Smiles and Coos

So I haven't updated in a long time but with the holidays things have been busy.
In the last week or 2 Phynley has really started to react to things. She will follow things with her eyes and look around when she hears mine and Stephen's voices. She becomes fixated on lights. She loves looking out the window and looking at the christmas tree lights. Here are a few cute videos of her growing up *sniff*

Snowball Fight!!!

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

My little sleepy Diva

Phynley likes to pose in her sleep.. We have caught a few of these poses on camera. I just love to watch her sleep sometimes. I wonder what she is dreaming about. She gets little smirks on her face and smiles (mom says it's just colic... ). Here are some pictures

gingerbread fun

Last Saturday we were up in Heber making gingerbread houses. It is a yearly tradition that my family does. Every year I make a gingerbread house with some type of theme. I have done a peppermint palace, all white "winter wonderland" house, red and green, all green.. etc. My mom has done some really fun houses too. One year she did the love shack (valentine's candy), The Nut House, and a few others. I decided since we had baby girl this year that I would make a princess house. I couldn't find a small cute princess to go in the front, but my mom was able to find a cute pink baby bottle candy. Here are the pics of the finished product.




It's always cute to see what the little kids do for their houses. This year gingerhouse day fell on the same saturday as the Utah and BYU rivalry game. Grace decided to make a BYU house and Tyson put a big U on his. Super cute. :) Sid kept coming up and telling me how much she loved my house. She loves to play dress up and be a princess. So I think this little house was fitting for her. I have to put my thinking cap on for an idea for next year.... any thoughts?

Purple Penguin Suit

Well, in honor of miss Phynley being born one month ago tomorrow, I am going to try to catch up on a few of the cute things that have happened since she was born. This one just happened yesterday.

We were up at Coby and Katie's house last weekend making gingerbread houses. Katie asked me if I wanted to borrow a few warm suits and receiving blankets for a while. I said sure we can always use more receiving blankets and warm stuff. Phynley got 2 suits at the baby shower but neither of them fit her yet, basically they drown her right now. I am sure by january that will change. We were going to take Phynley to Grammy's for a visit so Mommy and Daddy could clean up the house a bit. I thought, "well it's cold, so I will try on one of those suits so she doesn't have to have 5 blankets on." I laid her in it and it was within about 30 seconds of the initial cry that she had fallen asleep in the suit. She loves to be warm. Her cute little hands don't fit in the arms so she looked like a penguin... super cute :)




Not very happy in this next one...

Phynley Evelyn Hopper

She's here!!! Arrived Nov 5th at 12:01 AM weighing in at 7 lb 15 oz and 21 inches. I plan to post more about the labor and delivery soon :)

halloween time!

We had a really good friday night. We carved our pumpkins and just relaxed. We got the keys to the apartment and were ready to get moving sunday. Here are our cute pumpkins!

Wrapping up... and hopefully bringing a cute little present home with us this week :)

How far along? 38 weeks 6 days

Total weight gain/loss: about 40 pounds total

Maternity clothes? I miss my regular pants that aren't too tight and aren't falling off!

Stretch marks? Definitely adding to the collection

Sleep: Here and there... seem to wake up at 300 in the morning without fail nearly every morning.

Best moment this week: Getting all of our stuff moved out of the house and into the apartment. Her room is all ready :)

Movement: She moves a ton still. Feels weird this week.. prob because I am missing parts.

Food cravings: Just Ice continually.

Gender: baby girl

Labor Signs: Lots of little contractions. Had a scare last week for about 6 hours but nothing happened. Nausea.

Belly Button in or out? Well i think if i didn't have scar tissue there it would be an outie. It is very shallow right now.

What I miss: Being able to do normal stuff like walk up stairs without feeling like I might kill over.

What I am looking forward to: Having our little girl in our arms :)

Weekly Wisdom: Warm Baths are the best

Milestones: Induction tomorrow :)

So a lot has happened this last week. We are in the middle of moving. We found a little apartment in midvale. 2 bedroom 2 bath with an attached garage. We needed to downsize from our house. Stephen and I made the decision to do it now rather than later. We have a few weeks overlap time between being in the apartment and having to be out of the house. That has really helped us so far.

We also took gracie to the humane society this week. :( It was not a fun day for me. She had been so naughty the last week or so that I just knew when the baby came it would be worse. In one day she had pooed 2 times in the house and peed in the front room. All within maybe 6 hours. I had tried to let her out 4 times but because it was "snowing" she wouldn't go out. She was hiding upstairs (which she never does) and I found a poop at the bottom of the stairs. Later I went to the store really quick and came back to a poop in front of our bedroom door. She also had jumped up onto the coffee table and gotten into a bag of cookies and ate nearly the whole bag. She also got into candy that was in a bowl on the table as well. My fault for leaving it there, but it got me to thinking that if she is being like this now how will she be when I am taking care of a baby as well? She just needed more than I could give her. I also didn't want a baby on the floor with poop and pee spots everywhere... can you blame me? It was a hard thing to go with stephen to the Humane Society. I was going to stay in the car, but I thought I could handle it. I was fine up until we had to take her back to a cage. I lost it. I felt so bad leaving her. She was so scared and knew that something was happening. I just hope that someone will adopt her or if they put her down she just went peacefully. Maybe someday when peanut is a little older and we have a house with a yard we can try to have a dog again.

