Happy Anniversary

I can't believe it has been 9 years since I married my sweetheart. So much has happened during that time and I love him more than I could imagine. He is a wonderful husband and father, so easy-going and fun. We got married 6 months to the day from when we met, and I know some people thought we were a little crazy since we had never even lived in the same town. Our entire courtship was long distance from Provo to Logan, about a 4-5 hour drive. We met on a huge group blind date. My friend Emily and I paired up over 30 people for a dance at the Capitol in Salt Lake. So everybody in the entire group was on a blind date and we had people from 5 colleges. Here is a photo from that first date. (What are the odds of having a photo of your first date????) I also have copies of all the emails we sent back and forth-- although when I imported them into Word, it automatically updated a lot of Stephen's creative spelling and capitalization and punctuation. For some reason he thought that in email, you didn't need to worry about any of that. :) Here is one of our engagement pictures.
And here are a few pictures from our wedding day. Don't we look young!!!! The kids especially love the one where Stephen is jumping. I'm amazed the photographer caught it so perfectly.


It has been a wonderful 9 years and I'm looking forward to an eternity of years!

Mother's Day and Spring

This past week went quickly and other than the expected emotional ups and downs, was pretty calm. T ended up catching chicken pox, even though he was immunized for them when he was a baby. Apparently there are a lot of K and 1st graders catching it, so now they recommend a booster. But at least he had it pretty mild. I'm still watching to see if A is going to get it. He hasn't been immunized for it yet, so I wouldn't be surprised.

We ended up keeping the whole family home from church in case the other kids were contagious. So we had a very relaxed, lazy day at home-- everyone except J, who kept crying because she was missing her class and her teachers.

Emotionally, I think we're doing pretty good. Mornings are hard, mostly just because I physically feel yucky and it's hard to get up and get things going when you feel like throwing up. So we've been starting school later, around 10 and just doing the basics-- reading, writing, math, piano, and devotional. And spending lots of time out in the wonderful sunshine catching bugs, working in the garden, picking dandelions-- and trying to get them in the trash instead of being blown across the yard. Ever since we started homeschooling, we've went with the lighter school schedule for a few weeks in the spring and in the fall-- when the weather hits that wonderful magic stage where you can be outside all day without being too hot or too cold. And there is so much to see and do and explore outside. It's one of my favorite things about homeschooling. Then when it's hot and muggy and miserable in the middle of summer, we do our fuller school schedule with more history and science activities and more indoor arts and crafts.

For Mother's Day, the kids found rocks that they painted for me-- one looks just like a heart. They also painted the old stump in our back yard that they are slowly working on breaking apart. It's the most colorful dead tree around. :)

I love all the flowers this time of year. Quite a few of my tulips are still blooming, the lilacs are in full swing, and the irises are starting to open. The flower beds are finally to the point that we have something blooming from early spring with the crocuses all the way through summer with the roses.

What I didn't want to hear

We're expecting another baby, due Dec 3rd. We were very excited. Then, yesterday we met with the Dr. and he did the initial ultrasound-- I'm 9 weeks along. As part of the ultrasound, he did a Nuchal Translucency Screening-- which basically means he looks specifically for fluid at the back of the baby's head, near the neck-- the nuchal folds, as a screening test for Downs and other Trisomys. It was positive-- the baby has fluid there that shouldn't be there, it was obvious enough that I could see it on the ultrasound. So they have recommended I have an amniocentesis test done, which can tell us for sure. (They use a long hollow needle to draw out some of the amniotic fluid that has some of the baby's cells in it and grow the cells to test them.)

Most likely the baby has Trisomy 13, which is what Jason had. Other possibilities are Downs, Trisomy 18, Turners (only one sex chromosome,XO), or congenital heart problems. The screening only has a 5 % false positive rate. And 5% isn't much to hold onto. Especially when you flip it and say there is a 95% chance that there is a chromosomal problem.

Trisomy 13 is similar to Downs (trisomy 21), but more severe and is basically a death sentence. Many times babies with Trisomy 13 die in utero sometime along the way, with Jason I had to lay down for 30 minutes-an hour every day and count kicks to make sure he was still alive. Of those who are born alive, 25% die the first day, and 86% within the first year. The median age is 2.5 days. Jason lived 2 days.

We've skipped the amniocentesis in the past, because we're not willing to have an abortion anyway, and it has a 1 in 300 risk of miscarriage. But the Dr. is strongly recommending it this time so we can be prepared and they will know for sure what they are dealing with. With Jason, we didn't get the conclusive chromosome tests until several days after his birth, but he had so many physical characteristics that showed up on the ultrasound that they were pretty sure just from that.

I'm still basically in shock. I don't want to have to go through all this again. I don't want to have another baby die or suffer. I don't want to have to wait and worry and wonder. I don't want to have faith and trust, but I don't get a choice. The odds of having a baby with Trisomy 13 are less than the odds of having triplets. Triplets is 1 in 8,000; Trisomy 13 is about 1 in 12,000. So right now, it's basically the waiting game-- 7 weeks until an amnio, and then after the amnio it takes about 10 days to get the results.

There is nothing anyone can do right now, but pray. And hope maybe we can be in that 5%.