McLaws do Eternity!

Brittney and Derek got married in May in the Saint George Temple.  The WHOLE family was together for a lovely weekend of wedding bliss!  We drove down on Wednesday and had a girls night that evening with the older sisters and mom.  Then on Thursday Brittney took out her endowments and they got married and had their reception on Friday.  Everything was so beautiful!  I am so happy that this little lady has found the love of her life.  She is such an inspiration and amazing example to everyone she comes in contact with.  I remember 5 years ago when I met and started dating Woody and he just talked about Brittney all the time and honestly I was more scared to meet her than anyone else.  She was Woody's very best friend pretty much until I married him, and even now we are a pretty close tie for bestie...and I'm okay with that :)  I'm so glad she liked me even though I was barging in and stealing her brother and colored her hair really dark the first time I met her.  She is one of my best friends and I really could not be happier for her and Derek.

The beautiful couple!

All the siblings in the same place at the same time!

SEEESTERS!!! We are so lucky that we all get along and love each other so much!

Woody and Brittney definitely rapped at the reception.  Eminem would be proud.

Baby in the Making!

In February I was 16 weeks a long and was able to find out what kind of baby we were going to have! Woody wanted me to find out during our appointment on a Saturday and then tell him on his birthday the following Wednesday.  He be cray cray am I right?  We went to the hospital with Brad and Kenzie who were due six days after us.  Their Bishop's wife had just finished training to be an ultrasound tech so she let us come in free of charge to practice on.  I was a little hesitant since she was so new but I had another appointment scheduled on Woody's birthday somewhere else already, just in case she wasn't 100% sure.  Woody waited in the hall way while the three of us took a little looksie! It was very clear that he was ALL boy!  Woody was very good at not listening or peeking and all he could hear was me clapping and WOOHOOing!  So the next four days was really hard since I knew what the gender was and I had to be so careful to not say HE.  Woody's birthday arrived and we had a huge dinner at Pizza Pie Cafe with all of our family and friends, sort of as a gender reveal party.  It was a blast! It was so fun to have all our closest people there to celebrate with us.

Oh yeah, we named him Weston! The other part of Woody's present was  tell him that I agreed with the name he loved:)

 My pregnancy was pretty textbook.  Horribly sick for the first 16 weeks, pretty much amazing second trimester, and then the usual  heartburn-can't breathe-can't sleep-pee 6 times a night-full after two bites of my meal because baby is taking up all the room third trimester.  All of my appointments went well and I was a low risk pregnancy.
Lots of really great things happened while this baby was cooking, it helped make the time go by really fast!

Alaska reunion with the best girls!  Angie and I made Christmas cards to give everyone to tell them we were both pregnant.  Laura is pregnant in this picture too!

I eventually left the Heber office once there was an opening in Provo.  My lovely Heber family took me to Tarahumara for a goodbye baby shower.  They are some of the best people I know!

Elinor Rose Mullen was born!!!

My adorable friends threw me and Weston the cutest Dr. Seuss baby shower!  My sisters and mom threw me one for the family and ward friends the week after but somehow I have no pictures of it.

Michael Graduated from Timpanogos High School!

Brittney got engaged and married! More on that in another post!

Samantha Lynn Vance was born!!!

David was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints by big brother Woody!

Amy and Angie were pregnant at the same time and we were all due within one month of each other! Our babies ended up all being born within 9 days! More on that later.  Loved going through this with some besties!

The Cancer

Guys! look! I didn't wait another year to blog!

January brought just about the worst news our family has ever received.  Momma Jo found a lump under her arm and went to get it looked at.  They did a biopsy and it came back as the cancer of the breastses.  Honestly, January and February are pretty much a huge blur now and I really don't care to remember it.  I do remember the key events though.. Mom had many a doctor appointments with I swear like a million different doctors!  She decided with the advice and support of her doctor to have single mastectomy.  They were pretty dang sure it had not spread to her right side.  They did however, know that it was stage 2 because it had spread to those lymph nodes under her arm.  She had surgery and they removed her left boobie and those stupid little lymph nodes.  She recovered fairly quickly and was told she needed to get up and walk and move so she didn't get pneumonia.  Well.... as luck would have it, she got pneumonia.  What the crap.  She was admitted into the hospital and man was that a nasty sickness!  To make matters worse, she had a horrible reaction to one of the medications she was on and that sent her into Renal (kidney) failure.  Her short 3 day stay in the hospital slowly turned into 17 long days of H, E, double hockey sticks.  It was the WORST!  We took turns at the hospital and even celebrated my daddy's birthday there so we could all be together.  Mom had to do a bunch of dialysis to clean out her kidneys and eventually her pneumonia lightened up and she was finally able to come home.  Those 17 days brought us all super close and forced us to love each other more than we thought possible.  I just have to say... I have the most amazing family in the world!  Honestly I could not ask for better people to be with for eternity.  I am especially grateful for my dad through all of this.  It's true what they say, " They greatest thing a father can do for his daughter is to love her mother".  My dad took on a brand new program at work in November, a group home for teenage girls.  It has been a huge ordeal and was set to open the week my mom got her mastectomy.  Between everything going on in his life, he never once complained about a thing.   I never doubted that he loved my mom a whole bunch, but I had never seen how strong his love really is for her.  He has been so strong this year and has always been such a great example to me and my other siblings.  I stinking love that man! 

