Wrapping up Day Three

Day three we got to sleep in a little! Wahoo! We went to the neighboring town to a little resort where we rode the alpine slide. Jennifer, Shawna and Heidi here on their way up. (You can't even see Heidi, but she was there)

Here are Devin and I on the chairlift too. Looking chipper.

The girls with their sleds ready to ride!

Devin will be such a good daddy. He just has a natural ability with kids and they love him. Here he is playing with Daphne.

When we got back, Devin challenged me to a game of PIG. I'll bet he is sorry he did that, I won!


We had more family games that afternoon. A big round of kickball in a lopsided field. Yippee. I got to play home base. Not the position, the actual base.

A crowd sitting in the shade watching the teenagers play the game below. Good thing that tree is covering Devin.

This game was hilarious. The teenagers had to be blindfolded, crawl around inside the ring (a hose) and find objects to throw at one another. But of course they could not see anyone or anything, so they were all throwing wildly. When they got hit, they were out.

Of course we cannot go without mentioning that Devin played all the teenage boys in racquetball and won. They were all lining up to challenge him. Here he is playing Clark. I didn't even know Devin could play racquetball, let alone that he is good at it. Now we need to find someone to play him locally.

Whoa...we know you are the champion. No need to brag!

We went to dinner that night at a local BBQ joint. Look at all that meat. Can you tell Devin was happy? (even though the picture is crappy). When dinner was over, we headed back to the condos to play games until the wee hours of the night (by that I mean 11pm). We went to bed so we could wake up early and start on the drive back to Provo. We had such a good time at the reunion and we are grateful to Angela and Grandma for all their hard work. Until next year fam!

Bring on Day Two

The second day, we drove to Denver and spent most of the day at an amusement park much like Lagoon called Elitch Gardens.

This is the ride before the ride that got Devin really sick. Don't worry, I didn't ride any of them. He and my little brother Clark were riding buddies.

This is the ride that got Devin really sick. Check out the faces on both of them. They both look like they are about to die. We got a good laugh out of it.

Then Devin had to lay down for quite some time. We felt pretty bad for him. He was out of commission for the rest of the day, so he joined me and Jennifer and Chris as watchers.

Clark kept riding though. We found my uncle and aunt Richard and Peggy to ride with him. Here there are drenched after this log-ride.

Devin and I decided to play at the arcade for a while...some games we could both enjoy. We won enough tickets that we got a slap bracelet (remember those!?) and 5 jolly ranchers. Wahoo!

We decided that we needed to go on the carousel to say that we rode some rides at all. Here is my dad and Sharon on their fancy horses.

Here are Chris and Jen on the ride. I would put the picture of me and Devin, but it is really hideous (just trust me on this one).

Later that night, we went to dinner at an Italian Restaurant in Denver called Cinzettis. It was really good...as you can see from this picture. This is my aunt Tiffany and her 9 month old daughter, Daphne. When Tiff wasn't looking, Daphne just took her little hands and grabbed all the noodles she could get a hold of and stuffed them in her mouth. Pretty funny!

That's the end of Day Two. We drove home and we went straight to bed, we were so beat.

Strobel Family Reunion-Day One

Since there are just too many pictures to choose from, I decided to post about the family reunion day by day. So here we go.

We started off day one by going fishing with Jennifer & Chris, Shawna & Curt and their kids, and Sidney & Jack. Well, the lake was fishless, but we had a good time on the boat. Everyone else was either rafting at this point, hiking, or sitting in their condo.

Definitely NOT the best picture of us ever, but it proves we were on the boat.
Shawna is a master fisher-woman who proudly learned all she knows at Yellowstone Lake from family reunions of old. At points, she manuevered two fishing poles. Wow!

Devin and Curt were designated to touch the worms. None of the rest of us would do it. Yuck.


When we got back that afternoon, we played some family games, including walleyball at the clubhouse. I of course did not play, but Devin did as you can see.

Of course we finished off the night with the traditional round of games, including Snarf (Nerts if you prefer). Good thing Devin and I had practiced up at the ward campout, cause we were pretty good.


This is my lovely Grandma and me. I think there is a slight resemblance, now that I look at it. She was nice enough to pay for everyone's condos so that we could all come.

I have to jump on the bandwagon

This is so fun, I can't resist. Tell me your memories!

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you

4th of July Weekend

This 4th, Devin and I were able to go up to Idaho to spend some good old quality time with the family. We spent the day of the 4th up in Island Park floating down the river. By floating, I mean canoeing.

Devin and Dave (my mom's "friend") helping Chris get strapped in. Lucky him, he had the best seat in the house-a camping chair tied to the canoe.
These guys wish they could row as well as me, Devin, and my mom. No, they were pretty good.

