November!

This year's fall has been so wonderful! The weather stayed nice for much longer than normal which meant a lot of walks for John and I. The early part of the month was spent at home playing. Lots of pillow forts and playing in the kitchen, two of John's favorite things. :) Porter's birthday is also in November! He invited us to a party at a fun center that had all these bounce houses. John thought it was great fun!

Fall is Here!

I love Fall! It is by far my favorite season of the year. This year, Utah sure showed off and gave me a beautiful Fall. The colors were spectacular and so was the weather. John and I spent a lot of time outside and going on walks. I am trying to soak it all in before the snow hits. This month was filled with a lot of good days. I love months where I look back and can think of several happy memories that were made.

One of which was going to my good friend's baby blessing. Some friends are only your friends for a time and others are life-long friends and she is definitely going to be a life long friend. She now was two cute boys and John is right between them in age.

Another friend and I took advantage of the nice weather and hiked to Stewart Falls. I had never been and it was so beautiful! There is something about nature and hiking that just does the soul good.

I love watching John discover new things. He played in the leaves for the first time and also found my flower pots. He has a love for dirt. Haha. I guess next summer I need to put in a sand box. :)

Zac ran his first marathon this month too! He ran the St. George marathon and got under 4 hours which was his goal. It is inspiring to see him set his goals and complete them. Aunt Linda and her family were so nice to let us stay with them for the weekend. It definitely made it easier than trying to get a hotel and figure out transportation.

Family Pictures

Have I mentioned my love of having a photographer in the family? Lindsey took some amazing family pictures for us and I am in love with all of them! It helps that they are in the middle of beautiful fall leaves. There are few things that make me more excited than Fall. Maybe Christmas, but Fall is a close second. Well, I will let the pictures do the talking.....

General Conference Weekend

I LOVE General Conference Weekend! It is weird how that changes as you get older. As a kid, I hated it. haha. But now it is one of my favorite weekends of the year.
This one was so fun! Lindsey came down from Idaho with her boyfriend and Marc came up from Arizona. At times, I really miss the living in the PNW but how much I get to see my family now has definitely made up for it.
We watched Saturday session at my house then on Sunday we all headed down to Elise's to watch the afternoon session and eat dinner together. I really need to get better at taking group pictures when we are all together like that. Haha.
In between Sunday sessions, we went up to Yellow Fork canyon to look at the beautiful fall colors and to take some family pictures. It is sooooo nice to have a photographer in the family. I never have to pay for family pictures! Woohoo!
I wish my whole family could all live in the same place because I miss them so much. But getting to see them as much as I do has been a huge blessing in my life. I have blessed with wonderful siblings, parents and nephews. I wouldn't trade them for the world.

Halloween 2016

October was a busy but fun month for us. We had something almost every weekend. This year for Halloween, we decided to retire our tradition "Jack and Jill after they fell down the hill" costume. We figured five years with the same costume was long enough. Haha. We themed our costumes off of the newest member of our family, John. We were Robinhood, Maid Marien and Little John. Haha. I think our costumes turned out pretty cute if I do say so myself.
At the beginning of the month, we traveled to Idaho for my cousin's wedding. It was so beautiful! And John did wonderful. I am not nearly as scared to travel home for Christmas as I was before. haha.
I officially quit my job to be a full time stay at home mom. But they invited me to the Halloween party so John and I went had such a good time seeing old co-workers and friends. It was definitely bittersweet saying goodbye to my job. It was a good a one. But being a stay at home mom has been wonderful so far! I love spending so much time with my cute baby.
Zac ran the Haunted Half the week before Halloween so John dressed up as a pumpkin (Thanks Krisitin) and we headed downtown to watch him finish the race.
After that, we went out to Daybreak to watch the Giant Pumpkin Races! It was quite hillarious. Everyone racing pumpkins was dressed up so it was pretty fun to watch. The largest pumpkin weighed over 800lbs! It is crazy to think that pumpkins grow that big!
As for actual Halloween, it was pretty low key. After a weekend full of Halloween parties and pumpkin carving, I was ready just to hang out and hand out candy to the Trick-or-Treaters. We actually had quite a few.
It is so much fun have a baby to dress up for Halloween! I think this holiday is growing on me. ;)

Left: Ward Halloween Party. Right: Work Halloween Party

Kyla's Wedding in Idaho

Picking pumpkins with my little pumpkin

The finishline at the Haunted Half. You can't see my whole sign but it says "On a scale of 1 to 10 you are a 13.1" haha. 