Mom started Chemotherapy in March.  She had to have six rounds and would go in every three weeks and it usually took about 4-6 hours each time.  Usually the first week after treatment was horrible, horrible, horrible.  But then the following two weeks would USUALLY be pretty okay.  Thankfully, she made it until the second to last treatment until it was interrupted.  Her levels have to be okay for her to have chemo and that second to last one, they just weren't at the right numbers.  So that set her back a week, no biggie.  She was scheduled to finish on July 2nd but ended up finishing on July 7th.  After about a month she started radiation.  She went in every week day for 5 weeks to have that done.  She finished last week and is now cancer free!  Although she is still having horrible aftermath side affects from Chemo (mostly depression, which believe it or not is very common for cancer patients when they finish treatment) she is trugging right a long.  She will schedule her next surgery for January where she will have her reconstructive done on her left side and reduction on her right.  After that.... DISNEYLAND!!  

My mom is a fighter.  I don't think she realizes exactly how much we all need her in our lives.  I am so grateful that she fought through all the stupid fall backs and pain (emotional and physical) and hair loss and frustration and gnarly sunburns and blisters from radiation and all the other crap that comes with cancer treatment.  I am SO grateful that she fought so hard.  I am SO grateful for the love and support of our family and friends.  We could not have gotten through this year without them.  We are so blessed to have such amazing people in our lives and people who love our mom so dang much they would do anything for her.  So thank you.  Thank you Thank you THANK YOU! 

And mom, thanks for kicking cancer's trash so we can keep you forever! I love you!

Dad's Birthday in the hospital!

LAST DAY OF CHEMO!

A Really, Really, Really Long Post

So I really haven't totally been a slacker at this blog thing... you see, one day my blog was just gone.  I have no idea where it went.  So after about a year I decided to cut my losses and just start a brand new blog!  Well then this one just reappeared.  So that's good news!  But now I have a year to catch up on and boy what a year it has been!  Honestly this blog is my journal so I am not offended if you see how long this post is and skip on by!  So I left off with my momma's birthday last August..  here we go... The rest of 2013!

SEPTEMBER

Woody and I went on our very first real life vacation together for our third anniversary!  We decided to go on a cruise out of South Carolina for the sole purpose of being able to see Woody's brother and his family in the same trip.  We were gone for about a week and enjoyed every minute of it! Except maybe Carnival's food...not good.  We only had two ports, both in the Bahamas.  The first port was A BLAST!  We spent the day at Atlantis resort with a cute couple we met on the ship.  I would most definitely go back there!  The next port was fun but we didn't have very much time.  We went snorkeling though and I loved it so much!  For sure one of my new favorite things to do.  After the cruise we spent the night with Ryan and Jessie and their girls in Charleston, S.C.  It was so fun to have some quality one on one time with their family.

Now taking a step back real quick... before we went on our cruise we decided to put our condo up for sale (in June).  We had tons of people look at it and a few offers to decide on.  After a couple weeks we were under contract!  Sounds exciting right?  Wrong.  We told our renters (who we adore)  that we sold it and that they needed to be out at the end of July.  They packed up and were on their way...the same day our buyers backed out of the contract.  Awesome.  So there we were, living in Heber in a house we loved with a huge monthly rent, a condo with a mortgage, no renters, and no buyers.  Not too awesome!  So after a lot of praying and advice we decided it would be smartest to move back to our condo in Saratoga Springs.  So that's what we did as soon as we got home from our cruise!  Unfortunately, my job was still in Heber so I began the commuting part of my life!  Although it wasn't the choice we really wanted to make, we knew it was the right choice and that has been reconfirmed to us over and over again this year.  Starting in October.

OCTOBER

As many of you know, we lived in Denver the year before last because Woody owned a company there.  Well when we moved back to Utah, he still owned his business but did everything from here while his partner remained in Colorado.  That lasted about a year until October 2013.  A very long story short, Woody went to Denver at the end of September to discuss the business and possibly stepping down as partner. His partner had a different idea in mind and gave up the whole business to Woody.  This sounds great except all the crappy things a partner can do when you split up.  And he pretty much did all those crappy things.  So Woody lived in Denver the whole month of October while I lived in our condo with my three dogs.  We didn't want to move me to Denver until we knew everything was going to stay above water...which it didn't.  So Woody cleaned up in Denver and moved home on Halloween.  Most things were still uncertain but one thing was certain and that was that October was the worst month of our life and brought us closer than we could have ever imagined.  We started our new life back in Saratoga Springs with our old house, 2 less dogs, a new job, and each other.  Things would start to look up in November.

