festivities

Well December came and went, much too fast I think, and its time for a little update. Better late than never.  Once again, there aren’t many pictures of our Holidays, we didn’t really feel like hauling the camera around with us, something I would regret  more if I was a lot skinnier and tanner right now.

Our month was a busy one, with both Rytting parents working in the music world we are pretty spoiled with all the Christmas concerts and shows we get to go to. We went to the Utah Valley Symphony Christmas Concert, they played music from Home Alone, which sounded so amazing and festive, among other great Christmas classics.  The Nutcracker, which is always a must. We also  made the trek up to the Cathedral Madeline for the Children’s Choir concert, which was once again, one of our favorites.

Not the best picture of us, we look a little too tired and chubby. Well I do, so ignore that fact and direct your eyes to Mckay’s chest hair. This is just one of the only pictures we got of us during the entire month so I felt like I should use it.

We also made a stop at the Christmas tree at Gateway. Just a little nerd fact for you ( I know this because I married one) but that tree was named “the Brightest Tree in America”.  This didn’t really make sense to us, but, since the tree was only 48 feet tall and used 90,000 lights made it have more lights per branch than any other tree in the country. Compared to the Rockefeller tree which was I think close to 100 feet tall and only used somewhere around a third that many lights, that’s pretty impressive.  also impressive is the fact that the Gateway tree used a lot less power than the most of the other trees that made the top 10.  the end.

Christmas break is also time for my favorite Jacobs tradition, the Salt Lake weekend. We always stay at Little America, which is always decorated so amazing for Christmas.  We shopped at Gateway, saw Tron, ate at Stone Ground and Tucano’s (a pregnant girls paradise), went swimming, watched the Jazz game, and finished the weekend off with the Christmas Brunch with Santa, too perfect.

This is the only good picture from that weekend. didn’t even get one of the entire family : (

With this potentially being our last Christmas break living in Utah we tried to spend as much time with each of our families as possible, and since our families live 20 minutes apart we spent a lot of time driving back and forth. Our break was full of family time, movies, games, puzzles, amazing food, relaxing, shopping. It was heaven.  We seriously got spoiled by both families this Christmas but I have to mention a couple gifts that completely thrilled us. Mckay got a bike trainer so he can ride his road bike in the house during the winter, so great. I got some new lenses for our camera, soooo excited, and just in time for the little man, I have a feeling Im going to be one of those annoying moms that takes pictures of anything and everything their baby is doing. I also got the most dreamy diaper bag:

I just have to say I have had my eye on Petunia Pickle Bottom bags since even before I was ever pregnant. Embarrassing I know, but just imagine how thrilling  it is to finally be the proud owner of one. Its beautiful.

December also meant our last month with our beloved Primary Class. We’re now teaching the 8 year olds, which is a lot less crazy, but we loved and miss our wild little class. We made them some Christmas goodies for their last day with us:

These little pretzel bites were so easy and fun to make and we were surprised that something so simple was oh so addicting. The white ones are Hershey’s Kisses, fudge filled I think, and the others are Rolo’s. You stack mini pretzels (the square window shaped ones work the best) with the chocolate and stick them in a 200 degree oven for 3 1/2 to 4 minutes pull them out and press an M & M into the top. I think I might have to make these every year.

and Melted Snowman Cookies.  I got this idea online. I  only wish I was creative enough to come up with something like this on my own.

Anyways, wonderful, busy, fun month. Next year, Christmas with the babe, I think that might easily top this year.

forgotten goods from the camera

oh goodness it’s been awhile. And I am quite sick of looking at Paul Millsap’s floating head every time I open our blog so the time for an update is past due. I have some catching up to do. Our quiet life has had its busy moments lately, especially with the holidays and I’m sad because I’ve been neglecting our camera lately, so the pictures are few and far between but just for the record:

Our Thanksgiving Break was much enjoyed, and needed. Our week was filled with mountains and mountains of food ( we literally cooked for two days straight), jazz games, family, a killer Rock Band jam session, movies (Tangled was too cute), a little Black Friday shopping, and lots of relaxing.

While I’m catching up there are some pictures from October that I just need to post. I have to pay tribute to our Halloween weekend trip to the Rytting cabin. Halloween weekend at the cabin is becoming a tradition, it was seriously a weekend straight from Heaven.

We got to play in dreamy places like Christmas Meadows, Lilly Lake, and Provo River Falls. It felt more like Christmas break than Halloween weekend, we left the cabin surrounded by snow. We did make sure to celebrate Halloween properly, with a serious pumpkin carving. Mckays pumpkin was quite a thing to behold, he carved some lobster character from Futurama, I cant remember its name. but it was amazing, I wish I had gotten a picture. I was being ambitious, and attempted to carve Mr. Harry James Potter in honor of #7, but quickly ran out of steam and ended up with a picture of Harry, taped to the front. It was a nice thought, anyway. Okay, I feel better now that October and November are taken care of.  We’ll see how I do with December updates.

