He is here!

Wow! What a day!! We welcomed our sweet little boy this morning at 8:27!! He was 9 lbs 1 oz and 20" long. It was a dream delivery!! I was 41 weeks and 1 day pregnant. I wanted to write my labor and delivery story down now before I start forgetting the details.

So I woke up a few times last night from some light contractions but nothing that would keep me up. I easily could fall back asleep and sleep through quiet a few more contractions. Around 4:30 I woke up from an intense contraction. It was soo super painful and I tried to jump right out of bed because it hurt so bad to lay in bed through it. I labored at home with Mike in the tub and on the birth ball for the next hour or so. We were not timing them because Mike was helping me out and didnt have time to time them, but he knew that they were about 3 min apart and he could tell that I needed my doula. So he called my doula who was asking questions on if we were sure she should come. Mike asked her to come and then helped me labor a bit more. After a few more contractions he called her back and told her to meet us at the birth center instead. I am so glad that I have a husband who looks out for me and can read me well enough to know when to make these kinds of calls!!

So around 6 we called a friend to come and get maeli and we got our stuff in the car. We were out of there around 6:15 and Mike drove way too fast the whole way there (like 90 in all speed zones). Im sure glad that there were no cops around cuz he would have gotten in big trouble!! On the way I started wanting to push. Mike was totally freaked out and drove even faster to get us to the birth center quickly. The car ride was SOOO hard because having intense contractions and not being able to move sucks!

When we got to the birth center they checked me and I was dilated to 9.5 cm. I was fully dilated except for a little lip of cervix on one side. I labored for a bit on the birth stool and then some on the toilet too. While on the toilet, they got me pillows to go behind my head and stools to rest my feet on. I feel asleep between a few contractions. It was a nice little rest before gearing up for another contraction. It took everything that I had to stay under controll and make it through my contractions! (Mike wanted me to add that I had enough energy to mention that I should try to sleep on the toilet more often because it was so easy to fall asleep and it was a nice break from the birthing stool) I was begging for the birth pool to be filled up but the plummer that was working at the birth center turned the water heater way down so they had to turn it back up and I had to wait for it to heat enough water to labor in it. FINALLY the birth pool had about 8 inches in it and i climbed right in. It helped SOOO much. I could not have made it through the whole labor without it. It made the contractions so much more manageable! I got in about 7:30 ish and labored till 7:50 when my body was telling me to push. At that time Mike got in with me and helped support me by sitting behind me and holding me up. He was such a HUGE help during the whole process!! He was such an awesome birth partner! Pushing was intense but it hurt less than the contractions so I was greatful for a change. I pushed for 37 minutes before he was born at 8:27. It was the most amazing experience to reach down and feel my babies head crowning! It gave me just the motivation that I needed to get him out. He was such a sweet baby when he came out! He didnt even cry at first. He just looked up and Mike and I with his big beautiful eyes. We waited till the cord stopped pulsing and then Mike cut the cord. It was sooo thick! Then i delivered the placenta which is my favorite part of it all! I love the feeling of being totally empty after 10 months of a growing child inside of you. AMAZING!

We got to spend a few hours with him before they even took him away to measure or weigh him. It was so nice to get to have skin to skin bonding time with him for so long. All the midwifes and nurses left the room and let us spend time as a family getting acquainted. After about 2 hours we had them come in and check him out and I got all stitched up and repaired. It was so nice not feeling rushed and feeling like I was in control of all the decisions that were being made.

My mom brought Maeli over after a bit and and it was so special watching her eyes glow as she held and admired her little brother for the first time. She is such a cute older sister! The first thing she said to me was "Mom! You got the baby out of your tummy??" It was so cute! She kept saying how cute he was and she held him like a champ! It was awesome to have our little family all together. My mom picked us up some breakfast and we talked and ate and played.

We headed home about 2:00. It was so nice to be able to leave when we were ready! We werent required to stay for days and we could have stayed longer if we felt like we needed to. I just LOVE the birth center that we delivered at. It was a perfect experience.

