November 2013 – Andelin Adventures

Jeremy’s Baptism

We were late to the baptism this morning (we seem to always be late). Kyle is not feeling well at all, and has a fever. We asked Jeremy if Grandpa could baptize him, but he insisted on daddy doing it. Also the person that normally does the program wasn’t around to make a program for the baptism today, so Kyle was finishing that up and getting it printed, that is the bulk of what made us late this morning. Liesl had her camera and took pictures for us, and I’m so grateful for that because our camera started having issues back when we had our Locks of Love drive and got really bad during Thanksgiving dinner.

Jeremy was baptized with another boy from our ward named Nathan. Nathan is actually the younger brother of one of Ethan’s friends, so that is kind of cool.

Here is a picture of all the family that came to support Jeremy today:

Someone thought it would be funny to put the kids up on a shelf while we were taking some other pictures.

Then we headed back to the house for some food! Lydia couldn’t wait to get her hands on some cheese balls:

Then she couldn’t wait to get the cheese off her hands:

Jeremy worked on his new bracelet loom while we got the food ready:

We had sandwiches and a veggie tray and some fruit that we bought pre-cut, and the cheese balls and we bought cans of soda and juice as a way to come up with some pop tabs for a project that Tyra’s girl scout troop is working on.

When everyone was done eating food, we got out the cake.

We sang to Jeremy and had him blow out his candle.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the cake, and the raspberry swirl ice cream we served with it. It has been a super crazy and busy day, but all turned out well in the end.

Jeremy’s 8th Birthday

Today, Jeremy turned 8. Kyle and I had a few errands we wanted to run today. Grandpa offered to stay and watch the kids, so we took Jeremy with us since most of the errands related to him, and left the others at home. We went to get him a new suit, since he has outgrown his current one, and I really wanted him to have a nice suit to wear to his baptism tomorrow. We took him to the toy store and he picked out a loom to make bracelets out of little rubber bands. We took him to the scout store to get his book and other things that he will need for scouts, well to get the things that I didn’t have already. And we went to pick up the cake that we ordered and to get food for the party after his baptism. It was insane to go out on black Friday, it took us way longer than we wanted it too, but we got all the shopping done.

To celebrate his birthday tonight we had leftover pie (so we could save the cake for when everyone is over tomorrow). We even put a candle in it.

After pie we moved on to presents. While Adam attacked the cheese balls for tomorrow’s party.

I think he had a good birthday. He got to have Grandma and Grandpa here to help celebrate, which doesn’t happen very often. He is rather sad about the new suit, but only because it means that he is officially out of his old suit. Other than that, I think we had a good day. 🙂

Thanksgiving

My sister Debby, was going to host Thanksgiving this year, since she and her husband bought their first condo and finally have a place to call their own. But when Rexton was born early (he was due in December), Debby started doubting if she could handle hosting this year and asked if we could just host it instead.

I started with making the pies last night so that they would be done and wouldn’t have to fight for oven space and time today. While I was working on another pie crust the cat jumped on the table and started eating one of my prepped pie crusts!

I flipped out because I didn’t want to have to roll another piece of pastry to reline the pie pan. Instead, Kyle suggested that I just cut out the part that the cat touched and just put a patch of fresh pastry on. So that is what I did.

This morning, I got started with the stuffing, and the turkey. The turkey was still frozen even though it has been in the fridge for the last few days. But I got it thawed out enough to remove the innards and I got it stuffed and in the oven, and went on working on the other items on the menu.

Meanwhile, Kyle was helping by getting all of the laundry, that I have been neglecting, downstairs. Check out his idea of “taking laundry downstairs”:

Basically he stood at the top of the stairs and he and the kids just threw piles of laundry down. At least they had fun….I guess.

Mom & Dad were in town, but they spent the morning at Debby’s place getting the baby’s room all cleaned up and setting up a crib that they brought for Rexton. They came over in the afternoon, and said that Debby and Jeff weren’t home when they left, so they would be over later.

The turkey came out beautiful, just like it always does. It was so beautiful, Kyle wanted to kiss it!

When Debby and Jeff arrived, they brought with them this beautiful fruit platter. I saw the idea online and when she asked what to bring I sent her a picture and said “THAT!”

Here is the whole Thanksgiving spread for this year:

Turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, baked sweet potatoes, creamy carrots and green beans. The cinnamon apple rings, spiced whole apples, spiced whole peaches, cranberry sauce, jams, Cornucopia, and rolls were all home made. Actually only the olives came from a can. 🙂

We probably could have lived without the green beans, and I wish the rolls rose a little bit more, but other than that it turned out very nice.

