The day to finish getting ready

Let me just start by saying that babies, like teenagers, do what they want, when they want, no matter what your plans are or how inconvenient and irrational their agenda is. The day before our OB/GYN was leaving on vacation for a week we had an appointment to see how far along Jackson was. In her words he was "coming, but very slowly." This was no big deal since he was still not due for another week and of course, being our first, was more than likely going to be late. So we set up an appointment for the day our doctor got back to induce labor.

That brings us to Saturday. This was the day we were going to get ready for Jack's arrival. Among the things on our to-do list was: Go to the auto dealer where we were going to have the car seat professionally installed, finish packing the go bag, buy the last few things we needed off our registry, clean the car out, fill it up with gas (because the light had just gone on), and Joe was wanting to try his hand at maternity photography. He bought a whole bunch of stuff for the photo shoot and even took a few initial photos a few days before just to see if he could get the right lighting (which he didn't). It was going to be an eventful day, but after that, we would be ready for parenthood.

But that was not Jack's plan...At 7 in the morning, my water broke. I woke Joe up and we sprung into action. After a quick pack of the go bag and prayer that we wouldn't run out of gas, we were at the hospital. Things seemed to calm down at that point, Joe's parents filled up on gas and got the car seat installed. Before contractions got too out of hand, I had an epidural and was feeling good. It turns out, however, that Jack only wanted to feel what contractions were like, he didn't want to come out into the world so he made me push for two and a half hours! But he learned a valuable lesson that day, that we can't all have the things we want, and even though he didn't want to come out we were able to get Jackson Fredrick into the world on October 9th at 5:20 in the evening. Joe's mom thought it would've been cool to have him wait until 10/10/10 to be born, but took back that statement after she realized how cruel that would be to his mother. He is the smallest (thank goodness) of Joe's family weighing in at 7 pounds 15 ounces and has a fantastic mullet. It has been a month now and we are so glad to have him here and are having so much fun being parents. Here are some picture we have of the little cutie.

Summertime!

Ok I'm super behind on blogging!! Here is an overview of what we've been up to the past few months!

LAKE FAIR

We go down to Lake Fair every year. This year was a little different!
#1: I was pregnant so all of the elephant ears, fries, and deep fried ice cream was calling my name and of course I had to sample it all...
#2: We had family in town with us. Which is always fun! :)

These are some of our friends that joined us at the fair . Sam, Amy, and their little bundle of joy Parker also Heather and cute little Kaylee (Isaiah had to work, sad) Joe and I will be joining the stroller club soon enough!!



Jason and Tabitha along with their daughter Jessica and cousins Jacob and Noah came along too! The kids went on this ride called the Kamikaze (I think that was the name of it) and had a blast!



Tabitha was talking about another belly that was growing and it wasn't mine.. Haha




SAN FRANCISCO AND UTAH BABY SHOWER

As an early anniversary present Joe and I took a trip to San Francisco for one reason only:




Wicked was AMAZING!!! Before the show we went behind the scenes to see some of the costumes and props from the show.




This is the green silicone baby they used in the play. It was heavy enough to be a baby! Too cute!



Joe found this really great hotel just outside of san fran. It was called The Inn at Oyster Point. If you are ever down in that neck of the woods it's a great place to stay.
This was the view from our window and they brought you breakfast every morning!!



After Wicked we drove up to Utah to visit family and friends. My mom and sister also threw me a baby shower!

A lot of people who came brought their children which was really fun because of the games we were playing! There was a "Feed the baby" game where you were blindfolded and had to put applesauce in a cardboard cut out.



And a play-doh game which I got to judge!



And the winner is:



The J F on the baby is for Jackson Frederick. ( Which is the name we decided on by the way!)

I'm so blessed to have such loving family and friends. It was so good to see so many of them while we were down and we miss them so much!!


Well you are sort of caught up with what's going on in the Bippert House. I only have 3 more weeks until my due date so more posts to come very soon!!

It's a BOY!!

After all the waiting and anticipating we finally know what were having!! In honor of us having a boy I have lovingly changed our background blue!
While we were getting the ultrasound the doctor measured his weight and found out he's already in the 97% for weight! (He needed to be at least 10%)
Babies at 20 weeks are around 10.5oz and he was a whopping 14oz! Maybe it's just a growth spurt or he definitely a Bippert! (Most Bipperts are around 9 pnds. when delivered!) So pass the cocoa butter and color me blue!

