Finding the blessings during the trials

The last few days have been quite an emotional roller coaster ride. Many already know that we had a miscarriage yesterday at 7 weeks pregnant. It was a really hard thing to go through, but despite this trial, for some reason I feel really calm.

See we have known that we were pregnant for about a month now. We held off on telling people until we met with our doctor to confirm the pregnancy. A week ago we finally met with our doctor and was hoping to see our baby at 8 weeks old and hear the little heartbeat. When the doctor did the ultrasound he said he saw the baby only measuring at 6 weeks. He said he couldn't see anything wrong so we just needed to come back in 2 weeks and see if the baby had grown at all. When we looked at the possible conception date, it made sense that we might have miscalculated things and that the baby could possibly be only 6 weeks. So Cody and I decided to tell people the good news. We knew that even if we did have a miscarriage people were going to find out anyways and it's nice to have that support during those times. Anyways we announced it and all that fun stuff. We went on our fun little lives. I was feeling great, no problems, no morning sickness, no nothing. For some reason the whole time I was wondering what if I had a miscarriage or thinking that I was going to have one. I started reading this book by John Bytheway that talks about scriptures to help us overcome trials. Maybe I was reading that to help prepare me for what was to come. Who knows.

Friday night, Cody and I were getting ready to go out on a date when I noticed I was spotting a little bit. I never spotted with Dean so this scared me a bit. I know spotting can be normal so I was trying to remain calm. We called and talked to a nurse and she said to call if it got worse. I felt fine for the rest of the night and the next morning. Saturday was a normal day. I usually take naps when Dean does, so after he woke I woke up, went to the bathroom and noticed I was bleeding. I called Cody at work to let him know just in case he needed to come home, and then called the nurse and they said we could come in if we felt like we needed to. I told Cody that for my own peace of mind I wanted to go in. Cody was at work about an hour away so he actually called in one of his buddies that was working on the ambulance that day and personally requested him to pick me up and transport me to the hospital. One of Cody's coworkers took Dean for us which was really helpful not having to worry about him. One of our friend's Scott came by and gave me a blessing which actually helped a lot. It made me feel more at peace and ready for whatever God had planned. When the ambulance showed up, they placed me on the gurney and wheeled me away. The paramedic was a guy I have met once or twice and it was nice having someone I knew take me to the hospital, since Cody wasn't there. We got to the hospital and maybe 10 minutes later Cody arrived. The hospital took a few different blood and urine tests and after I think 2 hours (lost track of time) the ER doctor came in saying he was 99% sure we had a miscarriage and to meet with my OB sometime this week. So that was it. It was a bit weird cuz I wasn't bleeding a lot and I didn't have a lot of pain, but I most likely lost the little baby inside of me.

It was really hard to swallow all the news, but the last few days I have been learning to say in my prayers "it is not my will but thy will be done". As much as I didn't want to admit to the Lord that it really is His will and His choice. I think in ways he wanted me to say it before much else happened. I know that whatever happens in my life has a purpose. The Lord is blessing us in so many ways and for some reason He needed us to pass through this trial at this time and to learn from it. Cody and I aren't worried we won't be able to have more children at all. We are calm and peaceful at the fact that we are in the Lord's hands. I know many people go through either having a miscarriage or losing a child and it is very hard. Cody and I have struggled and have felt this loss in our lives (it was one of our children after all), but we are going to go forward and are ready for this next step in life. A lot of people have mentioned that they are impressed with my attitude with this. I was talking to Cody about it and really feel that this is the best way to go. I can't sulk and mope for something that I cannot prevent. I am taking time for myself to let myself feel the loss, but I am hopeful and positive that there is a greater purpose to all of this. It is what I feel deep down inside and what I KNOW is true.

