Ethan Robert Berrett

IT'S A BOY!!! Our little Emma turned out to be our little Ethan! Ethan Robert Berrett was born August 24, 2009 at 5:02 P.M. He weighed 7 lbs 15.2 oz and was 20" long. Such a perfect baby! He's been home for almost a week now and we love having him in our home and as part of our family.

He slept quite a bit at the hospital, and wouldn't even wake up for feedings! But the second we walked in the door of our apartment, his eyes flew open and he started investigating his new digs. :) Since then, he still sleeps all the time, but he wakes up every 2-3 hours so he can eat and have his diaper changed. Heavenly Father must have known that I needed a baby like this to transition into motherhood. :)

He had his 1 week apointment a few days ago and the doctor said his jaundice levels are going down and we're oretty sure it is gone altogether now. He is back to his birth weight and then some: 7 lbs 15.7 oz.

Ethan came out with curly strawberry blonde hair, but it has since turned more blonde. His eyes were dark blue in the hospital with a little bit of brown around the iris, making them look almost violet! I'm not sure what color they are now because he sleeps so much! He's a beautiful baby boy and we are very glad he is here and part of this family!

Hey! So, it's been a while...again...since we've written. Since the last time, a lot has happened. We're having a daughter, Emma Rebecca Berrett, due around August 18th, but apparently she can come any time now. Ahhh!!! :) Only 10 and a half weeks to go! We finally got some insurance, which was the biggest stress for me when we moved down. We have a doctor, but we don't know if Chris' insurance from Volkswagen will include our doctor. We'd better find out soon though...

I have become a substitute teacher for the Jordan School District and have had three jobs with that so far. I've also applied to be a teacher for a private school in Salt Lake / Sandy. But with needed maternity leave, I don't know what's going to happen.

Chris applied to the U to go to school starting in January. We've gotten everything in, we're just waiting to hear back now. We'll let you know.

This summer just seems to be rolling by too fast, but not fast enough. Too fast because we don't have time to do everything that we want to, but not fast enough because I'm still pregnant. We're going to have a baby at the end of the summer! I'm very nervous to have this baby, but SO excited to bring a child in to the world and be responsible for her. Our family is growing and I'm excited to see Chris with his daughter. :)

Nothing else has really happened since our last post. Chris is having to work some nights until midnight, which is not fun for either of us. But he's selling cars so that's good. We have lots of high school graduations in the family this week: Zoe (C's sister), Miranda (C's cousin), Bryce (N's cousin), and Melissa (N's cousin)! Wow! Other than that, we're just passing time, enjoying each minute we get to spend together. 10 more weeks everyone! :)

Well sorry it's be a while. Thing have gone from good to bad and now then seem to be on the up swing. It's now the end of March. February was a weird month. Wackerli filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy about the middle of the month, that is never a good thing. So I had to make a decision, do I stay or do I look for a new job. What to do, what to do? I was going to stick it out however one of the former employees of Wackerli called me up and said that where he was working was looking for a good salesman. I decided to go and apply. Well I got the job. So now I sell Chrysler's, Jeeps, and Dodges. I've been working here for about 2 weeks and have been really successful.
Life was looking good. Natalie and I decided to apply to for some managers positions in Rexburg. We thought that would be great... Free rent! Then I would go to school and N would have a part time job, that was the plan. Things didn't work that way, we applied for about 5 different places and didn't get any of them. So we had a sit down and decided that there was nothing that keeping us in Rexburg. So we've started to look for an apartment in the SLC area. We found one in West Jordan and will be moving back to Utah April 10th. It was a heck of a steal originally 880 a month and we signed up for 13 months at 680 a month. WOOT! I'll be starting work at VW Southtowne again and N will be looking for a job. Things with the baby are going great. We still don't know if we will be having a Boy or Girl yet but we will on the 10th. Natalie is starting to show and can feel the it kicking, she loves every minute of that. I've felt it kick two or three times, and that's a lot of fun. We're both super excited to see what we've made. I think that is about it for us these days. We'll try to do a little better at keeping this thing updated. (if anyone still reads this.)

