I Made Jansen's Costume

It will come as no surprise to most of you that I made Jansen's costume:

This is on the way to preschool and every time I would turn around to talk to him I would start laughing. He insisted on being a ghost for Halloween for this reason: his favorite color is white. I figured I would do the sheet thing but cut a hole for his head and paint his face, but he wanted a sheet OVER his head. I NEVER imagined one of my children would wear a sheet and be a ghost on Halloween.

Two cute trick or treaters...to be wed in the year 2029.

Oops. Sincerely sorry about the bad luck everyone. A black cat just crossed your path.

Boo, Mom, Dad, and Meow

Don't you just want to pet her? Don't. She bites.

We aren't moving for 7 months, but I'm missing Columbus already looking at this...



And now on to November!!!

Noah's Headstone

This is an image of the headstone we have chosen for Noah. We really like the birds in it and the silhouettes of the little boy and girl because it kind of represents Jansen and Natalie. I will definitely post pictures when the actual headstone is placed at the grave site.

The Perks

There ARE perks to living far away from family.

Okay...there's one perk. I've only come up with one so far.

They come visit you! I get that heart-bursting, smile widening, silly stomach feeling when family comes to see us. It's marked on my calendar from the moment I know the date and once I even cleaned my fridge in preparation for the event. Those were a nice 3 days when my fridge was clean. I miss that...almost as much as I miss all our family.

When Nate's dad (and fellow birder extraordinaire) comes out this direction for his work we usually get to have him stay with us for a few days. This last time we made a last minute trip to Hocking Hills and froze our boo-tays off but it was, of course, worth it.

See that jacket I am wearing under Nate's jacket? I left it at church on Sunday. If you go to my church and are reading this, please don't steal it. It's kinda new and I really like it. See that threatening look Natalie is giving you? DON'T TAKE IT.

Had to throw this one in there:

I told you it was cold.

Missing all of you! Come visit again soon!

Carving Pumpkins: In Which Natalie Handles a Knife and Jansen Lights a Sharpie on Fire

No matter that they are already decaying and shriveled on the doorstep. And never mind that a friend quickly called her son away from Natalie's pumpkin because it looked so rotted and diseased. The important thing is:

We carved pumpkins! (And made memories. My very, very most favorite thing to do.)

Hand picked from a pumpkin patch in the dark because we were the last hay ride to go out that night. SPOOOOOOOKY!

Poor Jansen was intent on carving his pumpkin with a butter knife. We were able to distract him from this impossible and frankly dangerous task by having him scoop out guts. How many homemaker points do I get for saving the pumpkin seeds? I didn't roast them or anything...just ended up throwing them away the next day...but still, there's got to be points somewhere in that process.

Look how sweet this is. Nate is protectively hovering over Natalie AS SHE BRANDISHES A WEAPON! Neither of us are all that sure how she got that in her hand without us noticing, but be assured it was a short lived rendezvous with the knife.

A few minutes later as we are still working on our pumpkins (I was talking on the phone) I hear Nate talking to Jansen about NEVER, EVER lighting things on fire and how dangerous "that" was. He had lit the tip of a Sharpie on fire. There are still black marks on Jansen's pumpkin where he had tried to extinguish it.

The night is declared a raging success as we finished it off with pumpkin pie shakes.

It's a Long One

Before I tell you what this freaky-ness is about....

We had our Primary program today which was centered around the theme "My Eternal Family." All year as the kids have been working on these songs I have gotten teary eyed listening to them sing. One song in particular, "The Family is of God" is just incredible when you hear a group of Primary children sing it. I listen to it all the time in the car, even without my kids, because I love it so much. You can listen to it HERE. This is how it goes:

1. Our Father has a family.

It’s me! It’s you, all others too: we are His children.

He sent each one of us to earth, through birth,To live and learn here in fam’lies.

[Chorus]:

God gave us families to help us become what He wants us to be—This is how He shares His love, for the fam’ly is of God.

2. A father’s place is to preside, provide,

To love and teach the gospel to his children.

A father leads in fam’ly prayer to share

Their love for Father in Heaven.

[Chorus]

3. A mother’s purpose is to care, prepare,

To nurture and to strengthen all her children.

She teaches children to obey, to pray,

To love and serve in the fam’ly.

[Chorus]

4. I’ll love and serve my family and be

A good example to each fam’ly member.

