It's a boy!

On Tuesday, Travis and I went to the doctor to find out what we are having and survey says...it's a boy! We are both so incredibly happy. We were actually convinced that we were having a boy, so it's nice to finally really know. The doctor said that everything looked perfect with our little man and that he was wiggling and moving all over the place. They also said that he was measuring a little small so they may move my due date to January 28th, but we don't know yet. Maybe he'll hit a growth spurt yet! This picture is of his profile, it's so amazing that you can see all his little features. Basically, I'm just so glad to find out that I'm not really pregnant with a lizard (Trav was amazed that I was actually worried about this possibility).






This picture I am posting by popular demand (I think everyone just wants to see me get fat). Anyways, this is me at five months. As you can see, I am developing quite a belly. I can hardly fit into some of my clothes any more, but I guess that is a good thing right?!

AUVSI 2007 Competition

At the end of June Travis went to Washington D.C. as a member of BYU's AUVSI team to compete in this year's competition. No one in their right mind should know what AUVSI stands for but the competition was to have small autopiloted airplanes fly themselves around and find targets that are on the ground. The team then goes through all the video from the plane to determine what the targets are and find the GPS location of each target. As you can see from the above picture the team wasn't quite done when they got there. They were up til 4 am finishing up some of the code and flew that same morning at 7.


Ashley Ogzewalla, Michelle's old roommate, was working at the Kennedy Center in DC and came out to be our official BYU cheerleader for the event.

BYU ended up taking 3rd in the Oral presenation, 6th in the paper, 3rd in the flight mission, and 3rd overall. With much thanks going to our team cheerleader!


The team is shown here as James Hoffman, Travis (in the bowtie of course), Jared Yates, Jared Lee, Professor Tim McLain, and Brett Millar.

Equation in a Bottle

One day while bored in his Thermodynamics class Travis figured out how many milligrams of dry ice it would take to carbonate root beer. It turns out to be 357 milligrams of dry ice in case you were wondering, (as I'm sure you were). As Travis couldn't just leave that fact on paper he decided to see if it would work. It turns out you can! Though if Michelle asks it wasn't done in her kitchen despite what this picture may suggest.

Not knowing any local drug dealers who might have a fine set of scales with which to measure 357 milligrams of dry ice Travis fashioned one out of a paperclip, some dental floss, and a tylenol. Those are some mad McGyver skills! Anyway you just have to be quick to cap the root beer after the dry ice is in it and then let it sit and dissolve the carbon dioxide for a few days for the carbonation to take full effect.

...it also turns out that while 357 milligrams of dry ice will carbonate your bottle of sweet sugary goodness, 358 milligrams will transform it into a glass billowing dry ice bomb. Probably not the smartest idea I know. The leather gloves and safety glasses faired OK against this one that went off like the 4th of July as I was setting it down but I probably should have found something safer to wear than sandals! I don't know how I came out of this one unscathed but the explosion sent glass upwards of 25 feet.

Onion Baby

As many of you may already know, Travis and I are expecting our very own little rugrat come January 18th and we couldn't be more excited! I love looking at all the weekly pregnancy calenders online and for this week (I'm 17 weeks along) it said our little one is about the size of a large onion! What a great visual.
So, this is something weird I've noticed: why is it that they always use food analogies for pregnant women: babies the size of onions, shrimp, rice, etc? I think it's just a conspiracy to get us to have weird cravings.

Yosemite National Park Camping Trip

For the 24th of July, we took a little vacation down to Yosemite National Park. We met Amber, Ryan and Britton and Renee down there for the weekend to camp out and generally have a great time. This is Amber, Ryan and Me at the top of Yosemite Falls. It was slightly disappointing because there was only a tiny trickle of water for the falls, but we hiked all the way up and found this little pool created by the runoff. The water was freezing, but it was so beautiful we loved it!









Shelly and Travis in front of Half Dome Peak. This place is breathtaking. I would really like to come back every year and explore it!

























Britton, Renee, Trav, Me and Ryan around our campfire. Our campsite was located right next to this little creek that we had a blast exploring.
This trip definitely had some crazy moments, but here is one of my favorites: The last night there, we heard some noises while sitting around the campfire and Trav and Ryan, being boys, decided to go investigate. What do you know but it was a huge brown bear stealing food from our neighbors! They had a tent for sleeping and a tent for food and the bear had completely destroyed the food tent. I mean ripped it to shreds. It was slightly unnerving, but the bear just seemed like it was after quick meals--nothing he had to really fight for...but still enough to get our hearts beating a little faster.