swine flu

all i have to say is...

don't try this at home!

YAY

i'm excited about a number of things...the following being at the TOP of the list:

1) danny and i passed every single one of our classes!! we've had quite the semester (with work, getting through the first trimester, and soccer) and i must admit, i was ready to bribe some of our teachers...begging them to pass us. but guess what?? i didn't even need to go to those lengths! yeah. we are pretty proud of ourselves! i even managed to get a few A's and B's. YAY for passing winter semester. one step closer to graduation!

2) finding out, on may 11, whether or not we are having a boy or a girl!!

2) my floral design class, with my MOM! my mom started back up at college last year, and she is loving it! we are in the same major but have never taken a class together...so we decided now would be the perfect time. our teacher is HILARIOUS and it seems like its the only thing that will get me through spring (since i'm also taking statistics and family finance).

3) the BEAUTIFUL weather! i'm counting down the days until seven peaks opens up. YAY for cheap season passes.

4) our new callings! we never got calls in our old ward, but our new ward jumped right on it. i'm excited to get more involved and to help spread the gospel!

5) not feeling sick anymore! YAYYYY. i think i'm actually going to attempt going to the gym tomorrow. i haven't felt up to exercising in a while, but i think i'm going to try it out.

what are YOU excited about??

birthday week

even though my birthday was over three weeks ago, it's still the month of april, so i can still blog about it...right?? my husband was SO sweet to me the whole entire day (even though we were super stressed with finals/work/everything else)--and we pretty much celebrated the entire weekend. thursday (the second) i woke up to breakfast in bed which was a big box of einstein's bagels (my favorite!) and a sweet note from him. i went to work, where all the kids were especially nice to me, and then i headed up to campus to go to class. on my way i received a phone call from danny--and he had his entire seminary class sing happy birthday to me. it was so cute when they all sung "happy birthday sister mckinley". i LOVE his kids. then about an hour later, i got about 25 text messages all at the same time. for his 7th period class he wrote my number up on the board and then told them to pull out their cell phones (they were all a little hesitant because they aren't ever supposed to have their cell phones out, and they thought it was some kind of object lesson) but once they found out it was my birthday, the texts came pouring in. once again, they are awesome! i had class at 3 and then that night, danny and i went out to red robin to get my free birthday burger! (if you're not already signed up--all you have to do is go here and you'll get all hooked up!) our order ended up getting lost, and our waitress felt super bad, so she gave us a free appetizer AND a free dessert! all we had to pay for was danny's burger. what a deal! it was super good and we had a wonderful time!

after dinner we headed to my parent's where we opened gifts and laughed and laughed. my family decided to get my maternity pants (along with a few other things) and it was hilarious. they were huge, so i had to exchange them, but everyone is excited for me to get BIG. (prego pictures to come soon...i promise!)

friday (the third) was a continuation of the birthday week and after we were done with work/classes, we headed up to draper to go to the brand new temple! they only do sessions every hour, and we got there 4 minutes before the session started, but luckily we made it in time! it was incredible and absolutely gorgeous, and was a wonderful way to start out conference weekend.

then, we treated ourselves to the melting pot. best. resteraunt. ever. but so so pricey. we figured since this was our last birthday without a baby we could splurge. so we did! we had a great night, and ate SOOO much. ohhh man, the dessert plate was heavenly.


friday night we stayed at danny's sister's house in salt lake and then saturday morning we woke up and attended the saturday morning session of conference. i LOVE conference. i am so grateful for the incredible men and women who do so much for this gospel and are so willing to share their testimonies! i need to be more like that. all of the sessions were great, but there is something so special about being in the actual building as conference takes place. the spirit is so strong. it's amazing.

all in all, my birthday was fantastic! danny's birthday was eight days after mine...we'll blog about that next!

soccer games and power tumbling gyms

for those of you that know my incredible husband...you also probably know that he is incredibly accident-prone. {incredibly might even be an understatement} not only is he accident-prone, but he plays on the byu men's soccer team...not the most accident-free sport. last season, he had shoulder surgery, and about 3 sprained/broken ankles from various games. this season we were determined to have an accident-free year since this will be his last season playing with the team. he was doing SO well, and was starting in every game (they have had 3 official pre-season games so far).

april 10, his birthday, he started in their game against weber state. and 00:55 seconds into the game HE SCORED!! it was probably the coolest goal i've seen in a long time. the goalie did not see it coming at all! he was so excited--as were all of us in the stands. byu won 2-1 and i couldn't have been prouder of my boy.

our friends brittany, ryan, and kim sat by us during the game (which was so much fun) and afterwards, danny's mom treated us all to pf chang's for danny's birthday. oh it was so delicious.


