breaking dawn

i went to the midnight showing last night. yes i'm crazy and i was also super dissapointed. did anyone else see it? what did you think?

long time no blog

it's been a while. i've been given a bigger workload at work lately so i've had no time to blog (yes i blog at work). so i guess i'll pick up where i left off....
the week we got back from lagoon tragedy struck in the life of my very dear friend. she was 36 weeks along in her pregnancy and she went to the doctor and found out that her sweet baby  had not survived. she went in the next day to deliver her beautiful baby girl, and later that week they had a beautiful graveside service and laid baby kynlee to rest. my friend has been through a lot in life and then to have this put on her as well breaks my heart. she is the strongest woman i know, and a fantastic mother to her 6 year old boy. this experience that she has had to go through really threw me for a loop and has been on my mind constantly since it happened. life is hard, and for some it's really hard. i try not to take a moment for granted because we never know when our whole life will change in an instant......
on to happier things. at the beginning of october we hit our 1 year mark for being in our house! for a whole year we were trying to get our house built and it seemed like it took FOREVER, and now the year that we have lived there has flown by.
we celebrated halloween. it was very low key. no trick-or-treating, but we did dress stone up and take him to grandparents houses, and i dressed up for work....

 my cute little mickey mouse. he is at a stage where he doesn't want his picture taken and won't sit still. so these are the best we have.

 and i was an ice princess....

 yes, i was crazy enough to wear my wedding dress as a halloween costume. and it was awful! wedding dresses were not made to be comfortable...and mine is not. but it was fun to dress up. brandy and i got together early that morning and helped each other get ready. we had fun.

the costume didn't turn out as i had planned but oh well. i think we look pretty cute.

my little one turned 2! and we had a little party for him. he was spoiled to the max from his aunts, uncles, and grandparents. and now he's all grown up!
he went from this

to this:

and now to this:

he's so big and smart! he can spell his name, sing his abc's, count to 15, knows all his colors and shapes, and can speak in full scentences! where does the time go?
that's our life in a nutshell recently.....

annual lagoon trip

over the weekend we went on our annual lagoon trip, and we squeezed hogle zoo in this time too. we saw some cool animals

 and played with the kiddos (i should say, the kiddos played together and had a blast)

my boy is happiest when he can go, do, and see what he wants, so running around the play area was his favorite thing.
The next morning we went to cracker barrel for breakfast and then hit up lagoon. we went to the kiddie rides first thinking we would wear stone and mya out and then while they napped we would do the big kid rides. i thought for sure that stone would love all of the rides...and he did like some of them

but a few of them he really didn't like

i felt so bad watching him cry on this one, but by the end he had settled himself down and was fine.

he didn't cry on this one, but he clung to my shirt for dear life, and when we got off he looked at me and said, "too fast, scary". he was a trooper though. we had so much fun!

where were you?

on sunday it will be 10 years since out country was attacked on September, 11 2001. i've been thinking a lot about it lately. there have been a lot of articles online, and many tv reports in the last week or so that i've been paying attention to. i've seen horrifying pictures from that day, and heard people tell where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news.....where were you?

i was getting ready for school. i always had the radio on while i was doing my hair, getting dressed, and putting my makeup on (seems silly that i was trying to look my best while others were fighting for their lives). i was looking in the mirrior, giving myself one last look over when Z103's DJ's came on and said that a plane had crashed into the world trade center in NYC. i didn't know what the worl trade center was, but i thought it was werid that an airplane would crash into a building. i remember thinking how scared the pilot must have been before he hit (at the time i thought it was just a little one man plane), and i remember wondering what kind a freak malfunction must have cause a trained pilot  to run into a building. so i finished getting ready for the day and went out and hopped in the car and while she drove me to school i told her what i hear on the radio. she told me that i had heard wrong and that a plane wouldn't just fly into a building. i got to school and i had mrs. aston's history class first (fitting right?). i walked in and she had been crying, we sat down she told us more of what had happened, and we turned on the news. we watched the news in every class that day.... and the situation got more and more scary by the minuet. when i got home my mom apologized for not believing what i had told her that morning. i don't remember many details from that day, or from any of the days that followed, but i remember exactly what i was doing the moment i heard about that first plane. i don't know if it's a good thing or bad thing...but this all means more to me now than it did then. i'm more touched by it now, and understand it better now that i'm older, and i realize that because of what happened on this day my children will be growing up in a very scary world.
i'm sure most of you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing as well. i just read this article (watch the video and read the article) of an astronaut who was the only american not on the planet at the time the attack happened, and how helpless he felt watching what happened from space (he saw the smoke over new york).  where were you? what were you doing?
take a moment (or better yet, the whole day) on sunday to remember what happened 10 years ago, and what our men and women in the armed forces are fighting for.

