Baby Britton!

It's hard to believe that the day finally came and we now have a baby boy! His name is Britton Michael Cleve Goring and he weighed a whopping 8 pounds 10 ounces at birth and was 22 inches tall. I have no idea where that height came from.

Oh, I should also mention that he was over a week late. Nicole's doctor decided that we better induce her so we went in Monday night, driving through a blizzard to the hospital. When we arrived at 8:30 pm we got situated and they started Nicole on a drug to thin her cervix since she was not effaced at all and only 1 cm dilated. Through the night they continued to administer the drug and we didn't get a whole lot of sleep. Come 6:30 am they started to induce her using pitocin (an artificial hormone similar to oxytocin). She started to have mild contractions and that went on till about noon. She had only dilated to about 3 cm by then. Around noon the doctor decided to break her water sack to help along the labor. That's when contractions got really intense. It got to the point that her contractions were stacked pretty much right on top of each other with no rest time in between. She also started having back labor pains that caused all her muscles to seize up so she couldn't relax them. That's when we decided to get an epidural. Unfortunately the anesthesiologist was in with a patient having a C-section and didn't get to Nicole for over an hour. That was probably the hardest time.

By the time she got the epidural, she had progressed to about 7 cm and 80% effaced. Oh, it was around 3 pm that she got the epidural. Now, in general most people progress quickly after reaching 7 cm dilated. Well, the next 2.5 cm took till 11 pm. All the time we were trying different positions and turning Nicole on to her side. We came to find out that Britton was facing posterior, which simply means when he came out his face was facing up and not down. This makes delivery more difficult because his head runs into the pubic bone and has trouble coming down. The other issue was that the last 0.5 cm of Nicole's cervix would not thin at all. Most likely due to the baby's position. So finally around 11 pm we decide to try and push past that part of cervix. Luckily after a while of pushing, he did make it past the cervix but still had the pubic bone to get by. But at least we now knew we would get by without a C-section.

So at 11 pm Nicole started the pushing and pushing and more pushing. Nicole pushed for about 3 hours and his head was visible but just wouldn't make it past the pubic bone. Finally, the doctor decides to use the vacuum cup to help pull him out. Finally, after 4 hours of pushing, the baby came out and man was he big! No wonder he wasn't coming out.

Well, he had finally come after being in the hospital for like 30 hours. Nicole was a trooper! Here are some pictures!

Update on our lives!

So, Nicole hasn't been too proactive about updating our blog so I decided to step in and give a little update. Nicole is a whopping ONE day away from her due date. I'm starting to think that she will be a little late, though. We shall see. We just go on with our lives waiting for the tell-tale signs of labor. Needless to say, we are excited! As for what we've been doing for the last 20 or so weeks of our lives...well here are some pictures to tell. Oh and let me preface by explaining that my latest "plasma money" purchase was a new DSLR camera so I had some fun with some landscape pictures.

So this first image is of the mountains by where Nicole's doctor's office is. I used photoshop to make the panoramic picture.

These two are just up the Big Cottonwood Canyon.

I took this photo while snowboarding after a snow storm up at Brighton. Most of my free days are spent snowboarding and tutoring.

I was driving in my car coming home form tutoring and saw the sun breaking through the clouds sending spot lights on the valley. I couldn't catch the best part in time but this is the best I could get of it. I need to edit out the power lines.

Nicole had her baby shower down in Provo around the end of January. We got some needed diapers as you can gather from the diaper cake she is reaching for in this picture.

Lastly, this picture was taken just the other night. My mom requested a pregnant picture of Nicole just before she is due.

So, the next chapter of our lives is soon to begin. It's hard to believe that after 9 months Nicole will actually have the baby. You kind of just start to get used to it and think she will be pregnant forever. Lucky for her that isn't so! We will let you all know when the baby comes and we will be sure to post pictures on here.

We're having a boy!

I know this news is a little late, but we're having a boy. I am 24 weeks along and I just started feeling the baby move this past weekend. He's a pretty active little guy but not big enough to cause any pain or extreme discomfort yet. It is exciting to being able to feel him moving and to be able to pick out cute baby clothes now that we know the gender. I'm posting a pregnancy picture people have asked, but I promise I really don't look this pregnant on most days (it's the outfit).

Big News

So now that I've started to show we've decided to start making the news public...we're expecting a new addition to our family. I'm 19 weeks pregnant tomorrow and I have an ultrasound on Tuesday October 5. We'll let you all know when we find out the gender on Tuesday, but we're super excited!