So we've promised to try to keep everyone as updated as possible. We've been to see the doctor a few times and he says everything is just fine. If everything is on the right schedule, we should have a new little boy or girl on August 18th, give or take a few days. I've been really lucky and haven't been sick at all. I've been nauseous, but nothing that can't be handled. It's a big relief.
Right now, for anyone who cares (but it's very exciting for us as new parents), our little one is about the size of a prune right now. We have another appointment on February 10th and we should hear a heart beat!
We've been speculating about how our life is going to play out now and it's possible we'll still be in this same apartment when Chris graduates from BYU-Idaho. It's fun to think about a 4 year old running around the apartment when daddy comes home to try on his cap and gown for graduation. :)
Work for Chris is going well this month and I'm just plugging away at school. I actually have the opportunity to help edit Bro. Henry Eyring's (son of Pres. Eyring) new upcomming book in my editing class. With my editing class and my senior writing capstone class, I've got a full load. But things are going well so far.
Well, that's all for now folks. Thank you for all your love and support! We love you!

Well we're through January and now on to February. This month is going to be a good one we think. January was a really good month for us. I had one of the best months that I've had at Wackerli. Things have started out well for us this year.

During the first week of February we went down to Salt Lake City to enjoy the weekend with family for the Super Bowl. All was well during the drive down and during the drive around town. We went to my grandparents to watch the game after we had gone to church with Natalie's family. It was an uneventful game and all was well until we had to fill up with gas. As is the case with the "Ghetto Cruizer" it didn't start. We were stranded in Salt Lake City for 45 minutes. Now that may not seem like a long time to normal people, however, to us it was a long time. The car had a been giving us fits since the day we bought it. I guess that is what you get for buying a car that was 19 years old and had 118,000 miles on it. We decided to get a new car. Lucky for us I happen to work at a car dealership :). So we traded in the old car and got a new one. We now have a 2008 Subaru Impreza Outback Sport. It was a used one that only had 5,100 miles on. It's nice to know that Natalie has a good car to get her where she needs to go.

"You gotta be careful when you've got good love, 'cause them Angels will just keep on multiplyin' "- Jack Johnson.

Well let me start off by explaining the title of this little blog.
I love Jack Johnson the musician. He's got to one of my favorites. He has a song called "Angel" which is where that quote comes from. It has significant meaning this week too.
On Friday of last week, Natalie and I received the shock of our lives, in a good way. We found out that Natalie is pregnant! This was amazing news to us. We weren't planning of having a baby for a while, but I guess it happened anyway. We're super excited, as well as both of our families.
We've decided that if it's a boy, he's going to be named Ethan Berrett. If it's a girl, it's going to be Emma Rebecca Berrett. Natalie's always thought that twins would be fun, but now that we're actually in that situation...we're thinking it might not be a good idea right now. But you never know...
We haven't been to the doctor yet, but we're thinking he/she will be due the first few weeks of August 2009. Happy Anniversary! :)
We had a great Christmas! We drove down the 23rd and actually left a few hours earlier than planned! We got to my parents house to stay the night, watching George C. Scott's version of "A Christmas Carol." Mom got new leather couches for Christmas, and Zoe (being Zoe...) jumped up on the three people already sitting on the one couch and we all heard a loud *snap*! She, the tiniest Berrett of all, broke the couch frame! Don't worry, it's under warranty. :)
We got up early the next morning and went to traditional Christmas Eve breakfast with the Read's at Golden Corral. We went to their house first to tell Natalie's parents about the baby. They got all excited/worried when we told them to sit down before we told them what was up. But they are so excited! When we got to Golden Corral, we told everyone, including the great-grandparents to be. All the Read siblings are so excited they are going to be aunts and uncles in a few (8 1/2) months! "Aunt Amy" and "Aunt Jenny" are especially excited.
We hung out at my parents the rest of that day, just chilling. We went to the traditional Berrett family Christmas eve cousin dinner/party at Gma and Gpa Berrett's house. It was fun and we had a blast. Gpa scrapped his finger on a EZ-chair hinge and had to go to the hospital, but with a few stubborn stitches, he's going to be fine. I told them about our upcoming bundle of joy before they left and made Gma cry. :)
Since Brandon and Heather and Elijah were going to Las Vegas early the next day, we all went to their apartment to have the Berrett traditional Christmas Eve experience and to exchange presents with them. We also told the family that Natalie's eggo is prego. It wasn't much of a surprise because Natalie took a long nap that day and Mom and Zoe said it looked like a "pregnant nap." Oops. Since Heather is pregnant too, they know exactly what to do. They looked up a Chinese something or other on the internet and we're apparently going to have a girl. We'll wait until the ultrasound, just to be safe.
Dad took Gpa and Gma to the hospital in the truck and I took everyone else to the BS Berrett's in the Envoy. After Dad was done with the hospital, he went to fill it with gas and when he tried to start it again, it was dead. He called Mum to come jump the truck, but the cables started on fire and the truck was left in the gas station parking lot until the morning. Needless to say, it was not a good night after we left the BS Berrett's.
Dad was gracious enough to let us use his Envoy to go to Natalie's parents house for Christmas morning. Since we left at about 7 (IN THE MORNING!!), the roads had not been plowed and no one had driven on them either. We slid a few times, but we thankfully got there safely. (Christmas miracle #1). Natalie was grateful to spend that morning with her family and it was a good time for me too. After breakfast, we went back to my parent's house for Christmas. It was a great morning, in spite of the cruel weather. After that, Dad and I went to try and start the truck. I thought he might have not put the jumper cables on right, so I went with him to see for myself. We got there, hooked up the jumper cables, started both cars, and the truck started right up! (Christmas miracle #2!)
We came home for Mom's traditional English Christmas dinner, filling in our "newbie" of the family to traditional English food. Another success mom, another success.
We went to Natalie's parents house before we decided we'd better head back to Idaho before the weather turned nasty again. We were doing really well until we hit Willard Bay. Remember when a Star Wars ship would go into warp speed, and all the stars would fly by and look like lines on the side of the ship? Well, that's what it looked like with the snow, but we were only going about 25 miles an hour. We decided it would be wise to stop in Brigham City for the night, so that's what we did. It was kind of like our honeymoon, only WITH snow, and pregnancy cravings. :) Natalie told me she wanted Cheezit's, but they didn't have any, so I got microwave Easymac, microwave popcorn, Sunchips, and a V8 juice. Very good substitute! I'm a good guesser!
We got up on the 26th and were able to drive back to Idaho (although it took about 4 hours from the boarder...). It was scary driving behind Natalie when we got back to Wackerli where the white car was parked, because she doesn't like driving in the deep snow. Slow down honey!!! She's good with me rescuing her from the mess she's made, getting the car stuck deep in the plowed snow. She says I'm her knight in shining armor. Whatever that's just what I'm supposed to do. :)
We both made it safely back home (Christmas miracle #3), got the presents unpacked, and I went back to work. Work has been going really well for me this month, but I guess when you consider what last month was like then anything would be better. I'm up to 5 cars this month with a few more that might come later in the week. I have one more to make my goal of 6, which will be great.
We have to dig ourselves out everyday it seems with all the snow that we have been getting here, I think that there is about 7 inches total in our parking lot from this last storm and there seems to be more coming. OH JOY!
Well that is all for us this week. We'll keep you up to speed with what happens with the baby. We love you all and thanks for reading :)

