Week 29 Update, family camp out Christmas!

I popped!  It seems like in the last month I have just popped out, and I am sure that it will continue in that manner for another 11 weeks until she is here!  

This is a blurry picture of our family camp-out in our front room!  Our neighbors were having a party and were being quite noisy, so we moved our bed into the furthest room from their party and had a family camp out!  It worked out well until they moved the party outside at 5 am.  Gotta love apartment living!



Below is our Christmas, Yea for Christmas!

It's Great... to be... a Florida GATOR!

These past 2 weeks has been full of fun and travel for the Meldrum family!  We were able to go to Utah for Thanksgiving, and thanks to Mike's professors changing classes at the last minute, we were able to go out for a whole week!  We were able to see Tanner and welcome him home from his mission, spend time with our way cute nephews and even got to go up and see the Garlock family in Logan for a day.  It was great to be back and be with family and to just relax!  We got to see the Bean Museum with the Shaw boys, get a hair cut, go bowling with the Garlock girls (fairy wings and all), had tons of GREAT food, and just enjoyed being with family.  Thanks Mom and Dad for bringing us out!  Too bad we missed little Ben by 1 day.... but pictures will have to do.

Then, this past weekend we went up to Atlanta to go to the SEC Championship game and boy was it awesome!  We got some tickets from work and drove the 5 hour trip Saturday morning, arriving there around noon.  This time, we planned out our parking/transportation situation to a T and it worked flawlessly.  

We parked over by the airport and took the Marta in to downtown and even got the DL from the local guys to take the exit after the Georgia Dome for better access.  It was quite cold, but there were still TONS of tailgaters and just tons of people around the stadium.  We had lunch, played at the Fanfest and went and took our seats about an hour before the game.  We were worried there for a little while, but once Florida sealed the deal in the 4th quarter, we were sure the title was ours.  

(Notice the lack of Alabama people? They had 3/4 of the seats and if you look to the left, you can see the start of the Florida section)

One of my favorite parts was riding the Marta with all the people from Alabama!  I just love a Southern accent and had some great conversations with them.  I tried to convince Mike that we need to move to Alabama so our kids can have the accent, but he wasn't going for it.

We stayed in Cordele GA, (reminds me of Beaver, UT) about 2 hours south of Atlanta so we could drive the rest of the way home on Sunday to make it in time for church.  All in all, it was an AWESOME couple of weeks and now we get to celebrate the Christmas Season with Mike's family this year.  It will be even better once Mike finishes school, Seminary takes a break and we can just relax!  Yea for the Holidays!

The Name Game

We are stuck.  We don't know what we should name our little girl, so we are opening it up for suggestions!  We both have a name that each of us really likes (R- Abigail, M- Isabelle or Samantha), but the other one is not in love with, so we are looking for that perfect name out there that both of us will just know it is perfect.  So, if you have any suggestions that would go well with Meldrum, let us know!  Please!  

Florida vs. Georgia Blowout!

I think most of our posts consist of some sort of Orange or Blue and usually have something to do with Gator Football.  But, that is the life in Gainesville and come January, we can focus on other things!  (yea for me!).  I do enjoy football, but it will be nice to have Saturdays back.

Anyway, on that note, we got tickets to the Florida Georgia game which is played in Jacksonville at the Jaguar's Stadium as a neutral site.  Last year was pretty pathetic, so we really had to show up and play this year, and boy did we ever!  

We left our house at 9:30 am and arrived in our parking spot around 12:30.  We "tailgated"  in the sense that we brought chairs and stopped and got some Quizno's and ate our lunch out in frot of our car with pink lemonade and Rootbeer.  I know, we are wild. They had a whole area set off with Sports Illustrated, ESPN, and many other booths ,some of which had games like throwing ball through the hole and winning a prize.  I would like to point out that I beat Mike in one of the games (my throwing skills have greatly increased since marrying him).   He whooped me in the fieldgoal kicking, but I have never been known for my feet skills.  

Picture with fellow co-workers

All in all, it was a great game, we had great seats thanks to my boss, and we have another great Gator memory.  Mike starts his rotations in March for a full year and then we are done 

(if you don't count the residency)!  Yea!!!!!!

The 3rd Annual Pumpkin Carving FHE with the Davis'

It is officially Halloween, we now have carved our pumpkin and in the spirit of the Georgia vs. Florida game on Saturday, our pumpkin had to be Gator-esq.  I think Mike and I did a decent job this year!  

