Baby Shower

Last week I was completely spoiled with the best baby shower a girl could ask for! My sweet sister, Lauren put so much time and thought into each aspect of the event, I was so impressed. Kayla, Emily, Lauren and my sweet friend Heather all prepared wonderful food that coincided with children's books. 

Next, all the girls drew pictures to go with alphabet blocks that Lauren had made. They turned out so cute! I can't wait for baby gaff to play with them. 

Next we played other fun baby shower games that involved diapers and children's books. It was so fun. But the game that topped them all was the Price is Right. 

All the girls had to help me decide how much each baby item was to help me win the big prizes. Several weeks prior, Lauren had asked me what two items were on my wishlist- a boppy pillow and bumbo seat (both items were on my luxury list which meant I wouldn't be buying them anytime soon) My family is awesome and pitched in to buy me those two items. I felt so loved! We hadn't bought anything except for a stroller so getting all of these baby presents was amazing! I had so many friends come and support me. 

But the best best part of the whole shower was my mom surprised me! I had no idea she would be coming, everyone kept it a secret from me. I was completely shocked to see her come through the door. I loved loved loved having her there! It was seriously the icing on top of the whole thing. She flew in late the night before and left after my shower. She is the best mom in the world for coming! 

I was so touched that my grandma,aunt and cousins came and supported me as well! I have an amazing family. 

Look at how loved I am! It was a such a perfect day. Thank you Lauren and everyone else who helped put this shower on! Baby gaff and I are so grateful!

Pregnancy Woes

A couple things I've learned while being pregnant. First of all, I've taken sleeping for granted my entire life. I have never had trouble falling asleep or waking up during the night. I loved sleep so much, it's been my favorite part of the day! Garrick on the other hand has always had trouble sleeping and he hates going to bed. He lies awake for hours trying to get his body to sleep. I always thought he was a weirdo and just didn't know how to relax. Now that I've been pregnant, I've experienced sleeping struggles and it's the worst thing ever. I am constantly waking up, going to the bathroom, trying to get comfortable, trying to get baby to stop kicking, etc. It's terrible. Everyone says that you need to get all the sleep you can before baby comes. What people don't tell you is that it's impossible to do this while you're in your third trimester. Okay, rant over. 

Other fun things that have happened during my pregnancy is a little thing called "pregnancy brain" It's a real thing, guys. It show as evidence, here are two socks that I paired together and put in Garrick's dresser. Neither of which are his socks! He couldn't believe that I had actually paired these two together. I have no recollection of doing so but the evidence is clear as day...

Second occasion was after my baby shower. We were packing the car with all of my baby stuff. Lauren had given me the keys to the church just 5 minutes earlier but all of a sudden I couldn't remember what I had done with them. I didn't want to lock the church until I knew I had them. So I made everyone stop and help me look through the boxes and bags of stuff. I clearly remembered putting the keys in something...My friend Aly kept asking me if I was sure they weren't in my pockets. I kept responding, of course not-I would've remembered putting them there. After several more minutes of looking, Aly told me again to just check my pockets. Frustrated, I agreed and sure enough in my pocket it sat. 

Another incident where it has shown itself was last Saturday. I was starving and wanted to go to Betos (they have the most delicious fish tacos). After we filled my tummy I wanted to go to Target to look at baby stuff, which was a 30 minute drive with all the traffic. Garrick is not a fan of Target and really didn't want to drive all the way there. But he was nice and didn't complain once as we fought through traffic to get there. Once we finally parked the car and we were getting out I immediately remembered that I had a purse at one point and I must have left it at Betos. Without even stepping foot into Target we got back in the car and headed back down to Provo to look for my purse. Betos was super busy so we figured it'd be best to check at home first. We drove home and sure enough my purse was hanging on a chair. Garrick was frustrated with me for a couple minutes but then was super sweet and laughed it off. This is our life now and he is embracing my prego brain.

And here is more evidence that a child is in fact growing inside of me. T-minus 5 weeks till baby comes and Jamie becomes normal again!

Thanksgiving

Back in the summer, Garrick and I decided it'd be fun to spend Thanksgiving in Colorado. So we started making plans and saw that the Lion King on Broadway was going to be playing while we'd be there! So we quickly bought tickets and then convinced Kayla that she should come with us.

This was Garrick's first Broadway show, and I wanted him to love it. We bought slightly more expensive tickets so that we could be super close to the stage, we were literally 4 rows back! I had never been that close before and it was so cool! The costumes were amazing and we were right next to the guy playing the drums. Needless to say, it was a pretty amazing show. It was also pretty fun driving around Denver, we've flown into that airport a million times but had never seen the city. 

My best friend, Shanon also happened to be living in Denver so we got to see her! It was so fun seeing her all grown up, living on her own in the big city. She is interning with the Denver Broncos marketing department, no big deal...

