Owen Photo Shoot

Having little Owen home with us for the last 9 days has been the greatest. He is just a perfect little guy. I think that he has only cried for longer than 5 minutes twice.

One of Katalyn's old roommates, Lora, gave us a free baby photo shoot as a baby shower gift. And she took some wonderful pictures. If you want to see some of the pictures they are available here. If you live in Utah County and have photographic needs, you should check out her page. She does great work, and is really fun to be around.

Owen Rodger Pickett: The Continuing Story

It began on a Wednesday much like any other... Katalyn had a appointment with the doctor first thing in the morning, and we went together. She had been measuring small for the last 2 months or so, and that was the same on this day. Her doctors had been concerned about it before. One had ordered an extra ultrasound right before Christmas, and another had us come in to monitor the baby's heart rate and get another ultrasound just a few weeks ago. Though none us these tests had shown any cause for concern, the doctor we saw on Wednesday was still worried that Katalyn was measuring small, and told us that since we were at 39 weeks he thought the best course of action would just be to go to the hospital and get induced. It was at that moment that the full weight of having a baby struck me, and I began to have a mild panic attack as we drove home to pack a hospital bag. Katalyn was sweet and calming as always and helped me not to hyperventilate. When we got home we packed our bags (we googled what to bring), I gave Katalyn a blessing, and we headed out for the hospital.


We waited in this room for a while until they admitted us to the real one. We decided to take advantage of the time by taking some final tummy shots before it disappeared. Isn't she beautiful?


So we got into our room and started on pitocin around 11:00 am. Six hours later, Katalyn had only changed by 2 centimeters, and both of us were getting set to be in there for a long time. That was not a very appealing idea since we had only brought 3 movies and we had finished 2 of them. Around 7 pm the nurse came in to check her again, and somehow she was fully dilated. We started pushing a little while later, and at 8:19 pm, this little guy came out. 7 pounds 4 ounces and 20 inches long.

This was Katalyn seriously 1 minute after he was born. I think the caption to this picture should be something like "Epidurals are the best!"



After checking to make sure that he was healthy, they let little Owen (who was at the time nameless) hang out with us in the room for about an hour. He and Katalyn did some very tender bonding. Then it was time for me to take him down to the nursery. There, the nurse gave him his very first bath. He wasn't too thrilled about that.


But afterward, he was clean and happy and he had a sweet hair-do.


The next day, we had quite a few visitors from Katalyn's side of the family. This is Katalyn's mom along with most of her grandchildren.


By the second morning, we were ready to get our little son out of the hospital and take him home. Here he is right before we strapped him in his car seat. The hat was a gift from Becca. Though his head needs to grow a bit before it really fits, it still looked pretty darn stylish on him.


Here is Katalyn dressed and ready to go home. I feel like the caption on this one should be something like, "Wait, who just had a baby?"


Here we are just hanging out in the nursery after getting him home. I think that my favorite part of this picture is his skeptical look. To me it conveys something to the effect of, "So, you really think you can do this, eh?" Or perhaps, "Who the heck are you and why do you smile at me so much?"


Katalyn's mom has come to stay with us for a while to help us get adjusted. It has been wonderful having her here. Owen just loves snuggling with his grandma.


This picture was taken earlier today, right after our first attempt at giving him a bath. Again he didn't love it too much, but he was so clean and cute right afterward that it was worth it. Unfortunately that only lasted about 15 seconds at which point he spit up all over himself and his little towel. In the end, it turned out okay and we got another priceless facial expression on camera. Isn't he cute with those little ears?


Here's me combing his hair after the bath. We played around with a few different looks. One of my favorites was the missionary part.


I decided that it makes him look a little more mature than I am comfortable with, and we went back to the faux-hawk.

Well that's our story and all of the cute pictures that we have so far. I think that being parents has been a little more difficult than we had pictured, but we love it and him and each other more than ever.

Baby Boy Pickett

The newest member of our family arrived at 8:19 pm on February the 9th. He was 7 pounds 4 ounces and 20 inches long. Though we have yet to decide on a name, we sure do love our new little guy. Expect many more pictures to follow shortly.

"That is so true"

So, we didn't do any blog-worthy projects this week, but we did get some fun baby gifts! These were probably our favorites. they were given to us by all of Katalyn's former coworkers at the biophysics lab. We felt that the onesie was very appropriate for any offspring of ours as did Mary's friend Mark who saw it and remarked, "That is so true." We definitely are both nerds, but it sure makes life fun. I am so glad that I married someone who will have half-hour long discussions with me about why green paint looks better in a room with white light, effective cryptographic secret sharing methods, or why paint would take longer to solidify when it is cold outside. So, even if other people think we are weird, at least we're having a good time.

