We thank thee for this bountiful *$&#@!

So, anyone who has seen the Simpsons movie will recognize the title of this post.

Katie and I went for our 17th week checkup last Monday. Although its too early to do the ultrasound to check the condition of the baby's heart, etc., we convinced the Dr. to let us slide into the ultrasound room really quick just to take a quick peek at what's inside for a little Christmas surprise. He agreed. Hooray!

Before he performed the ultrasound, I gave the baby a little pep talk. I told him/her to be a good little son/daughter and spread his/her legs for us. The George genes have very prominent spread eagle qualities. Katie can testify to this per my sleeping habits. I tried to get him/her to use those genes he/she was blessed with and give us a show. :)

The Dr. stuck on the the ultrasound and immediately we could see the baby's heart beating. Then he panned down to the crotch area......

I looked at Katie and said, "did I just see what I thought I saw?" Katie smiled and said, "I think so..." The Dr. chimed in and replied, "You sure did!"

Here's an ultrasound of the baby. You can see almost the entire body:

Here you see a close up. You can see a little more detail in the heart and spine:


And lastly, my favorite of all, the gender! Yes....it's a boy!!

[Censored for content.....sorry all you late readers]

Let it Snow

I love the snow. Every year I get so excited when it starts snowing again. By the time February rolls around I'll be hating it but right now I love it. We had a big snow storm yesterday and now the grass and everything is all covered. It's so pretty. Last night I had my siblings over for a Christmas/Birthday party. We ate cinnamon rolls and drank hot chocolate and watched A Year Without Santa Clause.

Then we took a picture in front of our small but beautiful Christmas tree.

Since we're covering up all but the top 2 inches of the tree, I took another picture of just the tree so you can see how pretty it is.

I can't wait for Christmas. Only one more week of classes for Ryan and then he'll be done with this semester. Yay! And then we're going to my parent's house in St. Louis for Christmas. It's going to be so much fun. Oh and don't forget to vote on our poll on what gender the baby is. My doctor's appointment is tomorrow. We hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!

I have a kumquat in my tummy

Most of you already know this but I thought I'd just officially announce on our blog that I'm going to be having a baby. I'm 16 weeks along and my due date is May 26th. Here is a picture of me on the day we found out I was pregnant. I was about 4 weeks along. We were so excited.

And this one was taken yesterday at 16 weeks. I'm wearing a maternity shirt so there is a lot of excess fabric around my tummy, but let me tell you, my belly is getting huge. I think I've gained about 12-15 lbs already.

Like I said I'm 16 weeks along so our baby is 4 1/2 inches long, about the size of an avocado. When I was 10 weeks they compared the baby to the size of a kumquat, I had no idea what a kumquat even looked like and I just thought that was funny so that's where the title of the post came from. Our baby has all its arms and legs and fingers and toes. It even has toe nails. It has a fast heart beat too, just like me. At our last appointment the heart beat was 170 bpm. Although I can't feel it yet, our baby can kick and move around, sense light apparently (but I shined a light on my tummy and nothing really happened), grimace, squint, and they say it can suck on its thumb too. I'm sure my baby is advanced so it can probably do all this and calculus already. My next doctors appointment is on December 17th and even though I'm not scheduled for an ultrasound, cause I'll only be 17 weeks along and they like to wait till around 20 weeks, my doctor said he would just take me down to the ultrasound machine and take a peek to see if we can find out the gender. We can't wait and I hope our baby cooperates so we can get a good look. We'll let you all know as soon as we find out.

Thanksgiving

This is a bit late, but I never seem to be able to get around to blogging lately. This Thanksgiving we got to spend time with both my family and Ryan's family. It was a bit busy, but we had a lot of fun. My brother and his wife and two little kids stayed with us at our apartment. Ryan and I made a feeble attempt to baby proof our apartment but obviously we don't have a lot of experience with this stuff, cause we did not do that good of a job. It was so much fun waking up to these cuties, though, that we didn't really care. And my nephew loves cereal as much as Ryan does; they were like twins. I just love how cute and cuddly babies are when they wake up.

On Wednesday night the whole family had arrived in Utah so I made some clam chowder for dinner for everyone. It was the first time I'd ever tried the recipe and it turned out amazing. We ate the soup in bread bowls. Everyone loved it. We had a whole pot full of soup and there was barely enough leftovers for one person. I'm definitely going to be making that one again. My dad also made this delicious chocolate melting cake. It was seriously amazing. Here's everyone enjoying their dinner.

My niece crammed both of her feet into this shoe. I thought it was funny so I took a picture.

