Saturday Night Fun

Happy Sunday!  I have three recommendations for y'all of stuff we did last night!

 Okay, first of all, Erik and I watched Bernie last night and I'm still freaking out about it a little! I really liked it... Probably Jack Blacks best acting ever... You should watch it... But expect it to be weird. That's all I'm going to say about that.

Next, we also made a super yummy treat last night!  They are called Caramelitas!  It's and oatmeal bar with Carmel and chocolate and pecans! Oh! So good! And the best part is you only need a tiny piece to be satisfied so you don't feel like a pig... And that's coming from a girl who ate a whole pan of Can't Leave It Alone Cake by herself one time!

Hank loves books and I was reading him a book last night that was so fun!  It's a Mo Williams Elephant and Piggy book called "Can I Play Too".  I love these books and this is my new favorite one. Especially since Hank likes it so much!  There's a part where one of the characters says "hee hee haa haa hee hee haa haa" and EVERY time we get to that part Hank laughs:) I love it! He has such a great sense of humor.  It helps that he gets slap happy when he is tired too! Haha:) fun stuff! 

Now that I have offered up some recommendations I need some help from you:)

Hank started to flip over at night, wake up and cry until we go flip him back over.  For a while he would flip over onto his stomach and just sleep that way, but ever since he started getting up onto his knees (he is so close to crawling it is scary!) he ends up that way in his crib and I think he is so tired he just doesn't know what to do... Plus he ends up tangled in his blanket and the whole thing is just really frustrating to everyone involved!  Has this happened to anyone else? And what should I do about it? I was super excited to finally be consistently sleeping until 6 or 7 but now that is not happening anymore.:(

Also, some super exciting news! I got a new calling as the Behive advised in my ward! I'm so excited! I've wanted to be back in young women's since... Well since I left young women's! I've been longing for Girls Camp for ages! I can't wait! I feel weird being a leader instead of a girl though! Haha:) So I basically had the best leaders ever and I'm kinda nervous cause I don't know what I'm doing so if anyone has advice for me let me know! :)

Hank is waking up from his nap so it's time for me to go!

Love ya! :)

Animals:)

I just got a new app that is specifically for reading/following Blogs, which is great because unless I get notified when people post new stuff I really don't remember to check.  So, I'm following family and my favorite food and beauty blogs (Which has allowed me to become even more obsessed with Maskara!:).  This rekindled blog love has been so much fun, and after reading all of Mary's latest posts I felt inspired to update my own blog! :).

Right at this moment I feel on top of the world for no apparent reason:). Nothing really spectacular has happened lately, life is just good I guess.  Maybe it's because Hank is asleep and we have moose tracks ice cream in our freezer.... Or maybe it's because the front room is clean and vacuumed and there are no dirty dishes in the kitchen.  Or maybe it's just that tomorrow is Friday! Anyway, I'm quite happy right now.  It's hard for me to be sad when I have the cutest freakin baby:)

Hank has been so much fun lately!  We have been going on lots of adventures and I love how excited he is about the world!  Every time I put him in his car seat he gets super excited cause he knows it means we are going outside!  We went to the Zoo last week with Grandma Blue-Car, Emily, Amanda, and Lila and it was so much fun! :). Hank was not a huge fan of the squealing train ride but he looked over my shoulder at his cute cousins and that helped quite a lot.  

He seriously loves these girls so much... He smiles every time they talk or even look at him and I catch him watching them all the time.  I can totally picture him as a tiny toddler following them around some day:)

He is pretty fun:). In this picture he is sporting my new favorite shirt in his wardrobe!  If you didn't know, elephants are my absolute favorite animal:). Erik's aunt Robin sent us this shirt from Doalittle.co which is an awesome organization that donates ten dollars from every sale to save endangered animals.  The shirt Hank has supports the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust.  They rescue baby elephants whose mothers have been killed:(. It breaks my heart to think about those poor baby elephants and I'm so glad that there are people helping them.  If you want to buy a shirt and help an endangered animal go to Doalittle.co. Plus they are super cute shirts! :)

Well, I'm getting tired and I need to get to that ice cream before it is shamefully late so I'll end there, but I'll probably be posting again soon cause I've got a lot more cute pictures to share:). Later! :)

Hank Overload Anyone?

I've been posting a lot of pictures on Facebook, but I really have been holding back quite a lot and I decided that I should just post everything from this weekend on here and if you want to view it all you may.

