectators played music from their phones. It was awesome! 

It was so fun being home, but the whole time we were in this weird limbo. We were staying with our friends, neither of us had found a job, we didn't have an apartment, and school didn't start for another two months.

I had been searching for a job since March, since ASU became an option for law school. I hadn't made any headway, there were no leads or even promising applications. Public health just isn't a booming field in Phoenix. I was getting really frustrated and a little panicked because I didn't have a plan. We had made it to the last step of our plan and now we were just flying by the seat of our pants! 

Anyways, no public health jobs. Non-public health jobs sounded fun, but my experience was not "adequate" for other positions. No one wanted me! I did not want an office administrator job. I didn't want to be a secretary. I started applying for physical therapy technician positions because I had experience in that from my internship. Within a few days, I got a request for an interview. Because I was still in California, we decided to do an interview over Facetime. Not too much later I had a job offer with Dynamic Rehab! I was so excited!! 

We headed back to Arizona after two weeks and the next week I started my new job! 

Moving Day

Two weeks after graduation we had our house packed up and our truck loaded. We were out of our apartment on May 15th and were on our way to a new adventure!

Packing was a little rough, but we got through it!

Living room

Kitchen

Bedroom

Apartment's empty...

All gone!

Thanks Trent and Kristen for your help! They're the best

The last time in our apartment

Bye #293! 

I always loved the view from our porch

We're ready to hit the road

So after our first 6 hours of driving, we stopped off in St. George to stay the night with my grandparents. We figured it would be good to give ourselves a little break and cut the trip into two legs. We were able to rest up, get some good food, and hang out with Grandma and Grandpa a bit!

The next morning we're about to head out when our trailer starts making a strange noise. We stop to check things out, and don't see anything wrong, so we get started again hoping there aren't any major problems. The trailer only makes noise when we turn or slow down, so we figure that some parts just need oiling. As we're heading to the freeway, some nice man in a pick up truck waves us down to tell us we have a flat tire! AH!! As we get out to look, we find out that it's not flat, the back axel is breaking/broken.

YIKES

This is very stressful, to say the least. Literally everything we own is now stranded on the side of the road, practically on the freeway onramp. We call Penkse Truck Rental company to see if they have a location close to us to come replace the trailer. The closest one is in West Las Vegas and was going to take THREE hours to get to us! So now we just have to wait. Thankfully we (a.) didn't get on the freeway and start driving, and (b.) my grandparents live in town.  After calling the local police department to see if we can leave the truck (I didn't want to get it towed/booted as well!), my grandma took us back to her house for some lunch and to wait it out. After about three hours, we headed back and waited for the trailer to come.

The guy finally came and replaced the trailer. After about 5 hours, we were on our way! Another 10 hours of driving in the middle of no where, on a two-lane road, and a few missed turns later, we finally made it to Mesa, Arizona. Thankfully we had some family friends living there who were willing to let us stay for a few days as we checked out apartments. More on that later...

We were so grateful to have a friendly house to stay in after such a long and stressful day! The Bentons were so kind to let us crash at their house! Nate had never met them before and I hadn't seen them in a very long time, so I was afraid we would be awkward. A few weeks before I had randomly called up their daughter to ask if we could stay there for a few days, so I was nervous we should seem intrusive and like freeloaders. If we did, they didn't show it because they seemed just as happy to have us there as we were to be there.

Originally we had planned to stay for a week while we decided on which apartment to move into. I already has a spreadsheet (yes, another) full of complexes to check out and thought it would only take a few days! Little did we know it would take a little bit longer than that!