Happiness!!

And here we are, quickly back to a happy blog!! Thank you all so much for reading my previous post and for all of your amazing comments. I really have had a great day (other than missing some sleep last night). I am so glad to know every one of you and to have been able to learn and grow with you and from you. I am so blessed to have my junior high/high school friends, UW friends and Utah friends all on here! I love blogging!!

These girls have too much fun off of our back step!

I really do need to hire someone to come in and decorate my home. The problem is that I really don't want to take down any of the other pictures of the girls from when they were smaller. Too many memories! Way too cute! How can I just box them up?! So far I still have wall space though for fun collages like this! How many more times am I allowed to post these amazing pictures on my blog?! ;)

Things have slowed down quite a bit since Christmas! I loved vacation, but I love a routine. Now that Emily is 4 she gets to go to the Literacy Center twice a week to start reading. It is a free program and Kaylee and Taylor got so much out of it. So here is Emily's "first day of school" photo and then Kaylee preparing Kierra for when she gets to go.

As I mentioned the program is free, but every year they do a Green Eggs and Ham fundraiser that is now a tradition for us on Martin Luther King day. I don't know why I didn't take a picture of the green eggs! The girls LOVE them! I did get pictures of Kaylee and Taylor in their pjs singing at it with the Children's Choir. They are both in the front row--Taylor is 2nd from the left and Kaylee is 4th from the right.

"BIG BAD SQUIRRELS"

And last but not least our Kierra happiness!! Eating Daddy's birthday cake and squeezing her cute chubby feet into her black Sunday shoes. You might have to click on that one to get the full effect of those legs!

What am I thinking--this is last but not least!! My little sister's new baby boy. I hope she doesn't mind me stealing this picture. I know some on my facebook were wondering if she had even had him yet. They got home yesterday and even slept pretty well last night. I cannot wait to hold him!!

This is one of those times that I wish I could be as eloquent of a blogger as many of my friends are, because this has been quite the week of mixed thoughts and emotions and I wish I knew how to get them from my heart onto paper.

It has been a very fun week of anticipating new arrivals of my sister's baby boy, a dear friend's baby boy and then last night seeing another friend's little 4 week old boy. We are now 15 weeks pregnant and very excited!! But is everyone taking all of the baby boys? Actually, we know how girls work, we have the pink, why change anything at this point?! Of course, we are just excited to have a new happy, healthy addition to our family; pink or blue. 1 or 2.....

And there is where the contemplating and the tears begin. How I long to hold those sweet twins that we lost 3 years ago this week. How I long to have that privlege and honor of being trusted to raise two babies. I know that sentence may not make sense or even be fair. I know we are so blessed to have the 4 beautiful girls that we do have, but for so long I did beat myself up saying, "He must've known I couldn't have handled two." This week has been a little bit of a tough one for me as we are now exactly as far along as we were 3 years ago and with each pregnancy since then I have hoped, even prayed for that special opportunity. This week especially I really had my hopes up for 2 babies.

I am pregnant with 1!! How exciting is that though?! The nurse even asked Matt to be the one to try to find the heartbeat this time. That was an odd request--one that we have never had before, but it was fun! A little nerve-wracking because it took him a little while, but then fun!

The girls are extremely excited!! And very protective :)! Remember that basketball game at Christmas? We could not decide if we should tell anyone (especially the radio announcer) before or after the game. Within minutes of getting into Laramie my brother in law was going around with big hulk holgan gloves beating up the little kids, and right away Emily said something about not hurting the baby in mommy's tummy. When everyone started laughing and getting so excited she started crying of course, but it was the best announcement yet! It sure took the pressure off of us deciding when to announce it.

It really has been a great week! I am so excited for my baby sister and my new little nephew. It is fun to think that she has a baby that will be older than one of my babies. They will have so much fun together!!

Today will be a little bit tough though. It is now 4:30 in the morning and I haven't slept much at all thinking about the many things we went through 3 years ago. There are so many personal experiences that I am glad I had written down; mostly because I see how far I have come and I also see names of so many people that helped me through those hard times. My testimony of prayer and faith went through a lot at that time, but most of all it was strengthened.

I do know that we are so blessed to have 4 such beautiful girls. I love them love them LOVE them. I have almost kept them home from everything this week, because I have just wanted to be with them all of the time.

I am very blessed to have a husband who has put up with my crazy emotions. He was and is always there for me. The willow tree statue above was something he gave me for Mother's Day that year, and it meant a lot to me! During that time when I was really very up and down he seemed to always knew what I needed; what words to say and maybe even when not to say anything at all. (that is a picture the girls actually took during one of there take pictures of everything in the house moments)

Anyway, sorry to ramble on so much about such personal things in a public blog. I usually try to do way more pictures than writing for fear of putting myself out there too much like I've done today. There were so many other things I was planning on saying, but I'll do that in my journal later.

