Good Bye Texas

Well its been a year since we moved to Texas and we decided to move back home to Utah since I am based in Chicago and commuting to work anyways. If I am commuting, might as well be from home right? Well, both Mindy and I have had a great experience here and will remember our time here for the rest of our lives. Maybe some day we will come back, who knows. The people here are great, I have had nothing but positive experiences with people, except for the ones that I will talk about later in this blog. The weather cant be beat except during the summer when its 110 degrees and your electricity bill is 200$ / month for a 1 bed room apartment that is only 800sq ft. (That happened to us not once, not twice, but THREE freaking months in a row.) BUT during the winter, if you even want to call it that, its just really nice. It may have got below freezing maybe 3 or 4 times during our stay here. It rains a lot during the winter, but that is fine by me. So since we are leaving, I thought I would share some of my most memorable experiences that I have had since I have been here. I am sure Mindy has had others, but I will list mine.

I will list them out, but they are not in any particular order...well except for the 1st one. Other then the 1st one, they are just in random order.

1 - Probably my most memorable experience here involves me almost getting beat up by a bunch of white trash gang bangers at a gas station.

2 - Me almost getting in a fight with some drunk guy at 3:00am since he decided he needed to sing at the top of his lungs for 15+ minutes.

3 - Going to a Fudruckers near our apartment and ordering a Pastrami burger. Needless to say, I didn't get a Pastrami burger.

4 - The night our child was conceived. (You can blame our neighbors for us getting pregnant. If they did not have such cute kids, I can guarantee that we would not have a child right now.)

5 - The birth of Asher. This probably should be number 1, but it was not nearly as funny or scary as number 1.

6 - Having my friend call me up and asking me, "Dude, are you moving to Chicago?" I said, "Of course I am not moving to Chicago!" Only to have him say, "Then why are you transferring bases to Chicago?" Turns out, I really was getting transferred to Chicago. On top of all of it, I ended up enjoying flying out of Chicago way more then I did flying out of Dallas. So in the end, It was definitely a positive mistake.

7 - Having someone join our family that I would never give up. My little puppy Buster. Who would have thought that having a dog can impact your life so much. He really has made our life much more fun and hard at the same time. Now that he is potty trained, and has been for a while, he does not require as much special needs. But he really is a sweet dog who just wants for us to be happy.

8 - Hanging out with our friends/neighbors Matt and Christina all the time. They will be sorely missed by both Mindy and myself. Of course, they are welcome to come visit us anytime, since they have free flight benefits too! I wont have anyone to talk airplanes with anymore, since both Matt and I worked for the same airline. I guess we will just have to continue to text each other, since Christina thinks that is what we do all day long.


Well, that is all that I can think of for now. If anyone shows any interest in hearing the stories on the first 3 experiences, I may type out the story. Some of them will be fairly lengthy, so that is why I didn't post them now =)

6 Days Later!

Well, It has been 6 days now since little Asher has come out and said, "Hey, how's it going down here guys?!" and things have been pretty good so far. We did have a little scare from the doctor (pediatric doctor, not at the hospital) tho. We took Asher in for a normal appointment and we had noticed that he was breathing out of his mouth kinda funky. Well Mindy had realized that baby's aren't supposed to breath out of their mouth. Since they have to use their mouth to suck down their food, they need to breath out their nose. At first the doctor said that it wasn't a problem and had given a second thought about it. They continued on their little exam (which is ridiculous for what they charge BTW) which included a weight check and turns out, Asher had lost a full pound. The doctor then started to get all worried, which worried us of course and we were not sure what was really going on. Doc then say's he lost a full pound from birth weight, that is WAY too much weight to be losing at this point in the game. So we need to have a serious chat about this. He then asks us if we were feeding him. We both were like.....uh, duh? Yeah, we want our child to starve to death and us have to listen to him scream all day and night while his little intestines eat themselves up to cope from the lack of food! Well he had been eating, but was probably not eating as much as he could have been. Due to his awkward breathing problem. So after he then realized that the problem was with his breathing, which we had told him in the beginning, he then started to scramble around even more telling the nurses to go get this, go get that. Mindy and I were still just lost as to why he was such a nervous wreck. Was our baby going into cardiac arrest in the doctors office? I don't think so, he was just chillin there laying quietly minding his own business. So the doctor had the nurses grab a feeding tube and some oxygen monitor device. He put the tube down his nose to see if either passage way was blocked or if the septum (I think?) had not fully opened on both sides. They were both opened. He hooked the oxygen tester up and of course I don't know what key numbers to look for. Well he wasn't getting enough oxygen (obviously, since he had a problem breathing, we already knew this) according to the doctor. They then dropped some Saline drops down his nostrils and some decongestant drops and had us sit around for 15 minutes in wonder at what was going on. Still, he had not told us what he thought was the problem, just that there was something wrong. Seemed like to me, he made a bigger deal out of the situation then was really warranted. Granted, Asher needed to have his nose unplugged...but, the doctor could have been calmer about the situation. At any rate, the drops unplug him and he stopped breathing out of his mouth almost immediately. So he tells us to go buy some over the counter drops from Wal Mart. Blah blah blah, tells us everything that had happened...then yeah..that was that. Left us kind of scared leaving the doctor's office. Well, that was on Saturday. We went back today and he showed up and was a champ. He weighed in at 7lb 10oz. 3oz more then he did 3 days before. So 3oz in 3 days according to the doctor is amazing! He was getting overly excited about it, it was hilarious. We were seriously at the doctor's office for no more then 23.5 minutes from the time we walked in the door to the time we walked out the door. That is including signing in, waiting for the doctor and making a return appointment. I wish I could charge that kind of money for my services! Anyways obligatory pictures.



Bust loves Asher!



Hello World!



Sleeping Asher

At Last! Finnaly Home

Well, we departed the hospital finally at noon today. There was a bunch of different people that kept coming in telling us to do this and don't do that. It almost seemed like they were trying to scare us about having a child at home. Oh, but before that, the Lactation consultant was in our room trying to show Mindy how to breast feed and whatnot, anyways, she was kind of annoying. She kept grabbing Mindy and trying to show her how to do it right and pestering the baby. He just wanted to sleep! He had just been circumcised and wasn't really interested in eating at that time. But she kept trying to make him. She finally left and after she did Mindy said "She was really annoying." Mind you, Mindy never ever says anything bad or mean about anyone. I was almost shocked! I just laughed. Anyways here are some pictures of the baby.



This was the first time Mindy held the baby.



This was about 2pm on the 1st of April after our friends had come over and seen the baby.



Me holding Asher




Leaving the Hospital all dressed up.