National Farm Machinery Show

I know what you're thinking....farm machinery?? But it was actually a really cool expo! Rory and I felt a little out of place without our work jeans and cowboy boots, but we didn't let that stop us. :) The whole time we thought of Boston, Rory's nephew. He would have been in heaven with all of the big tractors! We had to take lots of pictures for him. :)

There is a huge convention center by the airport in Louisville and they have big events almost every weekend. We wanted to go to the Championship Tractor Pull, but with Carter we didn't think we could pull that off yet. So we went went to the expo. There was huge farm machinery everywhere! I had never seen such big machines up that close! It was pretty cool to be able to climb up into the cabs and check them out! We took lots of pictures and had fun walking around. We even had some cookies and cream ice cream in a big waffle cone! Carter slept peacefully in his stroller the whole time!

One Month!

Carter was a month old on February 16th!

One month stats:

Weight: 11 lbs 7.5 ozs (90th percentile)

Length: 21.75 in (20th)

Head Circumference: 15.25 in (in between 25th-50th percentile)

He's growing so fast! He outgrew his newborn clothes a couple weeks ago and fits snugly into his 0-3 month clothes. He has the cutest little chubby cheeks!

We have the sweetest little bundle of joy! Once he turned a month old he decided he didn't want to sleep as much. Mommy loved that! It seems Carter takes after his mom and is not a morning person either. We have fun together in the morning. :) At least he seems to be sleeping well at night! I can usually get at least 4 or 5 hours of sleep and then feed him and get another 2 or 3 hours of sleep before he's up for the day. Carter is slowly getting on more of a schedule which makes things a little easier. If only we could figure out our mornings and get him to take a nap! :)

We are indoctrinating him young!

Carter loves his Daddy time when Rory gets home from work. I think he gets tired of looking at me all day. :) Rory is great with him! It's funny to watch when Rory will turn Carter around so he can look at the room and Carter will twist his head around trying to look at Dad. :) One night I was feeding Carter and Rory came and sat down by us on the couch and Carter pulled back trying to watch his Dad and keep eating at the same time! He did that for a few minutes! Rory has let me go to bed a couple nights and has stayed up with Carter until he finally settles down to sleep for the night. A little more sleep for me is great! I'm finally not feeling completely exhausted all the time and it is great! I might be able to do this after all. :)

Thanks for the cute outfit Jenny!

Carter and I still have a lot of things to figure out. But we're getting there! I love watching him sleep. He looks so peaceful! He is the cutest little boy in the world and we love him so much!

Carter Alpine Housley

Carter arrived 10 days early!

January 16th 2012

7:06 pm

7 lbs 4 oz

20 in long

Sorry this has taken me so long to get around to writing! It has been a crazy 3 and a half weeks. I finally feel like I'm not running completely on fumes. :) Besides trying to get used to taking care of our little guy I spent 3 days last week back in the hospital so it's been a little harder to adjust than expected. But I'll write about that later.

Rory and I were excited about the 16th because Rory had the day off for Martin Luther King's Day. We were going to use the day to wash our baby clothes and finish getting last minute things done before Carter came. We still had a little organizing to do and we really needed to clean our apartment. Plus we needed to get our hospital bags and stuff ready.

Well, around 5:30 that morning I woke up with pain in my abdomen and lower back. I tried to keep sleeping for a while, but it didn't go away so I got up to go to the bathroom. It kind of felt like cramps telling me I needed to go to the bathroom. That didn't help anything either. So around 6:30 I gave up trying to sleep and decided to read on the couch. About an hour later Rory came out and I think he was pretty surprised to see me up. (Rory knows how much I love me sleep.) He asked if I was alright and I said I thought I was having contractions, but I didn't know if they were real or Braxton Hicks. I had been keeping track of them for about an hour and they weren't consistent, but they were pretty frequent. I didn't go much more than 5 minutes ever before the next one hit. Around 9 I decided I should call my doctor because they weren't going away. She told me I should probably go to the hospital to get checked out because they

were so frequent. I decided to shower and eat something before we left. Showering is fun with contractions. :)

