The Last Few Months...

Since we haven't had a lot of time (or desire, lets be honest) the last few months to update this, I decided to include all the big things that have been going on since the last time I posted. It's a long entry, and I'm sorry. It's mostly for my benefit so I don't forget stuff as pregnancy tends to make me forgetful and slightly dumb. :) So, here is what we have been doing in a nutshell since February.

- May 5th we went and had our 20 week ultrasound to find out the gender of our baby and to make sure everything ok and developing normally. We were excited and VERY surprised to find out that we are having a little girl. Curtis and I both asked the ultrasound technician lady to check again just to make sure since we were both pretty convinced that we were having a boy. We also had a name picked out for a boy, and were absolutely positive that we were right. However, we are having a girl, and we are ecstatic! We are struggling with agreeing on names, and when we do agree on one, the next day one or both of us don't really like it anymore. But we have a little ways to go before we actually need to have one set in stone, so it will work out eventually...we hope. We also went and purchased the baby furniture for her room, which was a lot of fun and got me really excited for her arrival.

- We posted earlier that we were the proud owners of a new home (new as in built in 1940 and most recently occupied by homeless people and meth users). We finally got the house decontaminated and started construction on it. Curtis spends 90% of his time that he's not working at his job at the house getting it fixed up and ready for us to move in and rent out the basement. However, the project is a LOT bigger than we thought, there have been many more obstacles than we had planned for (which will be discussed in a later post), and so it is taking quite a bit longer than we expected it to. Since I can't do much on the fix up a

t this point, I mostly spend my time running back and forth to home depot and brining the men food like a good little wife. We are both anxious to get this project finished so we can have a life again and see each other once in a while. There will be pictures and updates on the house and its progress later. I don't know about anyone else, but I love before and after pictures (I get that from my mom, I believe), so we have taken a lot of them along the way and will post those as soon as it is finished.

- I finished my last semester of school until after the baby comes. I am really excited to be out of school for a few months and do some things that I actually enjoy before I don't have a lot of time to myself. But I have also found I don't get as much done when I'm not in school or working.

- My baby brother Jesse received his mission call for the LDS church to serve in the Birgmingham Alabama mission. He reports to the MTC July 1st, and we are so excited for him. My dad grew up in the south and always jokes with my brother that the southern people don't really speak English, so he'll be learning a new language entirely. :) I'm sure while it will be extremely challenging for him because of the dominant Baptist faith, it will also be a great experience as well.

- My cute sister-in-law Carmen (Curtis' baby sister) moved in with us for the summer. It has been fun having her around and spending time together. She is definitely the ideal roommate/house guest as she always does the work around the house that I hate. :)

- We spent an awesome Memorial day with my family at my sisters beautiful home in Mapleton and had a large BBQ that was so much fun. We played games, talked, at tons of food, played with my nieces and nephew, and just had a blast overall. Unfortunately, the fun had to end early for us so we could continue work on the above mentioned home as we are on a bit of a time crunch.

- This weekend Curtis' older brother James is getting married in the Manti temple. His parents flew in last night from their mission in El Salvador for the wedding, and we are excited to begin the festivities and celebrations that will be going on most of this weekend. We are extremely excited for James and Whitney, and hope that it is a memorable weekend for them.

- And lastly, Curtis is still serving in the bishopric for the BYU 191st ward. It has been a year this week that he was called to serve as the 1st councelor, and we are waiting to see if that call will be extended for a few more months. It has been a lot of fun attending that ward, as everyone is our same age, and has been a great opportunity for Curtis to work with such an amazing bishop.

The next few months are going to be busy with lots of traveling both to Montana and Arizona, family time and reunions, continuing to fix the house and eventually moving in, getting ready for the baby to come, and so much more. I'm sure I will have a bunch of pictures to post by next time I do an entry, since it only happens every couple of months. But for now, here are a few pictures from the last few months (and by a few I mean 15).

My mom had an easter egg hunt at her house for my nieces and nephew living in Utah. It was kind of a nightmare getting all the kids to look at the camera...

A portion of my family the day my little brother went through the temple.

This is me at 16 weeks pregnant. I am now 25 weeks... so I'll get a more recent one soon.


This was at our niece Kamryn's 1st birthday party. There was so much to do for the kids and it was so much fun.

Memorial Day BBQ at my sisters house.

