White Christmas

Today we had sunshine & snow... what a fun combination!


Kids went sledding, built a snowman, & made snow angels.

More snow is supposed to be on the way b/f Christmas.

Short & Sweet

I'm thinking of keeping the Christmas letter short & sweet this year. Something along the lines of...
Sweet Highlights from our Year…Sold our townhouse & bought a new(not to scale)
Babydue in 4 months!
D (8) was baptized. Miss H (5) loves Kindergarten. Our lil'Stinker (3) keeps us smiling! Hope you’ve had many sweet moments as well. We wish you joy as we remember the birth & life of our Savior.

(Sooo... just in case the month gets away from me b/f making & mailing them, now you know what it WOULD have looked like. And we DO hope you have a Merry Christmas!)

Big 3 year old!

3 Things we Love about this cute little man...
1-He's so affectionate. He's always willing to give a hug or a kiss.

2-He's very articulate. All our kids are verbal, but he amazes people with the thoughts he shares. He's rather methodical- almost reminds you of Churchill...

3-He has a great imagination. He pretends he's a hockey player, a race car, "master yoda", etc. It's fun to watch or listen to him play.


We're glad he had a happy 3rd b-day! We can't believe how fast he's grown!
Here's a link to flashback to the year he was born.

Our house this fall

Here are a few things I'm proud of this fall...

My garden! Having a garden was one of the things I was most excited for with the new house. We build a couple raised beds, but you can only really see the bed from the angle below b/c it grew well beyond the borders.

Miss H helped me decorate our table for fall. She even wrote placecards. (Usually I'm not a fan of our red/orange/yellow lamps, but they actually fit the autumn theme right now.)

And it's hard not to be proud when you are gaining weight- if it's for a good cause...

Heaven

Our faith teaches that marriage can be eternal. And what will we do for all eternity? We will learn to be like our Heavenly Father. We will create life. We will have children. In the celestial world, I can create as many babies as I want.
I know of many great women who can't get pregnant or can't stay pregnant or who aren't married but long to have a family.
I love the babies I have. I miss terribly the ones I don't.

...As many babies as I want...that does sound heavenly...

Miss H's birthday party

We are so thrilled that this sweet girl is part of our family!

We enjoyed having her friends over. We painted toenails.

We played a water relay where they raced to fill their bowl.


Each little guest decorated their own cupcake.

It was fun!

Milestones

1st day of school

D's baptism

Cousins!

(A couple 4th of July pictures with paternal cousins)

These two are not biologically related- but they might as well be family. We're so glad these friends moved back in state.

Fun with cousins on my side in Illinois...


We also travelled to Ohio where one of my brothers now lives. D is wearing sunglasses b/c he was self-conscious with a puffy eye. But I think he looks so cute in sunglasses. His favorite part of the trip was the air force museum. Miss H's favorite part might have been the ballet basement at her cousin's house. Ben loved everything except maybe the travel. But they were good travellers overall.

It was a nice to end summer on a high note. School starts for my kids next week.

FVL Pregnancy Blog

I have been doing a lot of research on the condition they diagnosed me with, Factor V Leiden. It's an inherited thrombophilia (propensity to form blood clots). We are fairly certain that's what has caused my losses. I think a lot about what I could have done differently with Hope. I wish I'd had testing done after we lost James last year. I wonder if the 15 lbs I've put on in the last few years incresed clot formation or perhaps it was made worse by the less-than-ideal diet I had while pregnant and selling our house/ helping hubby prep for the Feb. bar/ moving in March. (Life has been STRESSFUL!)

But, I can't change anything in the past. I have to remind myself that hindsight is 20/20. We did our best with the limited information we had at the time. I'm starting a blog about FVL in order to focus my efforts on searching out more information on the condition & making better decisions based on that.

We'd really like to have another baby. The Maternal-Fetal Medicine specialist thinks that with daily injections of blood thinner, our chances are good of carrying to term. I've read that the medicine really stings & my stomach will be covered with bruises, so I'm not looking forward to that. But of course I'll take temporary physical pain over the lingering emotional heartache of losing a baby. YOU BET!

But, I'm afraid the joy of pregnancy might be gone for me. Last time, I was worried, but I REALLY felt like things were going to work out & I still enjoyed the pregnancy. Now I'm considered high risk & even if I make it to term with the baby, the delivery is more risky for me, and I could develop a life-threatening clot post-partum (that's actually the most dangerous time for the mother). I think when we get pregnant next it will be for the last time & I worry I won't even be able to savor it. How do you recapture the belief that "being pregnant" is the same as "EXPECTING a baby"?

Lazy days?

We are enjoying our summer, but I think it's only "lazy" for the kids who don't have homework. For the parents who have to come up with more activities, some semblence of learning so their brains don't turn to mush & who push double strollers up steep hills on a regular basis to go to the park, it's anything but lazy!
Here's some of our adventures:
Going to the playground is fun for kids & getting there is good exercise for mommy!


D just turned 8 and will be baptized soon. (For more information about our views on baptism, click here)

Miss H will sing at the baptism. She's so pretty in her dress.
We went downtown for a PBS kids event. (You can see I cut my hair to get it off my neck.)


I made a teepee for the kids to play in until we get a playhouse built. Miss H is sitting in it in her pjs... Lazy days of summer!

Space Party

D wanted a party to celebrate the new house & the end of school.
So this weekend we had 8 eight-year old boys over for a Space party. It was crazy, but fun. Here's a peak. (Miss H & Lil'Stinker are sporting the "jet packs" made from a cereal box, painted silver, and soda bottle feul tanks.)


We had pizza for dinner. We did a space race relay where they wore jet packs, squirted aliens with water guns, shot moon balls into a rocket & orbited around cones. Then we had them build space objects with legos. (This was the only calm part of the party- we were amazed how they quietly & cooperatively constructed legos!) I made a moon cake for dessert. It was fun!

Easter Events

This year, D asked that the baskets be found after a treasure hunt since he loved the St. Patrick's day treasure hunt at his cousin's house.



Miss H had a ballet leotard in her basket which she LOVES. She wants to start ballet & practices twirling on her tiptoes.






















CUTE KIDS... let's sugar 'em up before church & see if their teachers agree with us...














I like how D is laying on the floor. I was so tired after staying up late composing rhyming clues & stuffing/hiding eggs that I wanted to do the same.





Our Easter art: The painted egg is from our oldest. The empty tomb is from Walter Rane. It's titled "He is not here". I've found myself starring at it so much lately. Such a simple image but such a powerfully reassuring message.

New House & Nauvoo

We planned to go visit my brother in Nauvoo, Illinois for spring break. Even though it was less than a week after our loss, we decided to go anyway since we need the hugs & time with family all the more. My parents came from DC & it was so good to see them too & to go to the temple.
The kids all had such fun playing together.

Also, I promised pictures of the new house...













The living room & family room have a see-through fireplace.












We love the open kitchen & just all the extra space in general.





This last picture shows the blanket & hat we made for the baby laying over the box that holds her ashes on our dresser. The willow tree figure is from friends & is called "Angel of Hope" which describes perfectly how we feel about her.