He Makes me Smile!

In the photo above, Hyrum found a paci laying around the house that a friend had borrowed the evening before. He decided to be my baby for the day again!! Silly boy.

Ricky hurt his shoulder at work back in January, which still bothers him. He ices it at night when he goes to bed. Hyrum decided to be like daddy and ice his shoulder one day as well. (shirt off an all!) :)

Here, Hyrum is just being really silly. He found an HPD badge sticker that PawPaw brought up for him from Texas the last time he came for a visit.. Hyrum decided to wear the badge on his face.

New Ride

So.. some of you are thinking "hmm I thought they decided to wait a little longer...?"

Well, it didn't happen like that.

We looked at probably 60+ cars and test drove maybe 10 of those. We had specific criteria we wanted our 'new' car to meet, and wanted to spend only a certain amount on the vehicle.

After looking at so many cars I decided "this is too frustrating, we aren't having a new baby anymore right now, so we don't need to rush into getting our new, big, family car.. I will just keep driving my Taurus.."

As most of you know my car started making a really eerie squeeking noise any time we made left hand turns in the Taurus a couple of weeks ago.

On Tuesday I made Ricky get it inspected to find out what the noise was because I was freaking out about wether or not I was driving a safe car.

I have been driving a 2000 Ford Taurus with 176,000miles on it. I have taken MANY long trips in my Taurus. It was my first car, a graduation gift from my parents.. I have somewhat of an attachment to it..

The Taurus took me many places in the time I had it.. I packed it up with all of my belongings and moved far away from home to Utah to be on my own and work and "go to school." It has also taken me back home a few times.

I wont go into a long drawn out story about all of the adventures I went on in my Taurus, but I was sad to see it go!!!

My poor Taurus ended up needing $1,500 worth of work done to it that we didn't want to pay out of pocket money for, so we kept car shopping.

I personally fell in love with a Kia Sedona we found out in Issaquah but for whatever many reasons, Ricky decided "I don't want to own any Kia's!"

With Ricky being my husband and main "bread winner" of the family, I felt like I couldn't push it on him, so we kept looking for a car we could both agree on and like just the same.

FINALLY, we found this Ford Expedition. and we both loved it.

I didn't want to keep searching once we found a car we both loved because it probably would have been gone by the time we decided to 'stop searching.' We had already looked at soo many other cars before this one.

We know we needed the new car, we can afford it, and we got a great auto loan with a 5.9% intrest rate and we surprisingly got a great trade in value for my Taurus. enough to cover more than half the taxes. but we both still felt uneasy about the whole process..

This will be our biggest bill of the month, which isn't a problem.. I just hate spending money.. I am my mothers daughter and shop sales and clearance items.. I'm cheap. I guess that's a good thing because it helps with saving money, but I sometimes get sick to my stomach purchasing anything for myself.

This is the first big purchase Ricky and I have ever made together since being married more than 3yrs ago.. I've never had to car shop before and personally know nothing about cars. So it has been quite the experience..

We'd feel much better if mom and dad were to fly up here and give it their stamp of approval to help ease our minds about this huge purchase!! ;)  (ehh hemm, cough cough)

Our new car is a Ford Expedition Eddie Bauer Edition.. Seats 8.. has a dvd player for long trips. nice 2 tone kakhi and black interior.

It was a one owner vehicle to a Military man, no accidents, low miles, exterior and interior were well taken care of.

And now it's MINE!!

if you are wondering.. we purchased it from Auburn Nissan..

Demolition Derby

Over the weekend we went to the demolition derby at the Spring Fair in Puyallup.

We had a pretty good time. Non of us had ever been to a demolition derby before. It was pretty fun to watch.

There were some pretty cool crashes and one car went up in flames. Driver was completely safe and unharmed.

I don't have pictures, but on Friday night, Ricky, Hyrum, Marvin and Saul had a 'guys' night out and went to the monster truck show. Hyrum absolutly LOVED it and had a great time.

While at the demo derby Hyrum kept asking for the Monster Trucks to come out. Looks like we will have to start doing a yearly monster truck show when Monster Jam comes around.

Boat Launch April 2011

Delta Marine Ind. launched their most recent/completed yacht this past week and had a launch party.

I would have taken more photos but the weather was pretty nasty and it was raining the entire time.

I managed to get one photo of the Yacht, and one photo of Hyrum when I dropped him off with Jessica at her place in West Seattle earlier that day.

This yacht was built for the Catterpillar company. Pictures don't do them justice when it comes to the actual size of the yacht.

they are huge!

On another note, Ricky brought home an official letter from Delta today stating that they have FINALLY sold the 200 foot Steel Haul yacht that they have been trying to sell for the last two years.

