A Year's Worth of Updates

So, it's been a while. So much has happened in the past year.

Last August, I had a dream come true for our anniversary celebration. We went to Wicked! I had wanted to see it for about a decade, so I was very happy and excited for it. I was not disappointed. It was amazing!

 

This is the lobby at the theater.

We got a babysitter (Grandmacita) for our celebration and stayed at a Marriott in Sandy. It was so fun to get away for a night. I had a feeling that something was different, and I was right. I took a pregnancy test and it was positive! Woo hoo! Lydia now has a baby brother! But more about that later.

 

Positive pregnancy test

In November, I did something so brave, I still can't even believe I did it. A friend of ours got married in LA, and we went down to it. Lance was already in Vegas, so I drove by myself to St George to pick up another friend, and then proceeded to Vegas to pick up Lance. It was scary, but not as bad as I thought it would be. However, I really hope I don't have to drive that far by myself ever again. P.S. The wedding was beautiful! Lydia stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Hansen. She had a blast!

 

Los Angeles temple

Also in November, we hosted my family for Thanksgiving. It was great! It was the first Thanksgiving my family has had away from my parents house in over 20 years. I'm proud of myself for taking on such a daunting task while I was pregnant. I'm glad it's over, but I'll probably do it again. It was fun!

 

Our winter activity was to remodel the master bathroom. The shower had leaked, causing the sub floor to rot and crumble. Right now it is finished except for the bathtub faucet and the exhaust fan. I absolutely love it!

We also painted the master bedroom. The brownish color it was before was awful. Now both the bathroom and the bedroom are a bright and happy yellow. Pictures will be in a separate post all about the remodel.

Now for the part you've been waiting for. Braden John Welling joined our family on April 11th, three days after his due date. He is a wonderful baby boy and we can't imagine life without him. He is a really good baby. He regularly sleeps 6-8 hours uninterrupted at night. He has the cutest smile and will charm you any time you talk to him. He's a major mama's boy and is very cuddly. He looks a lot like his sister, except that he's got darker hair.

 

Braden in his blessing outfit. He got blessed July 5, 2015

Lydia absolutely adores her baby brother. She is almost as much in love with him as I am. She is a great helper. Sometimes she is a little too helpful. But she has learned a ton. She is pretty much the best big sister ever. I am so blessed to have two amazing children.

 

I had another dream come true recently. I love playing the piano. I used to teach, but stopped when Braden was born. It's just too hard to teach with little kids around. But I absolutely love playing the piano. All my life I have wanted a baby grand piano. Well, I got one! I love it so much! Now Lance gets to work on his sport court. That will be an adventure!

Here are some updated pictures for you. Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

Bye for now! Let's hope I can update more than once a year.

"Flowers in the Garden"

I've had a rough week. Just the usual ornery week, but still, I felt kinda down.

I've been thinking a lot about this saying I saw the other day. I've been thinking about it because sometimes I think people misunderstand my jokes or sarcasm as being mean. I don't usually have mean jokes, but weeks like this, they just slip out. When I went through infertility, my humor became a little dark and negative. I had a hard time coping, and my new found dark humor helped me out a little. I've been working on that, but every once in a while something will come out and surprise me. Then I feel terrible for days. I never know who to apologize to, because I don't know who heard it or how they took it. It's supposed to be a joke, but some people are much purer than I am (such an admirable quality), and they get offended by such remarks. I hope to have friends who overlook my "broken fence." I'd like to think I have many beautiful flowers in my garden that are noticeable in the front as well as deep in the back of the garden. Who knows?

Along with these feelings, I've decided on a couple of goals for myself. You know the saying, "In order to make a friend, you have to be a friend?" Well, I'm going to do this. Honestly, it's terrifying for me to make new friends, but I really need to. I don't have any real "hang out" friends. The friends I have are lovely, but I don't regularly hang out with anyone. I don't feel comfortable just calling someone up to talk, except for Lance, my mother, and my sister. So, Goal #1 is to make new friends. I need to anyway, since I just barely moved.

Goal #2: Teach my kid(s) (hopefully we can have more kids soon) to be friendly and serve others. How do I do this? Well, start off by teaching them service, by showing them service, and actually going out and serving others. Also, make sure they have opportunities to invite friends over, teach them good manners and how to be nice, and treat them nicely, too.

I hope that by doing these things, I will have a happier life and make a lot of new, lasting friends who want to hang out with me sometimes.

Upstairs

Here are some pictures of the upstairs of our house. Well, upstairs #1. Oh yes, there are two upstairs. This is the main upstairs.

