24 weeks

Well, we've just about hit the 24 week mark and the dress I wore to Church on Easter showed off my belly quite nicely so...I had Benn snap a picture.  So here it is!

It's weird to look at pictures with this belly poking out.  Sometimes I forget that it sticks out like that so looking at pictures is really the only way to convince myself that yes that is what I look like, yes it's great, and yes...in less than 4 months Benn and I will be parents.  It's seriously mind blowing at times.

My mom sent an "Idaho Baby Shower in a Box" which was so amazing!  Benn hoarded all the presents and surprised me with them when two friends showed up Friday to give complementary 'oohs' and 'ahhs' to all the wonderful gifts friends and family had sent.  So here are some pictures of the wonderful things we got!  And just want to say thanks to all who put the effort forward.  It's so amazing to know that we have people that loves us and remember us even though we are SO FAR AWAY!  So thanks everybody, you're amazing.

Easter

It's Easter (or was yesterday)!  What a wonderful thing to celebrate that our Savior lives.  We had a wonderful church meeting and came home to celebrate the day with each other.  Benn found a cool way to decorate eggs so we thought we would practice dying eggs.  We thought it was pretty cool...

 We decided to try some papers on there too - turned out pretty cool looking

 TA DA!  The finished eggs.  Unfortunately the dye kinda came off when we tried to clean the shaving cream off so...next time we will try something different so we can keep more of the dye on.  :)

After our egg dying, we ate a fabulous dinner of ham, overnight (funeral) potatoes, green beans, and rolls.  We enjoyed getting to spend time with each other and reflecting on the amazing gift our Savior gave us.  We topped the night off with some Easter candy that Benn's mom sent us.  Happy Easter all!

BABY!

Well - haven't put this up yet, but Benn and I will be expecting a little baby girl July 26th!  We are getting so excited!  Just this past week I have started feeling the baby move and Benn has been able to feel it once.  It has definitely been the coolest thing about being pregnant so far.

One thing that I have been feeling lately is just how blessed we are.  It is very humbling to know that the Lord is going to trust us with one of his spirit children.  It makes us want to be so much better than we are knowing that we will have a precious new life to be responsible for.

I remember my mom and other mom's talking about how having your own children changes your idea of what love is - that the love of a mother is one of those things that you can't explain but that you just have to experience.  This past week I think I started to feel a little bit of what that is.  I have this thing growing and moving inside me and there are so many things that I do or don't do to help keep it safe and growing healthy.  It is so precious and I feel like I had a little glimpse what it's like to be a parent and love something so much that I will do anything to keep it safe and healthy.  And on top of that, I haven't even seen or held it yet!  I can only imagine how much stronger that love will be come July 26th.

Here is an ultrasound picture from about 3 weeks ago at 18 weeks.  :)

Me with a growing belly - at 21 weeks...over half way!!  WOO HOO!

The Holidays: Cole Style :)

So...Christmas was quite crazy for us!  We got to fly to Idaho and spend a few days at my parents house in Parma.  We spent some time with extended family when we went caroling to people around town.  It is one of my favorite traditions and I was so excited to get to do that and be close to family.

Christmas day we headed up to North Idaho to Jessica's (my sister) house.  We ended opening presents Christmas eve night because my mom had to work on Christmas at the Hospital.  We had a blast getting to see Jess and John and their adorable 3 boys.  Benn usually ends up being the baby sitter while the girls go shopping and he is always so wonderful to do it.  He helped the boys make a track and ramp for their race cars and I have to admit - it was pretty cool.  :)  It's wild how fast kids grow up!  It had only been about 6 months since we had seen them last and it seemed like it had been years!

We flew out of there and headed to Atlanta, Georgia a couple days later to spend about two days with a great friend of mine from college.  We went to the aquarium in Atlanta which was AMAZING!  Seriously, one of the best aquariums I've ever been to so that was super fun (except the line to get in rivaled those at disneyland).  That night we went to a restaurant called papadeaux and it was so good!  It was some real cajun food.  Between the three of us we had shrimp gumbo, cheesy grits, frog legs, fried catfish, stuffed crap, and some amazing fish concoction Benn had.  It was so good - minus the heart burn later.  haha! We got to attend the singles ward with my friend, Terra and it brought back some memories for Benn and I.  The best part about that though (minus the spiritual enlightenment) was that the meeting was held in an old plantation home.  We made Terra show us the rest of the house after the meeting.  It was soo cool!  It happened to be the only thing we remembered to get pictures of...so here those are!

The holidays were so great for us.  We had the opportunity to spend time with wonderful friends and family that we love dearly.  Sadly we didn't get to see all of our loved ones, but look forward to when we get to and are grateful for modern communication that allows us to facetime, skype, and talk on the phone.

