Summer Camping in Moab

We have too many Utah locations we want to visit this summer and not enough time! Dustan has really been wanting to visit Moab again (we went about a year and a half ago in February, blogged about here) to try out the mountain biking! So we went for a weekend in June :) We went with two other couples, PJ and Katie, and John and Jessica. Half of us (John, Dustan, and I) went up early on Friday to snag a good camping spot and the rest joined us later in the afternoon.

Before the other half of the group arrived, we set up camp at the King's Bottom Campground and grabbed some lunch at the famous Moab Quesadilla Mobilla--a quesadilla food truck. It was delicious. We lounged around the remainder of the afternoon in the extremely hot, hot, nearly 100 degree weather. We did make a short stop at a fossil and rock store in Moab, which was actually really awesome (and funny, see picture a few below).

Funny mirror in the fossil store bathroom...

Once the rest of the group arrived, the boys did a quick mountain biking ride at the Navajo Rocks. Us girls did a short hike through a canyon to a pond that was just across the street from our campground. The weather felt so much nicer in this little canyon, and even better once the sun started to set.

Yay Chacos!

We arrived back at camp around the same time the boys did. Finally, we cooked up our foil dinners and brats and sat around the fire chatting until it was time to head to bed. The boys had an early morning ahead!

I woke up way too early with the boys so that I could shuttle them to the top of a mountain. This mountain biking trail is called The Whole Enchilada, one of the most famous and tricky mountain biking trails in Utah. It was a long and eventless drive, even after dropping them off. Afterward, I met up with the girls! First, I will write about what we did that morning and afternoon, then I'll have Dustan write about his adventures biking with the boys.

After eating a quick breakfast, us girls headed over to what we though was called Negro Bill Canyon. Apparently it had been recently renamed to Grandstaff Canyon. Either way, it was such a great little hike! It was about four miles roundtrip. Each of us wore our Chacos as we trekked over and through a small creek multiple times as the path crossed over. So refreshing! At the end of the hike, we came to a tall, natural rock bridge called Morning Glory Natural Bridge where people were repelling. Apparently, it is the sixth largest natural rock bridge in the US at 243 feet.

Chubby preggo belly

After this hike, we headed into town to buy a few necessities and received a text from the boys that they were running a few hours behind schedule. We were a little bummed, but ultimately decided that we didn't have enough time for a different outing, and just hung around the campsite.

Our campsite right beside the brown Colorado River

The time when the boys were supposed to arrive back at camp came and went. We gave them another couple hours before letting ourselves actually get a bit concerned, mainly because it was only about an hour until sunset at this point, and we knew that they boys had not brought enough food, water, or light to get through that. Since we didn't have any phone service at our campsite, we decided to drive into town to see if we could reach them. Literally as soon as we got into town, a phone call came in from John. He told us that one of the bikes was broken, they were out of water, and still five miles away from the trailhead/car. Obviously, that's a ways to go in the hot Moab heat and trying to make it before sunset! We immediately went back to camp, packed up backpacks full of water, snacks, and headlamps before heading to the trailhead.

We began to hike up the trail. Within minutes, Dustan came riding fast down the trail on his mountain bike. He hadn't had any crashes during the day and was physically less exhausted than the other boys, so they sent him ahead to look for us. He immediately chugged a bottle of water before stashing his bike on the trail and joining us on the hike to the other boys.

Luckily, they had made a lot of progress since we last heard from them! After just two or three miles of hiking and before it was even dark, we found the other boys, PJ and John. They also immediately chugged some water and took a short break. Then, we continued the hike back down together. We did end up needing to pull out the headlamps--thank goodness we had them. It got dark quick and it wasn't an easy trail, especially when dragging a couple bikes along.

Eventually, we made it back to the cars. We immediately drove to the Moab Diner and stuffed ourselves full of delicious food. It was a crazy day!