I mention this because this means, RICKY HAS WORK! this entire last year we were sitting on the edge of our seats expecting Ricky to be laid off many times over and over..

Luckily he was never one of the unlucky many who did get laid off in the last year and a half.

Delta now has 2 yachts to build and work on, both of which have at least 2yrs worth of work to put into them.

Who knows how many other boats will be purchased over the next 2yrs, but for the time being Ricky is safe and has a job.!

Gone Too Soon

I have been putting this blog off for at least a week now. I actually did write a post about the events of our misscarriage but have decided not to post it for the time being.

It would be rather depressing for some. So instead I will stick with this short and sweet version.

As you all know Ricky and I were excitedly awaiting the arrival of a 2nd edition to our little family.

One April 3rd, 2011 all of that changed. I was somewhat expecting it to happen because of the events of the week prior but nothing can ever prepare you for the actual loss of a child no matter the age of gestation or life.

We lost our little one right around 3pm at the close of the last session of General Confrence.

I wont go in to detail of the actual event as it was actually a very personal and yet spiritual encounter for us. (me)

We took a trip out to Bellevue to go to Deseret Book store because I had a $5 coupon with them, and I had every intention of purchasing the book 'Gone Too Soon.' I think at the time I was in a bit of the denial stage of things. I held the book in my hand and decided 'I don't need this, at least not right now.'

So we got a couple of other things instead. I had my moments on and off throughout the week and into the weekend. I went shopping at the Supermall and found it hard to even shop for clothes for Hyrum because at any store, I would have to pass the infant and baby clothes section to get to Hyrums section of size clothing.

Let's just say, I was in and out of each store within minutes and didn't buy anything at all..

As the next weekend came we went to Beehive Books in Edgewood so I could buy some new neck ties for Hyrum for church.. While there I ended up grabbing the book 'Gone too Soon' and finally purchasing it.

I am glad that I did. It is a great book. It is very informative medically, as well as comforting. I highley recommend it. It's a quick read but a great one.

I kept thinking that maybe I shouldn't be feeling sad about the loss because the pregnancy was still a bit early but this book lets you know that no matter how small, or young, weather it be 5weeks along to a still birth at full turn, it is still a very sad and traumatic event and you shouldn't let people try to dissmiss it.

I'm sure I will still have my moments from time to time but I am doing well.

I believe in a life after this and that there is a plan for everyone. I also believe that one day, we will be reunited with lost loved ones and family members.

I want my baby, miss my baby, and wish I wouldn't have misscarried.

But, I also believe that somebody had other plans and intentions and that we will have another chance.

On Another Note;

Yesterday I recieved a call from Barb. She is my Nurse Practioner that I use at Valley Womens Clinic when I need an apointment but don't need to see my OBGYN. She is great. I absolutly love her.

She is the one that helped up through the week leading up to the misscarriage. She was hopefull that things were going to work out and go well because everything in my uterus looked absolutly perfect, even with the baby except for the fact that things didn't measure up to the date it should have been.

Yesterday I recieved a personal phone call from her extending her condolences and appologizing for her hopefullness during the week when things didn't end well. I never placed ANY type of blame on her and I was never even upset for her 'giving us false hope.' Because she didn't.

I had a gut feeling from the moment things didn't add up that things weren't going to go well. Once a womans body decides to misscarry or terminate a pregnancy, there is absolutly nothing at all that any doctor on this earth can do to stop it from happening..

and these things are never anybodys fault

I was very surprised by the phone call. I wasn't expecting to get one at all. In fact it didn't even cross my mind.

We had a great experience with Valley Womens clinic as well as Valley Medical Centers hospital throughout my pregnancy and delivery with Hyrum. When we found out we were expecting it didn't even cross my mind to go to another facility, though I did toy with the idea of trying out one of Valleys midwives to try an all natural pain medicine free birth.

I love Valley and can't even wrap the idea of delivering at any other hospital around my little brain.

The entire staff at Valley Womens clinic have always been the most pleasant and respectfull people to deal with and when we went through our misscarriage at Valley Medical hospital they were all very kind and helpfull through the process.

I appreciate everybodies kind words, thoughts and prayers while we have been dealing with this.

One can never prepare for the loss of a baby, or child and my heart goes out to all mothers and famlies who have had to live through such an experience.

Alex Boye'

On Saturday we went to Beehive Books Store in Milton.

There was a book I wanted to pick up and I wanted to get Hyrum some neck ties for church from there.

Before checking out and being on our way I decided I needed some more/new church music.

I immediatly decided that I wanted CD with a male vocalist. There wasn't a way for me to preview any of the CD's so I just had to grab one that I though and hoped would be great.