We are meeting with our doctor this week and he will tell us what to do next so who knows, we may have another child by the end of this year after all. We shall see what the Lord has in store for us. Thanks again to all the people that love and support us. You have no idea what a blessing this is in our life. We love you and hope the best for you in your lives

Baby oh baby

Time has flown by once again and here I am barely updating this thing. Life is crazy, but fun. We have flown by all the holidays and have now entered the new year. 2012!! It is weird how fast life has passed by. I can't believe how big Dean has gotten already. He is 10 months today and is learning so much about the life around him. He is an active little boy, loves crawling everywhere and he is starting to walk with support. He loves to play with his animals and to chase them everywhere. I couldn't be happier to be his mommy.

Motherhood is pretty awesome! Cody and I just found out we are going to be expecting our 2nd little baby the end of September/early October. Dean is going to become a big brother!! We are really excited about it too. We always wanted kids close in age and a couple months ago, we started feeling that is was getting to that time to add to the family. We were planning on waiting til April when Dean turned 1, but looks like Heavenly Father had other plans for us. What's a few months early right? We are really excited. It was hard not telling anyone til we met with the doctor since we were so stoked, but now the cat is out of the bag. Sadly I feel that there are some people who I thought would be excited, are not too excited. Who knows why either? It may be because they don't think we can handle more than one kid...or maybe they think that it is too soon. Whatever their reasoning for it, I have decided I really don't care and I am doing all I can to not let it bother me. Cody and I are fully capable to give this little baby, Dean and all other babies that will come in to our family the love and support and ANYTHING or children need. After all is said and done, what really matters is what Cody and I decide together. :)

We have already started doing some moving around and preparing for this new little addition. We go back and forth guessing if it will be a boy or a girl. Cody thinks it's a boy so I say girl :) Either way we are excited for either and we have the names picked out :) yes we are that crazy and that prepared haha. Well I am off for now!! Til next time!!!

Summer fun times

Well this summer has been a fun one, especially now that we have a kid in the family. A year ago this time we had already knew we were pregnant, but still hadn't told our families and friends. Now our baby boy is almost 4 months old and such an adorable little boy. He is getting his own little personality now. He loves laughing and smiles every time someone calls him handsome or cute. :) We have taken Dean swimming a few times at my parent's house and Dean absolutely LOVES the water. He has discovered that he can splash around and this last week, using the methods I learned being a teacher at Jim Booth Swim School, Dean has gone all the way under the water twice. He didn't know what to think about it. His expression is priceless haha. The Johnson Family had a family reunion just a few weeks ago so Dean got to meet all his cousins and his aunts and uncles. He loved playing with all of them. I really love spending time with my whole family. We all had a blast playing games, catching up, heading to the beach, and spending time in the hot tub. I feel so blessed for the family I have and the time I have been able to spend with them. They are huge examples to me and it's a riot to be around them. We also celebrated Dad Johnson's 75th birthday as a family by "roasting" Dad and then we gave him a scrapbook of pictures from him life, with letters from loved ones included in it.

Cody has been working a ton lately so most the time it is just Dean and me just hanging out. Being a stay at home mom is a great blessing and I love being able to spend all this time with my baby. It has been fun watching Dean grow and develop every day. Who knew being a mom could be so much fun? Well til next time....enjoy the pics!

Family pics by Kilean Todd Hernandez

One of my fave pics of the Johnson Family

First time at the beach

His Bumbo chair!

And his first time swimming!!

I am a slacker...

Almost 3 months old sitting on his Bumbo

1 month family pic

He is ready to play water polo :)

Family pic 2 days after he was born

2 days old

I realized the other day that it has been over 3 months since I have updated my blog. The thing is I love reading other people's blog, but I always forget to update mine. I think it's because I can spend forever on writing a blog when really I don't need to. Plus now we have a new addition to the family and majority of my time is dedicated to him. Our little boy is here and almost 3 months old, as of tomorrow. He is such a joy to have in our lives. Dean Thomas Smith was born a week and 4 days past the due date. I had to be induced and due to his heart rate dropping with each contraction and his little heart not going to be able to endure the natural birth we had to have a c-section. It was a bit scary, but he was a born a healthy 8 lbs 4 oz and 21 inches long. Learning about how to be a mother has been one interesting ride. It has its ups and downs, but I wouldn't change it for the world. Dean is always full of smiles, giggles, and loves looking around at the world around him. He hates not being able to look around. It's quite funny. We recently invested in the "Bumbo" seat for growing babies and he absolutely love it. It's sad cuz it makes him look so much older and it makes me sad that my baby is growing up so fast. Oh well such is life. Well this is super short but I really wanted to put up pics of Dean and finally say I have updated my blog....and that I have :)

Baby's almost here!

