Merry Christmas!

I hope all our friends and family find themselves happy and healthy this year and know how much we appreciate all the love and support we receive in so many ways all year long. I love this special season that we get to reflect on the Savior and the many ways we are blessed. Thank you all for helping to make 2008 such a loving and fun-filled year for the Pidcocks. I am only excited to see what next year will bring and how I can try to translate this wonderful Christmas feeling into the new year. Maybe I can actually make and keep some meaningful new year's resolutions...

Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving festivities!

So we hosted the large family Thanksgiving at our house this year and it was FANTASTIC! Thanks to everyone for all the help and fun to make the first Thanksgiving in our home so great! I think the final count was 25 when we included kids and babies?? Anyway food and fam and fun! Glad we have that unfinished basement so we could at least all sit down for the dinner!

In the spirit of the Griswald family vacation Mark wanted to have a grand premier on Thanksgiving night of our Christmas lights. So, we made everyone stand out in the cold doing the drumroll... AND as in the movie the lights did not totally cooperate... the rain earlier that morning attacked some of the lights and extension cords so we only got to see a partial show.

The whole display is working now if anyone wants to come back???

Baby bump

Yes it is there- I would say I don't know why it is already so large, but when you eat as often as I have been there really is no other explanation...

I'm a girl!

Baby Pidcock is a girl!!

So I guess some of the crazy lady pregnant dreams really are true!

**I dreamt that the doctor's office mailed me an ultrasound picture that said "I'm a girl!" In my dream I was so mad because they spoiled the fun!

Is it normal to be this freakin excited???

One week and counting- boy or girl? Boy or Girl?? BOY or GIRL???

CHRISTMAS!!!!

Ok, just a little catch up for all you die hard blog readers out there. This blog was started by me because my wife was missing for 3 or 4 days when the last Harry Potter book came out. I don't even know how many Harry Potter books are out now so it might have been the last book or the one before that; nonetheless, that is the time our blog was inspired. Since then I think I've posted 2 maybe 3 posts, so I think I would get on and tell you whats to come.

CHRISTMAS!!!! I read Ashlee's last post regarding me being over zealous about Christmas. In my defence, I just love this time of season. It's one of very few seasons when the Spirit of Christ is overwhelming with joy and gladness. Today I am putting up our Christmas lights for the first time ever. This is a momentous occasion for us. I am drawing my inspiration from Clark Grizwalds house.

I know this may be a little extreme but what a glorious sight for the eyes of those that appreciate what this season brings, joy, peace, and comfort. I know this is going to be an enourmous task to under take so, just to let you know its our first year decorating our house for Christmas. I beg that you give us a few years, and some more after Christmas clearance sales and we should be a contender with the mighty Grizwalds house.

Remeber Christmas is not about Santa but about the Lords birth and what a great gift he brought to all of us, the atonement. I know you are thinking, if I feel that way then why am I putting worldly lights all over our house. When you look at the Grizwalds house, our house or any other house with lights; think of each light as a candle of appreciation on the birthday cake celebrating the number of years the Sons and Daughters of God have had to partake of the atonement. With that in mind, we can gain a better appreciation for the patience and mercy the Lord has extended to us. This is truly "the most wounderful time of the year" We have the biggest birthday celebration coming and i want to celebrate with a bang. The sun is up so I am going to go put that candles on our cake. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Hallelujah!

I kind of thought it was a mean trick that everyone kept telling me the second trimester would be better. I guess it wasn't much comfort as I was puking (or trying not to puke because I was on a bus full of people!) Anyway, I believe you now! This is glorious! Now it is just the waiting game until the 19th! I hope baby cooperates and flashes the camera!

(So I know this has kind of turned into the Pidcock baby blog- but besides work, that is what I think about the most now! Oh well!)

Christmas already?

So the other day I am riding Trax and I hear 2 girls talking about how ridiculous it is that Christmas music is already playing on the radio. Funny to me because Mark wanted to play Christmas music in our house long before Halloween! We have been waking up to the sounds of Christmas since Nov. 1st. To me the Christmas season doesn't officially kick off until after Thanksgiving, but Mark thinks Thanksgiving is just a part of the whole Christmas season... I wonder what everyone else thinks?

I felt it!?

And I am not talking about the wonderful feeling you get when you are totally confident you made the right decision at the polls...



I am talking about the baby! Mark was totally freaked out by the whole idea, but I thought it was pretty cool. I guess only time will tell whether it was "gas" or the baby!

Pregnant!

Yes, it's true- despite our evasiveness or outright lying for the past few months (sorry if that was to you!) We are having a baby! Any doubts I may have had in the beginning are definitely gone now. I don't know for sure what finally clued me in- the snacking in bed at 2:00am? The paperclip/rubberband I now need to hold my pants together? Crying at least three different times in one day? (I think that is more than I cried in all of 2007) Or maybe it was the wonderful chance I had to experience what dry heaving is really about?