{...THEN...}

april 11 came around.
danny and all of his friends had been planning for quite some time to go to the power tumbling gym in south provo. they were celebrating danny and braden's birthdays and danny was seriously so pumped. he was looking forward to it for days. i decided to stay home, since they hadn't been able to schedule the gym until 10:30 pm, {and i wasn't sure how the little bebe would like all that flipping and jumping around...} so caleb came to pick danny up and they were off. about 20 minutes after they left, i got a call from danny.
{this is how our conversation went down:}

me: hello??
danny: hi babe. how are you?
me: i'm good! how are you?
danny: good!
me: so...why are you calling me? you weren't supposed to be done until midnight. you didn't get hurt did you?
danny: {pause}...yeah.
me: oh no. how bad is it?
danny: pretty bad.
me: you feel ok?
danny: umm...i've been better. i think it might be broken.
me: i'm on my way.

turns out on his SECOND jump his ankle cracked underneath him and he was done for the night. poor guy. he had to leave his own birthday party early. we went to the E.R., but then decided against it to avoid the super hefty bills that come along with visiting that wonderful place. we decided to buy some ice and wrap it up with an ace bandange instead.

{it looked like he had a tennis ball where his ankle bone used to be}

{the following morning...major cankle}

he's doing much better now! the swelling has definitely gone down and he can walk on it (for the most part) but he won't be out on the soccer field for at least a few weeks.
good thing he made that goal!

our new crib

don't worry. we aren't that on top of things...we don't have a baby crib yet. BUT we do have a new place to live! and we LOVE love it. we officially moved in april 6, (thanks to all those who helped us...the move went amazingly smooth) but we are just now feeling mostly settled in. it took awhile to sort through everything (we didn't even think we had that much stuff...but apparently we do) and get organized but we love our new little place! we actually live in a neighborhood now (instead of right in the middle of a parking lot) and our ward seems like it will be wonderful!

{before the big move}

{our lovely refrigerator is straight from the '50s. no joke. it weighs about 500 lbs. and has ZERO storage capacity. but...we still love it.}

{the humongous sinks are a personal favorite of mine...this one especially. i feel like i'm at a water pump every time i wash my hands. love it.}


{AFTER}

some moments are just so priceless

wow. where in the world has the time gone?? life has been somewhat INSANE over the past few weeks! i realized that i never wrote about how we broke the big news to our families, so i thought i'd share some pictures to explain! i saw the cutest family trees at desert book--but they were a little pricey--so danny and i decided to just copy the idea! it ended up being quite a bit more work than we had anticipated, but it was well worth it! first we had to get magnet boards (which we finally found at lowe's) and then we took them to my grandparents to cut in half with a hack saw. not easy. from there, we covered them with paper, i drew the trees, and we got pictures of everyone in our famililes to put on little magnets.

danny was so helpful during the whole project and helped with every step! who knew he had such a creative side to him?? here he is dilligently painting mod podge on top of each picture. what a great husband i have.

the sunday before st. patrick's day we had a big family dinner at my parents house, so we decided that would be a perfect time to tell them about the grandchild they have coming in september. danny and i were SO excited to finally be telling everyone our good news, so once we all sat down at the table, danny ran out to the car and grabbed the gift. (if you can't see in this picture, the little green square under our pictures says: baby mckinley due september 30) my mom was so surprised to get a gift for st. patty's day...but the look on everyone's face was priceless once they realized what was going on. my mom was almost in tears, bekah said she was going to cry--and once mariah heard her mom say that, mariah started screaming/bawling as well. i wish i had that moment on video. it was priceless. needless to say, the whole family was/is super excited and can't wait for grandbaby #3.

all of us (minus alli) after dinner

we told danny's family that following wednesday. (we were going to wait until we celebrated danny's mom's birthday on sunday...but it was just too far away.) they were ecstatic as well and can't wait for grandbaby #4 on the mckinley side. here is the magnet board we made for his parents.

after spending so much time on the magnet boards, we wished we had made one for ourselves! maybe someday soon we'll get around to it...

Baby Bear's Birthday

This is one husband's praising birthday story of his amazing, incredible wife and how she means the world to him. This is why April is the greatest month of all of em!
On April 2nd 1988 in a barn somewhere in kentucky was born the sweetest, prettiest, kindest, cuddliest baby in the history of sweet, pretty, kind, and cuddly babies! Jessica Lynn George was 4 weeks early - so while her mom was visiting her parents in some cowboy'd up town in the middle of nowhere (sorry to anybody that is actually from kentucky), and thinking she had a good month to go... her favorite daughter (sorry alli and cami) couldn't wait any longer. If you know my Jessie she isn't the patient type. Lucky for her, gramps was a doctor and delivered her no problem.
Ok, so i might be exaggerating a bit, just a bit. im fairly positive Jessie has never been on kentucky and half of us couldn't pinpoint it on a map (dang im sorry to all from kentucky! haha). So in reality Jess was born EXACTLY on her due date in provo utah, what an angel! Ever since i knew how to wish on and blow out candles i was wishing for that angel to be mine. WOW im still not sure how i got her! she is absolutely perfect!! i don't know what jessie's wish will be this year, but ihope that she always knows how she has made my dreams and wishes come true. I LOVE YOU BABY BEAR! now the secret nickname is out, oh well. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!