Just some more pictures to enjoy.

Just a fun one of Jayden playing with Daddy! He likes to jump and have fun.


Jayden is my little fish. He has no fear of water/baths and was excited to be in the bubbles and smile at the camera.

I bought a huge pack of diapers and so Jayden stacked the boxes, sat on top and let his stuffed animals join him. He was so funny to see him get off, arrange the animals then sit down and then get off and move them again.

So this is the first picture of Kylie sitting by herself. She likes to do it but I have a hard time getting pictures of it because she can't do it for long. She is so motivated to move and sit on her own. Not bad for 5 months.

Kylie and Dad. Dad looking a little scary!

She rolled over to the hat and was smiling and laughing when it was over her head. Our little cowgirl!

So in the blog below I talk about Jayden being naked. He doesn't like to take naps and so usually that is the time when he tries to be naked most. He got his pants off and was trying to put them back on and got both legs stuck in one leg of the jeans! He was screaming and I came to check on him and he kept saying, "stuck".

Jayden is officially Binky free!

So, we have slowly gotten rid of Jayden's binky. We snipped the plastic part weekly until there wasn't anymore for him to grab. He now says that the binky is broken. Anyways, now he is a big fan of this blanket. He grabs it out of his crib and says that he is sleepy so that he can cuddle with it. He doesn't want to share though and will grab a blanket for Kylie if she is rolling on his blanket. He then points to her blanket and tries to get her to stay on her own! What a cutie!


This is the kids playing. She rolls around and follows him everywhere and so he started playing under the piano bench because, "she not get me"! Yes, I did dust after I saw this picture!

Jayden wanted to be with Kylie and is learning how to say cheese to get his pic taken. They have a lot of fun together.

Here is another pic on the couch. Kylie was leaning on him and Jayden was laughing because she was getting him.

So I hope other Mom's go through things like this but my son does not want to wear clothes. AT ALL. He will laugh and clap and say, I naked! The only way I can keep his diaper on is to duck tape it or let him be half naked. Here is a picture of him happy and half naked. I have not missed the fact that he wants to be naked now that it is cold outside.

This is Kylie being cute and taking off her socks. She won't keep them on, I think she is learning from her brother. The animal by her head is a bunny, Jayden has a bunny and thinks that she should too and so he is always putting this blue bunny by her.

Not much new

So Kylie can't stay still. She was facing the opposite direction on the blanket and when I came back in the room she was trying to pull Jaydens Jeep out of the bucket to play with. She is so determined!


So my love of Ice Cream has passed on to Jayden. I told him to look at the camera while he was sharing Ice Cream with Dad, and this is what I got! A mouth full of ice cream and attitude!

Kylie loves this bouncer. Jayden didn't like it so much but she will bounce in it for quite awhile. (tender mercies)

So we go to the mall and there is a station of coin cars. I never put coins in them but Jayden loves to "drive" them and play in them. There are two other red sport cars and which one does he like to play in? The pink popcycle truck! Go figure!

Jayden loves to play in the diaper boxes. Colby put Kylie in one and Jayden got sooo excited and pushed "his" box right next to hers and climbed in. What a character! My three most favorite people in the world.

We have been pretty busy with lots of things going on so I haven't been good about blogging. I need to do more! The only thing going on lately is daily "stuff". I am learning about some of my habits that I didn't realize I had because Jayden has become the little immitator. I was playing with him on the floor the other day and my glasses kept sliding on my face, I kept pushing them back into place. One time I looked at Jayden when they slipped, to be funny, and he took his finger and pushed my glasses up for me! :)

Today he decided not to nap, I still put him in the crib for quiet time but he doesn't like it. He can't yet figure out how to climb the crib and so what did he do today? He had some naked time. I walk in after about an hour and he has no socks, no pants and his diaper is ripped to shreds. He had peed in the crib and was quite proud of it(we have been making a big deal about potty so that we can start him potty training). He kept pointing to it and then to himself and then felt I had listened and he smiled and said out with his arms up. What am I going to do about this? Duck tape comes to mind! I can make that diaper a part of him in a perminant way!