And..... IT IS COLDER IN GVILLE TODAY THAN IN UTAH!!!!!  We have hit a cold-snap and it is supposed to get pretty cold tonight.  We usually don't have our first freeze until the end of November and here it is October!  It makes me feel at home that it is cold at halloween.  YEA!!!

Belly Update & T-bone is back!

This is my belly at 21 Weeks.  Mike has decided that my new nickname is Fatso which he terms an endearing compliment.  Sounds questionable to me. :)

Also, T-Bone returned home from his mission in South Korea and we are so proud of him!  Watch out ladies, Tanner is back and cuter than ever!  This picture is of the baptism he had the week before he came home.  To quote Tanner, "Who says Miracles have ceased!"

It's a .... GIRL!!!!

She is healthy, happy, and weighing in large at 12 oz, the weight of a can of soda.  All body functions are working correctly, but she was hiding her face so we could not get a good shot of what she looks like.  We could not be happier (I get to buy pretty dresses, bow, and pink things), now we just need a name! 

You never know when someone is paying attention...

Every day, the owner of the company I work for posts a blog, usually centered around personal leadership or something similar.  I pulled up his blog today and the beginning quote was, 

"So many of us make a great fuss of matters of small consequence.  We are so easily offended.  Happy is the man who can brush aside the offending remarks of another and go on his way."

-Gordon B. Hinckley

In our company culture, we are encouraged to put a quote at the bottom of our signature on email.  I change mine about quarterly and this is the quote that I currently have on the bottom of my emails.  I usually have something subtly religious or a quote by one of the Church leaders.  Who knew that he would take the time to read my quote on my emails.... just goes to show you that you never know when someone might be paying attention to who you are/what you portray.  

 Being a seminary teacher, I just have to remind us all of Matt 5:14-16   Ye are the light of the world!

Here is his blog if you want to see it for yourself.

Florida Football & 16 Week Bump

It is that time of year again, when Football takes over life in Gainesville, FL.  I have never been in a town where college football is such a religion, a city where if you don't wear orange or blue on the day BEFORE the football game, you are deemed unworthy to live here.  A city where everyone starts tailgating at 8 am and the huge RVs come and park all around campus the night before and party all night (none of which are students).  A city where you have to get to the game at least 3 hours before to even find a remotely close parking spot.  A city where every main road is lined with tailgaters (and I come from a college town where there were not any tailgaters).  A City where 50,000 people come to the city for game-day weekends and the hotels require you to stay at least 3 nights and charge crazy rates.   All of this, and my Husband would not change any of it for the world..... until the last game against Miami.

We sit in the Pharmacy block for the games so we are surrounded by Mike's fellow students.  We got to the game quite early and were enjoying the whole scene.  Well, the game was at 8:oo so everyone had been tailgating and drinking since early that morning.  By the time all the students got to the game, most of them had had WAY too much to drink and were quite drunk and sweaty.  It was not the most delightful of surroundings, but it was the Miami game and Mike would never miss a game if he could.  

To make a long story short, there was about 5 min left in the 2nd quarter and the guy right behind me, who should not have been there, decided to throw up right behind me.  Luckily, I was able to jump out of the way but Mike got some on him.  The smell was horrible and I was quite proud of myself that I did not throw up back on him being pregnant and very queazy with smells.  Needless to say, we left early and missed the whole second half of the game.  The bummer part was that we could have easily sold our tickets for $150 a piece as regular tickets were going for $400 right before the game.  And yes, scalping tickets is legal here.  

So here is a picture of us watching the last of the second quarter under the stadium.  I have never been more grateful for the Word of Wisdom and how much wisdom there really is in it.  Seeing all these drunk students and how horrible they looked just emphasized our resolve to live by the words of modern prophets.  

Here is what it feels like to be in a stadium of 90,000 at the beginning of a game.  Just multiply the sound times 90!  (side note, if you pause on second 11, you can see Mike's happy face)

On a totally separate note, here is a picture that we took last week of my belly at 16 weeks.  The baby is healthy and happy as of our Dr. visit last week.  Our next apt. where we find out what we are having is on October 16th, so we are totally looking forward to that!  

We're Prego!!!!

After a year of trying, we're Pregnant!  We are so excited to be able to bring a little spirit into this world and cannot wait for the day s/he arrives!  I am just over 12 weeks and am due March 3rd.  The baby is super healthy and last week, when we had our second ultrasound, we saw s/he moving all around, doing somersaults and all the arms and legs.  It was quite amazing considering 4 weeks prior all we saw was a little bean.  

