Little fingers and toes

I often dream that I can hold and rub your tiny little hand through my belly, or kiss your precious toes.  It's my favorite dream to dream.  I can't explain how this is possible in my dream but I can tell you that it melts my heart and leaves it a silly mess all over the floor.... practically impossible to gather back into a workable organ again.  I already love you more than words can ever say. You have won my heart and I never wish to take it back again.   I treasure every little kick and nudge and can't wait to kiss those little toes for reals.

Kansas Gems

All the wheat fields...
A not so gem ish part of Kansas is the allergies though.... We hear they get worse the longer you live here.  Half the Kansas population is allergic to the state.

The Kansas sky

Lots of cute little lakes and ponds

So many different birds!

Love all the pretty flowers everywhere.   

Geese.... so many geese!

Wild turtles

Creepy huge wild snapper turtles that randomly come up from the depths

We love having a decent camera.... can you tell?

Mark's "Office"

Mark spends a lot of his time out in the fields in this Kabota or a tractor.... lucky guy.

Thanks Momma DaNell!

We loved having you here!!

Being the amazing seamstress that she is, she whipped out a bunch of baby room items, and a cute new valance and bed skirt for our room while she was here. Above is a picture of the baby's curtain (glued to a modified set of blinds - love pinterest) and valance. The bed skirt and bumper pads are made out of the same material. Super excited to get the room painted and the crib done so we can put it all together. I think it will look super oober cute.

Also, here is our not hot pink basement with side bathroom... In case you were dying to see it.






Stupid couch

Um.. here is our kitchen and "main room" that is so awkward that we don't know what to do with it. I don't like this level.... nothing works and we don't have the right furniture and the kitchen was so not thought out when it was built. BUT... it does the job, so I'm content. Maybe someday we will figure it out and make it look nice and usable.



I have never taken pictures of upstairs. Its just two bedrooms with a bathroom in the middle. Once we get it all organized with cute little baby stuff, we will take pictures.

Also, we survived the STORM (capitalization for scariness effect) Ok, it wasn't that bad, but it was a little scary. We realized it was going to be bad when the locals (the locals that usually don't worry much about storm warnings) are checking the weather on their phones every 5 minutes. We were in Wichita for a birthing class. They ended it early so everyone could get home before it got bad.... and nobody was getting anything out of it the last hour because they were nervously looking out the window. Anyway, pretty much everything missed us. Closest tornado was in Hesston, about 10 miles away but it didn't do much. And, no hail...no flooding... just lots of crazy lightning and wind. Super thankful for those smart people that watch weather patterns and can warn people, and those people, like our ward member, who stay up all night driving around watching and reporting tornadoes and then fight house fires from lightning. Do these people get enough credit? They are amazing. So normally Kansas gets like 130 tornadoes a year....they got 99 in one night. That means we're done right? :)

Well life is still good in Kansas! We are very blessed!

Love me some Easter weekend

Projects project projects.... that's the name of the game in the Glade house right now.

Also, we got a new camera. YAY! I'm going to enjoy documenting our life much more now.

I made a purse (no picture yet) I like it, but it was definitely a learning purse. It took me forever, but I loved working on it.

Last week we watched General Conference, which was amazing by the way, and I started a reversible blanket for our baby boy and grew a bigger belly while Mark modeled the crib.

Friday we started a garden... in our tiny little apartment porch.

Mark got free pallets and wood and we made them into planter boxes. We are very proud.

And we filled them with free dirt from a ward members well fertilized plot. Yay! They also fed us dinner that night.

These are our starts. We are going to try to start all of them inside. I hope it works.... neither of us are gardeners, but we want to be.

Saturday Mark cut out all the beautiful oak for the crib while Cassie went baby shopping with some girlies from the ward and got all these cute clothes. (no pic of the wood yet) Then we ate with a family in the ward.

Tool pajamas.... so adorable. He will also have a cute little monkey blanket that I didn't get pictured.