Curtis' first, and possible only blog post...

I am not a blogger. I don’t have a facebook or myspace account either. In fact, I have always been the advocate to have those time-wasting websites blocked on our work network. My wife started this blog several months ago despite the endless begging of her husband to not have one. It was never about the blog, or the profiles, or the pictures, or the networking. It was the bizarre phenomenon of blog-stalking, or facebook spying that got to me. It’s weird. I don’t understand the purpose of google-ing an ex-girlfriend or boyfriend, searching for someone that you haven’t been in contact with for decades or the weirdest yet, reading some random person’s blog that is about their personal life. My being weirded out was only expounded when we logged into a site that tells you how many people are viewing your blog, and from where they viewing it. I don’t even know anyone in most of those states, and the countries on there, do you even speak English? Maybe this is our generation’s way of having a “pen pal.” You just find some random blog on the internet and read about their lives. Despite all of that, I am starting to realize some of the benefits of a blog:

Old “best” friend: “Dude, you haven’t called in so long, what is going on?”
me: “huh? Haven’t you been reading my blog?”

So that, and how crazy this month has been, have coerced me to writing this blog entry. It may be long as it is extremely likely that this will be my first and last blog entry. So enjoy blog-spy-stalker-friends.

First, we’re pregnant—SURPRISE. So if you find out from someone at church or from some random person that you feel is on the lower end of the friend totem pole, I’m sorry, my response is “huh? Haven’t you been reading my blog?” We are due September 18th, but we are hoping for 09-09-09, as Connor (our nephew) is 08-08-08. See picture below (they say it’s a baby, but I think we may be giving birth to a toy tank, or maybe a key chain.)

You may be asking, “do they normally do an ultrasound at 10 weeks?” No, that’s all part of the drama. We have been planning a camping trip for months. My older brother Jared planned it as “a Fenn family reunion.” Not going was not an option. Camping isn’t as easy as it used to be when Fletcher and I could grab our sleeping bags and go to Jewel Basin. Now we have SUVs and SUV tents, propane heaters and LED Mag lights; guns, air mattresses, stoves, fold-out picnic tables, special hotdog roasters, hot water pots, fire rings and firewood, (yes, we had to buy freakin wood to burn). Then you add wives, babies, weather, three wheelers, trailers, and in my case, pregnancy. This trip included, to say the least, weeks of total anxiety and stress.

Two days before we were ready to go, a storm rolled in, making our original destination in Canyon Lands out of the question. So we decided to forget the guns and ammo, and head to a state park by St. George. Jared, Laura, Kamryn, James and Whitney left Thursday night—the same night the freeway was closed due to a 22 car pileup. (Their trip was NOT drama free, but if you google them you may be able to blog stalk them and read all about it.) Tyler, Jenn, Connor and Carmen left in the Durango, with my wife and me behind them in the Murano, at 5:30AM. Yeah, I know, but we wanted to get to our campsite by 10:00AM so we could have the entire day to vacate. About 70 miles into our adventure, we hit some icy roads. If they was any question the roads were icy, the six cars in the ditch over about a quarter mile gave it away. We approached a van in the ditch where no one had stopped to see if they were ok, so being the good people we are, and feeling pretty good about being on vacation, we decided to pull over and see if everyone was ok and to attempt to help push them out.

As we pulled to the emergency lane, I thought, “you know, with as many idiots on the road, I’m going to pull WAY over to avoid any accidents.” We rolled down the window to chat with Tyler who had jumped out to assist the van. Then BAM. One of those idiots traveling, at least what he admitted in the police report, 60-65 MPH, lost control of his vehicle and slammed into the back of the Murano. Sigh. Did I mention it was Friday the 13th? (If the driver of the other vehicle, or his insurance company decides to blog-stalk, I apologize for the idiot comment. But seriously, 65MPH when there was six cars in the ditch before you saw us?)

Mariah’s head was part way out of the window so the impact made the door frame hit her head. We pulled into the ditch and up the other side to the off ramp; which still makes me wonder how come a wrecked Murano could drive in the ditch when those guys couldn’t get a full size delivery van out of it. Well, as you all now know now, my wife is pregnant, holding her head in pain, and crying, and I was really ticked off. The ambulance came, I told them Mariah was pregnant, and hit her head. The four large farmer volunteers quickly sprung into action—a lot of action. Neck brace, gurney, spider straps, IVs, they even tried to cut a Jim Fenn Construction sweatshirt, fortunately for them, Mariah wasn’t about to let them do that. We sent Carmen with them and they rushed her away to the Nephi hospital, leaving me with the UHP to fill out reports—three hours of reports.

