Top 10 things I haven't blogged about in the past year...

Well, I put off blogging all the time because I hate uploading pictures. I only have about 526,784,893 pictures from the past year and I finally decided I would upload them, but what do ya know, I keep getting error messages so I'm bagging it and just doing a pictureless post! So here we go to our top ten, in no particular order:

1. Celebrated everyone's birthdays!(obviously :)) Easton is a big 3 year old, Caden just turned 2 a few months ago, and I hit my quarter century mark! Big Dada is now 2 years away from the big 3-0! We got to celebrate all of our birthdays in Utah with family which was the best present of all!

2. Jonathan finished his first year of law school! Only two to go! I can't imagine what it will be like when we're not in school. I'm thinking not having homework on weekends will be nice, but I'm going to miss him getting 6 weeks off for Christmas break. THAT is a pretty sweet perk.

3. We spent all of Christmas break in Utah with family, literally leaving right after he finished his last final and not getting back till the day before he started the new semester. It was so much fun to have a white Christmas, I haven't adjusted yet to looking out the window at the palm trees and blue sky when I'm listening to Christmas music. It just feels so weird still. But besides that we absolutely LOVE the weather. There are splash parks everywhere and last year we went to the pool up until November! We even got a sunburn in our t-shirts at the Christmas parade in December. It really is nice to be able to go to the park any time you want, but sometimes I do wish we could just have a few weeks of snow and cold, then back to 70s. That would rock.

4. We got to go to Hawaii! My dad had a ton of skymiles so my parents decided that the perfect Christmas gift for everyone would be a trip to Hawaii! It was amazing of course. They rented a little townhouse on the beach (totally the way to go) and we had a ball snorkeling, sight seeing, playing in the waves, and just hanging out together. The boys ask almost every day still when we got to go back to Hawaii. Those silly little boys would only get in the very edge of the water, they mostly wanted to play in the sand and throw rocks. But Easton says that when he's a 4-year-old (in a few months) he'll go out snorkeling. We'll see if that happens :)

5. I ran my first ever half-marathon in March! I'd never run more than 5 miles and I started running with my friend McCall who has run a couple of marathons. She inspired me so I started training and realized it was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. In fact I started enjoying running 10+ miles! Weird. Anyway, we ran a half and I was continuing to train for a full, but I got injured so it looks like for now my marathon dreams will have to wait till next year.

6. We also got to spend the whole summer in Utah with family! Jonathan did an internship for a judge and worked part-time at an apartment managing company (thanks to Robin for getting him that job!). It was soooo much fun to spend a few months with family after being away. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and are so grateful to our families for letting us come stay.

7. Easton started preschool! And so did I! My friend McCall used to be a preschool and kindergarten teacher and she wanted to start a preschool so we decided to start one together. It is sooo much fun! We started small last year with just a few kids but this year it's grown to 13 kids including Easton. We've had so much fun and it's amazing to see the kids learning and growing and realize how much they're picking up! Easton loves it and wishes we had it everyday! The kids are so cute, I never dreamed I would enjoy teaching as much as I do, but I love it!

8. We got two new brothers-in-law! Jonathan's sisters Jocelyn and Whitney, who have been roommates and best friends since Jocelyn graduated, ended up getting married within a few months of each other! Right around Whitney's wedding we also got a new cousin on the Peck side and in March of next year we'll be getting our first cousin on the Harward side from my brother David and his wife Robin! Yay!

9. WE will also be having a new baby brother in our family! I know this is kind of old news now, but it definitely goes in the top ten :)  Easton cried and cried when he found out it was going to be a brother, he wants a sister sooo bad! He wants a sister so he can cuddle her and kiss her and feed her a bottle, which I tried to tell him he can do with a brother but he really doesn't believe me. We actually had a little ultrasound earlier where the dr. guessed it was a girl, but said he was only 70% sure because it was so early and the image was so poor, but we had a big ultrasound the next week and found out it was actually a boy! Poor Easton had been so excited that it was a girl that it was a big letdown for him, but the weird thing was I was actually relieved. (The entire pregnancy I thought it was a girl, I was so much sicker and for so much longer that I figured it must be. And I had really bad acne, which I never got at all with the boys. Surprise, surprise! All 3 of my pregnancies have been totally different and yet they're all boys!) So after the dr said it was a girl the first time, I went home and started putting some baby boy things away and I actually started crying because I suddenly wanted it to be a boy! Weird huh? Well, I got my wish, and I was sooo excited when it turned out to be a boy after all! The funny thing is that even after the dr said he was 70% sure it was a girl, Jonathan still insisted it was a boy. He's usually always right about these things. And now my brother and his wife are having a boy too! So we'll have two little boy cousins just a few months apart! Yay!

