Happy Birthday Jacob Nephi!!!

Jake celebrated a birthday this past week. My cousin Amy was very sweet and offered to tend the kids so that Jake and I could go on a date. We decided to do a sports date. Jake and I used to always play sports together but haven't as much since he's been sick. He decided he wanted to feel normal and play like we used to (despite the cost of pain and fatigue for days afterwards). We had so much fun playing and reminiscing on our dating and newlywed days. Good times!

Another fun thing was Dal got $1 in the mail for Easter but the first thing he said when he opened his card and saw the dollar was "Now I can go buy daddy a birthday present!" It was so cute! He was willing to spend his dollar to buy his daddy a birthday present. So we went shopping and Dal picked out these miniature spiderman, wolverine and iron man toys that grow in water. He was excited to find them and was sure that Jake would love them! And he did :)

I am so grateful for Jake and feel so blessed to have him in my life forever.

A few things I love about Jake....

• He is one of the sweetest and thoughtful people I know
• He is such a wonderful husband and my best friend
• He is a wonderful listener and voice of reason
• He has an amazing mind and is so fun to talk to
• Like Dal, he has some pretty amazing dance moves :)
• He is an amazing cook--or should I say culinary master--and he shares his talent with our family quite often.
• He is the cutest and best daddy in the world. He plays so fun and crazy with the kids and yet can be so nurturing and sweet with them too. They both absolutely love and adore him.
• I absolutely love and adore him too :)
• I love how he goes forward with faith despite all that he has to endure.
• He is an amazing example.
• I love how he helps me come up with great examples and thoughts for my lessons at church.
• He is so funny and makes me laugh all the time
• I love how he believes in me and supports me in all I do
• He is just pretty much amazing!

I just love that boy! How blessed I am to be his wife!

Happy Easter & Happy General Conference Weekend!

So today we decided to hit some of the grocery store Easter festivities. It started at 8:00 this morning. (One Utah perk: they try to plan things around General Conference:) We got free donuts and juice at Smiths and then the kids got to go on little Easter egg hunts. I took Braely to the 1-2 year old group and Jake took Dal to the 3-5 year old group. We both had kind of funny experiences. With Braelyn, at first she thought it was kind of fun to hold the basket and when we found the first egg she picked it up and hesitantly put it into her basket. Then with the next egg she grabbed it and held it in her hand and wouldn't put it in the basket. She then found one more to hold in her other hand and then she was one content little girl....walking around with her two Easter eggs in her hands attempting to fit them in her mouth. She didn't need any more. Life was good.
At Dal's end of the grocery store.....when they said go he headed over to the first egg and picked it up and then savored the moment of getting that one egg. Meanwhile kids (and their parents) were sprinting through grabbing every egg they could find. After Dal got over savoring the moment of his first find, he looked around and all of the eggs were gone. But he seemd to be pretty content with the one he had, so they came to find us. It was pretty funny. Jake and I were laughing about it because him and I are both kind of competitive (me more than him) and I grew up in a very competitive family so I guess we were expecting him to go out there and compete for those eggs :) But we actually thought it was great that he didn't feel the need to go out there and get as many as he could, and get more than the other kids. He was content with his one. I'm sure there will come a time when he will get more of a competitive edge and that's great for sports or things like that but it will also be nice if he feels he doesn't have to be super competitive in everything he does. Braelyn's a little young to tell how her competive juices will run...but I'm guessing they might runner a little deeper than Dal's :)

Today when Dal and I were driving home from another grocery store adventure (Between conference sessions) I asked him if he knew why we celebrate Easter and he said "Yes! Because of Jesus!" It made me happy that he knows the true meaning of this fun holiday. Which brings me to General Conference....how fitting that it landed the same weekend that we celebrate the resurrection of Christ. I love General Conference! I look forward to it so much. It seems that every time there are messages shared that were written just for me and our situation, I listen to important things that I need to hear, or I feel prompted to do something, or I feel what I needed to feel. How blessed we are to have a living prophet, apostles and church leaders who know us and love us and give us guidance from the Savior. It is truly an amazing thing.

May the fun Easter and inspiring General Conference moments continue...

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!