I think the most interesting part of our holiday journey's was getting reminded of the difference of the east and west coast.  I don't know how else to explain it - except that they are totally different.  The feel is different, the people are different, and the general attitude is different.  We have decided that the east coast is not a place that we could spend the rest of our lives - we just love the west coast too much.  However, we continue to enjoy living out here and taking part of the wonderful opportunities we have!  Benn's school and my work are going well and we feel blessed to be safe and have each other.  We've been able to make friends with some people in our ward and it's great to be able to spend time with them like we would with our families.  We are extremely grateful for our blessings and the love and support from friends and family.

One of my new years resolutions is to update this dang blog more!  So i'm going to try and be better at that as well as taking pictures to go along with all these words!  Merry Christmas and happy new year!

One month down...

Here are just a few of some of Benn and I's favorite moments/thoughts of being in this new crazy place:

1- The weird people EVERYWHERE on the public transportation systems.
2- The rat I saw eating our neighbors garbage.
3- Drivers in Boston pretty much at all hours of the day.
4- Trying to turn left at a light.
5- Road lines really not meaning anything...that's assuming if there ARE road lines.
6- One way streets should be banned everywhere!
7- Humidity does not help when trying to "destinkify" our place.
8- Whoever invented dishwashers were genius!  We don't have one and washing the dishes by hand is SO over-rated.  :)

I also wanted to finally put some pictures up of our place!  It is so much bigger than our place in Vegas and even though we had some...issues, when we first moved in - having it decorated and what not makes it so much better!  So...TA DA!  Our new(well, month old now) place :)

 This is our living room :)

 Our front room.  This is what you would see when you first walk in.  Or in other words, this picture was taken from the front door looking in.

 The hallway that leads to the rest of the apartment.  The door on the right leads to our second room, door on the left leads to our dining room/computer room, second door on the right is the bathroom, second door on the left is into the kitchen, and the one straight back is to our bedroom.

 The second bedroom/stuff we don't quite know what to do with yet.

 A built in hutch kind of thing.

 The computer station in the corner of the dining room.

 Our Kitchen!

 Bathroom

 Bedroom

Our cool ward robe that we got because our closet is...honestly the smallest thing ever.

There are still a few thing that we have to hang up - but we ran out of 3M sticky things. Plus...we don't have pictures of ourselves in some of the frames so we need to get those in too.  :)

Other good news...we both got jobs!  We have seen so many blessings in our lives these last few weeks and we are so grateful for them.  Benn and I both found jobs, we got refunded money that we were not expecting and totally needed, and many others.  We have been able to make new friends with people here and we are beginning to feel more at home.  Between Benn's school and and both of us working - we keep extremely busy, but it feels good to be doing something again!

First Days of Our New Adventure

So...sorry it's been awhile.  We got so busy with unpacking and cleaning the joint up that we forgot to put up the last pictures and a few of what the apartment looked like with all our stuff.  :)

We got to our apartment nice and early on Wednesday.  We actually went to the wrong house first.  It looked exactly like ours (by that I mean it looked exactly like ours looked like on google earth....haha).  So anyway, luckily we didn't knock on the door or anything.  So after we got to the RIGHT place, we met our landlord, got the keys, and started to unload the truck.  When we first opened the back, there was shattered glass.  My first thought was "NOT MY WINDSHIELD!"  And my thoughts were correct, it was not my windshield (thankfully), but it was part of the entertainment stand we brought.  It had 3 tiers of glass.  Luckily my Dad and Benn were able to go to Lowes and get some wood to take the place of the glass.  Unloading the truck only took like...2ish hours with the 4 of us so we were pretty happy with that.

To be completely honest, when I first walked into our new place I thought, "hey, not too bad!".  Then I took a wiff and thought, "Oh...that smell has got to go".  It had a kind of musty smell so thankfully with our AC units and fabreeze, we are doing much better on the smell front.  The best part of moving in was walking into the kitchen...the tile floor was scratched and dirty, the fridge and stove were NOT clean, and the only part of the floor that did look nice had clearly been replaced.  (I say this because it was white tile, while the others were a tanish color....I mean would it really have been that hard to get something close to the right color?)  I almost forgot to mention the contact paper serving as wall paper.  The bathroom wasn't much in much better condition.  So, the cleaning supplies were the first to be unpacked and my mom and I got to work.  3 rolls of paper towels, half a bottle of 409, draino, a tub of Clorox wipes, 2 stainless steel balls, and about 12 pairs of blue latex gloves later, things are clean.  :)  There are still some things that Benn and I would like to fix up and redo to make it look better, but the majority of it is done and it is amazing how much better things look when they are clean.  I had to keep telling myself through the whole thing that it could have been SO much worse - considering the first time we saw the place in person was when we walked in the door that Wednesday morning.

View all

Get your own

All in all, Benn and I are very happy with our new apartment and are excited to get our lives started here in Boston.   We have just about finished all the unpacking and will start hanging stuff up to make things look more like home.  I'll be sure to post some pictures of the final look in a few days.

