It was the summer after my freshman year at college: 2004. I had come home from BYU-Idaho for the summer and got a job at the Target in American Fork. Melanie’s friend, Kylee, also worked at Target and it was great to have someone to talk to that I knew. One day she told me about this boy that worked on the sales floor (I was a cashier) and that he was super cute and that I should go on a date with him.
His name was Bryan.
I hadn’t worked there for very long, so I didn’t know who she was talking about. I told her I would keep my eye out for him and think about it. A little while later, while I was working another Target employee came through my lane. He was buying toys and food for a dog. We got chatting about his dog, Phoebe. How long he had her, what kind of dog she was and I looked up from the register and noticed his name tag. It was the Bryan that Kylee had told me about. She was right; he was cute.
After that initial meeting, nothing happened. We closed together a few times and we chatted when we saw each other. During one closing night I remember putting away abandons with him and his two friends, Brett and Shaun in A and B, standing by the greeting card aisle. They were shooting elastic headbands at me. Now that I think about it, I don’t think that Bryan shot any at me, or Brett, it may have just been Shaun.
Another night we closed together I was talking with him in between toys and the seasonal section of Target. As I walked away Janeen, one of our fellow Target employees, came up to me and asked me what I thought of Bryan. I was putting on chap stick and told her that I didn’t know. I had never thought about it. She told me that she thought that he and I should go on a date. We would make a cute couple, she said.
(It’s funny the things you remember.)
Janeen happened to also be one of the team leaders over the cashiers. So when I worked, I had to do what she asked. One evening, the store was super slow so we were all just kind of standing around talking. I was talking with Janeen and Bryan came up again. She really thought we should go on a date and she was determined to make sure it happened. She disappeared for a little while coming back with a bow from the gift wrapping section. It didn’t have a tag and needed one. She told me that I needed to go over to the aisle and find Bryan and have him get me a number so we could make a tag for it.
I found Bryan and he got me a number for the bow and asked if I wanted to go and get some ice cream at Sonic after work. And we had our first date, one summer evening at Sonic in American Fork.
Now, six years later, we celebrate our four year wedding anniversary. It’s amazing how something as small as a white gift wrapping bow without a tag can change your life forever (with a little help from Janeen, Kylee and a few of our other Target friends…).
The story doesn’t end there, the next two years before we actually got married is full of all kinds of drama and intrigue… but I’ll save that for another day.
Bryan: I love you more today than I ever thought possible. Thanks for marrying me.
Because having a new baby, just wasn’t enough change in our lives, Bryan and I also decided to buy a new house, pack and move out of our townhome.
(yes, we’re slightly crazy)
So the day before Mother’s day and just two short weeks after James’ happy arrival, we packed up the moving truck and away we went. Our families both pitched in and we had so many wonderful helpers! Thank you so much to everyone for coming and helping. We appreciate all your help so much.
During the move I was running around like a crazy person. I wanted to take some pictures of everything going on, but never did. Oh well. My soon-to-be-sister-in-law Aubrey did get some pictures of our front door and James during all the excitement. She posted them on her blog, you can check it out: Musings of Mo. (the first two pictures are of our new front door, then James and then pictures of our cute niece, Maddy).
After we got everything out of the truck and into the house, my mom, aunt Deanna and cousins Emily and Jared helped out a ton by unpacking and organizing our kitchen for me. It was such a wonderful blessing! The kitchen is one of those rooms that overwhelms me and having that finished before the day was done was wonderful. So you can have a peak at that room (it’s not an awesome picture, it was just taken with the camera on my computer. As a side note, although we do have an office that my computer can live in, I decided to put it on the desk in the kitchen and am totally LOVING having it right in the middle of everything. I can work on my computer but still be in the heart of the home.)
The Kitchen
There are so many things that I am loving about our new house. Here’s a list:
I love that I can do the dishes without having to have Bryan close the dishwasher for me
I love that none of the walls are shared. (The Cardons were wonderful wall-sharers in our townhome, I almost never heard them at all, but I always felt like I was too loud and they could hear me and I felt bad. Now, I can turn the music up as loud as I want and never have to worry.)
I love that everything is on one level. I don’t have to hike up the stairs. Laundry gets put away right away because I don’t have to fold it in the family room, then carry it all up the stairs. It’s just seamless.
I love that Teddy likes the house and can still see out the windows.
