Halloween

This year, Sydney was a penguin! Those who know me know I love penguins so I couldn't resist! Brian was Friar Tuck as usual and I was a wingless angel. I know, sad.

Pumpkin Carving

Today we decided we would carve pumpkins! I really want to try to challenge myself each year. I have not improved very much in technique but I'm trying! I did not have much time this year as far as preparation goes.

Brian decided to carve Kenny from South Park. It looks really creepy with a light inside.

I carved Sora from Kingdom Hearts (a video game).

And Sydney, well she slept for 5 hours, giving us the time to carve these masterpieces.

Those with children know not to envy us. She will be keeping us up tonight! Or at least me, Meagan.

Gallery Website

So, I created a website just for posting pictures and videos. I will post a little update notice on this blog whenever I add to it. Check it out at: http://www.freewebs.com/tucklings/apps/photos/

There are 4 photo albums there with pictures from labor, after the birth and the blessing. Enjoy!

Baby Blessing!

Today, Sydney was blessed! Brian did an excellent job and we were happy to have family and friends participate in the blessing: Father Tuck, Cousin Russ, Mike Wanstrom, John Holt, Marc Sunderland, and Ben Cook. Thanks for all your love! Also, we had several sisters help with recording Sydney's blessing. I will post that as soon as I get around to compiling all the transcripts.
Grandpa and Grandma Tuck

I want to thank Sydney's Great-Grandma Sanders and Great-Aunt Melanie for this beautiful heirloom blessing dress!

Yes, this bodice has smocking which means it was hand-sewn!
And thank you Grandma Tuck for the amazing photos!

More Pictures!

Here are some more pictures of our little Sydney!

New Addition

Friday at 8:45pm Little Sydney Tuck was brought into the world at Madison Memorial Hosipital. Mom and baby are resting peacefully after a 36 hour labor that wore both down, and ended in Meagan having to have a C-Section. Sydney is a healthy little girl born at 8lbs even and a length of 21 inches and was labeled as "The most quiet baby we have ever seen," by the nursery attendants. She is feeding well and is doing everything on or before schedule so we are glad. She is extremely beautiful. Our family has remarked that she has Meagan's eyes and my nose and mouth. She has brown hair with a twinge of red showing. We are recoperating at the hospital and can't wait to take her home.

We would like ot thank everyone who has helped us. Meagan's family was great. They showed so much support and helped make Meagan's experience as easy as humanly possible. They are trying to soak up as much baby time as they can before they have to leave tomorrow morning. My mom was here too rooting Mea on during contractions and lending a comforting hand when called upon. She will be a great comfort with Meagan still in stiches.

We hope to be home by Monday evening at least so more visitors the merrier. More pictures to follow

Tutor.com

Hah! You people are probably checking hoping to find information about a baby but I shock you with a side story! Sorry, I guess that was cruel. No baby yet. I am trying to go in on Thursday evening (Oct 2) to begin the induction process which would put the delivery on Friday. This is not a very desirable mode but my family is only in town until Saturday and so I am accomodating. If I am given pitocin, I will most likely opt for an epidural and have to try a natural birth on the next baby. BUT! Today has been a Braxton-hicks contraction day! I have been having consisitent contractions (pain-free) for several hours now. I am hoping this will turn into full-blown labor before tomorrow night. We shall see.

Now, most of you know I worked for 2 years as an English coach teaching Chinese students over the internet. I unfortunately found the company had gone belly-up this past summer. I have been looking for another stay-at-home job since then. My friend Rachel told me about Tutor.com. The application process took over a month but I have finally joined their crew and now am working when I have the chance. The job has a pay-raise opportunity after only 1 month and I can "float" whenever instead of scheduling which is working great right now and I know will be awesome once the baby arrives. I am very satisfied with this job and wish I had found it sooner!

Miracles Happen

No, the baby has not come yet. But! My mother was sent home from her deployment early! She arrived at the Idaho Falls airport Friday night and she is here! So now the stage is completely set! My mother has begun working on ways to get Sydney to come. I have walked a lot in the last few days and my mother has been actively looking for natural ways to induce labor. I hope something works soon!

A Big Thank You! to my family: My mom, my dad, my sister, and my mother-in-law for coming out to help with the baby and with my pre-labor nerves! It has been so nice getting so much help around the house and receiving so much special attention. Thank you!

Wishing and Hoping and Praying....

So, I went to the doctor today and Sydney still looks nowhere near ready to come out. I'm not dilated at all and Sydney's head is not far enough down either. So, my doctor had me schedule my 41 weeks appointment! Isn't that so ominous! I don't mind being a few days late but a whole week late??!!! We'll see.