 Thursday and Friday were spent unpacking, shopping at IKEA for some furniture items, and having fun!  We got to meet up with one of my mom's friends from High School.  We went into Boston and had dinner at a great seafood place.  Benn and I were able to take my parents to Mike's Pastry and get a variety of canoli's.  We were also able to visit a girl that grew up in Parma who now lives in the country area of Boston with her husband and 5 children.  It is amazing how having someone you know near helps make a new adventure not so scary. 

Saturday morning my parents left.  I was very eager for them to stay, but understood that the time had come for them to start their journey back across the United States.  This was probably the wettest part of our trip, including Niagara Falls.  :)  I couldn't help but cry when I said goodbye to my parents.  They have been such a support to not only me, but Benn as well.  We literally would not have been able to make our move to Boston without them.  We are so grateful for the sacrifice they made to spend about 10 days with us and we made our journey.  This is probably sad, but being in Boston is the farthest I have ever been away from my parents.  I have always been close enough that I could drive home.  Even while we were in Las Vegas, Benn and I always drove to Parma, with the exception of going for my Grandma Jemmett's funeral.  Things are different now and trips back home will be few and far between - for both us.  But, as I have said many times, we are so excited for this new adventure.  We both know that with each other we can bare all things.  :)  So Benn dried my tears (after giving me a fair amount of time to cry), and we dedicated our time to making our apartment our home.  Like I said, when we get it finished, we will most definitely post pictures!  Thanks to all for reading and sharing this adventure with us!  We love you, we miss you, and can't wait until we meet again! 

Day 6

     We woke up this morning with the goal of getting to Boston by the end of today and later than sooner, that dream came true! Without further adoo, We are here, we are safe, and we are excited! Driving into Boston is much more different than it is driving into Las Vegas. As you drive into Las Vegas, no matter the freeway or highway, you see bright sparkling lights that illuminate the sky with a glow visible from the heavens. The Luxor beam visible from more than 30 miles away, bursts from the tip of the iconic pyramid. Sadly enough, we will not be experiencing that sight for quite a while, but we are okay with that!
     As we approached Boston, it was the same entry into any city that we have seen ever since we entered Tennessee: Trees, trees, and more trees. The dense forests cover all the nearby buildings, and all the neighborhoods are hidden in the thick of what i would call the North American Amazon.
     Today was a very sight-seeing filled day, and here is what we did. We departed Erie, PA early to get to Buffalo, NY and experience Niagara Falls. We found parking on Goat Island, which parcle of land is the division between the Canadian side of the falls, and the American side. We took amateur pictures of such a glorious spectacle that no ordinary camera could capture. We stood on a ledge that overlooked the falls almost directly, and we witnessed how extremely close the "Maid of the Mist" ships got to the falls. From our vantage point, the ships almost disappeared within the thickness of the mist that was billowing out of the falls. Over 10 million gallons fall over the edge every minute, which equals to about 1,000,000 bathtubs of water a minute. Wow.
     Our next stop was Palmyra, NY. Palmyra was a small bustling town, fun to visit, and full of history. There is a cross-streets on Main St, where there are 4 churches, one on each corner; talk about your religious revival, especially back in the day.  We visited the Hill Cumorah, and had lunch at the top of the hill. We visited the original publication site of the Book of Mormon, and got to witness first hand the excruciating 2 year process that was endured to create the first 5,000 copies of the Book of Mormon. We then visited the Log Home of the Smith Family and took a tour there. We learned many things by sight and by sound, of the experiences, hardships, and times of growth that the Smith Family passed through during their time in Palmyra. After seeing the Log Home and the 2nd nicer home of the Smith's, we had a chance to live a dream that all four of us had in common: We got to walk in the sacred grove.  Inside the ancient forest, is a trodden pathway through the whispering trees that you could walk as you looked around into the undergrowth. One could not help but imagine any number of spots in eye-sight as a possible location of the First Vision. With a prayer in heart, we felt inspired by the faith the Prophet Joseph Smith, and how he was able to exercise that faith almost 200 years ago. After giving a few more CD's to the missionaries on duty there we departed and made our way back to the highway with our sites set on Boston or Bust.
     So here we are, we made it, and although it has been 6 very full days of driving, driving, traveling, traversing, driving, cruising, and coasting we are here and we are proud of our trek. For all of us, it was our first time. Unpacking starts tomorrow, and oh how we wish we had the capability to muster the hands of others to help us in this ill-looked-forward-to effort. Before we know it, it will be all done and then we can go get donuts from one of the 3 million Dunkin' Donuts here in Boston. Boston has more Dunkin' Donuts than there are Starbucks on the entire West Coast, if that gives you any idea! Thanks for following us on our adventures! See you soon!

pictures to come soon, its one in the morning and time to go to sleep. :)