This is my look of bewilderment. Unlike Chris, I did not get a good seat. I got to sit on the cooler in the middle of our canoe. Yippeee.

Occassionally, I would decide to help out with the rowing duties.

Occassionally, I would not.

Devin, being the eagle scout that he is, had to keep us on track most of the time.

Christopher enjoying the ride. You can't see it, but his life jacket had a handy dandy pocket knife attached to it too...you know, just in case we ran into any sharks in the water.

For lunch, we just pulled up onto a sand bar and set up shop. Jennifer is helping Chris get his hat on or something in this picture, while Dave is kindly chopping up vegetables and fruits.

Enjoying the good meal.

After the canoe rides, we got to ride in the back of Dave's truck to go back and get the other car. It has a top on it too, so we pretty much were dying of heat. Devin took advantage of the time by taking a nap.

Saturday, we spent shopping and buying way too much baby stuff. We had a BBQ at my dad's before leaving for Provo. It was a lot of fun to see everyone and we sure enjoyed all the good food. Sometimes, I just really miss having someone cook a nice big meal for me. I think about my mom and dad's Sunday meals and I just want to be there, just for the food. How horrible is that? But, I can easily say now that I cook on my own (or heat up) that it was nice to have parents who cooked so well for me growing up.

top three signs pregnancy is making me crazy

And these all happened yesterday.

3) I went to bed last night at around 11:30 and it just hit me that I had never brushed my teeth that day (yuck)

2) We had ward enrichment yesterday. Since I am the 2nd counselor in the RS presidency, this is my jurisdiction. I had been planning and working on this for a long time and it was stressing me out. But, just so you know, it turned out AWESOME and we had almost 50 sisters there, which I think is really good. Anyway, onto the story. We met in small groups in individual houses (4-5 girls) for the first part and made a new recipe together and then went to the church to eat a big Mexican Fiesta all together. Well the recipe that we were making at the house I went to was Brazillian Lemonade and since I was "in charge" of teaching the others, I figured I had better try the recipe out that morning. It calls for limes to be blended with some other stuff in the blender and then you strain the the blend to get out the rinds. Well, I strained the whole thing right down the sink. Never did I think to put a pitcher or a glass or SOMETHING below to catch the creation. So, I didn't get to try it. Then I went to the girl's house that night and we were chopping away, blending away, etc. and I was telling them about what I had done earlier in the day and how dumb I felt. So, we get done with the blending and I go to the sink and DO THE EXACT SAME THING!!! I strained the whole thing down the sink. AHHHHH. The one girl was just standing there staring at me like, "Is she serious?!" Yep, I had just finished telling the story and off I go again. Well, at least we could all laugh at it.

1) I turned the water on at Che's yesterday morning at 9:30 am. I was right in bed feeling good about myself and the day when I suddenly realized I had never turned it off! So the lawn got a good 12 hour watering yesterday. Wahoo.

Good thing I am fully blaming these on pregnancy. More likely is that I was so busy with enrichment stuff yesterday and planning that my mind was just elsewhere, but who knows.

A stroll down memory lane (freshman year to be exact)

I stole this picture right off my friend Kasie's ( http://skellenburg.blogspot.com/) blog. But I thought it was too cute to pass up. Here's a shout out to my Freshmen year roommates, Kasie, Camille, and Kaylin (Kaylin was not in the picture). We met up a few weeks ago to go to Cafe Rio, on of our favorite spots. I loved hanging out with them, even if it was only for a short while. We had such a great time our freshmen year, being the only freshmen in a ward full of "old people" as we called them. As a tribute, here are my top 5 memories from freshmen year with these wonderful ladies.

5. Collecting toilet paper from all who came over as a "toll". Hey, it saved us from having to buy any!
4. Sleeping in Kasie's car "Stitch" with her all night one night as we lost in "Dare Yahtzee".
3. Hooking up our roommate Kaylin with her "friend" Tyler. They are now married, and its all because of us. We coached them through the whole thing.
2. Getting into a war with Camille's brother's apartment that left us with a house FULL (and I mean FULL) of shredded paper. We were finding that stuff for months!!!
1. Just being silly together and having fun everyday. We made videos, we worked out together (kind of), we wore grandma lipstick together, we did service projects together, we ate Cafe Rio together (of course), we made lots of cookie dough that we ate before ever baking, and we definitely helped each other survive our first year of college!

FOOLED!

Well, ladies and gentleman, we have some exciting news. And that news is that we are going to be having a Fairy Perry afterall! We had an ultrasound today and we are having a GIRL!!!!!
Yep, I am pretty sure she had us all fooled, most of all me. I asked the man at least three times if he was sure and to show me again. Yep, he was sure. I also called my Uncle John before I called anyone else to see what he thought, and yep, he agreed. He had known it was a girl! So yippee for that. We are pretty dang excited.