This picture is not the best but the baby's head is at the bottom left and one arm is sticking out by it's head, waiving hi to us.  We will be able to find out what we are having in just over a month so we will keep you updated.  We just could not be happier!  

A Very Late 4th Update & 3 Years o'Awesomeness together

Well, it has been a while but I will try and update our lives for the past month.  

First, we had the 4th of July!  We had a couple days o' fun including Fanfare & Fireworks on the 3rd with live Gainesville Band/Orchestra music while the fireworks were going off (think Sandlot) and on the morning of the 4th we had our ward breakfast & games and then had our own version of the Cul-de-sac of fire.

We borrowed a house just off a little lake that had a huge backyard and invited some friends from the ward to party with us.  After some good food & games, we went and did our own little fireworks show which was followed by the neighbors full on huge firework show (big fireworks are not illegal in Florida and they sell them year round).  It was a great 4th as usual.

Oh, and Mike was in charge of the camera so it was a bit sparse.

leisurely enjoying post-dinner activities in the huge backyard

Sitting on a great southern porch in rockers.

The little girls this year loved sparklers a used the bug-repellant candle to light them all night.

This picture is here because while we were watching the neighbors fireworks from the backyard by the lake, we heard some gator calls, but could not see any so we took a picture to make sure that they were not right next to us by looking for their eyes flashing. 

It was also our 3 year anniversary this week so last week we went down to Busch gardens and played there for the day and then went to the Tampa Bay Rays game against the Toronto Bluejays.  It was a good game but what was awesome was that it was 90's night and after the game, MC HAMMER did a concert.  By that time it was getting late so we only stayed for 3 songs to get home by 1am.  All of the songs he did at the beginning were his new stuff, (yes, he has new stuff) but our friends who stayed said that at the end he did some "Can't touch this" and other Hammer classics.  It was a fun and tiring day.  

I am so grateful for my hubby who is my best friend and who I could not picture my life without.  This has been an awesome 3 years and I am so excited to spend the rest of eternity with him. Thanks babe for all that you do and for supporting me at all times.  I love you!

Hello? Is anyone out there? I know that some people seem to peruse these posts with some regularity, so there must be an audience. Therefore, I have decided that it is about time that I made some sort of contribution to this collaborative effort. After all, I am the andmike part of rachandmike. So welcome to my very first blog post, depending on how it goes it might end up being my last one. (I could leave the blogging to the family expert, I love you Rach) So now that I have decided to try my hand at this whole bloggint thing I have to figure out what topic I feel so passionately about that I could write anything of any meaning. After pondering that for some time I realized that blogging isn't about things of deep meaning. (take a look at all the previous posts if you doubt me) In essence Rachel only seems to write about what we do in our boring everyday lives. So I decided to write about one of my new favorite things that I have discovered on the internet. (it is amazing how much there is to look through when you are at work but really have little to nothing to do) So my great discovery is the website http://www.pandora.com/ Now as everone is very aware, I am not the musical on in our house hold, but I think I have stumbled across something that all you music lovers will enjoy. (or maybe I am behind the times and everyone has already discovered this site before I did, in that case kuodos to you) You can enter a song or group that you like and the site will play other songs that have similar music qualities to the songs you like. It is pretty cool I think. Thanks for reading through my ramblings. I hope it brought you some form of enjoyment.

Seminary & Treking

So, a couple of weeks ago I got released from the YW presidency but did not have a calling for a while.  I was so bummed as I wanted to stay with the youth.  Well, I am with them again as their early morning seminary teacher for next year (spoke too soon).  I am teaching our ward & the 1st ward kids every morning at 6:45.  I am so excited but humbled as I now want to go back in time and take a lot more notes during my seminary years.  The curriculum is the New Testament and I have my first of 3 trainings this Saturday down in Orlando so I will for sure take notes.

If anyone has any great memories or ideas about seminary, let me know!  

On Friday we joined the YW/YM on their Trek down just south of Orlando on a Church cattle ranch.  It was so fun to be with the kids, we were on the activities committee which meant going down for a day and playing games and joining them in a hoe-down.  We were in charge of a sack-race, javelin throw & a hair washing station where we would wash all of their hair if they wanted it.  

A Cute Pioneer Couple

The kids dancing, and they enjoyed it!

I just loved this picture of Mike as my cowboy!

