Congratulations to Spencer and Tyler!

Yes dad, you did see John's brother on the news! Spencer and Tyler helped make history last week when they were officially married under the new laws allowing gay marriage in the state of California. We have a new addition to the Jones family! Well, I guess Tyler was part of the family even before I was, as he and Spence have been a couple for over 6 years, but now it's official. So, Tyler, welcome to the family. We love you both and we think you're great!

25 Weeks and Still Growing!

A lot of you have been asking to see pictures of the belly. Well, here you have it! What an amazing time in a woman's life when her friends and family actually ask her to wear tight clothing and pose at the most unflattering angle so they can all see just how fat she really is. But, being pregnant definitely has it's advantages. At 25 weeks the little girl inside me is about 1 1/2 lbs and just over a foot long. No one has to know that sour gummy worms and large quantities of pink lemonade can account for much of the rest of this impressive abdomen!

Trip to Salem

This weekend was a fun one for me (Emily). I drove down to Salem help photograph Aaron & Beth Cooke's wedding and visit my family at the same time. It was fun. I liked some of my less traditional wedding shots (like the bathtub layouts below), and it was nice to leave the stress of getting the really good and more traditional photos to Teena. It was a beautiful reception and it brought back some great memories of our reception at the same location just over 2 years ago.

The best part of the trip was hanging out with my rad parents. My mom and I went baby clothes shopping and struck gold. We got enough 0 to 6 month clothes from craigslist.com to dress little baby jones in a new outfit almost every day for the first 6 months. It was so fun! We also got a sweet baby bathtub with all the bells and whistles. I must say, I have the greatest parents in the whole world. Thanks mom and dad!

It's a Girl!

Well, this is old news, but still good news. For anyone who hasn't heard, we are having a girl!She seems to be doing really well.
We don't know what we'll name her yet, but we've been thinking of Elizabeth. If you have any other suggestions feel free to let us know. We're open to more ideas.

April 08 Adventures

Emily and I are way too far behind to do things justice but I'll do my best to give an update on our the past few weeks. Here are some of the highlights:

1st week of April, Emily's first baby doctor visit.

Emily got checked out for the first time and it looks like mom and baby are doing great. Due date is October 7th! For now we are calling him/her Hercules. You can call him/her Herc for short. Our last baby.com update said that old Herc is the size of an apple and the length of its legs have now surpassed the length of its arms. Emily's little belly is just starting to bulge... that's what i'm talkin about!

April 14-18, Hawaii.

We celebrated graduation a few weeks early by taking a much needed vacation. We drove to LA on Sunday afternoon and made a long trip much longer by leaving my drivers license in the scanner the night before and not realizing until Beaver... We flew out Monday morning and stayed in the Sheraton hotel across the street from Waikiki beach. We spent a lot of time snorkeling and on the beach, went to the Polynesian Cultural Center, watched a man reel in a 70 pound mantaray, hiked to Manoa falls through the dense rain forest, saw numerous sea turtles and Emily even touched one (but don't tell anyone or she could go to jail:)), lived off of PBJ sandwiches, and got burned to a crisp. It was wonderful.

April 19-20, San Francisco w/ Tyler & Spencer

We flew overnight on Friday night arriving early Saturday morning and immediately headed out to see Spencer and Tyler. Spencer wasn't kidding about that LA to SF drive being one of the ugliest and most boring - however I think the SF to Provo drive may have topped it... but despite the long drives we had a great time in SF. We spent time at Fisherman's wharf, went shopping at Union Square where we were converted to H&M by Spencer, learned the art of parallel parking and how to keep the bums from breaking into your car, and had some great pizza that night. The next day we drove over the bridge and took pictures, ate lunch at In & Out courtesy of Uncle O'Melveney, went to a museum and saw the photography exhibit of Annie Leibovitz, drove through the gigantic and beautiful SF park, were given a tour of many neighborhoods and areas of SF, and returned home and had an incredible home cooked Italian meal made by Spencer and Tyler. What a weekend!

April 24-25, Emily and John become BYU graduates!

After a few arduous years of undergrad Emily and I finally graduated. Emily was designated as Valedictorian of her Psychology class and sang at convocation. Both of us got to sit on the stand. Mom tried to get us in trouble by calling us while we were down there but luckily our phones or turned off:) We had great family and friend get togethers on Thursday night at La Vigna in American Fork and at the Brick Oven on Friday afternoon.

April 25-27, We leave Provo, Utah, and all we know behind for the East coast.

I put a hitch on the 4-cylinder Camry and we packed up a U-haul trailer with lots of help from the fam and headed out for Virginia Beach where I'll be selling for the summer. With more than a little bit of divine intervention the Camry did incredibly well. I was scared to death when we finally put the packed up trailer on hitch and the Camry dropped almost to the point the muffler was touching the ground. After some adjustments in the trailer and a father's blessing from Dad, the load didn't seem nearly as bad. We made it up Parley's canyon, through a mini-blizzard in Wyoming, through 10 different states, and all the way to Roanoke Virginia. We decided to make a pit stop tonight with Emily's family to get some rest (after 3 days without a shower and after spending 2 nights in sleeping bags inside the Camry our noses and our bodies needed a rest...). So tomorrow morning we'll head out the rest of the way to Virginia Beach to work for the Summer.