Spontaneous Utah Trip

Friday we took a trip!

Chase needed a few parts for his truck. He called around to a few pick and pulls in the salt lake - ogden area and found one in Ogden that had all of the necessary parts he wanted to find. So we packed our bags! Cole was a champ the whole way down. As long as this kid has food in his belly, he's happy.

Chase called his brother to make sure we could crash there for a couple hours while he went and rolled around in the dirt and grease. April and I ended up going to some thrift stores that day. We got Sam and Cole talking to each other too. They are BFF already, I know it.

After Chase got back and cleaned up we got some dinner. Wanting to take advantage of the fact that there were two perfectly capable individuals right in front of him, Chase asked Chay and April if they would babysit Cole while he took me to a movie. I felt bad but they said everything would be alright. I mean they have 4 kids, they have to know what they are doing so if I was going to leave Cole with anyone I'm glad it was family.

Chase took me to see Man of Steal, the superman movie and it was so GOOD! Loved it. Truthfully I love all of those super hero movies. About 5 mins before the end of the movie April txted me to let me know everything was going good, he cried for a bit but Chay walked him up and down the street outside til he fell asleep. Now, I know, that this was in no way suppose to make me feel bad, it was suppose to give me peace for crying out loud but the minute I read that I burst into tears! Here was my train of thought: Did I feel bad that they had to deak with that...a little. But the tears were more for Cole. I felt bad that I had left him with people that essentially he didnt know and who essentially didnt know him. And when I say know him I mean like I know him. What he likes, what he doesnt like. What makes him happy, what makes him sad. I felt bad that he might have been uncomfortable and I'm sure he knew that I wasnt around when he needed me. Talk about guilt. I just love that little guy. My life just wouldnt be complete without him. I told Chase that we needed more. More children. hahaha. Because eventually Cole was going to grow out of this little baby stage and I am just loving it so much. There is just no way that I can only live through this once and be satisfied.

We went home straight away the next morning before Chase had to go into work. I love these little spontaneous trips.

Danielle

Things I love

In no particular order...

• I seriously CAN NOT get enough of Cole. He is just the sweetest thing I have ever seen. He is in his swing right now and I am in his rocking chair and he is just looking over straight at me and I love it. I had one of those mommy moments in church a couple weeks ago where I was holding Cole and he was looking at me. He has such sparkly eyes. The way he looked at me I could tell he knew who I was and that he loved me. 
• Chase was/is sappy. And what can I say, I love it. We brought home a few boxes from his moms this past weekend and he had a couple of journals in there. One was from when he was 8 and there werent a whole lot of entries but dang they were cute. The other one was from his teenage years. Chase sure had a lot of feelings. That one of the reasons I love Chase though. 
• Thrifting. I have grown to love thrifting. I love going to a new second hand store and checking out all the cool things people have let go. I love finding a deal. I love furniture and refinishing it. I can dig a good garage sale. Chases sisters really inspired me a lot, even though I bet they dont know it! Since Chase and I got married I have heard all about their great finds. I always just thought they got lucky...I still think they do. But I have found some good deals myself!
• DIY blogs are making me more creative and I love it! (yes I have said 'I love it' a lot but this is Things I Love, remember?) I keep going through all the possibilities for my media console and then adding more. I really want to be crazy about it because it has been a pain in my rear getting all the paint off and getting hardware off. I am glad that people decide to share their talents with other people.
• I love perfume. 
• I love Clothes.
• I love Kojak, our dog. He is a stink sometimes but he is also really entertaining and cute. So we keep him. 
• I love having the restored Gospel.
• I love my family. My grandpa calls me nearly every day he knows that Chase is working because he knows that I get lonely and I like to have people to talk to. Hes the best. 
• I love that Chase knows how to work on cars. Otherwise there is no way we would be driving a BMW right now. Who can actually afford to drive one of those things and get repairs when it breaks down and still be able to eat?
• I love makeup. I do. Its true. It is just so much fun. I love lip colors and eye shadows and learning how to apply it. Is it vain? Maybe. I still love it. 
• TJMaxx. Mygoodness. I use to hate this store. I just couldnt walk into that store and find anything with all of the different clothes they have. I grew up and got over that. Then I realized that there were some really great deals and it is easy to find them if you know where to look! How do I know? Well, its kind of like an internal radar that I have, if you believe that...haha
• My king size bed. It gives me room to spread out. 
• My friends. I can laugh, cry, vent, party and conversate with them, things never get old.
• How Chase thinks squoze is a word. I love how funny that is. 
• I love sleeping.

Danielle

I Looked Out the Window and What Did I See?

I'm so glad you asked. Well, I guess I asked. And, well, I guess I didnt look out the window I looked out the door. But you get it...