Now this is the sad part. I feel terrible but I completely forgot about my camera after this so I didn't get any more pictures of our Thanksgiving holiday. We spent most of the day on Thanksgiving with Ryan's family. We had delicious turkey and gravy and mashed potatoes and some raspberry jello stuff that is my favorite. After we left Ryan's parent's house, we went back to my little sister's apartment where my family had Thanksgiving dinner, and we helped them eat pie. I think I had 5 pieces, and then I ate more for breakfast the next day.

On Friday we spent some time shopping. We went crib shopping and found a few cribs that we liked but we still need to decide on the one we want. We also went to the fabric store and got some crafty stuff and I bought fabric to make a quilt for the baby's crib. I'm making a gender neutral one with creams and browns and green. I think it's going to be so cute. I'm not exactly sure how to quilt though, so for now I'm just cutting out fabric squares and piecing them together to find a pattern I like. I was working on this last night. It took me all week to cut out those pesky squares.

My mom brought a sewing machine for me out from St. Louis with her when she came to visit, so now I have a sewing machine to use to make this quilt. Hopefully when we find out the gender of our baby, (and when I get better at quilting), I can make more quilts and cute things. I'm so excited.

Now everyone is gone and we're back to boring school and work. We miss everyone and we're so glad my family could come out to visit. I love Thanksgiving and I'm so thankful for both of our families and the love they show Ryan and I.

Our Weekend in California...

If you haven't already heard of my obsession with cars, than you obviously aren't an avid reader of our blog. I'm mostly obsessed with european vehicles, but more specifically Audi and Volkswagen.

Well, I found out about a driving school that Audi offers and the best part? It's free. I was one of the lucky few to actually get a spot in the school before they all filled up. Next task? Convince Katie to let me fly out to LA to realize my dream!

We set out for LA last Thursday, picked up our rental car, and headed out to Ontario. Thanks to Jason we stayed at the Marriott Fairfield Inn Ontario and woke up bright and early for the school.

On to the pictures!

This is me after taking an A4 around the track a few times. Notice my cool helmet? :)

This is me inside of the Audi R8...the only car in the world to undergo a CT scan to ensure that nothing is out of place by more than 0.1mm!And Katie and I in front of the entrance to the speedwayOkay, now on to the more exciting stuff....the BEST PART OF THE TRIP! Katie and I drove up I5 for a few hours in our 60mpg Prius (we only spent $25 in gas for the WHOLE trip!) and arrived in San Jose where we met up with John and ate at P.F. Chang's with Uncle John, Uncle Brian, Uncle Mark, and Aunt Annie. We spent the night with John and watched The Office and played RockBand2 with him before heading a little further north to San Francisco to visit Jeni and Jason.

We started off with some authetic clam chowder and sourdough bread

Saw the seals on Pier 39Hopped on an open top tour bus and saw the city!

Our first day was really foggy....I got this funny video of the Golden Gate Bridge. You can tell it was really wet and cold.

Our first day experience was definitly fun AND humorous. :) Day two was CRYSTAL clear! It was so beautiful so we went out again to see the city.

Anybody remember Full House? :)

In front of the Golden Gate Bridge

And most importantly, you haven't had a chocolate sundae until you've had one from Ghirardelli Square! AMAZING!

We wanted to thank John, all of Katie's extended family, and Jeni and Jason for the amazing trip to California! We had a great time!

Why is your blog address so long?

Too lazy to type in our blog address everytime you goto read something about our unexciting lives? Can't ever remember "george-ster's" or why the heck we chose that as our blog address?

Don't want to type http://thegeorgesters.blogspot.com/ anymore?

Problem solved! Simply type http://www.ryankatie.com/ and you'll be automatically redirected to our blog! Hooray!

(ryankatie.com was formerly our engagement website. since we are no longer engaged as of 2 years ago, I felt it was appropriate to update)

Where Did My Beautiful Fall Go?

This morning I had to scrape frost off my car before I could go to work. What happened to fall? I do not like this freezing cold weather!

The Past Month of Our Lives

So, a lot has happened over the last 4 weeks but for some reason I just keep forgetting or haven't had time to update the blog. Hopefully this long post will make up for it.

Ryan has started school back up again. Well, now I guess the semester is almost half way over but it had just started when we got together with Ryan's capstone group for a get to know you night about 4 weeks ago. We ate yummy food and then we had a friendly little competition. Everyone in Ryan's group is married so each couple made a paper rocket and then we went to launch them off to see who's went the furthest. Ryan and I were the only team that had two engineers. Here is a picture of me holding our rocket. We were so proud of it.

In the background you can see Ryan's capstone coach setting up the launcher. Here is the whole group watching the rockets get launched.

