Smiles all around

Justin is growing so quickly! He smiles more than anything else these days. I love waking up in the morning to his cute little grins and giggles. Unless he's tired all you have to do is smile at him and he smiles, or laugh and he laughs (his funny little gurgly laugh) (:




Going out to play in the snow.

Justin wrapped up in his swaddler getting ready for bed


Sorry about all the pictures of Justin, but I can't help it. I'm completely in love with this sweet little boy.

Christmas - Act 2

After opening presents in Pima Christmas morning we headed to Joseph City. That drive goes quicker and quicker every time we make this Idaho to Arizona trip. (we're on our 5th trip this year!) Almost 200 hours of driving total!!! Totally worth it though.
Aside from each other and the gospel, we agree that our biggest blessing in life is having such large wonderful families that we get to enjoy spending time with. We're excited to be finishing up school after this year and hopefully moving back closer to everyone.
A family friend from Holbrook gave Justin this adorable little santa suit that he's wearing in the picture with Grandma Gardner.

The day after Christmas we went to play in the snow with the Gardner cousins. We drove a couple hours to a place called Chevlen Crossing. There was a little river that was frozen over that everyone played on for quite a while. We had Justin with us, and I was afraid of slipping on the ice while holding him so Jason pulled us over to everyone on a sled then we took turns holding him and playing on the ice. It was pretty entertaining watching the human bowling and ice hockey games. We managed to make it through the day without any serious injuries. Just a few hard hits on the ice and only one kid fell through (it wasn't too deep).

We couldn't find the snow suit we'd brought for Justin so here's a picture of him all bundled up in Jason's arms. Jason's sister Kristin made him an adorable little striped scarf that he's wearing. He actually did really good the whole time, and probably stayed warmer than anyone out there.

Christmas - Act 1

Christmas is by far my favorite holiday! I love the charity and happiness that seems to be nearly bursting from every seam this time of year. It's so much fun to have a break from school and get to spend hours on end just visiting with family!
Our break started on the 18th when we left Rexburg to make the trek to arizona, again. After stopping in Jo City for a quick snowboarding trip, we went to pima for the week of christmas. It was so wonderful to have my entire family there, minus david. But we got to talk to him christmas morning, so it was like we got to see him too. He's doing great in Africa and seems to be learning alot. He already sounds so grown up. I guess he will be 20 before too long. Crazy! It's so fun being around family and having so many willing arms to entertain Justin for a while. After he got over the initial fright of so many loud people around him he seemed to enjoy getting held so much. here he is with Grandma and Grandpa Weech.

There wasn't anything I wanted for Christmas other than my sweet little baby boy. The christmas bow just made him that much cuter. (:

Justin loved laying by the tree looking at all the lights. Jeremy let me borrow his awesome camera and it was fun having indoor pictures turn out so well. We also took some family pics that i might be able to convince Sara to share with me someday...please. (:
It was a wonderful week that went entirely too quickly, but I guess that just gives us next Christmas to look forward to getting to see everyone together again.

More Pics of Justin (:

Poor kid...I hope he doesn't have any permanant eye damage from all the pictures we've taken of him. We try to justify it by saying none of family get to see him so we have to take lots of pictures and send them to everyone. Well, we've been really good at the picture taking but not so good at the picture sending. So i' m going to post a few of my favorites and everyone will just have to look on our blog if they want to see them. (:

He loves when morning comes and I unswaddle him and let him nap in his swing. His little arms go straight up to his face, and stay there for the rest of the day.

He's a big fan of falling asleep on the boppy after he finishes eating and has a nice full tummy. (which he thinks should ALWAYS be the case)

Not a huge fan of the camera flash though...(:


Justin's first bath in his baby-tub-thing. His other bath's were in the sink, which he loved! He was a bit unsure about this set-up but loved it once I covered him with a warm wet wash cloth and the bath finished filling up. He was pretty entertaining.

He was being so cute the other day wrapped up in his soft yellow blanket


I love this one! He has some of the most amazing expressions. Jason and I love deciding what he's thinking with each one.

1st Anniversary & Jason's Birthday

We had our 1st Anniversary the Saturday after Justin was born. We had already decided having a baby was going to be our present to each other since my due date was that same weekend. (as well as Jason's birthday) Anyways, Jason surprised me with this beautiful necklace that he'd managed to sneak out and get for me. I was so excited. It was kind of an emotional (mostly good emotions, but emotions none the less) day still adjusting to having such a beautiful healthy boy and such a wonderful husband, and being a new overwhelmed mom . Jason managed to make it absolutely wonderful though.