Go Jazz!

The past two days have been huge for the Jazz, and so I thought I should put this up to celebrate. We love Paul Millsap! I made this in Photoshop to celebrate the Jazz wins!

no more “it” baby.

21 week ultrasound was much anticipated in the Rytting house.  Like I said we were counting down the days.  I for one was super anxious to see if baby was growing great and healthy, and I couldn’t wait to find out what we were having so I could get busy  making lots of little goodies for the babe. Going in to the appointment I was still thinking it was a girl, and it took all of 0.2 seconds for the doctor to tell us it was a BOY!  very, very clearly a boy I might add :) It was amazing seeing our little mister moving around, he was super active! Sweet baby boy also apparently has a big head…thanks to mckay, and is measuring 5 days bigger than average, sounds like we might have a big baby on our hands! The only downside to the ultrasound is the mister was facing away from us so we never got to see a profile. and because people have asked, no, I wasn’t disappointed that it wasn’t a girl, I knew I was going to be so happy with either. In fact when the doctor told us it was a boy the first thought I had was “perfect”.  Adding a little boy to our family is absolutely perfect, and we could not be happier. And if he looks anything like his papa:

he is going to be quite the little heartbreaker.

After the dr. we made a quick trip to baby gap to buy a little outfit. We met my family for dinner and showed them what we bought:

We are all so excited and grateful for our sweet boy and can’t wait for him to make his appearance in March!

We do have a name picked out, we’re pretty set on it, but I am just a little hesitant to completely commit to it. It’s just a little intimidating naming a human, especially since the name we have in mind isn’t exactly traditional.  a little background on the name, Mckay thought of it a couple years ago, and I instantly hated it. It took awhile but it slowly grew on me.  Then we had family members who heard about the name and they loved it, and it was talked about so much that it kind of just became the baby’s name. And now when I think about it it just seems like his name and I cant imagine him being called anything else.  Still, if you know me you know I am terrible at making decisions, especially one as big as this.  So while we have a name basically picked out, we wont be putting it on walls or in frames or on clothes or anything, and we’ll probably just refer to him as baby boy,  I think I’ll have to just wait and see when he gets here. but just because I always want to know what people are naming their kids I’ll fill you in on the name: Nixon Ray. Ray is set in stone, for my sweet grandpa.  We’ll see if Nixon sticks around till march, though I have a feeling it will. Whatever his name ends up being we are so excited for him to get here!

Look what Mckay let me do…

 

16 weeks

20 weeks

7 days and counting till we find out if the babe is a hims or a her!The first trimester I had a feeling baby was a boy, but I’ve changed my mind, don’t know why, but I’m thinking girl now. Honestly I have no idea really. A lady at work stared at the shape of my belly for awhile then said it was a girl. She sounded pretty confident…Mckay thinks she’s full of it. I guess we will see! and you better believe we have a few names a-waiting.

party party

Last week we had a little Halloween party for our sweet little primary class. We love these kids but they are seriously a h.a.n.d.f.u.l.l.  In an attempt to encourage a tiny bit of reverence during class starting in September we brought a “party jar” to church. Throughout September and October they got to fill their jar with candy corns depending on how good they were that day. A full jar meant a Halloween party, but lets be honest there was always going to be a party.  

We had a pizza party to be more specific. The kids got to build their own pizza’s with the few toppings they requested.  We had Vampire Blood-Sauce, Mummy Dandruff-Cheese, Monster Meat-Sausage, ham, pepperoni, Bat Eyes- Olives, and Witches Teeth-Pineapple. too cute :) And Mckay made his famous root beer aka, Witches Brew, bubbling and smoking like it was the real thing.

Eyeball Cupcakes for dessert. fun to make and easy, I thought these looked super gross, but the kids loved them.

We played a couple games. Lots of high pitched squealing, running, screaming, sword/broomstick fighting, a few tears (look at poor Emarie on the couch).  total chaos for an hour and a half.

The game ended with a little scavenger hunt. I wish I had more pictures but they literally are all blurry. They were going non stop. But the scavenger hunt was super fun. We had hidden black cats all over the house and in the yard, each cat had a name of one of the kids on it. On the back was a clue for that kid to read, leading them to the next cat. They loved this.