I dont know how well you can see that, but that, my friends, is a dead bird. I know what youre thinking, "Who put the dead bird on your front door?" And then I might say, "Gee I dont know. But its probably the same person who rang our doorbell a couple weeks ago and when I got to the door I didnt see anyone but on our step was a dead fish in a bag and on that bag it said 'His name is Brad take good care of him.'" I might say that.

Am I creeped out. Ehh, a little. Could it just be kids in the neighborhood. Yes. Am I still paranoid? For sure.

Thinking about this made me think of Antione Dodson. Enjoy this little snippet.

Also my baby is really cute you should look at him as well :D

Danielle

Some Recent Inspirations...

Soooooo this post was suppose to go up yesterday. But on account of a combination of apparently me not pressing post and blogger not saving my post here we are...

I love pinterest. Who doesn't, really? I stumbled across a few blogs on pinterest one day and have been on a DIY kick for a good while now. The first blog I found that I now follow religiously is Vintage Revivals. I could not be more in love with this girl! Her name is Mandi and she is LDS wouldn't you know : ) One of her more recent posts is about overcoming all of your excuses of why you can do your own DIY. My current project is kind of a challenge so it was exactly what I needed to hear.

Ever since Chase's cousin, Monica, gave us this super awesome, solid-wood, claw-foot table I have been dying to refinish it. I dont have a picture of the whole table but just imagine the whole thing this oak color. Kinda boring, huh? My idea for refinishing it was this: dark walnut on the tabletop and on the chair seats and the rest would be white. I love white! Its so clean and crisp. Love it.

 Every time I thought about it I got nervous. Can I do this? What if it looks like road kill when I'm done? One day I finally decided to stop being such a chicken and dive in! I started with the chairs they were small, easy to handle. We already had a small cat and mouse sander which dont really do the best job. It takes a long time mostly. Before I started on the table top I upgraded to a Makita which I found at a pawn shop for $15 dollars! Score!! It is fabulous and sanding through the finish was a breeze. When I was finished staining and painting it ended up looking like this:

Uhhhhh gorgeous right?! I'm in love. I still have a couple things I would like to do to it but I was tired of not having a table and I wanted to be able to show it off when people came over. They would be all like "Oh em gee. I have to have one of those." And then I would be all like "Gurrrrlllll That is a Danielle Clark one-of-a-kind!"

My current project is a 20 dolla make me holla craigslist find! I am pretty dang excited about it. It is going to be our new media console. If you can look past the bad paint job you will see an awesome mid-centry modern looking piece.

I am using a paint stripper called citristrip to take off the purple paint. So now it looks something like this:

The drawers were a nice surprise. I like the detail the vertical black lines add. They give you something to look at.

I cant wait to finish it. I am not totally sure exactly what I want to do with it but I promise it is going to blow your socks off. 

Danielle

The challenge

I am not the greatest blogger, lets face it. Also, my memory is also not the greatest either which is why I need to be a great blogger so I can remember things. So I can remember Coles birth story, so I can remember how I made my kitchen table super awesome (I refinished it), and so I can remember all of the super great things chase says cause they are funny.

So yesterday upon leaving the clark/ramsey family reunion Tiff challenged me to blog once a day every day.  And I'm not gonna lose even though we haven't even actually set a wager so, in the words of Barney Stinson, challenge accepted! 

Cole is recovering from the reunion today he woke up at 630. Fell asleep from 8-9. Fell back asleep again at 11:30 and here we are at 4 and hes still asleep. This could be because there were like 40 people in one house for 3 days and cole didnt have a real nap until today. Haha
We had a family baby shower while we at the reunion. Today cole has enjoied his push toy that has all the lights on the front and we used the cd player to play Tishas Bethoveen CD which he LOVED! And then he also loved it while he was sleeping.

I think its time for some cute pictures of Cole:

Bedpans and Whatnot

Ok, so obviously I am not very good at keeping you all updated on me and Chases ever exciting lives as college students/newlyweds/parents (of a dog). I always have good intentions of writing a new post and then I guess I find better things to do!

But let's face it, these days I don't have a lot of options when it comes to keeping myself entertained or wasting time on doing things that don't matter like cooking or cleaning : )

For reals, whose water breaks at 28 weeks? Who knew that could even happen? Well, me, and now me. 

So there I was, sure I was serving at Applebee's on a Friday night, making the big bucks working my pregnant belly to my advantage. Seriously, you want to make good money serving? Go buy one of those inflatable pregnant bellies that Amy Pohler wears on Baby Mama. I'm making it sound like I hustle people. I don't. I promise. But I can tell a noticeable difference in my tips now that I am pregnant.

