Baby stuff!!!

So, we're pretty excited to welcome a baby. I've gone hog-wild pricing all the baby stuff I want/think I need, haha. We've been super blessed though. Mitch's Aunt Steph gave us a crib that is still in great condition, Mom Heath gave us the softest cutest baby blanket, Dad Heath gave me an amazing pregnancy body pillow - I pretty much can't sleep without it now, and my mom is throwing a baby shower for me. Wow. All we need now is the stroller/car seat combo and we're pretty much set on the non-refillable items. Diapers, bottles and pacifiers will probably start piling up in our closet as I start building a supply via store sales.

I'm 15 weeks today and finally starting to show! Woot! Mitch is happy to be able to touch my growing "baby bump" and grins like the proud daddy he's going to be every time. He's so cute!

We've had to revise our baby timeline - I'm now due 14 Jan and the gender ultrasound is Jul 27!!! *rubs hands gleefully* Mitch and I have a bet going - if we're having a girl, we get to go to my favorite restaurant (International Buffet), and if it's a boy, we're going to Mitch's (Chili's). Mitch has offered to go to IB either way, haha - we'll see. I'm not a sore loser, especially in this case. :) We were originally going to find out the gender in August but there was an opening earlier that the nurse made me aware of and we jumped at that!

Just the hum drum of college life here. We're not in school til Sept and the rattery has slowed in sales. According to fellow rattery owners, that's normal for summer months. I've planned for the next two litters to be available starting early to mid Sept. We'll see how it pans out, but I'm hopeful.

Just a few more weeks and we'll be in TEXAS!!!! AHHHHH!!! I'm so excited!!! I can't wait to see my family again! It'll be a year next Sunday since I've seen most of my family. Dad and TexAnne came up to see us in February and totally made my month!!! I'm excited to finally be back in Texas, though. Whether Mitch likes it or not, this baby is half-Texan and that's his/her maternal homeland. Too bad I can't have the baby in Texas.

In case some of you were wondering, I'm getting out of the Air Force. :( It was a bittersweet decision but I'm glad now more than ever that at least Mitch is staying in. I don't think I could've given up that service opportunity or lifestyle (yes, I'm excited to move every few years) very easily. I'm glad that I have a husband who is serving his country though - even if I can only serve by supporting him (which is still a big way to serve! Wife-Os rock!). Not quite the hands-on experience I was looking for, but it'll be fun to hold down the fort while he deploys. Not fun that he's gone, but experience either way. Lt Col Hopkinson (our Assistant Professor of Aerospace Studies) told us an experience he had when he was called to TDY (Temporary Duty) during Christmas. It was just a week or two (I think) but Christmas was right in the middle of it. He and his wife told their kids that Daddy had to go find Santa and make sure he brought them their presents - or something to that effect. It was so sweet! I think it will be an interesting time for our family to grow closer together.

More updates to come....

Here Comes BABY!!

Hi All!

So, you all already know, but here's the official announcement: we're pregnant!!! YAY! Well, I'm the pregnant one, but... you get the picture.

Here's the schedule of events:

Week 8 - bloodwork
Week 12 - first ultrasound (just heartbeat and profile pic)
Week 20 - second ultrasound (GENDER!! YAY!!)
05 Jan 2010 - delivery (hopefully)

I'll put more specific dates as I get them.

Love ya'll!!

Mitch and Kadi

Christmas Breakfast

None of us were able to go home for Christmas this year so Austin, Liz and Lanae came over to make breakfast with us Christmas morning. It was an awesome, relaxing, entertaining morning!

 Lanae is unimpressed with Mitchell's timing with the camera

 This girl is a hoot! I married into an awesome family!

 Cleaning off the dishes

 Our six-foot, pre-lit Christmas tree! Not too many presents under the tree this year, but it's still an awesome first married Christmas!

As you can see, breakfast was delicious! Austin flipped the pancakes, Liz made the eggs, I made the hashbrowns and Lanae fried up the sausage. YUM!! Breakfast of champions right there, folks.

Turkey Day and Christmas Beginnings

Hey y'all!