Time is getting closer to when our baby is due to arrive. 2 weeks and 2 days left. I have been on maternity leave for 2 weeks now and it's been really nice having this time to get the house and Baby Dean's room ready for his arrival. His room is all set up and decorated. I have yet to get overly bored on maternity leave....but it's still early on :)

I am excited for how well it turned out. We got the decorations at Babies R Us and used the decorations used in a diaper cake for the baby shower. Ladies from my home ward threw Cody and I a co-ed baby shower the middle of February. We were hugely blessed with tons of gifts and not to mention diapers. What expectant mom couldn't use a ton of diapers to plan for the future? Our baby is completely spoiled already :) We are excited about his arrival.

One of our friends took maternity pics for us this last week. We were able to get Bowser in a few pictures which actually turned out pretty good. Life is pretty much amazing. Now we are just waiting for the next step in life. My hospital bag is already packed and ready to go when the time arrives. It kinda scares me a bit, but I think I am ready for this. I watched a TV show called One Born Every Minute which is about mothers giving birth (if you couldn't tell by the title) and it made me a bit more eager and more prepared. Anyways we will see when it all happens and then we get to put up adorable pics of our new baby.

Our whole family...Angel didn't want to take pics :)

37 weeks and ready to pop :)

New stuff in a new year

So it has been quite some time since I have written anything here. Last time I did I was barely 2 months pregnant I believe and about to move in to my parents' house while Cody and I saved up money to buy our new house. With the time that has passed amazing things have occurred as well. We were able to find a house...an amazing house, which we absolutely fell in love with, and were able to move in the week after Thanksgiving. It has been a true blessing moving in to this house.

It was what is called a flip house, which is a foreclosed house, but an investment company came and redid everything to resell it for more money. We have brand new appliances, brand new flooring, brand new paint, brand new everything. So far we are pretty much settled in, just a little bit of our junk from Christmas needs to be put away and then organizing the guest room/study room and the baby's room. All of that stuff will be finished with in this next month though so I am not too worried about that. It feels like home and I am glad we were able to find such an amazing house and right when we were hoping to move in by.

The baby has continued to grow healthy and strong and with no complications, thank goodness. We have had several people ask us whether we wanted a boy or girl first and all Cody and I would respond is "we want a baby". haha. We really don't care whether the baby was a boy or a girl...although we still wanted to know so we could plan for what to expect. We had our 19 week ultrasound where, after doing the baby's full measurements to make sure the baby was growing ok, we could find out if it was a boy or girl.....well we were suppose to be able to find out then. I don't think our ultrasound tech knew too much what she was looking at. She first told us it was a girl and after getting a different view she said, and I quote, "no it's most definitely a boy". Right at the end of the ultrasound appointment I asked her if she was for sure so she loo

ked again and she said, "it looks like a girl. I am 90% sure it is a girl". So we left that appointment still not knowing. The lady just couldn't admit that she didn't know. I started to tell people that it was a girl, UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE because I got tired of having to explain the story of why we didn't know. Anyways long story short, one of my managers at work gave me a business card to go get a 3D ultrasound of the baby done and since we knew we could have the sex of the baby confirmed there, we waited til week 27 to go get the 3D ultrasound done. At 27 weeks and up is when the facial definition is most like how the baby will be when he/she is born. We got to see our baby AND we got to see that our baby has 3 legs....rather our baby is going to be a boy :) We were excited to finally know. The ultrasound tech doing the ultrasound showed us the gender shot in both 2D and 3D several times so there was no doubt about it. Now knowing we get to tell people the official boy name....Dean Thomas Smith.

