Friday, June 29, 2012

9 Years

We had our 9th anniversary. These initials were carved on the tree of our first apartment. They still look good and strong. So is our marriage. We are happy.

For Free

We had a rare Saturday when I was busy and Ryan was not, so he took them to the free Fabulous Freddy's car wash carnival. I don't know why they had it, but I'm glad we found out about it. Looks like fun, right? I'm going to have to bite my tongue next time I start to say there's nothing for families to do in Vegas...









Ballet

I have a girl! Rachel has all of a sudden come to love the things that frankly I'm not that into. She loves getting her nails painted and shows them off to everyone. She tests all of her skirts to make sure she twirls. She loves all things sparkly, but if it's not sparkly she says, "it's ok" with a sigh. And she sure loved getting dressed up in her ballet clothes.  You can't tell by the pictures that she loved her class, but she LOVED it. And maybe next time we can get her to do the moves IN class instead of afterward. But don't let that sweet face fool you--she is the instigator of all potty talk in our house, as well as snarky comments like, "I'm only going to be a little bit good, not a lot good."




2+2=4

It's no secret that we have trouble having kids...but apparently we like to make up for that fact by having them two at once! Here is the story...
After a couple of years of not worrying about it and just raising the kids we have, we decided to start down the path of fertility treatments again. This meant saving up a ton of money. So in the meantime, we went for the cheaper option of clomid. We had no hope of this working. It didn't before-so why would it now? We prayed and visited our expert Dr. D to see if we really wanted to spend all of our savings on doing IVF. It wasn't clear what we should do until a morning in early May changed everything. 
I was fed up with feeling sick and wondering "what if" so I bit the bullet and took a pregnancy test. When it was positive you wouldn't have been able to scrape my jaw off the floor. Even the doctor's blood test wasn't proof enough for me. It wasn't until I saw this, that I believed.




I have seen enough twin ultrasounds that I knew exactly what I was looking at. But I still had to have the doctor confirm it. I have been in a state of shock and worry and denial and happiness ever since.

This is a scary thing. The last thing we want is another life threatening stay in the NICU for these little ones. And we barely have room in our tiny house. And we already have been neglecting them...Do I know where all my ultrasound pics are? No. Have I carefully recorded their heartbeats and measurements? No. But despite all of the shock and the worry and the planning, you need to know this:

This is a miracle. And we love these babies. And we absolutely give credit to God for sending them here. So if you could just pray with us that we can last until they're big enough to come out, we would appreciate it. They are due in December, by the way. But I'm thinking we'll have Thanksgiving babies. And we will be doing plenty of giving thanks.

Joy School Graduation

Although I was very grateful to be able to do joy school this year, it was not my favorite thing to do, and so despite the longer hours of entertaining children summer brings, I was actually looking forward to being done.   So we had a little ceremony. Aren't they cute?





Solar Eclipse Day 2

Although we got a later start than we wanted, the kids certainly didn't mind doing more exploring. Nothing like hunting for flowers, and sticks, and berries. We will forget about the tantrums that exploded upon finding a huge rock covered with ants...


The day brought us up to Bryce? Canyon where we quickly hiked and explored until it was eclipse time...



















The buses were crowded, but because of this adventure, we ended up with 8 more pairs of eclipse glasses...for free. Oops. I guess we officially got our money's worth. We could have stayed up the canyon to view the eclipse, but we preferred to get on the road and have our own "stadium seating"










Don't you just love Spencer's version? The blue moon covering up the yellow sun? Love it.
Despite my original hesitation, it was an awesome trip and I'm so glad we went!