Thanksgiving and More

Thanksgiving was a very big weekend for us. Nate was able to come home around 12 noon Wed, so our Thanksgiving break was able to start early. Thanksgiving Day not only marked on of the best holidays of the year, but it was also our 2 year Anniversary. We had a great weekend of shopping, eating, and seeing one very special family member. I'll give you the highlights with each picture.
This is Elder Hadley (or Spencer, my younger brother). He is serving his mission in Roseville, CA, which is only about 1.5 hours from were Nate and I live. I was not too excited about having NO family around during Thanksgiving, so I emailed Spencer to see if we could go see him for a few hours on Thanksgiving. Well, his awesome Mission President said yes, and so we went. This is my amazing brother Spencer. He will be released from his mission Dec. 18th and our little boy is due Dec. 17th.



After spending some time with Elder Hadley, Nate and I headed home. We stopped at walmart and got a rotisserie chicken and then came home to make the rest of our Thanksgiving meal. While I was making dinner, Nate set up our REAL Christmas tree (Nate refused to get a fake one). Pictures to come later.


Here I am at 37 weeks. I guess that means I'm full term right here. This was taken at Macy's in Union Square, San Fransisco.


Here we are on the 8th floor of Macy's and The Cheesecake Factory. We had seats outside that looked over Union Square.
Union Square. The lighting ceremony for the big tree on the left was that night. We had already been at The Cheesecake Factory for about 1.5 hours BEFORE the ceremony started. I wanted to leave because I felt bad taking a table up, but everyone around us said don't leave. Just order a hot chocolate and watch the program...so we did.

If you look very carefully, to the left of the big poll, there is a woman in a tan coat singing. That is Kathrine McPhee. She was AMAZING. Very powerful voice. She sang 2 songs from her new album.
This is us from our seats...front and center, 8 stories up.


We are in Union Square now taking a picture of Macy's and the Cheesecake Factory sign (yes, I'm obsessed. I told Nate that he has to tell me while I'm in labor that once I'm finished I will be rewarded with a slice of The Ultimate Red Velvet Cheesecake....oh yeah, and a beautiful baby boy).
Scary picture...I know, but its hard to get any good ones when my face is twice the size as it used to be. Nate looks good though.

It was an amazing weekend as we celebrated Thanksgiving, our 2 year anniversary, and making it full term in this pregnancy. I am Thankful for all my many blessings. Especially for my wonderful husband (I love him and he is awesome) and for this wonderful baby boy who loves to kick my ribs.

San Fran visit/happenings and Halloween

This weekend, we decided to go into San Francisco for the first time (I have been in CA for about 4 weeks now). I figured the bigger I get, the least interested I'm going to be in going into the city and walking around for hours, so I made a huge effort and left the house to see the city. Here are some pictures of what we saw and also a few other things that have been going on lately.


A random street performer at Pier 39 (the famous pier in San Fran).

The golden gate bridge. As you can see, it was very cloudy, and yes...it did rain on us.

Alcatraz

Nate has caught the fever..."Fear the Beard".
We went to the Stanford vs. USC game a while ago. It was a really exciting game.

This is me at 33 weeks. If you happened to catch my pictured I put up last post, you will see I am much much bigger now.

Our Halloween picture. I'm a baseball signed, "The Babe '10" and Nate is a Red Sox player with a glove.

We have been doing lots of fun things here, and I'm getting more comfortable finding my way around. Life is good and we can't wait for our little man to get here.

Our New Place

Nate started his job in Oakland, CA the end of August and our apartment started the end of September. So Nate lived out of a suit case for a month until my wonderful father and mother moved me and our stuff down from WA once our apartment was available. My parents are the best. Nate and my dad pretty much moved EVERYTHING into our apartment. I wish I had taken pictures during the move, but I was too shell shocked from going from the country to the Bay Area (and for those of you who know my know I'm a country girl and the big city isn't my thing, but I'm adjusting pretty well). Here are some pictures of our new place all set up...except there are a few pictures in our bedroom that still need to be put up.

These pictures came out in reverse order. Oh well.

Hallway to our room.
Our Kitchen, which I love because it was just redone and all the counters, counter tops, and appliances are new.
Don't mind the DI box on the table.
Living room. My parents bought that entertainment center 28 years ago. It has held up very well. It was brown before I painted it black.
What do you think about our homemade storage unit behind the couch? I know...ingenious. Oh and that is our office area on the edge of the couch. We haven't bought a wireless router yet, so our computer sits there all the time.

Our newly renovated bathroom.

This is also an ingenious way of storage. And yes, I can get myself on the bed even though I'm 30 weeks prego. Ok, so sometimes Nate has to help me.

We are in a one-bedroom apartment, so our little man will be sharing our bedroom. This is were his crib will go when it arrives. We finally made a decision on a crib and ordered it last night. It should be arriving in the next few weeks. (again, don't mind the pictures on the ground that need to be hung).

