Ada's Blessing Day

Yesterday (Sunday, August 27, 2006) we blessed Ada in Church. She is still just the most adorable little girl that you have ever seen. Here she is in her blessing dress.

The blessing went well. My parents, Alison's parents, Jeff, Cheryce and girls, Rachelle and Shelby, Spencer, Korrin and Ella, Hyrum and Angie, Abby as well as my grandma and grandpa Squire, grandma and grandpa Dickson, grandpa bateman, grandma Bateman, Brett and Kim Hampton and Dan and his friend Jody were all there. It was quite a crowd, but it was sure fun to have family there for such a special occasion.

After the blessing everybody that could came up to our apartment and we had a little pot luck lunch in the grassy court area. Everything just went so well. Ada was such a good girl, during the blessing she was wide awake and just looking all around. I'm sure she knew that something special was going on.

Alison and I have also sent out announcements of Ada's birth. So far we have only sent them out to immediate family that was invited to her blessing but we will probably also send them out to our aunts and uncles as well. The announcement that we sent out is below.

We made the announcement in HP's Photosmart Premier software program. It has a photo collage option that we used and it sure made it easy to come up with the announcement. Alison and I were running short on time and we needed an announcement that could be made up quickly. I think that it turned out fantastic.

Well, school has now started. I will give a run-down of my new fall schedule in the days to come.

Huntsman Cancer Institute Golf Tournament

Well it was a pretty busy week this week. On Monday I spent the day at Thanksgiving Point hobnobbing with the stars. It was the annual Chairman's Tournament hosted by Ron Boone, and I was a volunteer. There were quite a few big names there from Michael Doleac (Miami Heat Center - who now has a championship ring) to Kevin Sorbo aka Hercules.

My dad and I spent the day on the 14th hole (the KJZZ hole) running the long drive competition. It seemed that every team that came through had at least one person capable of hitting the long ball. Most had more than one. The eventual winner of the long drive was a high school kid that drove about 350 yards. The second place drive (about 332 yards) was also hit by a high school kid. It's amazing that these kids could outdrive former and current NBA stars and NFL stars.

Here is a partial list of some of the names that I recognized from the tournament:
Arnie Ferrin (from the Utes 1944 NCAA championship team)
Bill Child (President of RC Willey's)
Bill Marcroft (former Ute announcer)
Tom Holmoe (BYU athletic director)
Gale Sayers (youngest inductee ever to the Pro football hall of fame, scored 6 TD's in one game, scored 22 TD's as a rookie, and on and on)
Nate Williams (former NBA player)
Ike Austin (former Jazzman)
Danny White (former Dallas Cowboy quarterback, Utah Blaze coach, Arizona athlete of the century)
Bubba Gilliam (from "Blazing Saddles")
Don Nelson (former Bucks, Mavericks, Warriors, Knicks coach, jersey retired as a Celtic, 3-time NBA coach of the year)

As you can see there were many stars. I don't get paid time-off at my job so I worked 4 ten-hour days to make up for my time off. If I had been able to volunteer on Tuesday as well then I would have also met Keith Van Horn (he's been there the last 2 years as well) and Julius Erving.

Ada is still doing well. She can be a little fussbucket in the evenings. I guess I need to regulate, eh?

More photos of Ada

We have been working hard to get Ada to smile. She has been trying hard to oblige. Here are some of the best new photos that we have been able to take.





She has been a pretty happy baby lately. She even has been sleeping better at night. She gets a little fussy in the evenings, but once we get through that part of the day then we are smooth sailing.

Oh my Gosh! What a loser!

I saw this picture on the internet the other day. I think that once I graduate Alison and I will move nearby this school so that our kids can go to a school that is obviously more progressive than most others.

I can't wait for football season. Only 20 days until I will be at the Rose Bowl watching the Utes season opener. Hooray!

She's Here!

Holy smokes, Can you believe it, Ada is finally here. She was born early Saturday morning (12:55 AM) at LDS Hospital. She weighed 7 lbs 8 oz and was 20 inches long. As you will see from the following pictures, she is just adorable.

On Friday July 21st Alison had planned to go into work for her last day before going on maternity leave. I had already put in my 40 hours so I had the day off. Early Friday morning, Alison began having painful contractions every 8-10 minutes. Because of this she decided to stay home from work. She did have a doctors appointment that morning but we thought we may even be in the hospital by then. When we finally got up for the day, Alison's contractions virtually stopped. The doctors visit went well. Alison was dilated to a 3 and 80% effaced. The doctor told us that the baby could come at any time.

At around noon, Alison started contracting again and this time they weren't gong to stop. By 2:00 we knew that we were going to be going to the hospital because the contractions were painful and between 3-6 minutes apart. We decided to kill some time by going out to eat at Su Casa. After that, we went up to the hospital. We got there around 4:00 and within the hour, Alison already had her epidural.

The pushing started just after midnight and after 45 minutes of pushing sweet little Ada was born. When she was born they quickly threw her up onto Alison's tummy. Ada cried for about 30 seconds and then just looked around with the prettiest big blue eyes. She was so calm. Everything just went as well as we could have hoped for.