labor day weekend

josh now has 32....yes 32 pearl jam concerts under his belt. he left on sept. 2nd at 4 in the morning in order to go pick up his buddy and head to SLC to catch a flight to wisconsin to go to the pearl jam 20 music festival. it lasted 2 full days and he and jeremy were in musical heaven. while josh was gone, stone and i spent quality time together and spent a lot of time with my mom, dad, one of my brothers, and my grandparents. on monday we were invited up to palisades to spend some time on tyson's boat. it was cooler than we thought it would be, but that didn't stop the boys or my mom from putting in some time on the wakeboard/skis. my dad and i were in charge of taking some pictures and i think i got a few good ones. 

handsome bryan

tyson pulling a backflip

fly big bry!!!

my mom is so beautiful



aren't my grandparents too cute?

 stone liked the boat as well. he was content to just sit in someones lap and watch whoever was out on the water. such a good boy.

being a birthmom

we birth parents are all very different. some of us don't like to talk about the fact that we placed a baby, some of us love to talk about it. some of us worry that we will never heal from the pain, some hope the pain never really goes away.  some want a closed adoption, some like to keep it open. some wonder if their baby will be hurt by their decision not to parent, and some are awake every night wondering if their baby is thinking about them. there are a lot of emotions involved in being a birth parent...and  i think even more emotions come into play when that birth parent has another child later and parents that child. being a birth parent is a tough gig....but one i wouldn't trade for anything because i brough an amazing child into this world 7 years ago, and even if it wasn't me who got to parent him....i'm so glad he was born.

i am the kind of birthmom who likes the term "birthmom" or birthmother"...it makes me proud.

i am the kind of birthmother who likes to talk about adoption and make people aware that it's not a careless decision.

i am a birthmom who cringes when she hears someone say the words "gave their baby up" or gave their baby away" or "didn't want their baby"

i am the kind of birthmother who still feels some of that pain from placing and hoping that it never goes away.

i am the birthmom who, after 7 years still misses that little boy like crazy, and i still wonder if he thinks of me

i wonder if he has questions that he doesn't ask, and if he understands why he's not mine.

i've had a lot of these feelings and thoughts recently. i have an open adoption with seth and his family. meaning we send emails, and pictures, and we can see eachother whenever we all decide we can and want to. i got to see them this last weekend!  my mom, stone, and i were invited to their house in utah for a BBQ, and we had so much fun! seth is so grown up, and tall, and handsome, and athletic. it was so fun to watch him and his siblings and cousins in their own back yard, playing like they always do. as soon as we pulled up and i got out of the car he came right up and gave me a hug...and it felt so good. i know he has questions, and doesn't really know what to say, and he was probably a little nervous (i was too), but he was perfect. he told me all about his new "rip stick", and showed me how he could do back flips on the trampoline, he asked me to take his picture, and he played with stone. it was just the perfect evening.

look at this daredevil!

 so handsome

 kiley (seths older sister) and stone

mom loves to play with the kiddos

what an amazing family

 he was so good to play with stone

 my boy is getting so brave

we had a wonderful time, and i was so proud of seth and how he has turned out. i could not have placed him with a better family, they are amazing. kiley's birthmom and i are always included in their family prayer, and after prayer one night tate (seth's little brother) asked who his birthmom is, kristi (seth's mom) said "i am" (she was able to have tate and annie herself). kristi said that tate seemed a little dissapointed that he only has one mom. haha. i thought that was cute, and it's just an example of the questions that they are going to have to answer forever.  and i know that seth will have questions for me as he gets older.
being a birthmom is emotionally tough, but i love it.

help!

i'm asking for help again. stone has gotten to the point where he can climb out of his crib. he's quite good at it (i may have given birth to a monkey...he's THAT good at climbing). so saturday night he wouldn't stay in his crib, and my worry wasn't really that he was getting out and playing in his room, but that once he was ready to sleep he couldn't get back into his bed....so i made josh take the fron rail off the crib and we turned it into a toddler bed (i was really sad about this). it was a bit of a rough night...but we finally got him into a deep sleep at 2 am and he stayed asleep till 8. not too awful right? well then naptime came....stone is down to one nap a day now so when that once nap comes...he needs it. well, there was no napping in the "big boy bed". he was too excited to play in his room. last night went much better (i think because he was so exausted)...we got him to sleep at 10...and he stayed asleep till we had to get him up this morning. so my question to you smart, experienced moms out there is this....any tips on getting a sweet little one to sleep in a toddler bed? or is this just something that, like so many other things with kids, has to come with time? and....my mom, stone and i are going out of town this weekend (we get to go see seth! yay!), so any tips on staying in a hotel with a toddler that has never slept in bed with his mamma? help me!

rain rain go away...

we had a rainstorm monday evening, and i thought it would be fun to go play in the rain before bath time

 nothing more fun than a bucked of dirty rainwater

 stone thought the rainbow was cool

puddle jumpin'!