Oh hello again.

So, it has been quite a long time since I've updated this at all. Ever since being pregnant I haven't been very good at it but the last couple months I've really been out of commission. Let's be honest, I haven't really talked to anyone if they weren't at work or Young Women. However, even though I haven't been up to talking to too many people, Adam and I have kept busy doing random, fun activities and adventures.

here are 10 of the things we've done in the last 5 months:

1. We went to DC for Thanksgiving to stay with Adam's sister and her family.


While there we took time to see some Smithsonians and had to take a picture by the Dorothy shoes and reminisce of when I was Dorothy in the school play.


Of course we HAD to take a picture of Michael Jackson's hat in honor of Mariah and the larger than life cut out in our apt last year


And of course we had to take a trip down the National Mall and see the WW Memorials, Washington Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, etc



Last, we all had a picnic out by the rapids and the most intriguing thing was a man stuck in a huge hollow tree


2. Going to the blessed AZ for Christmas, spending weeks in the glorious weather, and telling the fam the big news.


While there being able to show Adam the absolute HIGHLIGHTS of growing up! What would we have done without The Wall? Believe it or not this cinderblock wall that we carved our initials into in 1996 holds the very best of memories for me, Garret, and my cousins. Amada, Steph, Garret...I didn't initiate Adam without you, but I hope it's okay I showed it to him :) We took these pictures of it too.



I also went through everything my mom saved for me from childhood. I threw most of it out and took pictures of the very best things I wanted to remember. First, I love that I made this page for a school class - in case you haven't noticed, my cousins mean the world to me!
Second...Steph, Amada...please tell me you remember this "life's a bummer"
Third, I found these old pics of my dad. I don't know if they were pre-mission, pre-marriage, pre-med school, but isn't it fun to see him since pictures of him are so rare?





Of course, Mom and Dad were so nice to treat us with real food at real restaurants since we're on such a tight budget :) Rustler's Roost is a fam favorite since it overlooks the Phoenix Valley.


3. Because of my calling we've been able to do a number of fun activities with the youth. Here is me trying to ice skate. This is a bad idea for 2 reasons: first, I am an AZ girl through to my bones and don't function well on ice. second, my doctor specifically told me no ice skating while pregnant. oops! Obviously I was barely even moving.

4. Hostess went bankrupt. Personally, I don't really like Twinkies as much as the other hostess products but Adam loves them and has great memories eating twinkies and chatting with his sister so of course we had to mourn the bad news and try making a twinkie shake from the recipe book I found for Adam for Christmas (yuck). It was gross, but I made some modifications and turned it into a delicious chocolate shake.


5. Visiting the Big Mac Museum. There is a "museum" (that's free) 15 minutes away from us in the township that invented the Big Mac. After we found that out we HAD to go and check it out for ourselves. Had I ever tasted a Big Mac before? no Do I really even like McDonalds? Not usually. But because we live SO close to a museum honoring the Big Mac we just had to go.




Even though I didn't really like the Big Mac, I'm so glad we went.

6. Conservatory. They have a famous plant conservatory in Pittsburgh that we've been wanting to go to. We waited till a particularly gray stretch in the weather and treated ourselves to a nice date night in the ginormous conservatory among the India display, flowers, plants, and greenery.



It may be hard to see but they had a desert room which reminded me of home!


Last, I made Adam take a picture of this fish display because it said "get your fresh fish!" It's for you Amada - "fish, get your fresh fish"


7. It's a boy! When we found out our little guy is going to be a boy I made steak and potatoes for dinner.



8. The Tradition - RED dinner for Vday. (red lasagna, red potatoes, red jello, red Jones, red fruit, red apple craisen salad). thanks to mom we even had v-day plates and chocolates!


9. Dr Dreadful Date Night. We went to a baby consignment sale to try and find super cheap baby stuff. While we were there Adam found this 'at home science zombie lab' thing that his older brother had growing up. Adam always wanted to try it. Since it was only a couple dollars we got it and did it for date night. strange, i know. It was fun but super disgustingly sugary.


10. St Patty's Day!!! This is my second favorite holiday and we are SO FORTUNATE to live in a city where the second largest celebration parade takes place. So, we joined 250,000 people on St Patrick's Day to see the parade. Punxsutawney Phil was there, St Patrick came, VP Biden came, the unicyclists came, and the clowns came. fun! Big City Parade! Green, green, green!
(they also randomly decorate these stone dinosaurs around the city so this one is dressed in green Irish garb)





Okay, finally, we took a trip to Palmyra, Kirtland, Erie, Niagara a couple weeks ago....that would definitely be on the list but this is already way to long. Maybe I'll post some of those pics later.

I hope this makes up for going silent for the last little while and that you enjoyed it!

Guessing Time!

Probably a decade or so ago my mother, aunt, and girl cousins all sat around my Grandmother's dining table and played a game that determines the gender and number of your future children. Have any of you heard of it? You take a ring and tie it to a thread about 12 inches long. Hold the ring by the thread over your wrist. If the ring goes in circles (round and round) you’re having a boy, if it swings side to side, then it’s a girl. I wish we still had that little piece of paper we wrote the results down on. It would be funny to compare and see if it was close to right. All I remember is that one of my cousins is going to have about 15 kids or something...