It was really awesome being able to see the 3D ultrasound and see the baby move. Dean was laying on his arm a lot of it so the tech has to push my stomach to move him around a bit. He looks like he has Cody's nose, to me anyways, but a lot of people have said he has my nose...either way there is no doubt about it he is our baby and is going to be way cute.....how could you not be with Cody and I as parents :p We are slowly getting the baby's room ready for his arrival. We have 10 more weeks left until he is here....and that is if he isn't early or late. His room is a mixture of jungle animals, with lots of monkeys (cuz I love monkeys) and dragons from the movie "How to Train Your Dragon" (cuz we love that movie and Cody really has wanted to decorate the baby's room like that. Now it's just a matter of finding the stuff to put up in his room. I am in no hurry as of now. I don't know if I should be, but right now I know it will all come together in time.

Cody is working full time still and finishing up paramedic school. Hopefully if all goes well then he will be working as a paramedic starting in August, which would be nice because it's a pay raise for him and if needs be I can go down to part time work by then and stay home with the baby more so we don't have to pay for a babysitter.

We still have our other two "kids" as we call them rather than pets. Angel and Bowser are more spoiled than ever and loving the new house, although Angel would prefer to be an outdoor cat rather than be locked inside all day, but he really doesn't get that choice at all. He gets to play around with our horse of a dog Bowser a lot and they harass each other often, even when it's 2 am and we are trying to sleep. Bowser has a few scars on his nose from getting too close to Angel, but he takes it well. Bowser is now 6 months old and standing on his hind legs almost reaches me eye to eye. He is prolly close to 80 pounds now and still likes to think he is a lap dog....yea not so much fun. Angel has his moments of being cuddly and cute, usually when he wants food, but he is still so much fun to have around and harass.

Cody and I have also celebrated our 1 year anniversary of being married today, well I guess it was yesterday since it is already 1am Monday morning. It's weird to think that 2 years ago we met for the first time, just getting to know each other and see where things would go and exactly a year later we were married and now a year after that we are expecting our first child. We have been so eternally blessed. This first year of marriage hasn't been as bad with adjustments as so many people say it will be. We have had our fights and our butting of heads, but we have worked through everything. We know each other so well and are able to talk out everything that is going on. We both support one another and know that the other is not going to lead this marriage down a destructive path. Marrying your best friend is one of the best things to do. I have felt so grateful for all that Cody has done for me and for my family, especially my parents. I don't know how I became so lucky. I love the song from "The Sound of Music" where Maria is singing to the Captain and she says, "Somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good". That is how I feel with Cody. He loves me for who I am, where I have been and sees the greatness I can become and do in my life. I hope everyone is as blessed as I am to have someone love and support me as he does. I am looking for the eternity I have to spend with him.

Well I think that is mostly it for now. I will try and update more often, but who knows if that will happen. No guarantees. Til next time :)

Smith Clan is expanding!

Well the news is finally out...we are having a baby! The due date is March 27, 2011. We have actually known for awhile now, at least since the end of July. We decided to wait to tell people until after we met with the doctor to make sure everything was ok with our little jelly bean. It has been hard keeping the news to ourselves, but I am glad it is finally out and we can celebrate with others. At the doctor's appointment we heard the baby's heart beat and it was nice and strong. The doctor told us the baby is nice and healthy and that we have a really low percentage (like 2-5% chance) that we would lose the baby. That put my mind at ease a lot more. I don't think I will be completely at ease until after our little one is finally here. I haven't really been too sick, just tired more than anything. I have my moments of queasiness though and even throwing up a few times. My new goal is to try and organize the 2nd room in preparation for the baby. I am going to work my magic to make sure we have the room we need for this little baby. For those that are curious I actually stopped taking birth control at the end of May. We decided that we were going to stop preventing babies and to see what would happen. Miracles of miracles we got knocked up pretty fast. I am kind of nervous that we are actually going to be parents and be able to afford everything, but I know that we are going to be provided for and EVERYTHING will work out how it should be. It might be hard, but bring on the challenges cuz I am ready for them :).