Perspective

I believe that so much in this life, and how you feel is based on perspective.

A couple weeks ago a wonderful woman in our ward  gave a talk and told 2 stories about a trip she went on. In one story she told about all of the horrible things that happened on the trip, and seriously it sounded like one of the worst trips anyone's ever been on. Then she told a second story, same trip. In this story she told everything good that happened on this trip and it sounded like a completely different trip. At one point I even asked Dan, wait was she talking about the same trip in both of those stories?

I've really been thinking about this a lot the past few weeks as we've had quite a few ups and downs. It's really been quite the emotional month and half. I wanted to sort of mimic that woman's talk and let our family and close friends who read our blog in on a little bit of what's been going on in our CRAZY but AMAZING life.

Ever since Lynden was born I have been looking forward to her first Christmas. Like so much so, that every time I would think about her first Christmas, and leaving cookies for Santa and opening presents I would cry.. not even joking. Well Christmas comes around and she wakes up crying at 2:30 am. She has a fever of 102 and I am soooo sick I can hardly even pick her up and help her. Dan rocked and finally got her back to sleep around 4 and I fell asleep too. We woke up around 7:30 and she was doing much better, however I was basically on my death bed. We got up, opened presents and I went straight back to bed. I slept for all but about 2 hours on Christmas day. I got up one time to get something to drink and Lyndie put her arms out to me and started to crying. She wanted me to hold her so bad, but I was so weak and afraid of getting her sick. I had to walk away from my crying daughter on Christmas, I started crying too, and it was so sad even Dan started crying.. awful!! Anyway a few days later I am all better and find out that this scratch I got on my hand a few weeks before turned into a massive infection and grew a cyst. So I was in and out of urgent care and they finally opened it up and cut out the cyst and I lost full use of my right hand for 2 days. Then on Dan's Birthday I had to take Lynden in to Urgent care because she had an ear infection. So for a couple weeks we are all basically feeling pretty okay. Then I am taking a shower one night and get VERY sick.. the only time I ever felt like this was when I was pregnant with Lynden. I got out and new right away I was pregnant. I took a test (2 actually) and sure enough, Positive! We were not trying and were VERY surprised but began getting VERY VERY excited. We waited a little bit and then decided it was time to tell our families. So I made a cute shirt Lynden was going to wear saying: "I am gunna be a BIG sister!" and we were going to Facetime with them and let them all in on the news. The morning we were about to do this I started bleeding. I went in to the doctor and got blood work and an ultrasound and the numbers were so low they said I was either miscarrying or I wasn't as far along as we'd thought. (We were thinking I was about 6 weeks) That night I bled and bled and bled. I stood in the shower bawling and basically watched it run down the drain. I went in the next day and sure enough my numbers had dropped by over 60. They confirmed that I was in fact miscarrying the baby. ((On a side note, Dan had given me a blessing and I am feeling very much at peace with everything, I know that the Lord has another plan for us, that involves a baby at another time. And we are so thankful for all of the prayers from our loved ones during that time))

Now, here is our last month and half from a completely different perspective. My side of the family was all together for Christmas in Minnesota and there really wasn't a way for us to see them because of the cost of tickets and Dan and I had decided to spend Lynden's first Christmas at home. Well due to my business going so well I was able to buy a VERY last minute plane ticket for Lynden and I to go out to Minnesota and  Lynden was able to meet her Uncle she hadn't met yet. And we got to go to my brother's girlfriends baptism. Then we came home and had a bunch of Dan's family over to spend Christmas Eve at our house. Lynden got a little sick Christmas eve, but was completely better by morning and acting like nothing ever happened. My bram business took off, and I started doing "deals" on Very Jane (veryjane.com) selling these little gauze wraps you wrap your baby in for their newborn photos and they have done SOOOO well. I wanted to bring in a little extra money to help us out each month, and I have been making more money than when I was working full time. Dan then came home from work last week after meeting with his boss who had just told him that they were basically putting him in the fast lane for an awesome promotion this summer (He just got one last summer) and put him completely in charge of one of their biggest accounts!! Lynden has been growing and developing exactly as she should. She has never had any seriously problems or illnesses. We are just so incredibly blessed.

Dan & I have just been talking about all of these things a lot over the last few weeks and thinking we could be really down right now and feeling bad about some things, but we are sooo happy right now. We feel so blessed and so grateful for all of the things we have. We have a home, we live in a beautiful warm place, we have an amazing loving relationship, we have beautiful healthy daughter and are both doing so well at our jobs. We really couldn't ask for more. So while our life is not perfect by any means we just alway try our best to thank God every single night for all that we DO have. All that we have been blessed with. And for the perspective to see and be so grateful for these things.