This picture is for Gracie.  It is a baby gator that we found when we went to the bat house on campus.

Gville has been Super Sized!

It is now official, Gainesville has it's first Super anything as of last month!  Gainesville, for those of you who don't know it well, is a hippie-college town that does not believe in large businesses coming into town or expanding/building roads.  

Anyway, to get off my soapbox, we have a SUPER WAL-MART!  The city finally let them build on the east side of town which is not known for being the best part of town, but it is still exciting!  I was so excited to go, I had Mike take a picture which he thought was so nerdy of me.  He has yet to understand blogging life.  I saw things in that store that I have not seen since Utah: Rainbow chip icing, frozen hashbrowns/potato products, real chicken patties, and many more things.  

(low-quality phone pictures)

We also went on a hike with the YW, even though I got released from my position with them. :(  They needed another Priesthood holder and Mike is always the one they go to.  It was a 10 mile hike along the Suwannee River.  They did really well even though it was quite hot that day. I will miss working in the YW program.

This is what hiking in florida looks like... flat and lots of trees

Picture around the 8th mile... this was about where we got to the song "there was a hole"

The Suwanee river was super low and was a dark red color from the cypress trees that surround the river.  The girls kept calling it the river of blood.

Haiti, Jamaica, oh I want to take you to Grand Cayman, Cozumel...

Have no fear, I am finally blogging about our cruise through the Western Caribbean!  It was SUCH a blast and was so relaxing; we had a great time!  It was a 7 night cruise which went to Labadee, Haiti, Jamaica, Grand Cayman islands & Cozumel, Mexico.  We went with Steph and Brendon, who flew out here to Florida and we picked them up on our way to Port Canaveral.  

Between snorkeling in the beautiful clear water, almost getting left in Jamaica, swimming with the Stingrays and touring the ancient Mayan Ruins of Tulum, we experienced things we have never been able to do and feel very blessed that we were able to do this at this time in life.  

Below are a plethora of pictures so peruse at your delight (in reverse chronological order).  Isn't it great that the times you take the most pictures, is on vacation when you don't get dressed up or have make-up on, so excuse the lack of getting ready for most any outside picture.

Our Waiters- she was adorable and was brand new to Royal Caribbean. 

We learned how to play the steel drums and got pretty good at it!

We had a cruise-long tournament- the Meldrums vs. the Holmes

Our Dining room table- had lots of fun getting to know the other couples from PA.  You can't tell from the picture, but I was sporting the side ponytail - come on back late 80's!

Tulum was way cool, but WAY HOT!

I think I could have lived in this Mayan city right next to the ocean!

an Upside-down God they referenced- which they believe represents that God coming to earth... ring a bell to anyone? 

We obviously aren't of Mayan decent.  This was the entrance to the city

Yet again, part of the Meldrum vs. Holmes tourney.  Mike and I always won the golf and the Holmes always won the Ping-pong.

a beautiful Gazebo where a couple just got married right before we took this picture.

Watching Jamaica disappear, relieved that we were on this side of the departure.  Let's just say that we were running down the dock to make it in time.

Yarr... the real pirates of the caribbean

Mike and his love for all animals.

The Beaches of Mexico.  We got really good at taking the "stick-the-arm-out-self-portrait"

Fancy Dress up night.. I knew I'd get another use out of my Prom dress.

Dunn's River Falls where we climbed up the middle.  It was beautiful

I think we ate enough food for the whole month in just one week.

Brendon took us sailing out in the waters of Jamaica

Can you tell I was a little apprehensive about kissing the stingray?  I got a lot better towards the end of this encounter.  They are really amazing animals.  We took a boat out about 45 min to the middle of the water and went to a sandbar and fed the stingrays to get them by our boat.  There were about 50-60 stingrays that got up to 5 feet wide.  This was one of our best excursions!

Mike eating Escargo... ewww!  We got to eat a lot of different foods, but I did not try this one.

Hanging out in Haiti.  This was a private island in Haiti, so we were safe and it was beautiful!  It reminded me of the island in Joe verses the Volcano.  

Our boat- the Mariner of the Seas with Captain Johnny.  

I felt like a Lemming.

 We loved snorkeling.. swam with beautiful fish and Mike even found an Ironman Watch that still worked. 

Doesn't he just look so happy and relaxed!  Yea for Vacations!

We had a great time!  Thanks Steph and Brendon for inviting us to go with you!  We loved it!