Where in the World are Kimberly and David?!

I've had that line running through my head for the past week (for y'all who used to be Carmen Sandiego fans). But I think that really could be a true question given my lack of posts the past month. To sum it up, I can honestly say we've been busy! But life is settling about as much as I ever expect it to and so here are a few of the things we have been up to.

#1. We are officially moved! Hoorah! We were able to quickly find a new apartment and were moved in before Thanksgiving! And I must say that I had a lot to be thankful for this year! In the last couple weeks in our old apartment we discovered that cockroaches that big really do poop. And they got into all sorts of places that we hadn't ever anticipated leaving their traces. Our apartment complex also had a couple of mice or rats which had made a couple visits to our apartment leaving a couple of their traces as well. We called the cops on our neighbors who were having a huge Jerry Springer episode involving the whole apartment complex one Sunday afternoon. And we continued to have our usual struggles with the power company turning off our power and even claiming that we had paid them money, but that we didn't actually have an account with them (my thought is give me back my money then!). needless to say, we are ever so happy to be in our new apartment! I have yet to see a cockroach, we've only had a maintenance guy over once to do a minor repair, our neighbors are so cute, and I can honestly feel at home here. I feel safe bringing a baby home here. And we even put up our Christmas tree!

#2. We got to go to San Antonio for Thanksgiving! I love having my family so close! My dad was even able to come help us move. (Thanks dad! It was much needed!) So, after David finished his classes on Wednesday, we drove out to San Antonio. Dad made his delicious fried turkey and we helped mom make all the other delicious sides. We felt really relaxed there. We did a little bit of shopping and went to the Dickins Festival in Boerne. We enjoyed some fake snow out there (soap bubbles actually, but it looked pretty real!). neil didn't care for the crowds out there, so we saw our fill and then went home to play a game. Overall it was a great holiday and was wonderful to be with family!



I don't know how well you can see the snow, but it's there!

#3. The weekend after Thanksgiving, a couple of my friends (Cassidy and Stormie) threw me a baby shower! I love getting baby stuff! It's all so cute and little! My parents were able to come out for it (well, my mom came for the shower and my dad came for a coin show in Houston). So, it was fun having them here. Also, my cousin Lee and his family came from north Houston for it! It was so great to see them again! I got so many cute outfits and much needed baby supplies! Thanks everyone! I had a blast!


#4. I also was able to finish my project I had been working on. A blessing dress for Lydia (and other future daughters). I intend for it to be used on all of my daughters and grand daughters. It's only my second dress I've sewn on my own, and I sure had my share of screw ups that I had to fix on it, but I must say that I think it turned out beautiful! I am so excited to use it! What do you think?



#5. The rest of our time has been spent getting ready for Christmas and organizing our apartment. (Well, I guess I should clarify my time. David has been studying for all his finals.) We leave for Washington on Saturday to spend Christmas with David's family. And when we return, I will be in full baby gear making sure everything is ready!


So, now that y'all are caught up on my busy life, do you think you would be able to answer the question? Where in the world are Kimberly and David? Submit your answers via your comments. The best answer wins the loudest laugh!

A Halloween Scare

Many of y'all already know about my not so fun adventure last week, but here is a possibly better explanation of what happened and updates since then.

We have seemed to have endless problems with our apartment that we live in from 3 inch long cockroaches raiding my kitchen to our electricity being randomly turned off by our neighbors. Even finding out that we were paying our neighbor's electric bills. But none of these aweful experiences can top this past week.

First I'll give a brief background. Shortly after moving into our apartment we realized there was a problem with our garbage disposal. One day when the disposal was running, I put my fingers under the running water to get a small shock (kinda like a static shock). I became upset and the manager sent an electrician out to see what the problem was. He found that the disposal had not been grounded interiorly (some of you techno buffs may understand more what that means). So, he fixed that, but told us that if we had any more problems then it was possible that it hadn't been grounded exteriorly as well. But he did not check.
Well, we went a couple of months without any problems. However, this last Thursday evening I was washing the dishes again. The disposal and water were running and I put both my hands onto the sink and recieved a fairly large shock when penetrated my whole body for a little over a second. Luckily I did remain conscious and was able to scream and turn off the disposal. After laying on the bed for a couple minutes while David searched the internet to see what could happen to pregnant women who recieve shocks like that, we became excessively anxious and worried. David found that the survival rates of the babies in these situations is only about 29%. Lydia had been quiet since the shock. We called the hospital and they told me to go straight to the Labor and Delivery department.
After a long, long, long wait in the waiting room and in the observation room I was hooked up to several monitors which showed I was having minor contractions about every 2 minutes. The baby's heartbeat was normal, luckily. However, my ob happened to be the on-call doctor that night and requested that I stay to be observed for 24 hours to make sure I wasn't going into a pre term labor. So, I got to experience life in the hospital. It was far from glamorous! I ached everywhere and had a difficult time getting comfortable with so many monitors and iv's stuck in me. In the 24 hour period I got a total of about 4 hours of sleep. David got about 2. He still went to classes Friday morning.
Friday was, however, a little bit more comfortable just knowing that Lydia was alive. And our manager has been more workable than we ever expected having had several terrible experiences with her previously. I was discharged from the hospital at about 4 pm on Friday after the contractions had stopped and my cervix was still closed.
Call us crazy, but we still made an exhausting drive to San Antonio to be with my dad for his Halloween birthday. But I think that it was the rest and escape that I needed before coming back to deal with the mess of our apartment.

