School, Babies, What Else?

So, my little sister, Caitie, reminded me that I have not done so well in keeping up with my New Year's Resolution. Life has been a little crazy of late. We have two big announcements.
1, my eggo is prego for the 2nd time. It is still early on, but I am not so awesome at keeping things a secret. So, the due date is most likely the end of September. We are pretty excited. Unfortunately for me, the first five months of pregnancy are filled with exhaustion and nausea from am to pm. School has been a bit difficult with this arrangement, but I am hanging on!
2, Matt was accepted to 3 PhD programs in the past 2 weeks: University of Illinois in Champagne, Purdue, and University of Washington. Hooray for my genius of a husband! We are unsure of where we are going at this point, but our top picks are Illinois and Purdue. Matt will have two brothers out in that area, so it makes sense to be close to them. Also, Illinois is ranked #2 in the nation for Civil Engineering and Purdue is #7. Sorry to brag, but I am super proud of Matt.
Big, big, scary changes coming up. We are thrilled and scared! Now we just need to get our basement finished, our house on the market, and off we go in 5 months to the big unknown.
Madden is continuing to be adorable. Poor little guy is getting tubes in his ears on Wednesday. He has had 5 ear infections in the past 4 months. Hopefully we can get him feeling better and hearing better with these tubes.
That's life for us over the past 3 weeks!

Cute Pictures

I know that the best part of blogs are the pictures! As Madden is the best looking of the fam, he is the star of our picture show today. Below are pictures of feeding ducks, Madden feeding himself applesauce (he loved making a mess!), Madden with a huge goose-egg (and no I do not drop him on his head, that would be Matt), and Madden just being the cute rascal that he is!

New Year's Resolution (belated)

I think I’m really getting the hang of this blogging thing. I always make promises to be better, but we all know those promises don’t come with a lot of follow-through. Instead of a promise, I am making a resolution to blog at least once a week. With the school craziness and everything, I often have trouble sleeping. So, instead of watching lame TV shows online I am going to try to blog instead. We’ll see if this resolution goes the way of most of my past New Year’s resolutions—basically lasting as long it takes me to forget (1 week). My other delayed New Year’s resolution is to exercise three times a week. I thought I would scale down my ambition from five days a week to three days a week. I need to be better at making achievable goals! So far, I am on day one of three for exercising. Wahoo!!

My last resolution for the year is to be nice to myself. I have had this internal struggle forever between my desire to be a good “housewife” and the desire to pursue my education and career. In my LDS world these two don’t really go together, yet I feel that I am doing what I am supposed to be doing. I am an in-betweener. I am not one who wants to ditch the idea of being a mother and homemaker, and I also don’t want to leave behind my goals for school and work. My executive decision is that I do not need to feel ashamed for either desire. I love being a mother (minus a few details—runny noses, diaper duty, and temper tantrums). I also love learning and working. So, there we are!

Enough about me. . . Let’s talk about my adorable boy. Yes, he is thirteen, almost fourteen months, and basically full of craziness and fun! He has discovered that his nostril is the perfect size for his index finger (what a child prodigy!). In my efforts to steer him from the disgustingness of nose picking, I taught him how to say and point to his nose. About fifty percent of the time his finger ends up in his nostril, but I believe we are making good headway. His other tricks lately are to spit out all food items except for bread and water, run around like a Wildman and purposely face-plant on our futon mattress/bed (we are remodeling), and shake his head “no” at every possible question he is asked. As my sister Erin said, what a charmer!

A quick update on my hubby—doing great, was just released as scoutmaster and moved up to Varsity coach. He is pleased about this, because he can now be involved in activities with a higher level of danger and injury potential. Yay! He is working, working, and working. Keeping busy with his commute and our ever-expanding home remodel project.

He has arrived!!!

Madden Thomas Hebdon was born on 11/20/08! He weighed 7 lbs. 14 oz. and he was 20 in. long. During labor we figured out why I was a week late and not progressing. After 20 hours of labor I had regressed and he still had not dropped. We opted for a C-section because he was starting to struggle. And we discovered that the cord was short and wrapped around his neck twice. So, thank heavens we made that choice and he was stubborn about dropping. He is safe, healthy, and adorable!!
It is amazing how life changes in wonderful and difficult ways with a new baby. We are running on very little sleep right now, but he is so much fun!
These are some of our favorite pictures.

Long Overdue Update

Well, I am now officially 2 days overdue. This little guy thinks he is staying in a warm hot tub for life, I guess! Matt and I have been very bad at this blogging thing, but I am going to reform once the baby arrives. Our lives will be much more exciting then. Seriously, the last five months since we last posted haven't been that eventful. We have worked, Matt has gone on campouts for Scouts, I have done school and been pregnant, and that's about it! But, I did want to post a picture of our Halloween costumes, because I think Matt looks so great in his little shorts! For work, my belly dressed up as a pumpkin. My patients were appreciative of the comic relief! Then, on Halloween Matt and I had a party. I coerced Matt into dressing up as Bleeker, so I could be Juno. For those of you who have not seen the movie, the costumes won't make much sense. Matt wasn't too pleased about the whole short shorts business, but options for a pregnant woman are extremely limited as far as costumes go! He was a good sport!

Mesa Falls & Sheep Falls

Now that we're finally done with winter up here in the permafrost region of Idaho, we can actually get out and enjoy some of the awesome stuff that is surrounding us up here. I guess one benefit to having snow till May is having a ton of water in the rivers - the waterfalls around here are awesome!!! We hit these two waterfalls (Mesa Falls, and Sheep Falls) the first couple of weekends in June.

Mesa Falls

Sheep Falls

It's A Boy!!

Well, obviously I am not the best at the blogging either! But, we have exciting news. We found out that we are having a boy. The funny thing, is that I really thought we were having a girl. So, I had a cute girl name all picked out. Now we need to think of a cute boy name. So, if anyone has suggestions, I'd love to hear them. We're leaning towards all "M" names because we're both "M's" and we're cheesy like that.
Anyway, life is continuing on, busy as usual. Matt has tons of campouts this summer with the scouts. That means lonely movie nights for me. But, he loves his calling as scout master, so I can't complain too much. School is busy for me and I am way looking forward to the break in August! Occasionally, Matt and I get to hang out and go on hikes. We're trying to do all of that fun stuff before I get too big.