After we were finished with the main meal Grandpa passed out the chocolate turkeys. This is a tradition from when I was young. Every year there are always chocolate turkeys. The kids really enjoyed them.

This is Lydia saying “Turkey flying!”

Adam wasn’t sure what to do with his turkey at first.

But he figured it out. 🙂

While the kids ate their chocolate turkeys Jeff decided to take a nap, while Rexton was also napping.

We decided to go downstairs and watch a movie to give our stomachs more time to digest dinner before breaking out the pies. I made four pies total, a pumpkin, an apple, a cherry peach, and a pecan. In the past I have made way more than four pies for a Thanksgiving dinner, but by the time everyone has stuffed themselves on dinner, hardly anybody actually eats any pie, so I decided to cut it down a bit this year. 🙂

All in all it was a crazy busy day, but the food all turned out alright, and everyone liked it. And it was good to get to spend the day with family.

School Pictures

Liesl and Granny came out for a quick visit today, and while she was here she took pictures of the kids for us. Kyle had asked her to take some pictures of the kids individually and we are calling them their school pictures for this year.

Ethan is in 5th grade, and he most definitely needs a haircut!

Tyra is in 4th grade:

Jeremy is in 2nd grade:

Dinah is in kindergarten:

Chloe is in pre-k:

Lydia is too young to have an official grade, but we still let her learn with us during the day. 😉

And here is Adam:

He had just woke up from a nap and wasn’t sure what to think about having visitors.

Heartache

On Tuesday, I noticed just a little bit of pink on the toilet paper after going to the bathroom. Wednesday the pink was a darker shade and there was a bit more of it. This of course raised some concerns within me. I talked with Kyle about it and he told me not to worry about it. Of course I kept right on worrying. Thursday the pink was even darker and the quantity was still increasing. I decided to call my midwife and ask what she thought. But when she answered the phone and found out it was me, she said that she is not allowed to even talk to me. She had a bit of a law suit brought up against her recently and I guess that is the way the judge ruled. She can no longer practice as a midwife, and is not allowed to talk to her previous clients about pregnancy related stuff. At that point, I felt alone and scared. I was having issues and I needed to talk to somebody, an expert in the field, not just to Kyle. I called the gal that used to be her assistant and talked to her. The pink discharge the fact that I’m nearly 7 weeks and not feeling sick yet, led her to believe that I might be having a miscarriage. I hoped not, so I have tried to take it easy for the past couple of days. Kyle had taken the day off of work yesterday so we could move the boys bunk bed upstairs. He ended up doing most of it himself. I tried to move smaller stuff like the empty shoe boxes and small things like that that were in the way. I also held the bunk bed pieces in a standing position so Kyle could get them screwed together, but that was about it.

Last night we had movie night with the kids. We watched Turbo. As the movie went on, I was not feeling well. I was uncomfortable and starting to feel crampy. When the movie was over we prayed and the kids went upstairs to get to bed. I remained on the floor in the family room for a couple of minutes. When I stood up, I felt that gush that meant that I needed to get to the bathroom NOW. I tried to get to my bathroom as quickly as I could, but one of the kids was in there. I yelled that I needed my bathroom NOW. Kyle could tell that things were not right. Under normal circumstances I would have politely waited for the kid to finish and come out. I was most definitely suffering from a miscarriage.

When I came out of the bathroom, knowing that what I had been fearing had in fact taken place, Kyle tried to comfort me. He tried to get the kids to bed by himself because he could tell that I was not going to be able to do it, and then he just held me for a bit. He asked me if there was anything he could get for me. I knew that I would be bleeding a lot through the night and I did not want to lay down, so I asked him to clear my recliner off for me. He ended up putting a lot of that stuff on my treadmill, which I didn’t like, but I also realized that I wasn’t going to be using the treadmill anytime in the next couple of weeks anyway, so I just dealt with it. And so I sat in my recliner all night trying to get some rest.

Today, I am hiding in my room. I don’t want to move at all. And my heart is broken. I wonder why this happened. Why am I going through this? How will I get over this? What should I be doing to make sure that by body can heal from this? We were going to announce our pregnancy when we have most of the family here for Jeremy’s birthday and baptism next week. That won’t be happening any more. Instead I’ve got to try to recover a bit before all the family gets here. Our kids don’t even know that we were pregnant, and that I’ve miscarried. We don’t usually tell them about a pregnancy until we are ready for the word to get out, because once you tell little kids about it, it’s no longer a secret from anyone. They have no idea why I am hiding in my room today. When will we tell them? Will we tell them? I realized, that because I’ve miscarried, I can now take ibuprofen to ease the pain of the cramps, but that won’t help the pain that I feel in my heart.