26 and Counting....

Despite the looking like a deer caught in the headlights this was this best pic we were able to get of me last week.

I'm starting to feel huge, even though I'm really not yet. But for someone who has remained below 100 pound the major of her life and fit in the same size clothes for 8+ years, well I'm feeling a bit self-conscious about myself. When we had our last doctor's appointment back on the 16th of August I forewarned Ryan that if the Doctor told me that I still didn't look pregnant I was going to have a fit....thankfully she didn't say that :) And according to my "mother hen" co-workers I get bigger over the weekends....lol

Baby boy (aka Brysen) is becoming much more active. Kicks are becoming stronger to the point where if you pay enough attention to my tummy you can see him kicking and moving around... its weird in a neat sort of way.

Late August Update

August has been a whirlwind month for us and our immediate families and its reminded me of the small and simple things that get us through everyday. A smile, a kind word, a phone call, a song you hear on the radio, a hug, and the list goes on.

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to give advice to someone when you haven't been in a similar situation yourself? Its hard to relate to how they are feeling and what they are going through emotionally and physically. My mind has been focused a lot on my family and relationships with them. Mainly on 2 of my sisters and how grateful I am for them and their strength through trials.

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My sister, that is just older than me, has been struggling with many things over the years health wise, but lately its been in the relationship department of life. She was happily engaged to who I am told is a wonderful guy and they were set to be married in October and the next thing I know the engagement is off. When I heard the news from her I didn't know what to say and especially what kind of advice to give. So I did the best I could with what limited detail I had from her and what guidance I got from the spirit in thinking of what to say to her.

She has recently moved into a new apartment and gotten a new job and so she is trying to rebuild a life for herself without him in it right now and I just don't know what to do or say. Heartbroken, moving on with her life, and still managing to stay in a cheerful mood....that's my sister Cassy.

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The other is my sister-in-law, Kate. She and I are pretty close in age and its been fun getting to know her over the past couple years. She too, has also been through some tough stuff the past few years, but I would have to say her most recent trial tops them all by far. You see she and I both found out we were pregnant within a couple weeks of each other, for both of us its our first. Its been so fun having someone to share the dramas of pregnancy with. We found out that we were both due within about 2-3weeks of each other in the month of December. Then we both found out we were having boys. So exciting being able to relate and have someone to talk to...that is until she had her latest ultrasound appointment earlier this month. They discovered that their perfect little boy was not perfect and would not make it full-term. He has what's known as Trisomy 18, which is extremely rare. Once he is born he will probably not live for more than a day, unless heaven provides a miracle for this little family. They have recently found out that the best option for them at this point is for her to get induced early so that they will have a chance to see and hold their precious baby boy in their arms before he passes. I have found it extremely hard to reach out to her with comforting words. My heart stopped when my husband told me what was going on one day when I came home from work and I burst into tears. We sat and cried together on our living room sofa. Sorrowful cries for our sister and her little family, mixed in with ones of gratitude that it wasn't us. I felt selfish with that though but couldn't help it at the same time. Since then I haven't know what to say to her nor have I really attempted (I know I'm gutless...shame on me). I have overheard conversations Ryan has had with his parents when they have called to give us an update. The last time he called he actually talk to Kate for a little while and he told me how impressed he was with her faith, strength, and positive outlook. Said that she was defiantely growing up.

Its been hard for Ryan to watch Kate struggle through the years cause he has always felt really close to her and when she hurts, he hurts....its the perfect brother-sister relationship that I had always yearned for as a kid. So yes I am slightly jealous of their relationship, but they are both amazing people to me that I am eternally grateful to have in my life.

I want both Cassy and Kate to know how much they mean to me (and the rest of you too) and that they are teaching me about life as I watch them grow in their own lives.
Cassy you are my big sister and my close friend, always will be. Despite how far apart the miles have been keeping us over the past several years. Glad we have always been able to be there for each other when it matters most.

Kate, I don't know what to say beside I admire your courage with what you are going through right now. I do know one thing though, that our little boys may not get the chance to play with each other in this life, but I can guarantee that Brysen and Jayden are playing together right now and creating a bond of friendship that will last until they meet again....forever little buddies. Which I find comforting to know and so I hope it helps.

Living Room After Pics

I don't know what happened to my before pictures, but here are the after shots. The room just had a white primer-coat on it when we moved in. Ryan painted the living about 2 weeks ago and its just taken me a while to get the pictures off the camera and onto the computer. We think its a much better improvement (not as drastic as the dining room). Enjoy!