NOVEMBER

Okay,  Many of you don't know and some of you do know that we started trying to add to our family in July of 2011.  We weren't very successful and were super frustrated so after about two years we decided to have me go on some fertility medication (we had both been tested and nothing was off with either of our systems). I was on clomid in August and September but when I called for a refill in October my doctor told me she wanted to meet with me before we went another month.  I scheduled an appointment but then canceled it when we found out Woody would be in Colorado the whole month of October.  I didn't want to waste a month when we would only see each other a couple of times that month ya get me?  So this part might be TMI but I don't give a damn. I missed my period but thought NOTHING of it because that has happened before and October was SOO stressful so I was not surprised at all.  I refused to take a pregnancy test until I missed two periods which I just knew would not happen.  Woody really wanted me to take one because in months past if I was late, I would take a test and start the next day so he just wanted to jump start it if you will.  Anyway, I told him if Thanksgiving came and I still hadn't had one then I would take one.  I decided to call my doctor and make an appointment to get back on Clomid since Woody was back in Utah for good. Surprisingly she had a cancellation the next day so they got me in super fast (at this point I still had not taken a pregnancy test).  I was planning on going to the appointment by myself but Woody's work meeting got switched to an hour later so he got to come with me to kill time. I explained everything that had been going on and told her that I refused to take a test at home and naturally she made me take one before we went on with the appointment.  So I peed in a cup and she walked in 5 minutes later with the best little piece of plastic I've ever layed eyes on!

This was the beginning of our next big adventure!

DECEMBER

I call this month.... Vomit.  That's all I really remember about it besides our epic family trip to Disneyland!  Thank heavens for Zofran am I right?!  Woody couldn't go because he had just started at a new company so I just went with my family.  We were crazy and went the days after Christmas... holy cow!  SO MANY PEOPLE! It was still so fun despite the fact that I only rode like three rides, it's all good, me and Ives enjoyed all the lovely, magical sights that is Disneyland at Christmas time! 

2013 brought a lot of tears, a lot of big kid choices, a lot of praying, a lot of happiness, a lot of peace, and a reassurance that our Father in Heaven knows each of us and is looking out for each of us individually.  I have never had so many testimony building experiences piled into 365 days! I am so eternally grateful for my Heavenly Father and the tender mercies he places in my life on the daily.  He has blessed me more than I feel I deserve and even though things sometimes don't work out how I want them to when I want them to, he always answers my prayers and everything ALWAYS turns out the way it was meant to.  I have learned how important it is to put my faith in him and trust him completely cause guess what?  He knows lots more than I do. I would come to realize this even more this year.

 So we said a fond farewell to 2013 and welcomed 2014 with open arms!

Birthday Lady

Happy Birthday to the sweet one who birthed me!  Man she has put up with a lot over the years raising us five crazy cats (the gray hair we gave her covers up nicely) and the other millions of adopted friends, nieces, nephews, and the list goes on.  I am so grateful for her and the unbelievably great mom she has been to me my whole life.  I hope with all my heart that my kids love me as much as we love her.  She has always been there for us no matter what stupid thing was going on in our lives.  She has always been so supportive and has given great advice about all sorts of things that come our way.  I'm so glad that I have a husband who recognizes that sometimes you just need your mom and has actually taken me to her to cry to because sometimes that is all you need.  She brings so much joy to our family and we definitely wouldn't know how to laugh like we do without her. 

Mom, thanks for never losing your cool with us.  Thanks for leading us by example of how someone should treat others and not just telling us.  Thanks for teaching me to be the best Jill I can be.  Thanks for the lack of dating and marital advice and letting me figure things out for myself.  Thanks for being at home when I came home from school every day, I realize now how many kids don't have that and I am so grateful that I did. Thanks for trusting me so much that I never wanted to do anything that would disapoint you.  Thanks for teaching me how to work but also how to have fun.  And lots of it.  Thanks for being there to answer all my questions about life and offer me advice from the time I could talk up until last last week that I needed grown up house advice. I love you so much and I hope you have the best birthday and year ever!

Favorite Little Somethings

Found this lovely on pinterest and thought to myself... yeah...I really need to appreciate the awesome little things about each day.  We all get so caught up in work mode, sometimes we forget to stop and smell the flowers.  So here goes!

 

Today, my favorite little something are two little somethings named David and Jessica.  They are Woody's siblings who are 6 and 8 and I love them to pieces!  They came to stay with us this morning until Saturday and I am so excited to hang out with them!  They are two of the best kids I know and I love being their big sister in law.  They're the coolest!

 

Animal Hoarders

This is Marley. She's a 3 year old American Eskimo. Marley's momma had to make the hard decision to find a new home for her.  Marley was actually brother Ben's as a puppy and then when he needed to find a new home for her, he gave her to Missy.  Now Marley is back in the family and we love her to death!  It took so much for me to be okay with having three dogs but as soon as we got her (and moved are gigantic love sac downstairs) I was so happy she was there!  Thank you Missy, for trusting us with your girl!