May

May has been the month of family time for us! We have had so many major family events, it's crazy! We have been loving it. Here is the month in pictures, courtesy mostly of family members who have taken these pictures and sent them to us. I have been a terrible picture taker lately...but what's new? 

The first weekend in May the whole Young family went to Denver to be with Chris and Nicole and their adorable family for their new baby Evelyn's blessing. She is a sweetheart and hardly ever even made a peep, except in this picture. Thomas made up for his sister crying with that pose. 

The cutest family. 

The next weekend my brother got married in Logan! Not terribly good quality pictures here but it's what we've got for now. It was a beautiful day and they will have some amazing pictures for themselves later on. 

The happy couple.

Everyone always felt bad that Spencer didn't have any brothers but I never did, look at all of his amazing sisters! Right? He will be such a good husband after putting up with us for all of these years.

This same weekend, my sister Lyndsay had her mission farewell on Mother's Day. She did an amazing job and it was fun to be together on Mother's day. Also, this picture is crazy to me because my youngest sister Kamie looks so old! When did she stop being an awkward pre-teen?

A few days later was Lyla's first birthday! She was super cute opening presents.

She LOVED her new clutch the most.

Although her cake was beautiful, and she is usually a great eater, she hated cake. She will come around I am sure. 

Lyndsay got set apart that night after the birthday party and went to the MTC the next day!  I love this picture because it is classic Lyla. She is always scowling. She and Lyndsay really were good friends, I promise.

And she is off! She has been in the MTC for almost two weeks and she is doing really well. She is struggling with the Spanish a little bit but it's not been much time so I am sure she'll get it soon.

Today is memorial day and we are headed off for a hike and a Young family BBQ later. Next weekend we are rounding off the family time with baby Emery's blessing (Jessica and Adam's new baby girl). It's been a really fun month but I think we are ready for some relaxing weekends with nothing going on and nowhere to be. Maybe in June!

Baby Boy

Our baby boy is growing so fast! I am 22 weeks (about five and a half months) along right now and he is supposedly around 11 inches and one pound. 

We found out some hard news a couple of weeks ago when I had an ultrasound at our doctor's office. As far as they could see, everything was developing normally, except one thing. Our baby has a cleft lip and possibly a cleft palate as well. It was hard news to hear and think about for a couple of days while we waited for our appointment at a high risk maternal-fetal medicine clinic to find out more. The doctor and geneticist that we met with there were wonderful and said that as far as they could see, this is an isolated birth defect in our baby. There still could be other complications but until he is born there is really no way to tell the severity. We had a very thorough ultrasound at the clinic and we got some really good pictures. 

This is a left-side profile

This shot is of the right side of his body, you can see his head and ear and his hand is up by his face. 

This picture of his face shows the cleft lip the best. As far as we can tell, it is a unilateral cleft on his left side.

This face shot, where he is turned away a bit more, shows the other side of his face that appears to be normal so the cleft is just on one side. 

It has been so great the past couple of weeks to just mentally prepare and learn as much as we could. Stephen and I both feel a lot of peace about the whole situation and know that with so many things that can go wrong with a developing baby, we are lucky that this isn't more severe. He will need to get a couple of surgeries in his first year and maybe beyond that as well. They have a clinic at Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake that is devoted just to working with cleft lips and palates, where we will take him to be evaluated within a week after he is born.

If you are interested in finding out more, we have really loved the websites for the Cleft Palate Foundation and the Craniofacial Clinic at Primary Children's.

We have appreciated all of the support from friends and family and are so excited for our baby boy to come!

Spring Break 2013

Last week Stephen and I were out of school for Spring Break so we made the most of it. We started off the week at Disneyland! It's my favorite place in the world. (warning, lots of pictures that we took of ourselves, which is great for me because I loved that it was just the two of us all week long)

We rode our favorite rides...lots of times

Stephen had some special needs but he did manage to beat me on the Toy Story ride, one time out of three that is. 

Cars land is adorable and wonderful.

We ate my favorite Disneyland food together.

Stephen ate his favorite Disneyland food...alone.