Grand Tetons - Table Mountain Hike

Labor Day weekend we decided to go backpacking in the Grand Tetons with our friends Steph and Jarom.

The first day we did some short day hikes in the Grand Teton national park and set up camp in the dark that night.

We woke up to find that our campsite was overlooking a beautiful valley and a couple of rams meandered by as we cooked our oatmeal. Leaving camp we stopped along the road to gaze at a moose (a safe distance on the opposite side of the river).

Fortunately we did not have any bear encounters on the trip. The second day we drove to the west side of the Tetons and hiked to just below the tree line of Table Mountain. We set up camp for the night, built a fire, hung our packs in the trees and went to bed shortly after it started snowing. The morning of the third day we hiked to the summit of Table Mountain and took in the breath-taking view of the Tetons.

We hiked back out that day for a total of 14 miles roundtrip. The hike was beautifully adorned with wildflowers and streams all along the way with a crowning view of the Tetons at the summit.

Boise Trip

This weekend we took a trip with some of our friends from our New Zealand study abroad up to Boise to visit another friend from the group. We had a busy, fun filled weekend. Friday night we experienced summer sledding on a giant hill (more like a small mountain). Summer sleds are plastic sleds with wheels on the bottom and when you're going downhill they get going pretty fast (especially with two people on them) and the only option for breaking is your feet which can be pretty hard (and painful) when you're going fast. A few members of our group had some pretty good wipe outs. After summer sledding we watched "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" on a giant screen in the park and then ate some delicious scones at Boise's famous Merrit's Cafe.

Saturday we started the day off with a rafting trip down the Payette River. Our guide was super fun and we got more than the usual ride down the river - riding the bull, intentionally flipping our raft while spinning and doing other fun tricks our guide had us try. After rafting we did some bridge jumping and then headed over to this man-built rapid with perpetual wave. It was built for kayakers to practice their skills, but we had a ton of fun riding it with body boards. After a long day on the river with lots of sun, we decided to hit up the Boise music festival. We made it just in time to see the Backstreet Boys in concert (something I would have died to go to in the 5th grade, but on Saturday I was hoping to see some random local band instead). We ended the night with s'mores - a great end to a fantastic trip.

Update on our lives

So I haven't blogged in a while because life has been keeping us pretty busy as I'm sure you can all relate to. As part of the honors program at BYU, I've been working on a thesis since fall of last year. The honors thesis requirement involves conducting original research and writing a thesis on your research. So my research was on businesses' uses of Facebook to reach their audiences and Facebook users' perceptions of businesses' Facebook Pages. I surveyed students at BYU and in New Zealand during our study abroad. Since we got back to BYU in April, I've been analyzing the data and writing up the thesis. I submitted my final thesis the first week of June and defended it on the 21st. Thankfully I passed my defense! So I'll walk in the August graduation ceremony, and my thesis is being published right now. I also might submit it to some professional communication journals and a conference. While working on my thesis, I was also working at my old job at the McKay School of Education's PR office. It was kind of stressful, but I was able to get everything done for the honors graduation requirements, have an income, and have the flexibility to interview for various jobs so it turned out to be a real blessing.

I am now working at The School Improvement Network. We create professional development software for school teachers. PD 360, an online professional development tool, is our flagship product that used in over 3,000 schools across the United States. It's a really great product for teachers, and everyone I work with is passionate about education which is great. I am a client implementation specialist, which is basically like an account manager so I am assigned to the Tennessee region and work with schools to create a professional development plan using our product to achieve their goals. I do a lot of tracking usage and trying to figure out ways to get people to use our product more effectively which involves strategic communications and messaging. This past week was my first week, but I am really enjoying it so far. It's exciting to have a real job where I get paid vacations, holidays and benefits. I feel like a real grownup! Now for a quick update on Darren. He took classes spring term and applied for dental schools for the fall of 2011. He should start interviewing in the fall and we should find out where he's been accepted in December. He is now getting paid for the research he does at BYU and is doing that as work for the summer. His research involves muscle dystrophy, type two diabetes and the protein AMPK. Fall semester is his last semester at BYU so he is almost finished with his undergraduate degree, but has four more years of dental school ahead of him.

We bought a national park pass for the year so in our free time, mostly on the weekends, we've been trying to get to as many national parks as possible and enjoy the outdoors. Most recently we backpacked in Bryce Canyon, which was beautiful. I'll post some pictures from that trip and some hiking we did in Zion National Park the next time I update.