We hope the bald little screaming bundle of joy will join our family in April, and if Mark gets his wish it could even be for his birthday. If all goes according to plan we will know whether to buy pink or blue after November 26th. As for names, we do not have any frontrunners yet so stay posted. I joke about the less than pleasant symptoms, but in all actuality we are thrilled to welcome a new person into our family and soooo happy about all the excitement this will bring to our lives. And I could not ask for a better person to share this experience with. Mark has been a tremendous support and loving partner through it all- even when I have been far less than tolerable myself. If you will excuse me now those two sentences alone have set off my pesky tear ducts again...

Loved and not forgotten

So I think I may have become a blog stalker. I love looking at everyone else's blog and seeing pictures of their adorable children and such. I would like to say that not having adorable children or recent pictures of our exciting life is my excuse for not blogging, but that is exactly what it would be--an excuse. It is not like our blog was ever exciting or full of amazing pictures. I mean I just scrolled through it and I have more pictures of vegetables than my handsome husband! Anyway, we are still alive, I still love blogs, and I will think of something to post one day. In the meantime, we are alive and well. Working, playing, eating, sleeping--you know, the basics. Mark started the MBA program at the University of Phoenix which I think will be fantastic for him. He is loving his new job (and I think glad to be out of the banking industry right now- yikes!) I am loving our neighborhood and autumn and getting really excited for the holidays. Something about the cooler weather makes me want to sew quilts, read books & play with friends more- just a few of my favorite things anyway :)

Another Mystery Vegetable...

The last mystery was solved- a patty pan squash (very yummy by the way)

But now we have another one that is huge and we haven't picked it yet because I am still trying to figure out what it is...
I would kind of like to know before they all get that large...

Congratulations Mark!

Just have to congratulate my awesome hubby- he just found a new job! I am so proud and we are very excited for this new adventure in his career!

Name that Vegetable...

Any guesses?

SUmMer FUn

Can I just say how much I love summer? It is fantastic! We had a BBQ yesterday with some of the coolest friends yesterday and it was a blast- I am so glad that we all still get together even though it is no longer as simple as walking down the street or shimmying through the hole in the fence!

Notice the little one that got more naked as the afternoon progressed...

We love to steal the little cuties!Happy Birthday Jenn!

One of my new favorite things...

Isn't it interesting that the first time you do something it is so fun and exciting and then if you do it enough it can become drudgery? Well, if you can't tell already this is the first year for the Pidcacks to experiment with a green thumb--so it is extremely cool to me right now. But, I remember having to pick the vegetables in the dead of summer when I was a kid, getting sunburned and attacked by bugs so I know it will not always be my new favorite thing :)
For now I love checking out all the plants and seeing how they are doing! Our little tomato flowers!

-Ashlee

Cross country drive from NC to UT

Since we have a house now we decided to finally get the rest of my things from my parents in North Carolina. Well, that involved renting a truck and driving it all back to Utah. It worked out rather well for us though since my parents gave us everything they are not using that we can use! We had a lot of fun with my mom and dad, but didn't stay long since we had the whole drive back...

The Big Coca-Cola 500 Nascar race was happening over Memorial Day weekend- so we went to downtown Charlotte to experience "Speed Street". All the sponsors set up booths for drawings and samples and they have concerts and all kinds of fun things for the whole weekend. Mark loved all the free samples- he thought it was like trick-or-treating!
Mark and my dad also got to race changing a tire- I don't think they are quite ready to join the pit crew though!

On the way back we stopped in Nashville and saw the Grand Ole Opry,
the Parthenon- which is just in a park in Nashville. It was really cool, but kind of a random thing?

And we stayed at the Heartbreak hotel in Memphis. It was really cool to see Elvis's mansion, planes and cars.

We also got to stop in St. Louis. We had to stop and have BBQ and ice cream at a couple of places where Mark ate on his mission- it was fun hearing mission stories as we drove through some of the little towns nearby.

We also got to stop at some of the church history sites like Liberty Jail, the Independance visitor's center and winter quarters. It was a cool experience to take the tours and learn more about what the pioneers went through. It sure makes me appreciate what we have!

-Ashlee

Pictures for mom and grandma

So Grandma Sugar can't get pictures through her email so I told her I would post a couple more on the blog-->

We got a new coffee table donated from Mike & Becky...
YAY!!! furniture in our front room! Thanks Momma & Dad!
Our little flowers beds...

-Ashlee

Before and after

I have been threatened to be removed from the links list of others if we did not make a post, so I thought this might be a fun one... A few pictures of the house pre and post move-in. I do not claim to be an interior decorator, or even that great of a house keeper sometimes, but it is amazing how much fun it has been to turn this into our home. The only hard thing is that we have learned the definition of "house-poor" so camp chairs will have to do for now!

-Ashlee

We have the keys!

So it is official... We have the keys to our own home! We are so excited to move in this weekend and hopefully post some pictures soon! Stay tuned :)

Homeowners???