Hey, It's been a LONG LONG time...

Well what can I say really? I basically forgot about blogging. I'm not much of a blogger anyways but we've been pretty wrapped up in life for a while that it just hasn't seemed very important. That being said, its now 2015 and our 3 month old is now a 3 YEAR old! 
Yep, Brayden is officially 3 and we celebrated his birthday last month in true Disney style with a Barnstormer/ Storybook Circus theme. we even rented a little (well maybe not so little) Bounce House for the kiddos since that is also one of Brayden's favorite things to do! Oh and obviously he loves Grave Digger and monster trucks thus the 3 Grave Digger presents he received lol. His other present was going to Monster Jam this month with his daddy and best friend Everett to see them in real life!

Why the Barnstormer you ask? Well, we had the great sense and ability to go to Disney World in September and Brayden LOVED the Barnstormer ride! It was pretty much the best trip ever so far with him because he actually really enjoyed everything. We got to have breakfast with the Characters TWICE and had 7 days of fun at the Parks and went mini golfing and of course to the pool and waterpark at the hotel several times! (we stayed at the Reunion Resort) We also were lucky enough to go with my sister and her family so Brayden had tons of fun playing with his cousins Sophie and Hunter :)



We went to all of the parks and watched the Frozen Fireworks Special at HS, Wishes twice at MK and Illuminations at Epcot. Brayden even got to go on the new Snow White Mine ride which was fun and kinda intense for a 2 year old but he wasn't scared! I think he might be a daredevil :)





Naturally a lot has happened in between him being 3 months old and all this, but the gist is that Dallan went back to school at the U for 2 years to get his Masters degree in Business. We moved a couple times in between there as well! But he graduated last May and then got a job offer in August with 1800 Contacts, which he accepted! It's in Utah, so we didn't have to move again- though we would love to be able to get a house here sometime soon!


I also started a little job adventure of my own last spring by opening up my Etsy store Whitetail Designs! I sell digital invitations, party decor, art, and Nursery art. Not gonna lie- it's been SO great! I can work from home whenever I have a chance and really don't spend more than an 30min to an hour on it (unless I'm designing new stuff) and make what I would likely make working full or part-time anyways so it's pretty much the best thing ever for us and really was a life saver in between school and Dallan getting a job! Obviously you all should check it out ;)

So the road has been a little rough sometimes with the school, no work and kid thing, but all in all we are doing great! Brayden is so much fun and such a kind loving kid, even though he's pretty mischievous and a bit of a tornado, his cuteness definitely makes up for it! Dallan loves his job and I am still loving mine, so I think we might just be all set for now! Next goal is a house which is very exciting but also expensive right now, so maybe the prices will go down soon?? Hope so but I'm not counting on it :(

We are looking forward to Easter and Spring and are making plans to go to Disney's Aulani Resort in Hawaii next January "for Brayden's Birthday"!! It's going to be awesome! So if I don't post again until then, that's what I have to look forward to and will be posting about, though hopefully I'm better and post before then, maybe because we got a new house? haha. 

SO I guess it's been a year!

So a lot has happened over the last year, nothing major though, just got pregnant and had a baby! Yep, so last May I was out in Utah visiting for a friend’s wedding and went to the doctor for a check up and asked them to check and see if I was pregnant, thinking I wasn’t since we had just barely starting trying and I know these things take time, but sure enough I was! And believe me, that is a weird feeling as many of you know, being told you have a baby growing inside of you. I’m not gonna lie, I was in a little bit of shock and that night I kept dreaming about it and then waking up and thinking it wasn’t real and then realizing that it was. It felt like it just wasn’t really sinking in for a little while, and then the sickness kicked in. I know I never threw up or anything, but man, I felt like crap and on the verge of puking the whole first trimester.

SO 17 weeks in Dallan and I were out in Washington and took a little trip over to his Dad’s old office (he was a OB/GYN) to see if we could see the gender and found out it was a boy! I kinda had a feeling he would be since there were so many girls on both our sides of the family I felt like a boy was coming. So naturally 9 months later we were anxious to have our baby. At my 38 week  appointment I was not progressing at all, the baby had been head down for a while but still hadn’t dropped or anything. I was very concerned too that he was really big and wasn’t gonna fit! The doctor agreed and thought that if I tried I would have a 20 hr labor and wreck my body and then need a c-section anyways. So c’est la vie, we decided it was best to just schedule a c-section for January 17^{th (the day before my} due date). Even when I arrived to the hospital that morning I still was not dilated at all and still hadn’t dropped! I guess he was just gonna hang out in there forever.

So got my spinal around 8:30am (which wasn’t as bad as I thought, though nerve racking since they have to have the room completely silent and it's all tense cuz I guess its kinda a tricky thing) and then my legs starting getting numb. Really weird feeling too cuz you feel like you can totally move your legs and then you can’t! So I was SUPER nervous about being able to feel something or accidently seeing something during it, it was like my worst nightmare, but everything was fine, I couldn't feel anything and then all the sudden they were pushing on my rib cage trying to push him out and the had to get WAY high! Like I literally couldn’t breathe for a minute cuz they were pushing so high and hard on my lungs cuz he was just way up there. The doctor even had to use the vacuum on him a little to get him out! Then it was 8:57 and he was out! I kinda felt like I cheated, having a c-section and not having to push him out at all, but that changed later on.

