He's Home!

Luke got back yesterday afternoon! It's been wonderful to have him back! He's gotten to feel the baby kick a couple times too (which I think is super cool ha ha). I think he thought it was pretty neat too :)

We had my friend Joy take some pics of us this afternoon for our Christmas card that I will be getting mailed out hopefully tomorrow or Tues at the latest. Our Landlady came and looked at our leak in the bathroom today too (as well as the stinking dishwasher that's been on the fritz). Hopefully nothing else breaks or goes wrong! It would be great to have my dishwasher fixed before Christmas Eve since I'll be making dinner for 6 people that night...that's a lot of dishes to do. I only have to work 2 days this week! That is super exciting! Especially since Luke has the same days off as me too! I love it when that happens :)

Well, just wanted to post a little update and let everyone know that Luke got back safe! Hope everyone is ready for Christmas! Just 4 more days!

I'm off to bed now because it's waaay past my bedtime. Goodnight!

~Nicole

baby bump

Here's me today at 22 weeks and 4 days along! I finally have a baby bump :)


Now if only we knew what the little one was! The 28th needs to hurry up and get here already! One things for sure, it's a wiggler ha ha :) and it likes to wiggle at the most inconvenient times like when I'm trying to go to sleep. Oh well, it makes me smile every time I feel the kicks and nudges hehe.

Anyway, now I'm going to bed ha ha. Night!

~Nicole

a much awaited post...sorta

I finally took pics of the house to show you all (I'm such a slacker I know). Some pics include our Christmas decorations too :) Enjoy!

my little solar snowmen :)

the front door

the entry way hallway

view of the hallway from the living room

Luke's desk in the computer room downstairs

my desk

more of my desk and my craft corner

my desk and other office stuff

downstairs bathroom

the laundry "room"

the kitchen

a cool cupboard in the kitchen

kitchen pantry

the dinning room

the living room from on the stairs

the living room at a different angle

the stairs

pics on the wall on the stairs

the guest room

more of the guest room

the Nursery :)

the Nursery closet

the upstairs landing

the upstairs bathroom a.k.a the baby's bathroom

more of the bathroom

our bathroom

the shower/toilet area of our bathroom

our bed

our closet

WHEW! That was alot of pics! But that's our house :) I love having all this space! :) Now we just need the furniture for the Nursery...soon :) Well I need to go to bed now so goodnight all!

~Nicole

Just one more week

Luke has been on a TDY (Temp Deployment something or other..) in Ogden, UT for a language class for the last 2 weeks. I have been so lonely and bored without him here! BUT he comes home next Saturday!! I can't wait to have him back! Plus there's only 12 days till Christmas! We are going to do a Christmas Eve dinner at our place this year. And since I wanted to make this year special for my friend Joy, we are going to try to go "sledding" at one of the beaches here. Try being the key word in that sentence ha ha. She normally would be home in Michigan for the Holidays, but couldn't this year. She was sad that she couldn't go sledding on Christmas Eve with her family (it's a tradition for them) so I suggested that we try to do it here! It's not like real sledding with snow, but it's the best I could come up with for our situation. After that little adventure we will come back to our house and have some Eggnog smoothies (since it would be silly to have Hot Chocolate here)!

Basically I'm super excited because this is the first year I've done something like this. I wanted to do something special, since last year was pretty blah for us (didn't help that Luke was sick on Christmas morning). I think it will be so much fun to have dinner with some friends and spend time together! And I love helping friends feel special (and I'm pretty sure trying to go sledding here in Hawaii is considered special ha ha).

Oh, I almost forgot, we will be sending out Christmas Cards, but they will be a little late this year since I wanted to get a pic of Luke and I for them (and since he's not here with me till Saturday, that makes things a little difficult). We will hopefully get them mailed out before Christmas, but for sure before the New Year. Hope everyone is having fun decorating their homes for the Holidays! I know I always have fun decorating hehe :) Love you all! Later!

~Nicole

Getting ready for Christmas!

