Thanksgiving

Natalie, Liberty and Nathan...it is so nice that they live close enough to visit more often! Everyone was running around too much to get the entire family. Which reminds me, Natalie if you are reading this will you email me family picture if you have one?

Wyatt loves to snuggle up with Aunt Sylvia... so sweet!! I love this picture!
Carma only has 2 girl cousins here (and one is only 2 months old) and 7 boy cousins. So she LOVES to play with Liberty. I love that they are both at an age to enjoy each other, I hope they will always remain close. I was never close to my cousins which makes me sad.

Judson and Carma loved that we were at a church and they could actually run around and play. I love to see them playing together! It is so cute when they do.

Anyway, we had fun with Natalie and Kenn in for the week (we actually got to play some games this visit) and Thanksgiving was nice and low stress. The most fun was that I got to cook again, I really missed cooking while on bedrest and recovery. I cooked Peach Almond Pie, White Chocolate Carmel Apple Pie (this one was a TOTAL flop... but sounds good huh). Funny story; I actually didn't recognize the pie on the table for some reason. So I took a piece and tasted it I thought "who made this nasty pie".hahahaha I realized later that I in fact I made that "NASTY pie". hahaha I also made 2 Tassin family traditions that I can't do without: Artichoke Casserole and 4 Cheese Macaroni. YUMMY! I LOVE FOOD! WAY TOO MUCH!! dang it!

Adjustments

OK, three kids has been a HUGE adjustment for us. Having a new baby and no sleep is harder than I remembered, but I guess that is the plan. Make us forget what NO sleep feels like so we will do it again. I THOUGHT I remembered, but I was way off... this is harder. I am finally getting more used to it and trying to learn how to juggle kids and household stuff, which leaves no time for things like... ME! What is a shower? or working out? Oh, well, there will be time for that soon enough.. I HOPE. The 3 hours of sleep a night is getting easier too. So all is good. But the hard thing is that I FINALLY feel alive and can do things now, but I can't. All I can do is sit and hold him, so he better be glad he is adorable!!

The reason I never post anymore is that I have to choose between posting and cleaning during the minutes he isn't demanding to be held. I always choose cleaning since my house is a good 5 months behind on cleaning. Soooo... I will try to post more often and I have a million blogs to read. Hopefully I will get to your blogs soon.... I miss reading them.

Wyatt Update:
He had breastfeeding jaundice... yes my breast milk caused his jaundice to get worse, so I quit nursing for 3 days and only did formula... it got better and now I am back to nursing. HURRAY! He seems to be doing much better. He is 5 weeks and already 12 lbs. That went by SO fast. He is starting to smile and coo and I am reading his cries a little better. The smiles make everything SO worth it. He is SOOOOOO CUTE!!! You know you are in love when totally sleep deprived and you have to stay up to make sure you don't miss a singe smile or coo at 2:00 am. Michael and I just melt.

The kids are getting used to him too. Carma seems to be a tiny bit less sensitive and understands that I can't jump up at every request. She is more sincere at her affections toward him, it is pretty cute. It is SOOO hard to give what I feel is adequate attention for Judson and Carma. Also a challagne to have energy to feel and give the love that I want and feel I need to. That is so hard and the guilt is almost overwhelming at times. I wish I were more patient and less high strung. Talk about refiners fire... too bad that I just feel the burn... burnt actually. I hope to get better at this.

OHHHHH, I wanted to say thank you to Yolanda Gripe Water and Thank you to the Makers of Gripe Water!! This stuff is AMAZING!!! Totally different baby. He has been so much better, still wants to be held ALL DAY and night, but it is better and he sleeps for 2 hours at a time now. I swear to not eat beans for at least 2 months after last night, even though I am sure it would have been worse with out GW... I LOVE beans and will miss them...sniff sniff.

OK, now I am just rambling....

