Whats up with the Lowes?

Here's just the latest on what's been going on. All I have to say is I hate AZ right now- the heat is killing me. I refuse to go outside unless I HAVE to! :) ok. There's my venting, on to the pictures.

We bought a TRUCK! I love it. Isn't it cute?...I mean...masculine?
The Sunday after we moved, Landon was searching for his church shoes...this is what happened...He finally found them in my sea of flip-flops.

Landon had knee surgery about 10 days ago... here's him before he got knocked out! He's doing well & is up and walking around. He'll start physical therapy soon.
No one really knows what Landon does for work- so here's a little glimpse

I am 6.5 months pregnant!

And last, here is our sweet little boy's crib & bedding that Landon set up. Funny thing is he set up the crib in the living room (this probably took about an hour & a half)... then when we tried to move it to the baby's room it DIDNT FIT THROUGH THE DOOR!! So..he had to take it apart, bring it into the babys room, & re-assemble.

Sorry i'm not as detailed as usual. Just not up for it this time! I can feel the heat coming through the window next to me & I can't handle it. So that's why this is short & sweet. I want to live in the pool all day or walk around naked. haha.

The Latest & Greatest

It freaks me out to see our families growing up so quickly. This has been a full year of fun so far & it's just going to continue! Jarom graduated from Centennial-the last Stringham in our family. Disgusting! Anyway we're proud & can't wait until he's a famous olympic pole-vaulter.

Also, Landon's brother Josh left for his mission (Mexico city west) - here's the last picture of the Lowe family before the baby comes...when Josh get's back Jeff will probably be on his mission & there may even be more little Lowe's running around!This memorial day weekend the Stringham side went to Christopher Creek for our family vacation this year. It was a lot of fun. Here are some of the highlights!

Celebrating Landon's 22nd Birthday with his fake birthday cake that he absolutely loved!

Tonto National Park rainbow bridge...coolest site ever!

Here's our humble little cabin we stayed in!

Uncle Landon playing with Rigdon at the lake!

At Tonto National Park

I would say our family vacation was a success & lots of fun. It was a nice getaway for a few days. Well we sold my car so that we could "upgrade" to something bigger. There is no way a stroller could fit in my tiny little cobalt.. so we're lookin for an SUV or truck. Nothing too fancy just something to fit our baby nicely. :)

Also, at the end of this month we will be moving back up to our parent's side of town (Peoria/Glendale). Our lease is up here so we decided we'd like to be in a two bedroom apartment & also be closer to our families for the baby (which is quite very alive & kicking these days). I think that's all the big stuff. Oh, & we're diggin' the name Chase for the baby.

It's a....

BOY!

Yay for May

April was a busy month and May will be too!

Landon went skydiving a couple weeks ago with his Mom, Sister & Brother outside of Casa Grande. This was his "early" birthday present, along with his brother Josh leaving for his mission with a bang! It was fun times. They all said it was awesome-accept for the motion sickness part. Josh was the only one who didn't get sick. I think someday for our 50th wedding anniversary I will try skydiving with Landon! Haha. That way it will be ok if I die :)

Here's a lovely gash Landon got from playing ball. It should have gotten stitches but I wasn't able to influence that decision until it was too late the next day. I was sleeping when he came home from playing that night so I didn't get to see it and freak out :) Lucky him. Lucky me too, I prob would have thrown up! Anyway, it's healed really nicely now but it looked nasty in the beginning.

More on my lovely man- He did the Pat Tillman run in Tempe a couple weeks ago. I'm so proud of him. It was a 5k and he didn't stop. He said toward the end he was struggling but he finished strong and finished 1,200 out of 20,000 runners. Pretty dang good! I love doing runs but I obviously couldn't this time. Maybe i'll do the family runs soon and walk in the back with a stroller :)

Other stuff not requiring pictures :

So Landon's correctional officer application fell through so now we're starting to look at other options. Problem is not very many doors are open for us so...we're kind of looking at the air force. It's hard to find something that doesn't require schooling that we can make a good living off of. So we'll see what we end up doing but pray for doors to be shown to us please!!