All this time I have been having contractions Rory has been trying to get things ready. He got all the baby's stuff for the hospital and put the car seat in the car. We both got our bags ready and around 10 we headed to the hospital. At this point it didn't feel real. Even when I was having

contractions my stomach muscles were not hardening like I thought they should. So I thought they had to be fake contractions. At 10:30 I was finally taken to the triage center to get checked before they admitted me if I was really in labor. As I talked to the nurse and explained how I felt it was clear she thought I was having fake contractions. That's what I'd been thinking so it wasn't a surprise. But it was 10:30 so I'd been having contractions for at least 5 hours by now and they weren't getting better. After asking me all her questions the nurse checked to see if I was dilated. Come to find out I'm 4 cm dilated and about 90% effaced! The nurse was like, maybe you're one of the lucky ones who gets through this easy.

Looks like I'm in labor! It's a pretty surreal feeling to think that we're actually having our baby. I'd been carrying him in me for almost 9 months and he was finally making his way out!

I was moved to a labor and delivery room. It was a pretty nice room. It was really big and we had it all to ourselves! I think we figured out later that a baby had been born early that morning, but we were the only other baby all day. So we had a lot of attention. :)

Once we were in the room I got my IV and they took my blood for testing. After I was all settled I finally called my mom and told her I was in labor. :) She was just as ready as we were for our baby to come so early. Luckily she was able to change her plane ticket for not too much so she could fly in the next day.

Rory and I settled in to wait after that. At 1:00 in the afternoon my doctor came by to check on me. I was still about 4 cm but I was almost completely effaced. My doctor broke my water and started me on a small amount of pitocin. Within minutes my contractions kicked it up a lot. At this point I decided I wanted an epidural. I called the nurse and said I wanted one. Shortly after, the anesthesiologist came and they kicked Rory out so they could set me up. It was about 1:30 at this point. Receiving the epidural was a piece of cake compared to the contractions. Except for the fact that it's hard to sit up through a contraction while they're trying to put it in. :) Once they were done I finally got to lay back down and Rory came back in. Within minutes my pain was gone! I turned to the nurse and asked if I was still having contractions. She was like, year you can't feel them at all? Yay! No pain! My legs felt really weird, but I got used to it and I'll take that any day over contractions!

After the pain was gone I tried to take a nap to save up my energy. It was not that easy to sleep when I knew our baby was on the way! At 3 the nurse came in to check on me. I was 9 cm dilated! That was quick! The nurse told me my doctor would come by after work to deliver our baby. She said it wouldn't hurt me to wait a little longer so that his head could drop further so that I didn't have to push so much. My doctor finally came around 5:30. Then the real fun began. :)

I think I ended up pushing for about an hour and a half. It might have been a little quicker without the epidural, but I'll take it over no pain. Besides my doctor I always had at least two nurses and Rory helping me push. :) I told you we had all the attention. :) Everyone was very encouraging and supportive. I'm pretty sure Carter's head started showing pretty quickly. They even let me feel the crown of his head at one point. That was kind of crazy. At the end my doctor said I was tearing and she said she was going to cut it a little more so we could get his head out. Once she did that Carter came out pretty fast. Carter was born at 7:06pm!

The next thing I knew little Carter was laying on my chest! The nurse cleaned him off as best she could while he was on my chest. What an amazing feeling! I could finally see and hold the little baby I'd been carrying around for 9 months! It was so much fun to see his big eyes as he looked at his new world. He was so alert for the first little while. I know I am biased, but he was the cutest baby I'd ever seen! Besides his funny shaped head he looked pretty much perfect! And his head rounded out pretty quick.

After an hour or so the nurse from the nursery came in to give Carter a bath. She washed him by the sink in our room so that I could kind of watch from my bed. As she bathed him she gave Rory instructions on how to bathe him when we got home. Once he was squeaky clean and I could feel my legs a little better we were moved to our recovery room.