Thanksgiving was really good. We stopped by Col. Jacobs' house and helped bake pies. Annette (Col's wife) and I are making this a tradition now. :) I'll go help bake pies for Christmas, too. She gave me one of her nice glass pie pans (for a wedding gift) and I baked an apple pie in it. Mitch said it was really good. :D I'll have to sharpen my cake making skills, too. I haven't made a cake in FOREVER! :(

Anyway, after Col's house, we went to the family gathering in American Fork. We had it in a cultural hall at a church building! I've never been to a family gathering like that before. I kinda miss the family dinners when we were all together in a house, but it was still nice to be with Mitch's family. Afterwards, Col had invited us back to his house in the evening to play games, so we took Lanae and David (her boy, who is also a cadet in the corps) with us. We got there a bit late, but Col and his family still hadn't even sat down to eat! Poor Annette had been cooking all day. We got there in time for second dinner (HOLY COW, WE WERE STUFFED) and stayed talking until 9:30. All-in-all, it was a great day!

The next morning, Mitch and I woke up and went to Petsmart. We had gotten another rat (a big blue curly-haired rat named Max) a week before and he wasn't settling in well, so we made an exchange. Now, we have Ralph. He's a very tiny baby blue rat and he's settled in nicely. He and Toby are asleep on my lap even as I'm writing this. :) We also got a bigger cage for Toby and (eventually) Ralph to share. Ralph is in the smaller cage until he gets a bit bigger so he can't slip through the bars on the bigger cage. He'll probably only be there a week or so.

Austin and Liz thoughtfully picked up a pre-lighted, plastic Christmas tree for us during their Black Friday shopping at 2 am Friday morning. :) It's just over 6 feet tall and has really colorful lights. I might just buy some really cheap gold lights and switch them out... it would look better with the decorations we have on it. We're just using odds and ends around the house to decorate it right now. Mom sent me a Christmas ornament about two years ago that I still have, so that and a paper one about as old are the only real ornaments. There are fake flowers and some keychains on it that make it look pretty nice. And a bell. And a string of shells. I've got some seashells that I'm going to try to turn into ornaments, so we'll see how that turns out. I've ordered some big pendant necklaces for the girls as Christmas gifts, but I should have a couple left over so those will be turned into ornaments as well. We're excited for Jared (Mitch's brother) to come home from his church mission to Canada this December. He should be home right before New Years. :)

Our tree!

Hope all is going well with all y'all down in Texas! We miss you!

Love,
Kadi and Mitch

My Birthday

My birthday has been awesome! Mitch got me a pet rat the day before my birthday and he sooo cute! He's about a foot long including his tail and is brown from his nose to his shoulders, with a brown stripe down his back. I took two tests on my birthday and got an A on one, which was pretty good. Still don't know about the other one; hopefully it will be handed back in class today. Austin, Lanae, Kayla and Loni had a "surprise" birthday party for me. Liz had to work, but she was there in spirit. We had cake and watched Toby (my rat) roll around in his little ball. Zeus (Austin's dog) was so excited to play with Toby. At first, he was pretty scared of the ball that moved "on its own" but he soon got used to him. It was a great birthday!

How We Came to Be

It's September 2007. I was meeting the new cadets in Air Force ROTC and making sure I had names straight. This was my second and last year of being a "lower classman" and I wanted to make sure I did everything to make my flight as close knit as possible. Turns out, I'd be knit pretty close with one of them less than a year later...

This is one of Mitch's favorite memories of me before we were dating (notice him sitting at the table). Little E was soo cute and Mitch said he liked seeing this side of me.

Now it's Winter Semester 2008. Mitch often called me to come help last-minute with lowering the flag on BYU campus, even though Drill Team (Kadi) and Color Guard (Mitch) had a friendly rivalry. Occasionally, he'd give me a ride back to my apartment in his car, which was a huge luxury - I think he felt bad for calling me so often. ;)

Our catalyst came in the form of a mutual friend, Megan. She and I had gone country dancing at a local place in Provo and decided to invite some of our cadet friends. Mitch and one other cadet showed up, but after an hour, it was just Mitch, Megan and I. Megan was a great dancer so she had tons of partners, but me... not so much. I thought Mitch was just taking pity on me by dancing with me so often (he says he'd had a crush on me since the previous September). Warm fuzzies that night. :) We tried to repeat the activity the next week but Mitch and I were the only ones who showed up - that was our unofficial first date.

