One year

A year ago, I went in for a prenatal checkup. I was just past 3 months with our second baby and we thought everything was going great. However, at the appointment we found out our baby had been dead for over a week and I had to go in for surgery. Now a year later I am pregnant for the 5th time. I have gone into labor twice and we thought for sure we would lose this baby too. This has been the hardest pregnancy by far, but somehow our baby is still alive. I am on bed rest and it is miserable, but I am grateful that Heavenly Father has blessed us with yet another baby and I just hope that this time we can keep it. It makes the anniversary of my first miscarriage a little bit easier.

Lynnea's 1st Bithday

We can't believe it has been a whole year since Lynnea became a part of our lives. What an amazing thing it is to be a parent, we love her so much!! This last week has been miserable (we've all been really, really sick) so any plans for her birthday kind of went out the window. I was going to make a really fun fondant cake, but ended up just picking up a premade one at the grocery store :( She really loved it though so that is all that matters right? It was the first time we'd allowed more than like a bite of anything sweet. Aunt Mariah and Aunt Anne both gave her presents and my parents left some here for her when they came, which was a good thing since we didn't get around to any birthday shopping due to how sick we all are. We also wrapped some of her Christmas presents back up so she could have fun unwrapping more things.

Christmas

This year we spent Christmas with Gerrick's family. We drove down to Utah so we could carpool to New Mexico with the Woahns. We crashed at the Robert's and kept the tradition of playing some games and eating Gma Roberts amazing food. The trip was actually pretty good considering we had 3 kids in the car, although we pretty much went insane with the noise the luggage rack tie down straps made. It sounded like there was a motorcylce on top of the car the whole trip. Grandma Jones rented a couple hotel rooms in Albuquerque and we had fun keeping up the whole hotel with all of our kids screaming :) Then we got to watch BYU trounce some random school from Texas. We stayed up every night until like 3 in the morning playing games, until we all got sick. The Woahn's brought a game called Acquire and now we're addicted hard core. We played lots of Volleyball, basketball, fuseball, ladderball (which Resa killed us all in), went bowling, etc. We took Gerrick's mustang for a drive, it made us really want a garage so we could take it with us. It was such a nice break from Rexburg weather, we were able to play tennis outside in shorts and t-shirts! It was perfect weather for running too. Anne gave me some super sweet running gear for Christmas and I had fun breaking them in there. It almost convinced us right there to write off ISU (we're sick of the cold and snow). Anyhow, overall we had an amazing time and it was great to see Gerrick's family. I feel like I get to know them a little bit better every time.

Visit from the Grandparents

So my parents came to visit back in November, yes I know I'm a little behind on blogging :) It was Lynnea's first time meeting Grandpa Warner and at first she was terrified of him, but she warmed up pretty quickly. We tried to surprise Joseph, but apparently one of the cousins let it slip when they were coming. It was still pretty funny though, Dad pretended to have a cigarette and was lounging against a tree by the library when Joseph came out and said something like, "hey could i get a light". They had a pretty snazzy red rental car and Dad revved the engine at random people. Our lounge has a pool table and so I got to see Dad play pool for the first time ever, he was pretty good. I think Grandpa Jones and him should have a match. So we hung out for a couple days (it was a quick trip) and then they all headed down to Montana to visit my mom and dad's family. Lynnea was so sad to see Grandma leave, we are really hoping we'll be able to go visit them in Alaska soon.

Trick-or-Treat

One of the benefits of living in a predominantly LDS town is that when Halloween lands on Sunday the community does their trick-or-treating the night before. So after our ward party we took Lynnea trick-or-treating for the first time. However, we quickly discovered that it was freezing outside so we cut it short. Our awesome friends Dalan and Kristy had us over later and we made caramel apples and watched Jurassic Park. It made me feel better that Kristy was almost as scared as I was.

We have been so blessed this year to have lots of my family living in Rexburg. My brother Joseph and sister Mariah are both BYU-I students along with five of my cousins. We had an awesome cousin/ friends party on Sunday after church. Gerrick and I procrastinated our costumes so we had to be creative with what we had in the house. I ended up being an Alaskan tourist and he was "black mail". We discovered the benefit of having children on Halloween is that it makes you look festive if your child is dressed up, even if your own costumes are lame.

Lynnea was very social, but that was probably because everyone shared their food with her :)

She tried to help Taunya bob for apples, but couldn't quite reach.

Finally a walking video for the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and such. Enjoy!

Lynnea walkin' around in her bathrobe before bed. Poor girl is sick, so ignore the snot :(

Lynnea is walking!!

When I was five months pregnant I began to wonder if there was really a Kung Fu panda inside of me instead of a little girl. At birth we quickly realized that Lynnea's acrobatics were to continue, as she almost rolled onto her tummy while still in the hospital. Swaddling was a bust as she would always break out, no matter how tightly we wrapped her. Soon she was scooting, and then at six months (pretty much the day after she started crawling) she began furniture cruising. She took her first step without holding onto anything at eight months, and now at nine months she is officially walking. Suffice it to say we have one ACTIVE little girl on our hands.

As excited as we are, it tends to make life a lot more interesting each time Lynnea hits a milestone. Especially going out into public. For example, we were sitting in sacrament meeting and set Lynnea down so she could cruise the pew. The couple next to us oohed and aahed until Lynnea bent down to suck on the girl's toe. In class, she pulled the girl next to me's skirt up and began to chew on it. She really is a good baby, but if you try to confine her.... wow does she get mad. That is why we always sit next to the door in church, and avoid any stores without shopping carts. So, as excited as we are for Lynnea to be walking, I'm sure it will take terrorizing people to the next level. At least her random phase of growling has passed, I'm sure it will go over better when her antics are accompanied by cute babbles instead of her slightly creepy growl.