The rest of the stay in the hospital was great. We both found it very relaxing and enjoyable to have people waiting on us and helping us out with everything. Nonetheless, it is sure exciting to be home with our brand new baby.

Ada's very first picture

Ada's first bath

Ada Elizabeth Squire

Our little family

Daddy and Ada

Mommy and Ada

Cute little Ada

Ada ready to leave the hospital

Alison at 38 weeks pregnant

Here is a picture of Alison at 37 weeks pregnant. Doesn't she look ready?

Side View


Front view

Camping at Pineview

This last weekend was a good one. We went camping at Pineview Resevoir (east of Ogden). It was our annual ward campout so the food and games/boats were provided by them. We had a beautiful campsite right on the water in the Anderson Cove campground which is on the south side of the lake. We were a little nervous about how well Alison would be able to sleep. She is eight months pregnant you know :). We had an air mattress, warm sleeping bag and every pillow we own, and it turns out that she slept pretty well. It got a little chilly during the night but otherwise the weather was absolutely perfect.
We spent our time playing volleyball, waterskiing, eating and playing other games. The waterskiing early Saturday morning was especially good. I was awake at 6:00 waiting for Bishop Moffat (our old Bishop - leaving soon to serve as mission president in England). He was there but the gate to the campground was locked until 7:00 bummer. The water was still pretty good at 7:00 am though. The Salt Lake Marathon was also today. A guy in our ward was running the marathon and his wife needed a ride home. We decided to leave a bit early to try and get her to the finish line in order to see her husband (DJ) cross. It just so happens that we got her there about 1 minute before he crossed - lucky day, eh?
Work has been going well. I am still doing the same thing that I have been doing almost the whole time that I have worked here. We are almost finished though and then we will start some different projects. I am looking forward to that. It will give me an oppurtunity to learn how to use a few more programs. It's a good job.

Sheesh, Where Have I been?

Hooray! School's Out! (It's acutally been out for 2 weeks now, but I can still get excited about that right?) Things here are going very well. This last semester was a busy one (as you can probably deduce from the lack of posts), but it also turned out to be a good one. I got the best grades that I've ever gotten while here at the U. I should take a full load with a pregnant wife, time-consuming church calling and change jobs in the middle of every semester. It seems to work out well... I will give a rundown of my grades below:

(MEEN 2300) Thermodynamics - B+
(ECE 3530) Engineering Probability and Statistics - A
(ECE 5720) Analog IC Design - A
(ECE 5221) Micromachining - A-
(RUSS 4900) Slavic Folklore - A-

GPA = 3.77

I'm pretty proud of myself. This will definitely boost my cumulative GPA.

After school had finished for the semester, I could finally buy what I had been looking forward to buying for a long time. For almost a year, Alison and I had been saving up for a new computer. I toyed with the idea of building one myself but, for various reasons (mainly I couldn't find a tower/case that I liked and had all of the ports that I wanted accessible on the front). We shopped around a bit before settling on an HP Pavilion model m7470n. It is a Media Center PC - so we don't have to buy a Tivo or a DVR now and it has pretty good specs.

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processor 4200+
Memory: 2GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM
Drives: Multiformat DVD+RW/CD-RW drive, double layer support, lightscribe capabilities
Hard Drive: 300 GB SATA
Also: TV Tuner, 9-in-1 media reader, ATI Radeon Xpress 200 graphics, and all of the usual stuff.

We also bought a 19" Samsung LCD moniter to go with the computer. We are set now to be able to do just about anything that we want. I would definitely like to upgrade the videocard to one with a TV output, to be able to watch recorded TV on the TV. I'll probably do this in a few months.

Alison is looking good. More and more pregnant every day. Look for some pictures to soon follow. Less than two months now until the baby's due date. How exciting is that? She has had a couple of showers already and we have gotten some good stuff. There's a ton of stuff you need though.

I've got a new job since I last posted. I now work for Pacificorp (Utah Power). I got an internship there and started on March 13. It's a really good job. During the school year I worked 20 hours a week and once summer started I upped my hours to 40 a week. I have been working 4 10-hour days in order to have a day off each week. I work 6:30 AM - 5:00 PM. I have been taking the bus in order to save money on gas and have a chance to read. The main thing that I have been doing at work is FeederAll updates. This basically consists of taking the Autocad maps of the circuits for a substation and using these maps to update another program (FeederAll) with the correct circuit. The updated circuits in FeederAll can then be used for various studies. It sounds exciting doesn't it? You won't find me complaining though because I'm getting paid for it!

It's A Girl!!!

Well, It's official. Alison and I are having a girl! We found out on Tuesday morning at Alison's 16 week ultrasound (an extra one for a study that she is participating in). Granted, unless you're a doctor, sonographer, or you have experience deciphering the ultrasound photos below, they may not mean much. I still think she's pretty cute :). Check out how different she looks from our first ultrasound.

16 Week Ultrasound Photos:

Front View


Her Foot


Her foot


Her Head


Her Hand


Her Foot #2


It's a Girl!!!

Alison at 15 1/2 Weeks

Here is a picture of Alison showing off her pregnant belly of 15 1/2 weeks.