And when I am a mom or dad, so glad,

I’ll help my fam’ly remember:

God gave us families to help us become what He wants us to be—This is how He shares His love, for the fam’ly is of God.

What a cool song.

So back to Saturday...it started off with a practice for the Primary program. After that was over, Nate and I raced over to the OSU game. If you can believe it, this was our first time going to a game since we have moved here. We hope to make it to maybe one more game because it's awesome being a part of this:

Yes, it rained. Yes, it was cold. BUT YES, they sell hot chocolate and warm pretzels so things worked out. Monica and I stole these garbage bag liners from some stadium garbage cans and they were perfect ponchos! (Okay...I got them at Wal-Mart. But if you want to pretend they are garbage bags you can, it's funnier.)

To end the day we attended a Halloween party. I have yet to figure out how to put together a Halloween costume without spending more money than I want to, so we borrowed these rockin' costumes from the Palmers. They looked so good the year they wore them that we pretty much copied them.

Cannot pull off the serious faces.

I had to run to the grocery the store that night to get nail polish remover to take off my black nail polish (I know black nails are trendy...but I cannot pull that off either) and it felt so weird to be stared at constantly. I tried to smile a lot so people would know it wasn't the "real" me. Cuz a real gothic would never smile at someone at the grocery store right?

Girlfriends

Don't you just love girlfriends? I do.

To recommend a good book:

To sit and chat with:

To just hang out with:
When you need a good squeeze:

To steal heavy machinery with:

"Sisters, we are all in this together. We need each other. Oh how we need each other. Those of us who are old need you who are young. And hopefully, you who are young need some of us who are old. It is a sociological fact that women need women. We need deep and satisfying and loyal friendships with each other. These friendships are a necessary source of sustenance. We need to renew our faith every day. We need to lock arms and help build the kingdom so that it will roll forth and fill the whole earth." -Marjorie Pay Hinckley

Just want all the girls and girlfriends in my life, past and present, to know how much I love you!

If Jansen Was a Balloon Animal...

Sing, Sing a Song

On our way to the cemetery last Saturday, Natalie burst into song for a few minutes. I'm so glad I caught it on camera. My two favorite things about this video:

1. When Natalie turns and sees that I have the camera and she inserts the phrase, "Time to say cheese," right in the middle of her song.

2. In the background when Jansen uses his new phrase, "I don't believe!" Not on this video, but even more entertaining, is when he says, "I believe!" when I tell him something he likes or is excited about. I don't know where he got that, but I'm loving it.

Obsessed

The love for trains is going strong. If you have a small male child I highly recommend getting him hooked on these contraptions. As long as you are okay with nerdy things like that. :) Jansen's new favorite activity is coloring in his train coloring book. He's doing it right now and the fact that he's whistling as he colors is pretty much melting my heart.

Sometimes he will be staring off into space and I will ask him what he's thinking about.
"I'm just thinking about trains."

Every preschool paper he brings home has a train drawn on the back. I love it.

Now to Nate. His birthday was on Tuesday and I had a little pirate themed birthday party for him. Unfortunately, he is NOT obsessed with pirates. But when you find pirate themed birthday stuff on killer clearance you have to go with it. Honey, I will try and do a bird theme next year okay? We had some friends over for pumpkin cake and ice cream and I hopefully embarrassed him with this:

I had to include the Halloween pictures of him I dug up from a few years ago.
He's so lucky he has such a weird wife.

Mr. Pumpkin Head

Last night we tried to create our own velcro versions of Mr. Potato Head using pumpkins, velcro, and felt. As with all grand ideas presented to toddlers and preschoolers, the kids went their own direction with it. Jansen took the "black permanent marker all over it" direction and Natalie went the way of "felt and stickers and stuff every which way." It was nice to get the Halloween spirit going.

Noah's Service

Saturday morning we had a small graveside service for our Noah. It was a cloudy, cool day with beautiful fall leaves and crisp air. We invited a small group of close friends. After an opening prayer, Nate shared some of his thoughts about our sweet boy and also about our Savior Jesus Christ. Our little group sang "I Feel My Savior's Love" and then I read a letter that was written to Noah.