Anyways, it was midnight and I was adjusting my tips on the computer so I could go home when I felt a gush of liquid. Yikes I thought. Immediately I was nervous that I was bleeding so I ran to the bathroom to check and was in the all clear. But by the time I got home this said liquid had my pants soaked almost to my knees. I was praying in the car on the way home that Cole was ok because I knew whatever was happening with my body wasn't suppose to happen.

When I got to the hospital in the morning they got me to a room pretty quickly and the nurse (who I now know as Kendra, one of my favs) did a pH test on the fluid I was leaking. If the paper turned blue, it was amniotic fluid...Guess who's paper turned blue. Me. I really had no idea what this meant. I thought your water broke when you were going into labor? And this stuff has to be pretty important otherwise everyone wouldn't be looking so grim. So they called Dr. Allred, who was on call that weekend, and he came in about 15 mins later (it felt like forever). I expected him to double check the nurses work to make sure what was going. The expression he wore on his face was not one that said "Hi, Danielle, happy to see you!" so at that point I knew whatever he said next I wasn't going to want to hear. "Danielle, I'm so sorry, but the rest of your pregnancy is going to very boring. You will be spending the next 6 weeks here at the hospital on bed rest." 

I was pretty shocked to say the least. There is no was that this is real, is what I was thinking. I was silent for the next few mins while Dr. Allred checked to make sure that I wasn't dilating and did an ultrasound to make sure the baby was doing ok. I wasn't in labor and baby was doing great so those were two really good signs. I have since learned that 90% of women who are admitted to the hospital for bed rest with Preterm Premature Rupture Of Membrane (PPROM) deliver within the first 48 hours. 

After my exam I was set up in my own room, had blood drawn, given my first ever shot in the bum (Geez...), hooked up to an IV with fluids to keep me hydrated, antibiotics and something called Magnesium Sulfate, and finally had a fetal heart rate monitor and a contraction belt strapped around my belly.

(Insert your best teenage angst attitude here)

OK. For real?! What is this crap?? I have been perfectly healthy all my life! and Now I have to spend the next month and a half in this stinking place!

The shot in the bum was a steroid shot (of which I had to get another one in the other cheek the following day...) that was given to me to help speed up the development of the babies lungs. The antibiotics helped to keep away infection but to also prevent me from going into labor. And the magnesium sulfate helped the baby develop faster and helped prevent me from going to labor as well. Magnesium Sulfate was terrible. It gave me hot flashes and gave me what the nurses call 'Slap Face'. It dried out the skin on my cheeks and made them really red and they burned if you touched them. They told me had I not been on antibiotics with this stuff, my whole body would have been broken out in a rash. In other words, it's pretty legit. Too legit to quit. 

The next two days were not fun at all. There were all kinds of new noises that I was suppose to sleep through at night (yeah, that didn't happen). My nurses were instructed to come and check on me every hour to get my temperature and blood pressure. And actually the first week in general was pretty miserable. I had blood drawn and an ultrasound every day. The ultrasounds were, and still are, pretty fun. I get to see my sweet little babe all the time!! 

Speaking of Cole: He is a happy little stink! He's wiggly all the time. Prefers my left side. Gets lots of hiccups. Has even decided that he will show off for dad when I tell Chase "Get over here! You gotta feel this!". Most of the time when I do that he goes into hiding. His movements aren't quiet as spastic as they use to be. I think I could have compare them to someone setting off a bunch of firecrackers in my belly. He use to be crazy! But as of late, he is running out of room, which I think is due to his large noggin! Ultrasound pictures make this kids head look huge. 

The Thursday after I got to the hospital has by far been the hardest one here. They drew blood that morning and my white blood cell count was elevated to a 19. (14-15 is normal). This worried Dr. Evans (I have two Dr.s Allred and Evans and they trade weeks at the hospital and the women's clinic) so he ordered two ultrasounds for me that day and for my blood to be drawn 2 more times. My white blood cell count was going to down, but unfortunately so did my fluid levels. They went from a 7 in the morning to a 4.3 at 5pm. 

The average pregnant woman whose water has not broken carries around 12-14cm of amniotic fluid.

With 4cm being the lowest the Dr. Evans wanted me to have, everyone was really concerned especially Dr. Evans. Such low levels lead to me not being able to get out of bed at all. No shower, no bathroom, no nothing. Great so now I'm a 22 year old living in the hospital using a bed pan. I spent most of the night really upset. I was worried that Cole wouldn't be ok. I was worried my body wouldn't follow through on the only way that I could take care of my baby right now. Amongst knowing that I was confined to my bed for who knows how long.

So the next few days were hard and I struggled with being restless. As the days went on everything became a lot easier. You have to learn to have a sense of humor about these things otherwise you'll just end up crying all the time. Don't get me wrong, I cry, oh, I cry. (I'm pregnant, what do you expect?!) But the good days I have far outnumber my bad days where I cry, oh, I cry. Haha. 

Danielle and Cole