Utah Trip Part 1 Nelson Family Reunion

We spent the last part of July in Utah. Originally we were only going to be in Utah the last week in July for the Jenkins reunion. But my wonderful father-in-law gave us some buddy passes so that we could fly to Utah so we decided there was no point in waiting around and we went up a week and a half early for the Nelson reunion too! It was a perfect vacation. Next summer we could be in the process of moving and we might not be able to make it back for summer reunions for a few years so it was really nice to be able to relax and soak up family and Utah for 2 and a half weeks.

We started our trip visiting Kyle’s Aunt Lori and her wonderful family. I hadn’t met all of Lori’s family so it was fun to meet them and introduce Abby. We had a fun barbeque and played on a HUGE slip-n-slide. Aunt Lori had an AMAZING house with huge windows and a beautiful view. We are so grateful they were willing to let us hang out with them for the day!

Then we met up with my dad and he drove us out to Ioka for the Nelson Family reunion. That was so much fun! Last summer my grandparents were on their mission and they were missing from the reunion. It was so much fun to have them back! We ate more Rhubarb pie than we could handle! We sat around and enjoyed each others company, played badmitton, and took lots of naps!

We took lots of walks down my grandma's lane. Abby loved being outside and I loved being able to take her outside without worrying about how hot it was!

Kyle went wakeboarding, he is pretty amazing and ridiculously good looking!

We did Yoga with my cousin Ashley and Kyle was better than the rest of us combined.

We took a drive up to Stillwater Dam. There is so much water in the lake that it is spilling over. It was beautiful!

Kyle is the one in the blue and white striped shirt

We saw some pretty incredible storms

We were even lucky enough to be there when my grandma's brothers and sister the Hubers got together for lunch. It was fun to show Abby off to even more family!

This is all of the grandkids minus me, Kyle, my little brother Carson and Jason's little girl Lynlee. Little Abby is the first great grand baby in the middle!

And we took naps

A lot of naps

It was so relaxing to be in Ioka. We had so much fun spending time with family and eating some amazing food!

Up next Roosevelt, Orem and Salt Lake City!

Abigail's Blessing

We blessed baby Abby on July 3rd 2011. It was a perfect day. I am so grateful for a wonderful husband who is worthy to hold the Priesthood. He gave a beautiful blessing. I prayed all week that Abby would sleep through the blessing. So far she has been very anti sleeping during church. Which I have decided is a good thing, you shouldn't sleep in church :). But luckily she did sleep through the blessing and the rest of sacrament meeting which was a wonderful fast and testimony meeting.

We had a really special thing happen at Abby's blessing. My Great grandparents, Abby's great great grandparents were able to attend the blessing. My great grandfather blessed me, so it was really neat that he was able to bless my daughter. The rest of Abby's circle consisted of my dad, Kyle's dad, both of my grandfathers, My Uncle Jason and Uncle Brent. My Great Grandfather also stood up in sacrament meeting and bore his testimony that he knew Christ was our Savior. He also encouraged us to continue to stay strong in the gospel that he knew to be true. How many people can say they have heard their great grandfather stand and bear his testimony? It was really neat. Below is Abby's 5 generation picture.

My parents with Baby Abby

Kyle's Parents

My mom's parents. I didn't get a picture with our camera of my Dad's parents, but they were there too!

This is my Uncle Brent showing us how excited he was about the delicious dinner we had. It was homemade Cafe Rio. We had salads, and burritos and tons of different salsas. It was very yummy!!

It was also my birthday, blessing Abby was the perfect birthday present. But my mom also took me shopping and got me this delicious birthday cake!

It was a wonderful day and we had so much fun! Thank you to everyone that was able to make it, and we missed all of those that were far away! Kyle blessed Abigail with some very neat things. We are so excited to see this little baby grow and see all of the wonderful things she will do!

1 Month

1 Month Stats

Weight: 8lbs 13 ounces (25th percentile)

Length: 21.75 inches (70th percentile)

Head: 14.5inches (30th percentile)

Dear Abby,

This first month of your life has been such a fun adventure! You have your parents wrapped around your cute little fingers. We have had so much fun getting to know you and learning how to be parents. Since we have brought you home from the hospital you have been sleeping really well at night. The shortest amount you sleep at night is 4 hours and the longest you have slept is just short of 8 hours. When you do wake up you eat and go right back to sleep. During the day you like to take little cat naps and spend the rest of the day eating and playing with me. Nursing was very rough at first and I almost gave up. Luckily you knew more about what we were doing than I did and we are getting to be pros at it. You have been giving us social smiles since you were two weeks old and it has been so much fun. You love to watch baby mozart, which gives mommy some time to get ready during the day. You look so much like your dad, its so cute. I think I can claim your nose and that is about it. During your first month of life you have done so many things! We went to Cars 2 and 17 miracles in the movie theater. You did great and slept through both movies, which was a miracle because you don't usually take such long naps! We've been out to dinner twice, and you did great. You love to have people to talk to and things to look at, so we try to keep busy. You're only a month old and you don't like to snuggle anymore! You like to sit on our laps and look at what we are looking at. When you are awake your little arms and legs are constantly moving. As soon as you can start moving I don't think we will ever get you to hold still. Your favorite place to take naps are on your Daddy's chest. You refuse to sleep laid out on your back, you like to sleep in your little sleeper that lets you curl up a little bit. I like to spoil you and rock you to sleep. I could hold you in my arms all day long! We are having so much fun with you and we are looking forward to seeing your little personality develop more and more. We love you little Abby!