I do have some fun video and cute pictures that I need to post soon--once I remember how my new camera works.

I am very blessed with family and friends that are such wonderful examples to me. I am blessed to always feel their love and support! I am so happy! We are very happy and having so much fun together as a family! Love you all!!

(really quick I have to explain the song "I Can Only Imagine". About a week after we lost the twins, a friend of mine lost her little boy after about 22 weeks of a very difficult pregnancy. I struggled through that funeral, but it was very uplifting and hopeful at the same time. This song was on a video of that little boy with his family. It brings back so many thoughts and memories and has helped me so much)

Happy Birthday Matt!

We love you! I love you! Thanks for being the best daddy and husband ever!

The smile on your face

These pictures turned out so amazing! Wow! Thanks to our good friend Sanae. (She also did our Christmas picture at the top of the blog) If any of you live in this area we HIGHLY recommend her. ;) http://www.sanaejames.com/

It's out with the old and in with the new!

If any of you know what movie the title of this blog comes from then you know what movies we watched on our travels all across Wyoming. ;)

2009 is here and life starts up again in about 12 hours so I'd better get going on our Christmas blog. I will miss the days of pjs all day, playing cards, Daddy home from work, the girls home from school, sitting in front of the bowl games, playing the couch game, playing high school basketball again, taking a couple of days to recover from that and having nothing really to do but be with family and have a good time.

Our Christmas festivities started with a new tradition that I am very excited about! Matt decided this year that he wanted to do the real deal prime rib like they used to do at the restaurant--ribs and all. It was amazing! We had his brother's family over for dinner and a Christmas program that the girls put on. We also watched last year's nativity that we had done with cousins that now live in Texas. We missed them so much this year! After the cousins went home we opened pjs and got to bed pretty early.

Maybe we got to bed too early because at 5:00 two of them were all ready to go. After sending them back to bed we did get a couple more hours of sleep and then the chaos began. As one brother-in-law put it--does it look like Wal-Mart just puked in your house? It sure did, but it was fun!!

Yes, we are the mean parents that are laughing hysterically at our child being terrified of a robot. Will she hate us for this later?

The snow was coming down really good Christmas day! It was so beautiful and it made it a perfect Christmas--unfortunately we were wanting to travel in it. At one point I thought how nice it might be to be snowed in and just enjoy the White Christmas, but then homesickness struck and we got packed up and outta there. We drove just to Matt's parents place in Kemmerer to stay the night with them, play cards and enjoy a good Christmas meal. The next day we took off for Laramie where we got to see all of my family. We haven't all been together since last SUMMER so it was fun to throw a surprise birthday party for my sister and enjoy that time together. The cousins all had a blast playing the wii....and you gotta love the eye roll! We spent a few days in Laramie and then we went on to Cheyenne where we were able to see a lot of Matt's family! Again, the cousins had a blast and we ate a lot of really good food! (well some of us ate more than others--the flu hit a lot of people during these few days) After Cheyenne we went back to Kemmerer for a few hours to watch the Sugar Bowl on the "big screen" and then we headed home. We hit some pretty nasty weather on the way home and debated staying one more night away, but we missed home way too much! It was good to get back and clean up the Wal-mart pukage that we had left behind on Christmas day!

Taylor had quite the snaggle tooth at the start of this trip but at breakfast one morning she finally popped that thing out with her tongue. She has the cutest little toothless grin!

And here it is everyone!! Were you wondering why I had the Notre Dame/Laramie fight song on my playlist? I have saved the "best" for last. Actually, I saved it for last thinking that it really is only my family that reads through every word of my blogs. Maybe they will be the only ones that see what a "has been" I really am. This was really a ton of fun!! Last year we scrimmaged the high school team--well, I had just had a baby, so I just ran up and down the court a few times. This year they wanted to do an all out official game--refs, radio, newspaper, sponsors, the works. I even have a picture from my brother's camera phone of me being interviewed on the radio by my dad who does the color for the high school football and basketball games. It was so much fun and I had the best cheering section ever! No one else had 4 kids of their own cheering them on, let alone parents, brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews! In the video you can even see my 2 points in our 4 point win over the varsity. (I'm taking the ball out at the beginning of the video--Matt was an awesome "soccer mom" video taping, taking pictures and juggling the girls)

All in all it was a wonderful Christmas vacation! We were so blessed to have been able to travel safely and be with so much family during this time. Now it is a new year and time to set goals for the coming year (one of those being to be in better shape for next year's alumni game). We look forward to the exciting year to come and wish you all the best!