Now, for Dustan's side of the story (in italics):

On Friday evening, we went and biked a short 3 mile trail called the Ramblin' Trail at the Navajo Rocks Trail System Area to get warmed up and make sure the bikes were running okay since we were doing The Whole Enchilada the next morning. Everything was running well and we tried to go to bed fairly early so we could start The Whole Enchilada the next morning really early. None of us got much sleep though since it was about 85 degrees all night (except me, I can sleep well in pretty much any conditions). We got up at 6:30, and headed to the trail by 7. Ellen was nice enough to shuttle us to the top (over an hour of driving on a bumpy dirt road). After some last minute bathroom breaks, we were off!

The start of the trail was beautiful! We climbed through the trees and meadows, and even got to ride through a stream or two on our way up to the top of Burrows Pass (at 11,200 ft elevation). It was an exhausting climb, and by the end we were riding for 30 seconds and walking for 2 or 3 minutes. We had high hopes though, because after reaching Burrows Pass, the trail was all downhill for the next 26 or 27 miles. 

Our hopes were met with disappointment at the top though. As soon as we crossed over the ridge, rather than being met with a fun singletrack downhill trail, we were confronted with 2 miles of deep snow (the sun apparently doesn’t melt the snow on the back of the mountain this early). We pushed our bikes the two miles only staying on the trail by the grace of my phone GPS showing us when we were off track (since we couldn’t see the trail for most of the walk). 

After getting through the snowy part, the ride got really fun. We blasted down flowy alpine singletrack through the aspens with breathtaking views. The next section Hazard County was more technical, and had large rocks in the trail, but we finished it uneventfully. After Hazard County, we went through a really fun section called Kokopelli. It was like a four wheeler road, with some fun little roller jumps. This was a fun section to go really fast on. 

The end of this trail is when our real troubles began. We stopped here to eat lunch and when we started to get going again, John’s tire had gone flat. He tried to patch it, but the valve was really old and wasn’t holding air, so we put one of his three spare tubes in it and went on our way. Well 20 minutes later, his tire was flat again. This was only PJ’s 3rd time mountain biking, so he decided to go on ahead, and we’d catch up to him after we finished patching the tire. After about 20 minutes, we were finally able to get the tire patched, and we went flying down the trail to catch PJ. He said he would stop and wait if he got to a trail junction, but we arrived at the next trail, and no PJ. We sat there for about 15 minutes trying to decide if he really could have gotten that far ahead and we should keep trying to catch him or if he had somehow gotten lost and we should wait. We decided to pray about it, and right as we were about to start our prayer, PJ comes rolling around the corner. He had gotten off the path, and before he was able to get back to it, John and I had passed him trying to catch up to him. We said a quick thank you prayer that we were able to be reunited and went on our way again. We made it down the next sections--Lower Porcupine Singletrack and Upper Porcupine Singletrack--without many problems (except that John’s cleat on his clip in shoe broke, so he wore one of my vans and I wore his broken clip in shoe so that he could have a bit of traction on his pedal). 

But as soon as we started Porcupine Rim, the real problems began. John’s tire went flat again, and this time we couldn’t get a patch to stick (it was filled with that nasty goo stuff), so we went to put another tube on, but discovered all of his other tubes had broken valves (always pay for the good tubes, it’s worth it). We tried to get a patch to stick to the one tube remaining with a good valve, but to no avail. We were now out of patches, and 9 miles from the bottom of Porcupine Rim. So we started walking. At this point, we had been out way longer than we had planned on and were running out of water. Also, our phones only had 4-5% battery life, and no service to call the girls. We did get passed by one biker (the only other person we saw on the trail the whole day) who filled one of our water bottles up for us, but we were very low on water. After walking 2 miles (and counting exactly how many steps made up a half mile haha), we came up with a system. Two people would bike half a mile (my bike had an odometer) and then wait while the third person would push the broken bike the half mile, and then we would switch. We made sure to only take a small swallow of water every half mile so we would have enough. We did this for about 4.5 miles (and found a full water bottle on the side of the trail that had fallen out of someone’s bicycle that helped a ton), when PJ and John started getting pretty dehydrated. Both of them were running out of energy fast, and were getting pretty dizzy when walking (the 95 degree weather didn’t help). PJ was even holding his pee in case he had to pee in a bottle and drink it haha. It was starting to get dark, and I was still feeling pretty good, so we decided that I would bike the last 4.5 miles to the bottom as fast as I could to find the girls and go back up to where ever they made it to with water and food. At this point John turned his phone on to see if he had service and he did! He called the girls who answered (a small miracle since there was only service in the city of Moab, and we thought they were back at camp with no service) and told them to meet me at the bottom of the trail with water. I gave PJ and John the last of my water, and rode as fast as I could to the bottom. By the time I got there I was so tired that I teared up a little bit when I saw the girls coming up the trail with water. I drank a bunch, then hiked with the girls back 2.5-3 miles and found PJ and John. By the time we got out of there it was pitch dark, but the girls brought head lamps, so we all made it out fine. We were quite dehydrated, but it was an adventure we’ll never forget, and I’m glad we did it!

