Proud Parents

So.... the nursery is coming along great!  I've been stressing like crazy about what I was going to put on the wall that I painted that really pretty purple.  I needed something to go right above the crib and couldn't think of what I wanted. There was a wall-decal that I found on Etsy through Pinterest that I really, really liked, but it was like $65.00 for it! Geez, I'm already having a baby, and these peole expect me to hand over an arm and a leg to them too for some plastic that sticks on a wall? I don't think so!

So I began searching for other options.  I'm not exactly a "decorator" so I always end up second guessing myself a lot.  But, I was in Hobby Lobby one day and saw a very cute wall decal that fit the colors of the nursery, and it was on sale for $15.00 down from $30.00! On top of that, there were two of them sitting there. I decided to hold off on buying it, however, because I promised Pac I would take a break from the nursery for a little while, while we focused on saving up. I thought "Oh, I'm sure it'll still be here..." Yeah right! Turns out, I was going back to Hobby the next day with Paxton's mom, and sure enough, the two that were sitting there, were now gone! The next freakin' day?!?! C'mon now...

So, I decided to design my OWN wall decal, and make a stencil for it, and just paint it on the wall.  This is what my design turned out to be...

I was so flippin' proud of this. As I began getting ready to make the stencil, I realized "This is going to be more expensive, and more stressful than simply buying one..." Dang it! Shut down again.

So a few weeks later, I went back into Hobby Lobby (looking for inspiration) and saw the $15.00 wall decal back on it's shelf. PLUS, there was another one that was the same purple and green colors that could go on the other wall that isn't painted purple.  It too was on sale, so I thought "Yeah... this is what I'm doing."  So I bought them both. 

Paxton helped me put them up, and this is how they turned out...

This is the cute tree with the adorable little birdies... 

And this cute design is right above where the changing table is.

The lighting is a little dark, but you get the idea. So, slowly but surely, her room is getting there.

In addition to our new addition, our puppy is making some good headway on the learning front.  Before you know it, we will have so many posts about our little girl on here, it's going to make you SICK, but for now, you can get sick at how proud we are of our little Boomer. He played fetch with a frisbee for the first time last week. Here is how it went....

Attempt #1- He runs with the frisbee up in his face so

he can't see...

Attempt #2- Well, that we caught on video anyway.

We were actually doing this for like 45 mins. He's

getting closer!

SUCCESS! I'm not gonna lie, I wasn't expecting this
to happen on his first time playing frisbee. I love how he
comes down on his back legs so wabbly. He was
really tired by this time.

Lastly, Boom made his first ever trip to a local dog park.  It took him about 20 minutes to figure out who he wanted to be friends with, but once he found this dog, they were best buds!

Getting Ready....

Well, we officially have a "start" to a nursery.  I painted the walls last week (holy cow, that's hard to do with a baby inside the tummy!)  My back hurt so badly each night after I was done.  Luckily I did it in two days.  And Pac only had to hear me complain about it for two days. :)  We've finally gotten the crib and dresser set up, and I love the bedding! You can't really tell, but the wall behind the crib is a very pretty purple color. It's almost a pastel, but just dark enough to be bold as well. It compliments the cherry hugh that is in the furniture.

Almost done!!!

Finishing up the crib...

Boomer loves cardboard. Or anything stiff that he could possibly rip apart. He found a little cardboard booklet attached to the front piece of the crib and went to town. At least he was finally focused on something! 

So, this picture stinks. But, it's the show more of the contrast in color. 



Here is the crib against the wall. This work is definitely still in progress! But, at least I can take a break from it for a month or so and just relax. Just a couple more months of teaching....

We've had some requests for baby bump pics.  Here you go! I hope they are all they're cracked up to be! I've tried hard to get a pic for each month, and so far I've done well! The bigger I get though, the more picky I am about making sure it's a good picture.  Call me vain, I don't care. I'm pregnant. lol!

1 Month. Awkward Face. "Is the flash on honey?"

2 Months.  I thought to myself..."how cute would it be if I wore the same outfit in all of the pregnant by month pics we take?!"  After realizing I'd have to change out of what i was already wearing that day, I quickly did not care anymore about this idea. So, that's why Month 1 and 2 look the exact same. I promise, I did not take them in the same night.

3 Months.  We had just gotten home from Pac's Family Christmas party, so if I look tired, it's cause I definitely am. I remember leaving early cause my body had had enough. I'm still not showing very much at this point, but it was still worth it to take the pic.

This pic is my epic fail. Especially because it's the one that's the cutest so far! I should be holding up a 4, but apparently my brain had something else in mind.

This is ACTUALLY what I looked like at 4 months.