Pregnancy Belly at Week 19

Volia! Our little baby boy likes to move up during the day and sink back down at night. This is me last Thursday (July 14th) at about mid-day. Usually when I wake up in the morning my baby bump is lower. He is moving around enough now to the point where I have figured out when its him moving and when its just me. It's definitely making being pregnant seem more realistic when I can feel the baby moving around.
Baby tends to move around more in the evenings and whenever Ryan is around. Knows his daddy and seems to favor him already...lol For example: I was lying down on the couch Friday night with my head on Ryan's lap and he was moving around quite a bit whenever Ryan touched my belly.

Dining Room Makeover

Last weekend (July 9th) Ryan did me a huge favor and painted our dining room. Bye bye ugly pink wallpaper and faded yellowing white trim, Hello midnight blue walls and bright white trim!

BEFORE:

DURING:

AFTER:

Our Fourth of July Weekend

We had a good 4-day weekend. I say four because I came home sick on Friday and didn't go back into work until Tuesday afternoon, after the ultra sound appointment. So we were able to spend some much wanted time together. We didn't really do a whole lot due to it being really, really hot! The heat index was up in the 100's and I've been having enough trouble with the upper 80's and 90's. Heat is not my best friend right now. Saturday we spent about an hour in the yard doing clean up work and putting stuff away and that was about the extent of our outdoor activities for the weekend. Monday we spent most of the day indoors, again due to the heat and me not being able to tolerate it very well right now. I get sick from it pretty easy, which is why I went home on Friday from work. The office building was too hot for me to handle. Monday evening we sat outside for a little bit and watched neighbors shoot-off fireworks. We were going to go watch the City display at the visitor center, but neither one of us felt up to fighting the traffic and crowds to get down there this year and we could see most of them from our front yard anyway. Didn't take any pictures of fireworks this year either, we were too lazy.

Mainly we spent the whole weekend doing a Harry Potter movie marathon to get caught up on all the flicks before the new one came out on the 15th. SO yes in a matter of 4 days we got all seven "currently released on dvd" watched. We are not big movie theater goers,s owe didn't rush out to see the last one in theaters like the millions of other people did on the 15th. We love the movies don't get me wrong, but they are getting expensive and its soo much cheaper to have the patience to wait for it to come out to rent on dvd for a buck or two.

July 5th: Ultrasound Day

First off for those of you dying to see a pregnancy picture of me, here ya go. Finally showing a little bit, after weeks of people asking me if I was ever going to start showing. I kept thinking "I'm only __ weeks along in my 1st pregnancy, am I suppose to be showing?" LOL.

This was yesterday, technically I'm about 17.5 weeks along, considering they moved my due date up 11 days when we went in to the hospital on Tuesday.

Second: IT'S A BOY!
Ryan and I went to the hospital on Tuesday for my ultrasound and we got to "see" our little baby. They were able to tell us that indeed it was a boy...a very active baby boy! It's amazing that I am not feeling him move around in there yet with as much as he was moving around during the ultrasound. He was very cooperative for the nurse :)

I keep trying to upload a couple of the ultrasound pictures, but it wants to put them sideways which is bothering me, so I posted a few on my facebook page for those of you who are my friend on there. I will keep working on trying to get them posted up here when I have a bit more time and patience to make them post correctly :)

Baby Update

We went to the doctor last Tuesday (June 21st) for the first time since going in for an official pregnancy test at he first of the month. Yes we know we're procrastinators, but we had to wait for at least temporary Medicaid to kick in to cover the doctor bills. Now that we have that going until the full approval comes, we went to see the doctor. There are 2 things about this doctor that just plain rock.
First: I love her already! She has an awesome caring, spunky personality that reminds me of my mother-in-law (who is a nurse) and my youngest sister Mary(who is a very spunky pre-teen).
Second: she is technically a nurse/midwife, which means more personalized attention and visits for us when we go in for check-ups.
Third: She has delivered 1,000+ babies in her career so far which is a great comfort for us considering this is our first and we wanted to find someone who cares and knows what they are doing.

Everything is all well and good and health with both Baby Rosenlund and mommy. Mainly got the initial exam, medical history and blood work done. We also got to here the baby's heartbeat for the first time....it was an amazing experience! Nothing touches a parents heart like hearing the first signs of life of their baby. We are scheduled for an ultrasound the first Tuesday of July, when I'll be at 16 weeks.

June Update.....

We moved into a our new house the 2nd weekend in June. We were really blessed with getting a lot of help from the Elders Quorum of the our ward out here! They are awesome. And considering I'm not suppose to lift anything over 15- 20 pounds, all the buff men came in handy to help Ryan move all the furniture and heavy boxes.
We are very excited about all the possibilities this new home has in store for us and the amazing part is the gentleman that we are renting it from is amazing as well. He had originally bought the house to come back and retire in, and was trying to find some members to rent it out to and the rest is history (see last posting for more detail). He is so kind and wants to help us out! He has told us to do whatever we want to the house and long as its an improvement and make it feel like our own. So here is a couple pictures of the outside of the house.

