Lil' Dean Fam

One of the days I look forward to the most out of the year is Black Friday. The Friday after Thanksgiving when all of the Christmas shopping begins. Major sales, big deals, and tons of customers. Each year I get up at around 4:30 am to hit the stores and grab the deals. There are crazy things that can happen in the stores and parking lots on these days. A few instances stick out in my memory. The year Wal Mart had the Razor Scooters on sale, we were in CA that year, and there were women fighting over the scooters. I remember one woman took a scooter out of another shopper's cart. The year I took Katie out for her first shopping experience we decided to go to Best Buy for our first stop. There were so many people there at 6am that the entire Home Depot (next door) parking lot was full as well as both sides of State Street. The next year Jess and I went to Radio Shack where the sales clerks were less than bright and had all of their inventory in the back. I guess that location had ne...

BYU beat Utah for the second year in a row! Crazy game with a mostly defensive effort and kicking scores. BYU won with a score of 17 to 10 with a touchdown run by Unga followed by a two-point conversion- amazing! Go COUGARS! Mountain West Conference out-right champions two years in a row!

This year we had Thanksgiving at our own little house. Colin's sisters Erin and Katie came over for a tradtional dinner. This was our menu. Turkey Stuffing Mashed Potatoes Gravy Rolls Sweet Potatoes Green Bean Casserole Green Salad Cranberry Juice Pumpkin Pie Pecan Pie It was nice to have a small group over to our house. This was my first time actually cooking the meal so I was proud of how well everything turned out. Katie and Erin did the rolls and the sweet potatoes and helped me get everything ready. Ryan didn't eat anything- he's going through this I-don't-eat-phase and its pretty annoying.

Today I had my tri -weekly (every third week) visit with Dr. Day at the Diabetes Management center . He is my favorite doctor ever. His personality and mine couldn't be more different (this man is my polar opposite) but for some reason, that works for me as a diabetes doc. Anyway, I had my HbA 1C taken today and it was .................(drum roll)................ 5.2 !!! This is as good, if not better than a non-diabetic person's. So, I've talked about an A1c before, but for those of you who aren't familiar with this diabetes lingo- it is basically a two-month average of blood sugar (Web MD link). Anything under 7% is considered normal. So, I'm pretty proud of myself. Overall though, a good A1c means I'll be healthier in the long-run, have less long-term complications that come with diabetes, and have a healthy baby during this pregnancy. I'm pretty excited. I even did better than one of the nurses in the office who gave me a hard time a while ago. I had ...

Ryan was invited to his first Birthday party this Saturday. Curen Cole turned 3 years old on November 10. Curen is Ryan's- baby sitter's son. They get to play together every day, so he's probably his best little friend. His party was at a new place in Draper called "the Kid Barn". It is a really neat place with all kinds of blow-up jump-on toys and slides. It is brand-new, I think they've only been open about a week, so all of the toys were really clean and nice. It was a perfect place for a little kid's Birthday party, so consider this my recommendation if you live in the valley. The kids had a great time, and I think a lot of the adults did too. Colin and I had fun chasing Ryan around and taking him on the different slides. We had a fun time spending some time together this weekend. Well, I got one video to work, the other is still not showing up, I've uploaded it three times! Arg ! It is just over 1 minute. Like 1:07 or something, is that too ...

Ryan loves his Dump Truck, which was a hand-me-down gift from his sitter Tonya. He loves to take it outside and play with it on the sidewalks and grass. He'd love to take it into the parking lot "street" but knows he's not allowed to do that. Any chance he can get, he's going outside to play with it. Gotta love the Tonka Trucks! I think he's just dancing with excitement at being out side and playing. "ah, the sun is in my eyes" or "mommy quit taking my picture" I have some videos for this post but can't seem to get them to work. For now I've spent too much time on it and will give up.

My ultrasound at LDS Hospital's Maternal Fetal Medicine office went very well. The ultrasound technician was really great and she did an ultrasound for about 20 minutes. She looked at the baby's head and brain, she measured his leg bones and took the circumference of his head. She watched his heart and listened to the heart rate. The baby looks wonderful! He is so healthy and doing very well. Everything was perfect. There is a lot of amniotic fluid and the placenta is in the right place. His umbilical cord looks good and she even checked for things like clefpallate and everything was so normal. That really makes me excited to know that the baby is very healthy. The baby was moving a little during the ultrasound. He kept putting his arm and hand into the view. I told the nurse that he was waving at us. It was really quite funny- personality already. After the technician left, the doctor came in. I met with Dr. Rose this time and she was really great. She told me that I am doing ...

In just a couple of hours I go in for my ultrasound. I'm really excited to see the baby and find out its gender. As the votes stand, 51% boy, and 48% girl. Looks like some votes came in at the end to put the boy guess ahead. 29 votes! I'm glad that many of you care. I have to admit though, that if I had to bet I'd say that I think this baby is another boy. I guess I feel that way because everything has been so similar to my last pregnancy. However, there have been some subtle differences, so I am still hoping that I might be having a girl. I felt the baby move about two weeks ago, and this past week it has been moving a lot. I get excited when that happens because I know that everything is going well with the baby. Another active one, that's for sure. This baby moves all of the time. Anyway, I'll be posting ultrasound pictures and notes from the visit a little later today or tomorrow. On another note, big brother had a major break-through yesterday. Ryan has never ...

For Halloween this year I took Ryan up to Colin's work to trick-or-treat around the office. He's done this every year and it is a fun tradition they do at Goldman. He only went to Aunt Jessie's and Grandma's for trick-or-treating. I think one more year and he may want to go walking around. How young do you take your oldest out for trick-or-treating? Anyway, Colin and I dressed up for Alisha's "famous couples" party as Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. All three of us at the office. Ryan with frosting all over his face. Ron (Daddy) wearing Sully's hat because he was sick of it. Daddy helping Sully get a drink of water. Cheese! These last two photos are from Alisha's party. We had a great time, thanks Alisha & Jimmy. Hermione and Ron Nacho Libre and the Nun girlfriend.