And back to me! On Sunday morning, we woke up early to break camp and go on a hike before church! We drove into Arches National Park to hike Delicate Arch, one of Utah's most famous landmarks. This hike is only about three miles roundtrip. The views along the path just show a lot of red rock, but then you hike out across a ledge, and suddenly, Delicate Arch appears! It was just as stunning as when we saw it last year. Though the hike was a little easier without the ice on some of the path.

Afterward, we stopped by the Lazy Lizard Hostel for some cheap showers (we will totally stay here next time in Moab--private rooms, AC, and so cheap) before heading to church! As before, the Moab ward was super welcoming. Afterward, we headed back home to Provo. It was such a fun weekend!!

Month 4 with Baby K

The world via social media now knows! Blog post announcing it is here :) though we had already told the people most important to us, it was nice not having to worry about seeing someone we know at the store and them wonder why I suddenly look chubbier so quickly, haha.

We had a third doctors appointment (we have one with my OB every four weeks). Nothing crazy happened, no ultrasound, but it was reassuring to hear the heartbeat again. It had dropped about 5 bpm since last time. We also scheduled our gender ultrasound, yay! My OB also told me that most first time moms start feeling the baby for the first time around 20 weeks, so really looking forward to that soon!

Baby went on his/her first hike this month ;) We spent a HOT weekend in Moab with friends and did a few small hikes! Wish I could be wearing my running shorts everywhere because they are comfier than anything else right now.

Week 15

Signs/Symptoms:
 - Still some nausea, though more intermittent than it used to be and rarely as intense. Still throwing up a couple times a week though, usually when I forget to eat every few hours.
 - As nausea decreases, acid reflux/heartburn increases. Yay. TUMS are my friend.
 - Able to be a little more active this month. Went on a few smallish hikes and started infrequently going to the gym again.
 - Definitely getting chubbier, though I definitely don't look pregnant. About a quarter of my pants I can still wear normally-ish, the others I can wear with the rubber band trick and a long shirt. Dreading having to find some maternity pants in the near future.
 - Now 4 pounds above pre-pregnancy weight.
 - Aversions: leftovers, meat (though I can actually eat it now, an improvement), still BBQ flavors/smells
 - Cravings: smoothies, anything a little tart and fruity, nachos, bagels with cream cheese

Week 18, end of month 4!

HS Graduation & Missionary Homecoming

More Kraus family adventures! During the month of May, Dustan's brother Garrett got home from serving a two year mission in Farmington, New Mexico, and his other brother Bryant graduated from high school. Luckily for us, Bryant's graduation and Garrett's homecoming talk about his mission in church were within just a few days of each other, so we took a short trip out to Castle Rock to visit :)

We got in fairly early, so of course the first thing the boys did was go mountain biking! I don't trust myself to safely mountain bike while pregnant, so I skipped out haha. We had a relaxing evening otherwise just eating good food, watching a movie, and attending Levi's orchestra concert.