Fast forward a few weeks to Dining Out in March 2008. I'd been dropping hints that I wanted Mitch to ask me out, but he'd already asked one of the girls in his ward by the time he found out I didn't have a date. So I had the lamest of all lame dates but being in charge of the grog was AWESOME!

Me and the grog in the grog bowl - yes, it's bright green. Hehehe...

Mitch sent me a text asking how my date had gone but -dun dun DUUUN!! - I didn't have texting on my phone. So Mitch calls two days later on Monday to ask for a Wednesday date. I was shocked and stunned in a good way. Mitch wasn't the first guy I dated, but I was really excited for this date. Wednesday rolls around and Mitch takes me to Chili's for dinner. Yum. Then we went for a walk around the bell tower and the tunnel by the Marriott center. As we were reached the street above the bell tower, Mitch grabbed my hand to pull me across the street... and didn't let go. He'd grabbed it at kind of an awkward spot (more fingers than hand) but I wasn't really sure what was happening was actually happening. All kinds of awkward conversation follows while the two of us tried to figure out the other's thoughts. Haha! Such an awkward moment. Neither of us pulled away (or wanted to end the date), so we went back to Mitch's apartment to watch a movie. Luckily, his roommates were just starting Ratatouille, so we settled down to watch that... still holding hands. :)

We dated for a couple weeks and then approached the ROTC commander to make sure that he knew we were dating, just to be on the safe side. ROTC has strict rules for dating within the corps (first and second years can't date third or fourth years without permission - long story). We were well within that rule (both of us were second years) but still, just wanted to be on the safe side. Little did we know that we would be back in just two short weeks....

After we'd been dating about three weeks, Mitch and I met some of his friends at Thai Ruby for lunch. I had been planning on serving an 18 month church mission that fall and Mitch had totally blindsided me. While we were sitting in the car fixing to go inside, I asked him where he thought we would be in 6 months because if this wasn't going anywhere, I wasn't going to waste my time (or his)... and he said "married." My jaw dropped, but boy was he right.

General Conference April 2008 - 2 weeks before the proposal

So, back to Col. Jacobs we went to see if there were any hoops to jump through so we could get married. Luckily, there were none and we got the green light.

Mitch proposed April 19th in a wonderfully surprising dinner date. He told me he had reservations at a "nice restaurant" in town (never mentioned the name) and planned to pick me up around 4:30 that Thursday. Well, 4:30 rolls around and he started calling every 20 minutes to ask for 20 more minutes... until he arrived at around 6 pm. With a single rose. :) Needless to say, I forgave him. He helped me into the car and then mentioned that he forgot his wallet and could we please go back to his apartment to pick it up? I was just happy to be with him, so I said yes and, when we entered his apartment, I was sooo glad I'd said yes! He had a table set for two with two tall lit candles and another single rose in a little vase. Surprise!! This was the nice restaurant and boy was it ever! Mitch had cooked up some orange chicken and mixed a salad, then we had sherbet for dessert and then Mitch started clearing away the table and pushing the couches against the wall. He turned on some country music and recreated our first date. After a few songs, we decided to go for a walk around the bell tower. Now, I should pause here and tell you that my roommate Milla and I had come up with a little bet. She bet me that Mitch would propose to me after 8:30 that night and I humored her and said he'd propose before 8:30. K, so back to the bell tower. When we got to the observation deck of the bell tower, we watched the sun set and the birds flying around while we held hands. I had taken to wearing my old CTR ring on my left hand when I was by myself, but I had forgotten to switch hands that night. Mitch laughed when he discovered a ring on that particular finger, but then said he wanted to get me a better one. I agreed and said that we'd go looking for rings soon, but then he got down on one knee and it gets a little fuzzy from there. He asked me to marry him and I kind of lost my power of speech for a minute. Remember, I wasn't expecting him to propose until we got back to Texas! He had to prompt me for an answer (which I quickly gave) and then slipped the little two-tone opal ring on my hand. As he stood to kiss me, the bell tower chimed 8:30. I'd won the bet!! By about 90 seconds, but still, what an awesome date!! We were both so happy and so relieved that it had finally happened. We hadn't planned on making a big deal out of it, but the following Sunday during the good news minute in Relief Society, Milla raised her hand and said that her good news minute was that I had gotten engaged. Almost nobody knew that I had been dating, let alone who, but it was kind of fun to be the center of attention for a few minutes. All my friends in the ward found me in the next couple days to see the ring and offer their congratulations.

