Turtle Bay

When I was in HI i never ONCE saw a sea turtle in the wild until i got pregnant. I didn't even know i was pregnant at the time. It was the week of our 2nd year anniversary (April 22) and we decided to go snorkeling in Hanauma bay. I didn't know it but i was close to 6 weeks pregnant at the time. We were in the water snorkeling when we saw 2 big sea turtles! I even got to touch one (though i wasn't supposed to). Ever since then EVERY time we went to the beach we saw sea turtles. Not just one though, we would see 5 turtles or more almost every time. So as we went shopping to decorate for our Baby Boy's room we decided on the "Turtle Bay" theme. (We also thought it was cool that we lived near Turtle Bay... the location ...on north shore HI). 

I see a PEE PEE!!

I was 23 weeks pregnant and was going in for that very special ultrasound! The one that will answer that very big question- PINK OR BLUE?!! Tiu had been betting on pink i had been betting on Blue. Well as we all know I am ALWAYS right!!! We were both thrilled when we found out we were having a boy!! The ultrasound Tech was soo nice. She kept taking pics and printing them for us (allot more than she is allowed to). She took her time and pointed everything out to us. Little baby jaden was squirming around like crazy!! The tech even asked me if i had been drinking coke or something because she was so surprised at how active the little guy was. He was punching so fast it looked like he was boxing! He would do these quick kicks and then twirl and then kick again! The funniest thing is even when it looked like he was kicking and punching really hard, i didn't feel it very much. Which led me to wonder what does it look like when i do feel it? After that appt. we knew we were having a strong active baby boy! Now off to paint the room... 

The PINK room...

Right around the time we had found out i was pregnant, BEFORE we had decided to move back to FL My mom decided to redecorate my old room. She picked out the colors she liked and got to work. She spent weeks priming and painting (she did it by herself so it took a bit longer than usual). Bought new dressers, a new bed spread, beautiful decorations. Worked night and day  to get the room exactly how she had imagined it. Alas, it was finished, just in time for our arrival. As we stepped into the room there was only one thing to be said.... "well....I sure hope we're having a girl!" The entire room had been painted light and bright pink along with bright green accents. It looked great...buuut what if we we're having a boy??!!! I couldn't have my baby boy's first room be PINK!!! It was still weeks away before we would know what we were having. However I was 90% sure it was a boy! I had, had dreams of my little boy since i was 16. It was ALWAYS a boy. Then in Jan. of 08 i had a very vivid dream that i would have a little boy around Christmas (the Christmas tree was up in my dream). I dismissed it imagining that that would never happen. But sure enough the"ultrasound - due date" they gave me was Jan 6, 2009 and i had a strong feeling that it was off by 2 weeks. I was SURE that the baby would come in 2008. So there we were standing in a lovely Pink room and praying that all my dreams were wrong and that we would have a girl!

Back again...

As our plane landed in the tampa FL airport i felt a rush of relief. We had finally arrived at our destination. I was about 5 months pregnant at the time. Tiny little unborn Jaden had just recently begun to squirm around inside me. I think i might have actually felt his first movements right before we left HI but I'm pretty sure i just wrote it off as alllooot of gas...haha. In Utah i had recognized that those twittery, gassy feelings might actually be him moving. But now in FL i was 100% sure it was him. It had gone from feeling movement every now and then to feeling like there was a teeny tiny mini acrobat inside me fluttering around all day. It felt weird ! I still had a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that i had something alive inside me!! My morning sickness began to very slowly ease up on me and for the first time in a while i was starting to feel a bit better.  We were staying with my mom who had graciously opened her doors to our broke bums... We had spent almost ALL our money trying to get back to FL from HI. Not to mention I knew that my mom would be able to help a bit with the daunting task of caring for a newborn. So their we were, back at the home i grew up in (kinda-  my fam. moved their when i was 12). And for the first time in our almost 3 year marriage we were completely dependent on our parents.... 

Utah- Flag day

On the plane...
Me an Michelle's baby bumps (both the same 4 months or so... except she has twins!) 

Salt Lake Temple

F

Flag Day event

Of course because we were strapped for cash so we ended up on one of those really stupid flights that takes you everywhere but where you're going. We spent the night in the Seattle airport (which was really cold). We were so exhausted at this point  that we were wondering the entire airport, carrying our heavy bags, desperate to find a not so freezing corner that we could curl up to and sleep. I have to admit at this point i remember feeling kind of sorry for myself. I mean after all my dreams of what my life would be like when i was pregnant with my first child ... (house of my own, graduated, stable job) ... well let's just say that even if it were the complete opposite of what my so far experience was,  i think i would still consider that an understatement. So their i was nauseous, pregnant, exhausted and cold .... poor me... ok pity party over. We got on our flight and arrived safely in UT. It was sometime around July 16,2008. I was about 4 months pregnant by then and the morning sickness was SUPPOSED to be letting up. But, of course it wasn't. We had a day or two to rest and then got to work. We started selling to some friends and then moved on to set up at the flag day event. We were Expecting Allot of sales! Buuutt as luck has it (sarcastic tone) that year was the first year that the flag day was split in two. Sooo our sales were pretty crappy. We made a trip out of it anyway, visited some friends and got to see the Salt Lake temple. All in all it was stressful but a notch down from what we were going through in HI.