Colby is in his fifth rotation. He is in trauma surgery. It is pretty fast paced so he is tired when he gets home but his shift is 7-3 p.m. Not bad! I am so proud of him and all he is doing and learning. We are getting a little trunky and ready to be settled.

A Camping We Will Go

Here is our camp site. There are so many trees in WV that you camp in open spaces :)

The group around the camp fire.

Jayden and Dad. Jayden liked playing with the sticks, he was proud he found a big one.

Colby and Jayden and Jayden's buddy Jett on the 4 wheeler.

Dad and Kylie hanging out in the shade on Saturday morning.

Jayden and Mom.

This last weekend we went camping. It is the first time we have gone camping with the kids. It actually was a lot of fun and was better than I thought. Not to say that we aren't tired today! Our friends in Philippi know a man who has a great area to camp and play. Jayden could run and play his heart out with the other kids and we adults could talk, eat smores, and ride the 4-wheeler. It was a blast and we are glad we took the opportunity to do it. We have missed it.

Baby Story!

Baby Kylie.


Baby Jayden.



I am inspired by my friend Holly. I feel like I want to tell my story about how Jayden and Kylie came to be. Now I know how babies normally get here, but for us it was a journey with much different results. Jayden and Kylie are what you would call "snowflake babies". We won't be hiding this from our children and so why not educate others about the options out there for those of us who struggle bringing a spirit into this world.

We were married 9 years ago, we did not start trying to have kids until we were married for about a year. We tried to concieve without too much concern for about 1 1/2 years after that. Finally we realized that something wasn't right and we went to a normal OBGYN with some experience in infertility. At this point it is test after test to make sure your body is performing normally. They are expensive and some painful but worth it if it will help answer those questions about why you aren't successful yet. The tests showed that we were both perfectly normal and we learned that we fall into 15% of people who at this point their infertility is unknown. We were given some prescriptions to help but they were not successful and caused some interesting and funny moments in our marriage. It was not a comfort to know you fit in that unknown category and to be honest every month was a game of waiting and then total dissappointment. The hardest times were when you were a few days late and then found out you were not pregnant. We lived in Utah and the pressures there to start a family are strong. That is a good thing but a lot of people did not understand and asked a lot of questions that were hard for us to answer. It is hard to explain because we felt God's hand throughout the whole process but patience was hard.

Finally the doctor in Logan said that he could do no more for us and recommended us to a specialist in Salt Lake City. We were excited to find out what was next and for this consult. It was a horrible moment for us. He kept stating the odds against us, we were now in an 8% category. The money we needed was staggering and in the end he felt it might be time for us to look into adoption. I will never forget the drive home. Our solution? We went shopping and spent a lot of money on stupid stuff. We decided to take a break for a bit.

In 2004 we moved to Boise, ID. While we were there, we heard of another infertilty clinic and decided to give it another shot. It was wonderful! We were given the odds but we were also given hope, we left that consult with a plan. First we tried inter-uter insemination. That was done once a month for three months. This is where they take Colby's swimmers and insert them further into my tubes. The hope is that if my uterus is tilted or my body is fighting the swimmers, they have a better chance. It was not successful. That was O.K. because we found out more things that were not the problem. Next was IVF.

IVF is one of the hardest things emotionally and physically I have ever done. The medication routine is intense! They cause all sorts of hormones to go crazy. I still remember that during one medication I had a personal space bubble and I would get so angry if Colby got in my bubble. It was life or death if he got in my bubble :) They were able to "harvest" 19 overies. That is very successful but come to find out that after my eggs were in the test tube, my eggs were not progressing and dividing how they were supposed to. At least we had an answer, we didn't know why but my eggs are not good. That was another rough week. We could try IVF again but the stats were not good for us. With as much as went into the process, I couldn't go through it again with the odds as bad as they were.