Work is going good for me, just 3 weeks left and I can finally relax and be a bum all day. Not really, i'm going to try to be productive this summer but I'm excited to have my own schedule everyday. School is over for me this week. I have one final left. I'll probably end up with 2 b's and an A. I'm so proud of myself considering i've had the combination of a full time job, school, and being sick/pregnant this whole semester. It's a big accomplishment for me.

As far as the pregnancy goes I'm getting bigger- a nice and plump baby bump! I'm glad it doesn't just look like i'm gaining weight anymore to people and you can actually tell there's something in there. I dont like that in-between stage. We will find out the gender of our baby (hopefully it's not in a position that we can't see) on May 24th. So two more weeks. We can't wait. We want to start buying stuff but we can't until we find out. As far as "how i'm feeling" goes, it's getting better. I'm not feeling as nauseas and I can go a couple days now without taking Zofran (the nausea pill). And i'm starting to get a little more energy to do things around the house. Bless my poor husband-he's been doing everything around here. I appreciate him so much. He doesn't complain either. He just sees that I don't feel good and helps out with the dishes without me even asking him. I'll come home from work and all the cleaning will be done for me. I have the best husband in the world! I really do. I feel bad that I haven't been able to do my normal work around the apartment but I feel lucky to have such an awesome husband that just does it for me! :)

That's it for now, and by the way, Happy Mother's Day!

Not Myself!

I just cant seem to break my habit of only blogging once a month. So this is probably going to be all you get from now on. Expect once a month!! Especially because since being pregnant-I am behind on EVERYTHING I need to get done. My room is a mess. Dishes are piled up like the leaning tower of piza. The fridge has no food in it. THIS IS NOT LIKE ME. I'm usually a crazy organized OCD freak. So being like this is frustrating for me...especially because I can barely do anything about it! I'm sorry but I come home from work just exhausted and feeling like crap! I just want to lay around! haha. Landon has been great though. He's been taking on most of my duties :) Good news is i'm 14 weeks now and starting to feel better. So hopefully it's all uphill from here and I can be my crazy self that I love again. Here is a picture of me TODAY at 14 weeks. People are telling me i'm HUGE for my 1st pregnancy and that I have twins! Please don't freak me out! I've only gained 6 lbs total...and there's been no sign of twins. So stop it!

Here is our 1st ultrasound at 8 weeks...we'll get another one in a month AND find out the gender! We're excited to get whatever we're given, no preferences. I've been having crazy dreams a lot though about the baby's gender. I've had 2 dreams that im having a boy born with teeth. Another one with boy/girl twins like my sister that came out talking to me. And one last night with a baby girl who had long brown hair in piggy tails with dimples on each side of her cheek. My mind is just a freak of nature right now. For real. Oh, by the way, our due date is October 15th. haha.

Anyone seen the show Pawn Stars on the History channel? No, not porn stars, PAWN STARS. It's about a Pawn shop in Las Vegas. They always have crazy items come in. We're addicted. Well we went up to St. George Utah a few weeks ago and stopped in Vegas on the way up. We decided to check out that pawn shop. It was so cool! So here's Landon and his brothers lovin' Pawn Stars.

Well Landon went and took the physical test for the Department of Corrections. His background check is pending so we'll find out in about a month if he can pursue becoming a correctional officer. After this, we're not sure what we're going to do! We have a couple options in mind but nothing that we're 100% on for our plan B. Pray for him please!

OK my mind is blanking really bad so Im gonna post what I have so far and i'm sure Landon will read this later and tell me about 50 more things to add. So..check back later! It's been real.

February!

I know I do this everytime..where it's been a month since i've blogged & I tell you that I need to be better at updating. BUT-I have excuses this time! I have been super-duper busy with work AND school...so i'm always crammed with homework. I barely have time for anything. I'm glad I finally have a few minutes though to give a small updatizzle.

Well January 10th was our ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY! Wahoo! We made it! This past year has been awesome & i'm so grateful for all the growing experiences we've had and how great we work as a couple. I'm so thankful for such a wonderful husband. Love him forever.

As far as the new place goes, I absoutely love our location. We are so close to all the fun stuff. We're just 5-1o mintues from the Zoo, Tempe Towne Lake, Mill Ave, Scottsdale Fashion Square, Camelback & Squaw peak mountains, First Fridays, Suns' Games & more! There is always stuff to do. Not that we have time for it. But if we do, it's just right there & we don't have to sit there for hours saying, "what do you want to do?", "I don't know, what do YOU want to do?". You know how that goes! haha. We are still unfamiliar to people our ward. No callings yet, but i'm sure we'll get some soon. That will definately help people get to know us.