Hillary, Trump and the Little Mermaid battle it out at the Giant Pumpkin Races 

Our carved pumpkins. I think our carving skills get better every year. ;) 

Fifth Water Hot Springs

Zac has been working like a mad man at work lately. So to help him not get burned out, they decided to give him every other Friday off! Which is perfect because I don't work Fridays. This means a whole day of just Zac and Katelyn. BEST. THING. EVER! 

On Zac's first Friday off, Zac planned a little trip to some hot springs in Spanish Fork Canyon. I had heard of them before and actually planned to go when we in school but never got around to it. 

They were amazing! I can't believe we waited this long. You have to hike in 2.5 miles, but oh it is so worth it. The weather was perfect.  It was a cool, sunny fall day, making the hot springs feel amazing. Not only were there several pools to swim in but the colors were beautiful. We will definitely be going again. 

If you look really close in the first picture you can see me hiding in the steam. The upper pools were too steamy in the cold air to get a good picture but in my pictures of the lower pools you can see how pretty the color of the water was. Just imagine how fun these would be to snowshoe into in the winter?! Who wants to come? 

The Big One

BIG NEWS! Zac and I have decided to try IVF with ICSI. Big news, right?! I may or may not be freaking out just a little bit. I can't describe the whirlwind of emotions that I am feeling about this decision. I am excited, nervous, hopeful and scared all at the same time. I am ready to start and to see if this will finally give us the children we have longed for for so long. Our chances for success are quite high around 60% which is so much better than our current chances of like 1%. We are hoping to start our first cycle sometime between the end of October and beginning of November.

One of the homework assignments that I have to do before is watch training videos on how to give myself shots. Yikes! Just watching the video was frightening so this will be really interesting. Any friends out there that don't mind sticking me with a needle? Just kidding....but seriously.

Even though I feel good about this decision and I know that it is the right next step for us to take it is still really scary. I keep telling myself that thousands upon thousands of couples go through this each year so it shouldn't be such a big deal. But oh, it IS a big deal.

Seriously, I think the only way I am going to make it through this is because it is fall and I love fall. So if all else fails, I at least have pumpkin patches, leaves changing and caramel apple spice drinks from Starbucks to keep my mood up.

 I am still waiting for the IVF nurses to call me back so we can talk schedule. The more I learn about this process I become more and more amazed at how advanced modern medicine is! Everything about this whole procedure is all about timing.

We have started some of the pre-testing. Last week I had a sonohysterogram done and what they call a trial transfer. The sonohyterogram was to make sure there was no scar tissue or blockages and the trial transfer is pretty much the doctor Google mapping my uterus so, you know, really fun. I did not anticipate how incredibly painful it would be! Holy cow. It hurt so bad. The pain was so terrible that I lost my breakfast on the way home from the doctor's office. I have only had cramps that severe a few times in my life. It was terrible. On the bright side though, our doctor said that if he didn't know I had Endometriosis that he wouldn't have been able to tell. So YAY for minimal endo growth.

Going through this is going to take so much strength: physical, emotional and mental. I just have to remind myself that going through hard things just make you stronger and that I may really get my Christmas wish this year, a baby. :)

Yellowstone

I love exploring the world! And the United States has some of the most amazing natural beauties that the world has to offer. Last week, Zac and I took a mini vacation to Yellowstone. With us both in fairly new jobs and starting IVF soon, we didn't have a lot of time to take off. So we took a four day weekend. :) 

Zac's parents drove down from Spokane to join us and it was so much fun having them there! We rented a cabin in Island Park which is a little ways outside of West Yellowstone. It was absolutely perfect. 

Zac's and my work schedules are opposite. He works during the day and I work in the evenings and on Saturdays. Which makes it hard to spend time together. I have missed him so much! This little getaway is just what we needed. 

Yellowstone was everything that I hoped it to be. There was wildlife everywhere! We saw buffalo, elk, fox and deer. The mud pots, hot springs and geysers were incredible. I have never seen anything like them. 

I think my favorite part of the trip was swimming near the boiling river. There was an area where a hot spring flowed into a cold river, creating a natural hot tub. Because the two were mixing, depending on the currant, you would feel really hot water or really cold water. Quite the interesting sensation.