Lydia's room. Yes, we have dormer windows. We LOVE them! And that IS two closets. We don't have a high number of bedrooms, so if we happen to have more than two children, it won't be a problem for them to share a room.

Window seat. Lydia loves to sit up there and cuddle with each of her stuffed animals. She also likes to look out the window and laugh at outside. Ha ha!

Window seat in the playroom. Lydia's room and the playroom are mirror images of each other. Except the playroom is pink. We chose Lydia's room not to be pink because there is a ceiling fan in her room, and not in the playroom.

More of the playroom.

That door with the mirror is a small door. It comes up to my neck. It is a storage closet. We have those in both bedrooms upstairs.

Upstairs bathroom. Don't you love the forest green counter top and linoleum floor? Our house was built in the 90's and it shows. It will be on the remodel list for one day, but not for a while. Also, a nice feature to this bathroom is that there is a linen closet right as you walk in. I love all the storage in this house!

More upstairs bathroom. The sink area and the tub/toilet area are separated. That will come in handy some day.

Tub/shower. Don't you love the forest green stripe? It's definitely a matching bathroom. Ha ha! The toilet is just to the left as you walk through the doorway.

More pictures to come later. I hope you enjoyed the "tour" of the upstairs of my house.

New House

We are all settled in our new house. We love it here! The neighbors/ward members are all really nice. It will take a while for it to really feel like home, but we definitely love it here.

 

  This is our house! Isn't it adorable? It is definitely our dream home.

This is what you will see as you come in the front door. We will eventually have more pictures on the walls, but I need to map all that out first. We have pictures up in lots of places, but we're not even close to finished yet.

This is looking down at the front entryway. This picture doesn't really do it justice. It's pretty grand.

 This is the front living room. This is where we will receive guests and piano students. It is our "clean" room. Lydia likes to go in there to play the piano and climb on the couch, but toys are not allowed there. I like to keep up appearances, even though the rest of the house is messy. Ha ha!

More of the front living room.

 Front living room looking into the entryway.

That's all I'll show for this post. I'll hopefully get more pictures of the rest of the house in other posts, but first I have to set things up and clean. Ha ha!

We love our new home!

First Post of 2014

Wow! Lots to update... I haven't really had time to blog lately. Well, at first, I felt like I was being boring because I didn't have much to blog about, except Lydia. She's always a fun topic, but you readers may be getting a little sick of hearing so many things about her. However, lately, we've been pretty busy.

So, since November, Thanksgiving was great. It was with Lance's family this year. Christmas was a blast. Lydia loved all her presents, and still does. New Year's was fun. It's getting harder and harder to stay up that late. Valentine's Day was celebrated a little late. Lance had a volleyball game. He's started competitive volleyball, and LOVES it.

We have also made a HUGE life changing decision! We are moving!!! For real this time!  We're super excited for this new adventure, and our beautiful new house, but we're sad to leave our friends in this area. We're also bummed to leave our house that we've done so much work on, but for us, the new house is definitely worth it.

We hope to stay in the new house for, well, pretty much, forever. I'm really nervous to make new friends in the new neighborhood and ward, but I'll be brave and branch out, something I'm not really used to doing.

We're pretty busy getting packed up and ready to move. I don't feel like I'm helping too much, because I still have to take care of the little one. She's a lot more fun than packing anyway. Ha ha! Lance has done tons of packing on the weekends. We've taken a bunch of packed boxes to his brother's house for storing until we actually move. I think we've gotten up to 80 boxes already, and we're only about halfway done, if that!

We have our house on the market right now, but don't get your hopes up for buying it, because we just got a really good offer a couple days ago, and we accepted it! We were so happy to get an offer so soon! Our house had been on the market only ten days. Wow!

I decided to have a piano recital for my students before the move. Many of them don't want to travel so far to the new house for lessons, so they will hopefully find another teacher that can teach them closer. The recital was yesterday, and they all did great! I will miss my students. They are all wonderful. As for the students who are still going to take, we're taking a break while I get settled into the new house.

So, the next time you hear from me, I will probably be relocated. I'm so excited, nervous, sad, and stressed, all at the same time! But honestly, I think the excitement is winning.

Here are some recent pictures. Enjoy!

Christmas Village

Valentine's Day picture

All of us crazies

Lydia making her daily (constant) mess

Wish us luck!

It's Cold and Flu Season

So, I have a very useful tip today. I know it's not Thursday, but who cares!

Lydia has been sick with a cold (probably induced by teething) and guess what, I caught it. It's bad enough when the baby is sick, but now the caretaker? I guess it was inevitable, but it's not fair that a mom should ever get sick. We don't get time off, EVER! We don't even get time for naps, which is very necessary for the sick.