Well, in the end we blew the competition out of the water. Our's went way further than any other rocket. One rocket went off at an angle so people were confused about how far it had gone and they thought it should get a rematch with our rocket. Our rocket went even further the second time around and the other rocket fell about 5 feet from the launcher. So we won! I guess everyone else was at some what of a disadvantage since our team was a lot smarter than the other teams. Oh well. :)

Another exciting thing that happened this last month is that I started scrapbooking again. I used to scrapbook all the time when I was in high school but since coming away to Utah for school, I just haven't had the time or the stuff to start back up again. I got the supplies for Christmas last year but we never got around to printing out pictures to scrapbook. This is one of the disadvantages to digital cameras, you never have actual prints of your pictures. Anyway, so Ryan finally had time and he printed out a bunch of pictures for me. This is what the floor looks like while I'm scrapbooking. It's a little messy; we might have to get a table.

I like to use paper punches to make cute things when I scrapbook. The pictures I scrapbooked first were some Easter pictures so I made a little baby chick to go with them.


Now I just have like 200 pictures and 50 scrapbook pages to go.

About 3 weeks ago we had a visit from Ryan's brother Derek and his wife Sandy and their two kids Ava and Penelope. I don't know how it happened but we don't have any pictures of them. If you want to see pictures you can look at Ryan's parent's blog. Despite not having any pictures to show, we did have so much fun with them. Ava and Penelope are kinda shy so it was very rewarding when they actually let you hold them and play with them, and I don't want to brag but by the end of the trip they both loved me and let me hold them all I wanted.

Last weekend was General Conference and we had friends over for the Saturday Morning session and made pancakes and eggs and bacon. It was so good. Here is Amber, and Peter, and me all cuddled up under a blanket.


And here's everyone watching conference from the comfort of their couch and blanket. We're very spoiled.

I love conference, not only because it's relaxing and I get to sit around and watch TV all day, but because it makes me happy to hear the words of the prophet and his counselors and this year I was not disappointed. There were some very good talks. I would go into detail on my favorites but this post is already too long so you'll just have to call me if you want to talk about it.

Between conference sessions we took a drive up Payson canyon to look at the beautiful fall colors. I love the fall season. I love picking apples and making apple pie and apple crisp. I love pumpkins and carving pumpkins and eating pumpkin seeds. And I love the fall colors and the red and orange and yellow leaves. We went with Julie and Christian and Sarah up the canyon. Everything was beautiful and the weather was perfect. It was maybe a little cold, but it was sunny.

And the last thing on the list of all the things we've done recently is to drive out to Denver Colorado for my friend Katie's wedding. I was Katie's roommate for almost 4 years of college so I was really excited when she invited me out for her wedding to Todd. Her family is so nice, too. They really made us feel welcome. Ryan and I drove out with Shannon, another friend of ours and Katie's. We met up with Crystal and Becca and us 4 girls were some of Katie's bridesmaids.

It was so cold but we still had a lot of fun. Here's the happy couple right after leaving the temple.

Ryan and I danced at the reception. We hadn't danced in a while so it was fun. Apparently we were really cute because the photographer kept taking pictures of us. You can see him in the background.

After the reception, Katie and Todd left through a trail of sparklers. It was kinda scary with all that fire and a very flammable wedding dress, but everything worked out just fine.

We had such a good time. We drove back on Saturday and we were lucky enough to have absolutely no problems with snow, even though the forecast looked really bad. Now we're back in Utah and back to school and work. It's always sad to come back after a trip.

Lucky Break....

We accidentally spilled a cup of water on my laptop tonight. I thought it was gone for sure. We also have a desktop computer, but we keep on getting the blue screen of death and I haven't had time to fix it yet. So, the laptop is all we've got for now.

Here's our step-by-step of how to save your laptop:

1. Turn it off immediately! Hold the power button for 5 seconds if things are acting weird. If the computer is still operating normally...you could risk just shutting it down.

2. Unplug the AC adapter and take the battery out!

3. Turn the computer upside down and get all the sitting water out quick!

4. Take out any cards in the PCMCIA slot...dry them off.

5. Same with the CD-rom drive. Take it out, dry if off.

6. Dry off as much as you can with paper towels.

7. Take out the keyboard and dry underneath it!

8. Prop up everything upside down and sit it in front of a fan.

9. Leave there until you are SURE that everything is dry.

10. When you are sure that everything is dry, put it back together and boot it up.

I hit the power button and it started right up!! Hooray! The laptop is okay!!

Good luck!

Note: it might be good to leave the laptop is a dry warm place like a window sill for a day or so. You need to ENSURE that it is dry before you even attempt to put power back to it.