Sunday we took it easy, worked on the garden a little more, read about our Savior and gained even more appreciation for His atonement, walked around and pictured the arboretum, and had dinner with a family in the ward.

Wild turtles... awesome

Notice we didn't eat dinner at our house at all this weekend. Love this ward.

Also, I love my new camera.... and I really love Mark. He is amazing.

Some things we have learned in Kansas

Mark and I put together a little list of some things we have learned in Kansas, or just funny things. Maybe we will keep adding to it and it will be a fun little list to look back on and laugh someday.

• Kansas state government is about 10 years behind everyone else.
• Make sure you drive down the correct long driveway when going to dinner at your friendly ward members house, or some farmer might drive up with a shotgun hanging out the window pointed at your face.
• Only open one door at a time or else everything inside your car will blow away.
• They don't cater to pregnant woman with clothing here like they do in Utah, basically there is one option, and it's in Wichita.
• Cops will pull you over for buckling your seat belt in your own housing complex parking lot....because your car was already in gear.
• People ask about your religion by asking the location of your church, because there are so many different churches in the area.
• We live on a hill! Don't get too excited, its the only one in Newton and probably wouldn't pass the hill test in Utah.
• Besides the man with the shotgun, people are really friendly.
• Warsh means wash.
• Mennonite people are amazingly friendly and great cooks, but they absolutely hate our missionaries. Poor guys
• Guns guns guns and more guns. Everybody loves their guns. Every door has a little no guns sign on it.
• People will pawn anything.... It's also fun to be friends with pawn shop owners. :)
• Though AGCO employs so many people in the area, they remain religiously devoted to John Deere. Which is ok because AGCO mostly sells overseas.
• The odds of seeing a tornado... or actually being hit by one are very very very incredibly slim. But the weather does take an obvious turn... and its kinda creepy, super cool but kinda creepy. Can't wait to see more crazy weather.
• Mark apparently looks a lot more like jimmer than we thought. Aside from being called jimmer at church, mark also has the name of Kevin. (because one of our friends couldnt remember his name and kept calling him kevin) The kids just can't seem to let it go and are determined to rename him.
• You dont know flat until you haven really experienced flat...and flat is so much more flat that you could ever imagine it to be.
• Kansas is really pretty in the Spring. :)

Awe.... we could go on forever. Its been quite the adventure. Sometimes it feels just like home, sometimes it feels like we are in a foreign country. We went out for a picnic the other day. I tried to take some pictures of the fields..... a camera just can't quite capture the splendor. It really is amazing. Here are some pictures I got before a bug flew down my shirt.





I'm sorry, someday I will have a nicer camera. As you can tell, its flat.....woah really?! Kansas is flat? Yes its flat, just look at the pictures again. Anywhere that hasn't been farmed is a little hilly, a little.

Well, we went to a nice park/lake/walking trail/camping/swimming hole area. It was awesome! It will definitely help fulfill our outdoor and camping urges... not completely but it will help. Here is a picture of part of the swimming hole.... then Mark had to save some kid swimming from a goose attack, and then we left.

It was the kid and his friends own fault. Stupid teenagers were pestering the birds and the male attacked. When it went for the first kid it was hilarious. He got under the water enough and dodged him til he got to shore, but the other kid couldn't swim very well and was bleeding pretty good. He could touch just barely but was pretty flustered so Mark was a hero and walked out to help scare off the bird and get him out of the water. Yay for heros! Boo for stupid punks. Geese are not something to play with.... Oh ya that's another thing... there are SOOOO many geese out here. It's awesome to see huge flocks overhead or in the fields. I'm talking thousands.

Kansas is really cool. It's really growing on us. Still not home and still really miss our family, but we really like it and have loved our experiences and our friendships out here.

Thanks Glade family for including us in family dinner!!! We loved it! Even though it made the hormonal pregnant lady cry later because she misses you like crazy and hates seeing the little ones grow from a distance, we loved seeing you. We talked it over last night, and I think we have decided to visit home earlier then planned and both of us want to come home in June, my brother comes home from his mission then too! We will know for sure when it gets closer.... pray for a smooth pregnancy that will let me travel.

