He's Here!!!

Matthew Michael Byram
Born 8/20/11 at 11:47 a.m.
7 lbs, 14 oz
21 inches long

Everyone is doing great, and we are loving getting to know the newest member of our family. He's got dirty blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and some seriously healthy lungs. :-) More pics and info soon!

All Kinds Of Good Things

Lots of great things have been happening around here lately. I never even mentioned that Michael finished school a couple weeks ago! What a stud. He now holds a Master's degree. Well, technically he will after he defends his thesis next week, but close enough. He thinks his new title should be Master. He wishes. ;-)
Also, last weekend was fabulous. My amazing friend Anna threw me a baby shower and it was perfect! The theme was 'ABC' and it was adorable. That girl really knows how to throw a party. She has a good amount of the pictures but here are a few that I took with my camera....

Cute invitation huh? (I crossed out her address in Photoshop for this picture because I didn't think Anna would appreciate me advertising her address to the blogging world).

The food was seriously so yummy.

A few of the guests....

Me and Anna

I am so thankful for such good friends and family here in Tennessee, Utah, Vegas, and CA that have been more than generous and have spoiled our little boy rotten already. THANK YOU EVERYONE! You are all so great.

Anyway, last weekend was also our first anniversary!! It was actually on Sunday, so we mostly celebrated on Friday and Saturday. On Friday we saw a movie with some free movie tickets we had, and on Saturday after my shower we went to a Color Me Mine type place and then out to dinner. Am I weird for loving Color Me Mine type places even though I have absolutely no artistic ability whatsoever? Probably. Anyway, we made salt and pepper shakers because I needed some anyway. We even made them lovey-dovey. ;-)

This last year has flown by. Being married to Michael has been so wonderful and so much fun, and I am looking forward to our second year together! (And an eternity after that!)

Have I mentioned yet that there are only 18 days left until my due date? That's another wonderful thing happening around here. :) I am feeling enormous, excited, and nervous. Mostly excited though. We have narrowed down our name choices to Matthew and Joshua. The middle name is Michael. Speaking of names, why is it that we already have all our girl names picked out, but boy names have been the biggest headache ever for us? Sheesh. Anyway, now that we have his name almost figured out, I would love for him to grace us with his presence any day now.... I know a lot of people go over their due date though (especially first-time moms!) so I'll try to be patient. :)

Enjoying The Moment

For the last couple of weeks, I have often found myself not really stopping to smell the roses very often. I justified it by how ridiculously hot it is outside (I pretty much don't go outside unless I'm going from point A to point B) and how it often seems like I'm the only person in the world who hasn't had her baby yet... not to mention all of the third trimester discomforts that have finally hit me full force. (I pretty much don't sleep at all, I'm in desperate need of a pedicure, and I move around like I'm 1000 years old). Also, as we've been preparing for this baby and the baby's room gets more and more stocked up with adorable baby blue items, it's really hard to appreciate the moment that I'm in right now since I just want this baby to be here already!

Well, I've decided that this needs to change. There is SO much to enjoy about NOW.... like the fact that me and Michael get wonderfully ridiculous amounts of time together for the rest of the summer. This is going to happen again....... when he retires? Yeah, it'll probably be that long. My baby shower is in two days, and our anniversary in three. Oh, and I get to pretty much do whatever I want all day, even if it's to just sit around and watch movies while my baby rolls around in my belly. It's pretty great. Life is good. I have no doubt that it'll be even better once Baby Byram makes his appearance, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy these next three weeks(ish) as well.

So, here's to enjoying the moment. I have so much to be thankful for.

And here are a couple pictures of our summer adventures. (bowling and a picnic.... yes, I braved the heat for a few minutes....)

Wimps

A few days ago, I came to a realization: me and Michael are total wimps. We LOVE scary rides at amusement parks and trying new things, but we have one major wimpy thing in common: We are not 'nature people.' Sure, I enjoyed going to Girls' Camp when I was in Young Womens, but we mostly always went places with cabins and showers. Michael went camping twice while growing up- and didn't love it. As he likes to tell people, he was raised by a woman. :-) In college, I had a fear of marrying someone who loved camping and would want to go all the time. I would so much rather camp in a hotel in the Caribbean. Well, I definitely married the perfect guy for me. Michael is just as big of a nature wimp as I am.

Earlier this week, I decided that we should finally go check out the lake that we live pretty close to. It's HOT here, and I thought it would be nice to pack a lunch, have a picnic on the sand, and then wade in the lake. Sounds nice, right? Once we got there, we saw a picnic table under the trees. Within one minute, we had seen about four HUGE spiders hanging out under the table and the flies were attacking our food like crazy. Gross! I also heard some suspicious animal noises that scared me to death. So we packed up our food and moved closer to the water. Sadly, there was no sand- only rocks. We set down our towels on a big rock and figured we could dangle our feet in the water while we ate. This time, we made it a whole two minutes before the spiders (and this time, mosquitoes) made an appearance and we chickened out yet again. We were sweaty and creeped out and decided to just leave. We didn't even go in the water- no one else was in the water and apparently there are poisonous water snakes here. Ugh! So yes, we are lame.... and incredibly wimpy. I did take one picture to prove that we at least tried to appreciate the nature around us.


We enjoyed the rest of our lunch in the comfort of our air conditioned apartment. Seriously, someone needs to take our poor little boy camping because I would love for him to actually appreciate things like that, unlike his parents. :-)

Fourth of July

We had a great time on the Fourth of July this year. It didn't start out so wonderful, but then the day got better and better. I had wanted to go to the lake because that's the next best thing to the beach, (and I grew up going to the beach on the Fourth) but by the time we got there we were told to turn around because it had already reached the maximum capacity. Bummer! So we came home and watched a few episodes of our latest favorite TV show, House. Then we headed over our friends' apartment (Brandon and Anna) for a BBQ. They are awesome! Their adorable little baby boy isn't even a month old yet and they still threw a fabulous party.

Then, some of our other new friends, Nic and Christy, hooked us up with an amazing place to watch the fireworks in downtown Nashville. Unlike almost everyone else who watched the fireworks downtown, we didn't even have to get there super early. Awesome. We went to the top of a building downtown and watched the fireworks from the balcony.

Anna, me, and Christy. We matched, so I had to take a girls picture. :)

I'm not sure where we'll be next year on the Fourth, but our Fourth of July in Nashville was definitely a good one!