Halloween

Halloween!
It was interesting having a baby so close to Halloween. I LOVE Halloween... not any of the scary stuff.. (I avoid TV during Octover b/c I can't find the remote fast enough to change the scary movie adds even). But I love all the dress up stuff and chocolate and especially fall! This year was an especially beautiful season. But we had to miss several of the Halloween festivities. I had the baby on the School's Spootacular night .. so sad to miss that. It is the cutest tradition the PTA puts on. Maw-maw and Aunt Nikki were sweet enough to take Juddy for me. And I was in the ER the night of the ward Trunk or Treat... sniff sniff. But I DID make it to Cynthia's for our Halloween tradition. Here is a pic of our family. Carma looks hilarious in this picture...it is So difficult to get a picture of her... she IS a cutie though.. and she was SO excited for Halloween. She kept asking us everyday what we were going to be for at least a week. And she would end saying "And I am going to be Cinder-RELLA" (stresses the rella part everytime).


So, Judson originally wanted to be Iron Man. We looked up on the net and the costume was
$40.00. What the heck. I was going to buy it for him and let him pay for half.. but dad said "NO". Good thing b/c 2 weeks ago he said that he is growing out of Super Heroes and that he wanted to spend his money on cool toys instead. Phew.. thanks hon for stopping that purchase. $40.00 on a costume.. outrageous! Aunt April saved the day with his homemade Jack Sparrow Costume!!




Maw-maw took Judson trick-or-treating since I could only walk so far... Thanks maw-maw. Judson loved it!

So, this is Carma's first trick or treating. She honestly has had an ear infection the past 3 years.... I hope the ear infections are far behind us now. So this is the first one she has been well enough to go. We went around to a couple of houses.. she got scared at the third house and saw Michael on our porch and said "I want to go home now and see daddy". She is SO my daughter and scared of her own shadow!!! Poor thing.. it isn't fun being a scardiy cat, but it is just our nature. She was so stinking cute saying "trick or treat". She used to say "trick or treak" .. so cute! They grow up way too fast.

This is actually Michael's costume on Wyatt. Istn' it SO cute! Dana do you recognize this? It is the bicycle helmet cover you won for Judson... keep eatin those pop tarts:)
Our little Squirt!! Thanks Ashley for this SUPER cute costume. He looks so dang cute!! He was only 8 days old for Halloween! So tiny! I swear he is bigger already.
Here are some of the cousins at Aunt Cynthia's house. It is tradition for the family to go to their house and have Soup and bread. I love that tradition.. what a cute one. April made these Three Musketeer costumes and the baby is Puss in boots. SO CUTE HUH! I wish I could have gotten Rachelle's kiddies too, they were ADORABLE too. Can I say that it is pretty much impossible to get a decent picture of Carma. These are the best ones .. sad huh.

Brothers

I can't believe how much Wyatt looks like Judson when he was a baby! These boys are so cute!!

He is Here!!

I would like to thank my friend Jamie for taking these AMAZING pictures! She is just starting out her photography "career" and said these were just for practice. PRETTY AMAZING for practice in my opinion.

He is finally here!
Wyatt Eli
8.5 oz 20 in
He is such a cutie!!!
I am doing AWESOME!! Baby is doing EVEN BETTER!! He is THE CUTEST thing I have ever seen. He looks just like Michael, he is SO CUTE!! I wish he had Michael's cute dimple, but no sign of it yet.
He is a natural big mouth nurser, which makes life SO MUCH easier, so far no pain in the breast feeding area, but I am sure it will come. I am waiting for my milk to come in, but he is gulping something down.. he is SO CUTE!! His little round head and black brown eyes just stare at me while I nurse. I love him so much!!
SO the section went well, they couldn't get him out. They had to use forceps and his head is bruised a bit. The Dr had his hand all the way in my stomach and he still couldn't get him, he finally had to turn him around and take him feet first. He swallowed fluid, but he is totally fine. I can't believe how fat he is, he has chubby legs compared to my other two.
The Dr. had a hard time sewing me up b/c my fibroids are so big that he couldn't fit it through the opening and had to sew it inside which made it hard. I bled A LOT. He thought I would need 2 transfusions, but so far so good. I feel fine. He is so funny, he basically told me next time I have a baby he wont be around and started naming other doctors for me to go to b/c he was having such a hard time with the surgery---and he has been doing this for 30 years. He is an AMAZING Doctor. He cracks me up! He was cracking jokes the entire time... we were all laughing the entire C-section. He said I will look 8 months pregnant for a while, I hope he is joking but so far it doesn't look good. He said he never wants to see another fibroid again after my surgery.