We took another break but got the itch again when we were living in Pocatello, ID. We decided to look into adoption and went to a meeting with LDS Social Services. Now remember that I am adopted. I had a closed adoption and feel strongly that that is the way to go. I love my birth mother in a way that is hard to explain but I know that she gave a gift by letting go and letting my adoptive parents take over from day one. It was hard to hear in the meeting how many rights the birth mother now has. We left the meeting knowing that we were not ready for this avenue and the waiting time given to us was three years!

We prayed and decided to go back to the clinic for a consult one last time. We had decided that this was going to be it, maybe we weren't meant to have children! We were told we have three options...1. Try IVF again with Me and Colby. 2. Try an egg donor situation 3. Try something called Embryo Adoption. We knew 1 was not an option. Egg donation cost about $15,000 and was hard to handle for us. Embryo Adoption cost only $2,500.

What is Embryo Adoption? A couple comes into the clinic and does an IVF procedure. They have success and have left over embryo's. They then sign over all rights and donate those embryo's to those who need them. We prayed again and felt this was the way to go. It is a little wierd being mailed a list with ethnicity, eye color, blood type, etc. information and "shopping" for a couple that looks somewhat like you. We had a hard time finding a match and then one day got a call from the office saying they had a couple that we might be interested in. It was like a peace settled over us and we knew we had found what we were looking for. We had 10 embryo's to use.

Our first time they let 6 embryo's develop further and two were awesome. I can not tell you how awesome that day was when we found out that we were pregnant! It took 7 1/2 years but finnally we were going to be parents! It was not wierd, when he was born he was ours in every way! We laugh now and wink at each other when someone tells us how much he looks like Colby. I will never forget when we blessed Jayden, I never thought that day would come. We are sooooo blessed! We didn't know if we were lucky the first time and so we decided to do the procedure again the next summer.

Of course for us nothing could be easy. When we decided to do the procedure again we had to do a blood test and found out that my body did not respond to the Rhogam shot I was giving after Jayden was born. The doctors had never heard of this before so now we are in the 1% group. Rhogam helps your body not fight your babies blood while in the womb because you are different blood types. I am negative and the embryos are positive. Colby is positive as well so we would have had this issue no matter what. The clinic was nervous doing another procedure because it had a high possibility of being a high risk pregnancy. We understood the risks and moved forward anyways. We felt the longer we waited the higher chance there was of my blood fighting the fetus.

We used the last 4 embryos and again had 2 good ones. To our surprise, we were successful again. My blood numbers stayed low the whole pregnancy and so I was not high risk. Kylie was born 4 months ago. My blood was tested and my level now is too high to have another child safely. So, we have a boy and a girl. We love them sooo much and are so thankful for technology today that has allowed us to be parents. We know we are a family in a unique way but still feel that this is Heavenly father's plan for us.

This has been a long blog, I just felt like remembering today and journeling this for the future. Thank you for being patient with me. If you have any questions, please let us know!

Washington D.C. March

This was our view as we marched toward the Capital building. We were early and so there were a lot of people behind us.


The view behind us.

This was on our way to D.C. The kids needed a break and Jayden decided to take over the car after he had walked around a bit.

On our way to the march we walked by the White house and a great family from Europe took this picture for us.

This is where we were during the speakers at the rally after the march.

Our family at the march in D.C.

Just a shot of us hanging out during the rally.

Jayden is politically active for one so young :)

Another fun shot.




I don't know how to put into words our experience this last weekend. I would say that we are not real political zellots but we enjoy Fox News and Glen Beck. Colby likes Ron Paul. We heard about the march while watching Glen Beck and we felt that we were too close to pass it up. We debated about going and taking the kids, but in the end we just decided to do it. We didn't have a sign that we made to take with us, to be honest it was a rough day the day before and I couldn't think of anything clever. It worked out fine. We dressed in blue and red and felt like it was a movement for us just to be there.