What a day! I was in labor for about 13.5 hours. All in all it wasn't the worst experience ever. The epidural was definitely a life saver! It was all worth it to finally be able to hold Carter in my arms!

My little burrito!

48 hours later we were headed home!

What an experience! And then there were 3. :)

Sherman Minton Bridge Closure

The Sherman Minton Bridge is one of the three bridges in our area that connects Indiana and Kentucky. On September 9th of last year a crack was found in the bridge and so it was closed indefinitely. It is now January 9th, 4 months later, and we are still waiting. I think it is supposed to be done in April or so, but until then we continue to deal with the repercussions of a closed bridge.

When the bridge first closed, rush hour traffic was horrendous. Rory works across the river from us, so this impacted him every morning and night. Rory had to leave for work before 6 to get there at a decent time before the worst of the traffic hit. If he didn't take that early bus then his travel time would triple or quadruple. After a few weeks the city seemed to have things a little more under control and the traffic was looking better. Rory was able to go to work a little later and make it at a decent time again. The situation was still not perfect, but it was looking better.

Well sometime in the past week a couple changes were made that I think were supposed to continue to help the situation. In reality, traffic just got worse than it was in the beginning! Rory drove to work on Friday because the buses are always really off schedule Friday afternoon and he hates waiting for them. Lucky for him he hit traffic and spent about 30 minutes just stopped in one place.

This morning Rory came in and woke me up and asked if I could give him a ride to work because the bus hadn't shown up. This new traffic change has thrown everything out of whack again. According to mapquest we live 4.59 miles from Rory's office. Not too far right? It took us almost an hour to get to Rory's office this morning. An hour to go less than 5 miles!! That's what happens when way too many people are trying to use just 2 bridges to get to work in the morning. At least it only took me 10 minutes to get back home after dropping Rory off because no one wants to come this direction in the morning. :)

There is a radio show in the morning that we sometimes listen to if we're in the car that early. They put together a hilarious song about the closure. Someone called in Friday morning and asked them if they would play it again because the traffic had gotten so bad again. At least I think it gave Rory a good laugh while he was stuck in traffic. I've attached a link to the song. I apologize in advance for the few bleeped swear words. You might think this song is exaggerating, but this is how you feel when you're stuck in that traffic! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl_er9MQHNM

37 Weeks!

I'm full term! I can't believe I've been pregnant for 37 weeks already. It seems kind of surreal right now that I'm so close to the end. Within the month we should have a new baby! Crazy! I know people want a picture so I'm finally posting one. You may notice I'm not wearing my wedding ring. That's because it no longer fits... In the past few days my hands have swollen a little and my feet and ankles have swollen quite a bit. I'm ready for this baby to come! :)

This picture was taken after a large meal at Red Lobster... :) I don't know that it made me look any bigger, but I was pretty uncomfortable with a very full stomach. :) Why did we go to Red Lobster for dinner? To celebrate Rory passing his 3rd actuary test!!! He took it six weeks ago and just found out today that he passed! We're pretty excited. Just two more tests and an online class and he will have his first certification!

Merry Christmas 2011!

Our last Christmas before our family grows! We were planning on a pretty low key Christmas here by ourselves since it's pretty late for me to be traveling, but Rory's parents made it out to visit! After 26 hours of traveling they made it here! It was quite the accomplishment to get out here flying standby just days before Christmas. We picked them up from the airport about 5 pm the Friday before Christmas.

After a little shopping at Sams to pick up food for our Christmas Eve dinner we headed to Chuy's for dinner. Chuy's is a great Mexican place. After stuffing ourselves we decided to check out the Lights Under Louisville. It was a really cool lights display in a cavern under the city. It was pretty neat to drive through the cavern and see all the displays.

Christmas Eve morning we spent some time in the kitchen getting things ready for dinner and finished last minute things for Christmas. Then we went to the movies and watched the new Mission Impossible movie. After the movie we had time to play Rook while the food cooked for dinner. We had prime rib and au gratin potatoes for dinner. It was really good!

