Christmas in Idaho!

I feel so behind in blogging! Get ready for some long posts!

We had such a great Christmas break! We got to see so much family. Nathan got the full 2 weeks off, se we left as soon as we could for Idaho! It was a really fun week! We have never been able to spend so much time up in Idaho before, they are usually quick weekend trips.

Sadie was great on the way up. We stopped once, and she was super stoked to be out of her seat. DO you like her milk mustache?

The next day was Christmas Sunday, and Sadie finally got to wear her Christmas dress that I have been excited about for weeks! It didn't fail me. It was perfect. And we forced her to take all kinds of pictures.

She fell asleep on Grandpa during church and it was kinda the cutest

We had a lot of fun over the next few days leading up to Christmas! We played lots of games, watched movies, relaxed, walked around some awesome Christmas lights, and Sadie even went to her first movie!

Santa brought us games to unwrap

Nathan, Shawn, and I went out to lunch and when we came back, we had been locked out

Sadie at the movie theatre haha

Christmas Eve it started to lightly snow. We relaxed and got all our Christmas things finished. We had an awesome dinner and fun program that night. Then we all got to open a present that had fuzzy socks, slippers, candy and hot chocolate in it!

We put Sadie to bed then got out her Santa presents! She got a pump, stuffed giraffe, and new pajamas. Her stocking was full of toys and books. I'll be honest, everything we gave her, besides the pajamas, were things that had been sitting in her closet, unused, since she wasn't old enough. She'll never know the different, right?

Christmas morning dawned, dark and early. Heather can only last so long before she gets over stimulated, so we hurried down so she could open presents with us. It was such a fun morning! Sadie slept through half of it, but she really liked her bumbo once she woke up! We got lots of wonderful things, and it was fun to see everyone open the gifts from us too. 

The beautiful face of Christmas morning

Waking up to realize she had a beanie on her head

We stayed in pajamas most of the day and played around. We had a delicious early dinner, and then Nathan and I had to get on the road. We had an early morning flight the next day out of Salt Lake. It was so sad to leave! But we had an awesome Christmas :)

This picture is so weird, haha. No editing. The sun was just shining perfectly.

Sadie loves uncle Jaden. She will talk to him for hours

We drove home in crappy weather, got there around 10:30, unpacked, repacked, got into bed around 1, and got up at 7 to get to our flight. Then it was California time!!

Sadiegrams

A little late, but here's month 3 Sadie grams! There's um... a lot of them..

Before shots..

..after shots

Nathan did this when I left the room one night and texted it to my entire family

Nap time!

As she has become more aware of things, she started noticing the birds attached to her bouncer. She will stare at them for hours. And talk to them.

Sadie's not the only one with bug eyes

THE MULLET

I left the room the other morning to get myself breakfast and she started crying.  I was hurrying to get it all together when she suddenly stopped and was dead silent. It freaked me out a little so I ran into the room and saw this. She had caught sight of her bird friend.

British flag leggings! She misses her grandparents and uncle across the pond.

We keep her up a couple hours before bed time each night and some nights she really struggles to stay awake. Here she is mad that I propped her up in an effort to keep her awake, then she gives us, then she goes to sleep anyway.

Road trip! She gets so happy when we stop and let her out of her seat

Ahhh.. the freedom of no swaddle

2014

It's really hard to sum up 2014. It was the best year of my life. But also one of the hardest and most emotional years of my life. It's funny how it can simultaneously be both the best and the hardest.

2013 was so awful. I know I say that a lot, but it was the worst year of my life. I'm not trying to be dramatic. It just is what it is. I lost my first child just a few months into the year. Then I tried to pretend I was fine for everyone else. Then we learned I wasn't ovulating and went through month after month of no period and no positive pregnancy test. Then the fertility drugs wouldn't work. Then I fell into an awful depression. My baby was gone and I couldn't get another one. I blamed myself for Madelyn's death and blamed myself for not being able to get pregnant. I was in a really dark place. I don't want to ever go back there.

2014 started with me finally starting to feel kind of normal again. I decided to was time to move on. We packed up our 2-bedroom filled with sad memories and an empty nursery, and moved to a 1-bedroom in the suburbs. 

The day before we moved I found out I was pregnant.

The next 9 months were filled with a roller coaster of emotions as I would go from ecstatic, to thinking there's no way I was actually pregnant, to depressed, to terrified, and then start all over.

We had scary things happen. There was fluid on her brain. There was the possibility of down syndrome. There was too much amniotic fluid. She was flipped the wrong way. Then the scary day at 38 weeks when she stopped moving and we went to the hospital to check on things and we left with a baby. (After a terrifying night of her heart rate dropping and then a c-section, of course).

I can honestly say that those 9 crazy months were worth it though. As well as the hard adjustment phase after she got here. I have never loved something more in my entire life. She is absolutely everything. She has brought so much joy to Nathan and I and has brought us closer together. We have waited for her and prayed for her for so long. She is undeniably worth every tear and every second of waiting.

But a baby wasn't the only thing that 2014 held for us.

We celebrated 2 years of marriage. We celebrated Madelyn's first birthday. We went on lots of trips to Idaho and California and Nevada.

I said goodbye to teaching after 3 amazing and incredibly hard years. I am still trying to reconcile it all. I miss my students every day. I miss that school and those halls and my coworkers and that feeling of really changing lives. I am so happy that we are blessed enough that I can stay home with Sadie, but teaching is what got me through those days while I waited for her. My students are the ones who healed my heart when Madelyn died. I have wanted to teach since I was a child and it was just as amazing as I thought it would be. The end was hard, but I think I went out on a high note. I sent my group of students that I had taught for 2 (some for 3!) years off to high school and I felt like I did my absolute best and I have every confidence that they will kick butt.

Nathan got a huge raise and a lot more responsibility at work. He started at the Berklee College of Music and absolutely loves it.

We taught Sunday school together, and I planned and attended Girls Camp at 24 weeks pregnant. I fell in love with those Young Women and luckily, I got called to be in there permanently with them.

We found an amazing opportunity for a brand-spanking-new basement apartment that would allow us to stay in our awesome ward. We moved in after a brief, and super sucky, stay in a rental home in Midway while renovations were finishing. We love it here. We love being in a neighborhood and out of stupid apartment complexes. We love how spacious and bright it is. We love having a little yard. And I finally get to decorate my nursery. And have a baby actually sleep in it.

As I re-read those words I still don't feel like they come anywhere close to conveying how incredible and awesome and emotional and terrifying 2014 was. But those are the 4 adjectives I would use to sum it up.

Emotional
Terrifying
Incredible
Awesome

Thanks 2014.
2015, I am okay if you want to be a little less dramatic.