Birth Mom

While my sister, Jerilie, stayed with us last week I was privileged to host a lunch with the birth mom and grandmother of her beautiful daughter, Ashley.  Ashley has an open adoption, which means my sister is still in contact with Ashley's birth mom.  She sends letters and pictures monthly and gets together with the mother as often as she chooses.  The frequency of contact will decrease over time as she sees fit, with her daughter's best interest in mind.

I was thrilled to be part of such a meeting.  I didn't know what to expect and was touched by the interactions I witnessed.  The birth mother beamed as she beheld Ashley, with a sparkle in her eye and a smile that never ceased as she ogled over every action and cute story.  As I looked around the room it struck me what a sacred experience it was.  Two women shared a bond that not many will ever understand - both love Ashley beyond words and both want the very best for her.  That's why her birth mother went through with an adoption that was no doubt painful, and it is what my sister works for everyday.  The happiness and well-being of this beautiful little girl is what all of us want.  I am grateful for adoption and what it gives to children and women who yearn to be mothers.  It heals hearts, blesses lives and makes the world a better place.

Christmas with the Hutchings

I can honestly say that Christmas this year did not turn out how I thought it would.  We had been so consumed by our kitchen project and then recovering from it that we barely had time to plan and prepare before our company was here and it all started.

We did do a few fun things that we snapped pictures of as we went.

Gingerbread houses (in my case, a gingerbread jeep) at Michelle's annual birthday/Christmas party.



Caroling to the neighbors on Christmas Eve.  One of my friends said in all the years she's lived here she had never had carolers!

And of course, making and eating delicious treats.

We ended Christmas Eve with our new tradition, carried on for three generations, of acting out the Christmas story while reading Luke chapter 2.  My sister's son, Aaron, loved being Joseph and our little Jaime didn't make a half-bad Mary.

Then we let the kids open their new pajamas, another third generation tradition.

Vida's head was drooping (as pictured above) so we said "Jaime, hold her head!"  She rose to the occasion, although not how we anticipated...

Then we put all the kids to bed and got to wrapping and organizing presents.

 

On Christmas morning we opened stockings, ate breakfast and got ready for sacrament meeting.

 

After celebrating the true meaning of Christmas by singing hymns about the birth of Christ, we came home and opened presents.  The favorites for our children were definitely the bumbo for Vida and bathroom step stool for Jaime.

 

She put the step stool together with her daddy and must have washed her hands five times the first time we put it up to the sink for her.  She loves it.

 

We had a somewhat lean gift-giving this year because of some big ticket purchases we've made lately.

A family iMac to replace our college laptops.


A new washer and dryer set to replace the decrepid ones with oh so many problems.

 

And of course the one that still makes our house sparkle - the new and improved kitchen with all of the new tools it required.


Add in the cost of hospital bills from Vida and we were at our max for this season.  But who can complain?  I get to spend all season looking into the face of that rugged bearded husband of mine who is gifting our family with eleven days of uninterrupted family time.

Secret Sleeper

Today I went grocery shopping with my sister, Jerilie, who is visiting for Christmas.  Her husband watched the kids at home.  When I got back we were unable to locate Jaime.  We searched and searched and then finally found her like this.

Tucked under our bed, asleep.  Poor thing.  She woke up last night sick and has been throwing up ever since.  I'm glad she is finally getting some rest, no matter how she gets it.

Our Kitchen!

Hey, there!  Our kitchen is DONE.  Okay, so it's almost done, but I'm going to show you anyway.

Looking back I'm confident this project was born in some of the worst circumstances possible.  It's winter.  We have a newborn.  We didn't plan or prepare at all - no food planned out and no idea how much it would cost.

I was able to scrounge together a couple of before pictures from around the time we moved into the house.

Old Kitchen

Old Dining Room

Two weeks ago we emptied and removed our cupboards, purchased a steamer and began removing wallpaper.

After peeling, steaming, scraping and scrubbing every ounce of wallpaper and glue off our walls I vow to NEVER put wall paper up in any of the houses I live in, no matter how cute it is (this wallpaper was NOT, by the way).  Painting over paint is easy, removing wallpaper to paint is a nightmare.

Our family crew showed up and helped us rip down the dropped ceiling (it was lower than our normal ceiling by 12 inches) and begin installing our new can lights.  Love them.


At this point I was really starting to regret starting this project, because our kitchen looked like this:

We enlisted our home teacher to help Justin put up the ceiling drywall and patch the walls while I scraped the popcorn texture off the dining room ceiling.  Getting the ceiling up was the milestone that was most needed.  Without the ceiling our house wasn't insulated and our home wasn't warm.  We got it up and Justin was able to climb back into the attic and pile the insulation on (he had removed it at the start, and thoroughly despised the cramped process).

Then came the mudding and sanding, mudding and sanding, and mudding and sanding.  What a horrible mess that makes.


All of this dirty work thanks to superman.  He stayed up so late every night working on this and still got up early every morning to go to work because of my repeated pleas of "I can't live like this."  I never did take a picture of what our living room looked like during all of this and I'm kind of glad I didn't - cabinets, dishes and snack foods everywhere.


All of that prep work took the longest.  Once the new ceiling was up, mudded, sanded and every inch of our walls was scrubbed to remove every minuscule amount of glue, we were ready to texture.

We borrowed a compressor and texturing gun from my brother and Justin went at it.  Once he got going, texturing the walls took less than ten minutes.  Texturing the ceiling took decidedly more time. We used my brother's hawk and it turned out beautifully.  We let that dry for a day and then Justin stayed up until 4:30 a.m. priming and painting our walls and ceiling.  We chose chocolate to complement our caramel cabinets and new white bead board.  The girls and I got out of the house for the night to avoid fumes and came home to this sight in the morning:


I was so incredibly excited at this point!  One thing I learned is that the beginning stages of these projects take so long and it feels like you're getting nowhere, but then the last few stages go quickly and make a big difference!

I could not wait another day, so I cleaned like crazy to get it ready to put back together after he got home from work.  As soon as he got home I helped him mount the cabinets, loaded them up and kept cleaning.

New Kitchen

The next day we got our carpets cleaned.  They really needed it after eating on them for two weeks and getting so much construction dust everywhere.  After that relaxing day Justin got to work on this paneling and moulding.  This is the last step of the process and it's almost done!  A little more moulding on the edges and around the pantry and porch doors and we are done!

New Dining Room

This was our first big house project on our own house.  Justin has a ton of experience with construction but this was my first personal experience with it.  It was very hard for me to deal with the mess, chaos and exhaustion that accompanied it, all while still adjusting to having two kids.

Just another hurdle in life.  Aren't they all alike?  We think they are unbearable in the moment and then, in the end we realize we are better off and it was all worth it.

Jerilie

This is my lovely sister, Jerilie, and her family.  She and her husband, Rick, have not been able to have children on their own and have been fortunate enough to adopt two children, Aaron and Ashley.  Her adoption stories were recently posted on a friend's blog.  Their lives are full of faith and their story is inspiring.

Part 1 and Part 2

2 months!

Little Vida is exactly two months old today.  She's about the most darling thing there ever was and has seriously got the most delectable "kissing cheeks" I've ever seen.  They hang a good inch beyond her jaw bones!



Vida got her first round of immunizations this afternoon, which is always a difficult experience for me.  Letting her go through something painful for the greater good isn't easy, but I believe that principle is part of good parenting.

The doc says she's 68th percentile for weight, 90th percentile for height and 34th for head circumference.  What I want to know is what percentile those cheeks are in.