The electricians still have yet to figure out what caused my shock. They claim that one of my hands had to have been on something else in order to "complete the circuit". Maybe I'm just a accident prone pregnant woman. Our manager has agreed to let us out of our lease at the end of November and is sending us a form in the mail which will give us the legal evidence of this. And we have been searching the island for more suitable apartments. We've decided we prefer a larger complex this time with onsite management and have a long list of questions that we keep asking them after our terrible experiences here. We think we have it narrowed down pretty well to a place where we can feel both safe and happy. And Lydia is just as active as ever.

Things seem to be working out now, but please continue to keep us in your prayers because there still is a chance I could go into a pre-term labor.

The Haunted Mansion

In honor of Halloween this weekend, I thought it would be fun to show you what the house next door looks like. It still, to me, looks like the perfect haunted house! Also, last night David and I went to a small Halloween party with some friends. These were our costumes. I had thought about being a pregnant nun, but I didn't have the costume. So I decided that a pregnant missionary would be equivilant. Can you guess what David is? I'll give you a hint. Those are TicTacs taped to the Toe of his shoe. The perfect costume for David. A pun.


So, think of visiting this house on Halloween and enjoy this fun little Halloween story! Happy Halloween to everyone!

Halloween Skeleton for the Doctor
An intern was sent to collect a new skeleton from the central store. When he arrived at the consultant surgeon's office there was already a queue of patients waiting. As the intern wrestled the skeleton through the outside door he became aware of people gazing at him enquiringly.

He gave them a smile and said, 'I am bringing him to the doctor.'

An old lady said sympathetically, 'My dear! Isn't he a bit late for the doctor?'

My extremely exciting life right now...

Well, okay, it's not so exciting right now. I'm not a writer like Lindsay, and so I have a hard time coming up with random things to write about when there is nothing exciting going on in my life. A general account of my days lately would be:

10am: wake up, eat some cereal and grab Eragon to read

12pm: realize that it's time that I shouldn't be in bed anymore and lazily go to the kitchen to decide what I should eat for lunch.

12:30pm: decide that I really don't have anything exciting going on for the day and so I go back to the bedroom to read. Sometimes David comes home for lunch, so I attempt to be social for about a half an hour.

2pm: decide that I don't really have any plans for the day and so I would be quite alright not even showering for the day.

4pm: the missionaries decide to knock on our door and so I frantically put on some appropriate clothes. Talk to the missionaries for about 15 minutes and they mention how they always catch me at a bad time.

4:30pm: desperately decide what I want to make for dinner, or if I even want to cook at all. (ps: if you have more quick and easy recipes, send them my way! I feel like I cook the same things all the time! I'm not one to cook anything that takes a lot of effort.)

6pm: after eating dinner, David decides he is tired of studying and wants to watch a movie or play a game. We hang out then until he goes to bed at about 10:30pm. Then I read more of Eragon until I tire at about midnight.

And, I am trying to pull some other projects in there instead of just reading. I need to find a cheap place to print off all of our wedding pictures that then I'm gonna put them in a nice album, I'm going to make a blessing dress for Lydia, and I try to clean something in the apartment everyday. I also try to go out with the sister missionaries about once a week and go to play group every Thursday morning. So, I have some other stuff, but not much. If you have any suggestions, I am open.

Such a cute little fetus!