On Wednesday morning, it was time for Bryant's graduation!! It was at the fancy Red Rocks Amphitheater and it was a beautiful, sunny day. (Thank goodness, because it snowed that night!) It was a little crazy with the traffic to find parking, but we were able to make it in time and even get semi decent seats. Overall, the speakers were good and the graduation was shorter than I expected with the number of graduating seniors. Afterward, we went out to lunch at Noodles and Co. and headed to the park.

At the park, most of the family again went mountain biking on the surrounding trails while I sunbathed and read a book. That evening, we did our usual eating of good food and watching a movie. But when we woke up in the morning, there was about a foot of snow! Colorado (and Utah for that matter) and crazy. So, we had a lazy, indoor day with no desire to be out in the snow. The boys went and played sports at an indoor complex and we played games as we waited for Bryson and Taylor to get in that night.

The next day was a little more fun! The highlight of the day was when we went out to dinner at Red Robin and told Garrett that both Taylor and I were pregnant! We had agreed that neither of us would tell him until we were together in person, and he hadn't found out with the rest of the family because he just got home from his mission. Once we had ordered our drinks at Red Robin, Taylor followed our waiter to ask him to bring out something special for Garrett when drinks came around. As our waiter was placing all our drinks, he casually placed two baby bottles in front of Garrett. He was SO CONFUSED, it was hilarious. We had brought two baby bottles with us to Red Robin, and Taylor and I had each taped an ultrasound picture to one of the bottles. He understood that Taylor and Bryson were having a baby girl first (their last name was on their ultrasound picture) before finally understanding that I was pregnant as well. We got the whole thing on video and still enjoy watching it, haha. It was so nice to finally have the secret out! The whole family had been working hard to keep it from Garrett since he had come home from his mission a couple weeks earlier.

At this point, we only had a couple days left on our short vacation. First thing Saturday morning, we went to Top Golf. It was a blast! Bryson and Dustan killed it, the rest of us had fun, haha. We definitely plan on going back to the one in SLC this summer!

After running a couple errands, we headed back to the park. Most of the snow had melted by this point and it was just chilly out. I wrapped up in a blanket and read my book/watched (thanks nausea) as the rest of the Krauses exercised by running trails, swinging around on the Epic Ropes Course, or playing football. That evening, we had a small BBQ, made homemade Nielson family ice cream with rhubarb cake, played games, and watched a movie.

And with that, there was only one day left of our vacation! Sunday came around and Garrett gave his homecoming talk in church about his mission. He did a great job, and it was wonderful to hear some stories from him. We spent the afternoon watching Kraus family videos and playing games before taking some family photos in the evening! This was the first time since Taylor had left on her mission (which was back when Dustan and I were dating) that the whole family had been together at once! Which also means, that this was the first time both Bryson and I had been with the whole Kraus family at once since we married in :) So of course we had to get a picture!

We also took a few cute pictures for Bryson and Taylor to help them announce their new baby girl :) Of course, Dustan and I had to join in a few toward the end, since our babies are due just within a couple weeks of each other!

We ended our last evening watching a few more home videos and just chatting. We headed to bed fairly early, because we had to leave at 4 am to make it to a baby appointment the next afternoon and get moved in to our new apartment! It was worth it though. We are so happy that we have the Kraus family so close! We love being able to visit them :)

**More new posts below!**

First Trimester with Baby K

We're having a BABY!! The current due date is December 1, 2017. We are so excited. Check the blog post below to see how we announced it to the public (i.e. social media). It seems like most moms mention how they wish they had documented their pregnancies better, so I am hoping to post how our little baby is doing at least every trimester, maybe every month. Hopefully future posts will not be quite as long as this one, haha. In my defense, so much is happening that I don't want to forget!