I just cant stop thinking about how proud i am of myself! i totally did it! i labored like a champ and i delivered a huge baby with absolutely no pain meds!! i feel like wonderwoman! i feel so empowered! and i feel so much better than i did after maelis birth! i feel awesome!! I am so proud of my body and that I trusted it to do what it was made to do.

Mike was amazing too! He did a perfect job of helping me without overwhelming me. I could feel his love for the through the whole process. He was wonderful!! And I was so glad to have an awesome birth doula to help me with comfort measures and helping Mike to comfort me as well. The whole experience was just amazing! It was better than I could have ever dreamed of.

So from the time that I really noticed contractions to the time that he was born, I was in labor a total of 4 hours! That sure beats the 36 hours that I was in labor with Maeli for. I pretty much slept through all of the prelabor stuff and went right into transition. Thank goodness too! It made for a quick but intense labor.

Jaxton is an awesome baby! He has been a good nurser today with a great latch and he has been sleeping tons (which im sure will change). We are just so in love with him and are so greatful for a healthy little boy! He is the perfect addition to our family! We love him!!

And on a side note... my mom informed me that I hold the record in my family for the smallest baby (Maeli at 5 lbs 5 oz) and the biggest baby (Jax at 9 lbs 1 oz). Just something i thought was funny :)

Happy Thanksgiving

Since it is Thanksgiving I thought i would blog about a few things that I am thankful for!

I am thankful for a wonderful family who loves me and makes me smile

Im thankful for an awesome husband who is a strong spiritual leader and brings fun and laughter into our home

I am thankful for healthy kids! Maeli makes me smile and laugh every day and is such a joy in our family! And Jaxson is such a blessing to our family. We cant wait to meet him and get to know his sweet spirit and personality

I am thankful for a home and for my husband job which allows me to stay home and raise my children

I am thankful for an awesome birth doula who keeps encouraging me to stay positive and keep my head in the game!

I am thankful for friends who care about me and who look out for me all of the time (especially my miss Carey and Marika!) . Even the friends who live far away who still manage to make me feel loved from miles away! (Emiley and Heather!!)

I am thankful for the little things in life that keep me excited and keep me going!

I am thankful for a ward family who is always so willing to help out.

I am thankful for a little brother who is a great example of service!

I am thankful for the gosple and the ways that is blesses my life every day

I am thankful for the temple and the love that it has blessed my family with

I have so much more that I am thankful for... but Im gonna stop there so I dont go on forever.

We are doing exceptionally well! I am still pregnant and YES I am almost 41 weeks. I have my moments that I mentally break down and just want this kid out but for the most part I am doing really good. I am so grateful for the miracle that the Lord allows me to participate in. Its such an amazing experience carrying a child inside of you and feeling and watching it grow. Its amazing to be apart of this experience and being trusted to raise one of His spirit children. I feel so blessed to have already been able to go through this process with Maeli and that i know how wonderful it is in the end. I love being a mom! My heart feels so full when i think of all the joy that Maeli alone has blessed Mike and I with and knowing that we get to experience that again soon. I have never felt so close to God then when I held Maeli for the first time.

I have so much to be thankful for!

22 week update

I am 22 weeks and 3 days today. I cant believe how fast this pregnancy is going by. My goodness!!! With Maeli it seriously took forever for her to get here and with this little one time is just flying. I think partly it is because I am way busier and also partly because I am SOOO not ready for a new baby.

We had our ultrasound and midwife appt last monday at 21 weeks. They got to do an ultrasound and we found out that we are having a BOY!! I could hardly believe it. I have no idea what to do with a boy. I totally have the girl things down... but a boy? I dont even know where to start. We went out shopping and luckily found some cute boy clothes that have made me super excited to have a little boy. And i think maeli will do great with a little brother!! She is already a rough and tough girl so she will wrestle with him lots. We have two names picked out for a boy that we might name him. I am having a hard time just picking one and sticking to it so we will just have to wait till he is born to pick it.
Mike is soooooo excited as Im sure anyone could have guessed. He is already planning out his future of playing for BSU so that we can have season tickets to all the games...(PUKE)
We are really excited though!

