Disneyland + a bit of a nursing rant

Hello friends! Thanks everyone for the support shown after my last post! Y'all are so great :)

Back in May, our little family ventured off to California to visit some family and go to Disneyland!! It was soo much fun, I love how tomorrowland is now basically Star Wars land! Being the huge nerds we are, Blake and I totally loved every second of it!! We even got to meet Kylo Ren!

Brayden also got to ride a few rides, we took him on Monsters Inc. and Jungle Cruise! I was really nervous to take him to Disneyland, but he was so great the whole time! He is such a little trooper! :) 

Jungle Cruise with Dad!!

ISN'T HE THE CUTEST!!! His cute mickey mouse onesie was a gift from my sweet mother in law, and Brayden totally rocked it! 

Also, while we were at Disneyland I noticed something that I thought was SUPER weird. There are no nursing rooms or places to nurse your baby in! It seems like the one place in California where there are definitely going to be children should have a place for nursing mothers. I mean they have designated smoking places, why not designated whip-the-boob-out places? Here's a picture I sent to my sister while I was nervously nursing at a restaurant in Tomorrow land. 

ANYWAY, that was our experience at Disney. Thanks again for the love and support, have an amazing rest of your week!!!

About time!!! -- a birth story + 11 weeks of life

Hey Y'all, sorry this post has been edited to take out many pictures of my son to protect him. Sorry if the post is now choppy and doesn't make sense, I hope you understand. 

Oh man!!! I can't believe all that has happened so far this year, it's been a big one for our little family!  As you can tell by the title, this post is going to be very informative (and of course have LOTS of pictures!) so hopefully you brought snacks!! ;)

First, I finished student teaching, which was amazing and exhausting all at once (probably exhausting because I was nine months pregnant) and so worth it!! Everyday the students asked me "When is your baby going to come out?" I'm sure I got more and more grumpy with my answers the closer I got to my due date haha! I finished student teaching March 4th, and our sweet baby boy made his appearance not even a week later - talk about perfect timing! 

Brayden Arthur Peel - a birth story

After student teaching ended I was starting to get stir crazy, although as you can tell by the picture below I probably should've put those nesting instincts to better use organizing my house haha!

I took this picture the day I went into labor, March 9th - I felt HUGE!!! Blake got home from work and we immediately left the house to go on a walk. We walked up the hills above our house, ran around the parking lot of our church (well let's be honest, I was waddling by that point) We did that for about two hours, and we started getting really discouraged because I was only having braxton-hicks contractions. Later that night though (around 11pm) I started getting more braxton-hicks contractions, so many that Blake started timing them. They were TWO MINUTES apart and consistent! Blake started freaking out, but I was like "These don't even hurt, we're fine! We aren't going to the hospital!" But I kept getting the feeling to start packing and loading the car. So after about a half hour we left and around midnight we arrived at American Fork Hospital. Then the REAL contractions hit. From 12am-4am we were in triage, and I remember just being in so much pain. I don't remember much else (those hormones really do make you forget!!), but Blake tells me it was very scary and there was lots of screaming. Finally at 4am, they said I could get the epidural, which I was really scared of getting but I wanted the pain to go away. I felt the first numbing shot - it felt just like a bee sting - and then lots of pressure. After about 10 minutes everything calmed down and I felt so much better :) seriously, I highly recommend the epidural :) I know it's not for everyone, but it made my birth experience so much more enjoyable. 

In the hospital after the epidural - obviously :)

 We had a room where you could see the Timpanogos temple from the window! Too bad I couldn't get out of the bed at that point haha.

topline baby's heartbeat

bottomline contractions

Around 3pm my nurse told us I was at dilated to a ten, but my dr. couldn't make it for another few hours, we were so anxious but we had to wait for him. Around 4:45 my nurse helped me do a few practice pushes, and around 5pm my Dr. came into my room and started getting everything ready! At 5:35, Brayden was born :) 

Isn't he so perfect?! 

My boys!! I love these two so much!! Also I have the cutest husband on the planet, he stayed up all night and day so excited/anxious to meet our boy. 

Life after that - Eleven Sleepless weeks of pure happiness :)

Last Thursday marked Brayden's 11th week of life, and while motherhood definitely is not easy, it's so rewarding. He is the sweetest little baby ever, so cuddly and smiley!!

More pictures to come! I have two more pending blog posts, one for our time in Disney and one for our recent move to Tennessee!! 

Love you all!!! I promise to be more consistent on the blog!! ;)

END OF SEMESTER!!

Today was my last final, which means I just have one more semester left to finish my degree! I am so excited (and ready) to finally be done with school! I can't believe all I have left to do is student teaching! Yay!

Also, a quick bumpdate! Baby is healthy and running out of room! Sometimes I feel like I can't possibly grow any more, but then I remember I have ten more weeks of this! Oh man!!!

As I was driving home from the final, I started to reflect on this past semester. Six months ago I imagined myself somewhere completely different, in a totally different situation, on the other side of the world. During a really hard day this past week, I stumbled on a quote that has really summed up my entire experience these past six months:

This really hit home for me, because I remember laying awake so many nights crying  and wondering why life wasn't working out the way I had planned. 

Well that's life for ya. You can plan all you want, but in the end, everything works out how it's supposed to, probably not in the way you wanted but in the way you needed. I still don't know why everything worked out the way it did for our little family, but I'm choosing to have faith and be happy about the future. Thanks again for all the support you all have given Blake and I these past few months, we love you all and really appreciate it. Thanks for reading!

A bump update... bumpdate? Is that weird?