I have been so frustrated at how the media has talked about this rally. There were senior citizens, young people, families, veterans, blacks, whites, democrats, republicans, independants, business people, religious groups, and even some crazy zellots. There were people on Harleys decked out in red, white and blue. There were so many different people but the message was the same, too much government! People were there for healthcare, fiscal spending, Acorn, Congress and senate reform, Czars, not being open and honest with the public. Most wanted Obama and their representitives to know that we are serious and that we are aware and hope they know there will be reprocussions in the next election to those who don't listen to our concerns.

There were so many people! It was awe inspiring! We met people from Illinois, Montana, South and North Carolina, Texas, and Indiana. It was so fun and crazy! There were two parts that really touched me. A lot of people came up to us and thanked us for bringing our young kids and said that they were what this whole rally is all about. The second is that one lady sang the National Anthem (sp?) and the whole crowd stood up and sang together. It was so touching. In a nutshell we are so glad that we went. We feel like we were a part of something good and a bit of history.

Columbus, OH Trip

Jayden wanted to swim in the hot tub because it was making so many bubbles. He couldn't stop laughing and playing in them. He kept saying, "bubbles".


Colby teaching Jayden how to kick when he is "swimming"

Colby and Kylie, she did so good. She didn't cry or anything she just liked being in the water. Yes, there are no pictures of me on purpose. I think I would blind people with my whiteness!

Jayden and Colby with the elephants at the Columbus, OH Zoo. Jayden didn't want to turn away from them long enough to get a good picture.

My two tigers!

Just another pic where I was lucky enough to have Jayden look at the camera.

Sweet Kylie! This is what she did most of the time at the Zoo!

Me and Jayden with the Kangaroo's. They let you walk around with them, it was pretty cool!
Just so you know, my hair has never been flat since we moved out here. The humidity was bad that morning and all my work gone in a few short minutes :)

So the summer is going fast and we decided to go to Columbus, OH this weekend for a little getaway. The hotels are cheap, the temple is there and they have the best custard ice cream place ever! This time we went to the Zoo, it is an awesome one, and swam in the hotel pool. It was a lot of fun and a much needed get away. We probably won't do something like this very often, they kids were so tired on the way back that a 3 1/2 trip turned into a 5 hour trip because we had to stop so much to calm them down. Oh well, MEMORIES!

Go, Go Steelers!

Jayden and I decided to build a fort on this day. He had a blast, if he wasn't in the fort he was flopping on the blanket on top to collapse the fort. He kept peeking out under the chairs and saying Hi!


So Kylie is quite a determined girl. She is 3 1/2 months and can roll from front to back and back to front (isn't this early?). To turn over she will grab the blanket like in this picture and grunt and before you know it......

She is like this and smiling. So proud of herself!

Jayden wanted to hold Kylie and help feed her. Most of the time he is not interested at all but this day he was having fun.

So NFL football has started. I know it is just pre-season but this is my plug for the best team out there. I feel a back to back coming on. She is our little Steeler cheerleader!

I know Jayden is crying, but the story is about his shirt and backpack. My Mom sent him a Buzz and Woody shirt and he LOVES it. He wears it all the time. Well we were in Wal-Mart one day and he saw a Buzz and Woody backpack and loves it as well. He puts his books and toys in it and wears it around the house all the time, it is so funny.


Jayden likes to play the piano, this day he set up his bear to play with him. He was so proud to have gotten both of them on the bench.

Jayden loves to help when I change Kylie's diaper so I thought why not have some fun with it. He took the diapers off and put them on his animals for several hours of entertainment. He finally decided he liked them better without them so that he could cuddle them better.

So we have begun the habit of reading our scriptures at night with Jayden. Instead of the real scriptures we have a book with pictures of kids and the Book of Mormon stories. Now during the day he will grab his scree-shurs and sit and read them.

Kylie was in the pack and play and Jayden with his incredible climbing abilities decided to join her. I was doing the dishes and came in the room to find this. They were having a ball together. Jayden was laughing and Kylie was smiling.

I know it has been a long time, I can't believe it took me so long to sit down at the computer and type stuff. I have been busy, we are trying to fit as much in as we can before summer is gone, and I haven't been able to update 'stuff'. Here are a few pictures and stories to update you. I will blog again soon!