I am getting pretty big. The same size as with maeli (I compared pictures) but I feel so much bigger. This little guy is a kicker and a squirmer! I have been feeling him since 17 weeks or sooner. I just LOVE feeling the kicks and wiggles. I will be super sad when he is born and I cant enjoy this part of pregnancy anymore. I am enjoying this pregnancy much more than i was with Maeli for sure. I feel so blessed to be a mom again and I just love the fact that I get to bring a sweet little life into this world. And I am also super excited about nursing this time where I was terrified of it with Maeli. So much changes when you have become a mother!! including your opinion about everything!!

What did I just agree to??

Mike and I got licensed for foster care the 24th of June. We first off got a call a few days after asking us to take a teenager for just a few days. We agreed to it and boy was that an experience. The first night we had her she climbed out our 2nd story window onto the porch covering and jumped down. Her boyfriend had come to pick her up and she ran away with him. The neighbor saw it all and so he called the cops and it was a whole production with three cop cars, spot lights and drug dogs.

It may seem like way more drama than any normal person would want but we didnt mind it at all. I think it actually prepared me for what we have going on now. It made the thought of taking on twin two year olds seem pretty plain and boring compared to runaway teenagers :)

Yesterday we got twin two year olds; a boy and a girl. With Maeli, that makes 3- two year olds in my house!!! Its like having triplets!!! Let me just say that it is pure madness here at my house!! lol. there is running and screaming and climbing and hitting and giggles and smiles and lots and lots of love. It is gonna be super hard here for a while because the twins will take a little time to get adjusted to our home. And they also have never had any rules to follow so that is hard to teach them the boundaries here at our home. But Maeli loves having two friends here all the time and they are just cute as can be.

Mike is in love with them. He thinks they are the cutest thing ever. I would have to agree that they are cute... but Maeli is the cutest thing ever so they take a close second. We feel so blessed to have their sweet spirits in our home and they truly are a blessing. I may have asked myself what I agreed to... but i know i will grow from having them here with us.

week 16 pregnancy update

I cant believe that I am 16 weeks pregnant already!! I haven't written much about my pregnancy yet and I really enjoy going back and reading about Maeli's pregnancy so I know I need to keep track of this one too!!

I have been feeling great other than my hips and sciatica acting up. I am luckily keeping it under control by putting hot rice socks on it every night when I go to sleep and by Mike being a sweet husband and always doing physical therapy on my and giving me messages :) He has been a huge help this time around!! I have been feeling baby move from time to time and have been for two weeks now! That is my favorite part of pregnancy!! I LOVE getting to feel that little life rolling around inside of me. I also love laying on my back at night and trying hard to get the baby to entertain us. Its so much fun!!

I am showing a lot now and have had lots of people ask about it. Its so funny because they dont wanna be wrong but they know that i wasnt this big a few weeks ago. I cant fit into hardly any of my clothes and I am noticeably round with a pregnant belly! Thats a fun part too! When you get to be huge and people think its cute :)

I have a midwife appt in a week and i cant wait to get to hear the little heartbeat. Such a comforting sound to a momma! I also have a meeting with a Doula to see if I would like her to be there with me at my delivery. I think i will really like this lady! I have interviewed a few on the phone and I just havent loved any of them... but this lady is super cute and has been super sweet to me. She is also LDS so that is a huge advantage for her. I cant wait though! Its fun to start planning the whole birth. That is something i didnt do with Maeli and i wish i had. Although with her I had no idea what i wanted from the birth. I sure did learn a lot from that whole experience.

We get to find out what we are having in a month too. Since we just find out at our midwife office and dont go to a ultrasound place, we have to wait for our next appt. And I will be 21 weeks for that. I cant wait!! Mike is positive we will have a boy because of this gender test that I did. But I honestly have no idea at all! And i dont really care either way so it will be a lot of fun to find out.

Other than all of that... there isnt too much going on. We are loving summer and the sun!! Trying to keep busy so that Maeli doesnt go crazy! We have one last homestudy probably this week and we will be licensed for foster care so we will have another kid around here pretty soon. I am super excited for maeli to have a play mate! Poor girl gets soooo bored here at our house with no one to play with. I feel bad for her but it wont be long till she has a sibling and a friend here all the time.