Hey everybody! These past few weeks I've been terrible at documenting, and I'm sorry! I'll try to be better. I also learned that I'm really bad at taking selfies haha!

Here are some pictures I took on Sunday. Bathroom selfies, you gotta love em! :)

Me trying to figure out how to take a selfie lol.

Success! Kind of. haha 

And then here's a pic from thanksgiving.

Blake is such a cutie, I hope our son looks like him! :)

So ya, as you could probably tell I'm a whale now ;) but don't worry, people tell me it only get worse.

Some thoughts on keeping an "Open Mind"

We live in a crazy world. Recently it feels like I've been bombarded with news articles, political viewpoints, ridiculous health trends, religious viewpoints, etc. I don't even talk to people really, but I know through Facebook how everyone feels about everything. Literally. Everything. 

With so many things going on in our world, I know I'm probably not the only one who feels a little lost, and that's hard to admit. I think it's human nature to want to appear like you have all the right answers, like you've never been lost in your life, like you know exactly where you're going. But most times, I think people don't feel like that. 

 I'll see a link on Facebook and think to myself "Wow, I never thought I would have to form an opinion on this, but it looks like it's a major issue now," This happens to me almost everyday, so I know it happens to a lot of you too. 

Recently I stumbled across this quote on greatist.com that totally resonated with me, and helped me process a lot about whats going on. 

Powerful right? This helped me so much. It's important to keep an open mind, be open to fresh and new ideas, right wrongs and be kind to people. It's equally important to make sure we are not blindly jumping on every social bandwagon we see. It's ok to disagree with someone else's views, we live in a great country that allows us to have our own opinions and be vocal about those opinions. It's never ok to tear someone down because of what they believe. We can argue all day about what is morally or socially right, but in the end that's all it is. Arguing. And it usually never leads to a solution.

I'm not going to share my opinions on every social issue right now, just because I would rather talk to someone face to face, in a safe conversation instead of posting and expecting us to argue across screens and keyboards. Just be aware of other people feelings, accept that you may not be right on everything, and most of all be kind to people. Just because you don't agree with the way someone is living, doesn't give you the right to bully them into your way of thinking. This holiday season, instead of focusing on what makes us different, brings us apart etc. lets all try to focus on positive things and be kind to people. I think that is what our crazy world needs. 

Gender Announcement!!!

Hello friends and family!! We have another announcement, and we are SO excited to tell you!

We are having a BOY!! :)

We went in on Monday the 28th for our ultrasound appointment, and right when his little picture showed up on the screen (we saw his face first!) I had the feeling, that's my little boy!! But I didn't say anything out loud. Our ultrasound tech went through all his anatomy first, showing us his cute little head/face, his arms (he was waving at us!), his abdomen, his legs and his tiny feet! After going through and showing us everything BUT the gender, our ultrasound tech finally moved the camera and said "That's a boy!!" and we went crazy! Blake and I would've been happy with either, but I'm so happy we are having a boy first and all of our other kids will have an older brother to look out for them.

Here's our cliche gender reveal pictures!

Thanks for reading guys!! 

COMIC CON

It's that beautiful, lovely time of the year again when the leaves fall off of trees and the weather starts getting colder!! You know what that means?

COMIC CON!!!

Forget all the pumpkin flavored stuff that usually rules this time of year!! Once I walked into the nerd paradise that is Salt Lake Comic Con and saw all the fun cosplayers and smelled people who apparently don't know about deodorant, I knew it was going to be a good time. I LOVE Comic Con, and I have fully accepted how nerdy it is for me to say that. 

Best Costumes

Blake and I don't dress up for Comic Con, but it's so fun to see everyone else's costumes! Here are some of my favorites!

Look at this cute Orc family! They were posing for someone else, but I had to get a picture cause it was so clever! Love it!

LEFT SHARK!!!! I saw you walking by, and my camera wasn't on fast enough!! I love love love this costume though, so clever!!! The rest of the Con I kept looking for him to take a better picture, but he was elusive. 

My favorite costume of the day! This is Pattern from the Stormlight Archive books by Brandon Sanderson. Basically the BEST BOOKS EVER. 

Best Panel

This year Comic Con scheduled the two best panels (Con Man and Shanara Chronicles) AT THE SAME TIME!!! I can only express how I feel with Tobey Maguire memes, CAUSE THAT"S HOW I FEEL COMIC CON. You make me feel like ugly spiderman. 

Anyway.

We ended up going to the Shannara Chronicles preview while our friends went to the Con Man preview, that way we could not completely miss out on one or the other. At the Shanara preview, there was a writer of the show (far right) Terry Brooks (the author, middle) and the actor Manu Bennett! (Left) All of them were so nice and excited about Shanara, I can't wait for it to come out next year!!!

I kept getting closer to their table, trying to get the best picture, until a security guard asked me to go back to my seat! :) Haha oh well, I got a few good snap shots of them!

image via

 Also, Manu is the coolest person ever, he was so nice when answering questions, and his New Zealand accent was so. COOL! Great job Manu, you're awesome!

Coolest Author 

 Usually I would say that Brandon Sanderson is the coolest author, but he wasn't at Comic Con this time around! We did, however, get to meet Tracy and Laura Hickman, and they were so nice! They let Blake and Brian go back in their booth while I snapped a picture of them!

Overall, Comic Con this year was so fun, I can't wait to go back next year! I'm thinking of writing a "What I wish I would've know before I went to Comic Con" or a "Comic Con guide" for people for next year, so look out for that! Thank you beautiful people! Have a great week!!!