So no, we didn't go on a cruise, or a vacation, or even out to dinner...but I couldn't have asked for a more perfect day. It's been such a crazy year with so many unexpected blessings. This was a perfect way to end such an amazing year: Spending a quiet day at home with my loving husband and precious baby boy.

The next day we celebrated Jason's 23rd Birthday. I'd been so excited about getting to make him a real cake since last year his birthday got a little forgotten in the craziness of the wedding/reception. I didn't quite have the energy to make it exactly how i'd planned but it turned out close enough. I wanted to do a beach theme since that's one of his favorite things. Cheesecake is also one of his favorite things, but since you can't decorate a cheesecake all that well, I decided to do a cream cheese frosting a filling between layers. It was absolutely delicious! Thank you cooks.com for the recipe! (: Oh and I discovered this wonderful place in Idaho Falls called WINCO where you can get all sorts of fun treats by the ounce, so I picked out different ocean themed gummies to decorate the cake with. I wanted to put a palm tree on it, so I actually used a chocolate salt water taffy and 3 alligator gummies that somewhat resembled palm tree fronds. It was quite a bit of fun to put together!



(Jason put one of the gummy bears in the ocean cause he thought the shark looked hungry :(

This is a fairly common sight around our house and one of my favorites! This was while we were still at the hospital and Jason held him so I could take a bath. (:

Car ride home. He's not a fan of car seats, but a big fan of the car (:

Tired but Happy Mommy

he absolutely loves stretching out on his back.

asleep in his wonderful swing. [the only place he'll stay asleep that isn't with me.]

Justin Brian Gardner

I had a doctor's appointment monday morning where I found out I was 4 centimeters (same as the week before) and 60% effaced. The doctor told me the baby was ready as soon as I was and asked if I was ready for him to come. I never thought I'd even consider being induced, after seeing Sara's less than ideal inductions, but I was so miserable I heard myself saying I was definitely ready. It took him a while to convince me that he was serious and would actually induce me 6 days early, and after asking Jason over the phone (he was in class) we decided to go for it.

We got checked in at 7:30 tuesday morning and my doctor broke my water. He gave me a few hours to see if labor would start on it's own, and I never even needed a bit of pitocin, which I was very greatful not to have. The contractions started right away and were pretty strong and about 2-3 minutes apart by 10:30am. after 5 hours of less than joyful back labor and 2 minute apart contractions, I decided I was definitely willing to give the epidural a shot. And let me just say, I am a HUGE fan!!! My anesthesiologist did an amazing job, in the middle of a room full of students, and had it in after only one contraction. All I felt was the poke from the numbing needle. The pain started to subside and that's when i realized you can actually feel contractions in your stomach, not just your back. (: The dosage was perfect and I could still feel alot of pressure from the contractions, but no pain.

Thanks to the epidural I was able to let him labor down for about 2 hours before I started pushing and he was out by 8:20pm after 20 short minutes of pushing. (they made me stop for awhile so the doctor would make it to catch him).

Justin came out bright pink and screaming. He got a 9/9 on his apgar and was basically a perfectly healthy pregnancy/labor/and delivery. Jason and I just keep saying how absolutely blessed we are. Heavenly Father has definitely taken care of us so we'd be able to do this up here in Idaho. We're so greatful for our precious little boy and the miracle of not having any complications.

Like this little anouncement says, He weighs 8lbs 9oz, 20.5 in, with a HUGE 13.5 in head!

Picture of me waiting for contractions to start right after they broke my water.

Sorry no pictures during actual labor, we were a little bit busy...

They let me hold him for about 20 minutes before they weighed and measured him. This is a picture right after they got his vitals and gave him back. We were able to stay in our labor/delivery/recovery room until I was up for a shower then they transfered us to the mother/baby unit.

When he came out he had lots very curly, strawberry blonde hair. It straightened out after they bathed him, but stayed a little red.

He's been sleeping wonderfully and hasn't cried other than his circumcision.

Hopefully we'll get to go home in about 5 hours and enjoy our own little home with our new little boy. We're so greatful to our family for being patient with the fact that we had him clear up here in Idaho, and have enjoyed the blessing of technology allowing us to see them through lots of web calls.

We'll try to post more pictures later in the week once we all get adjusted to our new little life! (:

3 weeks left...!

Are you serious?! 3 weeks left to go?! I don't think my tummy can stretch any farther!!! Guess it doesn't have any choice. Here's two pictures Jason took just a minute ago.

Despite being incredibly ready to NOT be pregnant anymore, I do love my little boy and feeling him move around inside me is amazing! We're way excited for him to FINALLY be here. It feels like I've been pregnant forever, I can't believe it's almost over. Then the real excitement begins, and hopefully I'll have pictures of someone alot cuter than me and my round tummy!