I love that we have been here for just over a week and it already feels like home. It’s like we’ve always lived here.
We’ve put away and organized all the rooms except the office and the baby’s room (he’s sleeping in our room right now). So as soon as those two rooms are finished, I’ll take some more pictures and let you see the rest of the house. For now, you’ll just have to enjoy this little taste.
Now, don’t think everything is perfect. (Although it’s pretty close) The back porch of our house doesn’t have steps going down and there’s no yard… so taking Teddy potty is kind of a pain. We have to hook him up to his leash, out the garage and then out the side yard and stand there with him while he does his business. It’s a good thing that I have diaper changing to bargain with though. I say to Bryan, “I’ll change James’ diaper if you take Teddy out…” and it almost always works.
I do kind of miss our townhome though. Mostly though, the people. That was the hardest thing for me about moving, realizing that I was going to have to leave a ward that I have grown to love so much. You are some of the greatest people I have ever met. The first time Bryan and I set foot in that ward building and became members of the Vineyard 2nd ward, we were instantly greeted with warmth and friendliness. Attending a new ward for the first time has always been kind of a super stressful for me (traumatic experience when I was younger, I’ll share the story sometime), but because of how wonderful the people were in the Vineyard 2nd ward it wasn’t so hard (it was harder for me to tell them that we were leaving).
To all of you wonderful people in the Vineyard 2nd ward: thank you so much for your friendship and for the things that you have taught me over the last two years. I will never forget the wonderful friends and examples you have been to me. I will miss you so much.
The newest addition to our family, James Edward Phelps, made his way into the world April 23, 2010. He was born at 10:45 a.m. weighing 6lb 10oz and was 18 inches long. And we are so excited to have him here.
My little alien
Our Story:
As I mentioned in my last post, the doctor was getting worried about my blood pressure, so I was on bed rest for about a week. During that time, I was in and out of the doctor’s office and hospital being monitored to make sure that my blood pressure wasn’t going to elevate more and develop into anything more serious.
(This is going to be long… but you are reading my blog, so obviously you want to hear all about my story. And, I have to have a record of it lest I forget)
Thursday night, I went to bed looking forward to another exciting day of bed rest. I woke up around 1:30 with a pretty painful contraction. I walked around for a minute and got back into bed and went to sleep. Around 2:30 I woke up again with another contraction. After it was over, I tried to go back to sleep only to be stopped by continuing contractions.
Inside, I think I knew that he was coming and I could only think, “No, you can’t come today, this is the only day that mom can’t come to the hospital.” (She had a field trip with her students.) But the contractions kept coming and there was nothing I could do. I wondered around the bedroom trying anything to make myself more comfortable though the pain. I started timing, and the contractions were getting closer and closer.
Around 3:45, I woke up Bryan telling him that he needed to wake up now, I think I’m having this baby. It took him a little bit and a couple of poking, but he finally woke up. I wondered around the bedroom some more and he rubbed my back through a couple of contractions, before we decided to call my mom. My contractions were a little different than the doctor and my mom had said they would feel, so I wasn’t totally sure if I was actually having real contractions. And after being in and out of the hospital the last two weeks, the last thing I wanted to do was go over there only to be sent home.
I called my mom knowing that at 4 a.m. it would be hard to get her on the phone. I heard her on the other line pick up her phone, and then close it. “Great, she thinks I’m her alarm,” I thought. “Mom, Mom, this isn’t your alarm; answer your phone. I’m on the phone; answer the phone.” (She answered her phone thinking it was her alarm, then set it back on her nightstand. I knew that if I just talked loud enough into the phone, she’d finally answer.)
After chatting for a few moments we concluded we should go to the hospital. So I brushed my teeth and brushed my hair (a little earlier, while wondering around my room in pain, I had thought about getting in the shower, and briefly considered it again, but decided against it). Bryan got dressed, we let the dog out and away we went.
We arrived at the hospital around 4:30. Bryan dropped me off at the front door and went to park the car. I walked in and the security guard offered me a wheel chair. In my head I laughed a little bit thinking about all the television shows I had seen with the woman freaking out in the lobby of the hospital, doing her labor breathing as they wheel her up to the delivery room in a wheel chair. As I wasn’t freaking out, and could still waddle, I declined the wheel chair knowing that Bryan would catch up with my by time I made it to the elevators — He did, because I had to stop walking half way to the elevators with another contraction.