I decided on this one for the meere fact that in the title is says "Classic Hymns and FOLK Songs"

I'm a sucker for some deep harted folk music. When we got home I stuck the CD into the computer to get a good preview of it.. I wasn't at first too impressed with my short few second preview of each song.

Later Saturday night I decided to plug in the earphones and play the music through while updating our blog and fooling around with photo editing stuff.

I LOVED IT!

I can't tell you how many times I have played it over since I got it and listened to it Saturday night.

I will be getting more music of Alex Boye'

The One about Great Buys from IKEA

Basically, Ikea is awesome to shop at.

They have anything and everything a person could ever need for their home. From living room furniture, to kitchen utensils, knives, pots, pans and dishes, to office supplies and home storage units, as well as bedroom furniture for all ages.

We went to Ikea this weekend for the first time in about a year and I was quickley reminded why I loved going to this store nearly every week when Hyrum was born. It's fun, a good exercise due to the size of the store, and they even have some extremely yummy soft serve, non fat, frozen vanilla yogurt cones.!

If you aren't sold yet get this; Ikea- a home furnishing store, is famous and known for their delicious Sweedish Meetballs!!?  

This next part is literally the icing on the cake...

After going there this weekend I needed to go back to grab a couple more things..

In all, my two day shopping spree at Ikea came to a whopping $50!!

Why is that so crazy that I'd like to share with you all? Because of what I got and how many items I purchased.

My list of purchases are as follows;

4- wall shelves

8-brackets to hang wall shelves

2- office document/paper/folder holders

2- pencil/pen desktop containers

2-dishwashing scrub brushes

1- deep skillet for stirfry type stuff

2-carving boards (1 large 1small)

1-Bookcase w/3shelves.

I practically got all 22items for roughley $2.30 per item!

documents are in the following pictures

These are two of the shelves that Ricky has hung for me. The items on these shelves wont be staying, will be full of office stuff.. I will add updated pictures of our little 'remodel' later on when I am done.

here are my pen/pencil holders, document holders, some brackets and the bookshelf I grabbed from the 'as-is' section for a rediculously cheap price.

and these items would be my kitchen supplies. carving boards, deep skillet, scrub brushes

Things Unmentioned

If I were to write about the last 6months all in this one blog we'd all be in trouble..

 Why? Because that would make for one extremely long blog and lots of reading that I am sure most of you wouldn't want to do.

So here is a VERY short rundown of some of the last six months happenings.

First of all, I went to Texas for 6weeks to visit my family and friends. While there we celebrated the wedding of my sister Adrienne Nicole to Corey Tatom. In fact, as soon as we arrived in Baytown, we showered, got dressed, and got back into the car to head to the wedding.

It was a very nice, small, and beautiful wedding. I am extremely happy for my sister to have finally found a great man to love and take care of her the right way! :)

While in Texas Halloween happened. Hyrum was little Luigi and cousin Aeden was Mario.

Maeli, Hyrum and Aeden enjoyed a healthy McDonalds meal before the Trunk or Treat got started at the church.

After Halloween, of course Thanksgiving came and went, along with 8hours of Black Friday shopping.

Black Friday was also the day of my very first 'mild' gall bladder attack that I just thought was some kind of aweful stomache ache/cramping.

After Thanksgiving we made it back to WA after an extremely long road trip back home that included an ER visit due to my first major gall bladder attack in Waxahatchie, TX. I thought I was dieing in the car in front of Hyrum and Ricky. I didn't know what was happening, I just knew it hurt like CRAZY!!

Any who, December came and went along with Christmas..

Not sure where the New Year went, but it was greated with a 2 1/2 week visit from my mom and a trip into surgery to get my gall bladder REMOVED. Hyrum sure was spoiled having MawMaw here to take care of him while I recouped. Despite recovering from surgery, it was a nice visit.

Mom and I watched all 6seasons of Grey's Anatomy on DVD and I got her hooked.

(my four incisions from surgery the day after)

After recovering from surgery I got brave... Hyrum really needed a hair cut and I had an itch to be the one to cut it.. I'd never cut anyones hair ever before in my life. I got the clippers out, stood Hyrum in the bathroom and went after his head.

I like to think I did a pretty great job for a first timer. Yes it came out very short, but I like his hair shorter. I think we will keep cutting his hair at home for now.

Other than that, we have been busy busy. Hyrum is talking sooo much and learns new words every day. And he is such a sweety when he wants to be. He is also very polite when he isn't in a horrible throwing a fit mood which is starting to happen more these days when he wants something and isn't getting his way.

The 'Terrible Twos' have definitly kicked in and taken hold of little man Hyrum, but we still LOVE HIM SO MUCH.!!

That is all for now folks. Check back in the next day or two for more. (bed time for now)