First of all, Hank is in a stage of life that we've decided is best defined as Pure Joy... and it's contagious!  He is so happy all the time, we're having so much fun!  And this weekend he loved getting to be around so many people! So here are some photos and videos from our week in Provo and at Erik's parents house:)

I've got a lot of material to cover so this might be long and jump from thing to thing so just bare with me:)

Also, I was going to post a bunch of videos on here but blogger isn't letting me:( so I'm going to just post them all on Facebook and take over everyone's feed with Hank:) Let it begin!!!

First is our 4 generation photo!  So fun to see Grandma Great! :)

Next, I am so stinkin' proud of my cute hubby!  He graduated on Friday and it was such an awesome experience.  We both finished school in December but we we both wanted to walk so we got to make a trip back to Provo last weekend for Erik's graduation and are going back again next weekend for my graduation.  Erik's Dad has spoken at graduations at BYU for a few years now and he was a speaker at Erik's which I thought was really cool!  They even let his dad pop into the picture when he was walking and they got to have a picture taken of just them too which was really fun and special.  BYU is such a cool place and his graduation was so cool... I am so proud of him!

And here is where it all started!  This is The Riv courtyard... Erik's apartment was up on the balcony behind us and mine was right to right of this shot!  So much fun to get to go back to where Erik and I met:)

And here is what we count as our first apartment... haha!  Right on BYU campus!  Lots of fun memories here... including packing up and moving out while I was in labor:)

and our pretty view of the street right in front of our apartment.  Provo is beautiful... glad we got to spend some time in this fun city.

Henry was such a trooper the whole weekend as we dragged him around from place to place.  He did not love the applause at graduation and got tense every time anyone clapped... he also freaked out a little bit during a trumpet quintet performance at the commencement ceremony.  All in all though he was just a bundle of joy the whole time:)

Erik's parents had a graduation party for us but really Hank ended up being the star of the show! He found his voice and we pretty much spent the whole night just being entertained by him. He LOVED having so many people to play with and be held by and I kinda think they might like him too:)

And we'll end with some fun Sunday morning family fun:)

Mr. Henry Scott Eckern

Little Henry is 5 weeks tomorrow! WOOT WOOT!  What a big little boy:)  I decide I had better write the story of his birth on here so everyone can know what a crazy time it's been.  I don't feel guilty in the least that it's taken this long for me to write about it... in fact I'm actually quite impressed with myself under the circumstances:)

On Monday, December 16th, 2013 I woke up at around 5AM and started having contractions.  I went in the other room to wait a while and time them to make sure I was really going into labor before waking up Erik.  I called my mom and told her what was going on cause I really wasn't sure how to know if I was really having contractions or if it was something else.  As you can guess, my mom was pretty excited and told me it was only a matter of time before little Henry would be here! :)

Some important things to know about that week:  First of all, it was finals week for both Erik and myself.  I had a finals on Tuesday and Erik had finals on Thursday. (I ended up missing my finals, but I still passed the classes so it's all good... Erik had to leave the hospital on the second day we were there for a few hours to go take his final... he did awesome and we decided Heavenly Father was looking out for us cause Erik really hadn't had time to study at all for his final and he still aced it!)  On top of that we had scheduled a moving truck for Monday morning so that we could move out of our apartment and into our new one.  We figured that it would probably take a while for Henry to be born since it was my first baby so we decided to just go ahead with our plans and play it by ear.  We still had to pack a little before people showed up to help us move, so we left early to get everything ready.  A couple of days before I had asked people to help us move and we didn't really have a lot of people who could, but the day of when everyone found out that I was going into labor we had A TON of people show up and it only took us about a half hour to get everything packed.  So that worked out pretty well:)  

After everything was packed we decided to go to the hospital and see how close I was.  I was pretty sure I wasn't ready yet but the contractions were getting closer and I wanted to go just in case.  They told me that I was only dilated to a one and an hour later I was only at a one and a half so they sent us home.  The nurse told me she thought I'd be back later that night or early the next morning.  We decided we better stay at our apartment to be close to the hospital even though we didn't have any of our stuff... including a bed.  So, Erik's parents brought us an air mattress and some things we'd need and then Erik's dad drove our moving truck to our new apartment where our family unloaded everything for us!  We are seriously so lucky to have so many people willing to help us... I don't know what we would have done without everyones help! The day before Erik and I were planning on moving everything in all by ourselves, I'm really glad it worked out that we didn't have to do that!