We got there early both days to beat the crowds and this was us on the Small World ride, just the two of us in our own boat and no one in front or behind us! We weren't this fortunate with short lines all day but the mornings were great. 

After Disneyland, We drove up the coast on the Pacific Coast Highway from Los Angeles to San Francisco. It was one of the most beautiful drives we have ever taken! I don't know why this isn't WAY more popular, it was amazing. Big Sur was breathtaking and although you can't really capture it fully in pictures, we took lots. 

 

Our last day in California we did some quick sight seeing in the bay area before heading back home. 

It was such a fun trip and so nice to have some time off and spend the whole week just with each other!

100th Post! Back in the saddle again...

I have been away from this blog for so long that I have debated lately whether I should attempt a gigantic update of our lives since October, or if I should just delete it and be done blogging. I thought it seemed like a shame to stop now, right when I am about to have something to post about that people might be interested in! Stephen and I are expecting a baby in August and I will blame my lack of motivation to do much of anything on the first trimester of my pregnancy. I am going to try to post more regularly again, so here is the ridiculously large recap of the past few months.

Stephen is half way through his MBA program and has traveled to Durham, North Carolina, Shanghai, China, and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. He has been posting pictures on face book but I requested picture from him from China and Dubai to put on the blog. Here is what I got:

The Shangahi skyline

Part of the Dubai skyline, this is the view from Stephen's room

This picture is really poor quality but Stephen was so excited that he went indoor skiing in the Arabian Desert.

The holidays are the other excuse I am using for being behind on my blog, so busy! For Thanksgiving, we headed to Las Vegas to be with my mom's extended family. We often don't go downtown at all when we go to Vegas because we are just there to see family but Stephen has a hard time feeling right about that so we went out one night. 

The Christmas season was so fun. Stephen and Bradley surprised Robyn and I with a cute little date ride on the Polar Express in Heber Valley. 

We spent some time with my family

And Christmas day with Stephen's family

We opened presents at our house, Stephen got me a beautiful bracelet and I made him a boy quilt.

After Christmas Stephen and I went on a trip together, just the two of us. It was heaven. We went to St. Kitts in the Eastern Caribbean. 

We hiked the volcano

And we did some sightseeing

But mostly we just relaxed on the beach, took naps, and read books for pleasure (no school books were allowed)

It's been an eventful few months and the next few will be the same. I turned 25 on March first and had a great birthday. Stephen's birthday is in just a few weeks. Stephen's next school trip is to India in a few weeks. The baby is due in August.

There is the big overview of our life right now and hopefully I can blog more regularly now that I am caught up!

Happy Halloween

In the spirit of Halloween, here are a couple of our favorite videos...

And...my coworkers are better than yours.

Autumn and Girl Time

It's fall and it's been a wonderful one so far! I have been loving the weather, the leaves, and even a little bit of football.




I went to the pumpkin walk with my family and it was adorable, as always.








Stephen has been in China for the past couple weeks for school and I have missed him a lot (and I'm SO excited he is coming home today!) but I decided to make the most of my time without him and have some really fun girl time.

Last weekend I went to Witchapalooza at Gardner Village with my wonderful teaching friends and had a shopping day with my mom and sisters.

This weekend I got to go to Time out for Women with my friend Robyn. I have never been to anything like that before and it was wonderful! There are some really talented and inspirational people out there and I got to spend the weekend listening to many of them.



My favorite presenter at the conference was Jenny Oaks Baker, the daughter of Elder Oaks. She is an incredibly talented violinist and was breathtaking to listen to live. Here are a couple of videos I found of her that I liked:

Champlin Family Pictures

We had some family pictures taken at the end of August with my family in Logan and they are finally back to us! I love the way they turned out, here are some of my favorites.

My Kind of Election Coverage

This video is from the last presidential election and I could not think it is any funnier now, with them bombardment of the current election, than I do.

(sorry if you're offended by the swear in the title or the content, but I have to hear things that offend me every time I turn on the news)

First Week of School

I was wandering pinterest (ok, ok, I was just looking at Adrienne's pinterest) and I saw (stole) this (from Adrienne's collection).

This is the perfect visual description of my first few weeks back at school. Here's to hoping that this year can only possibly get better.