Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Happy, to YOU!

A little birthday wish to Amy from Jessica (and J & K of course too). Love ya!

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Her newest trick: Standing!

Here's a video of Jessica's newest trick: standing. She's been doing it all week and gets better and better everyday. I was excited that I finally got it on video the other day.





And here are some cute pictures of our adventures from the last few weeks. I could write a bunch of info and details about it all, but for now "a picture is a worth a thousand words", so I'll just leave it at that... ;)

Fun in VA & PA with family. We got to meet Ethan, and everyone got to meet Jessica! So fun.





And we got to spend a lot of time Nancy and her kids, and meet the newest Worth cousin, little Sammy! So cute!


Super Baby!!!!! We had fun for halloween. (p.s. her "cape" is a backwards bib! I was pretty excited when I thought of it :))




And Jessica's newest bath friend - I love this blue float-y thing, it saves my back and it lets her enjoy the bath more - she loves her baths!



The End.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

7 months already? How did that happen!! :)

Well, a little update from the Hess Mess...

Jessica has been up on her knees rocking back and forth for the past few weeks. Every time she'd try to crawl though she'd either go backward, or try to move her knees and not her hands and plop on her head. ;) But a few days ago she got up and just started crawling like a pro, so luckily we got it on the camera. It was funny - her pj's were so baggy her legs kept getting caught up in them ;) so cute.

Here's the video of it...


She is just such a fun pleasant girl. Even when she is sick, etc. she is still a total trooper. It's fun seeing her grow and seeing her cute personality come out. We are enjoying being her Mommy and Daddy, and hopefully she's enjoying being our cute little sweet Jessica.
p.s. She has two teeth in on the bottom now, and one on the top is coming through - you can kinda see the bottom one in this pic :) it was taken before the other two came in though it looks like.



She's so funny! This is one of her favorite positions to be in - on her side, legs crossed, arm up in the air - it's like she's constantly posing. :) So fun.




Having fun daddy time...


We went camping with some friends a few weeks ago...


And of course we make sure to get out and have some fun together as well. (p.s. I actually beat Jared in mini-golfing! It was a miracle! He usually creams me... by a lot!)


We love playing intramural sports with the singles ward. Jared is playing soccer (he's soooo good! Just a little bit out of shape ;) hehe, but then again... so am I!) as well as flag football and ultimate frisbee, and I'm on girl's teams doing soccer and flag football. I ended up playing goalie for the first time ever - it was way fun, I had some pretty good stops, and only let one go in on our first game. We have another game on Tuesday. And I ended up being put in as QB on flag football. It's a lot of fun.




Life is good. We are happy. End of story. :)

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Great things come in big bellies...

Just wanted to share some pics of the growing belly. This one was at about 25 weeks...
...and this one was just a few weeks ago!

All things considered, I'm feeling pretty well and am getting anxious and excited... and of course a bit nervous :). Her little kicks are getting stronger by the day - I bet she's just about as excited to get out of there as we are for her to come out. March 7th here we come!

So far we've been calling her Jessica - we both really like the name. Of course there's always people that say "we had a name for our baby, and then the baby came out and just didn't fit the name!" so we'll see how it goes when we do see her. But Jessica Kalena Hess is what we have in mind (Kalena is Karen in Hawaiian).

Yeah for big bellies!

Let it snow!

Well, most of the snow had just about melted over the last few weeks when we got hit last night with a few more inches of fresh, beautiful, and awesome-to-pack snow.

While waiting for me to put my shoes on this morning (a fun endeavor since I actually decided to tie them today... ugh) Jared went outside and made a quick 1 minute snowman. When we came home from our Saturday errands.... this is what followed...


We're such kids :) One of our new neighbors was outside getting her mail just in time to see it. His comment to her puzzled face "I built it, I can destroy it" :)

Yeah for Christmas Break!!!

Last year sometime in January we were at K-mart and noticed the section of Christmas items that were 90-98% off, so we decided to stock up and store it until Christmas rolled around since we didn't really have much by way of Christmas decor. It was awesome to get a good deal and a good start for our first Christmas together. So a few weeks before Christmas we got it all out and decorated outside our apartment...