So everything, I THOUGHT, went well. But then in the recovery room (which you're only supposed to be in for like an hour and half)  my legs weren’t getting un-numb forever. The hour and half had passed and I still could only barely feel my hip! I was like, oh crap they messed up my spinal!! I was super nervous that I was gonna be paralyzed or something. But then that didn’t seem to be the problem anymore, cuz my blood pressure kept dropping. And dropping, and dropping. Finally I could see people starting to panic and little and calling doctors and running around grabbing needles and attempting to shove them in my arms without success. (apparently there wasn't much blood in my veins so they were having a hard time getting the needles in). I saw that my blood pressure was 53/28, which I figured wasn’t good, and its not. I really shouldn’t have been conscious to see that since coma ends around 50/35 and anything below is “death.” So anyways had to go back into surgery cuz I guess they had accidently cut the main artery in my uterus the first time around, but had stitched it up and it seemed fine, but then it burst back open and starting pouring out. I had to get a complete blood transfusion; I think they were only able to keep like 3 bags of my own blood, which is nothing really.

Woke up in the ICU that night unfortunately to find out why it is you aren’t supposed to be conscious during this time. (I liked how at my 2 week check-up my doctor asked me, “so what do you remember about the first night?” I was like, EVERYTHING. And he says “oh, I was hoping you’d say nothing”). I had a breathing tube in and it felt like I was choking and suffocating all night long and then of course they had to keep pushing on my uterus REALLY hard every 2 hours… ugh. I won’t get into details but lets just say for the first time in my life I was screaming in pain and did not have a good experience those 3 days in the ICU. Like a Percocet was all they would give me cuz they didn’t want to lower my blood pressure. Finally I got one nurse who was nice enough to give me an ml of morphine before they’d move me. Which really only barely took the edge off.

SO anyways, that sucked.

But we have a baby! YAY! And I must say he is the cutest baby I have ever seen (and I know I’m the mother so I have to say that, but seriously! He is cute!) SO now he’s almost 3 months old and after figuring out he has colic from milk allergies and has acid reflux (both super fun to deal with) he is doing much better and is generally a happy boy! He has started smiling a lot and even sometimes kinda laughs a little which is super cute!

So outside of all of that, we are all doing good for the most part. I am back at work and feeling normal again finally and we are just looking forward to spring!

Spring is Coming

So spring is slowly starting to creep its way into the Maine weather patterns, though today you would have assumed winter would be here a while longer. Nevertheless, I can feel that spring air and sunshine are coming and with it, hopefully, a better attitude about being here. Things are going alright for us these days, though there seems to be no job opportunities coming our way to carry us back out West. So in the mean time, I am working at the local tanning salon and Dallan is contemplating a Masters Degree. I have been having a bit of fun with my photography class though and of course now I desperately want a camera. 

photography class picture

Some bad news came last week when I found out my dad's surgery for his colon went badly at some point in time and he took a turn for the worst. Finding this out at about 10pm I booked at flight around midnight, packed, left at 3am for Portland Airport(2 hrs away) for a 6am flight. The roads were terrible since it had just snowed about a foot, and then of course as fate would have it we had a "maintenance issue" with plane and it was delayed 2 hrs causing me to miss my connecting flight. My new connecting flight was another hour and half wait until they then were "cleaning" the plane and needed to delay it another hour and a half. Needless to say I was finally arrived pissed off. haha. Luckily, my Dad pulled through and is doing much better now, but it certainly was a big scare. 
Spending time in Colorado with my sisters was a good time for sure, along with my cute little niece! Jared hooked me up and introduced me to Keegan from the D Bar Desserts (Judge on Food Networks Cake Challenges) which was really fun! He was a way nice guy and told me I had potential, so now I just need to work my way up to being on Challenge! haha. I also got to get me some Costa Vida while I was there and ate an entire large sweet pork salad in one sitting! I usually only get about half way through, so it was pretty impressive that I ate it all. It was so good! YUM! We also decided to take on a little interior decorating project while my dad was in the hospital and redecorated his living room which was a complete disaster. He has been to South Africa twice now and took some cool pictures so we blew them up and redecorated his room to fit a modern african theme. turned our pretty good if I do say so myself, considering we didn't spend much!

Dad's new living room!

I think we accidentally moved to the Arctic!

