It takes us HOW long to get to Tonga?

Spencer and I left our apartment Tuesday, September 3rd at 4:30 p.m to make our very long journey to Tonga. We landed in Tonga on Thursday, September 5th around 3:55 p.m. in Tonga. (Tonga is 19 hours ahead of us.) Which made this entire experience 28.5 hours long... not including the driving around we did for dinner after we landed. PHEW.

Since I knew it was going to be a long flight and I'm trying to limit my dairy intake, I packed a LOT of snacks. Some of them aren't even pictured here and I brought quadruples of snacks for our trip back.

Filled to the brim!

My purse couldn't even fit them all in, and Spencer's backpack had to hold some of them.

Spencer all cute and happy on our way during our first leg of the flight. Salt Lake City to Los Angeles!

We got to LAX and it was a whirlwind trying to figure out how to get to our new terminal. I thought it was the coolest thing when we had to slowly walk two by two past a police dog sniffing for drugs. Although, I was slightly nervous that he was going to smell my snacks and I'd get slammed to the ground when he alerted his handler...

We finally got to our gate and were very happy that we could relax for a little while before our 11 hour flight to Fiji. 

Our flight was supposed to take off at 11 p.m., but was delayed until 12:45 a.m.! We got word from the pilot that many travelers checked overweight and over sized cargo. This caused imbalance on the plane and the cargo handlers had to rearrange all of the luggage and cargo to stabilize the plane. A good amount of the passengers laughed since they knew they were part of the reason why the plane was delayed. 

Chicken with rice and peas, crackers with cheese, and a Twix.

We got chicken with rice for our 'dinner' which felt like it was at 3 a.m. My nose knew it was chicken and rice and I told Spencer that as the people ahead of us got their food. I became very grateful for my snacks, as I didn't care for the seasoning or spiciness of the chicken. Plus, the amount of dairy that was in the meal wasn't ideal. Spencer ended up eating most of my food. It's my fault that I didn't notify Fiji Airways about my dietary restriction, but I know to notify them next time! 

Spencer slept quite a bit on the flight there, I was quite jealous. I watched Toy Story instead. I realized that there are a LOT more jokes in Toy Story that I didn't understand as a child. I was somewhat shocked at some of them. This is a kid's movie?!

I struggled to find a comfy position to sleep, which resulted in me sleeping for about 90 minutes total on our flight. Darn those hip and back aches while being pregnant! I couldn't wait to get off this plane!

A couple of the funny happenings while I was awake:

• A man went into one of the bathrooms and was fighting to get the door open. He quickly left and sat back down in his seat. Ten minutes later, a man walked out of the same bathroom. I guess he didn't remember to lock the door and got barged in on! I felt bad for quietly laughing to myself.
• While looking for one of my shoes on the floor to walk the aisles, I accidentally grabbed the mans foot behind me. I retreated quickly and pretended it never happened. I learned later on that 'he' was a 'she', since I saw her fancy-schmancy purse. Whoops, sorry lady!

We had breakfast, and it was about as good as 'dinner'.  I smelled blueberry muffins and my sniffer was right once again!

Wet scrambled eggs, mushy hash browns, pitiful fruit, blueberry muffin, and orange juice. I wish that red thing was ketchup. 

Once the flight was over, I was SO excited to be done sitting on a plane!

This couldn't be more accurate.

Going through customs in Fiji was such a long process, but we had a 7ish hour layover and wanted to say we had a little mini adventure there!

We got a taxi ride to the wharf to have breakfast at the port. 

I took a lot of pictures while we were speeding along on the left side of the road on our way there. That took me some getting used to!

Can you spot the gravestones?!?!

We went to Lulu's and I got French toast with bacon (and Spencer asked them to put my bacon on the grill longer since apparently the South Pacific doesn't like crispy bacon). He got an omelet with toast.

It was a pretty cool place.

After breakfast we walked around and I loved seeing the ocean and the palm trees. I got some earrings as a souvenir to say we went to Fiji.

Then we got picked us up and our taxi driver drove us back to the airport.

I'm uneducated and didn't know Fiji had mountains.

We got back to the airport and was very early for our flight. 

I thought it was cool the airport had a prayer room.

The older plane we got on to fly to Tonga was so much more comfortable than the last Fiji Airways plane. Spencer and I did not understand this. I didn't fall asleep, but I was a lot more relaxed.

The flight to Tonga was pretty uneventful (thankfully). But we learned when we got to Tonga that Spencer had to report to customs that he brought his pocket knife to Tonga. We weren't sure if they were going to confiscate it or not, as the two workers looked at each other and then back at the knife. But our knife was spared and became an important item of our trip.

