A Door Shut

I've been absent from the blog scene for some time now. Trying to keep up with the nausea of pregnancy becomes a full-time job for me making the thought of blogging out of the question.

I'm feeling much better and am ready and need to start doing the things again that I love, one of which is staying in touch with family and friends who are so far away.

I don't even know how to say this. This is not what I would want to be writing, but I feel it important to explain.

Last week I went to one of my routine doctor visits and learned that our baby was no longer living. I was nearly fourteen weeks and had no indication anything was wrong. We are heart broken.

This is the reason I am feeling much better, however I would give anything to be sick right now.

Even though I feel very sad, I am so grateful for a loving and selfless husband, two fantastic kids and family and friends who love me.

Our family has had its recent trials, this being the pinnacle. Right now the lesson I'm learning in all this is that life is just hard sometimes--for all of us. Randal and I are hopeful a window will be opening for us sometime very soon.

Thank you for all your love and prayers.

Knock Me Over With a Feather

A few miracles occurred around here this week.

First. I was asked to participate in a stake missionary workshop and share some food from Russia. In a valiant effort to make all the youth in the stake gag, I made borsht (beet soup). And guess who ate an entire bowl without complaining? Ethan! I'm shocked. And thrilled. But mostly shocked.


Second. Finally, half a year later, I got over my fear of putting nail holes in our new walls and hung a few pictures.

I realize now, looking at this picture, that one is awfully crooked. I'll go fix that immediately.


And third.

We found out we're expecting a baby!

We wanted to wait a bit to tell everyone. I lasted a week.

And since that bit of news may not make you as happy as it makes us maybe this will:



You can tell I'm pregnant. I cried all the way through this clip--three times. I don't know why. I just think that must have made those travelers so happy.

Question

I have a few questions.

Why is it that if I'm not quite ready to begin my New Year's goals on January 1st do I think the rest of the year is now shot? I'm already counting out 2010 as my year for any kind of growth.

Why do I still own socks from 10 years ago when Randal cannot manage to keep a pair holeless for more than a year. (He has gnarly feet. Don't tell him I said that.)

And why is it that the rest of my house falls apart after only a few days spent painting? Seriously, I, myself, wore the same thing three days straight; and I'm pretty sure Adelaide never made it out of her pajamas. There really shouldn't be this much laundry!

In a Nutshell

Alright, I told you I'd finish the Christmas diatribe last week, and didn't. Sorry to disappoint. Look on the bright side, at least you're not paying to read this blog...yet.

We had a fantastic Christmas. Not that it wasn't without mayhem, mess and even a lot of vomit. Despite all that, I'm willing to bet it will be one of those Christmases our kids will remember forever.

Randal's brother and sister came with their families to visit. A full house. Nine kids and six adults. We were outnumbered, true. Thank goodness these kids are adorable and happy to be with one another again, or we might have been in trouble.

We merged our families' traditions.

Gingerbread houses. (Yes, Adelaide is in her pajamas. I refuse to confess the time of day.)

Christmas Eve we held a talent show as per Bangerter tradition. The kids sang songs, recited poems and reenacted the nativity.

At bedtime Uncle Rich told all the older ones they were not allowed to leave Ethan's room until the clock said 7 am. Then he sneakily set the clock back an hour. Our hats off to Rich!

After a great debate, Randal and I decided not to feed Ethan's video game obsession with a Nintentdo DS from Santa. That is until it was a Black Friday door buster. At risk of being trampled or sucker-punched in the check out line, Randal managed to wrangle a DS for Ethan.

And it was worth it.

This is the money shot. Sorta. It was taken seconds after all the jumping, and the whooping, and the hollering.

We skimped on Adelaide's gift to make up for the DS. Not intentionally! Geez, what kind of parents do you think we are?

She loves to play with food. Its the only thing she does play with, really. She already has a kitchen and playhouse. We decided to expand on it by giving her a shopping cart, cash register and more food. They happen to be pretty cheap toys. In more ways than one. But she doesn't care.

It turns out the best gift was from my brother, Mike, and his family. They gave us four homemade marshmallow shooters. And in a stroke of pure genius, rather than including marshmallows they sent 100 Nerf darts

(This is my best attempt to get Ethan and Addie to look thuggish.)

The kids have had a great time with those shooters. I don't mind so much, until Ethan discovered the darts stick to the windows. They leave a little ring so now my windows look pockmarked.

Whew! With this post I can now say Christmas is officially over. Except for an apology for the absence of a Nelson Christmas card this year. I really have no excuse.

30 Rock

Are you tired of Christmas yet? Too bad. I'm catching up on the blog with a recap.

We took a little trip to the big city.

Silly us to think a week before Christmas we could visit NYC and actually ice skate at Rockefeller Square. Well, I guess we could have if we were into standing in a mile-long line in 20 degree weather. We quickly gave up on that dream. It was only my dream anyway, really.

We took the kids to see Mary Poppins on Broadway. All in all, they liked it. And that's all I'm going to say about that. We paid a pretty penny for their seats, so by darn they liked it.


We did miss out on seeing two iconic sites--the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty. Thank goodness the Toys R Us has the Lego versions.

And a ferris wheel. Which we rode for a mere fraction of the price of Mary Poppins' tickets. When will we ever learn.


Here is a bit of irony for you. The weather was as beautiful as one could expect NY to be in December. Well, until we tried to drive home that is. After several more hours driving in a snowstorm than we had expected we decided we'd better pull off and stay the night somewhere. It turns out we pulled off to the very same place we did last year after trying to drive home in an ice storm.
Go Scranton!

Oh, you're not getting off that easily. I'll be back tomorrow with more Christmas, Christmas, Christmas!

Life Imitating Art

So we had a dilemma. One we were able to avoid last year because we spent the holidays in Utah. The problem: our fake tree does not fit in our old, lower-ceilinged house. Having grown up with a real tree, I already have a few problems with owning an artificial tree, so the thought of buying a second fake tree was an issue. Well, we started a new New York tradition thanks to the suggestion from a friend. We visited a local tree farm and cut our own tree. (There are definite perks to living out in the country.)

Perhaps waiting until the 17th is cutting it a little close, but we wanted to wait until Randal came home from his looooong trip. We picked him up from the airport and headed to the tree farm, hoping to make it there before the sun went down.

We made it. We had a great time. And now we have a beautiful, yet sorta ugly (perfect, tree symmetry is argualbly an advantage with the fakies) living tree.

Fun fact: John, from the tree farm, told us it takes 14 years to grow a tree this tall. They plant 2500 trees every year and sell about 800.

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The thought occured to me. Our little excursion was, in fact, a case of life imitating art. Last year, Randal's parents gave us this picture for Christmas:

Because the children looked so much like Ethan and Addie they thought it was the perfect gift to commemorate our first Christmas in the New England area. We love it. Now the picture seems even more fitting.

I wonder if the three-year-old girl in the painting screamed and yelled at her older brother to let her pull the heavy tree, "all by myself!" too. Because ours did.

Now we have our dad back and everything is right with the world again. We hope you're having a very, merry Christmas whether it be fake or real.

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PS--I posted very little while Randal was away. I'm still not sure why that is, but I will soon make amends. Both my mom and my dad came to visit. I have the best parents in the world and have alot to say about the time we spent with them. Stay tuned.

R&R (Rest and Renovation)

As I said, Randal has been gone for quite some time. He did fly home for a whirlwind Thanksgiving weekend. And this was the aftermath:


Yes, that is our first floor ceiling.
Yes, that is Randal's foot.
And no, we were not planning on remodeling that part of the house. It just happened.