My mother was in town this weekend. She came back from her summer classes in England. She is getting a master's degree in Education Technology. Or more specifically integrating technology into to her teaching methods. I was able to help her with her Web site (though not as much as we wanted. Sorry Mom.) and see the sites of Boston.

Our first stop was Plymouth Plantation, which was highly recommended by my friends. We were able to visit the Mayflower replica while we were there too. Both were very interesting sites. The ship was smaller than we had expected with a larger hold than we expected. Something of a contradiction. We were told that over 100 people were housed on a ship that would probably fit inside a chapel (with overflow). The pilgrims were amazing people to have endured so much so they could achieve religious freedom. I am thankful that our country today is accepting of different religions and doesn't persecute as in times past.
The plantation was also well done. There were actors dressed and living as though they were pioneers in a new land. They spoke about the things that were important to them: farming, fishing, cooking, sewing, carpentry, religion. It was certainly a difficult time to be alive.
My mother as a history teacher was very interested in everything going on. I have been more reluctant to embrace history but even I found it very interesting. Mia and I think of everything these days in terms of bringing our kids back. This is definately on the list.

While my wife stayed home the next day, mom and I went into the city of Boston to walk the Freedom Trail. The trail is about 2 miles long, though we only traveled about 1 mile of it. That tour is packed with so much historical information it is ridiculous. We learned about the founders, the patriots, the myths that surround Paul Revere (he didn't shout as he rode) and myriad other facts about one of the oldest cities in our country.
Some great things happened in Boston and I am proud to live in the city were freedom was so highly regarded.

Before she left, my mother and father gave us the best gift. I want to thank them so much. We know that it is for the baby, but we hope you don't mind us breaking it in first :)

Today was David's wedding to Chris. It was held in Utah at the top of the Snowbird ski resort. The wedding was very nice, it went (mostly) smoothly and there were quite a number of people in attendance.
This was something of a shock because they gave everyone about 1 month's notice about the whole affair. I do not mean to say that we were suprised to hear they were getting married, quite the contrary. However, we were suprised that it was happening so suddenly.

When we were told, David offered to fly us out to Utah from JFK airport in New York city at midnight. That meant a 3-hour drive, driving through the entire city, and then catching a red-eye flight out to Utah. Fortunately, we were able to work out a deal that let us leave from our hometown at about 9:00AM. That worked out much better for us.

Coming back to the topic at hand, the wedding was very nicely done. Chris has more family in Utah so they made quite a showing. We enjoyed meeting them and getting to know her boys better as well. They will be moving to New York in September so the boys can begin school and get settled in.

We drove out to Albany this weekend to visit the Mia's family. We have been doing that quite a bit recently. They just have too much going on in their lives for us to keep up with.

As we were driving we decided to come up with names that we like for a . We are getting more confident in the idea that our baby will be a little inday (the Filipino word for a baby ). We had a couple of names written down from some baby books. None of them felt quite right, they seemed to be trying too hard. After much debate we decided that we liked the name Kimberly Jane Johansen.

Jane comes from Mia's maternal grandmother and will be the name that we call her. She can certainly decide for herself to switch that later, but for the first while we are the parents and get to make aribtrary, caprious decisions.

Kimberly doesn't have roots in either family. We both think that it is a cute name and we hope that our daughter will like it as well. I might just have to steal a nickname from my uncle though and call her Kimmers. I suppose it depends on what she will respond to.

This is one of the most exciting posts that I have had in a while. We went in today for our first (and only) ultrasound. We were eager to see pictures of our little baby and find out if everything was alright so far.

The first pictures that we saw were of random legs or arms, then the technician pointed out the beating heart. From that moment the whole baby seemed to come alive. We could see it moving, squirming, kicking, trying to suck a thumb. We were enthralled, I was enthralled.

The good news is that our baby is healthy. There are a couple of medical histories on Mia's side of the family that had us worried, but everything is fine. the baby is developing normally and from the measurements, our due date was put at 2 days after what we already had calculated. A very good sign!

The only downside is that we were hoping to find out the of the baby. The couple of shots we got, the baby was kicking the whole time, were inconclusive. However, the best guess at the time, and our own feelings on the matter, lean towards having a female baby.

Having a -baby (or boy) will be the best thing that has ever happened to us. We are so thrilled that we can barely wait until the end of November to greet our little newborn.

I will be sure to keep posting her progress.

First, I have to put in the plug that I finally updated the pictures of our pregnancy. We don't have many, but there are some pictures of the growing belly that my wife is carrying around. I think that she is looking cuter and cuter each day, but she doesn't believe me. I guess I will have to keep telling her until she does!

