Our New House!

Our House Tour

baby bump

12 Weeks

15 Weeks

22 Weeks

Our House!

Stage 1- Framing for the foundation

Stage 2- Prep for the foundation

This is a side view, our house, then another house, and then an almost completed house 2 doors down.

Stage 3- Foundation Poured!!!

"How firm a foundation"!!!

Wahoo!!

Condies and Conference

Daddy Cheney in HOUSTON!

Daddy Cheney drove from Iowa to Houston to visit us for a week during our Spring break.  We LOVED having him here.  Ben and Dad played golf a few times, and even let me go to the driving range with them and share in their male bonding time.  We went to dinner with our old bishop "Bishop Cheney", who- yep you guessed it- is a far distant relative.  We love him and his family so we all went to dinner to our favorite BBQ- Rudys.
We also went to the Rodeo on Wednesday and had fun eating the food (Turkey legs, corn dogs, corn on the cob, funnel cakes, fried twinkies, and fried oatmeal cream pies)- basically all that is bad for you.  We tried to eat healthy the rest of the week to make up for it.  We had an awesome of experience of going to the temple and seeing friends from non-other than Iowa.  It was so cool to see the Stott's son go through before going on his mission.  For Christmas we got the men NBA tickets and for Ben's birthday I got him and his dad matching shirts to wear. 
We also really appreciated Dads wisdom on purchasing a home and fixing cars.  We loved having him around and I know Ben especially loved watching March Madness with his dad.  We can't wait for the Idaho reunion to see him again!

San Antonio was WICKED!

 

Our first time to San Antonio was wonderful!!!  Ben bought us tickets to see the Broadway Musical Wicked for one of my Christmas presents!  We have been looking forward to this weekend for some time.  The first thing we did when we got to San Antonio was check into our hotel and then left out the back door of the hotel and came out right on the the riverwalk.  This picture was taken the next day, but we got to see it during its busiest time of day- night time!  It was so awesome to see the crowds of all different types of people enjoying the gorgeous view and amazing weather.

 The next day it rained most of the day, but not enough to keep Texans and tourists inside.  We picked Shilo's Delicatessen (which was a few blocks from our hotel on the way to the Alamo, which was also in walking distance).  This fun old time restaurant makes it's own rootbeer and used to be an old bank.  One of the servers made friends with Ben quickly because they both are from Iowa.  She helped us a lot and told us some of the restaurants history because she said, "Us Iowans need to stick together".  We went to the Alamo, which we knew nothing about, but since Ben is a history teacher and we live in Texas, we thought it would be a perfect place for us to go.  We need to go back because there was so much to see.  Davey Crockett died here (so the story goes just to the left of this picture). 

The Majestic Theater where we saw wicked (also a block or so from our Hotel)

After the show with big smiles on our faces!!! We loved Wicked!!!! I know it looks like we wore the same outfit all day, but we really didn't.  Those are the only jackets/sweaters we brought.  We dressed up, I'm just wearing green all day (two different shirts though).  Cathryn gave me the secret that real fans wear green- so I did... all day.

Our hotel - The Marriot Courtyard (thanks Parkers for the recommendation)

Where's Waldo? Youth Activity

 Ben headed up the organization of the young men/young women youth activity this past Wednesday.  It's called "Where's Waldo", but he put some special twists on it.  The basic premise of the activity is to have members of the ward dress up so they aren't recognizable, walk around the mall and let the youth try to find them.  Ben made up a "Warrant" poster with pictures of how we all look normally.  The youth had to find us and then write down on the paper what were wearing.    The lesson was that we shouldn't judge others on their appearance. 

 I decided to go a little over the top with black lipstick, fake Tattoo sleeves and no smiling.  I walked around for about 45 minutes and still no youth spotted me, until I was standing in the chick-fil-a line and turned to my right and accidentally made eye contact with one of the youth and couldn't keep a straight face.  After I got my chick-fil-a I sat down at a table near some of the youth and they started recognizing me.  Check out the guy behind me...

Here are some of the other contestants.  Mallory in her brown wig, Anna who really is super pregnant and still she wasn't recognized in a hat, Brother Nunez who is in the bishopric and is dressed like a thug, the missionaries in street cloths and some other great participants.  I learned a lot from the activity. 

Here are some of my experiences:
1.The first person to smile at me was a lady with purple hair
2. A teenage boy said he liked my tattoos.
3. Another man said he liked my tattoos and wanted to know where I got them done.  I told him they were fake and he creeped me out by touching my arm to find out for himself.
4. The chick-fil-a guy also wanted to know about my tattoos and when I told him they were fake he told me he wanted to get some.  Luckily his boss was on my side while we tried to talk him out of ever getting tattoos.
5.  Little kids walked by me and just stared at my arms.
6.  I really wanted to go into some wholesome stores- like motherhood maternity, but felt awkward and felt like I was only accepted in clothing stores that had to do with my current fashion. 

I'm Pregnant!

Baby Cheney 7 1/2 weeks

YEAHHH!!!! This is the cause of most joy right now in our house.  We found out 3 days before Christmas, while in Iowa visiting family, that I'm pregnant.  We thought we were farther along than we really were, but we were so excited to tell family we had a hard time keeping it in for about a week.  We went to the doctor and got this awesome picture at 7 1/2 weeks.  I'm now 12 weeks- and don't have another ultrasound to show, but I do have a baby bump!  We feel so blessed and so excited to invite baby cheney into the world around August 24th.

Houston Museum of Natural Science

Saturday Ben and I went to the HMNS in houston.  A few months ago we went for the first time and got a year long membership because we knew we would want to be back.  We were right!  After spending a few hours our first visit, we barely saw a third of the museum.  This time we went through the butterfly experience (which is always there, but we hit it on a great day because the sun was shining and the butterflys were super active).  We walked through the educational part of it, and were just like two kids in a candy store.  Our favorite part was the cacoon area where we saw butterflies hatch right in front of us. 

After the butterflies, beetles, hissing cockroaches, iguanas, and crazy stick bugs- we went through the special Pirate exhibit.  There are rotating exhibits that are only there for a few months, which makes it worth it to be a member because you get a discount to get into them.  The pirate exhibit was INCREDIBLE!  I'm really not a pirate fan, but I could see Ben's face light up- so ofcourse I went along, but when we got in there... I was shocked.  This was a real pirate ship that really was discovered.  We saw all of the spainish coins, which claims to be the ONLY pirate treasure ever discovered.  The cool part at the end was learning how it was discovered and brought up to the surfice.  No pictures were allowed, but look up info on the Whydah pirate ship, and I'm sure you'll see cool stuff.

The coolest frog ever!

One of the many butterflies we saw in the Butterfly Room

I don't think you can see them, but there are tons of Butterflies flying all around- it was so awesome!

This shot took some extra work, because the camera is propped up on a rock wall.  We are lucky it worked, but oops we are blocking the view of the waterfall.  What a great adventure!

Happy 26th Birthday Benny!!

Yeah!!! We celbrated Ben's birthday by going out for Thai food, and then celebrated again on the weekend with our friends the Burches.  Luckily we bought candles ahead of time this time, so we were able to blow out more than a match.  We played Dicecapades and Settlers of Catan (congrats to Kim for beating Ben!)  I love being the same age as Ben, even if it is only for a few months :)