Month One

Dustan and I had agreed that we would always have me take a pregnancy test when we were together, so we could be elated or slightly disappointed together, haha. I had only taken a few negative ones so far. On March 22, Dustan needed to go to campus late to get some work done in the lab. He left around 7 pm that Wednesday night while I lazed around the apartment, watching my shows and vegging. About an hour after Dustan left, I got the impression that I should take a pregnancy test. I immediately brushed this thought away--I didn't take tests without Dustan and I had just gotten a negative test a few days beforehand. I continued my laziness. But, this impression just kept coming back to me again and again. So, eventually, I gave in. I peed on the dumb stick then hopped in the shower while I waited. And what did I find when I got out! The faintest line ever indicating I was pregnant :)

Dustan: I had been on campus working on King Louie (the robot I do most of my research with) trying to get a demo working for the next day. Well, 3 a.m. hit, and I wasn't getting anywhere, so I decided to call it a night and head home. When I got home, I found a note on the lightswitch from Ellen asking me to wake her up when I got home. This isn't that unusual as she usually likes me to wake her up when I get home if I'm working late on campus, but for some reason, the first thought that I had was that she wanted to tell me she was pregnant. When I got into bed and woke her up, she asked how everything went with my research, and then we rolled over like we were going to go back to sleep. Then she whispered that she was pregnant!! I was/am so excited! I immediately hopped out of bed so that I could see the faint line on the cheap pregnancy test. I'm so excited to be a dad! Needless to say, it was hard to get back to sleep despite it being almost 4 in the morning.

Signs/Symptoms:
 - Days before we even found out I was pregnant (so very early on), I had very slight and intermittent cramps and nausea. Only enough to be annoying to me though.
 - Extra acne. Yay. The first "symptom" of all!
 - No aversions or cravings yet!

Month Two

This was an exciting month, even with all the nausea! First, we told our families on Easter Sunday :) Unfortunately, my family is in Washington and Dustan's is in Colorado, so we couldn't tell either of them in person. Instead, Dustan and I took a cute and simple little picture revealing that I was pregnant (below, we didn't have a cute ultrasound pic yet) and sent it to each of our families while we were Skyping them. Both families were SO excited, though mine seemed to be a little more surprised, haha. We were excited to finally have someone in the loop that we could talk to! And SO FUN, when we told our Kraus family that I was pregnant, Taylor (Dustan's sister) and her husband Bryson also announced that they were having a baby! Just two weeks ahead of us! We are so excited to be doing this together.

With month 2 came the dreaded "morning" sickness. During week 5 of the pregnancy, I just started feeling a bit worse every day. By the time week 6 was in full swing, I was throwing up every day, usually multiple times a day. It became very difficult to work (substitute teaching is not a good profession for when you are sick, in case you were wondering). I felt a little bit better when sitting or laying down, but still so crappy. I called my OB (I hadn't had my first appointment and wouldn't until week 8), and she told me to start taking Vitamin B6 and Unisom (an anti nausea and sleeping agent) each night. Unfortunately, I just threw this up in the middle of the night and it tasted horrible. My all time record was that I threw up 18 times in 24 hours. This was definitely more than the norm though. And that happened the night before and day of my first appointment, yay haha. I even threw up at the appointment. But good news, my OB prescribed a new medicine (Diclegis) that helped. I didn't throw up for about 5 days! It was awesome. Still feeling very crappy, but an improvement. The barfing unfortunately returned the next week, but more like twice every few days. So I'll take it.

Our first appointment was during week 8 of the pregnancy, on April 24th. As I just mentioned, the night and morning before was one of the worst I'd had, so my excitement level wasn't as high as I think it normally would be, haha. We had been a little overwhelmed at first on how we would choose an OBGYN with the plethora there are here in Utah, all covered by my insurance. So, we went to the hospital where I would eventually be delivering the baby and asked the nurses in the birthing/mother center who we should choose, and they were pretty unanimous with their top pick. So off to Dr. Emma Miller we went! She was awesome at our first appointment, we think we will really like her. The nurses were very sympathetic about my nausea (as I mentioned, I threw up in their office haha) and gave lots of advice. Of course, the most exciting part about the appointment was seeing our baby and hearing the heartbeat :) The heartbeat was at about 160 beats/min., and the baby looked like a little gummy bear. Doc showed us where the heart was and we could even see it fluttering while it was beating super fast! So neat. She also pointed out the head and body, which were very difficult for Dustan to discern, haha. And we got a cute, black and white picture to take home!

Week 9, very end of month 2!

