A lovely sounding heartbeat

So today felt like a fairly normal day, though numerous really great things happened that collectively made it a great day.
To start, I went into work today and asked one of the midwives, Barb, to listen for heart tones on the little one we call "Emby" (like emby the embryo). We have seen the cardiac activity plenty of times on ultrasound, but we haven't been able to hear it yet. Today we wanted to either hear or see it before leaving for Iowa. I don't want to do too many ultrasounds, so we were really hoping to hear the heartbeat... and we did! What a wonderful little sound! I hear other people's babe's heartbeats all the time, but it was pretty wild hearing our own. Eric wasn't there to I taped it on my phone and sent it to him right away which he was able to hear at work.
So that was a good moment.
The other lovely things were Eric surprising me by taking the afternoon off of work to come home and help do laundry and things that I wanted to get done before leaving. He folded so many loads of clean laundry, and made my evening much easier! I still have to put away the other half and start to pack, but I don't know how I would have gotten it all done and it was such a nice surprise. He also brought me lunch at work (always wonderful!) and then we took the dogs to the park tonight while the sun peaked through and that too felt really great. We didn't take a very long walk, but a good loop for the pups and they had a lot of fun. About 6 days ago Finny was walking around putting no weight on one of his back legs and we weren't sure why, but we tried to let him rest for the week. He was putting weight on it the next day, but just to be careful we took it easy all week, though it was clear he wanted to get out. So tonight, he was a very happy boy and looked completely like himself sniffing and leaping around with great youthful energy. A woman stopped and asked about him and said she could tell he was the happy pup, he had that look about him! So that brings us to now...
I am going to go pack, and for some reason it still doesn't feel like we're about to go back home! Usually it feels very real but it snuck up on us this time, so it seems crazy that we leave tomorrow night. Hope everyone had a nice Monday!
Please send positive energy towards my friend Josh Koeppel who got hit today while riding his moped. He is doing ok luckily, hoping he feels back to normal very soon!

This time I mean it!

I'm back! This time for good I hope. I never feel the pressure to write, but I really enjoy doing it, and I love the idea of people sharing stories with each other so it bothers me when so much time goes between posts on here. I must say however, that I don't have too many interesting stories to share, but that doesn't mean that I won't at some point!

So much has changed since the last time I wrote... I was just looking at my last entry (April, yikes!) where I mentioned that there were 50 more days until the wedding. I remember looking forward to the day with so much excitement and anticipation, and we are now a few months past it looking back on a truely perfect day. I wish we could do it again, just to enjoy the feeling for a while longer, spend more time with so many friends and family in one very beautiful and happy location, and have more time to talk to everyone. It went so wonderfully, the simplicity of it, it was exactly what we wanted. We had the greatest pair of photographers, Jodi and Rodney Gehman, and they captured the day and evening in exactly the way we had hoped, we have such wonderful memories to hold on to. And a wonderful start to marriage since then! We got back to Alaska and got back to work, with a quick trip to Homer, AK in between for a weekend away together. We camped on the spit one night, went to a cabin for the second night, and just bummed around town eating good food and looking around. It felt wonderful to go somewhere different up here! We spend the majority of our free time in Anchorage, and one of our goals continues to be to get out of Anchorage a bit more. Last weekend we didn't quite get out of Anchorage, but we at least made it above it! We went with a couple of friends and the dogs up to Arctic Valley, just a 20 minute drive up a mountain where blueberries are supposed to be plentiful. Well the truth is, they're not... but it was fun and beautiful anyway. We went on the more quiet side of the hill that gets less sunlight, which is probably a good indication that it isn't as great for berry picking. Both the lack of sunlight and the fact that everyone else was on the other side were pretty good hints, but we enjoyed the quiet, and the good deal of sun that we did end up getting. What we did end up picking were crow berries, which are small and a bit tart, but I really like them. Finn had such a great time running around freely on the hill, and learning to eat berries, it was really relaxing for all of us and will probably jump start a series of small trips that we will soon take. A larger trip we'll be taking next week-- is to IOWA! We are taking off on Tuesday night and will arrive Wednesday. Our good friends Erin and Justin are getting married on the 4th, and the rest of the time will be spent with wedding celebrations, visiting family and friends, and hopefully getting some actual sun and summer weather, even if just for a few days. We are all really excited to get back. I shouldn't smash on summer here... While it hasn't been the greatest in the last few weeks, this week has finally risen to the occasion and been very beautiful and warm, filled with sunlight. Before that, we had reached the record for days of measurable rain in a row, at a whopping 30 days. So you can imagine why a little bit of summer is a very exciting thought.

When we get back from Iowa, we will be just days away from Eric's sister Bekah giving birth to their second child, and first son. We are very excited about this! Eric's parents will be up staying with us for a while, and my lovely friend Molly will be up on the 13th of the month to spend some time with us. We are hoping to come up with some fun activities while she's here both in town, and elsewhere in AK. Maybe a trip to Seward is in order.

For this weekend, we're going to the State Fair, as well as deep cleaning the house, both of which sound like VERY exciting activities to me!

Other big news that most already know... We are expecting in March! It was a big surprise but one that we are very excited about, and we're already enjoying the ride. More to come on that later as we get more to tell! We had the first visit (though at work every day is like a visit), and everything is going great. I had a very busy week at the birth center last week, with 4 in one week, and 3 right in a row. I was like the walking dead after that string of births, but it was a very special few days and a lot of fun for me. Eric got to do a bit of traveling, he flew out to Ekwok for a wetland deliniation and he enjoyed that for the most part! He also attended a class in town where he spent a few days learning about deliniations, so he has had a lot of information to share with me since then on our regular walks at the dog park (one of his class days took place there)

I think that is about it! I'll be checking in more regularly I hope, with maybe slightly exciting things to report but probably not so many changes at once! We shall see :)