11/25/2009

Mom and Dad!


I am so so thankful for my parents! I was really really blessed to be born to them. I can't imagine two people who could have raised me better.

I am so thankful that my parents blessed us by getting married in the temple and raising us in the gospel. I know it was a struggle for my mom to get us all dressed and ready when we were little kids, and I am so thankful that she made the effort.

I am so thankful for the "matter-of-factness" that my Dad imprinted on all of us kids. He has always been a hard worker, and I know he did his best to make sure that we knew the value of work as well.

I am thankful that my mom always has good advice, ready to throw to me like a lifeline when I often need it. I am thankful that my Dad is always teaching in everything he says. I am thankful that Mom and Dad have such love for their grandkids! I am thankful that Atticus will have them in his life!

Mom and Dad, you really are the greatest. I am so thankful for the years you spent teaching me how to be a mom myself. These past 6 months have really increased my appreciation for you :) I love you!!

11/24/2009

Cousins

I have the best family in the world. Really. This includes extended family.

I am so thankful that I have always lived around my cousins. Even now, Peter and Leigh-Ann live just over the bridge in Rexburg. Holly was my roomate in college, and before that, the Rich Hall kids lived down the street from us. My cousins are some of my best friends! Peter and I used to chill in a little world of our own when we were babies. Some might say we're still in a world of our own. Here's photographic proof:

Emily and I went to the same piano teacher, we even did a duet together during a Christmas recital. I still can't believe I talked Emily into doing chopsticks in the beginning! I think we may have shocked Julie Bursey enough to be glad her run with the Hall's is over :)


I don't have a more appropriate picture of us at a recital, so here's one of Emily breaking the girls camp hula hoop record. She's pretty awesome.

I have to make special mention of Holly Marie. I owe so much to her. I am so thankful for the mothering and friendship she gave me that I so desperately needed my first semester away from home. I'm so thankful for the strength you've shown in your life, because it gave me confidence to build up my own strength in decisions.

Holly and I, I think it's '94




Chad and Glenn, making good last use of the high chairs

I am so thankful for all of my cousins!! I'm grateful to Andrea, James, Rebecca and Saramarie for the wonderful examples they have been to me. I'm grateful to all of Uncle Ed and Aunt Ellen's kids for putting up with me every Easter as we invaded your house, and as Holly and I made a racket to be reckoned with. I'm thankful to all of Aunt Julie and Uncle Bart's kids, even if Chad did draw on my face while I was sleeping. Punk :) I'm thankful for all of Wes and Lisa's kids too, for their funny views of life and Hall-ish sense of humor


A bunch of Mumfords (if not by name, then by heart)


Grandpa, Todd, Peter and Me at Wages Creek in... 1990? Maybe?

Hi Chad!

If I make a list of everyone here, it's going to get very long, very quickly. But just know that if you are a cousin of mine, I am so thankful for you! Our lives just wouldn't be a good if we didn't have each other. I love all of you!

Me, Emily, Kim, and Peter in 1993, with Granpa and who I'm assuming is my dad in the background.

Kelly, David and I after hiking 3 miles to see an unsafe structure... I honestly don't remember what we went to see, I only remember the walk.

Todd, Peter and I at a Hall family reunion

11/23/2009

Pretty please, with a cherry on top?

If anyone is still wondering what to get me for Christmas, please please PLEASE get me this!!!



I LOVE IT! I'm practically trembling with delight!

Extra, EXTRA grateful post!

We had a big weekend here, with Grandpa Rick and Gigi and Grumpy. They stopped here for a couple days before they headed down to Utah yesterday. We'll probably be following them Wednesday night.

So here is a great big thankful post to make up for the days I missed!

I am so grateful for my Temple marriage to Trevor! Growing up with the LDS gospel all around me, I never imagined getting married anywhere but in a temple. I always knew that when I finally decided and committed myself to a man, I would want to be with him not only "until death do you part", but forever. I know that he and I existed before we were born here, and we'll exist after we kick the bucket too. And I still want to be married to him after Atticus plants us in the ground ("Plant us in the garden, next to the lion").


We were all pretty excited.

