Don't worry, we are still alive and well!

Don't bother pinching yourself. You're not dreaming. I am actually updating our blog. I was recently asked by Grandma Kennington why I haven't updated and that she is always looking wanting to see some recent pictures and updates on what we are up to. So for her, and anyone else interested, here goes! :)

I'll keep the words short and the pictures coming. Jessie is now the lovely age of two and is such a little angel every day! Ok now that would be a dream. She definitely has her moments. More naughty moments than good, but I wouldn't trade a thing. I have a lot to learn and a lot to teach and I hope I can do that well.

The past year has been a little rough for me. Last October I had half my thyroid taken out because of a goiter that was growing somewhat rapidly, so as a result of that the remaining half of my thyroid was not producing the amount of levels that I need. It wasn't really a problem until I went through two miscarriages in a row. So for the past 4 months, I've been on thyroid medicine to try to boost my hormone levels and hopefully keep a pregnancy. The doc has been keeping tabs on how it's looking and adjusting the medication when necessary and last Monday we got the news that things are looking good so we got the go-ahead, if you will, that maybe I could keep a pregnancy. So here's hopin :) 

Ok enough chit chat, here's those pictures I mentioned.

The Blessing of Family

They say that time flies when you're having fun. Well we must be having a blast, because here we are with a 7 month old baby and Paul is halfway through his first semester at Provo College. He is also in the process of applying to get in the Nursing Program next fall there.

I have been thinking a lot lately of how extremely blessed I am. I have an amazing husband, the best baby any first mommy could want, super-amazing in-laws, and to top it all off, the kindest and best parents a girl could ask for. And of course, I can't list my blessings and not mention having a testimony of the fullness of the gospel. I am definitely blessed.

On Christmas Eve, Paul, Jessie and I packed up the last load of our things in Cedar and moved north to the "metro city" of Fillmore Utah, to this house:



With him:



and her:




(The amazing parents I was telling you about) It's still up in the air how long for sure we will be here. But until then, we will watch Jazz games and BYU games and continue the tradition we started of making bread on Sunday afternoons. It's never in the plans of a young family to admit defeat for a time and move back in with the folks, but I am sure grateful that when it happened to us we had folks that didn't hesitate and opened their door and arms to us.

Since being here, Jessie has sure grown! She is eating rice cereal and baby oatmeal and baby veggies like a champ. She has the army crawl down pat and is already showing signs of standing. Just the other day, she pulled herself up and stood. When Grandma and I applauded her, she got a little too excited and proud of herself that she tumbled over. Sheesh, I don't know if I'm ready for her to be to that point yet, but as they say: ready or not, here she comes!

And of course gotta put current pictures of the little one!

More cute pictures:)

With her cousin Casen. He is Paul's cousin Anna's baby and is about a month younger.

So sweet! When I saw this picture, I thought she looks so much like my sister Erin.

She was Eeyore for Halloween.

She loves bath time!

She can even rock her dad to sleep:)

....3 months later.....

I am such a slacker! I've been told that there are frequent visits to our blog to see if I have posted about the baby and such, but here I am Facebooking, and emailing, but not blogging. But I am finally buckling down and doing it. I have over 500 pictures of Jessie on my camera, so it will be hard to choose what to post.

Since I haven't yet told my story, here goes. The morning of August 14 (3 days past due), Paul had gone to work bright and early, and I made plans to organize Jessie's room some more that day. As I laid there in bed trying to talk myself into getting up, subtle pains would come and go, but not in my stomach...in my legs. I thought that was weird, but didn't worry too much about it. I finally got up and going on my day. As it went on the pains were getting stronger in my thighs so I thought what the heck, I'll time them. They were getting around 7 minutes apart and pretty painful. I was kinda getting tired of 'false alarms' already being 3 days past my due date, so having pain in my legs bad enough that I couldn't sit, stand, or lay comfortably and pretty consistently was pretty frustrating to say the least. I found myself praying every time they came asking the Lord to stop messing with me. I ended up calling Paul around 1:00 and told him what was going on. So he came home and after calling both our moms, and the nurses station at the hospital, we decided it wouldn't hurt to go in and get checked.

So I was dilated, but only to a 1, so the plan was to wait an hour, see if there was any change, then decide what to do after that. After an hour I was to a 1 1/2, so not much was happening. At first they were just going to let me go, then my doctor charges in and while gowning up says, "actually we are going to break your water and just have her today". After a mild panic attack, phone calls, and some prayers, I was officially in labor. I want to stop here and just say wow. Contractions hurt! This was about 4:30, and around 5:30 I got my epidural. Want to stop again here and say hallelujah! Pretty sure I heard angels sing when that kicked in! I started progressing pretty fast after that, then before we knew it at 10:49 pm weighing in at 7 lbs 14 oz and 19 inches long Jessie June was born.

Mom and Dad Kennington

Since Paul and I moved into our townhome at the end of January, we've been itchin to have people come visit. Paul's parents have been wanting to, but they have had so much going on that they haven't had a chance...until now. Last Friday the 23rd, they got on the road way early (well, to me it's early) and were here by 10:00. We had breakfast cooking, but when they got here, we were so excited and distracted we burnt the French Toast, so we tried again and after their VIP tour of our place we sat down to eat.

After that we took them up to see Cedar Breaks.



When we got back to town we went to a matinee showing of Toy Story 3. Way cute show if you haven't seen it. Then we went to eat at the Pizza Factory. YUM!

Paul wanted to take advantage of Kirk's help installing some smoke detectors in our house while he was here. So we went to work doing that. We also got a carbon monoxide detector that you are supposed to be able to just plug in, but apparently this one is a tad more complicated because it went off and those things are loud! So we unplugged it, took the battery out, put in back in, took it out did the hokey poky...well after the process we went through to try to get it to work we were desperate. After reading the instructions, we finally realized it was picking up levels of carbon monoxide. Duh!! We had the swamp cooler on and our neighbors were grilling, so it was pulling in the fumes from that. Who knew? It was actually working!

Once we got that figured out, we played some games, then they were off to their motel for the night. The next morning they took us to IHOP for breakfast (Kirk's favorite) Then they were "on the road again"....headed back home.

It was so much fun having them here and for the chance to play host and hostess for a day. We are so grateful for them and for all they do to support us. We love you!!!

The Baby's Room!!!

Ok so I've been wanting to share this for awhile. I am not much of a crafty person, as most of you know, but when there are projects that involve real tools and a big change, I really get into those. So here are the results of the baby room transformation:)

These were the colors the room used to be. Green and ....pink...ew! Haha they actually weren't too bad of colors by themselves, but together it looked really weird. This isn't the best 'before' picture, but you get the idea. Just green and pink walls in the room.

We got to work making the room our own and one that will hopefully be a happy room that our little girl will enjoy being in.

We started painting with a nice basic yellow...

And I do mean 'WE'. I didn't just take pictures the whole time:)

After we got the walls painted, we put up a white bead board....

And finally the finished room!!...

stay tuned....

So I know this shouldn't count as a post, but I just wanted your ears (or eyes) to perk up for there will be an official post coming soon. We have been hard at work getting the house, more specifically the baby's room, ready. We have a day off tomorrow so Paul and I will be sharing with you our experience with plenty of pictures for proof:)