Anyway, let me tell you a trick that works for me. I've used this a few times, and it works like a charm. I found this trick on Pinterest.

1 teaspoon honey and 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

That's it. Just mix them together and eat up, twice a day for three days. The honey coats the throat for immediate sore throat relief, and the antioxidants in both the honey and the cinnamon fight off the infection. And, it tastes pretty yummy. It's a little strong, but it's no nasty grape or cherry cough syrup. Bleh!

Holy wow! Right?

You're welcome. :)


*Other symptom helpers include:

-Pain killers/decongestants (duh)

-Chamomile tea (I add a little honey and lemon, with a lot of sugar, and it tastes divine, perfect to warm you up on a blustery day) P.S. Herbal tea is totally in line with the Word of Wisdom, if that worries you. Ginger and peppermint teas help with tummy aches.

-Sucking on a candy cane. This helps coat the throat, but the peppermint also helps nausea if that's a symptom. I did this while pregnant and it worked beautifully.

-Melt Vicks in a candle/scentsy warmer. This works especially well for babies who can't have Vicks on their skin. AND it clears everyone in the house up, to!

-Humidifiers. The main thing the doctor tells me to do when I take Lydia in. If you don't have one, get one! It's totally worth it. Ours is a cute little cow. Ha ha!

-Get moving! Moving around breaks up mucous. That's why we feel cruddy in the morning, but as the day goes on, we feel better. So, don't be a baby. Get up, get out, and get on with your life. (Only if you have a cold. If you have the flu, stay in bed!)

-Sip coke. The caffeine/acid helps with the icky tummy bug. Also, if you have a headache, the caffeine usually helps with that, too.

-Ginger snaps/anything ginger. Ginger helps with tummies, too.

-Suck on chocolate. Chocolate helps coat and soothe the throat. Milk chocolate works okay, but dark is the best for me. Milk chocolate just seems too sweet and irritates me a little. Just don't do this ALL day, although I know we all would love to. Right?

-Marshmallows. These also help coat the throat, temporarily. Lance is especially fond of this one. Ha ha!

-Get a good amount of sleep. Sleep is the time when our body does its best healing, so get at least 8 hours a night.

-If you feel a cold coming on, be sure to take your vitamins, drink plenty of orange juice, eat healthy, and get a little extra sleep. It may help prevent the bug from hitting you too hard, but it's not a guarantee.

*These tips were all tested by me, and are what work for me. Not every tip works on everyone. But most of these are easy and harmless, so it's worth a try, right?

I hope these tips help you control your cold and flu symptoms this year. Good luck!

Happy Fall, Y'all!

We've sure been enjoying the fall weather around here. My mom, brother, Lydia, and I went to Gardner Village a little over a week ago. Lance, Lydia, and I went to Pack Farms pumpkin patch on Friday, and we've let Lydia play at the park every so often. We've also taken some drives to see the leaves. Fall is so fun!

 Lydia at Gardner Village. I made the spider for her hair out of pipe cleaners. It fit right in at Gardner Village.

 Lydia loves riding on Daddy's shoulders.

Pack Farms pumpkin patch. Lydia was a great poser at first.

Pack Farms pumpkin patch.

Pack Farms pumpkin patch straw maze. Lydia LOVED this! She didn't want to come out.

Lydia was not happy to be out of the straw maze. She is distraught.

Pack Farms pumpkin patch. We picked a pumpkin. And we also got a baby pumpkin for Lydia. She loves hugging the baby pumpkin.

Lydia loves the swing. (Mantua park)

She wasn't too sure about the froggy she rode on. She bailed as fast as she could. (Mantua park)

Lance also went to Michigan for 10 days. He went to help Bryce and Jessie (his twin brother and his wife) with their house. Their house is super cute, but is in need of some tender loving care. Since we get help from family all the time, Lance thought it'd be nice to help Bryce out. He installed a dishwasher, patched the bathroom ceiling, fixed a light in the kitchen, and dug up some rogue cement in their backyard.  It was a foundation for something, but that something wasn't there any more.

Lance was going to take vacation leave for his trip, but since the government shut down for a few weeks, he only took a few hours of leave. Score! Thanks for being so stubborn, everyone in congress! Ha ha! Also, we got a LOT done around our house too, with the government's little shenanigans. So, hey, it's not all bad. Sorry to all the taxpayers who paid my hubby to go on vacation and get some household chores done. Bring that up with congress. I'm sure you have a long list of things you'd like to bring up with them...

I hope everyone enjoys the rest of their Fall, and has a very Happy Halloween!!!!