PNW for a season

I've decided I need to blog more. For me and my family. I've noticed that there are very few places that I record my memories these days, and I need to be better at it. I love looking through my past posts and remembering all the great times with my family. I hope I can blog more for my family to look back on. And then maybe it will trickle into better journal writing and other kinds of record keeping. 

So... Here's some past entries I don't want to forget.


Washington! We spent roughly 4 months in Puyallup, Washington in the fall of 2014 for Eric to do a physical therapy rotation. This is actually a really neat story that I just can't forget, so I will try my hardest to remember the details. 
We had originally planned to go in the summer but last minute Eric's professor told us the internship had fallen through and our only other option was to go in the fall. We decided to go with it since my twin sister lived 10 minutes away and it would be a fun adventure that we probably would never be able to do again. 2 small kids, 2 cars packed with 4 months worth of living supplies, 12 hours of driving with Eric's brother and his wife to help us (they have no idea how much that meant to us), figuring out insurance, furniture and all the logistics, we finally made it to our tiny apartment. It was no beauty. Dark basement, sleeping on an aerobed, Seattle rain, weird neighbors that smoked all day- filtering into our apartment, Eric's awful work hours, kids getting pneumonia, etc, etc. BUT, we had a wonderful time, saw and did some amazing things, and learned a lot. With all of the hard, there is no doubt in my mind we were supposed to be there at that time. And that is what I want to remember most. That God directs our lives and knows exactly where and when we should be in life.


Alex and Lacee saved us. They helped us move up there and we got to hang out with them for a couple days.


We went to a Mariner's game. REI headquarters, space needle, lots of bike rides, hikes, museums, all the Seattle downtown sights, I did a triathlon in Bonney Lake, we made it to the Oregon coast, etc. We made some great memories.


We got to spend a few weeks with Jackie's family before everything went crazy. We even took a trip to the coast one weekend and did family pictures. Washington was beautiful, and it was just so fun to have cousins playing together almost everyday.
Then one day Jack dropped her kids off at my place for a routine checkup and found out she had a lump in her breast. It was surreal. We didn't believe it. A couple weeks went by before they confirmed it was indeed breast cancer. And that's when everything changed. No more frolicking around in Washington. (Not that that was what we were doing, but we realized we were there for a reason). It all clicked. We knew we were meant to be there for her since we were their only family close by. The next couple months were constant dr's. appointments and babysitting her kids, making meals, and just being there for her. It was crazy because I know if I was living someplace else at the time, my twin sister bond would have ached to be next to her the entire time, and I think God knew that, so he put me there ahead of time. I am still sooo grateful for that. Jack did awesome with surgery, chemo and radiation. She is now fine and is a giant of a person I hope to be like some day. 



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Baby Simon

He's here. Baby Simon is here.
My water broke at 5:30am, and I called my mom to come over and stay with Heber. About 10 minutes later I told Eric that we needed to head right away and that I couldn't wait for her to get here, so we called a neighbor in the meantime. We got to the hospital and checked in around 6:15. The doctor wasn't there nor was the anesthesiologist. The nurses started to get me set up and get all my information in the computer, all while I was having pretty intense contractions. They were slowly going about their business and didn't seem to understand that I was in so much pain. Finally they decided to check me and were shocked to find me dialated to a 7. They looked at each other and said we needed to get this doctor here asap. The next 30 minutes were a blur. I was just trying to breathe through each contraction and keep my mind off the pain. The doctor still wasn't there and I remember saying that I needed to push. The nurse begged me not too and said that would be a whole lot of paperwork. Finally, at about 6:45 the anesthesiologist showed up and somehow got an epidural in my back. Then the doctor showed up right after. He hurried and sat down and coached me through 2 pushes and baby Simon was born at 6:55am. Wow. I hardly had time to realize what just happened. But goodness, that was fast. The epidural was so wonderful for those few intense moments, but later discovered that the hardest part of labor was what I had already done. So I wonder if I would have gotten it if I knew that before hand.
Simon was sent to the NICU the next morning because of low oxygen levels. They did a bunch of tests on him and tried to discover what was wrong. But after a few days, and intense prayers, he was released with just an apnea monitor. We still don't understand what happened, but believe it was a miracle that our little guy's oxygen levels climbed back to normal. We are so grateful for this little soul in our lives, and feel like he is such a fighter, wanting to be here so badly.
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