Meanwhile, the hospital in Nephi was checking Mariah out and wanted to do an ultrasound to make sure that nothing had happened to the baby, tank, or key chain. I don’t really know what Carmen was thinking as she didn’t know that Mariah was pregos; she must have been confused as they typically don’t make you take off your pants for a head injury. Heart beat was good, Mariah was happy she got a picture. (Again, blog stalking insurance co, the disclaimer is, she was and still has head pain, the doctors still advised there could/would be symptoms later).

I’m sure you can read Tyler and Jenn’s blog by clicking the link to the right. (We try to make it easy for you out of country stramgers to read about our family)

To make the long story shorter… We decided to go on with the trip. The Murano was beat up, but seemed to drive safely, Mariah needed a vacation, and I REALLY needed a vacation. It will behoove me to tell my mother-in-law, if she is reading this, that it was I that tried to call it off and come home, not just because I thought you would try to kill me, but I wanted Mariah to rest. She is the one that convinced me to continue. We ended up making it to our destination around 6:00PM.

It was amazing, a little cold at night, but we had heaters and motorhome just in case. The sand dunes in the back ground are a popular destination for fourwheelers. We decided to take threewheelers. James and I decided to put them to the test and took them straight up the rocks. I wrecked. Bad. The sad thing is that I didn’t even roll it sideways, which is what makes threewheelers dangerous; their notoriousness for rolling over. I flipped it endo. It would have been cool if I would have landed the front flip, but instead I caught the bike on my chest and head. My head had a helmet, but my ribs didn’t. The doctor said they aren’t broken, I only ripped the muscles that hold them together and to my sternum, no biggie if you don’t plan on sleeping, lifting, moving, or breathing.

It wasn’t all drama. The whole time we were dealing with insurance companies, hurt heads and ribs, morning sickness, etc. Mariah and I bought a house. A drug house; it tested at 45 times the meth levels than what the health department deems as “you should clean that up.” Despite the advice from my brother-in-law to just put up a new sign: “UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT” we decided to clean it up, fix it up and start the appeal process to get it zoned duplex to rent it out. The picture below is me on the phone talking to our Real Estate Agent trying to schedule a closing. We closed on the drug house after several strange days with title companies sending docs back and forth and we are now battling silly zoning laws with Provo city to even get the power turned on.

And the battle continues. As Mariah and I look back on this month, It istn’t that much different from any other drama filled month. But the pregnancy compounded February 13th. If you’re friends or family, thank you for reading and staying in blog-touch with us. We are doing fantastic and staying busy remodeling a house, fixing threewheelers, throwing up in the mornings, and looking for good deals on baby stuff. For all you other blog-stalkers, I hope you found what you were looking for.

Here are some fun pics of the camping trip:

Things to look forward to...

Let's be honest. I am not the best blogger in the whole world. I do try to get atleast one post in every month, but that is not always the case. Normally, I just don't have that much going on in my life to post about. However, the last few weeks have been tremendously busy and exciting, and we have many, many posts to catch up on. So, to wet your appettites and give you something to look forward to (very soon, hopefully), here are a few things that have been going on in our lives, and we will be posting about shortly.
- Car accident
- A ride in the ambulance due to car accident :)
- Camping Trip
- Purchase of a new house (and everything involved with that)
- And much more...

So, whoever reads this, don't give up on us or our blog. There will be several posts to come in the next couple of weeks. I have just been busy with school and midterms!

Boys will be boys

This week, on his way back to Montana from Colorado, Curtis' best friend since atleast kindergarten came to stay with us. Fletcher and Curtis always have a great time together, and never seem to run out of things to do. He was only able to stay for a day because he had to get back to work, but they had a lot of fun together. They went and shot machine guns together, we went out and ate several times, and ended the night putting mentos in diet coke and watching it explode. :)

Here are some of the favorite pictures from his visit.

Curtis & Fletcher taking turns using the machine gun. You should have seen their faces afterwards... It was so great! :)

Fletcher as the official mentos dropper

The awesome explosion, Fletcher trying to drink from the fountain, and Curtis who is obviously very pleased with their efforts.