Weird cravings- guacamole- At like 1 am me and Tiu went to a all night mexican restaurant and i ordered 4 sides of guacamole...hahaha! The guy was like "ok and what else?" i was like "no...just the guacamole " he couldn't believe it and we ended up having to just drive around and talk to him face to face to convince him that i JUST wanted a BUNCH of guacamole!

Regular cravings- soups, sandwiches, lime, greek salads and mango.

Surprise! Now what?

This was Tiu's nerdy idea... not mine
One of my crappy moments- hahaha

Goodbye  little ant infested apt./warehouse...

It caught us completely off guard! We didn't have the money for a baby! How were we supposed to have a baby in such a gross little apartment/warehouse. We didn't have time for a baby! I was going to school, Tiu was working all day! Who would watch the baby!!! We didn't have any real family close by, most of our friends weren't in HI anymore. Who would help us? We thought of every possible solution to all our problems and came up empty handed. There was no way we could do this in HI. As we came to the very depressing realization that we had just dragged our car almost half way across the world, paid out our bum to ship loads of boxes and sacrificed everything we had in FL to get to HI, and that after All of  that, that we now needed to actually turn back around and go back...Ahhh!! Very frustrating. To top everything off, Tiu began to have a family problem with his boss (his boss was his cousin's husband who we suspected was not treating her very well...) In the end Tiu was left without a job, I was pregnant, we had over 800 T-shirts in a tiny apt. and a mess of stuff that we had hauled over from FL. What to do!!?? The clock was ticking, NOW not only did we need to leave but we had a very limited time to do so, about 3-4 weeks to be exact. We needed to sell the car, sell all our business stuff, sell all our personal stuff, pack and sooo much more! To top everything off I was sooo incredibly miserable. I couldn't eat anything, I couldn't sleep more than 30-40 min at a time from the constant migraines and nausea. I felt completely bed ridden.  But there was no time to relax and recoup, I had to keep going. I can still remember night after night off packing and  walking through a sea of CRAP that was everywhere in our house. I can remember covering my mouth trying my best not to puke my guts out all over our apt., foodland, BYUH...pretty much everywhere! Then to top it all off EVERYONE in the entire neighbor hood decided to barbecue (ALL DAY!!!) It was the worst i had ever felt in my life (so far). I didn't sleep a wink for 1 1/2  days (or more)  before our flight. It was just straight packing. There was so much stuff that even hours before our flight there was still stuff i didn't know what to do with. At one point i actually ran to the dorm rooms and dumped a big box of stuff in the courtyard and just ran off...haha. Thankfully, with allot of stress and some luck Me and Tiu managed to get most of our stuff either sold, given away, packed in storage or shipped out (except the car, it got parked at Tiu's aunts house). We had decided to do another event in Utah in hopes to make a bit more money before getting to Fl so we still had bit of a journey ahead.

Weird cravings- Beef jerky- I must have had some kind of iron deficiency or something because out of the blue one day i wanted a TON of beef jerky! I ate about 1 1/2 big bags of jerky in one day! That was probably more food than i had eaten in like weeks!

regular cravings- all kinds of fruits and vegetables (I hated most meat) - I lost like 10lbs the first trimester.

The 2008 Fireknife competition

I found out i was pregnant about 3 days before our big selling event at the world fire knife competition. We were thrilled/confused/scared/excited  but didn't have any time to think about any of that. We rushed around like chickens with their heads cut of trying to sell as much as we could. It was pretty crazy, I barely got any sleep, and on the 1st or 2nd day of the event (it was a 4 day event) morning sickness hit me like a ton of bricks!!! I couldn't eat anything and i could barely get down fruit drinks. I felt miserable. It was just me and Tiu running the stand and it was one of those things where everyone would all come at once. People were yelling for sizes and colors, i was frantically running around digging in bins...it was nuts! By the end of the whole thing I felt like i was about to either die or kill someone (or both). In the end we sold a decent amount of T-shirts but not nearly as many as we would have liked. But now we finally had a moment to actually think about this surprise pregnancy. 

Weird cravings- Lime and salt - thats pretty much all ate and could get down!