The passing of the torch

So as you all know, John was writing this blog and was doing a super great job at it, other then the fact that it hasn't been updated in a year. So he said I could give it a go, even though he might slip back on and write every once in a while. :) Which is okay by me! So just to get everyone up to speed. I had a great pregnancy with all of the super fun symptoms, that I don't really need to go into detail with. The friday before Aliza was born I started having some labor pains. Yep for 4 days before she come

into the world. She was born 100% naturally with a midwife but in the hospital on Feb 8th!
Since then we have had so much fun playing with our baby and learning how to be parents. It is for sure an adventure. John had fun learning how to be a good daddy, be a hubby and be a student all at the same time and I loved learning how to be a mom and I keep learning everyday. Lately John is enjoying his new job at Jenic services where he works on airplanes! woot woot! And I am having fun working on writing and helping my baby girl learn and grow! Life is good!

Lots of love

The Shiels

19 Weeks!

Wow, time has passed so quickly. To think that nineteen weeks ago Cassie and I learned that she was pregnant. The thought of being a father just makes me so happy. Cassie and I went on a road trip a couple of weeks ago to visit some of my family and to celebrate our anniversary. We went to Disneyland and stayed all day! There was a lot of rides that we got to walk right onto because it wasn't busy in the morning when we got there. We just left our car at our hotel and only had to walk a block to the park. It was so nice because Cassie didn't have to far to walk to get back that night. We rode tons of rides and both knew that this would be one of the last things we did with just us before our life totally changes. We also went to Huntington Beach there in southern CA with my mom and sister. It was such a good time. I got a really nice sunburn and peeled for days. We visited my Granny briefly and went by Jeremy's missionary field and got gas and looked around for two missionaries on bikes. We would have loved to have seen them and me to finally meet my new brother. The other special place the I took Cassie as we were traveling north to my Grandpa's was Hearst Castle. If you have never been it is worth the effort. What a gorgeous place! Cassie loves castles and I thought she would enjoy being taken to one. We spent two hours just wandering the grounds and didn't have time to take any of the other inside tours. There are several guest houses that are magnificent on the outside and the pool there is so awesome. There are a lot of statues and things that Mr. Hearst had carved or made or even bought in Europe and had brought over. Not a bad looking cattle ranch! Then we went on to Sacramento and visited with my Grandparents and had a wonderful time. It was a great trip and it was great to have Cassie introduced to family before she got to big. Next week though we find out the gender of our baby! That will be another blogging moment!

Exciting News

Well, it has been a while since my last update of anything in this blog. You know how it is though, now I want to be more frequent about things going on in our lives. Cassie and I have been married for eleven months now and it has been great! We have had such good times together and we are going to be parents! Cassie is nine weeks along and she is doing great! Here is the first picture that we have. Doesn't that baby look cute! That sickness stuff though creeps up on her when she doesn't expect it though and we have to watch out... She is doing really well and we are excited. So our contract is running out on our place we are at now and since we are getting an addition to our family we have decided to move into a new place with two bedrooms. We found this little place to call home for the next however long, and it may not be the best looker but we feel good in it and it is actually cheaper. We are going to miss our one bedroom though. We got spoiled because it is so big. Our new two bedroom place is a small trailer and we are going to squeeze in there with our stuff and see how it pans out. We moved our table in last night and today after work we will move in some more. Its all about finding time in our busy schedules to do the move. Thanks to the parents though for letting us use the truck while they are out of town!

Married Life

Okay, so you know how you can easily fall behind in your journal writing. Well that has definitely happened with me. I have now been married for four months (almost) and Cassie and I have been having the time of our lives. Being poor married college students has been fun and all but it sure would be nice to have a job. With Cassie working and going to school I feel like I have been sitting around twiddling my thumbs waiting for a job opportunity. I have interviews every now and then but nothing serious has ever turned up. I have been having some fun over at a friend of mine whose name is Eldon. I bought an old truck from him and I have torn it all down to the frame and I am going to sandblast it and put it back together. It has really helped to pass the time and it will give us a better working vehicle since our blue Gwen is giving us trouble. Cassie and I have been readying ourselves for the Christmas season. Christmas is almost upon us and we got a free Christmas tree one day outside our door! We have no clue who it was from, it just said to the S. family, Merry Christmas. We were so excited. We have lights up in our apartment now and we are going to spend our first Christmas with her parents. It should be lots-o-fun! Her family has some great traditions that will be exciting to participate in. For Thanksgiving we were going to try to go to my moms in CA. but that was unable to work out so we did it with her family in Utah. It was a nice big group. I don't have any pics though. Cassie and I have been having a great time together and being married is so exciting. I have someone to visit and share my life with and we get to talk about everything together. We try to go to the Temple regularly and we have read scriptures together every night. I appreciate all of the qualities that she has and I know that she has made me a better person.

This is a picture of the spot where I asked Cassie to be my girlfriend back in March. I thought this would be a great spot with the scripture quote on the wall and everything. I know that I included it into my question, but I don't remember exactly how it went. I think it is the girls who are supposed to remember all this stuff. I was so nervous asking her though because she has never had a boyfriend before. Somehow she managed to send out the signals that she was not interested in anyone until I came along. I still don't know how I slipped in under the radar, but I am glad. This was a Friday (asking her to e my girlfriend), and two Wednesday's before this I asked Cassie is she would like to go bowling with me. I did it at 11:30 at night and she didn't have her glasses on because she was getting ready for bed, and I tell her that it was because she couldn't see me to well that she said yes.

Here is a photo of my Cassie, my wife to be. We are now down to 48 days left. It turns out that from the day that I asked Cassie to marry me and the date that we decided we would be sealed in the temple was exactly 100 days. How cool is that. Cassie made us a countdown calendar and we were both excited when we learned that. It just makes for an interesting tid-bit to share about our engagement period. I am so excited to have this women with me in the House of The Lord. We are both LDS members and we both look forward to being together for time and all eternity. We ordered our wedding announcements on Thursday and we put some fun lines in there about that. Hopefully I can post one when we get them in.

This was taken minutes before I asked Cassie to marry me. She still had no idea and I was so nervous. We made a fire and cooked smores. Well at least that is what we were supposed to do, but it turned out to be that Cassie had fun with marshmallows and I was just trying to keep the fire going and film in the camera. Despite the wind the night turned out just right. The moon was out and glinting off the water and there was a nice big fire and I had Cassie in my arms.