I messed up on my 4 month pic the first time we took it, and accidentally held up a 5 instead of a 4.  It works out though cause it's cute and currently my FB pic. We re-took it, and that's the one in the yellow, but I'm acutally like 4.5 months in the real one. We are also headed to a Superbowl party, and I may have checked appetizer we were bringing to make sure it wasn't poisoned ;) I'll add more pictures later.  I'll tell you this though, this little girl is already determined to make her presence known!!! Let's see, feeling a baby move inside you? Yup, best, feeling, ever.

Pac is going to be out of town this week. I joke with him that it's like I'm single again for the days that he's gone.  It feels like it anyway!!! He has a 20 Group meeting is Montana for work. Yeah... Montana.... lucky him right? I hope it's not too cold!  On top of the fact that he's going to Montana and not some warm state like California or Florida, this is the week during the year that he usually goes down to Las Vegas and watches the Nascar race.  He Looooves Nascar!  I feel so bad he doesn't get to go (I don't go cause I most likely wouldn't enjoy it as much.) But ya gotta do what ya gotta do!  Wish him luck!!!!

Team PINK!!!

Dear World,

Pac and Kara are having a girl!!!!!

I've been trying so hard to get the video of little Baby Girl Jensen's last ultrasound on here, but the format of the video is so stupid, and I cannot figure out how to do it. None-The-Less, IT'S A GIRL!!!!! Pac and I are officially members of Team Pink! I was convinced the baby was a boy (really for no reason at all), and Pac actually thought she was a girl the whole time! I guess it's a good thing I've got a while to hone in on my maternal instincts huh! Anyway, here are some of the pictures from the scan even if I can't get the video up. She's measuring great, and was moving around a whole bunch this time! At the 16 week scan, she would not move at all. This is the "20 week" scan, in which I was only 19 weeks at the time.

I think this shot is so incredibly awesome! Look at her little leg!

This is her profile view.  Cute little nose coming into focus! Will it be a Jensen, Croft, Chambers or Hansen nose? I guess we'll find out in June!

The pictures of her face (like this one where she's looking right at the camera) look like Jack Skelington pics right now. She's getting to work on that baby fat though that will soon fill her cute little face.

Pac and I have no idea what we're going to do about a name.  We've had a number of names picked out for a couple of years now, but now we're thinking we want to keep looking. It may be awhile before we have her name picked out, so bare with us!

Mexico!

Ok so this post is very late in coming, but at least it's up now, right?  Pac and I were invited by his company to go on a trip to Mexico this past Novemeber (2011).  We saw some incredible ruins and got to do some fun things! Some things we had to opt out of with me being pregnant, but it was so much nicer to relax most of the time.



These are both pictures of a structure at Tulum. We LOVED Tulum.  It was a half-day trip, and was so calm and quiet. The grounds there felt very special.

At the end of the tour, they gave the tourists an opportunity to swim down below in the ocean. We only had about 10 minutes to do so, so we opted out of the swimming. This happened when we went to Chichen Itza too. But what a view!



This guys says "Here! Picture with Iguana!" We thought, "Ok, cool!" so we did. Then as asoon as we gave the beast back and began to walk away, the man says "No, money." And looked at us as if we were stupid. We ended up shoveling out 5 bucks for this picture.

We knew we had to pay for this one, but how awesome is it!? I love the Mayan culture.



Ok, Chichen Itza was cool. Very cool. However, our tour guide was not all that amazing.  I would've loved to have had a member of the LDS faith with us as a tour-guide to offer some insight as to how these grounds date back to the Book of Mormon. We did not though, and just enjoyed the time. :)

Chichen Itza is so over-run with traveling vendors that it didn't have the same feeling as Tulum. Plus, it was an all-day excursion which meant we were on a bus most of the day. We were only at Chichen Itza for 3 hours, but were gone from the hotel from 7 am to 7 pm. Longest. Day. Ever.

The Mayans believed this snake head brought good fertility to the ground for plants.  It's body extends all the way up the temple.

The lobby of our hotel.

The entrance to the lobby.

The courtyard where we ate many a meal on the buffet.

i was 8 weeks preganant on this trip, and unfortuneately, nothing ever sounded good enough to eat.  This is the morning we left for home, and I was so sick of the food (it all tasted the same) I simply resorted to soda crackers and sprite. I felt so much better.



First time snorkelers here! This is so much fun. I would love to do this again.  Here's hoping we get to do the Great Barrier Reef is Australia. This reef we snorkeled at was the second largest next to Australia's.



Baby Jensen: June 2012

So, we're having a baby!!!  We found out around the end of October, and we're so happy it's finally happened. I wanted to put the story of how we found out and how I told Paxton on the blog so that our family and friends could know the fun story.