It is SO fun holding him and having him cuddle me and nurse. It is the sweetest thing in the entire world!!
I am so grateful to Heavenly Father for answering my prayers and for this amazing blessing!! That we are all OK and healthy, and for WONDERFUL family and friends.

Old Man Winter

Old Man Winter is here a little too early!!! I opened my window on Sunday to find.... SNOW!! CRAZY. I am not a huge fan of winter... I particularly don't enjoy the snow, mostly b/c I hate driving in it.. and winter seems to last WAY too long. But on a positive note, I DO love winter clothes! Which will come in handy after being extra "fluffy" after giving birth.

So the kids were all too excited to go play in it. Here are our pictures:

These next pictures are just them in their matching Halloween shirts.

OK, so this has nothing to do with either events, but here are some FUNNY quotes that the kids have said this week.

Judson was taking the clothes out of the dryer and he found Michaels underwear and he said "WHO's are these? These are HUUUGGEEE!!" bwhahahaha I almost peed my pants laughing. I am sure I wouldn't have laughed as hard if he would have said that about mine..hahahaha

The same night we were watching "Reflections of Christ" for Family Home Evening and Carma saw the picture of Christ Healing the blind man and she (not meaning to be sacrilegious, but saying he is cool?) said "Jesus is a Rock Star!". What will that girl come up with next?

Proposition 8

This decision has been harder for me than I ever thought it would be. When I was younger I had NO question in my mind whether or not Same Sex Marriage should be allowed. No way, it was just wrong.. esp in the 80’s I remember it being so WRONG to be gay and not accepted in society. I remember seeing two ladies kissing when I was 10 or 11 and being so confused and honestly grossed out. Thanks to television my views have been shaken. When I am watching TV only cruel and ignorant people are against homosexuality. The shows I watched were very moving and I started to feel so much compassion for these gay couples, which I am grateful for. I got to see another side that I never thought about. One of the shows that I am refereeing to is ER when Carrie lost her partner and she had no rights to any of the funeral arrangements or the baby they adopted together. It was very confusing and conflicting to me. Since then I have been a little bit of a fence sitter. I mean everything in my compassionate nature told me that this isn’t right to take this away from people. I still feel that it doesn’t seem fair and is still confusing. I wish I had all the answers and understanding, but I don’t.

HOWEVER, as I have been prayerfully asking Heavenly Father for an answer I do feel closer to understanding. I read

“In today’s secular world, the idea of tolerance has come to mean something entirely different. Instead of love, it has come to mean condone – acceptance of wrongful behavior as the price of friendship. Jesus taught that we love and care for one another without condoning transgression. But today’s politically palatable definition insists that unless one accepts the sin he does not tolerate the sinner.”