That night we tried to just go to bed but I kept waking up from painful contractions and I finally told Erik it was hurting to bad and we better go back to the hospital.  I was sure that it must be time now since my contractions were hurting so bad, but they told me I was still only dilated at one! (which is extra dumb since the nurse had said one and a half by the time I left the last time!)  So, they gave me some medication so I would be able to hopefully get some sleep and they sent us home again.  I did get some sleep but when I woke up the next morning my contractions were back to how they had been at the beginning of the previous day! :(  I was pretty discouraged to be a square one again after feeling so close the day before.  But, we decided to make the most of it and try to get some things done and enjoy the day.  We went onto BYU campus and walked around for a while, sold some books back, and got lunch.  Then we went to Walmart and got the oil changed in the car and walked around some more.  Then we went back to our empty apartment while I walked back and forth and watched Netflix on Erik's computer.  

I was trying to wait as long as I could to go back to the hospital because I didn't want us to get sent home again.  Around 8PM I was in more pain than the night before and decided we better go to the hospital, even if it was just to get some medicine again so I could sleep.  My contractions were hurting so bad and I was so worried that they'd say I was still at a one and then we would just repeat what had happened the night before:/  But this time the nurse told me I was dilated at a four! Halle-freakin-lujah!  Haha, I was pretty dang excited to know that Henry was on his way! They gave me an epidural (again, Hallelujah!) and I fell asleep for a few hours.  I woke up a while later and they said we needed to wait a little bit longer and then I could start to push.  Around 3AM they started me pushing and at 3:56 little Henry Scott Eckern was born, 7 lbs 7 oz and 19.5 inches long with a whole lot of hair! :)  He was so perfect and everyone agreed that, other than his cone head, he was definitely the cutest baby they'd ever seen:)  

He had a lot of happy visitors... Amanda was especially to see her new cousin, she put on a special outfit and  everything:) He was quite spoiled the first couple of weeks because we were staying at Erik's parents house.  His head hardly ever touched his bed:)

He was a very calm newborn and was just as sweet as can be:)  He is still as sweet as can be but is already a lot more active:)  At his 2 week checkup our doctor said he was surprisingly alert for his age.  He had gained a pound and grown two inches. He is a very tall and skinny baby, poor thing is to tall for all the clothes that fit him everywhere else:)  From day one everyone thought he looked like Erik, but he looks more and more like his daddy everyday... needless to say, he's a pretty handsome little fella:)

To sum up, we moved, had a baby, and graduated all in one week! It was a pretty crazy week but it was one of the happiest of my life and it just keeps getting better every day! :)

2 Years!

Here's a look at us after being married for 2 years! :)

We have so much fun together, I can't believe how lucky I am!  This guy spoils me 

so much and I hope our little guy is just like him:)

And he got me these beautiful flowers:)

Also, Here's the latest on Baby Eckern.  I'm about 22 weeks pregnant right now 

(these pictures are from week 20 though).  Our little fella is kicking like crazy. It's super 

fun to get to feel him flipping around and Erik loves that he can finally feel him too:) 

Erik always talks to him and plays music for him and me and the baby love it.  

Erik cracks me up some times (most of the time) and the other day he was talking to 

the baby and telling him about how much fun it will be when he gets here.  I think he 

got the idea after hearing how my niece Audrey has been talking to her little sister 

and telling her about pizza! Haha.  Anyway, he was saying things like, "Mommy and 

Daddy will love you so much and we'll take good care of you and Grandma and 

Grandpa will come visit you..." ya know, the normals stuff... and then he said "and 

there will be lots of kids your age there." Haha, I said, "you mean like at the hospital?" 

and Erik said "Of course!"  Haha!  Yep, there probably will be lots of other kids their 

age there.  Haha:) 

So here's me at 20 weeks!  It's pretty fun and I love that our little fella is starting 

to get so big! :)

If you haven't guessed, Erik is pretty excited:)

Drumroll Please....

Well we finally got another look at Baby Eckern and we got some exciting news!  

It's A BOY!!!! WAHOO! :)

We are both so thrilled!  We had a feeling it was going to be a boy and it looks like most of the voters were right too!

The little fella is healthy as can be. We got to see the spine and the brain and the heart and the doctor said everything looks great! He was very active and it took a while to measure the brain cause he kept flipping over every time they were about to take a picture! :)

Here is another profile. We think he is just so cute!  I can't wait to hold him in my arms!

This one is showing his little heart beat.  His heart rate is 150 bpm which the doctor said is great:) 

Yep, there's no denying it:)