The hunt led them to a stash of Halloween gift bags each filled with dollar store goodies and some homemade treats. I didn’t want to fill the bags with all candy, so I got Halloween pencils, tattoos, tops, a deck of playing cards (random but fun), etc. These were all found at the dollar store or at Joanne’s for 60% off. good deal. I got the idea for these suckers on ohdeedoh and decided to try it. They were a little time consuming but pretty easy to make, all it took was tissue paper and chenille wire. Lesson learned, Suckers with the wrapper twisted at the stick (like tootsie pops) work and look better than ones that twist at the top, like blow pops.

fun fun. the kids asked on Sunday if we could have a party every month. ha! so glad they had fun but my goodness it will take us months to recover.

Well Hello October!

October is definitely one of my favorite months. We’ve kind of had a lazy/fun October this year. Here are some highlights, sorry, this might be a long one…

We have taken advantage of our nearby canyons and changing leaves and gone on a couple  of drives. These pictures are from earlier in the month. Me and Mckay decided to grab some tasty Mexican at Tarahumara and then head up the Alpine Loop with Cascade Springs being the ultimate destination. Apparently every other Utah County resident had the same idea that day. It was so crowded we decided to skip it and kept driving till we hit a “rough and narrow road”. Understatement of a lifetime. The views were amazing, but they don’t capture the sheer terror that came later in this spontaneous off-roading. It started out like this:

and we crossed a couple of these which was pretty cool, not to mention beautiful.

After these pretty delights things started getting a little treacherous. The road got really rocky, narrow and STEEP.  One side of the road just dropped straight down hundreds of feet. I seriously feared for our lives. I didn’t get pictures of this part, my hands were too busy clutching on to the arm rests. I was slightly traumatized. It was funny later, after I realized we had made it out alive. Silly Mckay, he went back later in the month and drove the road again.  With the dog in the passenger seat instead of me this time.

Highlight two of the month was a busy day for us. We got to play with both families. We went to the BYU game with my family and witnessed one of their few wins this season, it was  so fun to have Chris and JJ down, I wish I had pictures. Earlier in the day we went up to South Fork to take some Rytting family pictures! After an hour or so of awkward posing (the pictures actually turned out amazing) we took these gems…

poor Dad Rytting had just been to the eye doctor.

so funny. This was also the first time I had seen my pregnant self on camera. It was shocking.

This is my family’s dog Toby. He’s unbelievably irritating but ohhhhh so cute.  We were house sitting/ dog sitting for my parents one weekend and decided to take this little man up to Silver Lake. We were all three of us completely worn out after this outing.

Pretty views

Play Date with the Ducks

This is what happens when fishermen leave without saying goodbye.

We think he enjoyed himself.

Hi it's me McKay

So...I'm not really a regular on here, but I got on the other day and noticed that the ESPN widgets were messed up and the music playlist was old and dry. I updated the widgets and got them working again (you're welcome) and took off some of the old music. I started putting music on, and then Emily flipped and said that she wanted to be involved and that everything had to be approved by her, which meant that like two of the songs I had chosen got through. I just did what she said because it's easier than dealing with pregnancy hormones. We did realize we needed to update the music with stuff that we're actually enjoying and listening to these days. We weeded through my picks pretty quickly and added some of hers (at least one of which I despise, I just want you to know) and we'll work on rounding out a full-fledged playlist for you guys.

In other news, I got a new phone! I've been jonesing for an Android phone for about a year now, and I've been looking for one to buy since my iPhone broke in April. I finally settled on the HTC G2. I didn't love the idea of a physical keyboard but I did love everything else about the phone. So I ordered it two weeks ago and got it on the 4th. I've been using it for over a week and a half now and I love it. I'm not obsessed with the physical keyboard still, but it's not as annoying as I thought it would be. I am obsessed with the Swype virtual keyboard. It, along with Google Voice Actions, have changed my life. It has increased my laziness to another level entirely. I haven't dialed a phone number or looked up a contact since I got the phone. I just say "call Lysa Rytting mobile" and it calls my mom. Or I say "navigate to Chipotle" and a few seconds later an enchanting female voice (we're trying to decide what to call her) gives me directions to the nearest burrito heaven. I can say "SMS Calendar. Meeting with Brian on Thursday at 5" and it will automagically add a meeting with Brian on Thursday at 5 to my Google Calendar. For anyone who's considering a smartphone, I'm going to say you have to go the Android route. There is just no comparison between what an Android phone can do and what you can do with any other smartphone. When I do cool stuff with my phone, maybe I'll post it here. Or maybe not, because I'm guessing most of the people that read this couldn't care less about my total nerdiness. Here's a picture of my phone, since we haven't really done pictures lately.



Also, I'm not as fat as I look in some of those pictures. I swear.

long time, no blog.

