Afternoon at Sand Hollow

Yesterday afternoon we went to Sand Hollow, a lake near Saint George, with our friends Ryan and Natalie and their chilluns. Lake day!! We had an absolute blast, and I think I was the only one to get a little sunburnt :) I was sick (I have a cold, booo!) but I just sucked it up, and we had so much fun I barely noticed it. This will be a picture heavy post, so let's jump right into it!

Henry didn't want to have anything to do with the sand or water. So most of the time he was on a chair. 

these juiceheads were loving getting their tan on

he's pretty cool i guess ;)

Henry enjoyed stuffing his face while the juiceheads "fought"

we made Henry go in the water a few times. he didn't like it. 

fun with Daddy (click on pictures to view larger)

"what's this??"

cliff jumping. there goes Josh!

Natalie cliff jumping. As Ryan said, "blondes away!"

we like making faces

"yo, wassup?"

again...on the chair...

within the last 45 minutes that we were there, Henry FINALLY realized he liked the water. 

after that, we couldn't get him away from the water

packin it up. 

There was lots of swimming, posing (haha!), jumping off cliffs, sunbathing, and having an overall fabulous time. Afterwards the babies got a quick nap in the car while we drove to Saint George to hit up Target and go to dinner at Smashburger. It was delicious. So what do you do when you're in the desert and it's hot hot hot? Go jump in a lake!!

this is the transition stage

So I realized I've been a stay-at-home mom now for a month. Whoa. Time flies!! It has been such a relief to not have to worry about working, and feeling guilty for having to ignore Henry just so I could get all my work done. Now if I ignore Henry it's because I have an obsession with Instagram ;) haha. Just kidding--I don't really ignore him, you all know what I mean. Anyways, staying at home has been a bit of an adjustment for me. I'm glad I've at least been working from home since mid-February to help with the transition. At first I always felt like there was some task that I needed to get done, or that I was actually just on a short vacation from work and I would be going back soon. Thankfully I've mostly shaken that feeling by now. It's hard to stop doing something that you've been doing for a long time, regardless of how stressful it was haha. I've been working since I was 14 years old. And to realize that I'm no longer under anyone else's leadership, besides my own, was both freeing and mildly terrifying. Now I can set my own schedule and do things on my own time. So that falls into the transition period, which is learning to use my time wisely and be the best mom I can be.

Obviously, one of the things I need to be better about is blogging! Even though I feel like my life is slightly boring (as far as in the blog world), but I'm sure I'll get my spice back sooner or later. Until I do, please bear with me. I do have a funny story about cat poop that I'll have to post sometime... ;)

Infertility stories

My friend Livia has been posting stories related to infertility this week. Our story is on her blog as well. I have loved reading through all the posts and seeing all the different (but familiar) experiences. Whether you have gone through infertility or not, I think learning more about it and increasing your awareness can only help. So thank you Liv for spreading the love and awareness; I think we can all glean something from it.

So please go check out her blog and read a few of the stories. Here is the link: http://www.livwrites.com/search/label/infertility

♥

Love you Mom!

For those of you following me on other forms of social media, you may already know about this. So I'm sorry for the repeats. On Thursday my mom was rock climbing at a rock gym that she goes to every week. A winding mechanism on a slack line broke, and struck my mom in the face and hands. Let's just say she got kind of jacked up... she had 4 broken bones in her face, broke both of her hands, and had multiple lacerations. Apparently it was her wearing her glasses that saved her eye from sustaining any damages (it was swollen shut, but the eye is fully functioning). On Friday she had back to back surgeries to put plates in her face and pins/screws in her hands. So far she is recovering well and is headed home today. We all really appreciate your prayers and support.

I'm sad to see my mom all banged up on mothers day, but I'm so glad that she wasn't hurt more seriously. Thankfully though, my mom is one tough cookie! I mean hello, she rock climbs in her spare time :) My mom is amazing, and is also a wonderful grandmother. She is always so sweet and patient and fun. I could not have asked for a better mother. I love you so much mom! GET WELL SOON! ♥

Five whole years

These pictures are completely out of order. But they're some of my favorites of us. If I was super organized I would know where all my pictures of everything was located...but that's one of my goals haha.

It's been a great five years. We've done a lot. We've lived in three different places, and owned and sold a home. We graduated from school and we got real jobs that are actually in our field. We paid off all our student loans. We've seen Beyonce and Britney Spears in concert (one of those was clearly better than the other hahaha). After being told we wouldn't be able to have kids without IVF w/ICSI, we had Henry. Then about a year later we were blessed to get pregnant with George. I've just become a SAHM. And most of all, we are happy. Thank goodness, right? ;) haha. I LOVE YOU SO MUCH JUJI!!! Happy anniversary :)

moving on...