Pregnant Picture

So here's a picture of my pregnant tummy that Jason took yesterday...We have a doctor's appt. tomorrow so hopefully everything is going well. School starts next week so the time's probably going to fly by pretty quick and our little guy will be here before we know it! Yay!!!

some art from last semester...

These are a couple of ink drawings and sculptures from this last semester. The drawings were a challenge for me cause they all had to be done from love without a whole lot of time or sketching. I'd only done one ink drawing before (at bottom of post) and it was from a picture so it was definitely a growing experience learning to put 3-D objects I'm looking at onto a 2D piece of paper. But here are some of the ones that I liked.

I really like this one i did it from the Winnie the pooh blanket Chris & Belle gave us for the crib and a little sleeper outfit mom gave us for our baby.


This one was really fun cause it didn't have too much detail (: It's just a drawing of a picture I painted, a fake sunflower, my wooden paint palette and a paintbrush. I enjoyed it alot cause I played around with dry brush (dipping a dry brush in indian ink and blotting it out , then trying to draw with it-a fun technique but prone to cause disaster) for the first time (on the flower painting part) and it actually worked ok! It was really fun.

In my sculpture class one of my projects was to sculpt a family crest out of clay so I could make a mold of it. Here's the clay before I made the mold from it, it's shiny cause I sprayed it with mold release. I don't have a picture of the painted mold I made cause I accidentally left it in my sculpture room. We'll see if it's still there when I get back to Idaho...:(

Another assignment was to sculpt a piece of fruit and make it into something useful. I decided to attempt a pineapple cookie jar. It took SO much longer than I thought it would to do all the detail, cause I made it about 16" tall. Next time i'll make it a mini cookie jar. (: This is a picture of it before it was fired and painted. Again I accidentally left all my sculptures in my locker at class so we'll see if there still there when I get back and maybe I'll post a picture of all my completed projects.

Again another ink drawing. The requirements for the class were to use things from around the house and arrange them, then draw them from life on a 2' x 3' piece of paper. The hardest part of each assignment was actually finding the stupid objects that would look good together!!! I hate being a perfectionist about things! It about drove Jason insane because every time he would come home I would have to tell him not to sit on the couch or touch stuff in the kitchen cause I was drawing what actually looked like a pile of junk.

With this one I was going for the "I cook for you because I love you" idea. Thus the apron, cook books, apple, and cooking board. You can't tell very much of the detail from the picture but I learned I really enjoy drawing wood texture on the cutting board. I never thought I liked drawing with pen cause it was so permanent, but I actually learned to love it finally after having to do like 9 large assignments in it.


Those are a few of the things I had on my camera and probably more than you wanted to see, but just an idea of some of the things I've been doing and learning my first semester as an Art major.
Like I mentioned above this was the first Ink drawing I'd ever done, and I got to do it with an old fashioned ink pen and ink well. It was pretty fun cause I could get really detailed with it. And it was a bit easier than the others cause I just did it from pictures of animals, instead of the real things. (:

More Sewing

I finished sewing my blessing dress the week before finals! (don't worry, it's not for our little boy it was required in my sewing class)

Updates!

Life has been pretty crazy the last month trying to finish up the semester, move across town, travel around 3 states for a Peterson Family Reunion, and finally coming to AZ to see our families. It's been fun though!
So we did end up passing all of our classes (woohoo) and got moved into our new apartment. We were SO ready to move! This place is about the same distance from campus, right across the street from a beautiful park, and has a bedroom big enough for our king bed AND the crib...and it's less expensive! Yay!!!
While in the process of taking finals, and moving, we were attempting to go to as much of the Peterson Family Reunion as possible. We ditched finals on Tuesday and drove to Jackson Hole, Wyoming where we got to stay in a HUGE cabin with his family and go white water rafting. I'd been so scared to try this since I was like 7 months pregnant, but it was a blast!!! I wish I would have remembered to take my camera! Later that day we just hung around Jackson Hole and saw some of the sights. Here's a picture of the sunset from the cabin we stayed at. It was so nice to have a break during stressful finals week!

The next morning we got up at 4am to drive back to Rexburg and finish finals. His family came later that afternoon to help us move all the heavy stuff into our apartment and we were able to leave the next morning for Lagoon in Utah!
Lagoon was such a blast! I'd never been there, and hope to get to go back some day when I can actually go on the rides and not worry about being pregnant. We had alot of fun though.

The last few weeks we've been in Arizona spending time with our families and earning a little money at the Gardner's pizza store and tiling my parent's back porch.

BEFORE

AFTER

We have one week left in Jo City then we're headed back home so I can finally set up the crib! I'm so excited to finish unpacking and have a little time to relax before classes start again.