I hate that I'm doing another post without pictures. boring. I have to admit pictures are my favorite part about reading other peoples blogs. So I understand if any of you want to skip this post, I just get this guilt when I don't post for a long time, like I'm abandoning our sweet blog or something, so I guess this post is to ease my conscience. Here are some Rytting updates, all which contribute to the lack of pictures.


{1}Life's been pretty quiet in the Rytting household the past few weeks. School is definitely back in session and Mckay has been completely engulfed by it. He is busy busy. With work, school, tutoring, etc., so we haven't had much time to go out. We did have a hot date to Costco last week. Nothing says romance like greasy jumbo slice of pizza and a churro :) but really, I'm grateful for any time I can get with my man. And Costco seriously thrills me. Senior year of school also means the GRE for Mckay. He took this test in September and I have to toot husbands horn a little and say he did a great job! I am so proud of him and all his hard work. with the GRE out of the way we are one step closer to Grad School, something that is on our minds a lot. I love thinking about where we might be living this time next year. We are so excited to move somewhere new for awhile. we're up for a little adventure. The hard part is narrowing down the schools to apply to, we tend to be somewhat indecisive humans. we have a list that's just a little too long. We would seriously have to sell a kidney to pay for all the application fees.
Whats on our list? :

MIT
Berkeley
Stanford
Princeton
Michigan
USC
Penn State
Wisconsin
John Hopkins
UW-Seattle!
UC Davis
Rochester
Cornell
Ohio State
Purdue
Oregon State


16 schools. about 6 too many. So we still have some narrowing down to do. anyone have suggestions? I'm not really sure where I'd like to go most, I think I'll be happy wherever we get in, and happy for a new experience :)


{2}baby. i must say baby likes making me feel sick-y. since we dont know what baby is yet I can't really start making things or sewing anything and it's driving me crazy! I'm dying to dig into my stash of fabric I've been saving up and start making some goodies! I'm still not feeling too great, dont have much of an appetite. I haven't really had cravings, except a one time trip to krispy kreme. so. good. I definitely havent been able to eat meat, or chicken. yuck. my meals tend to be filled with fruit, veggies, salads, soups, bread, cereal. not because I'm being trying to be ambitiously healthy, thats just what sounds good. I should be pregnant all the time because it's definitely made me eat healthier :) I haven't been able to cook really, unless you count warming up food in the microwave. poor mckay. I did attempt to make eggs one time, which brought on the throw up simply because the egg whites looked like boogers. I'm also super cool, and am usually asleep by 10. oh alright, 8. I am grateful that I've still felt okay enough to work, but I'm looking forward to feeling a lot better! hopefully sooner rather than later.


We had our 17 week appointment today and baby is a kicker! We got to hear our baby kick and it was amazing, and I cant wait to start feeling those kicks. I jokingly asked the dr. if it sounded like a girl heartbeat or a boy heartbeat and he said it sounded like a calm baby girl or a really active baby boy. that doesnt get me anywhere. but we did set our ultrasound appointment for the first week of November and I am counting down the days :) as for the bump, it kind of appeared out of nowhere a couple weeks ago, so now i look a little more pregnant rather than just chubby. but, husband feels a little weird about posting pictures of just the growing belly. thus, another reason this post is pictureless. So when we finally do something that's photo worthy and blog worthy, I'll be able to post some picture proof of our growing babe.


Other than that, love the rain this week, love the sweater weather (I finally gots me some maternity clothes) and thinking of the upcoming holidays. life is good.

baby mama.

someone's got a bun in the oven and that someone is me! hooray for the rytting family :) wonderful Mr. Stork will be circling the rytting home sometime mid march and we couldn't be happier. The word has slowly been spreading around, so we're not really sure who all knows. but baby is now 13 weeks along and we feel like its time to celebrate and let everyone in our little blogging world know.


There is so much i could write about, how much i hate food right now, how i wear my pants unbuttoned, held together by a stretchy hair tie (so attractive but i have no shame), how it takes me a week to do the laundry so by the time its folded and put away its time to do another two loads (gross), how i truly look more pudgy than pregnant. but, sweet baby is healthy as far as we can tell, and actually quite shy. at 9 weeks it wasn't wanting to pose for the camera right away, and at yesterdays appointment, it was curled up cozy deep inside my belly and proving a little tricky to find. So i am grateful. This pregnancy thing is becoming more real by the day and so i really have more excitement and joy to think about now than the somewhat frustrating and undesirable side effects of pregnancy. We feel so blessed and a little overwhelmed at times that Heavenly Father is trusting us with such a special gift. We are really excited to be parents and I am so looking forward to seeing my love be a daddy.