Well hey there little man

We confirmed your gender last week and got this sweet little picture of your genitals. :) You're a squirmy little dude and the ultrasound technician had to chase you around to make sure you have all your necessary parts... but these parts, your pride and joy, were the easiest to find.

Here are some more cute little pictures of you at almost 20 weeks old.




As far as we can tell, you are perfectly healthy in every way and you already weigh 11 ounces! Technology is amazing now days. We got to see your little 4 chambered heart pumping blood correctly with this colored movement sensor thing. And we saw your kidneys working correctly that way too! Amazing. Your brain looks fully functional and proper and your arms and legs are proper lengths and moving like crazy! Keep it up little champ. I just can't wait to kiss those cute little feet.

We thought maybe you were a boy at the last ultrasound but the technician said sometimes the cord can be deceiving at that stage, so we waited to find out for sure... we still called you a "he" most of the time though, even though it wasn't for certain. Like in this shot, sure looked like a wiener to me!



Well, you are quite the mover and I absolutely love feeling your kicks and punches. Most of the movements still feel like tickly little strokes, but I get a few good kicks each day. I can feel you getting stronger. Sometimes you make me jump right out of my skin when you decide to do a whole sumersault as fast as possible. I can't even describe the feeling, but I love it, even when it startles me. You used to mostly move in the morning, but you are adjusting your schedule a little and now I feel you more at night. You bonded with Daddy the other day and gave him some of your best kicks. Sometimes his hand calms you, but you still showed off a little. That really put a smile on his face. I can't wait for you to meet him, he is amazing. You are one lucky kid to have him for a father.


I just ordered some cute new pregnancy clothes the other day. I'm really excited about them and think I will do a "half way" photo shoot in some of them. I still fit in pretty much all my clothes.... except my skirts, but I am definitely looking to be more comfortable and fashionable. I bought short sleeve, lightweight shirts. I am already feeling really hot and its not even april! The other day our house got up to 80 degrees. We are working to get that air conditioner fixed so that your mother survives the hot summer in Kansas.

I'm thinking chocolate brown and blue for your room.... I know, real original right? But I'm a simple kind of gal and can't venture too far out of the box in a rental house. You won't ever question your gender though, or your dad's interests because your room will be full of trucks, tractors, and tools! Maybe a motorcycle or two as well. I'm thinking something like this picture below. I hope you like it and that you don't think you are destined to be a construction worker. I mean you can be if you want, but I am thinking maybe you will want to be an engineer and an extreme hands-on hobby type of person like your dad. He can't wait to teach you all about tools and tractors and electric vehicles and controllers and stuff.


Also, I am buying some cute little wooden tools for your room. I think they will make a cute decor, and probably excellent chew tools.... I mean toys. Well we might have to get ones with less seemingly sharp edges for at first, but you will enjoy them more when you are older. I found them on overstock.com. They are out of stock right now, but have no fear... they will be yours as soon as they are back.



I babysit a little 6 month old 3 days a week, his name is Dean. You like to kick him when I hold him. I think you guys are going to be really good friends. There's a bond there, I just know it.

I'm starting to get used to these pregnancy pains. I just have to take it slow and easy and ensure that I don't get constipated or that my bladder doesn't get too full. Lots of things can really trigger the pains, but I am learning. I am also figuring out how to get comfortable at night. I take up a lot of room on the bed with my necessary pillows like the boppy, but luckily your father likes cuddling with us and the boppy. He takes such good care of us and is so excited to be a dad. I like being pregnant with you and am so excited to be a mom. Pregnancy is really neat, such a divine calling. Not always comfortable, but its absolutely amazing.

19 wks

Well everyone is really excited to meet you in August. I know Grandma Walker is already on the hunt for fabric and ward members here already plan to take real good care of you and me. You are going to have some amazing people in your life... and you will probably be way too spoiled.