le petit prince.

Cubance had their ultrasound last Friday to find out the gender of the baby and...

Drumroll, please.

I made this little announcement for their blog, where you can get more details, ultrasound pics, the works.

(I'm just a little excited, can you tell?)

too much happiness.

Reasons why this week is great:

1. Clara finds out what they're having on FRIDAY. (Boy? Girl? Alien quadruped? Who knows! It's all part of the mystery. Aren't babies FUN.)

2. We get to Skype with The Precious Young Man on Sunday. So not only do we get to talk to TPYM, we get to see him. The insanity of this preciousness blows your mind, I know.

Oh, and I believe it's also Christmas. So there's that to add to it all.

Carry on.

the precious young man strikes again.

Letter from Derek yesterday, a snippet:

"I love writing to you! You're my sister but you're also one of my best friends."

Not only is this adorable in itself since Derek isn't the most expressive person in the world (wonder where he gets that ::::cough:::::), but he used "you're" correctly.

Ain't never been prouder.

i'm going to be an aunt!

a quarter of a century.

Working in a law firm that deals mainly with divorce has given me a completely different perspective of marriage, and not necessarily a good one. One of the reasons that I was so shocked when I first started working there was because of the most awesome example of marriage that I've had my entire life--that of my parents. Honestly, seeing their example and that of both sets of grandparents has been the only thing keeping me committed to getting married someday.

I've seen what happens when a couple lets selfishness and worldly aspects of life become more important than keeping their family together through eternity. Luckily I never had to deal with that personally.

Today is my parents' 25th wedding anniversary. I want to say congratulations to them and how much I love them. They are my best friends and I am so grateful to have grown up with them as my parents. They've created a close-knit bunch of freaks, but we're each others' freaks, ya know?

I cannot wait for the day when I have my own family and can pass on all the traditions and happiness that my parents have given me. Love you, mom and dad!

(Look at my dad, all tan and Californian. And my mom, just a small town girl from Utah. Adorable!)

Grateful.

Today I am overwhelmed by a feeling of gratitude and just overall contentment. Not even the blustery, nuclear fallout-ish weather can get me down. For one thing, the semester is over. I know I still have finals to take, but the main point is I have no papers to write, nothing to read, etc. And being an English major with no assigned reading is no small feat. Though it is strange to think that this is my last winter semester at BYU before I graduate. It's bittersweet. Mostly sweet, haha. But I will definitely miss all my professors and talking to genius people about fantastic ideas. Secondly, I am going to London. I don't know if you knew this since I never talk about it, but...haha, I'm kidding. It has really started to hit me that exactly two weeks from now, I'll have been in London for 5 1/2 hours. The sad news is, the program directors aren't allowing trips outside Great Britain for our free travel, but my little group decided that Dublin will suffice. Which leads me to another aspect of my thankfulness: having met people I can chill with in London. Not only that, but actually like and have fun with. It's amazing to me how nervous I was going into this alone, and now how everything worked out in the end. Namely, I am grateful for Carlos (who was also thinking of going winter semester like me originally, so we would have ended up friends either way), Makayla, who is hilarious and diabolically sarcastic, and Kristin, who is also funny and wants to get away from the larger group and not be a tourist. All in all, it's going to be a wild trip, I'll tell you that. And mom and dad, when you read this, by "wild" I mean "safe and organized with lots of rules."

And lastly, Cara and I are extremely blessed that our contracts for spring and summer have finally sold. I was so worried about having to pay money when we wouldn't even be living here, but it's all taken care of now. We even had someone call last night wanting to come see the apartment today, but we found out early this morning that the contracts were already sold. Thanks for being on top of it and telling us earlier, MVM! It really is a blessing though, and I'm happy to have one less thing to worry about.