Our wonderful and supportive bishop then dedicated the grave and we placed flowers on the tiny casket. There was a beautiful moment during the service when the sun broke through the clouds...it was really neat. Jansen and Natalie were a handful, but as our bishop's wife pointed out, that's life in a family and our young kids are simply full of personality and spirit and we wouldn't have it any other way.

We took a walk through the cemetery with the kids after finishing the service and had a wonderful time being together as a family. Life is beautiful and we are blessed. Thank you, thank you from a place deep in our hearts for all your prayers, service, support and love. We have certainly felt it and have been buoyed up by it. Thank you, Monica, for taking such special pictures for us that day. There is a little video I put together at the bottom of the blog that kind of goes through the whole morning.

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Noah's Dad

I absolutely cannot decide what to blog about and what not to blog about when it comes to Noah. I am a frequent blogger at heart and like expressing some of my feelings here, but I don't know what is appropriate and I don't want to over do it (for lack of a better way of explaining it) or sound trite. I guess that is the beauty of it, I get to decide. I know there are people who read this that will treasure some of these things I share and that is reason enough for me.

Nate didn't know I was taking this picture, but I knew I wanted to remember this moment. I had gone out shopping earlier trying to find a teeny something for Noah to wear when we bury him. Of course, I was unsuccessful. My ever-amazing husband decided to make something. Please keep in mind neither of us sew AT ALL. Like AT ALL. He sat down and got out the manual and stayed up till 2 in the morning making a precious little gown from one of Jansen's old baby blankets. I think it's beautiful. We took it to the mortuary today so they could put Noah in it. We also brought a family picture and a white blanket that Jansen and Natalie were blessed in for them to include in the casket. I am so thankful for such an incredible and faithful spouse at this time.

Little Noah

This blog has always been a way for me to record our life and to share things, big and small, with people that we love. This is certainly a more serious and difficult post to write, but definitely an important one and also an opportunity to say that I certainly feel loved at this time...by my Heavenly Father, family, and friends. I am completely overwhelmed by the kind, loving, and thoughtful people that I have in my life.

Last Thursday I got back from a 3 week stay in Utah with family. Nate had been doing another away rotation, this one at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas during that time. My last few days in Utah I had become concerned because I hadn't been feeling the baby move. I was coming up on 25 weeks, and it was somewhat early on in the pregnancy to be feeling consistent movement so I wasn't overly worried, but it definitely weighed on my mind. I prayed hard one day to just feel one really good kick so I could know things were okay, but just never felt anything I KNEW was the baby. I arrived home in Ohio fine and had an absolutely wonderful weekend with Kami (who had flown home with me) watching General Conference and shopping and eating and making things. Nate came home that weekend too...finally finished with those two away rotations. Kami left on Sunday afternoon, and Sunday evening things really kind of fell apart for me emotionally. Nate was putting the kids to bed and I just laid on the floor downstairs and tried so hard to feel the baby. I told Nate that I was really getting worried and we spent a good part of that night crying, praying, trying to feel the baby, holding each other, etc. I did call my doctor that night but she told me movement at that stage in pregnancy is really unreliable and that things were probably just fine and to just come in the next morning for my scheduled appointment. Although it turned out things were NOT fine, I was actually grateful for her words because I slept well that night and was not beside myself with worry.

At my appointment the next morning she was unable to find a heartbeat and unable to see one on an ultrasound. We came to the hospital a couple hours later and began the long process of getting ready to give birth to our little guy. After hours and hours of waiting for my body to be more ready to have the baby, he was delivered around 2:30 am. There was period of time right before he was born that things were a little hectic...the anesthesiologist was having a difficult time placing the epidural and then it was kinked...and this is all happening basically as I am feeling the extreme urge to push. I delivered him quickly after those painful moments, so no epidural for the actual birth but it kicked in soon after. NOT what I had planned on, but it's over now thank goodness. We really switched gears in our minds as we chose a name and have decided on Noah Roy Nye. We chose Noah because of its meaning, which is comfort, rest, and peace. Roy is Nate's paternal grandfather who Nate has always greatly loved and respected. We both held our little 13 inch, 1 1/2 lb boy for a few minutes.

Nate and I have always had everything a couple could ask for in the years we have been married and continue to feel so blessed even during hard times like this. I loved watching the video I posted above during my stay at the hospital because so many of you have been showing the love that President Monson talks about and I hope over the years we can do the same for you and others we come in contact with.