Poll Results

Like Anneka did, before we have the big ultrasound, I will post the poll results.

8 of you thought we are having a girl (38%)
13 of you thought we are having a boy (61%)

Tis the season for boys, so we shall see!

Tag-a-thon

So my sister Jennifer tagged me. I actually like the tag things because it gives me some ideas of things to blog about that I probably normally would not. So here we go!

joys:

1. I am going to have to echo my cousin Cortney on this one. Sitting in the bathtub with a good book. In fact, here is a secret for you. Last week, we went to mow the lawn at Che's and while Devin was hard at work, I was sitting in the bathtub the whole time. Ha ha ha.

2. Spending time with my husband. It doesn't matter what we are doing, I just love being with him.

3. Working. I love putting in a good day's work. There is just something so satisfying about it. Especially when I feel like I am making a difference in someone's life (which isn't that often, but still...)

fears:

1. After the hard year that our family has had, I am going to have to go with losing family members as well.

2. I fear that I will be a horrible parent or that something terrible will go wrong with my children.

3. I also fear rodents of all sorts. Nasty, icky. Oh yeah, and I will add worms and snakes to the list too.

Goals:

1. Become a good parent. See above. I want to love my children, yet teach them the value of hard work and the joy of earning what they have.

2. Continually work on my marriage and proudly say that I have succeeded when all is said and done.

3. Serve a mission some day. Some of you may not know this, but I was fairly certain I was going to go on a mission before Devin came home, but apparently my bishop knew otherwise. I went in to see him to get mission papers about six months before Devin came home and he told me that I needed to go pray about it some more. Well, good thing I did, because I came to the answer that then was not the right time. I wonder why... :)

Current Obsessions:

1. SNO CONES, SNO CONES, SNO CONES. I am currently on the lookout for the best sno cones in Provo. Sad to say, they just don't make them like they do in Idaho. Good old Idaho.

2. The show "Jon and Kate Plus 8" On TLC. Don't ask me why, I just can't get enough. In case you don't know, its a show about a family who have a set of twins and then a set of sextuplets. The sextuplets (thats six) are almost 4 and the twins are 7. It is very entertaining.

3. Free Cell. What a gem of a game. In my down time, I find myself playing Free Cell like crazy.

4. I am going to add grocery shopping to this list, simply because I cannot get enough of it.

Random, Surprising Facts:

1. I out-eat Devin. (that's for when I am not pregnant too). It's sickening.

2. I know more about baseball than most guys, particularly the Atlanta Braves. I was at work one day and two male staff found out that I knew a little something about the Braves, so they challenged me to a contest to see who could name more Braves players from any time. I beat them both.

3. When we were little, my siblings and I, along with the neighbors, were quite creative. Some of things we played/invented were the human board game, jump rope concerts, mud pits in the dirt with a hose for a slide, selling the neighbors painted rocks that we had gotten out of their own yard, dances to the Beach Boys, making our own plays complete with sets made out of cardboard, and imitating the Folk Dancers who came to Rexburg every year, costumes and all. Where have those creative genes gone?

Here is a pregnancy picture for good measure, since posts are often times boring without pictures. This is 19 weeks.

I tag uhhh...Nataley I., Haylee, and Emily! Have at it.

A Little Scare (oh and a little bad luck too)

So Monday morning I woke up to some bad news: Devin had been rear ended on his way to work. Luckily, everything was okay, other than some dents and scratches on our new car. It was not his fault, so the driver at fault will be paying to get it all repaired. As I got ready that morning, I thought to myself how glad I was that Devin was okay, but also how glad I was that I was not in the car. I worry a lot about my baby and my pregnancy, as you all might know from previous posts and I don't really want to do anything to jeapordize the baby. My fears are partially due to the fact that a girl in our ward recently delivered her baby at 25 weeks gestation after they were in a car accident. Luckily, after some intense time in the NICU, her baby is alright. But I can't even imagine the nightmare.

So, I thanked my lucky stars on Monday that that was not me. Well, fast forward to Tuesday. I was on my way home from work at Vantage Point. It was just after 11 pm and I was three houses down from ours about ready to be home. A girl, not seeing me, decided to do a U turn in the street and plowed into me on my driver's side door. She was driving a truck, so of course her car was undamaged. I sat there for a moment in shock then finally made my way out of the car (the driver's door would not open, so I had to climb over the seat and out the passenger door). I was really shaken up and immediately called Devin to come out. Another person, a young college aged kid, saw the whole accident and quickly parked his car and came out to see if I was okay. He told me he would stick around until the police arrived so that he could be a witness as to what happened.