Here's a good picture of our boy!





Here is an arm.



and here is a foot. The way the toe is coming out like that I guess is a hereditary thing and yes, I'm the one with the freak toe...



Now we've just got to pick a name... It's either Jackson Fredrick Bippert or Gavin Bippert. So if you see my husband he'll try and recruit you onto the Jackson bandwagon, he really likes that name. :)

I'm definitely starting to show. People are asking me if I'm pregnant now and he loves to kick my right side. Silly boy! Only 4 more months to go!!

May visit to Utah!

Every year around this time we take our annual trip to Utah to visit family and friends. We choose May because the blue mountains are usually clear and we can soak up some sun while in Utah for a couple of days.
This year we brought our trailer down with us 1: Because we were going camping in Bryce and Zion's National parks 2: When you have a 13 hour drive from Washington to Utah and you leave late at night, sleeping in the car is NO FUN! With me being 17 weeks along, finding comfortable sleeping positions is hard enough as it is! We were really glad we brought the trailer to say the least.

First stop was to Mom and Dad's home for Mother's Day! We went to church that afternoon and mom hadn't told anyone because she wanted me to when we came down. It was nice seeing everyone from my original home ward again. It was also great having everyone home for dinner that night as well. Jordan's girlfriend Chelsey and Rachel's boyfriend Quaid came over too!





Next we were off to Bryce Canyon and Zion's National park. It wasn't as long of a drive as I thought it would be. (Joe drove the whole time though so what am I complaining about...) It's interesting that when you're heading down there is a distinct line where it changes from brown dirt to red rock. I had forgotten how blatant that line was!




We get there and get settled in and that night it decides to drop below freezing!! We can comfortably fit 2-3 in the trailer, but we had 5. Dad would have stayed in there too if there would have been room but he was the gentleman and slept out in the tent in the cold. In the morning we trek into Bryce and what would you know....it starts SNOWING!! Man, we left Washington to get away from the colder weather!! Joe had never been there so it was a neat experience to do as a family.







All in all the first day at the park was great! There were beautiful walking trails and grand vistas to be explored. We saw deer and prairie dogs and had alot of fun in the visitor's center too...





Joe is training to become a Junior Ranger in his spare time... or maybe a Jr. Chipmunk. Swqueakity, squeak..uuh squeaken.





The last stop of the trip was to Zion's National Park. It was much warmer there compared to Bryce. It was so warm all of the caterpillars had hatched and were crawling all over the visitor's center. To get to other places in the park you have to take a shuttle up so we went about halfway and hiked up to the Emerald Pools. It was a really nice hike and nice area.



Someone even found a Mickey Mouse shaped cactus!





On the way home we noticed a cop car stationed in the exact same spot as when we'd drove by that morning. We decided to take a closer look and noticed something was amiss.... I know sleeping on duty can't be good but to fake it entirely!! Man!



This was a fun sign Joe wanted to take a picture of before we left for home.



Last but most certainly not least we had to go see our friends while we were here! We went out and saw Iron Man 2 with them. It was a pretty awesome movie! I just wish we would have had more time to spend with everyone. Of course being preggars and all we had to eat at all of our favorite spots and had a grand last couple of days! Tepenyaki, Cafe Rio and In-and-out...nothing wrong with that!



I think this is a really sweet pic. Audrey is having fun with Katelyn and David is just looking over lovingly... Aww!



Just stuffing our face at Cafe Rio...







We miss everyone already and well be back in June or July for a baby shower!! So I'll just have to keep up with everyone's blogs until then so I can get my Utah fix!!

April is CRAZY!!! (Warning this is a long post!!)

Every year in April the Bipperts have a million things going on, no matter what year it is! This year we have something going on every weekend!! So here we go!

April 3rd: Michael Buble for Joe's B-day!

For Christmas this year I thought it would be fun to plan really far in advance and get my husband concert tickets around his birthday. Michael Buble just happened to be in town on his b-day so I had to snag those tickets!! I always forget that his birthday is so close to conference that I probably shouldn't plan anything until the weekend before or after his birthday...well too late, already had the tix!

I was able to acquire floor seats but they were 4 seats apart from each other. We got there and the seats were great!! They were in the very front of this walkway so Joe had tons of room for his feet (which he loves!) and the people that we were sitting next to didn't mind if I sat next to him and they were over one spot! Super nice!!