If you're lucky, you'll have a plastic backing on your keyboard like on mine....this backing is literally what saved the motherboard from getting drenched in water. Looks like the engineers at HP had a few good ideas when they put this thing together.

And, maybe you should just keep liquids far from your laptop in the first place....then you don't have to remember these steps! :)

Aloha 'Oe

We're back! We got home from out trip to Oahu on Tuesday morning. We had so much fun, but the 4 hour time difference was a lot easier to adjust to when we were there than when we got back. I'm still not back on Utah time completely. It probably doesn't help that my incentive to get up here is going to work, when my incentive to wake up in Hawaii was this.

This was the view from the balcony of our hotel room. It was so beautiful there. I miss it. I have so many pictures so I'll start from the beginning of the trip and hope you guys don't get too bored. Here is a picture that I took from the plane. I'd never flow over the ocean before or been to Hawaii so I this was a whole new experience for me.

We went straight to the hotel to check in once we got to Oahu. This is a view from the lobby of the hotel. I'm sure Ryan was a bit embarrassed when I pulled out the camera to start taking pictures in the lobby, but look how beautiful it was. I loved everything about our hotel. It was amazing.

This is a picture of the Hotel from our beach. We were on the 17th floor, the top floor. You can see our room from here. It's the third balcony from the left.

Next we went hiking at Diamond Head. Here is a picture that Ryan took from the top. That's Honolulu in the background.

Then we went snorkeling at Hanauma Bay. We had a lot of fun and we saw a ton of fish. The coral and the fish were so close to the beach that you barely had to make any effort at all to see them. While I was exploring I ran into two sea turtles. We borrowed an under water camera from one of Ryan's friends so we got some really fun pictures of the fish and us. Here we are trying to take a picture of both of us underwater. It was a lot more difficult that it looks.


There were some really brightly colored fish. I wish we could have gotten a better picture of these two. They were beautiful.

And here are the sea turtles. If you look closely you can see the second one in the background.

Friday night was Ryan's parent's 40th anniversary so we took them to out to dinner to celebrate. The food was delicious.

We all had the chocolate souffle for dessert. I was so full from dinner that I didn't think I'd be able to eat dessert but when I saw this I couldn't help myself. It was so yummy!

We went to the Dole Plantation and ate yummy fresh pineapple and pineapple soft serve ice cream. Apparently a lot of our trip revolved around eating. Oh well, it was good. We rode the Pineapple Express train and got to see the pineapple fields.

Then we walked through the gardens they have there. It was really pretty. I want to landscape my backyard to look like these gardens some day. And if I have to live in Hawaii for the plants to survive, I guess that's a sacrifice I'll have to make.

Next we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center. There were a lot of cool things to see. That night we had dinner at the Luau there. Here we are getting our picture taken with our pretty leis.

This was one of the guys that danced in the evening show. He was a fire dancer and he was really cool so we wanted to get our picture taken with him. He was kinda gross and sweaty.

We also went to Pearl Harbor while we were there. It was very interesting and humbling to see. I wish I could have seen more of the ship. You could also see oil on the water that was leaking from the ship. Apparently there are thousands of gallons of oil still in the ship. Here we are on the boat ride over there.

We went ATV riding at Kualoa Ranch. They filmed a lot of movies there including parts of Jurassic Park, Godzilla, 50 First Dates, and are still filming Lost there. It was so much fun. We rode our ATV's around and got to see a lot of things that the bus tour couldn't get to. There was one spot where we drove up part way on our ATV's and then got out and hiked for a few more minutes till we got to this cliff that overlooked the ocean and part of the ranch. It was stunning. Here is Ryan on his ATV.

Here we are at the over look.

And here is the whole group. On ATV's...

And off ATV's...

And we took a picture hiding under the same log they hid under on Jurassic park when the stampede of dinosaurs came after them.

The last thing we did while we were in Hawaii was Parasailing. We've been wanting to go ever since we got married. We tried to go on our honeymoon but the stop got canceled because of the weather. This time we finally got to go. It was a lot of fun. It was exhilarating to be that high up off the ground with only a parachute holding you up. It was a windy day so Ryan got a bit sea sick but all in all we had a good time.

Now we're back in Utah and I miss the perfect warm weather and the beach and the sun. I even miss the humidity, I noticed that my skin didn't get very dry there and I didn't have to put lotion on my hands every time I washed them. Most of all I miss being on vacation and not having to make dinner. We're so thankful that we had the opportunity to go to Hawaii and spend time with family and do all those fun things. We really appreciate all that you do for us, Cheryl and Jim, and we can't thank you enough for taking us.