My mother was deployed to Texas to help with the hurricane relief. She is a nurse practitioner and so she is seeing people and mostly refilling prescriptions. My Dad and little sister, Tessa, arrived in Rexburg yesterday, Tuesday, and will be staying with me until next Friday so it's nice to have some family to keep me company while I wait. There is a slight possibility that my mom may be able to come up next week; we can only pray!

Brian's mom, Theresa, is also coming up! She was originally going to come up in mid-October but changed her plans when she heard my mother was unable to come up. It's nice to have so much support and we are now just waiting for the star of the show to make her appearance!

Thank you mysterious giver!

So, I was looking around Amazon.com and I found out that Brian and I had money in our account. I have no idea how it got there. Maybe someone returned a gift? Or a mysterious benefactor? But we definitely appreciate it!
Is it wrong for us to use the money before we know where it came from? Maybe it is a system glitch? What do you think?

Rexburg Unplugged

Brian and I joined the Rexburg Chamber of Commerce! So, we got to set up a booth at the community event called Rexburg Unplugged. It was just a place for businesses to give out swag and a place with food and music. Brian and I sold 4 games! and passed out all of our business cards! We were excited and thought it went well. We hope that all the contacts we made will result in more sales. We would like to thank our friends the Backman's for letting us borrow their tables! The less start-up fees we have the better!

37 weeks and looking big!

A side-by-side comparison of me at 19 weeks and now at 37 weeks! I look so big!

I say look because I don't really FEEL big. Only when getting out of bed. And putting on clothes. And when my shoes don't fit anymore. Only.

I have developed carpal tunnel in the last few weeks of my pregnancy. I wear wrist guards at night otherwise my hands ache when I wake up. I try to be good and wear my wrist guards when typing but I find that I do things to my word document and I have no idea what I did so I can't reverse it! It is so annoying! It makes me feel MS Word-incompetent. Anyway, things are still looking good. The baby is head down and still has a couple more weeks to incubate. I'm not miserable so she can stay in there for all I care right now. I am getting nervous about the labor and delivery because I will be attempting natural birth. I wanted to try a water birth but the hospital here does not do that so that's out of the question. Wish me luck!

Eastern Idaho State Fair

So, Brian and I went to the Eastern Idaho State Fair in Pocatello yesterday. I was put off by the high price to park and get in (spent $14 before we had even seen anything). But it was very fun! I enjoyed the free petting zoo, the science center, the art exhibits, the food and just the atmosphere. Brian and I were only there about 2 1/2 hours and I wish we could have stayed longer but I was a little tired of walking around. If we could ride carnival rides that would have been way fun but although I need the baby to turn out of the posterior position, I don't think my doctor would have been happy to know I got on a ride let alone if anyone would let me on being so obviously pregnant. Of course Brian found the hut where they had XBox games hooked up and we had to play a few songs of RockBand. But overall, it was really fun. And I think I may have escaped being sun burnt.

Another Tag

Kristin tagged me so here it is!

1. Where is your cell phone? probably in my purse, I don't know...
2. Your significant other? Brian- I thought this question was asking where is your significant other...
3. Your hair? Messy at the moment- wavy because it is permed but tangled because I don't take the time to style it.
4. Your favorite thing? Right now it is sleep!
5. Your dream last night? Sorting through baby clothes and fighting anyone who tried to grab what I wanted.
6. Your favorite drink? Water and then Sprite!
7. Your dream/goal? To learn all I can
8. The room you're in? Office- soon to be baby's room!
9. Your hobby? Drawing, scrapbooking and playing games
10. Your fear? Spiders and SIDS
11. Where do you want to be in 6 years? at least 3 kids and maybe done with my Master's
12. Where were you last night? At the Wanstrom's
13. What you're not? quiet
14. Muffins? Blueberry definitely
15. One of your wish list items? New kitchen table
16. Where you grew up? Shreveport, LA
17. The last thing you did? Ate breakfast
18. What are you wearing? oops, should have got dressed before writing this....
19. Your TV? mainly for video games and movies as we have no cable
20. Your pets? Tony the tortoise who is 8 years old.
21. Your computer? Dell
22. Your life? Quaint, peaceful and happy
23. Your mood? Still sleepy
24. Missing someone? No, not really
25. Your car? Toyota Corolla
26. Something you're not wearing? there's a lot, a shirt?
27. Favorite store? JCPenny
28. Your summer? hot as in I was dying
29. Your favorite color? Cerulean blue
30. When is the last time you laughed? This morning
31. Last time you cried? 2 days ago, watching Lady in the Water- sad I know.