David and I got to go in today to get the level 2 ultrasound done! Yay! So, we got a ton more pictures of the little lady. She is definetely a girl and it is now even more up in the air about when I am due. According to all the measurements, I could be due January 24th now. We'll see if the doctor will change my due date from February 3rd though. The tech said that she was pretty sure it would be a January baby no matter what. Yay! The sooner the better! (Well, within reason, of course! We don't want any babies coming before Christmas!) So, here's what you've all been waiting for! Fun pictures of Baby Lydia!

I'm pretty sure she's gonna be a model with this pose. The arm posed gracefully above her head as she shows off her profile!


Little footprints!


Such a small little rump! She is definetely a little kicker though! Too bad we don't have action photos to show!


And, just in case anyone was still wondering, Lydia is a girl!

New Galveston Adventures

So, I've gotten to go do a couple of the fun things in Galveston that I had promised I would. While David was in school one day, I went with a couple other women in the ward and rode the ferry. It was so fun! There were a bajillion dolphins following (or more leading) the boats! Unfortunately, I'm not that handy with my camera and couldn't get any pictures of them. Maybe one of these times I will. But it was a very nice relaxing day.

Me and David also got to go to the beach. It was very interesting! There were so many fish out that day! It was crazy! One of our friends even saw a very small shark swimming around the fish! Crazy! A little boy told David that if he stood still long enough, the fish would nibble at his legs. So, he kept on trying to no avail. I'm amazed at the tan line I got from just being out there a couple of hours! Yay!

So, one of my best friends from highschool was in Houston for the weekend and got to come visit me for a couple hours! Yay! It was so fun catching up with Sarah and meeting her little boy, Micheal. She's such a good mommy! We also took them to see the ocean. It was Micheal's first time discovering such a large body of water! I think he wished he was wearing swim trunks so that he could splash all around in it! It was a very fun day and so good to see such a great friend! Thanks for visiting Sarah! See you again soon!

It's a ... Girl!!!

So, we went to the doctor's today and found out that the little baby that started kicking me this morning is a girl! Hooray! It's a little Lydia Dawn. She was a curious little thing as she wiggled around her fingers and watched them as she made them into a fist and stuck her fingers out one by one. She also has long legs! We'll get to see better pictures of her at the sonogram in a couple weeks. So, I'll post those pictures then. For now, here are the outfits that we bought to celebrate!




And here are some pregnancy pictures for those who want to know what I look like at 18 weeks!

And on to the next adventure!

Well, we are now finally settled into our apartment in the developing island of Galveston, Texas. It's a very interesting place here. For one, all people can talk about is Hurricane Ike, which I pray we won't have to relive ever! The Bishop scared us our first Sunday into getting our 72 hour kit put together (which I can proudly say that I finished getting it together this afternoon). Overall, everyone is extremely friendly here! I had forgotten how friendly people can be until I walked into a store and everyone was saying Hi! And that's not just the store attendants. Everyone has a smile on their faces and wants to talk to you. For one, people are very curious seeing people driving around with Utah plates and want to know what's going on. I've already made a few friends in the ward and am finding several things to do in my very free time. That is also a major adjustment, by the way. I'm so used to be running to work and not having time to make dinner and not having time to socialize with people in the ward. But now I have so much time! (I'm not going to get a job in the few months before the baby arrives.) I have also grown an admiration for other homemakers. I never understood the meaning of being a self starter until now! I could sleep in so easily and just laze around the apartment all day. But I have so many other things to get done that I have to push myself to do them.
Well, David and I are very excited to get to discover more about the island! He doesn't have any classes or orientation tomorrow, so we are probably going to discover the beach (more than just a moonlit stroll this time). We are also excited to go on the ferry. We have heard that there are dolphins there all the time. And there are many other things I want to see! Like the Moody Gardens and Elissa (I don't really know what that is yet, but I've seen signs for it).
Oh and for everyone's update, I get to find out if I'm having a boy or girl on Tuesday. So, I'll be sure to let everyone know! For now, Toodles!

2+1=3 Dickinson's!

So, we had an exciting doctor's visit this last Tuesday and got to see the future baby Dickinson! That's right! We're gonna have a baby! I am now officially 10 weeks and 5 days! Only a few more weeks before the first trimester is over! And man, will that be a relief! Literally, for my body! Pregnancy is no walk in the park, as others may think it is. I sure underestimated it before I experienced any of it! So, if anyone has any excellent tips on constipation (I'm already working on drinking more H2O and eating more fiber), etc I would greatly appreciate it!
So, on to more exciting things! We got to hear the heartbeat and watch the baby wiggle around! It was an amazing experience! I'll keep everyone updated as well as I can with moving and all!