Signs/Symptoms:
 - As mentioned in more detail above, nausea. And a lot of it. ALL DAY LONG. Definitely not a fan.
 - Lost 3 pounds since the start of the pregnancy.
 - Slightly more tired than usual, but not too significant. It probably doesn't help that I'm up in the middle of the night sometimes throwing up.
 - Not having to pee any more than normal. Weird? I keep expecting to experience this, haha.
 - A little extra emotional, i.e. crying a lot. I'm not sure if it because of the extra hormones, or because I just always get more emotional when I'm sick. Which is all the time.
 - Continuation of acne.
 - Aversions: meat, warm foods, wheat thins (threw them up too much in the beginning), dry foods, anything strong smelling, most veggies
 - Cravings: cold fruit, french fries (specifically waffle fries from Chick-Fil-A with their special sauce), ice cream, pizza--basically all the healthy foods, haha

Month Three

Week 11, no noticeable difference yet!

We started telling a few close friends this month that I was pregnant, and it was so great to be able to actually talk to some people about it and not be afraid to invite people over even when I might throw up, haha. Even more exciting though, we told Dustan's brother Garrett! He just got off his mission in the beginning of May, and both my sister-in-law Taylor and I kept it secret until we visited them in person for his homecoming talk in church. Anyway. We went to Red Robin as a family and Taylor followed our waiter after he took orders to ask him to bring out something special for Garrett when drinks came around. As our waiter was placing all our drinks, he casually placed two baby bottles in front of Garrett. He was SO CONFUSED, it was hilarious. We had brought two baby bottles and Taylor and I each taped an ultrasound picture to one of the bottles. He understood that Taylor and Bryson were having a baby girl first (their last name was on their ultrasound picture) before finally understanding that I was pregnant as well. It was so much fun!! It was definitely a highlight of month three with our baby.

We also had our 12 week checkup with the doc this month. We were so happy to hear that everything is okay with baby :) My OB was awesome, and we not only heard the heartbeat--which was down about 10 bpm from last time--but got a second ultrasound! Baby was pretty chill until my OB started poking him/her with the wand, then he/she started getting super wiggly! It was really neat to be seeing our baby's different body parts so clearly (we could even see the spine, how cool) move as the baby squirmed around. We really regret not taking a video.

Signs/Symptoms:
 - Continuation of the nausea. With the meds my OB prescribed, it is more manageable because I'm able to get a better start to my day with breakfast, snacks, etc. I have found though that if I have a bad morning, I tend to have an okay evening and vice versa... Towards the end of the month though, only been throwing up a couple times a week and some days I feel almost normal!
 - More exhaustion and lethargy. Energy levels are pretty low. I get out of breath so easily.
 - Lost 5 pounds since the start of the pregnancy around the beginning of month three, but by the end of the month I was back up 3 (making me 2 pounds below pregnancy starting weight).
 - Towards the beginning of the month, it is getting more difficult to suck in my stomach, and I'm feeling bloated 24/7. Towards the end of the month, I could actually tell that I am starting to get a little bigger, especially right between my hips and my pants are definitely getting extremely uncomfortable, though most are still wearable.
 - Occasional but strong cramps, usually at night and when I drink less water.
 - Aversions: meat (especially in leftovers), smell of bbq sauce/chips/flavor (Dustan's favorite chips are honey BBQ Frito twists unfortunately), most veggies
 - Cravings: cold fruit (still, especially grapes and oranges), cheese quesadillas, fruit and cream cups from Fruta Crush in Provo (I've only ever had these once, but now want them every time we pass the shop), smoothies, ice cream

Awkward phase of starting to look chubby, but definitely not pregnant (Week 13)

BABY K :)

Our new travel buddy arrives December 2017 :) Our greatest adventure yet!!

We are so excited to meet our little one!

A second blog post will be coming within the next couple days documenting the first trimester. I know most moms say they wish they had written down more notes or taken more pictures during their pregnancies (and I have always loved documenting life anyway), so I plan on posting often on our blog how things are going with Baby K! And below are a few more pictures we took :)