Our Marriage

To all of our viewers out there, what would you like to know about us? A friend's birth mother suggested that we write about our marriage because that is what she wanted to know about before she chose her adoptive couple. Today's post will be about our marriage. Feel free to comment about our posts and ask us questions so we know what you would like to learn about us in the future.

* To begin with, we were married in the Idaho Falls temple on April 3, 2009. You already know a little bit about our story, so we will talk about some other things today. The most important thing you should know is that we are happily married, but we are not perfect. Really, we aren't, and that is ok and actually good. In one of our marriage and family relations classes we took at church, our bishop told us that if there are no arguments or disagreements in your marriage, then someone is dominating the relationship and that is not healthy. Because we are looking forward to being together for eternity, we are continually looking for ways that we can improve our marriage relationship.
* Another important part of our marriage is that we love each other and are one another's best friend. This is important in making our marriage work. We trust each other and can share things with each other.
* The gospel of Jesus Christ is important in our marriage. We were both raised in the gospel and look forward to raising our children in the gospel. We are also looking forward to having children sealed to us in the temple so that we can be with them for eternity as well. We're keeping ourselves temple worthy and try to visit the temple at least once a month. A temple picture hangs in almost every room of our home to remind us and our future children of the importance of the temple.
* Our personalities complement each other and help us to work together. We've also noticed that when one of us is struggling the other becomes stronger to help pull us through. A major thing that we work together on is our family budget. It is very important to us to live within our means and to save money for the future. Someday we want to get into couponing, but probably not extreme couponing! We would like to teach our children to value work, wisely control their finances, and to live debt free. We also like working together to clean, cook, and complete other household tasks. We view each other as equals in our home.
* You can also probably tell that family is super important to us and means the world to us! In an ideal situation we'd live near our families for the rest of our lives! We would love for our children to have family interactions while they are growing up. We'd love for them to grow up with grandparent's near and playing with cousins. We also want our children to know about their birth families and to have a relationship with them as well.
So, these are the basics of our marriage. Seriously please let us know if you have any specific questions about this or anything else. We'd love for you to get to know us better.

Baby J

It was a little bit of a rough week last week. It has been one year since we lost our little Baby J. The following is a re-post from our private blog about the events of January 2011. We felt like you should know about Baby J because we loved her and she is a very important part our lives (I felt Baby J was a girl). I don't know why I did it to myself, but I read through my journal last night about those devastating days and also about the happy days while I was pregnant. I was one happy pregnant lady. Even though I wasn't far along, I would sing and dance with Baby J in the shower. We had a hard time getting pregnant with Baby J and I was so grateful about everything, I was even glad when I threw up one time! Adam was a very caring and understanding pregnant daddy. One time during the pregnancy I just broke down crying because we left my new pj pants at my parent's house! Adam never made fun of me, he just comforted me and understood.

Heart Broken
This isn’t easy to write about, but we figure we have to do it sometime. We never thought we’d have to write something like this, never imagined that after all we had been through something like this could happen to us. Baby J is no longer going to be coming to bless our lives. I guess that Heavenly Father decided Baby J was still needed in Heaven.
One week ago today Adam and I went in to the doctor for a check up because I had had a tiny bit of spotting the day before. Nothing to worry about… we thought. There was no way to predict the news that would meet us there. We weren’t able to meet with our regular doctor because he was in Disney Land with his family, so a total stranger got to tell us that our baby had died. He was unable to find a heart beat through my belly and after an abdominal ultrasound, a vaginal ultrasound, and additional abdominal and vaginal ultrasounds, the news was confirmed. Baby J had stopped growing at 9 weeks… just days after our first healthy ultrasound, and 2 weeks before we would even find out. Baby J no longer had a heartbeat, movement, or any blood flow. Our precious baby was gone in the blink of an eye and our lives were changed that quickly too. The next day I had a D&C and Adam and I have been trying to recover since then.
There have been a lot of tears and a lot of heartache. So far the only things that have brought me comfort are the facts that they finally relented in not just throwing my baby away in the trash, and a quote by Joseph Smith, “All your losses will be made up to you in the resurrection.” According to the doctors, this happens with a lot of first pregnancies and we should be glad because we are still young. Well, as helpful as this is supposed to be, it is not. That doesn’t fix a thing or answer any of my questions. We’re trying to keep moving on though. Adam is back in school this week and our tears are lessening. My goal this week is to get up and get dressed, lofty, I know. I have even ventured out of the house twice.
We are grateful for all of your love, prayers, and support. Mom, we couldn’t have made it through the last week without you. You’ve been a great support with company, food, laundry, and dishes. Jill, Cooper, and Amelia, thank you so much for the card and the cookies… they brought tears to my eyes and meant so much. Kent and Karen, thanks for dinner and keeping in touch. May you all be blessed for your service. Adam and I love you all.

True or False

Here is a little true or false question for you:

True or False? You can freeze mayonnaise.

FALSE! You can NOT freeze mayonnaise! How do we know this? Because we have tried! We were almost out of mayo from our fridge and Adam didn't want to have warm mayo in his tuna so he thought he would quickly chill it by putting it in the freezer. Well, he forgot about it and found it a day later. It was so disgusting. It had turned yellow and had separated. Needless to say, we had to make a trip to the store to by new mayonnaise! If you ever find yourself in a situation in the future where you are pondering whether or not to freeze your mayo, just remember our story... or you could even look at the jar because in tiny letters it says DO NOT FREEZE! Hahaha! Guess you learn something new everyday!

Latest Happenings

Now that Adam has graduated it seems like we have less time to blog. Adam is trying to finish applying to graduate school and pick up more shifts at work. Katie is working and has started babysitting a little bit for another friend. Recently Katie has been working with Abby and her mom to plan a baby shower for Savanna. Savanna is Katie's older sister (The one that was Mary in the play) and will be having a baby girl in April... the very first grandchild on Katie's side of the family. During the planning session Abby began joking around and taunting Carolyn about something by saying, "What are you going to do about it old woman?" This is what Carolyn did:

The OLD WOMAN took the YOUNG WHIPPER SNAPPER to the ground in the blink of an eye! So funny!
In other news we are teaching the CTR 4's in primary. Sunday will be our third time teaching and we are getting less and less scared each time. The first Sunday we walked in all excited and none of the children wanted to sit by us! Then one little girl sat with a blanket over her head for half the time. We are proud to announce that last week she only had the blanket over her head for about a fourth of the time. We are making improvements! Also, did you know that cheetahs have really long tails to help them turn corners better? Was that a random thought? No, we learned that from one of our four year olds on our first Sunday.
Last but not least, we want to talk about miracles. We had a small miracle the other day and it might seem silly, but it meant a lot to us and reinforced to us that small and tender mercies happen all the time to show Heavenly Father's love for us. One day a few weeks ago our mail key went missing. The only mail key we have... the only way we have to access the bills and other mail that come to our little box... Try as we might, we could not find the key. We looked high and low, inside and outside, and in Adam's clothes (since he had the key last). It came to the point that the key could not be found and we were going to have to pay a fee to get a new key... which we really didn't want to do. We are saving our pennies for adoption. We went to our bedroom, knelt down, and said a prayer. The next day we found our key in... the washing machine! The washing machine of all places! How did it get there? We will never know, but it sure was an answer to prayer and a little miracle in our lives.