But now, what I was going to write about tonight is how bad I feel because I missed Father's Day. We went out to spend the weekend with my wife's parents, we got so caught up in the affairs of their lives that I forgot to call or write my own father. Now this might not be such a bad thing, if I wrote to my parents regularly, but I don't. So now I have the guilt of not writing often enough, combined with missing the day that I should have been especially focused on my father.

I think that it would be doubly shameful of me if I did not take this chance to write why I feel so badly about this. For everyone that knows Arthur, they know that I have been raised with one of the best role-models for a father that a boy could have. He was always calm but funny, always loving both to us and our mother. He was stern and unyeilding on the principles that were important to him (and are now important to me).

I know that my father has doubted that he was around often enough for us to appreciate him, but some of my best memories are fishing, skiing or playing Master of Monsters with my Dad. He is ready with profound advice whenever I ask and has shared his testimony of the gospel with me throughout this life, in his teachings and example.

Thanks.
I love you Dad.

I am getting closer and closer. I finally updated the main picturing page of my Web site. You can now check out all the slideshows in a much more presentable way. I am going to put some s in for all the main links, but not today.

The weather in Boston has been very fickle recently. In the course of just one week we went from about 50 degrees up to 90 degrees then into thunderstorms. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, but at least the rain has stayed away from the weekend recently.

One of the best parts about summer on the East coast are the trees that grow on the sides of the roads. So many of the streets here have a canopy of tree branches hanging over them, providing shade and making the drive feel like you are in a rural part of the country rather than a busy metropolis. We are both very fond of the greener, plantier landscape here compared to the West, from Utah down to Southern California.

Today we were out looking at baby strollers and car seats. They have gotten quite fancy in recent years. We were looking at some which the carseat fits into the stroller, and the stroller can be foleded down with one hand.
We also looked at some of the baby furniture, most of which cost more than our furniture. Changing tables and cribs and toddler beds and little dressers, it was incredible. We think that we will convert a couple of things around the house, but there are somethings that you can't avoid. We will be making a list soon, I think it is going to be a bit overwhelming when we first write it.

But on the positive side of baby news, we are going in for the ultrasound in two weeks. I am very excited because we are going to find out the of the baby. I hope that we get a good view so we can know for sure. We keep trying to say 'he' or 'she' now, but catch ourselves because we don't want to get too attached to one gender before we know. Although, I am hoping that we have a little boy. I think most fathers want to know they are going to have a boy to carry on the family name.

We will let everyone know when we find out what we are having.

A couple in our ward, who are friends of ours, might move into one of the apartments in our house. There are four aparmtnents in the house we live in, two on the first level and two on the second level. We live in the bottom right (if you are facing the house) and they will live in the upper left.
This is all part of the plan to get the whole house filled by people in our ward says my wife, but we don't expect the other people living near us to move out any time soon.
However, we are very excited and look forward to having people close-by that we can hang out with. The trick will be not to do too much together so we don't get sick of each other.
Our landlord really wanted them to be the ones to move in too. He lowered the initial rent price and offered to pay the realtor fee. That is quite a shock in the sky-high priced city of Boston. They are pretty lucky, indeed.

I like to listen to NPR as I drive to work, recently I have noticed a burgeoning trend towards short, personal essays. A kind of creative non-fiction that I think I would like. If I can get up the courage to do it, I am going to try writing a few pieces. I will post them in the writing section, but first I am going to need to come up with topics. I know they are all around me, but finding one and fleshing it out could prove more challenging than it seems right now.

But, I need to write more, and this is a good exercise in writing, so I will do it.

So, I feel bad that I haven't said more about the baby on my blog. I could write something everyday about our little baby, and I should.

Actually, we aren't seeing much change yet in Mia, so we mostly just read about what our baby is doing. One of the visible things however is the persistent morning sickness. She hasn't been able to wake up and just get going with her day. That is frusterating. We are both trying to come up with ways to help her, but so far nothing seems to work. We hope that it will pass soon. I don't know what either of us would do if Mia was sick all nine months. In fact, let's not think about it.

Mia is under the impression that her stomach is getting bigger, but I don't see much difference. We can tell that the baby has shifted up into the location it will be for the rest of the pregnancy. And in a couple of weeks we get to go in for an ultrasound to determine the . I hope that we can find out on our first visit.

Overall we are still very excited about having a baby. I have been telling people at work, and almost everyone at church knows now, so we are really in full-swing here.