This is my FAVORITE part of the whole apartment. This is what keeps me sane during the countless hours till our little man gets here. This is my version of a "dumbed down" nursery. I only have so much room to work with, so I thought it turned out pretty good considering. I usually leave this door open so I can look at it throughout the day and remind myself that he is actually going to be here very very soon.

Speaking of our little man, this is me at 30 weeks. Fortunately for me, my face doesn't look that large in real life. (At least Nata says that it isn't, which he kinda has to, right?)

Well, this whole week I have been unpacking, resting, walking around and starting to gather things to make my "crafts" before he comes. We live really close to EVERYTHING I need. My clinic/hospital is 4 miles away, there are about 3 malls within 5 miles, craft stores, grocery stores Marshalls, Ross, H&M are all .5 miles away, and my favorite....COSTCO is only 2 miles away. The proximity of everything is definitely something I can get used to.

Farmer Nate

We have had a great summer up in Eastern Washington with Michelle's family while we wait for Nate's job to start up at the end of August. Dairy work has been Nate's summer occupation. He has done a little of everything on the dairy, from disking the fields to de-horning calves. It has been an eye-opening experience for him but he has had a lot of fun.

He did get a to do a little construction work which he is more accustomed to.

Here is Michelle's younger brother Patrick finishing the concrete slab they poured.

Nate was able to operate some heavy equipment.

The Hadleys plant cow corn on over 500 acres and Nate got to spend his first two weeks in Connell up in the tractor disking the soil so it would be ready to plant. This is some of the fruits of his labor.

This is the tractor that Nate got to know very well over those first two weeks.

Had to throw in a picture with the cows.

This is where the money is made.

Michelle and her cousins little kid at the 4th of July Parade.

Nate was recruited to round up beef cattle in the hills. He didn't quite realize what he was getting himself into. For a guy who's ridden a horse about 4 times in his life he was pretty happy just to have stayed on the horse the whole day. This is some of the terrain he was out riding on. The pictures don't quite do it justice.

For Nate's birthday Michelle and her parents treated him to a festive Mexican dinner with a sombrero and all.

Its A Boy!!

After much anticipation we have finally found out that we are having a baby boy!! We were a little afraid that when we went in for the ultrasound that the baby might be shy and we wouldn't be able to find out the gender. As the picture above shows, our boy was anything but shy. In fact he was showing off. The exact words of the tech doing the ultrasound, "There's one leg, there's the other, and there's a third leg."

Here we have a glimpse of the little guys foot. I think we have a little of both feet in this picture actually. Michelle seems to think that his feet resemble his dads, poor guy.

Here's a profile shot. He was moving all over the place during the ultrasound so we were lucky to get this good of a profile shot. He's got his right arm up along side his face as well.

We feel so blessed to be having a little boy and we're very excited to add him to our little family.

Skiing

Here is the Goodsell crew minus Klysta and Dave's parents. It was the first time skiing for most of them. They survived the day and luckily they didn't take out anyone else on the mountain either.


This was us at the top of Sundance. Those sunglasses were a lot of help while skiing and they left us with some pretty sweet burn lines once the day was done.




Here is a video of Michelle skiing. We had a great day of spring skiing up at Sundance with the Goodsells. Unfortunately we forgot the sunblock so both our faces are bright red. This was Michelle's 4th time skiing ever. Not too bad huh?

Christmas

Christmas was full of family, food, and fun. We spent a week in Houston, Texas with Nathan's family and a week in Washington with my family. We feel so blessed that we were able to spend time with both families, it was great seeing everyone. Here are some of our adventures.

This is my wonderful sister Amanda (who is getting married to Garlan McCoy on April 22nd), my AMAZING mother, and myself. I think all three of us need some sun.
This is what Nate and my brothers did for many hours. They played the "blood game" and my little cousin on the couch calls it. (There really isn't blood, but their is killing...oops, hope the little guy isn't getting scared watching them play.)
Chelan and Leavenworth, WA: This is where we had the Hadley Family Reunion. We swam, ate, chatted, and shopped in Leavenworth. The picture above it Nate and me in the holiday town of Leavenworth.

Christmas in Texas...not exactly a white Christmas but it was fun. On this day we went to one of Evan's favorite places, the zoo. There is a cheetah in the background.

Michelle's first time seeing Pink Flamingos.

Despite what it looks like here, Evan was actually always really happy to play with Thomas the Train. In fact, most mornings we got to play with Thomas as soon as we got up because Thomas was stationed in our room. I guess Michelle was trying to get Evan to say cheese for this picture but every time she would take the picture, this is what she would get. I think maybe he was upset that he had to stop playing with Thomas for a few seconds.

This was one of the four or five times that we got to watch Evan's favorite movie, Finding Nemo. Between Nemo and Evan's other favorite, Noah's Ark, we are now well versed in all that has to do with water.

We got our first taste of Texas ice skating. We got there right after the zambonie finished doing its job and within 10 minutes there were a couple inches of water on top of the ice. The nice part of it all was that winter clothes were not required, in fact it got a little hot with what we had on