Jules, from this lovely blog, posted the above picture on her Instagram the other day. And I loved it so much, I had to steal it. It was another confirmation of what I've been working towards lately...

One of my friends posted this on her Facebook page a few weeks ago and it was what I needed to hear that day. When I read this, the things that resonated with me were title, position, and income. Again, another confirmation of what I needed to do...

I've also found a few good quotes in some books I've read lately (maybe I'll find them and use them for a future post...) that all kind of relate to taking control of your own happiness. And doing what you want to do in your life. And guess what? I'm not happy working at home in my current position. The hours were too long, I was forced to ignore my child all day in order to accomplish my high work load, and I was constantly stressed out. While I'm grateful for this time I've had working at home, because it has helped me sort out my priorities more, I've had enough.

Now that we've paid off all our student loans/medical bills, we are blessed to be in the position where I don't need to work if I don't want to. And I don't want to anymore. I want to stay at home and play with my son. I want to be able to go out to the playground with Henry and be carefree and FUN. I also want to have time (and energy) to pursue my other interests. I haven't even done anything with my sewing machine since we moved. I've barely even read a book. These past few months I have just become more and more stressed, and it has been a complete revelation to realize I don't need to put myself (and my family) through this anymore.

So last week I put in my two weeks notice. It was freeing. It was like a weight lifted from my shoulders. I am more excited for the future and for all the opportunities I will have because of this. And I am happy. Happy with my decision, happy with my life, happy with my family, just plain HAPPY. And it's awesome. I am so grateful that I have made this choice, and for a supporting husband, family, and friends who have helped me so much. Cheers to happiness ♥ It's definitely something worth fighting for.

baby bump update: 19 weeks

I haven't talked too much about my pregnancy yet on my blog. Probably because I've been so busy with work lately, and we had so many people visiting I had to blog about those first :) Yesterday marked 19 weeks pregnant. I got an ultrasound on Friday, and got to see little George--my midwife's office even called me yesterday to say they looked over all the ultrasound pictures and everything looked good. 

19 weeks. Pretty sure my pants are unbuttoned in this pic. I need Josh to find my maternity clothes soon.

So that's a big difference with my last pregnancy: this time I'm seeing a midwife. I went and saw an obgyn here in Cedar (w/decent google reviews), but didn't really get awesome vibes from him. Not knowing who else to go to in a new city, I decided to do a google search for midwives. I found an amazing one whose office is in the hospital, and she also delivers in the hospital. Once I found out she delivered in the hospital (I don't want to do any home birthing, that frightens me!), I was sold. On my first visit with her she chewed me out about my eating habits. I was feeling so sick that it was hard for me to eat, and I was popping Zofran twice a day. She talked to me about improving my diet and increasing my food intake, and explained how that could actually help my nausea. While she was very blunt/direct, it's what I needed to get my butt in gear. And since then, while I'm still somewhat nauseous, I've only had to take a Zofran once or twice in the past 2 weeks, and only threw up once. Gigantic improvement! While my morning sickness hasn't been as bad as with Henry (thank goodness!), I still was throwing up usually once a day.

"hello, mommy and daddy!"

sorry if 3d freaks you out, but here he is all smushed in there :)

Oh, I'm also planning on delivering without medication...... Ahh! While it makes me super anxious, I think it will be a better experience than my epidural experience with Henry. I'm going to take a hypnobirthing class starting in June. So wish me luck and send good thoughts my way when that time comes ;)

All in all, so far so good. While I've gone through specific food-obsessed phases, I haven't had any bizarre cravings. At my last appointment I had only gained 4 pounds from my pre-pregnancy weight, but I'm sure it's increased since I've been forcing myself to eat more/better. I've already started having to get up in the middle of the night to pee, and have to pee a lot more often than when I was pregnant with Henry. It's funny/weird how even pregnancy can be different. We'll have to wait and see how different the actual children are from each other! We are so looking forward to getting to meet this sweet baby in person, and we're just about half way there. Thanks again for everyone's kindness :)

Uncle BJ came to visit!

Uncle BJ came to visit us this weekend, and we had a lot of fun. Henry and BJ became BFF almost instantly, and played with eachother the entire weekend. Here are some cute pictures from the visit (there will be a full photo dump on Henry's blog shortly).

they each had their own controller

BJ took Henry to check the mail

there was lots of playing with blocks

Thank you so much for coming over BJ, we loved having you! And thanks for being so sweet to Henry :)