New Year's Eve

For New Year's Eve, we went over to the Halling's house.  They are some friends from our ward--and we recently found out that Brent and I are 5th cousins on the Snyder side!  So it was kind of like getting together with family too!

We participated in their family tradition of doing fondue.  It was fun!

Paul's Birthday

Happy Birthday to Paul!!

Christmas Dinner

We were excited that Kirsta, Morian, Devin, Mackenzie and Grandma Esther could come for the weekend!  They arrived around 4:30 on Christmas Day.  That evening we had a delicious Christmas dinner.  Again we tried to take a picture of all of us with the camera timer.  It's tricky!

Christmas Morning

Merry Christmas!!

I had a hard time sleeping--and after waking up around 6:15 from a funny position and not being able to go back to sleep--I decided to just get up.  I was also really hungry!  I just had to eat something!

Glenn didn't get up until 8:35 or so!  When we were ready, we went downstairs to read the Christmas story and sing Christmas hymns.  That is another one of Paul's family tradition.  Glenn got to put the Baby Jesus sticker on another advent calendar he was working on.

Christmas Eve

December sure flew by and before we knew it, it was Christmas Eve!  Over the years we have combined some traditions from Paul's family, some from mine and added our own.  

Glenn and Paul enjoyed making "Merry Christmas" pizzas.

December Happenings

Like most years, December was pretty busy.  I had to continually take hormone medication and go in to the lab every few days to see how my levels were doing.  We continued to settle into our home, rearranging furniture and organizing our things.  We had little get togethers and play dates and the usual Christmas and end-of-the-year things.

Glenn sure is growing up!  I can't believe how grown-up he looks!  He isn't my little boy anymore!

Pictures with Santa and Mrs. Claus

The Wells Branch Library put on a special event in December.  The kids each got golden tickets that said "Believe" on them, some hot chocolate, a train whistle and a shiny silver bell.  The Polar Express was read out loud and then Mrs. Claus led us in singing some Christmas carols.  It was a fun evening!

We got a picture with her and also with Santa Claus!

Dominoes at Home

After doing dominoes at the library a month or so ago, Glenn decided he wanted to try some of the techniques at home.  He first set up some mini figures he had been getting in an advent calendar we have.

A New Rug!

So our new home has a lot of brown tile.  It is cold in the winter, and it made our home loud and echo-y.  We had some friends who had a rug that we liked and decided to order one for our living room.  It arrived in early December and we didn't hesitate to set it up right away!

In Vitro Fertilization

When we got back from Spain, we had some big decisions to make.  For the past several years, Paul and I have been struggling to get pregnant again.  We had been meeting with a fertility doctor, taking tests and trying to figure out why.  The tests came back showing there was nothing wrong with either of us, which was great on one hand, but also frustrating.  With nothing wrong, there was nothing for us to 'fix' in order to get pregnant.  Over the past year or so we had tried 5 IUI's--Intra-uterine insemination.  Each time was unsuccessful and disappointing.  We had tried one last time--the 5th time--just before going to Spain and we found out there that it too didn't work.  So we talked about other options.  I will be honest that there were times when I just wanted to give up and say that we had one kid--who was pretty amazing--and we could be okay with that.  But then there were times that I would cry and feel like a failure or that I wasn't giving Glenn siblings, or whatever.  I thought maybe we should just adopt because for whatever reason, we weren't having more of our own.  But Paul felt like we hadn't done ALL that WE could do.  So when we got back from Spain, we met with the doctor to see what we needed to do in order to start In Vitro Fertilization or IVF.

The first step, after ultrasounds to confirm that there were no cysts on my ovaries--I had to do that with every IUI too--was to take some birth control pills.  They needed to regulate my cycle and be able to make things happen on certain days.