I'm so thankful for MUSIC! I was so lucky to grow up in a home with music going all the time. My dad, the band teacher, taught all of us kids how to play at least one instrument. My mom also jump started me on the piano when I was a little girl. When I got older and wanted voice lessons, she let me take those too, and then talked me into taking more piano lessons instead. I'm so grateful she did this! I love to play the piano. I love listening to music, I love playing it, I love that Atticus seems to love music just as much as I do. I'm thankful that Trevor is an all-star with the guitar (Seriously. The man is amazing. Even if he did learn it just to get girls in high school.) I'm also so thankful for the opportunity that I had to work for KBYI and KBYR. I had a lot of wonderful music listening opportunities that I wouldn't have otherwise had. I'm so so grateful to my Dad for prepping me for that job. 80% of the knowledge I used in that job came from conversations with my father, and the music we listened to when we would go do the popcorn on Fridays.


My knowledge of the Canadian Brass and the Boston Pops came in handy many, many times. Thanks Dad!

Atticus just got up from his first nap, so hopefully I'll have time to add more more grateful post later on today.

11/20/2009

My Siblings

Since I talked about my in-laws yesterday, I thought it would only be appropriate to express my thanks for the ones who put up with me as a kid today :) I am so grateful for my siblings! They really are the best that anyone could ask for! I love it when we're all together, though it happens so rarely now. My brothers and sisters are some of the funniest people in the whole world!


Chris is the most creative of the bunch, and I'm so thankful that he made the choice to go on a mission. He really set the example for the rest of us. Chris, you are also one of the funniest people I've ever talked to. Almost every time we talk, you catch me off guard and make me laugh!


I'm also so so grateful to Pam for being the first one to get married in the temple! Watching you get married when I was 14 was so inspiring. You certainly helped me know what I wanted out of life. Pam also makes the cutest crafts in the world. I kid you not. My favorite thing in our kitchen is the magnet board she made for us for Christmas two years ago!


Kimberly and I shared a bedroom until I was 12. I don't think I could ever express enough thanks to her for not strangling me in the middle of the night, as I KNOW I often would have deserved. Kim, I miss playing with you in Provo! You are probably the most fun person in our whole family! Sorry guys, but you know it's true too. Who else in our family has traveled all the places Kim has gone?


And David. I am grateful for your spiritual example and your hilarious jokes. They always make me laugh! You are such a hard worker, hearing about your day always inspires me to get more done! I am so thankful for the patience you had with me when we were the last two left at home. You're one of the two best big brothers ever made :)

11/18/2009

Thankful for my in-laws!

I love my in-laws! All of them! They are the best! I am so thankful for D. Ann and Rick, they did the best job possible of raising Trevor and have been so kind to me. Rick is truly just about the sweetest man alive, he's probably never had a mean thought in his life. I am so grateful that D. Ann likes my sense of humor, and so grateful that she loves Atticus so much! She is so fun to talk to!

Austin and Ruth, I really do love you, I just don't have a good picture of the whole lot of us!

Monica, KK and Mandy are all so much fun too! It's been so great to marry into a new set of siblings who are just as awesome as the ones I was born into. And we all totally scored with Austin and Ruth too! You guys are all so great!

My own siblings have made some pretty fantastic spouse choices too. Rob and Lorna are pretty rad. I'm so thankful that Lorna is still my friend after having picked Trevor for Christmas for the last 3 years :) Shopping for that man is enough to drive anyone crazy!

11/17/2009

Education

My all-time favorite family quote is "Don't let school get in the way of your education." I love the insight of that! I think I was in high school before I realized that good grades didn't mean I was learning anything. And while I certainly didn't even manage that half the time, I'm grateful that I have the education that I have, and that I can ALWAYS learn more. It was wonderful to be able to attend an LDS college where we started class with a prayer and kept the scriptures open in the class.

I'm also grateful that my high school mascot was a Honker. While it was somewhat of an embarrassment the time, it's a conversation starter now.

11/16/2009

Days 5 & 6 of Thankful

Since I didn't post anything yesterday, I'm writing about two things that go hand in hand: Atticus and breastfeeding.

It took a long time, and 4 cycles of failed fertility drugs before I got pregnant with Atticus. Lots of tears were involved. LOTS. Not all of them rational, an unfortunate side effect of fertility treatments. For instance, during the first round of Clomid, a class I was taking showed a video about the different kinds of cameras used during the '96 Olympics. I sat in the back (in the dark, thankfully) and silently sobbed through the whole thing. It was so MOVING, that high dive camera! ...good times... Here is something else I should have tacked on to Trevor's grateful post: He was the most understanding and loving man through all of that. When I cried for no reason, or for very good reasons, he was always there with a hug and either a listening ear or a joke, depending on what I needed.