But everything else is going great! We are just trying to get this baby paid off and get our debt paid off so mike is working lots of extra hours and taking on a few home health patients a week. Its super nice to have the extra income but we sure do miss the extra time with him. He is a great daddy and he is such a hard worker supplying everything that our family needs. He is always willing to work harder to help our family out. And he sure does take great care of me during these painful and uncomfortable months. I dont know how i would ever be able to do it alone! He is such a blessing in my life :)

This is for you Emiley!!!

Maeli has been telling me who everyone is in the pictures on the fridge! I think she is missing her friend!!!

SOOO much JOY!

I know that no one probably reads this but i just had to share my joy today!

First of all it is Easter so that is just a wonderful and happy day all in itself.

But also I am just so happy for the blessing the Lord pours out upon myself and my family and friends. The last year has been kinda hard for myself and a few of my friends and family members. I struggled to conceive a baby while my best friend Heather had a horrible miscarriage that was due to an ectopic pregnancy. My friend Emiley also miscarried and my sister also miscarried this last December. I felt like everyone around me was losing their babies and I was missing out on a baby too.

Well this few month has just been the complete oposite for me!! Heather is pregnant again and is now 12 weeks pregnant and doing great! Mike and I are expecting, Emiley had a baby a few months ago and there are a TON of ladies in my ward who struggled to get pregnant and are all due within a month of me!! And my sweet cousin Gina, who has struggled with fertility for a few years now and whom i have continued to pray for, is pregnant as well! I am just so excited and over joyed with how much the Lord has blessed myself and those around me!! I want to cry with happiness over how excited I am for all these women in my life who are strong and wonderful women of God and who are AMAZING mothers!! What once felt like a sad time for the women around me is now replaced with so much happiness and joy that I cant deny the Lords hand in it all.

I guess I am really just feeling so excited and happy for all the women around me who I love and wanted to share my happiness with the world!!!

What a blessed day to know that we are saved by our savior Jesus Christ and we will live with him again with our families!

Our big news

We are expecting again. Mike and I have been trying for baby #2 for the last 8 months. And we finally have good news that we are expecting a baby around November 21st, 2011. We got to see the heart beating away today at our appt so we decided it was safe to announce the news officially!!! We cant wait for a new little one to bless our family this next winter.

Its been a while!

It had been a while! I have been slacking in the blogging duties. I have been super busy and feel like i am going crazy sometimes and so it hasnt even crossed my mind that i am way past due for another blog entry. So here it goes finally

Mike has been finishing up his one last lingering class to finish his bachelors degree. He has one test left and then he is done. Thank goodness too! It seems like this class is taking forever. He has to wait a long time for each of his assignments to get graded so that is what is holding him up so much. He has been working hard and playing harder. He starts doing home health again next week! That will be awesome to have some extra money coming in to pay off student loans! After all... that is our goal for the year. We have cut down all of our extra spending and are putting every last dime we have into student loans. We hope to have it paid off by march of next year! It is going to be a super hard year but it will be SOOO nice to be free from that debt! Then all we will have left is our house and we plan to have that paid off in 10 years! Mike is so proud of himself to have a full time job and a house and a family and hopefully have it all paid off in the near future! He is such a hard worker to be able to get all of that done and I am so proud of him!

Maeli is growing and playing lots! She has been learning colors and numbers and she is a super smart kid. We enjoy our learning time each day and we especially enjoy our cuddle time to watch "Elmo" That she is always asking to watch! She is an independent and strong willed little girl who is starting her terrible twos with vigor! She has also been potty training and often asks to go potty all by herself and will actually go on the potty! We are so proud of her! But she has to have someone keeping a close eye on her at all times or else the cat ends up colored pink with markers and so does everything else she can make a little prettier with her coloring skills!