So as I'm sitting here this morning looking outside at the snow falling and blowing around and I see all of the over 12 ft high snow mounds everywhere, I feel like I minus well have moved to the Arctic! At least then I would have some really cool snow dogs and I'd feel like I was working for National Geographic, and maybe I would. But alas, here we are in Maine.
Dallan and I took a little trip over Christmas/ New Years and went to Washington and Florida, and on a cruise! Which was so so nice, not quite as good as our honeymoon, I don't really like Carnival that much, but it was nice just the same. We went to Freeport and Nassau which was very pretty. I hate places like the caribbean and the bahamas though because you always want to move there because its so pretty, but the surrounding areas are some of the most run down and ghetto places you will ever see. It's such a disappointment really because it detracts so much from the beautiful place that it is! Not than I'm trying to rip on the people there for being poor, I just think its weird that some of the most beautiful places in the world are some of the poorest, especially if there was no tourism.
I have never seen so many morbidly obese people in one place in my life. I would say that at least 85% of the cruise ship were just that. Needless to say as I'm sitting at the buffet looking around, I suddenly loose my appetite to eat so much food as I see others stuffing their faces with platefuls of food. That's probably mean, but it is a pet peeve of mine when I see horribly overweight people shoveling huge amounts of food into their mouths. There was a lot of good people watching though, I think that is one of our favorite pastimes!

We also made it out the Hogwarts! That is to say "The Wizarding World of Harry Potter!" It was so cool, unfortunately so insanely crowded we waiting one hour to get into the park, and the 3.5 to get into the harry potter world, during which time we were in front of the most annoying group of older people ever! This one lady was acting like a drunken college girl laughing at EVERYTHING and thinking she was just so hilarious, and let me tell you she had the most annoying and loud laugh I have ever heard! I think that you probably could have heard her from the other side of the park.
 We did get to go with my sister Nicki, which was really fun! I haven't seen her in forever and sadly we only had that one day before she left to go back to UT.

So since being back I have started taking a class at Dallan's school and am teaching myself German and French. For some reason I always fall into a French accent when trying to have a German one. We are going to Utah in May at least, maybe I'll venture out somewhere in March too for spring break, preferably somewhere warm!

Seriously though, we suck at blogging!

So it's been quite a while since our last update. Dallan and I became Uncle Dallan and Aunt Dana when Sophie was born in July! She is very very cute and is growing so fast already! So August came around and Dallan got a call from a College in Maine about a job opportunity they wanted him for. So like August 8th or something they flew him out there for an interview and basically offered him the job of a Live Sound Instructor, which he accepted! They wanted us out there by the 16th! So we had one week to pack up our whole house, but unfortunately Dallan was going to be out of town in Wyoming on a gig that whole week, so it was up to me. Lets me just say, we have a lot of stuff! Moving sucks and doing it that fast with no help sucks even worse. I guess I could have asked someone to help, but really I figured I'd spend more time talking and instructing them on what to pack where that it wouldn't really be very helpful at all. Luckily friends and family came to help us load everything in the moving truck!
So off to Maine we went. I had no idea what it was going to be like, having never been anywhere in New England other than NYC, which I don't think really counts. After stopping in Colorado, we drove for 4 days with Sadi in tow. She was a good girl of course. So finally we arrived in Bangor! It was dark and I felt totally lost and out of place, and there were no city lights or many stores and I'll admit I was freaking out a bit. We spent the next 2 weeks trying to get our living situation sorted and were able to get a really nice town home less than a mile from Dallan's work. We really lucked out because lets just say I was crying the first day after looking at some of the dumps in the area!
So we (well mainly me) are slowly adjusting to the town being much smaller than any place I've lived before. The bigger city of Portland is 2 hrs away, which we just found out they are opening a chipotle in and they also have Costa Vida! So we don't make it out there very often. I got a job a Macy's which is... well it's retail and I hate working retail,  but I needed a job, so at least its a little income, but I'm gonna try and find something else if possible ASAP. Dallan is enjoying his job alright and things are going well. We aren't sure how long we will be here, but we'll just have to see what comes our way!
Oh I almost forgot, I totally got a calling after the first week of being here basically, in the Young Women. First Counselor! I keep thinking I'm not old enough to be a First Counselor in YW, but I guess I am cuz our Secretary is 21 and our President is 32. Weird though! And it gets better because my first lesson I had to teach was on Chastity! Like the hardest/ most awkward lesson, but it actually went really well and wasn't awkward which was good.
The fall leaves were very pretty but didn't last very long. We did get some delicious apples from an orchard, the best way to get them in the fall. We spent Thanksgiving with a family from the ward, which was good and delicious! And now we are getting ready to go to Washington for Christmas followed by Florida for new years, and hopefully and cruise to the Bahamas! YAY!!!! We haven't been a vacation just to the two of us since our honeymoon really, so this will be fun! We miss all of our friends and its been really hard to find any up here. People are a little.... interesting. In fact its kind of like watching "people of walmart" all the time! No one in our ward are our age really, but at least we have each other!
Oh also, we went and saw Harry Potter 7 on IMAX and it was so good! I'm so exited for the next one because that is the one where everything is going to happen and it is going to be awesome! And now we get to go to Harry Potter World in a couple weeks and its going to be awesome!