Anyway, we get an ultrasound this week and Adam and I really excited to find out what this little nugget inside of me is! But first, we want to know all of your guesses! Boy or Girl? Because I'm not a fancy blogger I didn't do a built in survey or poll or anything - you'll just have to leave your guess in a comment :)

Pittsburgh with Mom Dyal

It was so much fun having Mom in Pittsburgh! Apparently she had been here years ago with Dad Dyal for a day and she recognized some of it so we just showed her the highlights of Pitt, which of course involved museums, cathedrals, parks, and food. Lots and lots of yummy food you can't find anywhere else :)

Here are some pics of the Cathedral of Learning. It is a magnificent building you can see from basically everywhere in Pittsburgh. The most extraordinary thing about this 40+ story building is that it was built during the Great Depression. I still have no idea how they managed that during those desolate times. It must have been such a symbol of hope to see that grande structure being built. Adam actually has a class in here. cool huh? Also, they have about 30 separate rooms set up like different nationalities' classrooms. It is REALLY cool! Here is the wiki page with pictures and descriptions of each room.






One of my favorite moments we spent in the Cathedral of Learning was at floor...41 I think. whatever the highest floor we are allowed to go to without security. Anyway, we were on that floor and the only window on that floor is in the boys bathroom. It was such a funny moment to turn and see Mom Dyal standing next to the urinals taking a picture out the window. so comical!


We also took Mom to the top of Mt Washington which is a beautiful lookout over the city.


The last day she was here we went on a walk in the park behind our house and looked at the fall leaves. That was one of our favorite things we did.

DC Trip #1

So Adam's sister and her husband and kids live in DC and we love that they are so close to us (well it's about 4 1/2 or 5 hours away but they are the closest family!) Well, a couple weeks ago Adam's sister had their second kid so we went down one weekend to visit them. It was so fun! They are the coolest family - just down to earth. Another reason for going down that weekend was to pick up Adam's mom and bring her back to Pitt for a few days and show her everything. So maybe I'll break up the pictures, but the next handful of pics are from that week.

DC - Since Adam lived there for an internship over a year ago we really wanted to see where he lived and worked, etc. However, we didn't get good pictures of it at all since the streets were so chaotic for Occupy Wall Street. We also went to the temple with Mom Dyal which was wonderful. Since the closest temple is either DC or Columbus, we can only go monthly and loved going to the beautiful DC temple with Mom Dyal. I don't have any pictures of that either, sorry.

We did go to a handful of sites like the Pentagon Memorial (and I thought of Mom)




And we went to the Air Force Memorial. We got their at sundown so I only snapped a blurry, dark photo so this other one is of the memorial at the air force 60th anniversary ceremony. I loved this site! They are unbelievably huge, solid, symbolic, and meaningful.




Oh, and here is a matching RayBand pic to show Dad!

Saudi Arabian Open House

We went to a Saudi Arabia Open House with little expectations going into it and it turned out to be AMAZING! It lasted for a few hours because they had a keynote speaker, translator, promotional video of the country, traditional clothing fashion show of the different regions, typical music and dance concert, and a mock wedding.

That alone was pretty cool, but then we followed the "wedding party procession" into another huge room that looked like the ballroom from Sound of Music where they had displays/Saudi treats/booths/henna tattoos, etc.

THEN, it ended with a huge, catered banquet in the ballroom (shown in the pictures of Adam and I before the hall was decorated) from the best middle eastern food in Pittsburgh. It was so good and so cool! There were hundreds of Saudi people there...and then Adam and I. We totally stuck out.

Radical Days

Pittsburgh does this thing called "Radical Days" for a month or two at the beginning of fall. Because there are so many sights and museums and musical functions and sport stadiums to see, a lot of the places will do a free day. So on the day they choose anyone is allowed to come for free. Of course we love Radical Days since we are on a small budget! Here are some pictures of the places we went.

The Soldiers and Sailors Museum which shows every war the United States has been involved in. We didn't get pictures of the individual exhibits but here is the outside building and Adam pondering.



The National Aviary Museum was surprisingly cool and had everything from bald eagles to "extinct" birds to hummingbirds. So here is us by the flamingos and Adam posing by a bird called "Dhyal" and pronounced the same as "Dyal" which we loved. Oh and the penguin picture is for Mom!





This is a walk along the North Shore next to the Three Rivers Memorial. We thought it was beautiful and showed a great view of down town Pitt and the Allegheny River on a typical day.





Andy Warhol Museum. We loved this. Fam, you know Andy Warhol's art/movies don't you? He is famous for his pop art and campbell's soup art. I really respect him as an artist. Of course we couldn't take pictures in the museum but we just HAD to sneak as much footage of this room as possible when no one else was in the room. This exhibit is called "Silver Clouds" and was our FAVORITE and really magical to be in. These movies don't quite capture how cool it was.
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