The Tiniest Hiccups, a Polydactyl Cat, and Arches National Park

So, for starters, little Quatro (or Rolly (like - roh-lie) as I've started calling him - it was as good as a nickname for "Herald" as I could come up with) has been kicking and rolling quite a bit lately. Seriously though, if his kicks continue to increase in strength as time goes by, he'll probably manage to kick his way out! About a month ago I started noticing tiny, extremely rhythmic movements he was making. I couldn't quite figure it out, and told Paul that Rollie must already have an impeccable sense of rhythm. After thinking about it and doing some research, and then noticing the sensation repeating a good number of times throughout the week,  I realized he simply has teeny tiny baby hiccups that last for ten minutes or so at a time. That's pretty fun and a good addition to his punching/kicking/rolling repertoire. We've been thinking about what crib/carseat/other baby stuff we're going to need, since we don't want to be taken by surprise *just in case* he ends up coming early. If anyone has suggestions for baby items/things we should prepare for, just let us know!

Here's a preggo picture from our trip to Arches. I'm lookin' even bigger now, of course. At this point, Rolly is about 14 inches and weighs 2 pounds.

We went to Arches National Park in Utah with my sister Brooke a few weeks ago, and I was soooo glad we went. It was right after Winter semester had ended and we had just a few days before we'd start working and going to school again, and it was perfect to actually get outside and go camping with what little time we had. It's about a three hour drive from Provo to Arches, and when we arrived we realized that the non-reservation campsites had apparently filled earlier in the day. Darkness was creeping in fast, so we drove around trying to find a campsite. Thankfully, Paul had found one that was *kind of* legit seeming, and we went down and asked the campers around it if anyone had claimed the site already. There was stuff nearby, but not in that particular camp, so we decided to chance it. The site was down right near a river, and tucked in a canyon with two large rock walls on either side. We set up camp and Paul and Brooke made a small fire upon which we made s'mores. There was almost a full moon so it ended up being very light in the canyon overall.

The rapidly falling night in the canyon as we finished pitching our tents and attempted to set up a campfire.

Brooke and Paul are great at building fires. Paul clearly retained his Eagle Scout training.

The first is our view from our campsite (the blue is the tent) and the second is the river - our campsite was right by the yellow tent.

We found a bunch of fun desert flowers while we hiked around - that was probably one of my favorite parts. I've never seen flowers like those back East. We also saw a jackrabbit, some mule deer, several tiny chipmunks, and some small pika/marmot type thing.

That's Paul way off under the arch.

Paul in a very sandy area, it was fun to walk in such perfectly find sand - it was very different from the beach.

Generally, Brooke and Paul were more daring this time than I was when it came to hiking around the arches and such :)

Balancing the balancing rock.

This was my very favorite arch - I think it was called Delicate Arch. Very majestic.

Hershesy - buy one get one free! Saw this at a gas station we stopped back on a nearby town to Arches. I feel like Hershesy is actually someone's rap name.

This is somewhat out of order, but we also had a very wonderful Easter. The traditional meal we make every year in my family on Easter is creamed eggs and cornbread. We also died eggs with some friends in the ward, which I haven't done in many years, so we enjoyed that. We added bacon because... bacon is delicious. 

We also went to the Utah Humane Society this past weekend which is up near Salt Lake. It's one of my favorite places because they have a part of the building called "Kitty City" where they have large jungle gyms with tons of cats sleeping and playing on them, and you can just walk in and pet/play with them. They had a lot of friendly (and not so friendly) cats, and Paul learned some more cat language tips from being around them. He's not in love with every single cat like I am, but he's becoming more and more open to the idea of owning one eventually (although they were running an adoption sale where the cats were only $5 to adopt when we were there - talk about temptation!)

The polydactyl cat and his awesome paws.

While we were in one of the cat rooms, I started petting a friendly cat who had chubbier cheeks and larger ears than most cats. I looked down and saw he also had more toes than most cats - a polydactyl cat! The last picture is an image of a normal cat's paws with only four toes. This cat had 5, and very long pronounced toes on his back feet.

This was another one of my favorite cats - you can't totally tell from the picture, but she had little black eyebrow markings right above her eyes.

We went and visited the dogs as well, but it was a little more sad because dogs don't take to an environment like the pound as well as cats do. A lot of them were pretty sad to be in there, but fortunately that particular humane society has a very good adoption rate for all their animals.

In other news, (heh) I had a lot of articles published in BYU's newspaper this past semester, and this photo on the front page of one of my friends with some blooming branches. I'm actually suuuper glad the particular class I was writing those articles for is over (probably the hardest class I've taken at BYU) but at least there were some fruits for my labors.

We also went shopping at Trader Joe's while we were near Salt Lake City since it's Paul's favorite grocery store. We got some strawberries and found this cute little baby and mom strawberry hooked together. 

We've had a fun time the past few weeks, and currently I'm working at an internship for school credit (and it's paid, fortunately) and taking one class. Paul is working full time - both our jobs are the same ones we had during the school year which is nice. I'm just hoping to keep on pushing through and that the baby doesn't come early so I can get all the required hours for my internship!