Catching up...

Okay.. so it's been awhile since my last post. Here is a little about life as we know it.

Last Saturday, while we were shopping at Old Navy, we got word that his mother was in the hospital with abdominal pain. It came on really sharp and she thought she better go to the ER. It turned out that her pancreas was enlarged and causing a significant amount of pain. She spent almost an entire week there and just came home last night. The doctors did many types of tests and nothing could explain why her pancreas was enlarged. I'm grateful that she is doing better now, but it was hard to have someone you love in pain but be so far away from them. When this happened, you realize how truly precious life is.

Then Thursday night, our pug Maddie had a series of 3 seizures. She has had a few before; it's been nearly 14 months since her last one. As we held and comforted her, it was so hard to watch her jerk and listen to her moan. She is all we really have and don't know what we'd do without her. I always get a little taste of how helpless my mom felt when I had febroric seizures when I was younger. Thankfully, I grew out of them. This morning, we took Maddie to the vet because we were so worried and felt like these were worse than her other ones. She gave us a dose of valium to give her at the onset to stop another one from starting. Hopefully for our and Maddie's sakes, it will be a while before she has another one.

And now for some good news....As Christian was paying bills this week, he called me at work to tell me that we have only $2900 more to go on our IVF loan of $12,000. I'm so grateful that we have been blessed financially to have children this way. Hopefully within a couple months, we can start a second IVF cycle. We can't wait to give Maddie a human brother or sister some day.

Christmas Season to Remember

We had a Christmas Season to remember. It was action packed: full of funny and happy moments and then moments of absolute fright.

We began our drive to Chubbuck, Idaho on Saturday, December 20. On the Snoqualmie pass, the roads weren't totally clear but they were passable. On the other hand, our drive through the Blue Mountains in Oregon was just plain scary. Many times we couldn't see the road and other times, we would hold our breath as semis would barrel their way past us. Christian and I were very grateful, 12 hours later, to finally arrive in Chubbuck. We had a quick dinner, spent some time with the family and then spent the majority of the evening with Beverly and the kids watching BYU in the Las Vegas Bowl. Unfortunately BYU lost and our hope was suspended until next year.

During the days leading up to Christmas Day we did so many things: visited and hung out with family, finished our Christmas shopping, put together many puzzles, and watched the snow as it continued to fall. Unfortunately Christmas Eve didn't begin as well as we'd hoped. Christian had the flu for most of the morning and couldn't keep anything down. He slept most of the morning and early afternoon while I took care of him, and hung out with family. I was happy that by Christmas Eve dinner, he was able to keep down dry toast and our infamous 10-layer jello that we had made. My favorite part of the evening was when we sat in the living room and listened to Amy and Brittany play duets and sing Christmas carols around the piano. It reminds me of the many times we would act out the Nativity and run around trying to find just the right costume to play our part.

Christmas morning brought a lot more snow and a strong wind to blow it all around. It literally was an adventure for Mom to dig out Grandma and bring her over for Christmas morning. We enjoyed the morning unwrapping presents and staying warm and cozy inside away from all the snow. Then we spent a good part of the afternoon playing my new DVD game of "Who's smarter than a 5^th grader." Some of the questions, I don't even remember learning about in the 5^th grade. I think my little brother, Bryan was better than all of us. :)

The day after Christmas was so busy. Busy with doing as much as we could before leaving Saturday morning. That night (Friday) Christian and I went to a High School Party that was hosted by one of my friends. I got to see so many friends from high school, meet their children and husbands. Despite the snowy roads getting there, we had a lot of fun talking to people there. Christian was a little bored but soon got talking to one of the guys there that was very similar to him.

Early Saturday morning, the roads were relative good. However by the time we got to Boise and Mountain Home, snow was blowing all over the road. Entering in Oregon, we could no longer see the roads. We passed a sign telling us the necessity to chain up. We tried to follow the instructions but finally asked a worker (he was helping the semis) to help us. We drove on them for about 50 miles at about 30 miles an hour. However they broke and we ended up removing them. We stopped in Baker City where ODOT had shut down I-84 because of the wintry conditions. After stopping at a Les Schwab, we learned 1) that we weren't supposed to keep our chains on that long, 2) we weren't supposed to go faster than 30mph, and 3) we were told that supposedly our little Honda would be "just fine" without them. We finally found a hotel and got some much needed lunch. After lunch, we watched college football in our room and took a long nap. The next day, we got up early and headed out on much better roads. The last leg of our journey (Snoqualmie Pass) was all snow packed and quite scary. We made it through safely and just in the nick of time. We found out later that they were closing down the pass 15 minutes later for some Avalanche work. We were so grateful to finally be home after 2 long days of traveling on icy roads.

Even though Christmas time was stressful due to the weather, we didn't let the weather dampen our spirits. We really enjoyed spending time with family as we celebrated Christmas. We loved making Evelyn smile and even hearing her giggle. I realized that I got addicted to puzzles when I was home because I started one here immediately and haven't stopped doing them since. We look forward to this New Year and hope to have our IVF loan paid off in another month. Then we'll start the arduous process again with hope the timing is right.