Two weeks ago I CHOPPED MY HAIR OFF! I just had to do it. I was bored with long blonde hair. I like to try to new looks too. Landon likes long blonde hair, but when he saw my new due (do?) he LOVED IT! Here's a couple pics---

Also two weeks ago, Landon went to work one morning & there was this dog hanging around his shop. He fed it & the dog ended up following him around the rest of that day. The next morning, the dog was waiting on the doorstep of Landon's shop...just waiting for his "new master" that he had chosen! The dog wouldn't go away. So Landon fell in love with his new Buddy. We didn't know what to do with him. I wanted to bring him here but a dog that big wouldn't work for us in our apartment. He'd get no running room & we aren't home very much. So we begged Landon's parents to take him :) . Actually we just kind of dropped him off there & said they had to keep him for us! Haha. But we love him. He's such a cute boy! His name's Buddy. He's so nice...he's like a chow/husky mix it seems. Probably about 2 years old-he's still got puppy instincts. Anyway. Here's our new doggy.

Lastly, & this is BIG. It might be too soon to say anything but we really cannot keep our mouth shut. YOU PROBABLY HAVE ALREADY GUESSED. But ill tell the story anyway. So a couple weeks ago I thought "hm.. I think Mr. Happy was supposed to show up a week ago". But I didn't think too much of it. The following Monday night I had a crazy dream that I took a pregnancy test & it was positive. So when I woke up the next morning. I just had to go count on the calendar exactly how many days late I was. I was 8 days late already! So I took 3 dollar store tests. All came out positive. That afternoon we wanted to confirm so we bought two $20 dollar ones at CVS..both came out positive. So what to ya know-we're pregnant! I'm probably only about 6 weeks along so hopefully everything goes well. We feel so blessed for this opportunity & are excited for the new adventure. The nausea has already hit & i'm feelin pretty nasty but I know in the end it will be worth it! I pray all goes well with it.

Well that's pretty much it. Have a great week-or month-everybody!

It's January 2010 ?!

It's really gross that's it's already 2010. I freaked out at work when I wrote the date..is it normal to write 1-5-10? Or should it be 1-5-2010? I feel like it should be 2010?? Cause what if 50 years from now they look back at records and they see 1-5-10? That could mean..January 5th, 1910, or 2010, or 1810...you get the idea. It IS a big deal to me. Not really, just don't know what's normal.

Anywho, I guess since my pictures upload backwards timewise, i'll blog starting from the most recent events taking place in our life. Last Saturday (January 2nd) we went shooting with my mom, dad & brother Jarom. Here are our highlight pics from that adventure...this gun was amazing. I want one.

New year's eve we went down to the Mill Ave block party & paid the disgusting $20 a person to basically just people watch! It was tons-o-fun despite the amount of money. Landon's friend Paul went with us. Here we are at midnight with the confetti flying all around us.
From Christmas day until the Monday after we (the Lowe side) went up to Boise to visit Landon's sister Brittney & her husband who live up there. It was an awesome trip! Our main event was a snowmobiling trip to a "hot springs"! It was worth the cold ride to a warm hot tub in the middle of nowhere. Definately one of the coolest things i've ever done. I wish I would have gotten more pictures, but here we are just outside the hot springs.

Us up early in the morning ready to ride!

We spent Christmas morning with my family (and Christmas vacation with the Lowes). We spent the night Christmas Eve & woke up like little children to gather around the tree. It was fun - I love feeling like a kid Christmas morning! haha. Our main gifts...Landon got xm radio & I got a sewing machine! I am going to become crafty sewing woman. I've already made a couple headbands (don't congratulate me I know i'm genius) and am starting a project to make baby shoes for my neice & nephew.

We finally moved to our new place & despite our unsurity we absolutely love it. It's perfect for us. It's brand new, we're the first ones living here. It's super nice & we have all the retail you can think of surrounding us!

I still can't get over the fact that it's 2010 already. That makes me feel old. Just looking at the number "2010" looks so futuristic & far off. Happy New Year! Dont forget to make your list of goals!