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:)

Oh baby, baby!

Okay, let's face it... We all know the only reason girls my age have blogs is so they can talk about their kids, so I might as well get started now:)

I am about 17 weeks pregnant and Baby Eckern is doing just great! Our last appointment was a few weeks ago and we got to hear the babies heartbeat. Erik literally said "aww... Cute" (it was quite a cute heartbeat) and I may or may not have cried/laughed for happiness so much that we kept having to re-find the heartbeat cause I was moving too much:) 

We also have had one ultra-sound so far. It was pretty early so the baby really just looks like a jelly bean with arms and legs but I still think it is super cute:) It might be hard to tell but the picture shows the babies head, one arm and one leg.  The doctor said the baby is very wiggly:) 

Our next doctors appointment is this Friday and we are so excited!  We are hoping to find out our babies gender so if you want to make any guesses this is your last chance:)

Flash!

Here are some of the flash files I've done for my Flash Animation class this semester!  

These were my midterm assignments:

And just so you know, I didn't do all the drawing for the characters .. I just did the background for the duck one and I made some of the hand poses for the talk show one and I did all the animation for both of them!  Thank you, thank you... please hold applause until after the end of the show! :)

Mustaches (or the lack thereof)

Erik and I have been pretty boring lately, just basically doing the same thing every day. School, work, bla, bla, bla.  Well we've recently had a spike of excitement in our lives:)  Yesterday Erik and I went to an award ceremony for a survey competition Erik participated in for Qualtrics, and Erik got 2nd place and won $100!  So that was pretty fun!  Erik also has been competing in Brandstorm which is a L'Oreal Case Competition.  It's kinda a big deal:)  They do research and case studies to make marketing plans to introduce a L'Oreal product into South East Asia.  They only include a few schools nationwide (I think only 8) in the competition and BYU is one of them.  Erik's team has 3 people in it and they passed the first round and got to be one of 6 groups to do a presentation for L'Oreal executives.  We found out tonight that Erik's group was selected to go to the next round and present in New York City for nationals!  If they win that they get to go to Paris for the international competition!  We're so excited and it's such an amazing opportunity for Erik and a really impressive achievement in the advertising world!  brlaganaba!  I'm just so proud of him!  

Erik has had a mustache for a few months now and was keeping it for the presentation, so to celebrate we had a shaving ceremony tonight! :)

 Before

 In the middle somewhere

 Being Charlie Chaplin

And After!

Yay!  No more mustache hairs up my nose!  

Also, it was Erik's birthday earlier this week and his mom gave him some super cute cupcakes!  I just had to share because they are so darn fancy!  (and tasty too!)

Thanksgiving and Erik's Birthday!

This is going to be kind of a random post because I want to share some of our fun pictures from Thanksgiving but I'd also like to dedicate this to Erik because tomorrow (November 26th) is his birthday!  Yay!  The big 2-4!  But we'll get to that in a minute:)

We went to Hurricane for five days for the Thanksgiving break and it was so much fun to take a break and see my parents and all of my siblings (except Josh):  Sorry to everyone in my family but we all know the kids are the funnest part:)  Uncle Erik had so much fun playing with his adorable nieces and it was so great to finally get my hands on my new nephew Kent!  

Erik and Amanda had a lot of fun playing together and Erik just can't say no to her, which resulted in Erik dressing up like a princess, playing tag with Amanda for hours and being cooked in the oven (which was the couch, they're both being cooked in the oven in the pictures below).

Here are some bonus pictures of cute Grandma and her cute Granddaughters all crammed together in a tent!  How fun!

For Erik's birthday he really wanted a Batman Arkham City game and he pretty much knew he was going to get it.  So, to make things more interesting, I decided to get him a cheap XBox game from DI and then wrap his real gift inside a weird book that I also got from DI.  Mwahahaha!  I wasn't sure how well it would work but i turned out pretty much perfect:) 

He was too nice to complain when he opened a SUPER old Xbox game (that I don't think will even work on our Xbox) and a really weird health book. 

We did learn some very interesting things from the pamphlet that came with the book though! :)

He was pretty excited when he opened the book and found the game and it was pretty much priceless:)  So much fun, I'm glad he thought it was funny and didn't just think I was crazy, haha. 

I Love you so much Erik!  I'm so glad you put up with me and that I get to share all your birthday with you for a long long time:)