...it was tediously fun (and somewhat cold).

Also included was this Christmas tree (these cost like... $80 or so, and we got it for $8! sweet deal!). Oh, and thanks to our moms for the ornaments!

Christmas Eve we spent with Jason and Margaret and their family. We had a blast. And we made crepes for Christmas morning!! YUM! Thanks again Margaret! Then we came home that night so that we could have our own Christmas morning together...

We had fun spoiling each other...

And eating yummy crepes...


...which is a great Hess tradition that I definitely loved making part of our own traditions. Not only were they yummy, but Jared was so sweet to get breakfast all ready while I set up and had fun with a new present that he got me - not that Christmas is all about presents, but I just have to brag about how good he is to me! Now... this wasn't something we splurged for on a whim, it is something that we've been saving up for as an investment for me to be able to work from home when the baby comes. I thought we'd be saving up for months and months still, but Jared was amazing and surprised me with it for Christmas!!! (and, it was on sale so we had to take advantage of it!!)


He's so great! We had a fun filled Christmas break and really really really enjoyed being able to spend two full weeks together without work & school - enjoying Christmas, our anniversary and New years together!

Sunday, June 21, 2009

The runaway big kids! Part 1

We did it! After a long semester and a term of lots of work and school that took us away from each other (namely what Karen has been editing: http://www.jer3miah.com/ --if you have not yet seen it you should check it out) we took our finals and ran. We bought new windshield wipers (Karen finally convincing her stingy husband that they left the window blurry) which Jared spent an eternity in the wal-mart parking lot trying to change out. Little did he know that the part on the car was just a hook. That's easy...yeah right!

We also bought oil and a couple of brake lights. You think changing the windshield wipers is hard, try changing the oil in the rain right on top of an ant hill. Oh, and make sure they bite. Finding a dry spot in the parking lot, we parked the car up on the curb. We figured while waiting for the laundry to dry, we would take advantage of our time and learn how to dance with ants down our pants. Jared is under the car, gets the busted, smoothed-edged bolt off (don't ask how) and lets the oil drain without a single drip on himself. He puts the newly bought bolt in and begins to tighten it. In the middle of doing so he feels a tickle on his arm. This tickle turns to a sharp pain, causing Jared to throw down the socket wrench and jump up screaming. As he brushes off his arms and pulls up the sleeve to see what it was, Karen looks on with this "freaked out" look. She immediately asks if he had burnt himself. The instant reply is "no", and after seeing the bumps on his arm he assumes he was bitten by some insect.

After calming down and getting ready to finish the job, the same sharp pain begins to shoot from his lower back, right about the belt line. Karen pulls up Jared's shirt to find more than a million ants crawling all over Jared's back. She excitingly says to Jared "Take off your garments", to which the reply is, "I am not going to just stand here butt naked." She only meant the top garment, and for the next five minutes Jared began to understand the phrase "ants in his pants." Needless to say, after getting back under the car without a shirt on, Jared found out it was going to be painful to finish the job.

Not to make this story too long, but we did all this while the clothes were turning in a dryer that blew cold air. Yes, they were about as dry as our rained-clothes. Karen said it was all worth it when we found that we could get a large Hawaiian pizza and another medium pepperoni for only $9.00.

Now that the car was ready for a road trip, we decided to see what all the excitement was about down in Vegas (or it was the closest place with a really cheap hotel rate, take your pick). Let's just say Thursday, when we arrived, we received a shock never before experienced. The cars and billboard signs around us were extremely inappropriate. Nevertheless, we wanted to make the best of it. So that night, we took a stroll down the strip. We found many lights, a couple of awesome singers,


and a fun fountain show outside of the Bellagio.


We entered one of the casinos to see why everyone wasted their money, and walked out immediately still preferring arcades. We also encountered a moving statue!


It was very depressing to see what people succumb to only to make a little money, but we don't need to dwell on that right now.