Projects Abound!

What do two temporarily unemployed college grads do with themselves each day you ask... projects of course! Here is a look at what we have done this week.

To start things off, while we were in Seattle over Christmas we went to the Harry Potter exhibit at the Pacific Science Center as a family. At the end of the exhibit you had to walk through a gift shop, where they sold lots of HP replica items. We were there with my nephew Addison, and he wanted a wand really bad. Unfortunately, the were like $70, so that didn't happen. But then my mother in the Joanne-esque spirit of volunteering others to do things said that I could make a wand. I made one while we were there in Seattle, but I think I carved it a little too thin and it ended in disaster. So here is my Harry Potter wand version 2.0. It is thicker and shorter than the other one, and hopefully much more durable.



I think that at some point last week we both realized that in about two weeks we are going to have a little baby to bring home with us and thought, "Maybe we should get ready for that..." So this week we got serious about getting the nursery ready.

This is a changing table that my mom found for sale on the side of the road somewhere.


This is the outline of the frolicking lamb that was on the front of the door after I had sanded it off. I wish we would have gotten a real before picture, because the cheesiness of it was pretty epic.


And here is the finished product after I gave it one of those miracle spray paint jobs that are often found on other people's blogs. Katalyn was the chief designer, and I just did my best to make her vision come to life. Doesn't it look like something from Pottery Barn?


Rochelle had the nursery painted pink for Zoey, but we didn't want to risk damaging Joshua's (or whatever his name turns out to be) manhood by putting him in a pink room, so we decided to paint it.


We did it green beneath the chair rail and cream above it. Feel free to notice how good the changing table looks in there. Also, feel free to notice the cushion on top of the cedar chest.


Katalyn used her immense sewing skills to make that cushion. She even made her own piping, which as I understand is kind of a big deal.






Katalyn's aunts found us this great rocking chair on KSL. Here she is just all ready to be a little mom. Pretty cute, huh?


And here are some more pictures of the nursery. And this is the finished crib, that we were priming in the last post.



Here is a sneak-peak of the living room. Katalyn also sewed these curtains. Isn't she talented?


Well, that's it for now. Next week we will hopefully have some more exciting projects to post.

An Extremely Overdue Update

To start from way back, Katalyn had her birthday in November and we made red velvet cupcakes from scratch. It sure took a whole lot of red food coloring, but they were really good and we had a fun day.


Now to fast forward to the present. We've moved into Bill and Rochelle's house (Casey's brother and sister-in-law) and have been working on a lot of home improvement projects. We'll show you the kitchen in this post, as all the others are still works in progress. We'll update as they're completed.

This is the awful "grapes of wrath" wallpaper border we took down. It was originally below the chair rail in the dining area of the kitchen.


Here's the wall with the grapes gone, but before we painted it. Casey worked really hard on getting the border off.


Here's the ceiling fan that was in the same room. We've discovered since moving in that we HATE ceiling fans. Note to selves: Never buy a ceiling fan.



Here is the finished product of the dining room area...well, we're still planning on putting up curtains, and the table is usually cleared off, but we're sure you all understand. :) Please take note of the cool light fixture. We stayed up really late working on it, and Casey taught me all about electrical wiring as he was learning it for himself. It was a fun adventure, and now we know how to install light fixtures!


Here's a little preview of one of the projects we're currently working on. Casey's mom got us a changing table and crib, and we've been painting the crib. Here's the priming stage. (Katalyn felt safer wearing her chemistry lab goggles...and it looked cool.) Also note that you can finally see that Katalyn is pregnant, now that she's full term. We're pretty excited about that.



Stay tuned for the rest of our home improvement projects! Coming up: baby crib, living room, and bedroom/master bathroom.

Who would have thought...

Somehow I have made it through all of my education up to this point without ever taking a statistics class, but that had to come to an end this semester in order for me to get my degree. The funny part is that I am kind of falling in love with it. It is a really fun way of applying logic through mathematics, and it really surprises me sometimes.
Do you know how many people you would need to have in a group before the odds of at least two of them sharing a birthday (not counting the year of birth) is about 50/50?









Seriously, guess first.















23. Isn't that cool?
Well, that satisfied my sudden urge to tell the world how fun probability can be. Aren't blogs great?

P.S. Sorry that we haven't done anything picture-worthy lately, hopefully we will rectify that soon.