My Mom

My mom has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. It's so crazy, especially because recently I have been preparing for a career to work with cancer patients and I have seen a lot of them lately. It's just so weird to think that that is going to be my mom now-having to go through all of that. It's all a little bit scary but we have a lot of hope knowing that breast cancer is so treatable and she is only in stage 2. Just this past Tuesday she had her mastectomy surgery. Everything seemed to go okay. In about a month or so she will start chemotherapy. At this point they don't think she will have to do radiation therapy. I've been sharing some mind-body health tidbits for cancer patients with her that I learned while earning my degree :) and we've been helping her check out wig, scarf and hat options online and such to try to get prepared for what lies ahead. Mainly we've just been trying to give her our love and support.

I love my mom so much.

She is really amazing and strong and one of my very best friends.

Please remember her in your prayers if you can!

Mi Uruguayan Hermanita

This past week we had quite the trip. We went with my parents to Las Vegas (they were going there to watch BYU play in a basketball tournament) so that we could check out a school that I am applying to there and check out the area. We also got to go to a fun children's museum with them. While there I took a little jaunt over to Oakland to go through the temple with Lucia (She is a girl that I met and taught on my mission in Uruguay and she got baptized. She later ended up moving to Spain which is where she met Justin (who was there on a business trip with his Dad) and they later got married and moved to California.) It was so wonderful to get to see her again (I hadn't seen her since my mission) and to get to go throgh the temple with her and be there for her sealing. It was such a special day. I just love that girl. She is one of the sweetest, craziest (in a good way :) and most amazing people I know. One thing about her that is so special is that she shares the gospel with almost everyone she meets. She is the most amazing missionary! I am so grateful for the friendship we have. She is my Uruguayan hermanita (sister)! We had so much fun reminiscing and she made me some delicous Uruguayan food. What a fun and special trip that was!

The Oakland Temple

They took me to see some of San Francisco. That is the Golden Gate bridge behind us.

What a wonderful trip!

Back to School

Our life has been taking a turn in another direction for a while now as my sweet husband has been battling constant pain and sickness. He's been to doctors and had a lot of tests done with few conclusions but at least we know he's not dying of anything. He's been diagnosed with Myofascial Pain Syndrome and Fibromyalgia. A bad combination of the two. It's a combination of the muscles not contracting and relaxing like they should and neurotransmitters not firing like they should leading to a lot of pain and disarray in every system of his body. The hard thing is that there isn't much you can do about it unless you want to go on meds for the rest of your life, with a lot of side effects and no gurantee of a lot relief. We really don't want to go down that path right now. So we are all trying to adjust our lives in learning to deal with it. It got to the point where we felt like I would need to go to school or work or something. I started out looking for jobs but that didn't feel right. I have always felt like I should do something in healthcare and have had some powerful experiences to confirm that.

So a couple weeks ago I started my return to school. I am taking a Physiology and a Physics class as prereqs for some imaging programs that I am applying to. (I love the learning but my brain feels like it's experiencing information overload :) I haven't quite narrowed down which field I want to go into...but I know that it is something in Radiology. I am leaning towards Radiation Therapy right now but we'll see. For the last couple months I have also been volunteering at the Hospital in CT. It has been a great experience. I have loved helping the patients and the imaging technology is just amazing. One day they had me put on some special 3-D glasses and I got to see inside someone's body in 3-D--it was very cool!

So our adventure in this new direction begins.

I didn't have any first day of school pics of me with my backpack :) so I thought I would post some pics from Thanksgiving in Provo and Braelyn's Birthday that I hadn't posted yet.

Happy Birthday Dalyn Jacob!!!

Dal turned 4 on December 29th! I know this is a little late but I had to give him a birthday shout out. I can't believe he is already 4! Where has time gone? He is so full of life, energy and personality and has brought so much fun and so many laughs to our family. We are so grateful for him. I thought I'd share a couple of young pics of him to reminisce on his early cuteness:)

December 29, 2005: The day he was born

A BYU fan from the start

He loved to climb in the cupboards

A cute little baller


Gotta love that little face and smile

Here we are now.

December 29, 2009

We got to celebrate his birthday in Montana with extended family so that was really fun. We were thinking about it and Dal has celebrated every birthday with extended family (two in Colorado and two in Montana). I guess that has been one of the perks to having a birthday during Christmas break.

I love his excited/happy face!

A Spider-Man transformer. It doesn't get much better than that :)

Trying out his new blanket that Great-Grandma made

We just love this kid.

Some of our favorite things about Dal....

• The way he loves to have dance parties and how he busts out some pretty amazing dance moves. It's like his own unique break-dancing, contemporary, and hip hop combo.
• How he gets so excited about things
• His smile and laugh
• How he is the sweetest big brother ever and has been since day one. He just loves Braelyn so much and plays so sweet with her, is always watching out for her, and gives her the most precious little hugs and kisses. (She loves to give him hugs too--it's the cutest thing!)
• His endless curiousity about everything. Millons of "Why" questions :)
• The things he says like: "You have time to keep playing toys. Just trust me.", "I don't want to talk about it anymore", "Mom, your sweet, but here's the thing..."
• The way he sings his favorite songs like Spiderman, Transformers, Ninja Turtles, Jingle Bells, O Christmas Tree, I am a Child of God & I Lived in Heaven
• The way he sings the ABC song every time he washes his hands
• The fun different voices he uses when he is playing with his toys
• His thoughtfulness.
• How he wants to be a prophet when he grows up
• His sweet prayers

I could continue but I think I'll stop there for now :)

We love you Dalyn!

Twas the Week Before Christmas

We thought we'd share some fun family things we planned for the week of Christmas. Dal was so excited about all of it and we all had a blast. We love Christmastime!

Monday:

We made Gingerbread bears and decorated them with jelly beans. We then made a special delivery to a friend. They actually tasted pretty good!

Jake and Dal built a fort and we all had fun playing in it.

Tuesday:

We had a movie "slumber" party. We blew up our air mattress and made some snacks and then we all sat on the air mattress and watched Christmas movies. It was great fun!




Wednesday:
I got to take both kids to the dentist! It was Braelyn's first time and she was not thrilled about people making her open her mouth and getting her little teeth brushed. Dal did great but the prize he picked out broke in the elevator on the way back to the car which was a bummer. We made it through though!

Back to the fun stuff...

We went on a little drive to look at some fun Christmas lights. The pics didn't turn out but some of them looked cool with the way the lights moved.

Thursday: Christmas Eve

We read Christmas books (all week pretty much and watched Christmas cartoons and movies that we had checked out from the library)

We ate Papa Murphy's Cowboy pizza and Root Beer. It doesn't get much better than that :)

We read prophecies of Christ's birth from the scriptures and then watched Joy to the World. I love that DVD!

All month long we read everyday from our Christmas Treasury for LDS families book and sang Christmas carols

We opened a few presents including the kids new pajamas. Here's Braelyn sporting her Dora the Explorer jammies right before she went to bed.

The rest of us stayed up and put together puzzles that Jake's fam gave us

And then we played some Christmas Bingo which was super fun

Then Dal was off to bed. We stayed up and Jake built a really cool train track that went through a present tunnel and around the tree and back around through another present tunnel.

Here's our cute and skinny little tree

Friday: Christmas

Christmas Day was full of excitement, joy and fun family time.

We also took some time to read Luke 2.

Look at that face. Need I say more.

We had a fabulous week and a wonderful Christmas with our little family!