Our Airbnb host, Isi picked us up from the airport and told us that he didn't have any other plans for this evening. He offered to drive us downtown so we could find someplace to eat and show us around. I was in awe just staring at everything and absorbing it all. In the end, we went to a sub place that Spencer remembered eating at when he was a missionary.

Waiting for our subs.

This is translated to "Blessing Store."

I'm obsessed with the skies in Tonga. LOOK AT HOW BEAUTIFUL THEY ARE.

This university makes me smile. Tongans love Jesus!

Then we got to where we were staying and ate our subs. If anyone is planning on going to Tonga, we recommend The Dayspring Lodge. :)

And this was just the beginning  of a whirlwind of adventure....

We're adding a leaf to our family tree!

So, if y'all haven't noticed... (and if you've been around me, you should have noticed.) I've been baby hungry for QUITE a while now. Every time I saw a cute baby (aka ALL of them), I would get wide eyes and turn to Spencer and proclaim, "BABIES."

We had recently been to a baby blessing for one of Spencer’s cousins on Sunday, May 5th. Holding a newborn baby did NOT help my baby hunger. Additionally, I had been feeling a little defeated as nothing was going as planned. I had a few genealogy companies I wanted to work for post graduation. But I was told from one company that they don’t hire new grads as contractors. Then another didn't have any contractor openings listed on their website anymore. I also found out that the volunteer work I wanted to do during the summer wouldn’t be ready until potentially Fall semester. On top of all that, I really wasn't sure what to do with my future as nothing seemed to be falling in place for me.

The next day (the day before our anniversary) I was blubbering to Spencer as we were laying in bed late at night. Having kids, Spencer’s promotion, and going to Tonga seemed to be all connected. We didn’t want to go to Tonga until we've moved out of our apartment. But Spencer also wanted to get at least three months in his new position before we head to Tonga. Unfortunately, the promotion had been pushed back over and over again since February. The fact that I have to get monthly check ups later on in the pregnancy made it harder to figure out when it was the right time to go to Tonga. But it seemed to be a once in a lifetime opportunity to go before we have kids. Nothing seemed right.

I had been struggling to fall asleep as I had been thinking about everything. So to nip things in the bud, I remembered I had a pregnancy test in a drawer next to my bed. I expected it to say negative as I had only been off birth control for a little less than 5 weeks. It was probably around 1:45 am (on our "anniversary") when I was shocked as I saw the “+” sign on the pregnancy test.

I was thrilled, and I couldn’t believe it. I ran and woke up Spencer, telling him that I needed to show him something. He winced at the bright light of my cell phone screen as I was trying to show him the positive pregnancy test. Spencer asked me how accurate the test was, and then I realized that it expired last November.

I became a little disheartened realizing the potential inaccuracy of the result. As we went back to bed and I started to search how accurate expired pregnancy tests were. The majority of the articles told me that they weren’t very accurate at all, and that I needed to take another pregnancy test to see if I was pregnant or not. I contemplated getting dressed and going straight to Walmart since I was wide awake. I wasn’t able to fall asleep until 3am.

I asked my boss if I could come in another day as I was feeling sick, as I thought Spencer gave me his cold that he had over the weekend. He agreed and I thought about going to Walmart early that morning. But I thought to myself that I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep after the second test, so I forced myself to go back asleep as I was very sleep deprived.

When I got up, I was in the car within ten minutes. I kept telling myself that I shouldn’t expect to be pregnant and that it doesn’t make sense. I tried to be calm and expect a "negative" or "not pregnant" response. I grabbed the pregnancy tests and made my way home.

The three minutes of waiting for the results were the longest three minutes of my LIFE.

When I saw the word “Pregnant” staring back at me, I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to tell Spencer right away, as I told him the night previous that I needed to take another one to make sure it was accurate. I texted him, “Call me when you get the chance?”, and “Like, ASAPish” when I was getting impatient two minutes later.

After doing some dishes I called him, and he told me he was in the car with his coworkers on the way to lunch. “Did you get my texts?” He said no, and that I was on speaker phone because he was going to go look at what the texts said. “....I’ll call back later.” Longest time of my life!

So he finally called back and I said something along the lines of “Remember how I took an expired pregnancy test last night, and I said that I was going to have to take another one to confirm? Well, I’m looking at this pregnancy test, and it’s looking back at me with “Pregnant” on it.” Spencer says “Wow, that’s big news!”

*We no believe it!

We continue to converse for a while about certain things, but we were still shocked about it all. After that, I continued my internet diving of what I should be expecting and found out that the sickness I had felt previously was not from Spencer’s cold, but morning sickness. Fuuuunnnn.

So, on our three year anniversary, we found out that I was 4 weeks pregnant! What a way to celebrate. :)

I'M PREGNANT!!!

No number of GIFs can adequately can represent how excited I feel.  

8 weeks pregnant today!