Welcome Home Trent and Baby Progress

This past weekend we were lucky enough to have Trent, Melissa's brother, come down and visit. He's been serving in Germany since before we met so I was excited to meet him and it was fun to have a few days together. Below is a picture of the three of us at our apartment.

In addition, we have more baby updates. We had an appointment yesterday and found out our baby weighs around 4 lbs and is in the 85th percentile meaning it is ahead of schedule. The doctor said it looked more like August 20th than September 9th but we'll see how things progress. Below is a picture of Melissa this week--she sure is a trooper!!!

I Don't Know If I Can Handle This Travesty!!!

For those of you who know me well, you know that I am very fond of ice cream. It isn't the most healthy item in the world but it tastes great, is refreshing, and makes any bad day better. I try not to get riled up easily, I really do. Gas prices go up, oh well--deal with it. Milk gets more expensive, I can get over it. Energy prices go through the roof, bummer but life goes on. Even ice cream getting more expensive, I can handle that. But since arriving in Tucson, I have discovered that not only has ice cream gotten more expensive, but they are shrinking the size of the ice cream containers and this crosses the line. Almost every ice cream here is either 1.5 or 1.75 quarts, with only a very rare couple brands that still are true 1/2 gallon (2 quart) containers. I'm not sure if this is just a Tucson thing (as people here are very health-conscious) but the idea of getting less ice cream is hard for me to handle--you can't get too much of a good thing (and ice cream is a GREAT thing!!!). Anyways, Melissa thought I should share my feelings with the world so I did and I'm sorry you had to read this. :) I will get over this (hopefully), but am still astounded by this latest crisis.

Our new home in Arizona!!!

We are starting to get settled here in our new home and thought we'd throw up a few pictures of our new home.

First we'll show our kitchen (with the washer and dryer at the end). We love it (our first kitchen with countertop!).

Next is our bedroom....

And the closet and bathroom off our bedroom.... (similar to the closet and bathroom off the 2nd bedroom).
Part of the living room is being used as a study...

And from the study you can see the living room (with the dining area/kitchen at the end)...
Next, we have our most exciting room, the BABY room!!!! We are so excited for our baby to come in the next few months and are trying to prepare as much as possible!

The other side of the baby's room is currently used as Melissa's music/sewing/scrapbooking area...

And that is our new home (we haven't taken a picture of the outside---sorry!). You walk in and the study area is immediately to your left. You see the main room with the kitchen area beyond. Our bedroom, closet, and bathroom are to the right of the main room and the baby's room, closet, and bathroom are off to the left of the main room. If my description of the floor plan is unclear, I apologize! Again, we love our new place and really enjoy Arizona!!

Some Serious Catch-up from here in the desert!

For those of you who check our blog, this comes after a long gap and so we apologize. But we have made it a goal to be more disciplined and so I hope these entries come more frequently. I will quickly go through some of the major events which have taken place.

First of all, we will start with the most important news of all. Right around the first of the year, Melissa and I received wonderful news that she is PREGNANT!!! She has been an absolute trooper the entire way (our online pregnancy calendar says she's about 62% of the way there!). I think she looks adorable pregnant and it has been so fun to feel the baby kick and squirm. We have decided not to find out the gender of the baby so we call our little baby "Hershey" (he-or-she) and "Junior". We are so thrilled to have a baby in our family and are humbled by the responsibilities which await us. I'm attaching one picture of Melissa to show how the baby is growing!

Second, we have moved to Oro Valley, Arizona! Oro Valley is a suburb of Tucson (about 20 minutes north of downtown Tucson) and we love it here. We live in Rock Ridge Apartments and we love our apartment and feel we are now living the high-life (we have counters, 2 bedrooms, and air conditioning). Our complex has a couple pools and hot-tubs so if you ever come visit (any time of year) you can swim, get some sun, and relax!! (That's our plug for visitors). We will post some pictures of our new place as soon as we finish getting settled.

Third, I graduated from BYU with Bachelor's and Masters degrees and a minor in Economics. I've loved the accounting program at BYU and am glad I was able to be in the program. However, I am very ready and excited to move on to the doctoral program at the U of A and move forward with things.

We have been so blessed and are grateful for our wonderful lives. Both our families are doing well, we are excited to expand ours soon, and we're excited for this new chapter of our lives in Arizona.

Our new logo

We will forever be loyal BYU fans but this is the logo we will be seeing most frequently.

PhD School---here we come!!

Sorry we've been bad at keeping more up to date. I applied to 5 PhD programs and the first one that contacted me was Arizona. I flew out at the end of January and was very impressed with the faculty, the campus, and the other students (not to mention the 60+ degree weather!). After considering my other options, Melissa and I came to the conclusion that Arizona was the perfect fit for my professional goals as well as for us and our future family. Therefore, today I confirmed my acceptance at Arizona. We are excited for this opportunity and we are glad to know where we will be the next 4 years. We are trying to not think about the extremely warm summers, the monsoon season, and the scorpions but instead think about the 75 degree days in January and February, the year-round golf and swimming season, and the cactus and palm trees which will be the most common landscape around. We will fill you in on details, such as when we will leave Utah, but again, are grateful a school thinks they can help Landon get a doctorate degree and he hopes he isn't in over his head. (And we might even pick up on some Spanish--que bien!!)

First pictures!!!

This first pictures is of Halloween --me as a nerd (not to hard to pull off) and Melissa as a gorgeous Pippi Longstocking!!

In November, Melissa and I participated in a triathlon--it was Melissa's first one and she was AMAZING!!!