I have been super busy with all of my daily tasks that need to get done. Being a stay at home mom is a hard job! I try to keep up on all of the house chores while keeping up with Maeli too. We have fun together though! I also try to take care of myself too so we go to the gym with a friend for an hour most days and I have been loving it! Maeli does great in the child watch at the gym too! I have been doing classes and running the few days a week i dont do classes. I am signing up for my first race this summer! I am running an all womens 5K race with some friends and I am so excited about it. I have never been a runner so this is a HUGE accomplishment for me! I also just got a new calling to the cub scouts that seems like its been taking tons of time. It is like a part time job between all of the trainings and meetings! But the gal that I teach with is super fun so we are starting to enjoy ourselves with that as much as possible. I am sure once we get the hang of it all we will love the fun activities and goofy boys!

On a side note... Mike and I have applied for foster care in the state of Idaho and have been busy getting all of the requirements met with that. We start our PRIDE classes in April and then a homestudy after that. We should have kids this summer I am thinking. We are very excited to take that on and hopefully make an impact on some kids' lives. The reason we decided to do this is because when we bought our house, we both had this overwhelming feeling that our house would not old be a safe place for us but it would also be a refuge for people who really needed it. And I have had this undeniable call to foster care and I am so excited about it. I am super nervous about it at the same time and wonder if i am fit to take on the emotional challenges of it... but a quote always comes to mind when i start questioning it. I have no idea who said it but it goes like this " Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved." It is so true that my doubts and situations that i may have to deal with are nothing in comparison to the importance of these kids being loved.

Well that is pretty much all that is going on! We are super busy and having tons of fun at the same time! We cant wait for summer and for all the fun we are gonna have outside!! Hope you all are doing well! We love you all and miss ya bunches!!

Nauvoo; where we started our forever :)

We just got back from our week long vacation to Nauvoo. When i pictured my dream vacation it was definitely not snowy and cold! But our trip was a dream come true!

My grandparents served their mission to Nauvoo 15 years ago and we had the chance to go and visit them while they were there. Shortly after they returned home, the church announced that they were going to rebuild the Nauvoo temple and my Grandma told me and my sisters that one of us needed to go get married there so that she could go visit the new temple. Well she passed away before it was even dedicated and my Grandpa passed away a year and a half ago! So when mike got baptized we contemplated the idea of going to Nauvoo. I didn't think it would happen but then I heard rumors that the Boise temple would be closing. So we made our plans to go to Nauvoo! As the date got closer we realized that the Boise temple wouldn't be closing anytime soon but i was so excited about going to Nauvoo that we still planned our trip there.

Well we traveled all day saturday the 8th and finally got to Nauvoo! Our apartment was perfect and had plenty of space for all of us! Sunday we went to the local ward and then drove out to Carthage Missouri. What an amazing place to visit! it was so much fun seeing again the last place that Joseph Smith spent his time.

Monday we went sight seeing. We tried to see as many places as possible. Nauvoo is a little restored town that has lots of different shops that are run by missionaries. They are all set up to look like an 1800's home and they demo how people made things and such. The first place we visited was the brick yard where they used to make bricks. Maeli tripped and hit her face on the door jam so she had a huge lump on her face for the rest of the week. We also got to go on a carriage ride in the 20 degree weather and froze to death. But we came across the house my grandparent lived in when they were there. Then that night we got to go to Rendezvous in Old Nauvoo. Its a play that the missionaries put on. It made me remember my grandparents and we were all bawling by the end :)

Tuesday was the most special day! Mike and I both took out our endowments and then we were sealed to each other for all eternity! The most special and wonderful part though was when they brought Maeli into the room. She was so adorable all dressed in white! She was perfect!! i started bawling my eyes out and she just wanted me to hold her :) What a special and spiritual event.

Wednesday Brittany and Adam and my dad all flew home. Bryce, Mom, Mike and I stayed till friday. We saw some more sights and went back to the temple and just soaked up every ounce of the special spirit there in Nauvoo up that we could. We saw Rendezvous again!! Friday we flew back home and enjoyed the rest of our weekend.

It was definitely a wonderful week. We had so much fun having the whole town to ourselves! And I am so grateful to be sealed to my family now. I feel a much deeper love for Mike and we have both grown so much from it all!