New Address

We finally moved into our new apartment! We have no furniture except for a bed and a dish chair. But at least we have a place to sleep :P

Here's the address:

010 SW Porter St. #101
Portland, OR
97201

Week 30

I've made it into the last 3 months--and I'm beginning to feel it! I never realized how hard it is to go from sitting down to standing up with such a big belly (being pregnant motivates me to never want to be fat). And I'm only going to get bigger! Yikes! Little Eliana is moving a LOT. I'm lucky she doesn't have kicks and punches--she just squirms most of the time, almost like she is stretching. Maybe she'll be a dancer...

Merrill and I are trying to find an apartment in Portland. We were hoping to live on-campus, but we only made the waiting list. So, we have to search a big city that neither of us are familiar with. Hopefully we can find something affordable and relatively close to campus before January when Merrill starts school.

I can't wait for Tuesday to come around! I'll finally get to see friends and family, some who I haven't seen in years. And what better time to catch up and be together than during the holidays?

The Neighborhood Zoo

Merrill and I are currently house-sitting for a family in the ward for a week while they are visiting family in Arizona for Thanksgiving. And it has been so fun! These people have SO many pets! 1 fish, 2 cats, and 4 dogs. 3 parrots and 2 crazy cockatiels in the living room. They have 8 canaries, 2 parakeets, 2 parrots, and a rat in the kids room. Then there is the garage, full of mice, more rats, more parakeets, and more cockatiels they are breeding. In the backyard they have tons of rabbits and some guinea pigs, and some more parakeets. Luckily we don't have to worry about the backyard animals-they got another person to take care of them. The birds in the living room keep us busy enough. One of the parrots doesn't have clipped wings, and it flies in circles all over the room. Another parrot sounds the alarm when the flying parrot tries to make the third parrot convinces her to escape their perch and run all over the house. One of the cockatiels (Einstein) walks around the room trying over and over again to climb up our legs and perch on our shoulders. The other cockatiel always follows a short time later. We don't like them perching on our shoulders too long-if they get comfortable, they tend to poop on us. But depsite the daily feeding schedule and trying to get all of the different types of food right for each of the different animals, we have had a lot of fun.

3...2...1...BLASTOFF!

I know most of you will shop online this year--why not do it with Blastoff?! Merrill and I joined this amazing network that offers discounts and an opportunity to get paid for shopping online! Go to this site and join our network: www.ppl.blastoffnetwork.com/animo!

Rain is fallin' on my head...

Well, I'm here in Oregon with Merrill, staying at his mom's place for the next 3 months. During this time, we hope to make lots of new friends in the ward and hook up with some of Merrill's old buddies who are still hanging around. Merrill decided to apply to Oregon State yesterday, so we have another option of what to do in January. Staying in Oregon might be a better plan than moving all the way back to Utah and finding a new doctor just before the baby is born. We'll see--we don't know what the Lord has in store for us yet, and we'll find out as soon as we hear back from OSU in the next month.

Baby Bump

Here is a treat for all of you: the baby bump at week 18.

After a long week of traveling, I'm here in Bak-o for 2 weeks. And I'm going to Britney's wedding. For sure. Merrill headed up to Oregon today so he can get some work done. Wish him luck as he starts building his business! Check it out at www.getthevizion.com. Let us know if you can think of anyone who might be interested in the services or the opportunity.