One Year

Where to begin?  I am not the best blogger, as is apparent by my lack of regular, interesting new posts.  But, this is mostly for my own memory...so, here's what's really been going on in the past year.   Last March was the multiple birthday bashes we usually have to do:  Oliver had his first big pizza party with friends from school, Everett had a party with just family at Chuck-E-Cheese, and Henry got thrown in the mix at the combined family parties.  The hardships of being a third child. haha  Here's some evidence of that crazy busy month!! 

Oliver's big 7 year old Party!  We played traditional birthday party games like pin the tail on the donkey, party bingo, etc.  It was so cute!

Everett, my big 5 year old :) 

Henry, turning 2!  My sneaky sweetie pie!

 Before Everett's special day at Chuck-E-Cheese!  We opened presents at home to keep it simple :)  And then we somehow got no pictures at chuck-e-cheese...classic.  Well, he loved it so much he wants to do it again this year. haha

Easter came on March 31st--HOORAY!  As if we didn't have enough treats that month ;)

And since we hadn't celebrated their birthdays ENOUGH, we had another big birthday bash, combined with cousin Harvey's birthday, at our Easter dinner with my side of the family.  We like to kill multiple birds with one stone, so to speak. haha

And we had a "little" announcement to make:  

We surprised everyone!  It was cute because we were like, "Let's get a group picture!"  And Aaron was going to take it, and instead of saying, "Sayyyy Cheeeese"...he said, "Sayyyy...Stephanie's Expecting!!" And then instead of taking a picture, he took the video of everyone's reaction. It was cute.  Baby #4 was a big shocker :)--haha, but not to us!  We were pretty decided on trying to have a baby born in any other month than MARCH. haha!  I estimated my due date to be around the end of November...

Spring flew by filled with:  

Projects...

Toy Storage!! YAY!

Beginning Potty Training!! 

(Little did I know, Henry would be my longest to potty train!  We're still at it!  He just won't tell me when he has to pee...sort of important!)

Warm enough days to hit the fountains downtown!

Silly kitty pics of our cat buddy...

Lots of Bonfires!  

My brother returned from his Mission!!

Mother's Day Tree planting and flowers!

Mother's Day  morning surprise :)

Fishing...lots of fishing!

Last little bit of Everett's preschool group.

Our Preschool farewell park day!

 Some of Everett's preschool buddies...

And somehow, on that busy May 22nd, I went to my 12 week baby appt.  to discover that we had lost our sweet little baby.  It was the first major tragedy in our little family!  It was hard, because I was all by myself at the appt.  The first two appointments had gone basically normally, so I didn't suspect any problems.  The only clue that I had was that when I went into my supposed eight week appt., the baby was measuring two weeks behind.  But then our little baby grew properly up to the ten week appt.  So they said that the dates must have been off.  Well, we know now that there was something definitely wrong!  It was horrible.  I cannot describe how I felt driving home after that appointment.  It was the worst having to call Aaron and my Mom.  I don't like to think about it.  That night we drove the boys to the temple and walked around and talked to them about what had happened.  It was a sweet time together and we really felt comforted, remembering that our family is sealed for eternity.  And our little baby was part of our family forever...

We went in for a follow-up appt. the next day, so Aaron could see one last ultrasound of our baby.  It was so hard to see that little cute body, lifeless. A day or so later, I went to the hospital for a D&C.  That was a very difficult decision, to miscarry at home, or go to the hospital.  I am grateful now that I chose to do the D&C because we were able to get some answers about our sweet baby.  For one, it was a girl.  That was so exciting and bittersweet to find out!  Also, that she was a partial molar pregnancy and had a unique problem called Triploidy.  Basically she had an entire extra set of chromosomes.  Some babies with triploidy make it to full term, but it is extremely rare. 

 She couldn't have lived long...poor sweetie.  

We decided to name her Pearl.