The police took forever to arrive, and when they did, it was apparent that one officer was training another, so the whole process took twice as long. I mentioned to the first officer that I saw that I was 18 weeks pregnant and that I was concerned about my baby due to the fact that when I was hit, the seat belt pulled tightly into my abdomen. I was also in a fair amount of pain in my abdomen area. The officer chose to ignore me and continued his work. I was so frustrated and scared that by this point I was in hysterics. Devin was trying to calm me down and assure me that everything would be alright. He finally approached the other officer to tell him that I needed to be checked out. This officer told us that since I was not seriously injured, it was preferable that I drive myself to the hospital since ambulance fees are so expensive. I then called my mom to tell her what was going on and Devin gave me a blessing before we left for the hospital. It was only at this point that I was calmed down somewhat.

We arrived at the hospital and to make a long story short, I was checked by a nurse first, who after a painstaking minute or more (that doesn't seem like long, but believe me, it was ) found the baby's heart beat. I was really relieved then. The doctor came in and told me that he was going to order an ultrasound as well, just in case. We were wheeled off to another room where an ultrasound tech, who did not say one word to us, took pictures of the baby and of my kidneys. I tried to look at the screen, but he wouldn't let me. My head was behind the monitor, so I relied on Devin to take mental note of everything. When he was done, he wheeled me back to the room and then we waited for almost 45 minutes to see the doctor again. All he did was come in and say that things were fine and to go home. I was really frustrated by this point because no one was open and honest with us. The radiologist who read the results didn't come talk to us, the doctor wasn't really sure of what was going on and didn't answer any of my questions, etc. They just simply said, "go home". While I was relieved that everything was okay with the baby, I was just disappointed in the lack of care that went on.

After I talked to my sister the next day, she told us that we could request the ultrasound pictures, which I did not know. I called the hospital and we soon had a disk in our hands with all the pictures that they had taken. Along with that, there was a full report of what the radiologist had seen and everything he said when he looked at the pictures. Yeah, that would have been nice to know when we were in the ER in the middle of the night. I was glad to have the report, but it also frustrated me more, because as the reason for coming to the ER, it stated "Patient is complaining of Pelvic pain". NEVER did I say anything about pelvic pain, only abdominal pain, which they didn't even mention. I only told 4-5 people that it was my abdomen that hurt. So my ranking for that hospital is not so good at this point.

Anyway, long story short, I am okay, the baby is okay. Yesterday and today my neck and shoulders and upper back have been sore, but other than that, I am good to go. Sorry for such a long, dramatic post, but I thought I would update you all on everything that has happened. The Honda is in the shop getting repaired now and when that is done, we will trade in the Corolla to get fixed. Luckily, Devin and I don' t have to pay for anything, since nothing was our fault.

Oh, and we still don't know the gender of the baby, even though we have had two ultrasounds now! My doctor is going out of town tomorrow through the 25th, so it won't be until after that that we can tell. Dumb, I know.

The New Abode

Well, the time has come for us to finally move out of Che' and Landon's house into our own. We can't tell them enough how much we appreciate their letting us stay there. It was such a lifesaver and we are so grateful. We will miss their cute little house. I will especially miss the yard, where I liked to go sit out on a blanket and read or eat lunch. The one thing we will not miss, however, is the crime in the neighborhood. :) I will briefly relate the story, then go on with this post. So one day, I decided it would be fun for Dev and I to go to a little park around the corner and have a picnic. So we did. However, while there, a gang of scary looking teens arrived. We continued minding our own business until we saw three of them running away from the crowd on the other side of the park. All we heard was a big commotion and these three shouting some choice words along with something about someone slicing someone else's eye open. Well, of course we wanted to know what was going on, so we slowly gathered our stuff and started to make our way back to the house. By the time we crossed to the other side of the park, the whole road was blocked off. There were a total of 8 police cars, 2 ambulances, and 1 firetruck on the scene! The whole neighborhood had also gathered around to see the action. Well, we don't know whose eye got sliced open, or what even really happened, but it was quite the event. So Che' and Landon, prepare yourselves for when you come back. Just kidding.

Here is some pictures of our new place. Here is the outside view. We have the upstairs and some people in our ward live in the basement. Sorry the picture is crooked, I took it while in the car.

Right inside the front door. This is the little area we made into a den.
The front room. This is to the left when you walk in the front door.

More of the front room. The old tenants even left their cable on for us. How nice.

The kitchen. My only complaint is that the thing is carpeted. Oh well, can't have everything. Devin's parents were nice enough to donate their table to us while they are on their mission.

This will be the baby's room. Very boring so far.

Here is our room. It also has a big old walk-in closet, which is really nice. The only thing that really fits in there is our bed. :)

The bathroom.

And that is all folks. So now, we have enough room if anyone ever wants to come visit and stay. The only rule we have is to bring your own air mattress, since we don't have any extra beds! :)