That helped me explain why I was so confused. I felt that I had to ACCEPT that homosexuality is not a sin and I just couldn’t do that. I DO believe it is a sin. Do I think that all of my gay friends are evil sinners and want to shun them? NO. Society is teaching me that I am a politically incorrect jerk who hates all homosexuals if I don’t believe what they are doing is right. I am not a jerk, and I AM compassionate, so WHY do I feel so bad and confused?
As Elder Dallin H. Oaks has explained:Tolerance obviously requires a non-contentious manner of relating toward one another’s differences. But tolerance does not require abandoning one’s standards or one’s opinions on political or public policy choices. Tolerance is a way of reacting to diversity, not a command to insulate it from examination
Even as I write this I am debating weather or not to send this on or post on my blog. But WHY??? B/C for some reason it is so much more acceptable for morals that are opposing to general Christian beliefs to be SHOVED down my throat than it is to be able to stand up for my beliefs. Everywhere I look I see half naked women, sexual innuendos, premarital sex, alcohol cigarette adds… last but NOT least..pornography everywhere. I don’t see people going ballistic on this, instead it is TOTALLY acceptable. It is getting to the point that God/Christianity are not allowed to be mentioned in government places but HEAVEN FORBID me complaining that I don’t want opposing beliefs being taught to my child in school. (When the state says that same-sex unions are equivalent to heterosexual marriages, the curriculum of public schools will have to support this claim. Beginning with elementary school, children will be taught that marriage can be defined as a relation between any two adults and that consensual sexual relations are morally neutral. Classroom instruction on sex education in secondary schools can be expected to equate homosexual intimacy with heterosexual relations. These developments will create serious clashes between the agenda of the secular school system and the right of parents to teach their children traditional standards of morality. ) IT is TOTALLY acceptable to teach my child that gay couples are normal and should be accepted in our society and I am a jerk for not agreeing with this. So why not teach them about Purgatory, heaven and hell, three degrees of Glory, reincarnation, Buddah, Alah.. WHY? Because this is a school, not a place to teach about beliefs. My son never came home from school with a pamphlet on a heterosexual family. Also, can you imagine the confusion of these poor children. It should be up the the parent of when and how they would like to teach about different beliefs. My son is 8 and I am still working on the sex talk and soon will explain what homesuality is. I don't want it SHOVED down his throat in school! especially as early as kindergarden!

Legalizing same-sex marriage will affect a wide spectrum of government activities and policies. Once a state government declares that same-sex unions are a civil right, those governments almost certainly will enforce a wide variety of other policies intended to ensure that there is no discrimination against same-sex couples. This may well place “church and state on a collision course..

The prospect of same-sex marriage has already spawned legal collisions with the rights of free speech and of action based on religious beliefs. For example, advocates and government officials in certain states already are challenging the long-held right of religious adoption agencies to follow their religious beliefs and only place children in homes with both a mother and a father. As a result, Catholic Charities in Boston has stopped offering adoption services.

Other advocates of same-sex marriage are suggesting that tax exemptions and benefits be withdrawn from any religious organization that does not embrace same-sex unions [17] Public accommodation laws are already being used as leverage in an attempt to force religious organizations to allow marriage celebrations or receptions in religious facilities that are otherwise open to the public. Accrediting organizations in some instances are asserting pressure on religious schools and universities to provide married housing for same-sex couples. Student religious organizations are being told by some universities that they may lose their campus recognition and benefits if they exclude same-sex couples from club membership"

So basically this infringes on MY RIGHTS as a citizen to believe what I feel is right. Instead, I would be FORCED to accept this behavior. How is that constitutional?

The arguments can go on and on… and I hate that this is such a sensitive subject and even hurtful to those who may feel judged wrongly or made to feel evil for being gay. Especially if they were born with these tendencies. These individuals may wonder if they were born gay why can we judge them and expect them to be different. I mean, it isn’t as if they can FORCE themselves to love and be attracted to the opposite sex. I don’t even want to pretend to have all of the answers. I have no idea what I would do if that were me, and if my child ever comes home and tells me he/she is gay I would NEVER shun them. I would love them and just ask them to follow what is in his/her heart. And I would hope to be able to support and love them while staying true to my beliefs.
I know those who believe that homosexuality is normal would disagree with the statement that I think it would be a hard trial to have, maybe they wouldn’t think it is a trial.

As far as LDS church members are concerned, I think this is where people will have to decide which way they decide to believe. There are many prophecies where the Lord states that in the end even the most faithful will fall away from the church. This could be one of those beliefs that will make people so angry and want to leave the church. The fact is that the General Authorities have stated very clearly what the Lord would have us believe. But it is up to find our own answers “I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.” Moroni 10: 4-5

As I write this I get a little nervous of losing friends over this, and if not the friendship itself, then respect. I know I have several friends who will COMPLETELY disagree with me. I would like the same treatment given to me as I plan to give to those opposing my beliefs. I will still LOVE and ADORE my good friends who oppose these beliefs and will still respect your views and opinions. I just ask for the same, that we can agree to disagree and not argue or fight about this. I just want to be more brave and stand up for what I believe with out having great fear of losing those I love. For these are my beliefs. 2 Tim 8:2 “Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord.”