The rest of our break consisted of hanging out with Skybekah and their cute kiddos. Jace is the sweetest baby ever, he made me super baby hungry! McKay and Alicia are too cute and we had a lot of fun playing with them.  

Watching Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving movie.

Jace has SO MUCH HAIR. I could not believe it. I had fun playing with it. Here's his man bun.

It's not Thanksgiving without watching the Macy's Day Parade!

Another thing you might not know about Garrick is that he LOVES to bake and cook. So during the break he thought of all of the recipes he wanted to make. Here is the table of desserts after our Thanksgiving feast. He was pretty proud of all his desserts. They were delicious! 

The best part about the break was definitely playing games with Skyler and Rebekah. They always introduce us to awesome new games! Loot, Set, and Settlers of Catan were some of the games we played together. The break came and went far too quickly. We were really sad to leave Colorado and make the treacherous journey back to Provo (it was terrifying driving back through mountains and in blizzards!) But we're so glad we were able to come to Colorado for a few days to relax and be around family. Thanks for the good times Skybekah!! 

Bits of Fall, Bits of Winter

We ended our October with a super fun ward Halloween party. As you can see, we put a lot of effort into our costumes. This is the first year that we've dressed up for Halloween since we've been together so we went all out! We also dominated the games at the activity because we're winners!

Another highlight from October was having my parents come visit for a quick weekend! We love every time they visit, it's always a party.

One Sunday night Garrick and I were both doing stuff for our callings and I thought it was so cute so I took a picture. We've really loved the opportunity we've had to get more involved in our ward this year. We've been able to make a ton of friendships and have learned so much from our callings. 

It's been Garrick's goal to be able to study from home this semester, typically he spends late nights at school. But to prepare for when baby comes, he wanted to get in a habit of successfully studying in our home office. There's been a couple of successful study nights but most of the time I distract him from his work haha. I'm hoping we'll figure out a better system some day. 

We supported both of our schools by going to the BYU vs UVU weekend. The men and women's basketball teams played as well as women's soccer. It's cool that UVU is now a big enough school that they can compete against BYU! 

A cool thing that Garrick did lately was teach a self defense class at our ward FHE night. One of the boys in the ward had been trying for months to have Garrick put on this activity for the elder's quorum. But Garrick had been swamped with school so the only night that worked was Monday which meant the boys invited the wives to turn it into FHE. It was pretty fun having him teach everyone different moves. My husband is a stud. And he could probably kill you with his bare hands....

One thing you should know about Garrick is that he loves Christmas. I am the one in our relationship that has to make us wait to put up the Christmas tree. Garrick started listening to Christmas music at the beginning of November and had asked several times to put up the tree before I caved. We compromised by making it a "gratitude tree" for November. So we wrote what we were thankful for on leaves that we hung on our Christmas tree. I've actually loved having the tree up an extra month so this will probably be a new tradition. 

Towards the end of November we went to an event called "Light up the Riverwoods" with some friends. It was actually really cool, they had a big concert, people making ice sculptures, Santa Claus and at 9pm they turned on all of their Christmas lights. It was pretty magical. 

That sums up our life for now. Next, is Thanksgiving!!

Beck Home Projects: Part Two

Seeing as how this occurred 8 months ago, I figured now was as good of time as any to blog about Beck Home Project number 2! Last Christmas Garrick and I randomly decided to redo the guest room and I loved it! Since then, I have decided that every time I visit home now, I will tackle a new room. This past March I went home to visit my dad being inducted into the Hall of Fame. While I was there I gave some much needed attention to Kayla's old room.

This room has turned into another guest bedroom that is meant for the grand kids (hence the crib). Here is the before shot. I loved pre-teen Kayla, but lime green was an awful choice for a bedroom color....

This is the walk in closet that one hasn't been able to walk in for a number of years...

This was a huge project to tackle, especially since I knew my visit would be short. So this room will be completed through phases. The first phase was to de-junk! This took up the entire time I was home. But after some sweat, blood and tears, we threw out a ton of stuff!

After removing the junk here is the after picture: 

I'm so proud of my mom for allowing me to get rid of so many memories. It was hard for her to let go of so many mementos from our childhood but she soldiered on for me! 

The last thing I was able to do for this room before I flew back to Utah was pick out a new paint color. Those green walls HAD to go. I had really hoped that I would be able to paint before I left but didn't have the time. So together my mom and I picked a color and the next day she painted the room all by herself!

Here is the after paint picture: 

So much better, right?? I love that we went with grey, it is so calming for this room. There are still a million things that need to be done to this room but I think we've made tremendous progress. Next up is to replace the beds, bedding, dresser, and add fun art. I'm really excited to see how it turns out. I can't wait until we move home for the summer-so many rooms to play with!! Thanks for letting me help decorate your house, mom!