Our first stop on this summer's guided tour is Bountiful/Murray with the farewell addresses of my two aunts/uncles Rich and Gloria Irion and Dick and Brenda Miles. Both were called to serve as mission presidents in Tennessee and Germany respectively. It made for kind of a marathon Sunday as we were able to attend two great sacrament meetings. They both did great a job and we already miss them like I miss my Transformers lunch box (that's a lot). I was able to capture this photo of my kid brother Preston during the second sacrament meeting. Sorry broseph, but it was too good not to share:
As we were leaving we were able to sneak a shot of the Nelson side of the family. It's kind of sad to think that the whole gang wont be together for another 3 years. We sure our proud of them for their service though. Here are all the Nelson's in one spot. You might even call it the full Nelson.
Our next stop on our journey is kind of the summer's definitive destination. Once the trained pulled into double pink strip station, the rest of our summer's journey kind of drove itself. You want the story? Well, I'll tell you. Lauren and I were hoping that we would be expecting to see two pink stripes in late June. We had a very competitive wager going with Lauren's brother and sister in-law and I'll tell ya, we wanted to win that blue ribbon. I came home from a business trip on June 23, 2011 and our first stop on the way home was our trusty Wallgreen's to pick up one of these things that supposedly tells you if you are pregnant or not.
After reading the instructions a few dozen times, we came to the conclusion that yes, we are expecting a baby. We didn't even need to calculate when the due date would be, because Lauren had that figured out when she was 14 years old. Little exaggeration maybe, but for those of you that really know Lauren you will know that she frequently gets lost in the baby section at Target just to oogle over the baby shoes. I trait I later learned she picked up from her Mom. To be honest though, I love her for that. She is going to be an adorable mother, and we couldn't be happier. We did a little baby math and determined that we are expecting our baby on March 4(ish), 2012! If all goes well, the little thing will be born on February 29, 2012 which, as you may have guessed, is leap year. Nothing better than knowing I will only have to pay for a birthday once every four years. All jokes aside, we are so so so so so excited! Can't you see it on our faces?
Once we knew we pregnant for suresies, we decided that we immediately needed to celebrate. Especially before the morning sickness destroyed us both. I had another business trip the next week booked for San Francisco, so I kindly asked if we could drive instead of fly so that I could bring my beautiful wife. EY was awesome and gave us the green light. We packed up the Forester and drove to Sunshine state to have a fun vacation before Lauren's body would inevitably be conquered by a single celled organism that would grow exponentially for the next 9 months and wreck everything in it's path. That little rascal.
The first four days of our trip to the Bay Area were pretty quiet, I had to do worky things all day and had to leave my bride on her own while I had to work for the man. Lauren was able to get out and see the City (natives call San Francisco "The City") and had a grand ole time. Later, when I was able to finish work, we had a few privately guided tours by my good friend from Murray Ryan aka Clay Brown. It was great to see him and have him show us around. Our favorite part of the trip to SF was how we spent the 4th of July. Eating a few cold hot dogs with a side of garlic fries, all while watching the Giants fail to comeback to beat the Dodgers. Feast your eyes on this spectacle:
God Bless America.
2nd place goes to the awesome firework show we witnessed at Fisherman's Wharf. It was beyond incredible. Best firework show ever. They had two identical shows going on so both sides of the Wharf could catch the show. We were posistioned right where we could see them both. It was amazing to see the fireworks reflect off of the bay. It's almost like there should be a Journey song written about the lights in the City. Check out where we caught the works:
After we got home from SF we had to get ready for the next stop of our journey, the annual Hillam visit from Hong Kong. As Mama Hillam is a school teacher, she get a nice hefty break during the summer which she typically spends stateside with her lovely childrens. We were lucky enough to have her and Mikey crash with us for several weeks. It didn't take us long to realize however, that we could not keep our little baby a secret for long. What was once a cute little zygote that could only put two pink lines on a white plastic thing had morphed into a destroying embryo that sucked all the energy out of my sweet little Lauren. Mama Hillam is no fool, and would have us figured in no time. We decided we might as well break the news as soon as possible so we wouldn't have to live a lie any longer. After running through a few ideas of how to break the news, we decided we would give her a gift with some baby stuff. Really, I think this was Lauren's idea of buying some baby clothes before I could pace her. This is what we picked out:
And here is how it was received: (technical difficulties, working on it...)
I love Mikey's reaction. For some reason or another, he just never trusts Lauren. I don't quite know why...
So, we had told Mikey and Katie, but we still needed to tell the Bradford. We wanted to wait until we could tell him on Skype so we could see his face, so made sure to brief Mikey really well that under no circumstances were he to tell Dad until we could tell him in person. ish. As you may have guessed, Bradford called us in between his Sunday meetings to catch up, and yes, Mikey told him over the phone. It was ok though, we had it on speaker at least and we could hear his reaction. He is such a cute Dad and was thrilled about the news. He was pretty mad when we told him he couldn't tell his branch that his Daughter was pregnant. I guess when you are a branch president of 80 Philipino sisters, that kind of news would probably be received pretty well. Sorry, but we had to tell my family first.
My Dad's birthday is on the 24th of July. What better way to say happy birthday than to tell your old man that he can expect a grandchild from his favorite son. I know I would be pretty happy if my favorite son said he was expecting a baby. After stealing a few pictures from Will and Brooke's blog, we put together a 3 picture frame that included a picture of all my Dad's grandkids: Liam, Ben, and a sonogram of our little heart-beep (the name Mikey gave to our growing baby). Check out the reaction:
For those of you who stayed tuned to the very end of that program, you will have noticed that my Dad explained to my youngest siblings that not Lauren and I, but Will and Brooke were expecting a baby. Oops, I guess the fact that I was giving him the present and was recording his reaction didn't tip him off. I guess it was kind of confusing since Liam and Ben were in the picture as well, but seriously, c'mon Pop. Looking back, we all had a good laugh about it. Especially when Josh told Lauren that she wasn't fat, and therefore couldn't be pregnant. Thanks man. It was kind of fun trying to explain it to Gianna. She still didn't quite understand it a few weeks ago, when she looked at Lauren in all seriousness with maybe even a little bit of terror in her eyes asked "Is your baby behind your clothes?" Here is a close up of our awesome gift:
The rest of our Hillam visit was filled with a ton of great funtivities. We went to the driving range, saw Harry Potter 7 in IMAX 3D, and we watched a whole lot of Glee (thanks Mike...). Here are a few of the highlights:
What do you say we break up the summer a bit, we'll get the rest after the world digests this part.
