Easter Weekend

Sometimes working shift work can be difficult. It's not just for frequent lack of sleep, but also the fact that we are also required to work holidays from time to time. This time, I had to work Easter weekend. I wasn't super happy about working a holiday, but I was accepting of it since I've had my fair share of holiday's off which I have been extremely grateful for. Because I would be working evening shifts all weekend, I decided to host my own Easter dinner on the Thursday before Easter weekend. We invited Nathan & Emily, and another couple that used to be in our ward, Denver & Alicia. We had a great time eating ham, scalloped potatoes, salad, and homemade cinnamon buns for dessert. Afterwards, we played games and just enjoyed each other's company. I figured if I can't be with family for Easter, I could at least make my own dinner and enjoy myself. 

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures that night but I did take a picture later on of a delicious cinnamon bun. Be jealous, everyone...

While I worked, Jared went to Airdrie for Saturday and Sunday to spend Easter with his parents and sister, Lexi. When Jared came home Sunday evening, he brought home a plate of food for me that Jared's parents were kind enough to pack-up for me. They even packed me Black Forest cake! Needless to say, I had the best dinner on Monday evening at work.

Although it wasn't what I planned, I still had a good Easter weekend. We had a calm weekend at work and I still got a delicious dinner (actually two) out of it. Hooray!

April Shenanigans

April was a pretty busy month but a good kind of busy. Although I continued to work a lot, Jared and I had lots of opportunities to spend time with friends.

On April 3rd, Jared and I went and saw Captain America: Winter Soldier with our friends Nathan and Emily in the IMAX theatre at Chinook Mall. It was pretty epic, let me tell you. With the number of people kicked off roofs, I'm surprised how many people managed to survived. Definitely a good movie.

Later that month, we went out for a Family Home Evening with some friends from our ward for Chinese Food and gelato. It was all very delicious, but the Chinese place we found ended up being pretty pricey...yikes. The gelato was definitely worth it though! I had oreo gelato on top and raspberry sorbeto on the bottom. Mouth watering...

During April, I also tried to improve my hair which ended up failing and then eventually succeeding. Because my hair had grown out, a large portion of my roots were showing. I tried to dye my hair a bright red without trying to bleach it first and it turned out terribly! I had to go to work the next morning before I got a chance to fix it so I tried covering up my hair with a big headband. The next day, however, I went back to the store and bought a darker shade of red hoping to cover up the disaster. Luckily, my hair definitely improved. Thank goodness!! I guess if you want to drastically change your hair colour, it's best to go to a salon. I've learned my lesson.

My epic hair disaster.

My hair after I re-dyed it. Thank goodness it looked a lot better!

 Other than that, I tried to occupy myself with hobbies I enjoy such as crocheting. I had a lot of purple  yarn given to me by a friend and I had no idea what to do with it besides make hats. Because I know a few people having baby girls this year and I still don't know what I'm having yet, I decided to use that yarn to make some cute baby girl hats. I gave one to my co-worker expecting in August and our upstairs neighbour and landlord, Katie, who just had an adorable baby girl.

I did my best to continue running in April. I noticed my knees and hips are becoming a bit more sore so I tried not to over-do it. I'm not sure if it's because of the pregnancy or the shoes I'm wearing, but I'm noticing my knees are giving me a hard time occasionally. This scares me since my dad has had bad joint problems, specifically in his knees and hips that he's dealt with for a long time. Here are a couple pictures of my runs this month.

Lastly, I ended the month with a youth temple trip to the temple with the Young Women and Young Men in our ward. I haven't been attending the temple as often as I'd like so it was definitely a treat to be in this holy and peaceful building again. I'm grateful for the temple and the peace and comfort it brings into my life. I know that because of the temple, I can be with my family forever! It's definitely the House of God. 

Overall, I felt like April was a pretty enjoyable and balanced month. I worked, played, and improved some of my hobbies. I'll include a couple more posts for April that I wanted to blog about individually. 

L'Arche Half Marathon

On March 22nd, Jared and I officially ran our first half marathon! Jared wasn't planning on running it, but a week before, he signed up to run with me so I would have some company and to make sure I was all right.

