Ultrasound Exam

I had my ultrasound exam on Wednesday. It was a lot of fun to look at the baby. They confirmed that my due date is May 10th. Here is one of the pictures of the baby. He stayed curled up on top of the placenta for the whole time, making picture taking very difficult.
For those who are not experienced in ultrasound pictures, the baby's head is on the bottom. He is kind of crunched over with his knees almost touching his head.
The next picture is of the baby's leg.
You can see his knee pointing down and his foot at the top.
The next picture is a 3D picture of the baby. You can't see his face because he is facing the placenta. Also, I think he looks kind of deformed but I think it is just the picture.
Also, we don't know if we are having a boy or girl. We are saying "him" because that is better than saying "it". Also we asked the ultrasound people if they could tell if it was a boy or girl and since the baby stayed all curled up they said no. They did get a shot between his legs and they thought they saw something but they said not to buy anything blue because it was just a guess.

More than one way to open an orange?

A few days ago we bought a bag of oranges to use as snacks. Alan loves them! A couple of days ago he asked for an orange and I gave him one. Then I asked if he wanted me to open it for him. He defiantly said "NO!" so I said fine and I started to clean up the kitchen (keeping an eye on him to see what he would do). He examined the orange from all angles and then started looking around the kitchen. All of a sudden he set the orange on the floor and walked over to my kitchen utensil drawer. He rummaged until he found my can opener and then he walked over to the orange and tried to open it! He even had the right part facing the orange and then he busily began to turn the knob. He did this for a bit and then he examined the orange...no results. At this time his hunger overcame his pride and he let me open it.





Another funny thing about Alan and oranges - he loves to sniff them. When I first start to peel an orange he will take it and then take deep, noisy sniffs. Its pretty cute.






I had my first prenatal visit last week. It went well but they said I am measuring small so they scheduled an ultrasound for next week to determine my due date. That should be fun.

Also, Reed and I both have callings now. I was called as the Sunday School teacher for the twelve and thirteen year olds. I was surprised...I have never taught teenagers before. There are 5 boys and 1 girl in the class. Reed was called as the 1st counselor in the Young Mens Presidency as well as the Scoutmaster. He is excited and a little overwhelmed. He had his first camp out last Friday and it went well. He had a meeting today and realized that he has a lot of work to do though. This Sunday is stake conference. It is in Cheyenne Wyoming (a two hour drive) so we are going to stay with Uncle Cabot. Neither of us have ever lived so far from a stake building. We keep moving further from the temple too...in Rexburg we were only 1/2 hour away, at Zion Ponderosa we were 1 1/2 hours away, in Belgrade we were 2 hours away and now we are 3 or 4 hours from the Denver temple. Hopefully our next move will take us closer to a temple. Thats it until next time. I will try to send house pictures soon.

Halloween

We had a lot of fun for Halloween. We went to our ward Halloween party but Alan didn't really get what was going on. We took him around to some of the booths and as soon as he got his first piece of candy he was done. He wanted to eat it and go home. We took him to one more booth so that he had a piece of candy in each hand and then took him home. For Halloween Alan dressed up as Superman...if any of you are thinking that the cape looks familar that is because it is one of the capes that Mom made for Russ, Ken and Reed when they were little.

We took Alan to the mall on Halloween night to go trick or treating. After the first few stores Alan got the hang of it. He was pretty cute. Before one of the store owners would give Alan a candy they said "What do you say?" (I think they were hoping he would say trick or treat) Alan looked up at them and said "Please?" They thought that was good enough. Also, some of the store owners were dressed up. One was dressed up in a scary mask and cloak. At first Alan didn't notice him because he was so intent on the candy. Then he happened to glance up and see the scary guy...he let out a wail and took off running toward Dad. We had to walk a few stores down before Alan would stop looking over his shoulder for the scary man.

Here are some pictures of Alan's loot. His favorite are the suckers.



When I first get Alan up in the mornings our conversation always starts like this:
Alan: Candy?
Mom: No, we are going to have breakfast.
pause....
Alan: Sucker?
Mom: No, its too early for suckers.
pause...
Alan: Chocolate?
Mom: No, Alan, we are going to have a good breakfast.
Alan: Oh (very disappointed sounding)

I think if he knew the individual names of the the chocolate bars he would list them in the hopes that one of them would be allowed :)

We had mixed experiences with carving pumpkins. About 2 weeks ago we had dinner in a pumpkin so we were excited to see Alan's reaction to cleaning it out. Reed cut off the top and let Alan look inside...Alan looked inside for a bit then turned to Reed and said "Eewwww, ucky." He refused to touch it.
We resigned ourselves to the fact that Alan would not help us make a jack-o-lantern. However when we cut off the top of the new pumpkin two weeks later Alan happily dug in and helped us get the seeds out!!!! We were very surprised.




Once we got it all cleaned out Alan got bored so he played with Reed while I carved the jack-o-lantern. Alan didn't pay much attention to me except to point out that I was making holes. Then I turned off the light and lit the candle in the pumpkin and told Alan to look. He froze and his eyes got big...then he started to slowly back away while still keeping his eyes on the pumpkin. When he got close to Reed he turned and lunged into his arms and started to whimper. It was pretty cute. The picture below is of him asking me to turn on the lights.

After we turned on the lights we finally convinced him to pose with the pumpkin.


After, when we tried to put him to bed we had to hide the pumpkin because he was still a little worried about it.