Basic Overview

Wow...it's been a while! I just uploaded 413 pictures onto our computer and realized that there is no way that I can possibly blog about each of those pictures! So I won't even make an attempt. The past few months have been crazy and I haven't really felt in the mood to blog about anything. But I suppose that I should start blogging again...although I don't consider myself that great of a blogger anyway! :) I have been more into writing in my own personal journal over the past few months and have been debating whether or not I should even continue this blog. I'm still thinking about it...

A few weeks before Christmas, both of the kids came down with a nasty cold. To be honest, I was expecting it. It seems as if someone is always sick for Christmas! :) The coolest part about them being sick (if there could possibly be something cool about it) was that I got to use our stethoscope and otoscope! I didn't want to take them to the doctor unless I was positive that something was seriously wrong with them. Using the otoscope, I was able to diagnose Bryce's ear infection! It was pretty awesome seeing how his inner ear was all red and swollen! Actually, I felt bad for the little guy...it looked painful! He was miserable for about 4 days straight and it seemed as if I could do nothing to console him. Luckily, he recovered pretty quickly once the antibiotics started to kick in.

Here's a sad picture of my sick little man:

For Christmas this year, we decided that we wanted to go to Disneyland. We only bought the kids ONE present to open up on Christmas (and the things in their stockings, of course). It actually worked out great and it made me realize that we should really only give them one thing EVERY year! We bought Bryce a Tonka car track thing and we bought Lizzie a big MagnaDoodle. Jon and I didn't get each other ANYTHING. Well, we bought a new camera in November, so I suppose we could count that as our Christmas present to each other. :)

On Christmas morning, the kids got to open up their stockings, their present from us, their presents from my parents, and their presents from my sister's family.

I was planning on making homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast but the mere thought of eating anything sweet made me sick, so we opted for hash browns and eggs instead. Even Bryce helped with the cooking! :)

After breakfast, we relaxed for a few hours while Bryce took a nice long nap. Then we went to Jon's parents house for lunch (pizza) and to exchange gifts.

I seriously think that Lizzie forgot how to smile normally for the camera. She is constantly smiling like this...I think that she looks constipated! :)

This is Justin (my brother-in-law) and his cute little bald son, James:

After Jon's parents house, we went to Justin's parents house to enjoy a little Christmas "buffet" that his Mom invites everyone to every year. We were there for a couple of hours snacking and visiting before the kids decided that they were done. Then we went home and discovered that, after all was said and done, the kids were sure given a lot of gifts! We were absolutely spoiled this year! We truly feel so blessed!

Here are most of the gifts that the kids were given. Not pictured are all of the clothes! And, believe me, there were a ton!

Bryce's pile:

Lizzie's pile:

It was an awesome Christmas!

Here are some pictures of our Disneyland adventures:

A few days after Christmas (or was it New Years?) it snowed! It was pretty awesome! And pretty cold too...I'm not used to the cold weather anymore! :)

Here is Lizzie's Gingerbread House that she made practically all by herself. I honestly think that she did a great job! If only she could have smiled normally... :)

Jon went with Lizzie to her friends birthday party a few weeks ago. She ate blue cake and she seriously got the frosting ALL over her. She came home with icing all over her entire face and sleeves. Luckily, it came out of her clothes just fine! :) If I was at the party with her, I would have fed her the cake myself. Yes, I'm one of "those Mom's" who still feeds her 3-year-old on occasion. Hey, I have cream-colored carpet underneath my dining room table! I have to take precautions. :)

A few days after Christmas, Jon pulled out all of his Lego's that he used to play with when he was a kid (his parents saved practically all of his old toys). He and Lizzie LOVED playing with them together! :)

Actually, I'm pretty sure that Jon enjoyed it a lot more than Lizzie! I totally saw his inner-child come out! :)

For some reason, we have about a zillion pictures of Bryce eating. Why? I'm not sure. He does eat a lot though! :)

We had some visitors from afar! My Grandma and Grandpa Duncan came to visit us from Canada! They are from Edmonton, Alberta (the place where I was born!) and they just spent a couple of months living in Mesa, AZ. They were headed to St. George, UT for a couple more months and so they decided to take a little detour to come and see my sister and I! It was so great to see them, as I had only seen them one other time since I have been married.

Well, that's basically all that has been going on with us over the past few months! Well, aside from one other thing. I wasn't going to mention it, but maybe I will anyway. Just in case someone else who reads this goes through the same thing some day. We found out at the beginning of December that we were pregnant. We were very excited! We didn't tell another soul for 2 whole weeks. Even after that, we tried to keep it a secret. After having a miscarriage, I was very scared that I was going to have another one. I was pretty confident that everything was going to be okay with this pregnancy because I was feeling SICK. More sick than I felt with Lizzie or Bryce. I was so happy to be feeling sick because, to me, it meant that everything was going to be okay!

When I was supposed to be nearly 11 weeks a long, I went in for my first ultrasound. In an effort to make this short (because I could totally go on and on with details), let me just say that I had an absolutely horrible experience with the OBGYN department. Horrible. So horrible, in fact, that I went home crying and ended up going to urgent care almost immediately after. I would never, under normal circumstances, choose urgent care over an actual gynecologist. But that day, however, I was lucky. The care that I received at urgent care was amazing. The doctors actually listened to me and treated me like a person with feelings! What a shocker, right?

Anyway, I was diagnosed with a "Blighted Ovum". Basically, my egg didn't have any genetic information inside of it. The sperm was able to penetrate it, however, and a placenta began to develop. The placenta is what houses the majority of pregnancy hormones. Due to the placenta that was attached to my uterine wall, my body thought that I was pregnant. The pregnancy tests turned out positive. I felt all of the pregnancy symptoms. My uterus even expanded as if I was pregnant. In fact, when the doctor palpated my uterus before I had that first ultrasound, she said that my uterus felt like a 10-week uterus. Weird, eh? So I was "pregnant" with a placenta and an empty amniotic sac. What a complete fluke of nature!