I'm not going to lie, it wasn't an easy run, but at the same time it wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. We had a really good pace for the first 3/4 of the run. About halfway through, however, Jared twisted his ankle in a pothole so his ankle started hurting him at about the 75% mark. My sore knees and hips were definitely starting to affect me too so we took plenty of walk breaks. We kept giving each other encouragement throughout the race which was really helpful I think. It's always nice to have someone cheering you on. When we saw the finish line, we ran as hard as we could which was not very fast but we finished! It was an amazing feeling crossing that finish line after working so hard for over two hours, and really, several months of training. It was awesome having the medals places around our necks as we finished!

When we went back to Eau Claire Market where we had started the race, they had a Stampede breakfast waiting for us which was SO nice. I had double helpings pancakes. When we had settled a bit and my uncontrollable shivering had somewhat stopped, we posted this picture on Facebook to announce Baby Rasmussen!

Overall, such a great and exciting day full of amazing accomplishments and amazing news to share with our friends! So glad I got to run with Jared (and baby)!

Second Ultrasound

Our second ultrasound was March 20th! This time, Baby Rasmussen actually looked like a little person. We could see the baby kicking and moving its legs around. Also, you could tell it is totally getting our stubborn genes because baby just did not want to cooperate with the ultrasound technician at times. According to this ultrasound and my bloodwork, baby has a very low risk of having Down Syndrome and other genetic anomalies. That's always nice to hear. According to this ultrasound, our baby's due date is October 1st! Exciting!

Month of March

Lot of fun things happened in March!

We visited my parents the second weekend of March and had a good time with them. We played games, visited, ate yummy food, and even took a drive out to Waterton. I forgot that the park isn't open during the off-season but it was still interesting to see how much snow they had! It was nuts! They had a TON of it!

After our drive to Waterton, my dad took us for an excursion to a Hutterite colony. It was pretty neat since I've never seen one before. Basically, they have everything they need in a little community. The women make meals all day while the men farm and do the business aspect. They even have their own schools where all the children learn. I must say, it's pretty impressive what they're able to accomplish all on their own.

We had a fun time with my parents but, as we always do, we had to go home and go back to work and real life again. Yuck.

Although March was full of work, I got to have some fun as well. I got a haircut and bought some new dresses and maxi-skirts that I can use all summer to lounge in or wear to church. I was pretty happy with the deals I got.  A dress, two skirts, two t-shirts, two bracelets, two necklaces, two scarves for $75?! Yes please!

St. Patrick's Day

I wasn't originally scheduled to work on St. Patty's Day, but when I got called in for overtime, I had to be festive somehow. I put on the one and only green shirt I own, put some bright green eyeshadow (I do what I want!) and had some Lucky Charms for breakfast. That was about all the St. Patrick's Day spirit I could muster.

$1.50 Slurpee Refill Day

I never realized how much I loved slurpees until, for one day only, it cost only $1.50 to fill up any glass you wanted from home at 7/11. You could literally bring a pitcher and fill it up for $1.50 if you wanted to. I grabbed one of our large theatre cups, I chose Spiderman, and hustled over to 7/11 to get my sugar rush. I'm pretty sure my co-workers were all jealous of my giant slurpee when I showed up to work that evening with a litre of awesomeness.

Arcade Day with Jason

On March 27th, Jared, his brother Jason and I headed out to Cross Iron Mills mall to play at the arcade while on the way to Airdrie for the weekend. Arcades are always fun and bring out the inner child in you. We played a racing game, a basketball shoot-out (which I won!), skeet-ball, Big Buck Hunter, and a bunch of others. We cashed in our tokens afterwards for some candy and some sheriff badges (which literally broke that day). Oh well, it was all in fun! I'm just glad I got a Ring Pop!

March was a fun month! I'll post about our half marathon and second ultrasound next.

First Ultrasound!

On February 28, Jared and I got to go to our first ultrasound of Baby Rasmussen! It was just a little thing, but you could tell it was a baby! It had a healthy heartbeat of 166 beats per minute. So cool! I was about 9 weeks along with this ultrasound.

February Running Update

I'm not going to lie, February was a pretty terrible running month for me, especially because I did so awesome in January. I guess I can blame it on feeling sick for the majority of the month, but my total number of runs for the month was only 5. So much for the hard-core training I planned to do for my half marathon in March!

One run I documented on February 20th. On this run, I stated "I didn't wanna, but I did it."