We got up to labor and delivery and were hurried into a room to be monitored. I was dilated to a 3 and things were looking good to have the baby. We sat and waited an hour watching the contractions on the monitor, well Bryan watched the contractions on the monitor with lots of helpful words of encouragement like, “Oh, that was a good one” and “that one was bigger than the last one” or “it will be cool when you can get four peaks on the screen at the same time.”
I can’t really imagine being the husband just watching your wife go through labor. I know he wanted to help me and somehow make the pain go away, but he couldn’t do anything and just had to sit there and watch as I mumbled to myself, “no, no, no. I don’t want to do this” or “I can’t do this; I can’t do this; I can’t do this” or “I changed my mind.”
After they watched us for an hour, my contractions continued to get closer together and more painful and I was dilated to a 4 — so they decided to officially admit us.
They moved us into a delivery room and started to hook me up to more monitors. The nurse was wonderful and did everything she could to make me comfortable. Then, she asked the golden question, “are you ready for your epidural?”
Yes, yes I was.
They hooked me up to an IV and showed Bryan some things he could do until the epidural arrived to help lessen the pain of the contractions. The nurse told me we were very lucky, because we were able to catch the anesthesiologist before he was going to be busy for 2 hours helping with a c-section.
Dan, the anesthesiologist, came in and they told Bryan he had to sit down in the chair right in front of me and hold my hand. “We can’t have you standing up and hitting the floor during this,” they said. Then they told us about more than one dad who saw the needle and passed out.
The epidural was heaven. It was kind of funny though, because it worked first on my one side of my body and not the other, so I could feel the left side, but not the right. It trickled to the right side, but I felt a little lopsided for a little bit.
Through this whole process they had closely been monitoring my blood pressure and just after I received the epidural, the doctor came in and decided he was a little worried about my blood pressure still and didn’t want anything to happen later during labor and put me on an IV of magnesium. This added a little bit of drama to the whole situation and tons more wires, tubes and monitors attached to my body. At one point during labor, I had 9 different things attached to me. I felt a little bit like the back of my computer tower at work with everything attached to me and connecting me to so many different things.
After I received my epidural, everything seems to move into hyper-speed. My parents showed up and so did Bryan’s parents. I was dialated to a 6 and even though I couldn’t feel any thing but pressure, my contractions were consistent and from the look of the spikes on the screen, would have been pretty painful (thank goodness for modern medicine).
The thing that I thought was so amazing about labor was how instinctive everything seemed to be. It was as if my body knew what it needed to do and although the monitors were telling me what should happen, I knew myself.
After kicking everyone out of the room except the nurse, Bryan and my mom I knew it was time to push. I told the nurse, I was ready and I needed to push. She told me just to hang on for a few seconds and then we could push. She check and I was completely dialated and ready to go. She said I could start pushing and explained to me what I needed to do. She went and got to the doctor and we were on our way.
After about an hour of pushing, at 10:45 a.m. he was here. Over my stomach, after he arrived, I could see little hands and fingers moving — it was a baby. Then I heard him cry and I knew — it was MY baby.
My Baby
Yes, I cried.
They were a little worried about his breathing so after cleaning him up a little bit, measuring and weighing him, he and Bryan went downstairs to make sure he was okay.
And the nurse brought me a Mr. Pibb and cookies. Ahhh — Wonderful.
It was an amazing day. Here’s more pictures:
Baby and Mommy
Baby Toes
Family Photo
Grandma and Baby James
Stretching
So Tiny
Bryan's Best Birthday
The day we came home from the hospital was Bryan’s 26th birthday. He was a little sad James didn’t wait just a few more days to share a birthday with him, but it was still Bryan’s best birthday present ever. We had a small celebration for Bryan that night with 24 candles and 2 matches. He’s a wonderful dad. One of my absolute favorite things about becoming a mom is watching Bryan become a dad. He’s so cute with James. Bryan made sure and introduced James to Jazz basketball the first night he was here with us. It was so cute.
Because it has taken me so long to record the events of that wonderful day, so much seems to have happened already since then. So I’ll leave you with a video. Our baby has the most amazing neck strength already. On Saturday, at 8 days old he was enjoying “tummy time” with Bryan at my parents house and wanted to get a better look at the world.
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