Lately...

Penny has been cuter than ever lately. Although it's really hard to catch a smile, I have managed to catch some other cute faces on camera..

I couldn't put captions under each picture cause I'm blogtarded, but one of these is called the "blue steel". I'm sure you can figure it out.

Things I've done ("I" being Jessica)

I found this on my friend Melanie's blog and thought it was fun. You're supposed to go through it and highlight everything you have done. I wasn't going to do it at first but then I realized I'd actually done quite a few things, so I decided to share. It's fun, you should do it.

1. Started your own blog

2. Slept under the stars

3. Played in a band--The Zenith Byrds, you should remember this Sara, you and Allie gave me hell for my hit "Joker".

4. Visited Hawaii

5. Watched a meteor shower

6. Given more than you can afford to charity--I might be cheating on this one because it was mostly other peoples money that I raised to go to Africa...

7. Been to Disneyland--more times than I can count. By the way D-land lets you in for free on your b-day this year. I already signed Dave up cause his is on July 31.

8. Climbed a mountain--Half Dome!! It was amazing.

9. Held a praying mantis

10. Sang a solo-- Young Women in Action, 13 years old, first and last solo.

11. Bungee jumped-- Into, yes, into the Nile River.

12. Visited Paris

13. Watched a lightning storm at sea

14. Taught yourself an art from scratch-- Guitar? Is that an art?

15. Adopted a child

16. Had food poisoning

17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty

18. Grown your own vegetables

19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France

20. Slept on an overnight train

21. Had a pillow fight

22. Hitch hiked-- no but I've picked one up before, which might even be riskier.

23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill

24. Built a snow fort

25. Held a lamb

26. Gone skinny dipping

27. Ran a Marathon

28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice

29. Seen a total eclipse

30. Watched a sunrise or sunset

31. Hit a home run-- No. But I got hit in the head by a home run.

32. Been on a cruise

33. Seen Niagara Falls in person

34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors

35. Seen an Amish community

36. Taught yourself a new language

37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied-- When I was 10 it only took 75 cents. Enough to get a push-up-pop from the ice cream man.

38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person

39. Gone rock climbing

40. Seen Michelangelo’s David

41. Sung karaoke-- And risked lung cancer from second hand smoke at a dirty Idaho Falls bar to do it.

42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt

43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant-- I bought a homeless guy a sandwich at an Arby's once... does that count?

44. Visited Africa

45. Walked on a beach by moonlight

46. Been transported in an ambulance

47. Had your portrait painted

48. Gone deep sea fishing

49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person

50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris

51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling

52. Kissed in the rain-- Thanks honey.

53. Played in the mud

54. Gone to a drive-in theater

55. Been in a movie-- Many of my own self-produced hits. As well as an infomercial where I played basket ball behind one of the original Duke brothers from the Dukes of Hazard.

56. Visited the Great Wall of China

57. Started a business-- Several. "Refrigerator Art"- When I was about 8 or so I sold crappy drawings door to door to old ladies and marketed them as "refrigerator art". Dang I was cute.

58. Taken a martial arts class

59. Visited Russia

60. Served at a soup kitchen

61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies

62. Gone whale watching

63. Got flowers for no reason

64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma

65. Gone sky diving

66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp

67. Bounced a check

68. Flown in a helicopter

69. Saved a favorite childhood toy--American Girl Dolls.

70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial

71. Eaten Caviar

72. Pieced a quilt

73. Stood in Times Square

74. Toured the Everglades

75. Been fired from a job-- Kind of. Sister Holt I did quit first, that's what it's called when you stop coming to work, so the e-mail was unnecessary.

76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London

77. Broken a bone

78. Been on a speeding motorcycle-- Dave just bought one.

79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person

80. Published a book

81. Visited the Vatican

82. Bought a brand new car

83. Walked in Jerusalem

84. Had your picture in the newspaper

85. Read the entire Bible

86. Visited the White House

87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating

88. Had chickenpox

89. Saved someone’s life-- Oh I'm sure I have, haven't we all?

90. Sat on a jury

91. Met someone famous--Please. Mya, Rascall Flatts, Jo Dee Messina, David Hasslehoff, and I spoke on the phone to Jewel (not a lie).

92. Joined a book club

93. Lost a loved one

94. Had a baby-- YEAH!! Penelope.

95. Seen the Alamo in person

96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake

97. Been involved in a law suit-- Well it was really my dog, Charlie's, fault. He dragged me into the whole painful litigation process, for which my parents are still paying.

98. Owned a cell phone

99. Been stung by a bee

100. Seen Mount Rushmore in person

I want to!

For all of you who are clambering for more pictures of the peepster, trust me, I want to post some. However we seem to have lost our camera charger in the move!! It kills me missing so many precious moments. So just know that we are looking and pictures are hopefully on the way.

In case you were wondering...