10. As most of you also already know, this pregnancy is not going the way we hoped and planned. Both of our other boys were completely unplanned and I liked it that way, but after Caden surprised us ten weeks early I decided this one would have to be more strategic, especially since Jonathan was in law school. We waited a little bit to get pregnant so if I had an incompetent cervix it would have time to get stronger and then planned his due date so that I would be 28 weeks at the beginning of Jonathan's Christmas break and a little over 33 weeks when he went back, thus covering the time period we figured I would most likely be on bedrest and also the time period the baby might come. I thought we were being really smart and had it all worked out and there was no way I would be on bedrest before then. After all, with Caden I was jogging 4 miles a day and taking no medicine or anything and he stayed in till 30 weeks, so I figured for sure with seeing a specialist, taking things easy, and being on medicine this baby would stay in much longer. Well, I started seeing a perinatologist and found my cervix was normal, although on the short end, so he put me on progesterone hormone. That seemed to work till my 22 week appointment, when he found it had gotten shorter. I'd also been having some pain for a few days before so he put me on modified bedrest and a low dose of anti contraction medicine and told me to double the dose if the pain kept up. Everything was fine for a few days, then the contractions got worse and worse till I ended up in labor & delivery with hard contractions every 5-8 minutes. The nurse was trying to get a hold of my doctor to see what he wanted me to do when they started to become irregular and not so strong, so they told me I could go home and see if I could make it till my next appointment which was a few days later. I had doubled my medicine dosage but still had small, irregular contractions all weekend till my appointment this past Monday. The perinatologist checked my cervix and it had gotten a little longer with the bedrest so he told me I would be on full bedrest the rest of the pregnancy and he also upped my contraction medicine to the highest dosage. They did a fetal fibronectin test, which I'm not entirely sure what it tests, but I think it's to see if the fibers around your uterus are starting to come out, meaning labor is beginning. A negative result means you basically have no chance of delivering within the next two weeks, a positive means a 30% chance, since it could be starting several weeks before you actually deliver. Well, mine came back positive, so even though there is still a 70% chance I won't deliver before I hit 25 weeks, they gave me steroid shots to help his lungs develop faster in case he does come sooner, giving him a better chance at surviving.(Can I just say, these shots are the most PAINFUL shots I have ever had in my life, and I'm not a sissy when it comes to stuff like that! It's the medicine that hurts, so you can feel it burning as it goes in and it continues to burn for about an hour after and then aches the rest of the day. But definitely worth it if he comes soon!) So as of right now, I'm 24 weeks and 1 day and I'm hoping to make it at least a few more weeks. At 26 weeks the survival rate is about 90% so that would be awesome, although we'd definitely love to last longer. I think I'm just nervous since I'm already on bedrest and the highest dose of contraction medicine and the hormones to help my cervix and I'm still struggling with contractions. I just feel like my body is trying to override everything we throw at it, but like my doctor said, every day he stays in is worth 3 days in the NICU and gives him a much better chance, so even a week more is extremely beneficial. A nurse is coming by tomorrow to hook me up to a wireless at-home contraction monitor so they can watch me and let me know if they think I need to go in. The next step would be to be on hospital bedrest, but if I am in the hospital they can give me an even stronger medicine for contractions so that will give him even more time to grow. Hopefully that doesn't come too soon though, I'm not ready to be stuck in a hospital bed all day.  Well, that's basically where we stand right now. I wish I was even just a few weeks farther along, but it's so amazing what they can do medically these days that I'm grateful I'm as far as I am. It can always be worse! I am especially grateful to all of our friends, family, and ward members! They have been amazing and incredible and taken care of my every need without even being asked. We feel so blessed to be surrounded by such good people and I feel awful because I can't even make them cookies to say thank you, but what goes around comes around so I hope I get a turn to return the service that they've shown to me. Especially Jonathan, he's in his last few weeks of school and has had to be the single dad, take care of the house, take care of me, do his callings, and everything else. I don't know how he does it. I remember thinking that it would be kind of fun for me to be on bedrest because then he would get to see what being a mom was like, but now I realize I was totally wrong because he is so helpful and all I do is lay on the couch and make more work for him since he is always getting me things and taking me to appointments. I just hope he breaks his leg or something someday so that he's laid up and I get to do everything for him while he just sits and reads and watches movies. That would be great. :)
Well this is way longer that I intended, but I just wanted to let everyone know the details since I love to hear all the details about stuff like this when it happens to other people! And I wanted to tell everyone thank you, for all your service and all your prayers! Every single person that has said they're thinking of us or praying for us has really made a difference. I remember what a comfort that was after we had Caden and it definitely is now too! Thank you all so much! I will hopefully update this a little more often and get some pictures on next time. Seriously, it's not like I have much else to do right? :)