April 2011 In a Nutshell

Yet again it had been over a month since I have updated our blog. I don’t intend for this blog to be a once a month update on our family, it was just an intense month over here and blogging was the last thing on my mind. So let me stop the chit chat and tell you what has been going on in our lives since our last post.

We started the month of April off by celebrating Stewart and my birthday along with Sophie’s half birthday with a surprise party. I decided that we needed a reason to mingle with some of our friends so I convinced Stewart to go along with the idea of us throwing ourselves a surprise birthday party. We had a lot fun and a good turn out, I did not take any pictures of the occasion but I will post our invitation so you can get an idea of how one can throw a surprise party for themselves.

Sophie is now six months old (almost seven months now); I can’t believe that is has been six months since she has joined our family. She is such a joy in our lives! Here are some fun facts about Sophie you may enjoy:

* She now weighs 14lbs

* She is 24 ¾ inches tall

* She still loves to growl

* She is cutting her two bottom teeth, and through it all has been relatively happy

* She can sit up all by herself

* She has just started getting up on her hands and knees

* She loves attention!

*She was so excited to learn to roll over or start eating solid foods, but now that she has experienced those things she has no desire to continue doing them (although I am sure it just hurts her to eat right now because of her teeth)

* When she was eating more, she loved prunes and oatmeal and all her veggies, but dislikes apple juice for the time being.

* She still takes two naps during the day, and for the most part sleeps through the night.

I recently took some 6 month/Easter pictures of her, so here are a few of them just to remind you how adorable she is.

This is her, Baby Gap photo shot picture... Stewart and I think Sophie's facial expressions looks like something you would see on a baby model for a clothing line.

Other news, on the evening of April 8th Stewart and I decided to go out to dinner in celebration of Stewart finishing his PBL track at school. After we came home he threw up and started complaining about his stomach feeling bloated and uncomfortable. Around midnight he woke me up asking me to call someone to come give him a blessing because he was in serious distress. After the blessing we went back to sleep for a couple of hours and then Stewart woke me up again to tell me we needed to go to the ER. At the ER they gave him some morphine for the pain, and by morning he was admitted into the hospital so they could monitor him and perform more tests. Long story short after 4 days and several tests later they concluded that Stewart has Crohn’s which is what his younger brother has.

As a family we are holding on strong together through this whole hiccup in our lives, we have been so grateful for all the many people who have helped us out by providing child care so that I could be with Stewart while in the hospital as well as many phone calls to check up on us and of course all the prayers offered on our behalf. The love we feel from everyone has been overwhelming, and we are deeply touched. We are not out of the darkness yet with Stewart; he has some good days and some not so good days. We are trying to figure out what triggers his body to react negatively so that he can minimize his unhealthy days to a rare occurrence. As for his schooling, he is managing to keep on top of things, he takes his boards on June 7th and then he will have a few weeks off to just relax before he officially starts his 3rd year of med school.

It is spring here in West Virginia, the flowers are blooming and the Trees have covered up their ugly brown trunks with a fresh layer of green. I love how the trees seem to grow foliage overnight here, one night it’s brown everywhere and then the next day everything is green. It is beautiful!!! Stewart and I are getting excited to move to our new house in Beckley, WV. We are planning on moving sometime soon after Stewart takes Boards. Since we are moving to a house with a large yard, our landlords have given us the permission to plant a garden. So over the last few weeks we have made some quick trips to Beckley to prep our garden spot for planting. We have been blessed to have some friends with a Rota-tiller come and help us dig up the soil for planting. We have not planted our garden yet but we hope to this coming week. I don’t have any pictures of our garden spot but I will post a few pictures of our new home so you can see where we are moving to, which happens to be cheaper than the place we are renting now.

This is our current Apartment, we live in the red circled unit of this four-plex

This will be our new home come June: Front View

Back View

And just because I can here are more pictures of Sophie playing in the flower bed at our new home.

Can't reach the flower with my hand

Maybe I can get it with my mouth

Got it! Of course Dad had to help me :)

Moving on, we are now the owners of a second car. Since Stewart will need the car to get back and forth from his hospital rotations, and there would be no way for us to schedule me time to use the car we decided it was in our best interest to buy a second car. We have been looking since the beginning of this school year and until recently have not found anything to our liking and in our budget. I call this car Stewart’s baby; it is a 2008 Suzuki Forenza. Here’s a picture of it, it is a standard so I told Stewart I wont be driving it, I may change my mind however if we ever move back to Idaho where the roads are wider and not winding up and down through the hillsides.

I will be traveling to Idaho, next week so Sophie can see her Grandparents and Aunts/Uncles who have never met her before. I am a little nervous about flying with a baby alone, but if I backed out of the deal because of nerves I would have a lot of sad family back in Idaho. Hmmm, I think that is about all the update I have for you all. I hope to be back on her next week telling you what is up with us, but then again the word to highlight in that last part is “hope”.