Thankfully our week will be getting a lot better and a lot busier! Tomorrow is induction day. I am heading to my appointment in just a little bit here. Who knows maybe we will be staying at the hospital today. I feel like I have dropped and been feeling contractions. On wednesday I had a run of contractions for about 6 hours that didn't get any worse but they sure were there. I was worried that we would be spending our "moving weekend" in the hospital.

counting down...

We are counting down the days now! :) I am officially 35 weeks along as of tomorrow!! My nesting instincts have kicked into overdrive. My mom gave us this really cute bedding months ago. We finally got a mattress so we could put it together. I have been working on getting the room ready. I made one set of curtains and have the other set to finish sewing the edges on. We had a great baby shower at my sister's house on saturday. I will add some pics from that later on.







My little baby bump has now become a BIG baby bump. She moves around A LOT. We start the weekly doctor appointments starting tuesday. Everything seems to be okay as of right now. I am at home all day now. I just keep thinking and looking at things to do in the house. I wish my body could handle all the projects I want to get done. Oh well... as long as the room is ready and the house is clean then I think we will be okay :)

What I am learning as a mom to be...

So I am not professing to be an expert, but this has been a topic of conversation for me whenever I speak to my friends/family about becoming a mom. How do you keep your sanity? How do you set the rules without being a hitler? How do you keep your child from being exposed to things he/she doesn't need to be exposed to without resorting to locking them in their closets/rooms?

I mean the list goes on and on... I am sure this is a thought process for most new time moms and dads.

I thought of this again today when I was standing outside the hotel fuming mad. Who taught these people how to survive as an adult? Did no one teach them that when an alarm goes off you leave your stuff and just get out? I remember talking about this in our home and at school. I started to think more about how much we have ahead of us as far as teaching our little one survival skills 101. What a responsibility!

I think my biggest goal is to raise a socially smart, manner conscious, respectful, intelligent little girl. Is that too big of a goal?

okay I am done... :)

Catching Up...

Well we basically suck at keeping up to date on this blog. Hopefully when our little "peanut" comes I will be better about it. :)




This week and next week we are in Vegas for Stephen's job. We are staying at a Holiday Inn Express by Nellis Air Force Base. What a difference from Utah! This town is so touristy even if you aren't on the strip.


This morning at about 545 Stephen left for work. I was just drifting back to sleep which, as you know if you have ever been 7 months pregnant, is not the easiest thing to do. At 645 I woke up to a blaring, and I mean BLARING, fire alarm. So I grabbed my phone and the room key quickly and headed out to the stairs. I was half awake and cursing the stupid alarm, stumbling down the stairs while calling stephen. I will not post the words I used when I spoke to him but it wasn't pretty...

The funny thing about Fire Alarms is, they are super annoying and loud on purpose... they are there for your protection. I walked around to the front of the hotel to find one person sitting on a bench in front with probably 15 to 20 cars parked in the lot. That was it.. me and one person. Then one other couple came out of a side door looking as sleepy and pissed off as I was. so in this 3 level hotel with 20 plus cars in the parking lot 4 people paid attention to the stupid alarm. It finally shut off after about 20 minutes outside. I walked into the lobby to find 2 employees back in a room which I am sure was a power/fuse room. I just continued to my room thinkin it was a false alarm. I smelt burning toast which made me believe that was the trigger (free continental breakfast every morning). As I was walking to my room I saw 2 guys sitting at tables in the lobby and laughing at all 4 of us walking back to our rooms. As I walked down the hall to the elevator I heard shuffling in rooms as I passed. It just made me laugh to myself thinking if this was really a fire those people would have been in their rooms ignoring the "fire."

So this leads me to my next point in this awfully long post... what I want to teach peanut when she is old enough.....

Antique Show

So uncle Lain (mom's youngest brother) had been working up at a farm in a little town called Wallsburg. Wallsburg is just about 30 minutes up a little canyon inside of provo canyon between provo and Heber City. The farm he worked at refurbished old motorcycles, tractors, cars, etc. We went up a few weekends ago to the annual antique show. Here are some pics of what they do.
This is stephen's favorite pic... random outhouse in the middle of a hay field....


Me pouting cause of the heat. I was frying....




An old Ice Cream machine



one of the ponds on the property... really pretty
This was a popcorn/ice cream truck thing... kinda cool

A little Summer Fun

So this summer we have had a lot of fun up at the "trailerhood". Cindy and Brent have their trailer parked in a campground off of the Provo river right below Deer Creek damn. We have a lot of fun BBQing and just enjoying the nice weather and scenery.


Stephen kayaked down the river with Brody for the first time this year on July 4th. He got a nice sunburn and some experience with the cold water in the Provo river :).

Here are some fun photos from the weekend. Enjoy!

Our First Post!!!

Ok, So we have officially had a blog now for several months. However, we have slacked in our blogitorial duties. That being said...Here we are!!!

Not going to write much as I have nothing to say, just wanted to get our brand out there so people know we're here. Sort of like throwing a beta version of software out and fixing the bugs as we go.

Next time will be Janny's turn to impress us with her scribery.

It was written,

Hopstradamus™