Around the end of October, I had called my doctor's office to make an appointment (because I had the universal sign of pregnancy of being late but did not want to get my hopes up because of other tests that had failed in the 9 months previous) so I just called to get set up with another shot and more medication. I had to leave a message as always. :) The doctor called me back not 20 minutes later and said "Kara! It's Dr. Meek! When can you get in here today?!" Needles to say I went in immediately after I was done with work. He did a pregnancy test, and after about 5 minutes of waiting (longest EVER) he came back in with a little card-type looking thing in his hand. "I want you to look at that" he says, "that is a positive pregnancy test."  I felt so bad for him because I immediately started sobbing and couldn't talk to him for a whole 2 minutes. Poor guy, I'm sure he gets that a lot in his profession.

After the appointment, I had a photoshoot I had to go to in Ogden. I couldn't tell anyone because I of course wanted to make sure Pac knew before anyone else.  I had to wait a whole 4 1/2 hours before my photoshoot was over, and he had gotten home from work.  I stopped by Kid-to-Kid on my way home and bought a little onsie that says Mommy and Daddy Love Me. I put it in a bag with the pregnancy test from the doctor.  When I got home, I went upstairs to set some things down, and came downstairs with this bag.  I told Pac "Someone left this on the doorstep for you this afternoon, and said I can't know what's inside until you open it." He was supposed to look at the onsie first, but found the test first. He looked at it for 10 seconds in silence, and after figuring it out, he looked at me and said "Are you pregnant?!" And I said "Yup!"

He later told me he was afraid the bag had something in it that may have been inappropriate from one of his friends, so he was slightly worried as he opened it.

It's been so much fun, and we're excited to see what the next 9 months and so forth have in store for us. This picture is when I was 7 weeks and 1 day, and they baby is about the size of a blueberry. Today, however, I am 9 weeks and 2 days. Baby is growing! We'll keep posting as things happen! 

Smurfs, Pirates, and Awesomeness...

It's time to carve pumpkins! I can't believe it's Halloween already, and I've just finished my first term of teaching. Craziness! This has to be one of my favorite activities around the holidays.  However, Pac and I both aren't exactly fans concerning the gut of the inside of a pumpkin. Yuck.

Pac carved a pirate pumpkin. This is him just getting started on it.

Boomer just did not know what to think of our carving pumpkins.  Of course, Boomer thinks everything is food, so he was acting like we were holding out on him.

"Whatchya got there Mom? It's shiny, and I think I'd like to play with it!" (the camera)

We had a few more pumpkins to carve because this year, we actually have our own porch to PUT them on! It's so much fun! Here is Pac's pirate, and a smaller pumpkin I just carved a cute Spooky into.

I've never carved a white pumpkin, but when I found a pattern for Jack Skellington from Nightmare Before Christmas, I just had to. It looks so awesome! Side note, I don't know what kind of "pumpkin" white ones are, but it definitely smells more like squash.

Is that a Vampire SMURF?!?! YUPS! And I love him.  I have the Smurf Villiage App on my Ipad and play it from time to time.  When I saw the smurf pattern, I was in love. Usually when I use patterns,  it almost never turns out, so I guess this year I got lucky.

Pac's Pirate! Gotta love it. I think we should find a Pac-Man stencil for him to make too.  We still have one more pumpkin to carve... ;o)

We used the portraiture setting on the point-and-shoot camera, and I think what it did to the photo is awesome.  Kind of like our pumpkins are ghosts. The two on the end aren't real pumpkins, they are faux pumpkins I made out of old glass.  They are awesome cause they don't rot, and are cute! 

Happy Halloween to family and friends! Be safe!

Paxton was gone...

Paxton was out of town this week on a business trip to Michigan.  Usually when he's out of town, I have to keep myself super busy, but luckily this time, I was plenty busy! One such example is that I

 recently took a quick trip to Salt Lake to get some pictures for a project that we are doing

for the Young Women in our ward (I work with the 12 & 13 year old girls).  I wanted to post some of these because I love how they turned out. It makes for some good pinning on Pinterest too!

I post my business photography on my photography blog.  If you'd like to see the photog page, you can get to it here. 

This first one is the statue of Joseph and Emma Smith.  It seemed no matter where I stood, or how I moved my camera, I couldn't get the building in the background to not look like it was a cousin to the leaning tower of pizza. lol! I just resolved to say it was the building and not me. lol!

The handles on the SLC Temple are famous. This was the main picture for our project.

To me, this embodies the entire concept and/or idea of what motherhood is.

Julie Beck, Lioness at the Gate. 'Nough said.

I love me some sun flare!!! 

Again, for some reason I couldn't get a shot that wasn't tilted, but I love it anyway. I've seen many pictures of the reflection of the temple in the reflection pool, but now I'm glad I have my own.

So pwetty.

 "Aspire Higher." A good reminder to stick to the things in your life that make you the most happy.