Just 19 days till Christmas folks! This year is definitely going to be different. For one, I had to get a tree by myself (more on that in a bit) and for another...this is our last Christmas together with no children. Crazy! I'm super excited for next year though! So many neat things will happen! And having a baby is only one of them! I hope next year is even better than this one (and it was a fairly decent year for us)! Anyway, onto the fun part (me talking about decorating ha ha)!

I went to Walmart and bought a little 3' tree yesterday and got it all decorated too! It's much smaller than last year's tree, but it's the best we could do this year since 1) it's what was left and 2) I would not have been able to carry anything bigger by myself (plus Luke won't be back from his class in Utah until the 19th...no way there are trees left by then!). Anyway, here is our tree!


I had to improvise this year and make a new tree topper since our star was WAY too heavy for this little guy! I think the bow turned out pretty cute though! I love how the tree smells! No way was I gonna buy a fake tree this year! I'd draw a picture of one and stick it on the wall before I did that ha ha! Now I just have to finish decorating the rest of the house, which won't take me very long at all. I love to decorate for Christmas! Now, if only there was snow here...then it would look and feel like Christmas. Well, I better go find some food to eat and get some chores done. Talk to you later!

~Nicole

Vacation is a beautiful thing :) (part 2)

Our next adventure was going to Utah to see my family and have Luke meet as many people from my side as possible within 15 days. We spent about 9 days with my Dad's parents (Gma and Gpa Johnston). We played lots of Mexican Train and other board games with them and went to a couple movies (the new Disney's A Christmas Carol (which was a bit scary I might add) and The Blind Side (which was AmAzInG!)). Gma and Gpa held an open house for us on the 22nd so that as many people from the Johnston side could come and meet Luke and spend some time with us. It was really great to see those that came and meet a couple people that had married into the family! I hope that we can come back and visit more often in the future.

We went up to Logan for a day and saw a few people from the Wegener clan. We went to lunch at Frederico's (the best pizza place in UT in my opinion) and we went to dinner at the Olive Garden. It was so awesome to see them and have them be able to meet Luke. Again I hope to be able to visit more often once the baby is born and such.

The last bit of our vacation was spent with my Mom and that side of the fam. my sister got engaged over the weekend before Thanksgiving so we got to meet her fiance for the first time while we were with Mom's family. He seems like a really good guy and I'm happy for them both. The only major drawback is that we won't be able to attend their wedding since it's in March which is too close to my due date :( I hate living so far away that we miss out on so many important events, but such is life.

I went with the girls to the New Moon movie on the 25th and thought it was pretty good. Much, much better than the first one that's for sure! Even though Edward gets Bella in the end, Jacob is pretty freakin hott in that movie! Almost all the women in the theater squealed when he took his shirt off ha ha.

We spent Thanksgiving at the Morton's this year (since that's where Mom and the fam go every year). It was nice seeing people I hadn't seen in years. Luke bonded with those that were into football (esp Fantasy Football) since the game was on downstairs ha ha. Mom and I went shopping on Black Friday, but we were not crazy and slept in instead of getting up at the crack of dawn. It was still pretty intense out there at 11:30 am though. We spent about 2 hrs in Old Navy alone (30 min shopping and 1 1/2 hrs in line to checkout)! After that we went to the mall which wasn't as bad followed by Walmart which was really calm. All in all I got alot of stuff for a pretty good price and I didn't have to sacrifice any sleep for it :) Luke made spaghetti for dinner that night and everyone loved it! He's so much better at cooking than I am. I'm a pretty lucky girl :)

Saturday night we went to Temple Square to see the lights since Luke has never been here and it's been YEARS since I've gone to see them. They weren't as great as I remember, but it was still neat to go see them.