Believe you me this place is not as small as it looks. Its got a front enclosed porch, living room, dining room, huge kitchen, 2 bedrooms,a full-size bathroom and a laundry room thats off the kitchen....and thats just upstairs! Off the laundry room and down about 5-6 stairs there is a huge sun room that just about spans the width of the house. I say just about because there is a neat little workshop area off the sun room that Ryan just loves! Then there is the hallway that leads down to the full sized basement, which parts of it are finished. There is another workshop/utility room area with a small storage room off it. Then there is a "guest bedroom" and a rec room w/ gas fireplace and tons of bookshelves. There is tons of storage and closet space in the basement and its a big enough area that we will eventually take the biggest closet and turn it into a 1/2 bath with sink/toilet/shower....key word eventually :) That end of the basement will either get tiled or re-carpeted...whichever we find more convenient when we get around to that major project.

All the rooms upstairs are painted white which is going to change as quickly as we can get our hands on the paint colors we are looking for. Just to give you a rough idea where we are going with this.....

Living Room: (White) to be painted a light tan/gray color
Dining Room: which currently has pink flowery old people wallpaper (no offense intended to anyone, I just can't stand pink walls) it will be painted a deep blue
Kitchen: (White w/a red & tan ceiling boarder) to be painted a tan
Mstr Bedroom: (White) to be painted a blue/green or something of that nature, still working a good color for that one
Bathroom: (White) to be painted a pale green
2nd Bedroom: (Currently a light colored wood paneling) dealing with this for now, possibly will paint it white. But eventually it will get torn down and sheet-rocked, just not anytime soon. Not with the need to start prepping it for baby here soon as we find out what the gender is.
Laundry Room: (White) and staying that way
Sun Room/Office: (Wood Paneling, light) and staying that way cause it actually looks nice there....yes Cassy I know I just said wood paneling looks nice.....(FYI- those of you that don't know this already, I [Allison] absolutely hate 2 things in a home 1 being wood paneling on the walls, the second is old-people looking wallpaper. Again no offense to anyone intended there, its just not my taste).

Basement wise we are either dealing with white walls in the finished areas or cement in the non-finished sections. Again will deal with all of that when we get to that point in who knows how long, mainly deal is getting the upstairs stuff painted and ready for the baby.

Catch-Up Time

Even though it is almost the end of June I thought we would start by getting everyone up to speeds on whats been happening with us for the past couple months. We have been insanely busy since we moved back in April and have since moved again (more on that later).

Not much more happened in April beside all the moving which due to that factor we didn't realize until about Mother's day time frame (early May) that Alli was pregnant. We we're so busy with the sudden need we had to move that we kinda forgot about everything else until things finally settled back down a little bit.

May Happenings

First part of May we realized that Allison was pregnant and let our immediate family know, so for those of you that don't know yet still, sorry for not informing you all sooner. We didn't want to broadcast it too much till Alli was in the "safe zone". So far she has felt fine, which was partly why we didn't figure things out sooner because she felt normal. She had all the regular symptoms that are not so noticeable unless you are paying real close attention, she has just never had the morning sickness. She felt nauseous from time to time, but we were having a heat-wave, and she usually does when she overworks herself in the heat, so we didn't pay too much attention to that. Like I said earlier once we slowed down enough from the hurried moved we figured things out pretty fast :)

Memorial Day Weekend:

Ryan gave a talk in church on Sunday. Which was really special, not only because of the spirit he brought into the meeting. But because the bishopric had asked the men that were speaking to all dress-up in the uniform of their respective branches of the military. I had never seen Ryan in his uniform, only ever saw pictures and I must say he looked amazing! Ok extremely handsome. He had know about it for about a little over a month and had been working hard to get his weight back down so he could fit back in his uniform....well good news is that he did it! And gave a very inspirational talk about what freedom means to him. I think people half expected him to stand up there and tell war stories and relate them to the gospel somehow, but he told me later that that is not what he felt like he was prompted to share with everyone.
I think its awesome that my husband is so close to the Lord and his Holy Spirit to know exactly what he's suppose to say and what people needed to hear! It was a growing experience for me to watch him as he spoke, always pausing at times to listen to the whisperings of the spirit. And as bad as this might sound (only because I can't think of another way to word it right now) his listening to the spirit really paid off. Because a few days later we got a call from a member who had been visiting our ward that Sunday who owns a house out here that fit what we have been needing almost perfectly and offered it to us to live in for an awesome price! We have been blessed in many ways lately!