The enormous pregnant beast

Eventually I did get pregnant, and I'm so thankful that my pregnancy was pretty run-of-the-mill. Labor was pretty standard too, and pushing was practically easy, even with the epidural (something I worried about). When Atticus was born, It was almost like having an out of body experience. Here was the little man that I knew so well, of whom I had been the sole caretaker, and I was finally able to see him!! What a beautiful baby! I was abruptly brought back to earth when they whisked him off my chest and over to the side table to give him oxygen. He was too floppy, not crying enough. After a few minutes, the nurse called the NICU and told them to make room for a new little one.

My
little one.

Then my labor nurse explained that he had probably inhaled some amniotic fluid and was having trouble breathing. All of the sudden, I was having trouble breathing too, and I felt like I was floating out of my body again. I had not prepared for this, even a little bit. Why should I? I was full term, labor started on it's own, he'd been an absurdly normal fetus, even on the growth charts, always measuring in the 50th percentile. Trevor told me he was going to follow Atticus to the NICU, and I hurridley agreed that he should be there.



This video shows a lot of what I remember. Atticus snorting as he tried to breathe on his own, the irritating beeping of the many monitors, and my husband learning how to be a magnificent father.

He spent a few hours on oxygen and had some help getting his lungs cleared out. He had his first x-ray when he was just hours old. But, thankfully, he breathing problems were not as bad as they could have been. He stayed there for 3 days, one extra day past me. He was given antibiotics and glucose for low blood sugar (common for newborns, and even more common when they can't have skin to skin contact right after birth). Although it was, by far, the hardest thing I've ever experienced, I know it could have been so much worse. Our friends had a preemie son in an incubator right next to Atticus. We joke about them being each other's first "roommate" now, but it sure wasn't funny then.


Atticus finally home, asleep in the swing with his elephant

One hurdle Atticus had to get past then was learning how to eat. The nurses told us that little white boys are the laziest eaters. Baby girls and babies of all other races seem to learn how to eat much quickier and easier than little white boys. Atticus was first fed through a tube in his mouth, and then a tube through his nose, and then bottle fed, and then finally breastfeed with a shield. When he was still in the hospital it was the funniest thing to watch him smell me. He would perk right up when he knew it was mealtime!

Even though we had some difficulties with the shield in the beginning (I really hated it), eventually we got rid of it. Now I love feeding him! Although I have to admit, it's a lot easier to love it when he's not demanding to be fed every hour :) But I truly do love breastfeeding and the miracle that it is. I'm thankful for the closeness it provides us, and the little smiles I get when he's done eating. I'm thankful that I can make the best, healthiest food for him. So there you have it! I'm thankful that I was able to get pregnant, have Atticus, feed him, and watch him turn into a huge, giggly, smiley monster!

11/14/2009

The Beach

Although it's only 8:30 here, it's been 14 very,very long hours since Atticus and I woke up. And so my grateful post for today will be short. But I just want to say...

I am so grateful for the beach.


We don't live anywhere near the coast now, and I often whine to Trevor about that. The beach is in my top 3 very, very favorite places to be. I'm grateful to my parents and siblings for creating such happy memories of camping at Wages Creek and going to Bodega Bay for day trips. I'm so grateful that I know how to boogie board, and that I was still able to really enjoy it after growing a kid and a two year hiatus. And I'm grateful that Trevor listens to my daydreams about living someplace where I can go to the beach every single day!

11/13/2009

Technology and Modern Conveniences

I love indoor plumbing! I am so grateful for it! Can you imagine having to go outside in the 10 degree weather every time you need to take care of business? I also love love love hot baths. There is almost nothing better after a freezing cold, snowy day.

Have you also thought about the internet lately? It's pretty great! We live several hundreds of miles away from most of our family, but I'm still able to talk with them nearly every day! And when we had that ridiculous problem with getting our Ensign mailed to us, it was GREAT to be able to download the Visiting Teaching lesson!

I am so grateful for these tender mercies!

11/12/2009

Trevor

I am so grateful for Trevor! He truly is my perfect fit. There's no one else who would put up with my eccentric ways and half-finished projects with such grace. Trevor is the most patient, kind, and giving man in the whole wide world.