Luke and I at Temple Square

The last couple days were spent doing laundry and packing. Luke spent Sunday night in his hotel since he had class early the next day. I had to get up early to go to the airport. My flights were alright as far as flights go. They were fast too. In fact, if my flight from LAX to Honolulu wasn't delayed we would have been super early (we were still early anyway though). It was so good to have gotten the chance to take this vacation! Just 2 more months and then it will be like I'm on a permanent one! And all my time will be spent preparing for our little one and then being a Mom :)

I had a doctors appointment today and got to schedule my ultrasound. It's on the 28th! Which is a ways away, but I wanted Luke to be there for it so that's when it had to be scheduled for. Hopefully the baby cooperates so that we can find out what gender it is! As long as I don't drink caffeine or sugary stuff like juice right before the appointment and stay relaxed then I think things will go just dandy. Apparently the baby is a wiggler since the doctor had some issues getting the heartbeat today. As soon as she found it the baby would move and all you would hear is this whooshing sound ha ha. But she eventually caught the heartbeat long enough. 150 bpm is how fast it's little heart is beating :) I recently (as in this last week) started noticing the "fluttering" as they call it. It feels like air bubbles in my tummy. Soon it will be kicking instead of fluttering. I can't believe that I'm 21 wks already! How time has flown! Here's a pic of me at 20 wks (on Thanksgiving).


Anyway, this past month has made me realize how important family is to me. And I wish we didn't live so far away. Missing out on all the fun things sucks alot, but someday we will live closer (I hope!). Until then we will just have to visit as often as we can. Sorry if we didn't get to see everyone while we were there! Hopefully our next trip we can! Love you all!

~Nicole

Vacation is a beautiful thing :)

Beautiful New Mexico sunset!

This past month has been so wonderful! I'll split up our trips into 2 posts though so you aren't overwhelmed with information and pictures :)

The first stop on our trip was New Mexico to see Luke's fam. We had so much fun there! We celebrated his little sister's 11th birthday while we were there, went to Carlsbad Caverns (and stopped at a couple places along the way there and back), went up to Pagosa Springs, CO so the guys could go snow boarding (and I got the most wonderful massage ever!), and got to spend lots and lots of time with the family. We went bowling, mini golfing, laser tagging and so much more! His family is a hoot when you get them all together ha ha!

Here's pics of some of our adventures while we were there:

White Sands, NM

the McDonald's in Roswell, NM
Luke & I in Carlsbad Caverns, NMLuke snowboarding at Wolf Creek in Pagosa Springs, CO

We also went to the Albuquerque Aquarium while we were there with Luke's brother and his Auntie Liz. We took mostly video there since fish don't hold still all that well ha ha. Here's a particular video that is worth sharing:

And that's pretty much all we did while we were there. It was 10 days of nonstop fun that's for sure :) I'll post what we did in UT in a different post so stay tuned! Later gator!

~Nicole

Almost time!

I'm so excited to be going on vacation on Tuesday! I just have to do some packing and finish cleaning the house before we leave on Tuesday night. We were able to get Luke's tickets (and lucky enough for him to be on the same flights as me too!) so we are good to go! We'll be in New Mexico for about 10 days and then it's off to Utah to see the fam there too! You all will finally be able to meet my wonderful hubby and get to know him better! And get to see my little baby bump too ha ha. Since I'm only 16 (almost 17) weeks along it's not much of a bump, but it's there just the same! We are having a doctor's appointment tomorrow afternoon before we leave and I'll be able to schedule my first (and probably only) ultrasound for when we get back. I'm so ready for that ultrasound! Can't wait to see the little one and know what it is! We might be lucky and see if we can get one done at a military hospital while we are home, but we don't know if that is a possibility or not. It would be awesome if it is! But if not then I will have to be patient. I can't believe I'm already in my second trimester! Time sure has flown by! Well, I better go do some chores before heading off to bed so talk to you later!

~Nicolehere's me at 16 weeks

Happy Halloween!

We didn't do much this year, just carved a pumpkin and handed out candy. Here's a couple pics of us with our pumpkin and some decorations. Hope everyone had a wonderful time tonight! Happy Halloween!

~Nicole

Let the planning begin!

I bought my plane tickets yesterday (didn't get Luke's yet because we didn't know if he would be getting a Language class out in Ogden or not..we found out today that he is) and I'm super excited to be going home!! Still haven't worked out the fine details of who we are seeing when (like when we are in Utah and such...gotta divide our time between at least 3 families if not more...oh boy). I'll be contacting people to make these plans and see what we can do. I can't wait to be home in a month! AAAAHHH! :) Well, I need to go do some things so ttyl!

~Nicole