BIG changes!

So I've taken quite a break from blogging lately. Usually this wouldn't be such a bad thing - so the world misses out on the happenings of Harrison for a couple of months. But SO much has happened in our family lately that I could no longer deny the need for a blog update.

Lets start with the most important news first: I discovered today that Harrison has his first freckle! (Clearly, this picture is not of Harrison) His freckle is so tiny and light that it wouldn't even begin to show up in a picture, but as a very experienced wearer of freckles, I'm confident in my diagnosis.

It is adorable, but it does foreshadow his future as a redhead. May he be blessed with the cute sprinkling of freckles his Uncle Lance had as a child, and not cursed as his mother is with polka-dotted skin.

Next news: Harrison is getting a little brother!! I have been so remiss in blogging that I am pregnant, it is embarrassing! I think I put something on Facebook a couple months back, but I never got around to making it blog-official. The baby is due on November 21st, a few weeks after Harrison turns two. I haven't taken any real pregnancy shots, so here's a pic of the actual guy!

Pretty handsome profile, right? This picture is from a couple of months ago (shame on me, I know!) He hasn't had any ultrasound pictures since then turn out better than this one. For all of our sakes, I hope he hasn't already hit his peak of good looks, at 13 weeks. Poor guy! The baby (who I've already named in my head but Byron has forbidden me to call him by that name aloud, since he's not yet won over) has passed all of his tests with flying colors and is doing great!! We're more than halfway there!

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Harrison is very excited about his baby brother (at least we think he is). He touches my stomach and says "baby brother," which I absolutely love. However, I have also seen him point towards older men with potbellies and his own protruding stomach and say "baby brother," so we may not be making quite as much progress as we think we are. He may now just think "baby brother" is another way of saying "fat."

Third news: WE ARE MOVING! After living in LA for the past seven years (8+ for Byron) we are finally dragging ourselves away. Byron is transferring to Vegas with his job and he starts there on July 19th. Wow. 10 more days left in LA.

This has been a possibility for some time now and I've been enchanted with the thought of buying a house and living near his family (voluntary babysitters!!!). But now that it is actually happening it is so much more bittersweet than I expected.

I moved to LA seven years ago, a fresh-faced 22 year old moving to a big city alone, about to start graduate school. Since I've lived in LA, I've made so many awesome friends, met/dated/broke up with my future-husband, finished grad school, dated/married my husband, worked in my field for years, got my professional license, had a beautiful baby and watched him grow into a toddler and now am on my way to having our second baby. Many of my biggest moments in life have happened while I've been living in LA, and it is much harder to leave than I expected. We are going to miss our friends and our home so much! Of course, by "home" I'm speaking figuratively, since we will not miss apartment living, but we will miss the beautiful weather, knowing all of the best places to eat, bumping into friends in random places and the familiarity and comfort of living somewhere for so long.

I just have to remind myself of the wonderful things to come. I'm sure Harrison is going to enjoy all of the swimming to survive the hot summers (still not sure how I'M going to survive them...)

We had a trial run this weekend, and I think it was a success!

We are going to love living by Byron's family. Harrison LOVES his grandparents, aunts and uncles and is never happier than when he is playing with his cousins (and their dogs). Harrison has six cousins living in Henderson and they make him SO happy!

It will be SO fun to buy a house (just look how appealing my realtor/sister-in-law can make a closet look!!)

And of course I'm excited about missing out of some of LA's less appealing features, such as the traffic and the cost of living. I will not miss paying for parking at the post office, the library, the doctor's office and everywhere else you can imagine!

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Besides all of our friends, I will miss the weather in LA most of all. That may also be because my greatest fear in moving to Vegas is: the weather. I figure I'm approaching the weather with a "band-aid style" mentality. If I do it all at once, the pain will be intense but it will never be that bad again. So, I'm moving to Las Vegas in JULY, while pregnant.

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My test run this weekend confirmed that the heat was all that I had feared it would be (my in-laws may have some concerns that I am prone to hermithood, as my basic survival instinct is to stay indoors at all times when the sun is up.) In my defense, it really is HOT there. Harrison had never said the word "hot" before, but the first time I put him in his car seat after the car had been sitting outside in the sun, he put on a very sad face and said "HOT." (It was 120 degrees on the car's temp guage at that time.) After this weekend, "hot" may have moved to the top of his most-used list of words.

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Now that we are back in LA until next weekend, we are enjoying it to it's fullest!! LA welcomed me back into it's open arms with a temperature of 67 degrees and the delightful marine layer blocking the sun - I could not have been happier!! Harrison and I are taking advantage of wearing pants (and maybe even sweatshirts!) for the last few times until possibly October. We are playing the delicate balancing game of trying to eat all the food out of our freezer and pantry so we don't have to move it, while still hitting all of our favorite restaurants in LA one last time. It is a delicious challenge.

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We will be spending most of our time outside, enjoying the weather while simultaneously soaking and storing the vitamin D for our indoor days ahead, hitting the beach, attempting to see all of our friends one last time, trying to fit in Disneyland, and I'll be getting one last cheap LA pedicure.

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Then: Goodbye, Los Angeles. Las Vegas, here we come.

One last final note: I distinctly remember telling Byron on one of our first dates, after learning that he was from Vegas, that I would NEVER live in Las Vegas. Hmmm, life has a funny way of proving you wrong and making your husband think that he can always have his way.