Trevor on the very day that we met

By all rights, he should never have even been interested in me. Nearly every girl living in Riviera apartments would have loved to date him, most of them better looking and much more talented than me. The summer that we met we hung out a lot because of mutual friends, but by the fall we were both dating other people... with him dating my roommate. When they broke up, he stopped coming by the apartment, even to hang out with the the rest of our apartment "family" (there were 10 of us that played together pretty regularly). Soon after that, I broke up with my respective wrong choice too. I clearly remember mentally head slapping myself, "Why didn't I date Trevor? HE'S the kind of guy I should be after. What's wrong with me?"

To my surprise (shock, really) he called me a few weeks after that to ask me out on a date. We went to see "Savior of the World" together. I have a couple key memories of this date, one being that Trevor built the giant menorah they used in the play, and the other being that I tripped and fell flat on my face. Twice. I think I actually skinned my knee.


Trevor giving me a Spiderman placemat for Christmas, just after our first date. He still has that tie. It plays music. He accidentally set it off once during a prayer in church. I love him.

It was very near the end of the semester by now, and I was going home for my off-track, while Trevor was staying at school. I also knew that by the time I came back, Trevor would be transferring down to BYU in Provo, and I would probably never see him again. That didn't stop me from gladly holding his hand when he offered it the night before we both left for the semester. We didn't know it then, but that was also the night I met some of my in-laws for the first time. And what memory did I give them of their first future daughter-in law? A vision of me slipping and falling on the ice and landing on my rear end. His family was sure that Holly must be the one Trevor had a crush on.

Two nights later, Trevor was at home in Washington, and I was trapped at the airport with a delayed flight. I called him, and we talked for 5 hours, until my flight finally left at 2 in the morning. The next few months were spent the exact same way... on the phone. I can't tell you exactly when it happened, but by April, when I was going back to college, I had finangled my way into his heart, and we knew we were getting married.


This has turned into a pretty self-gratifying and epic post, but I think you can see how much I have to be grateful for: grateful that Trevor had the guts to ask out a girl when the courtship would not be easy, grateful that he has a sense of humor, grateful that his family never tried to talk him into someone better (despite my horrible first impression), and grateful that he chose me in the end. I love you Trevor!


11/11/2009

Two Weeks of Gratitude

For the next two weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, I'm going to try to write about one thing I'm thankful for each day. They'll probably be in no particular order, just posted as I'm feeling wordy about that particular subject.





Today I'm thankful for Veggie Tales. And Baby Einstein. Now Atticus
does not watch either one of these regularly, but when the teething monster has reared his ugly head, and I feel like I'm about to loose a nut, and I have laundry and dinner and my church calling and X and Y and Z to take care of, I am SO GRATEFUL that I can stick Atticus in front of a Baby Einstein DVD with a toy. I am under no delusion that Baby Einstein is making him smarter, but he can shift his attention between baby Monet and chewing on whatever stuffed toy he's holding, and he'll be quiet and happy.








He doesn't watch Veggie Tales as often, because we don't have any on DVD, but I've pulled it up on Youtube once or twice. He's more into the music. I'm particularly grateful because I LIKE Veggie Tales! I think they're hilarious! It's much easier to listen to than, say, Yo Gabba Gabba. Sorry Monica, but that dude in the orange freaks me out.


11/10/2009

Because Trevor really wishes he were a Marine.



I'm not hardcore enough to say "HOORAH!" and have it mean anything, so I'll just say Happy 234th birthday Marines!

11/05/2009

gDiapers and momblogging.

Hi guys! Does anyone who read this blog use gDiapers? I'm wondering what they're really like.

Also, I have become aware that this has become a "Mommy Blog" (see above sentance). I only blog about Atticus. That's pretty much because that's all my life consists of right now. I'm not a "blogeur", I'm not that original, but I'm going to try and add in some other, non-baby related things more often. Just thought you might want to know that I have not COMPLETELY succumbed to the deep dark depths of mom-sonality (mom-personality).

11/02/2009

Atticus Vs. The Butternut Squash.


...The Squash did not win.



In case you were wondering, his list of solids reactions have been as follows: He loves oatmeal ceral, he likes rice ceral, he tolerates sweet potato, and butternut squash... after 4 tries, he outright refused to swallow it. Apparently, that's a vegtable for another day. Next on the list: carrots.

DAVID.

Dear David,


rel-e-gate

to send or consign to an inferior position, place, or condition: He has been relegated to a post at the fringes of the diplomatic service.

Love,
Michelle