Playing catch up... kinda

 Oh boy.  Six months gone since the last post.  And it was a such a busy summer! We had a string of visitors (and hardly any pictures to show for it), and also took a little trip to Portland to meet this little guy (and see his mom and dad... and all the other members of my family).  We were privileged to be part of his sealing to his parents in the temple.

 Oregon waterfall... can't remember the name of it.

 Multnomah Falls.  I wanted to make sure Adam got to see this area.  Especially since the only other time he's been to Oregon was at Christmas when there wasn't much greenery.

We went to the zoo where the hippos showed their best side.

We also had these crazies taking photos everywhere :)

That trip to Portland was in early June. Following that trip, we had Adam's sister and a couple of her kids visit for a few days.  We tromped around the city and sadly took no pictures!  On the day they left, we had our next visitor arrive later the same day.  Adam's friend Ryan came to stay for a week.  Another unfortunate incident of taking no pictures.  A couple of weeks following, my dad came to stay for a couple of night.  Again, no pictures (well, on our end... dad took plenty)! But we should really get better at documenting our lives.  

In the meantime, I tried growing some herbs in our window.  The started growing and it was exciting!  And then after a while, I didn't show enough love and they died.  No fresh herbs for us.  But let's be honest, I'm not sure they would have thrived growing in these starter pots inside a semi humid apartment.

On the 4th of July, we decided we should go see the fireworks! Turned out to be an awful idea.  Seeing the "best fireworks show in the US" is the worst experience you can have trying to see a fireworks show that, frankly, was not that spectacular.  You have to arrive early to even get a decent place to sit/stand, it was like 100º out with like 90% humidity and there's not even any grassy knolls to sit on.  Everyone is herded into gated sections of a highway they close down and you can't even leave or they won't let you back in! It was a lot of sweaty bodies packed into one long stretch of road.  We left out original spot to get some ice cream and sit in some a/c before going back to a place further away from the show but closer to the time they would start.  This was the view... a raised road was sorta blocking part of the view.

In September, our little nephew came to visit from Portland (with his parents), and we had a great time with them!  We did my things we hadn't yet done (and lots that we had done too).  Once again, we didn't take many pictures (but they did... and we have them somewhere...)

Right after they left, we received another visitor... this one uninvited, unwanted, makes messes, poops on your floor, avoids all traps, and chews through your food (in this case, just dried beans).  A single mouse. Don't know if you can see it the crumbles but he's been hanging out behind the bookshelves, eating dried beans, which you can see scattered on the floor and in crumbs.

We have set all kinds of traps (snappy ones and sticky ones) but for some reason we got the smart mouse who has not touched any of them.  We've chased it around, made barricades to trap him (twice now) but he's so quick and there's always a weak spot that he finds (we were SO close to catching it yesterday but he disappeared somehow).  Once he got to under the sink so we plugged all the holes up with magazines and boxes (yes, things it could chew through...) and set some traps in and hoped for the best.

 Unfortunately, there was a large opening under the cupboards that we didn't know about and so this attempt was unsuccessful. But we closed it up and left it blocked up so that he has one less place to hide.  Any ideas on how to catch him????

And lastly, this has also been happening... (this is my "Look what you did to me Adam!" face).  Haha, it's just a joke of course.

We're having a baby in January! And it's a boy Grigglet!  Here he is at 9 weeks.  I don't know what I'm looking at either.  The doctor said, there it is, and I said, I don't know what I'm looking at.  She pointed out a blinking light and said, well that's the heartbeat.  

Here he is at almost 12 weeks. Finally, a shape I can distinguish!

Here he is at almost 19 weeks.  The hospital here doesn't give us very good ultrasound pictures.  I feel like I've seen better ones... but oh well.

And here he is at just over 22 weeks. This was our follow up anatomy scan since they couldn't see all the angles of the heart they needed to see.

This was taken 10/18, two days from 27 weeks (third trimester!). Not much has changed since week 23 (that's the yellow shirt picture)