We were sealed for time and all eternity on 25 July 2008 in the Houston, TX Temple by Mitch's paternal grandfather and the rest is history!

Texas State Aquarium

Mitchell and I also went to the Texas State Aquarium. I think this was my all-time favorite place to go growing up. My dad and I even volunteered here on weekends for a while. I learned a lot about the marine life on display and it was so much fun to see Mitchell's first impressions as we walked through all the exhibits. I think the touch pools were his favorite. :)

 Look at that sexy profile!

 It's always fun to hold hermit crabs!

 Bubble bubble!

 Check out this massive crab!

 Here's me posing with Hans the sand tiger shark. We're old friends.

 Piranhas

 Bird-Eating Spider - it's the size of a dinner plate

 Lion's Mane Jellies

 Moon Jellies (these are my favorite)

 The rescued dolphin exhibit. We watched the dolphin show and then went to the underground observation room. HUGE walls of plexiglass make you feel like you're right there in the tank with the dolphins. The trainers gave the dolphins huge 5 gallon blocks of ice and fish to encourage intellectual stimulation.

 I've always loved playing with the otters through the plexiglass wall. Unfortunately, none of those pictures came out very well, so I'll have to settle for this one. Such fond memories.

At the ray and shark touch tank. This cownose ray was really friendly and kept passing by really close to the edge of the tank. None of the sharks were interested in moving.

USS Lexington

Mitchell and I headed out to visit the USS Lexington - a retired aircraft carrier. :) We had a great time exploring the whole floating museum and watched an IMAX movie about Red Flag - the US Air Force's version of the Navy's Top Gun program. Pretty neat! I grew up climbing all over the Lex so it was awesome to show Mitchell one of my favorite places.

 There's the Lex!

 The long walk up to the bay doors...

 Mitchell couldn't resist this massive anti-aircraft gun. Don't worry, it isn't functional. 

 My best impression of General George S. Patton

Mitchell's more accurate version of Patton... less smiling. :)

 Me sitting in the Captain's Chair!

 "Are you sure I'm doing this right?"

I can't wait to marry this guy!

Frisbee Golf with the Heaths

I love my future in-laws! It's been so fun to get to know them! Apparently, Frisbee Golf is a favorite among the Heaths and I was woefully ignorant of this most awesome game. Thankfully, it's been pretty easy to catch on to. My quirky wrist flick method for launching my frisbees made quite the impression too. It was fun to teach Tammy and Mitchell how to flick a frisbee. 

 We are going to make such cute babies!

 I love this man!

 My frisbee landed smack at the bottom of this massive ditch on my very first flick. CRAP!

 Jeff is explaining the rules for Frisbee Golf... and Colton is hilarious

 Apparently I walk with my hands on my thighs like this a lot. Mitchell thinks it's funny.

Such a pretty park with tons of trees and this pretty little bridge

Utah Bridal Shower!

My awesome friends Megan and Milla threw a bridal shower for me right before we headed back to Texas. It was so much fun! There were presents and a fun game that involved bubble gum... lots and LOTS of bubble gum. Mitchell had been asked a series of get-to-know you questions (favorite color, shoe size, eye color, etc) by Milla and I had to guess what answers he gave. If I guessed wrong, I had to put a piece of double bubble gum in my mouth.

 *Buzzer!!* Wrong Answer!

Taking a break... lettin' it all hang out to give my poor mandibular muscles a break from chewing

 The final count - 8 pieces of gum! What a chew!

From left to right: Me, Megan's friend (can't remember her name), Megan, Metta and Milla