3rd Anniversary

So, Brian and I celebrated our 3-year anniversary on August 20th. Since it was in the middle of the week, we waited until Friday night to really celebrate. We first ate out at Olive Garden in Idaho Falls and then we stayed at the Black Swan Inn in Pocatello. We stayed in the Egyptian suite. It was really nice! As you can see there was a jacuzzi bath tub, a gorgeous shower, amazing
statues and there was a big screen TV that you could watch from the lofted bed on the second story. Brian and I really enjoyed it because we haven't been in such a nice hotel room since our Honeymoon. We also stopped by a friend's, the Holts, in Chubbuck on our way back. We hadn't seen them in 4 months so that was a good visit!

I can honestly say I love Brian so much more today than I did when we were married! It has been a terrific 3 years!

A Tag

So I got tagged from Kristin to talk about myself a bit.

4 Jobs I have had:
1. Teacher for Fremont School District at the Five County Detention Center for Juveniles
2. Part-time Math teacher at BYU-Idaho (for one crazy semester)
3. Title 1 Aide for South Fremont High School
4. Team Out-bound Sales at Artco selling Christmas cards.... in the middle of the summer!

4 Movies I have watched more than once:
1. All the Pixar movies lately, Finding Nemo, Incredibles, etc.
2. V for Vendetta
3. Star Wars
4. Spider-Man

4 Places I have lived:
1. Arizona
2. Rexburg
3. Louisiana
4. Nevada

4 TV shows I watch:
1. Lost
2. Deal or No Deal
3. Are you smarter than a 5h grader?
4. What not to wear ( All of these shows I watched when I had cable)

4 Places I have been:
1. Disney Land!
2. Berlin, Germany - I was born there
3. Washington, D.C.
4. Birmingham, AL

4 People who text me regularly:
1. Brian (my husband)
2. Verizon Wireless (hahaha)
3. nobody
4. nobody but that's okay, I don;t have a text-messaging plan so it would cost me too much.

4 of my favorite foods:
1. Shrimp
2. Chocolate
3. Cheese
4. Bread

4 Places I would like to visit:
1. China
2. Ireland
3. Japan
4. Disney World

4 Things I am looking forward to in the coming year:
1. My new baby!
2. Brian getting a real job with great pay! (Our definition of great will probably change)
3. Seeing if our business will pick up
4. The holidays

4 Friends I am tagging:
1. Ashley
2. Christina
3. Amy
4. Kymry

Promoting the Business

So, Brian and I made arrangements with Broulim's to set up our "shop" outside their doors and see if we could sell some of our games. All we got to show for it so far are some sunburns. But we did talk to several people that seemed interested and we were able to pass out a lot of our business cards so maybe this was mainly good advertisement. We shall see.

Friends Over

So our friends Amy and Morgan Walker spent the night at our place on Friday night. It was the first time EVER that Brian and I have had friends stay the night so we were more than happy to accommodate them. We wish they could have stayed longer but they had to get back to Twin Falls the next day and we had our business to promote on Saturday.

Thanks for staying with us! We hope to see you again soon!

Brian's cellphone mishap

Well, I realized I forgot to tell this crazy story about Brian's cellphone.
I felt a timeline would work best here so you could follow along better.

Friday, July 25th- That evening, Brian realizes he cannot find his cellphone. He believes he left it at work.
Saturday, July 26th- Brian goes into his work and looks around his office. He still cannot find his cellphone.
Sunday, July 27th- Brian calls his voicemail using my cellphone and finds that he has 3 messages from the police department wanting to speak to him about text messages he sent. I check our cellphone account online and find that, sure enough, 10 text messages were sent and 9 received all on Saturday, July 26th. Someone had found Brian's phone and used it to send obscene messages to some girl in Pocatello. Brian reported his phone as stolen and had to activate an old phone of his mom's to use.
Crazy, true story!

Tuck's Media

Brian has wanted to start a books-games-movies store called Tuck's Media for a long time. Well, the business took its first step this past week. We purchased a business license (only $10 for 1/2 the year) and we made our first purchase of 20 board games we hope to sell and make a slight profit from. We hope to entice buyers by the fact that we can't charge tax, they won't have to pay shipping, and we are selling the games for a few dollars below retail price. We created a blog for our store: http://tucksmedia.blogspot.com and we hope to set up a table in front of Broulim's one of these weekends coming up and see how we do! It might not be the most opportune time with the break between the semesters and all but we still think we could be successful. Wish us luck!