We had a great time, and it was really good to see him again.

Sledding

Today, since we have gotten so much snow over the last few days, we went sledding with a couple of friends. There is this fun little place at the mouth of Hobble Creek canyon that has the perfect sledding hill. Unfortunately, by the time we left today, it was pretty packed. We did have a great time though! Thanks Eric and Alisyn for a fun day!

Curtis' legs coming up over the hill

What a stud!

Mariah, half falling off the sled...

Mariah and Alisyn at the bottom... we were racing, but Alisyn won.

Basketball

A couple weeks ago I was talking to my neighbor who joined a city league basketball team in Pleasant Grove, and somehow I let her talk me into joining it with her. I was a little hesitant and nervous at first, since it has been several years since I have even touched a basketball. Tonight was our first real game, and it was a lot of fun! We ended up playing against a team of young girls (maybe 18-21 years old). I am the youngest player on our team, and I am almost 25. So they definitely had the advantage of being in better shape and practice than the rest of us. But it turned out to be a lot of fun, and we won 39 to 17. Not bad for the first game. :) Lets just hope we can keep up that record for the rest of the season. Curtis took some awesome pictures. This one is my favorite cause it's one of the shots I made. :) By the way, did I mention I have Michael Jordan's number? That's gotta say something, right?

Florida

Our poor blog has been so neglected... My apologies to anyone who reads our blog. I'll do better.

This last week, we flew to Panama City, Florida to watch Curtis' brother James compete in an ironman competition. It was an awesome experience to watch, however, I don't think I'd ever have enough discipline to train for one of those. Which made me that much prouder of James for doing it. :)

We stayed in a beautiful condo right on the shore of the most beautiful beach I've ever seen. The sand was so small and soft, and white, and the water so clear and beautiful. The weather was amazing, and it was a very enjoyable trip all around.

James competed in the competition on Saturday, and was in the top 40% of his age group, which was really good. I was SO impressed with all the men and women who competed, and even got emotional when this old man (in his 70's) crossed the line and was crying and so happy! For those of you who don't know what an ironman competition entails, it is a 2.4 mile swim, followed by a 112 mile bike ride, and ends with a 26.2 mile run. And you have to finish within 17 hours, or you don't qualify as an ironman. It was such an awesome experience to watch, and such a fun trip.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the trip.

This is the view from our balcony. Our condo was literally right on the shore of the beach. It was awesome!

This is a view of the beautiful beach. I really think I was meant to live on the beach, cause it's my favorite place in the world!

This is kinda random, but I've always loved the show Ripley's Belive it or not!, and I was so excited to see this Ripley's museum in Florida. It was right by our condo, so we went one day, and it had some really cool stuff...

One of the many cool things in the museum... part of the Berlin wall.

James getting ready for the swim.

All the swimmers. It was utter chaos.

Curtis being supportive, and us waiting for James to pass on the bike portion (his number was 341, that's why it's on the sign).

James on the last stretch of the bike portion.

And James on the last part of the race.

Husbands & Hobbies

My creative husband has been doing stained glass for a long time. His aunt Juli (who is also extremely amazing) taught him how several years ago. Curtis loves doing stained glass, but for the last couple years, he hasn't done a whole lot of it due to his busy schedule. Anyway, this last weekend he got excited about doing it again. We both picked out patterns we wanted to do, and while he showed me how to make one myself (I didn't finish yet, although I will eventually), he made a great little stained glass window for his brother, sister-in-law, and niece Kamryn. Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of the process and the finished project. If it's not super noticeable at first, it's Winnie the Pooh with his head in a honey pot. Super cute. My husband is so talented...another great quality I love about him. :)

California

Curtis had to travel to a business seminar the week of our 2 year anniversary, so he took me with him and we celebrated in California. We stayed at the most amazing resort in the middle of Palm Springs. It was a lot of fun, and a great getaway for the week. Here are some pictures of the resort that we stayed at...amazing.

Room 7112 was the lucky room we lived in for the week

The entire resort was surrounded by water... lots and lots of water. It was beautiful.

In the lobby there were lots of cages of different kinds of birds to make the whole atmosphere more fun.

This is probably my favorite picture. This bridge led out to all the swimming pools. This place was amazing, and we had a blast!