See our cute Christmas tree? :) Rory wanted a Utah Jazz tree so that is what we did.

This is a little better shot of the tree.

We had purple, green and white lights. Then Polly made us some Jazz logos and we put them on purple, green and gold Christmas balls. We also used a purple and gold garland. The final touch? Old school Jazz basketball cards. :) Oh and you can't forget the Jazz blankets we used for the tree skirt.

Before bed my family always opens up a present. So after dinner Rory and I each opened one up. Rory got to open up the power drill his parents got him so that he could attach the heater we got to the wall in the baby's room. :)

Rory gave me a sweet Jimmer jersey! Too bad it doesn't quite fit right now....

Christmas morning!

Don't you like our Jazz and Ninja Turtle stockings? :)

Rory got an awesome Leonardo snuggie! Plus some cool turtle socks!

The back view. Don't you love the shell? We had to get a shot where you could also see the sweet ninja turtle pjs too. :) Our son has no chance but to love ninja turtles. :)

We had to take a picture with our sweet new hats. Of course Rory's is Leonardo. :) Mine is a cute BYU winter hat. :)

Our first Christmas away from home was great! It helped to have Rory's parents with us to help us celebrate. We did have to take them back to the airport at 1:30, but it was fun to have them there for the weekend. Rory and I are excited to have a third member of our family next Christmas! I can't wait until I can buy our little guy Christmas presents! :) I hope everyone had a great Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Butterfield Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year we were in Fruit Heights with my family. We had an amazing Thanksgiving dinner and had a lot of fun with my family and grandparents.

Like I said in the previous post we went down to St. George Friday afternoon, but we went back up to Fruit Heights Wednesday morning. Wednesday night my mom and Jenny threw me a baby shower!

I got lots of cute stuff, but one of my favorites was the cute penguin hat from Jenny! :)

Sometime in the middle of the night Wednesday a huge windstorm blew in. The storm lasted about nine hours and they recorded wind speeds up to 102 mph. It was the nastiest wind I have ever seen! It was so loud! Around 5:30 in the morning I woke up to go to the bathroom (one of those fun parts of being pregnant ;)) and the light started flickering. When I was walking back to our room I heard the printer coming back on and realized the power must have gone out. We were lucky that our power was turned back on later that afternoon. A lot of people in the area didn't have power for a few days.

Without power there are only so many things you can do. One of them is play games! :) We played a little Scum and then we had a Rook tournament! Rory and Scott pretty much dominated, but it was still fun.

At one point in the storm Rory and I decided to try and venture outside. The wind was super intense! Not only was it windy, but cold too! I didn't last very long. :) This is us when we got back inside.

My little brother Nathan had fun running with the wind and then against it. It was pretty funny to watch him speed one way and then really struggle to come back. Just after I came back inside a chair came flying down the sidewalk and flew into a telephone pole and pretty much exploded into a bunch of pieces. It almost took out Nathan!

For lunch we went out to eat, but we soon found out that most of the restaurants were closed because of power outages. Luckily we were in the Winger's parking lot when their power returned and they opened up for us!

Towards the end of the storm we started hearing things popping on the roof. We soon realized that it was shingles popping off. We also watched all morning as different parts of the fence went down.

The damage wouldn't have been so extensive if the wind didn't last so many hours. Driving around after was crazy. We saw multiple trucks that had been blow off the road and were laying on their sides. There were so many huge trees that had been uprooted and fallen over. It was a crazy storm! I'm glad my parents didn't have any more damage to their house than they did. We heard of people who weren't so lucky.

Friday night we went to Temple Square to see the lights! It was pretty nippy outside and it started to snow! It took us a few tries to take pictures because the snow was blowing into our eyes! :)

Even with the crazy wind storm we had a blast with my family! I'm glad we got to come out and visit before our baby comes. We had a great Thanksgiving vacation!