Called to Serve

Well we've now been in Rexburg for a while now. Natalie is finished with her second to last semester and is taking a well deserved rest from the worries of school. However that doesn't mean that worries cease.
Our little apartment has become quite the little home. We've been working hard to find everything a home. And for the most part we have... kind of. We still need to attack the back room and get that ready for Natalie to study in and a good place to do homework. All in all it is a lovely home: warm and comfortable and full of love and the spirit.

Life has thrown us a few curve ball these last few months. Work for me has become increasingly unstable. Unless you have been living under a rock the last few months, we have a bad economy on our hands, and a failing auto industry, that makes selling anything in this day and age a little complicated, especially cars. I've not been selling cars like I used to. November was a super slow month and this month hasn't been to kind either, but we will pull through. I've been looking for new employment and Natalie has been looking as well. Even after all of this, I managed to sell three cars, which helps keep things going.

As we go through this time, I think of something that my father always says "The Lord will honor those who honor Him." We continue to do that what is asked of us, tithing and fast offerings. We have been given an assignment to serve. One that Natalie is a little bit more excited for then I am. We are Nursery Workers. Oh Joy! We have 2 nurseries in our ward and rumor is that there will be 55 new nursery kids joining the ranks come January, but we serve faithfully.
Our home has become festive and triumphant for the season. We have a great Christmas tree and lights up and shinning in all their glory. Natalie made a beautiful wreath, her first attempt at such a project. It looks great but she will tell you otherwise, "it'll do" is what she has to say about that. While that little endeavor was going on, I skillfully hung and twisted the christmas lights outside our apartment, luckily without the hindrance of snow. Good thing too, because I didn't have a ladder, just a kitchen chair to stand on. I must say that they look great though!
The weather has been great... until it remembered that it was December. This last week we have been hammered with snow, about 4-6 inches, and a balmy high of about 14 degrees. My truck is amazing in the snow, it gets me back and forth to work and home with no issues. It's fantastic.
Well that is life for us this last week. We're hanging in there, life will go on and we'll survive.