Jaxon Travis Anderson

He's finally here! Jaxon was born Wednesday, August 17th at 8:57 pm. He weighed 7 lbs 6oz, and measured 20 inches long. He is so perfect, and we are head over heels in love with him!

The labor was fine- a little longer than we thought it would take considering my water broke at 5:30 that morning, (I almost had a c-section!) but he was worth every minute of it. He's perfectly healthy, and never showed any signs of distress or anything during the whole labor. I, on the other hand, had some complications immediately following the delivery, but I'm so grateful for all the doctors and nurses who came to the rescue.

We are absolutely thrilled to have him with us; words can't describe what he adds to our family!

Cherish the Moment

A big thanks to my sister, Caitlyn, for helping us remember this special time! 

Final Preparations

As our baby is currently in the final stages of construction, we couldn't resist getting this picture...

No, we still don't have a name yet. We honestly just can't decide on one. A friend told us if we didn't think of a name by the time he was born, that he would name the baby for us. So that gives us plenty of motivation! :)

As for now, we're making the final preparations for baby's arrival (although it's looking like he's in no hurry) running final errands, hair-cuts, freezing food, organizing his room and taking lots of walks! We're also taking advantage of the time we have now with friends as who knows how schedules will conflict once the baby's here.

(My friend, Natasha, was due 3 weeks before me- guess it's my turn now!)

Travis and I are also taking advantage of this time before parenthood (I guess you can say we've taken advantage of the last three years!). We've had many evening walks, movie nights and trips to 7-Peaks. Now that he's done with his thesis (which he did an AMAZING job defending...), he's done with school this summer so he's been home with me all day, which has been heaven! I feel so spoiled; I just want to freeze time right now and bottle it up. It'll be hard once school starts up in a few weeks and he'll be gone again. We celebrated our three year anniversary last week by going to Tucanos and the Hale Center Theater. He then surprised me afterward and stopped at Cold Stone on the way home. We've now had three wonderful years of marriage together, and an eternity left to go! To be honest, I'm a little nervous with how much things will change once our son's here, but Travis assures me that though there will be trying times, life will be even better, and that we'll still make time to do things "just the two of us". Words can't express how grateful I am for him! He's always been such a strength to me.

We are so excited for our baby to come- it seems like these nine months have gone by so slow! It's crazy to think we'll be meeting him anytime within the next couple of weeks!

Thesis Completed and Defended

Last Tuesday, I defended my thesis. All of my committee members thought I did really well, and were very impressed by my presentation, the quality and clarity of my writing, and the research work I have done.

One of my committee members, Dr. Chase, was particularly excited about my work. He's in his seventies (he retired last year, but still continues teaching as an adjunct faculty) and has spent his entire career in the field of assembly uncertainty and tolerance analysis. He's really excited about the contributions I've made to uncertainty analysis and its applicability to tolerance analysis. He said mine was one of the best defenses he's ever been to ("And I've been here a lot of years!"), and he asked for a copy of my defense presentation to use as an example for all his current and future grad students.

Since my work was so math-intensive (not very advanced math, but a lot of it), I've had Dr. Fullwood, who has his Ph.D. in math, review my papers before I submitted them for publication. He said I'm an exceptional writer. My advisor, Dr. Mattson, said there's not a single thing that could've gone better in my presentation.

After the 40-minute presentation, the audience can ask any questions before being dismissed, and then my committee asks questions for an hour, attempting to "find the limit" of my understanding about the subject. I answered all their questions to their complete satisfaction, which is unusual in a thesis defense.

They had a few changes to make to my thesis (mostly just adding a sentence here or there, nothing major). Wednesday I made those changes and then spent several hours chasing down all the signatures and approvals I needed. Thursday and Friday I worked on finishing up one final technical paper, which I submitted to the Journal of Mechanical Design for review and hopefully publication.


Download my Thesis

The Space Center

Yesterday, we accompanied our friends to the Space Center in Pleasant Grove. Travis, Colby, and Rob had been there multiple times growing up. I had only been there once in sixth grade. We signed up for a mission simulation aboard the U.S.S. Phoenix and we each had a different job/title for that mission. I was in charge of operations, which was in charge of communications and my favorite, transporting people and things on and off the ship. Travis was the engineer, of course. :)

Our mission was to save hostages from this evil guy, and stop him from destroying another ship. My favorite part was when our captain, Colby, just ordered Rob to blow up the bad guy's ship 20 minutes into the mission. The people running the simulation didn't expect that, and though they complimented us for our quick thinking, reset the simulation and asked us to think of another way to handle it. The whole mission was about two hours long. It was so much fun, and we won!

Eight Months Down...

Only one month to go! I'm currently 36 weeks, and it's hard to believe that after waiting so long, our little one will be here so soon! Everything is still checking out fine as my doctor appointments are now weekly. To be honest, though I'm very excited, I'm also really nervous. Travis and I took our 5 hour prenatal class last Saturday; it was very informative, but left me wondering how I can do this!

I'm so grateful for the baby showers that have been thrown for us. We are so blessed to have wonderful family and friends who are willing to help us prepare for this new addition to our family. Now if we can only think of a name for this little guy!

Fireworks!

It's been kind of stormy this last week, and even though we had rain off and on, we still had a great Independence Day. We spent some time at the Balloon-Fest with Travis's parents. Some of the balloons were really cool, but unfortunately it was too windy for the balloons to actually take off, so they ended the show early.

In the evening we had a barbecue with my family and enjoyed fireworks. This year, the state decided to legalize some types of aerial fireworks that were illegal in the past. My sister decided to surprise us and actually had one for us to try! This was obviously our first time launching one like this- growing up all we had were those little street fireworks, like this one:

My sister set the mega-firework out a bit further into the street, lit it, and ran for cover. It shot high up above our heads and exploded! It was amazing! Travis said it felt like he was in Paraguay again. :)

As the night went on, more and more of our neighbors were launching loud aerials. Baby decided he didn't like the sound very much and kept jumping. I finally had to go inside. But it was so cool to see so many more aerials this year. Travis then spent the next hour or so playing Dr. Mario with my siblings while I calmed baby down. It was such a fun, exciting fourth of July!