This is about how close we were from our floor seats. He was doing Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" right here. He is a really funny guy by the way! He was cracking jokes about Tiger Woods, being engaged and all sorts of stuff!




About half way though the concert they rolled out this mini stage RIGHT DOWN OUR ISLE!! He came out and sang "Home" with one of his band members playing acoustic guitar. It was awesome!! Joe gave him a pat on the back as he was going down the stage past our seats... hehe






The rest of the concert was great we were able to dance in the isle because of all the room and inspired the people sitting next to us to dance as well. I hope my dear husband had a wonderful time for his birthday and I am so grateful to have him in my life.

April 10th: Vancouver, B.C. Temple Open House!

We had been planning with our friends Rich and Allisha for weeks about heading up to Vancouver for the open house of the temple. We had gone to the DMV to get enhanced driver's licenses because we both didn't have passports. The people there told us it would take about 2 weeks...so it was cutting it close! We waited day after day and they never arrived.... until the day we had to leave!! So we hurried up, packed our bags, and left to Vancouver!

I don't have alot of pictures of the first half of the trip because we forgot to charge our camera...

Of course all of the temples are beautiful and this one was no exception! The chandeliers in the main lobby were dark around the edges and all over the temple there were accents of the dogwood flower. On the door handles, engraved into the carpet, even some of the chandeliers looked like bunches of dogwood. The one in the bridal room was the most impressive!



Later that day we ventured down to Stanley Park. They have these larger than life statues just outside of the park that are modeled after the artist. Inside the park there was people dancing, painting, bike riding, and this great play area we had to go visit.



It's hard to miss this guy in the park...Spandy Andy. All he needs is a boombox and a crowd!







The last day we were there we tried to find the Olympic Torch...I mean Cauldron. We ended up in the slums of Vancouver where people wear garbage bags and viking hats (true story). Needless to say we were a little lost so Rich stopped to ask for directions. He decided to ask the man in the slums wearing the 3 piece suit and his business associate that were grabbing a briefcase out of the back of an suv. Needless to say he wasn't much help but we ended up finding it anyways...and didn't get capped in the slums.

The cauldron ended up being kind of a bust... there was this big blue dumpster right near it and it was all fenced off and torn up. They were remodeling it for Canada Day or something like that. The finished product looked like it was going to be pretty though!



Last stop on our trip was the Tulip Festival back in the good ol' U.S. of A. I had never been there but I'm a huge flower nut so it was a lot of fun!



Skyler met a girl while we were there. It was so cute!!




April 24th: Corinne's B-Day in the Olympic Peninsula

For my birthday this year we decided to go to the Forks, Kalalock, and La Push area to discover the beautiful outdoors. The first night we were at Kalalock which is a beautiful rv site near the ocean but it didn't have any hookups. We walked on the beach and found this awesome tree that was hanging on for dear life between these two hills. there was a small waterfall underneath it that had eroded the land that was once there.



We relocated our trailer to a site just outside of Forks that had hookups. It was still a nice site just not near the ocean.
Our next outdoor adventure took us to Rialto Beach which is just before La Push. We had read about it in a book that said there were cool tide pools around here. It was about a 3 mile walk out to where they were and it dumped rain the entire time!! By the time we got back to the truck it looked like we had gone swimming in the ocean in our clothes! We quickly headed back to the trailer and spent the rest of the evening drying off, drinking cocoa and watching "Friends" episodes. (Thanks to Rich and Allisha again for letting us borrow those!)






So that sums up most of April! Baby wise I'm doing great! The second trimester is wonderful because I"m not as tired and my hips don't bug me anymore! YEAY! May is going to bring some fun adventures too. We are going to Utah to visit my family and also go down to Zion and Bryce canyon.

Oh and we also find out what were having in May!! We wish we knew now but I guess we'll have to keep being patient...

And sea monkey makes three!!

Ok, the cats out of the bag! I'm Pregnant! I was going to wait to post this until after we went to Utah but that's like a month away!! So baby bippert is doing great, I haven't thrown up yet, and my hips are killing me! Now you're caught up... So here are the ultrasound pictures with more to come!

This was our 7 week visit. Just a pea in a pod.


This is 9 weeks.


And this was today! I'm almost 12 weeks now. Look baby is already smiling!! Can you see it!



Joe and I both are super excited for all the fun that is to come. I can't wait until I can feel kicking.. which won't be for a while.


Here's the floating baby in space that is the size of our child!