The next day we had one of the funnest days ever. We indulged ourselves by going to the circus circus adventuredome. This indoor amusement park is definitely meant for kids, but hey, that's what we are. They charge $7 per ride or you can buy a wristbands that allows you the whole day of fun. We opted for the wristbands, and walked out feeling that they were worth it. The rides consisted of a roller coaster, a water boat that splashes you, and a few other smaller rides that leave you dizzy and scared of heights. There was also laser tag and mini golfing. Everything was worth it except the mini golfing. Too expensive for nothing really. We rode each of these rides (some more than once) and took advantage of the laser tag.

Between some of these rides, we spent some considerable time at the arcade, that was stretched throughout the park. Most of the time we walk out of arcades with silly little dinky toys that really are good for nothing, but this time we walked out with an MP3/FM stereo that has a usb port. It also has the capability of playing MP3 and audio CDs. How? That's the fun part.

There were two games that tended to work to our advantage. This game is called (at least for us) the ball drop. Basically it drops a bouncy ball down onto a moving, circular platform that has holes in it of values like 1,3,25, 100, and many values between. It also has a slot for the jackpot, although this one and the 100 slot are only as big as the ball itself, so it is almost impossible to get it in these slot. They had two of these, and both of them worked in our favor. The first one gave us sometimes ten times the value of the slot. There was one that valued 10 tickets, but gave us a hundred. This is convenient because it is really easy to get it into that slot, but gives us the value of the impossible slot.

Karen had a terrible streak going. Jared timed it out perfectly to get 10 almost every time, but Karen kept getting only one ticket. This happened about 5 times in a row, until she decided to push the button that dropped the ball without even looking. She achieved the impossible by having the ball bounce around and finally ending up in the jackpot slot. This was now worth over five hundred tickets. This is similar to one time when she just stuck a coin in a machine (again, not looking) and ended up getting the jackpot of about 300 tickets. She's good, and the reason we get all our tickets.

The second machine gave us the fair value for out tickets, but had a different kind of ball that would sometimes slip from the top and drop without having to put in a coin. This was convenient because sometimes for putting in one coin it would give us three balls instead of one. It also had a flaky wire that would occasionally gives us free credits. We would put in a coin and play the turn, and afterwards the game would go from zero to one credit. This sometimes would happen two or three times in a row, giving us 4 turns for one coin. Not only did it give us freebies, but it has a slot that says "2 free turns" and seemed to attract the ball, especially when we were down to four coins. Our last four coins lasted at least 15 turns.

We finally ran out of coins and went to have our tickets counted. Everything up there was silly and worth nothing, except for the 3000 ticket stereo that was in the shape of a slug bug. There was also a 4000 ticket stereo that played MP3 and audio cds. The tickets came out to be 2,809. We decided to keep going for the 3000, and told the lady we would be right back. Due to not having any cash, we had to scrounge around for coins. Karen, being as lucky as she is, found 6 coins in one machine's change return. We then had to choose: the extra tickets machine, or the extra turns machine. We started with the extra tickets machine (since we only needed two hundred, we figured we would hit the ten spot twice and be done). Unfortunately, the ten spot only gave us ten tickets that time. So, we went to the second machine, and ended being glad that we did. Having only five coins left, we were trying to be very careful about getting the most turns possible. After two coins, the machine started to announce that we had somehow gotten the ball in the jackpot, which was worth 300 tickets. We were stoked, and figured we would play the last three coins just for fun.

After playing two coins, and waiting a little bit, the tickets were still coming out. As much as we tried to stop them, they kept coming out and wouldn't stop. All in all, the lady at the counter came over and stopped the tickets, because we told her it was broken. When we gave her the tickets to have them counted, the total came out to be (including our 2809) 4064. We ended up getting over 1200 tickets from the six FREE coins we found. SWEET, AWESOME, RAD!! It worked out well.

Because the ticket lady's first language is not English, our communication with her was limited. When we tried to tell her the game gave us extra tickets, she thought we were trying to tell her that it didn't give us all the tickets we deserved. She wanted to give us 500 more tickets. After a few attempts of explaining and she still not understanding, we told her we were fine with the tickets that she had counted and quickly asked for the MP3 stereo. Feeling like we robbed the arcade, we walked out quickly and briskly to our car. (OK, we won it fair and square, but it was fun).