How to wear a wig and make it look natural. I stumbled across this little gem of a page as I was looking for ideas on how I should get my hair cut. Irony at its best.

Tiny Baby

Before we left Rexburg our friend Scott Wheeler (www.scottwheelerphoto.com) took family pictures for us. He also took some of just Penny and they turned out grreat! (And by "they" I mean "it" because this is the only one I've seen so far). She is just as angelic as she looks in this picture. She's very reasonable and an efficient cryer, only doing so when she needs something and stopping as soon as she gets it. We love her and so far she thinks we're alright too.

Penny Waking Up...

Penelope Picture shoot...

So here are some more pics of Penny, she keeps getting more cute every day! And i use too many exclamation marks.

more pictures!

So Penny has a sweet mullet. It's awesome. Her mullet hair is over and inch long red/blond and a little curly-ish.

Welcome to the family Penelope!

Well, 2:20, May 15th 2009, Penelope Nieman entered the world! The delivery went great, Jessica did a great job pushing for about an hour till the top of Penny's head was exposed. Then the Doctor came and 2 pushes later she was out! 7 lbs 6 ounces, and 19 inches of perfect baby girl. She's a cutie, with a fair amount of blond hair. She's just getting used to using her eyes in this bright world.

We're still taking suggestions on middle names! Right now we're thinking May or Fey... any ideas?

Baby on the way!

So no baby yet, but we've had a pretty exciting time at the hospital here in Rexburg. Here's the timeline so far:

Thursday 7:00 am - get to hospital,

8 am - induction attempt #1 results in Jessica's water breaking,

9 am - induction attempt #2 works, 9 am to 4 pm sleep/rest but no dilation yet!,

4 pm - 7 pm friends visit and Lindsay wins Ticket to Ride,

8 pm - 4:30 am really really painful contractions... but Jessica dilates from a 1 to a 2.75, enough for an epidural!

Joe also came in to visit for a while around 11, and at 2:30 Jessica's parents finish their long trek from Irvine, and make it to the hospital! We're really excited they could make it up here.

The good news is once Jess got the epidural she dilated really quickly to a 5, then we were able to get some sleep and when we woke up she was at a 7-8! So as of now we're almost at a ten which means that Penelope should be coming out in the next few hours!

Here are some pictures from the hospital as well as some form our trip to Jackson Hole last week.

Getting the epidural from Todd... it was both of our firsts... not really.

Top line is the baby's heart rate, bottom line is contractions!

Mango flavored ice chips yum!

Yes we watched Baby Momma... for the millionth time.

Learning to Waddle

It's Jessica! I've officially joined the Nieman blog. I figure its time to blog about being pregnant, since having a baby is a pretty big deal. I am finally getting to the stage where my body feels pregnant and I look like I'm joking when I walk, or waddle, as the case may be. I was trying to stay relatively hip and cool looking for as long as possible, but when the way you walk makes your toes look like frenemies who can't stand the sight of each other its difficult to maintain that image; one foot points to the east, one to the west, and my belly seems to guide the direction of my body (she's taking over already). But to be honest, I love being pregnant and I had no idea how much fun it would be to shop for baby clothes. It's like dolls all over again! Except that I won't be able to feed this one the same plastic dinner every night and put it in the closet when I'm tired of it. Other than that, I don't forsee any big differences...

Here is the best belly shot I could find of myself. I was debating putting a bare belly shot up, but I could not determine whether that was completely inappropriate or not. Any thoughts?

In this picture there is also more evidence that Dave is the best husband (see below blog for exhibit A). He made the giant happy birthday letters for me, and bought me a beautiful wedding band for my birthday.

Happy Valentine's Day Jessica!

Swimming in the snow...

So I'm kind of on a posting videos kick right now... this one is from Jessica and I's open house at my place in Clayton. Carson my nephew was obsessed with Jessica and her dress. While she was in the bath room getting ready he came in and asked "what are you doing?", "I'm getting ready" jessica answered. "that makes me really happy!" It was cute. he cried a lot when she took it off. Anyway, Carson had a lot of fun swimming in Jessica's snowy dress.

Attack of the The Inflatable Cat

So last semester I took 3-Dimensional art so I'd have enough credits to get my Pell grant... Anyways, for one of the projects we had to make an inflatable sculpture, so I made a giant cat in honor of the Nieman family cat, Midnight, that died when I was 6. So after I got a grade for it, we took it to Logan for Kaity, Christian, Alec, Sadie, and Lindi to play with. It was a good time. Once we were tired of it, we taped up the door in the back, so no air could come out and blew it up until it was bursting at the seams (probably twice as tall as it is in the video), then Jessica body slammed it and it popped. Jessica 1, inflatable cat 0. RIP.

Jessica Picking Bugs!

Dave and Robin (who just had a new baby!) made us this great little video from our wedding day. Be sure you check out their blog HERE to see their cute little kid Coby!