The doctor said that it would expel itself on its own, like a miscarriage. I didn't even start spotting until over a week later. And then (to make another long story short)I started bleeding so heavily that I lost consciousness, went into shock, my mother-in-law had to call 911, I got to the hospital and the doctor informed me that my placenta was stuck in the cervix. After he pulled out our huge "baby" the bleeding started to slow down somewhat. And let me tell you, there was A TON of blood. Seriously. I could go into details about how much...but I won't. It scared me!

It was a crazy day, to say the least. I'm glad that it's all history now! When all of this first happened, I told myself that I was never going to try to get pregnant again. I just couldn't handle all of the emotional excitement and let-down. A few days later, however, I decided that I wanted to get pregnant again. But I didn't want to start trying until Bryce turned two. With every passing day, however, I can't help but feel like I want to be pregnant NOW. I don't want to wait! The doctor recommended waiting for at least 3 more menstrual cycles until we start trying again. To me, that just seems like too long of a wait! :) Plus, who knows when I'll even get a regular cycle again. It's been over three weeks since I gave birth to our placenta, and I'm still spotting!

Anyway, when all is said and done, I really do feel incredibly blessed. Things worked out really well. I know that things could have turned out a lot differently and I'm just extremely thankful that things are okay! :)

Since I have completely neglected my blog for such a long time, I have a lot of pictures to post! I have so many, in fact, that I am publishing two posts in one day. A record for sure. :)

Here are some pictures documenting our Thanksgiving and a few other things (everything is completely out of order...sorry!):

We attended the annual Christmas Creche Festival last night and it was amazing, as usual. There was an incredibly large variety of nativity scenes from all around the world displayed in the cultural hall of our church. I loved looking at each and every one of them! And throughout the evening (and the rest of the weekend), a variety of musical performers from around the community come and perform special Christmas musical selections to help the people in attendance feel the true meaning of Christmas.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I think, Jon and I played 4 piano duets. We played "What Child is This", "Jeanette Isabella", "Silent Night", and "O Come O Come Emmanuel". When we practiced the pieces at home, they sounded pretty good. But leave it to me to make a zillion mistakes during the actual performance! :) I don't know what my problem is, but when I have to play in front of people, the notes on the page have a tendency to melt together and all that I see is a big blur! :) Oh well. It has been a lot of fun learning those pieces with my husband.

Anyway, at the Creche Festival, there is a special little Children's room set up where the kids can do a variety of Nativity focused activities. They had a bunch of dress-up clothes and I wanted to get a cute picture of Lizzie and Bryce...but it didn't quite worked out the way that I had planned. It's a good thing that my kids are cute no matter how well they pose! ;)

Here are the pictures that I was able to get:

Lizzie decorated this gingerbread man by herself (with a little help from me placing the frosting where she wanted it to go). It looks like a gingerbread ALIEN!

Random pictures of Lizzie:

We put up our Christmas decorations the Saturday after Thanksgiving. This is what Bryce looked like near the end of the decorating:

Lizzie loved helping out with the tree this year!

I felt so bad for Lizzie! She wanted to decorate this little tree all by herself. Every time that she was almost done, Bryce would come and knock it down! Needless to say, I ended up just taking the tree down and putting it back in the garage. It can come up next year when Bryce isn't so destructive!

Both of the kids loved discovering the Christmas toys that we get out only during the Christmas season (our Christmas Ducks, the stacking Santa's, Christmas books, Christmas stuffed animals, Christmas boxes, etc.).

Okay, on to Thanksgiving. We hosted the dinner at our house again this year and I think that it went really well. The only thing missing was my family. I missed them an awful lot! But aside from missing my family, it went really well! Everyone that came brought a dish or two (or three) and there was so much food that we ate like kings!

Jon wanted to give a shot at smoking the turkey this year. And I'm not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that it was the absolute best turkey that I have ever tasted in my life! (No offense, Dad!). It had the best smoked flavor! It. Was. Delicious.

He stayed by the grill the majority of the day making sure that the coals were still burning and that the temperature was still ideal. Actually, the entire process of smoking the Turkey began at 4:30 in the morning! While Jon was getting the smoker ready, I cleaned the turkeys and injected them with seasoning. It was an early start, but definitely well worth it!

Am I lucky, or what? :)

I contributed to the meal by making homemade crescent rolls (which turned out pretty yummy), and homemade wheat rolls (which usually taste great, but this time they tasted and felt like pieces of whole wheat brick).

I also made mini-cheesecakes, which turned out pretty well. Actually, I ended up eating most of them single-handedly. Not a good thing at all!

Here is the set up. We borrowed tables and chairs from the church which made hosting the meal very convenient!

Here are the people. There were a lot!

After the dinner had been cleaned up, Jon's Dad and Brother Manry played with Bryce's little Lightning MacQueen for about 30 minutes straight. It's the kind of car that you shake and then it goes. They kept shaking it and letting it go to see if they could get the car to go all the way across the table without falling off! It was pretty entertaining! Lizzie loved it, at least.

Thanksgiving afternoon, before we ate dinner, Jon was eating and sharing a popsicle with Bryce. Bryce LOVES to eat anything that Jon is eating. It's comical, really. He runs to his Daddy whenever he hears a wrapper opening up, or even if he suspects in the slightest that any type of food is being consumed. So, naturally, he tried this popsicle that Jon was eating. Apparently it was a little too cold for his liking!