Love,

Mom and Dad

June so far

Its been a busy and fun month so far. Abby is almost 3 weeks old and she is doing great! There have been a couple of nights that she has slept 7 hours straight, but usually she sleeps 4-5 hours. She is all smiles when she wakes up in the morning and we love it. Kyle has been busy studying for the DAT that he takes next Wednesday. I am so proud of how hard he is working. He is going to be very busy here pretty soon because he just got a new calling! And its not primary! Kyle was set apart on Sunday as the 2nd counselor in the Elders Quorum Presidency. We'll see if he likes it more than primary.... :) We are very excited about this calling and we are looking forward to all of the opportunities to serve that it will bring. I've been busy with baby Abby. We are starting to master nursing, it was a rough start but we're getting the hang of it. I could hold her all day long, so I don't get much else done :) She is beautiful and such a sweetheart.

Here are some pictures that my mom took of her. There are about 100 more, and we keep taking them. We can't get enough of her, we may be biased but we think she is the most beautiful baby EVER!!

Stationery card

Vintage Volute Pink Birth Announcement

Personalized cards for babies, Valentines, Easter and Mother's Day.

View the entire collection of cards.

May 25th 2011

Proud daddy!

Holding her for the first time.

She is so happy to be here!

Our first family photo!!

I have to kind of back up a little while to tell the whole story. I had a Drs appointment almost a week earlier. He had checked my progress and was surprised to see how far I had progressed. He stripped my membranes and I knew that meant I would be going into labor very soon... or so I thought. But its seemed little Abby was fine where she was. Monday was my last day of work, so Tuesday I was ready to relax and take it easy. Kyle and I had been walking about 3 miles a day, jumping on the trampoline, walking up and down stairs, eating spicy food just about everything you can do to induce labor. Tuesday morning we had a fun surprise when my grandparents who are on their way home from their mission in Florida showed up on my parents doorstep. My mom texted me and I rushed over there to spend the day with them. Kyle went to work and I stayed at my mom's house. We went to Halee's Pre-K graduation, listened to mission stories from my grandparents and had a really delicious dinner. Then Kyle had a ward softball game so I went to watch him. As a side note he had a REALLY amazing catch that made me so proud to call him my husband. He also won the game... he was definitely the MVP. It was a close and exciting game and Kyle played really well. After the game we had some trouble winding down, we laid in bed and talked for awhile. Then my pregnant bladder needed to go to the bathroom... again. When I was coming back to bed my water broke! Kyle and I just looked at each other in shock. We were not expecting that to happen, I hadn't been having any contractions that day so we didn't think there was any way it would be happening that night. We hurried and finished packing the bag and Kyle got the car loaded. On our drive to hospital the contractions started to come, and they were pretty uncomfortable. We got to the hospital and they checked to make sure my water really was broken, which it definitely was. I was already dilated to a 4 and 90% effaced. The contractions were starting to get more painful so they hooked me up to an IV to get fluid started so that I could get an Epidural. They moved us into the Labor and delivery room and we got comfortable. We wanted to get some sleep, but it was hard for me because of the incredibly painful contractions that were coming every couple of minutes. At about 2 in the morning I asked for the epidural and Dr. Tucker came in to give it to me. All I can say is I love Dr. Tucker. We were joking with the nurses that we were going to name our baby Abigail Tucker. That Epidural was magical. It kicked in right away and Kyle and I were able fall asleep. They say that you usually progress a centimeter an hour while in labor. I was a 4 at 12:00am and a 7 at 3:00am. I figured that we would have at least another 3-4 hours before I started pushing and then another 1-2 hours until she was here. But I was only able to sleep for about 2 hours, I woke up at 5 feeling an incredible amount of pressure with each contraction. It wasn't painful, but I could tell that this baby was coming. I called the nurse in and tried to wake up Kyle, which was hard because he was conked out. She came and checked me and I was at a 10 100% effaced and ready to start pushing. Kyle finally came to when the nurse said it was time to start pushing. It was just me Kyle and the nurse at first. I had the perfect Epidural, sometimes they are to strong, and sometimes they aren't strong enough. Mine was right in the middle. I could feel the baby coming, and I could feel when I needed to push. We pushed for about a half hour and then the nurse called Dr. Lepetich in. It felt like at that point the entire hospital was there. They had to have the NICU team there because there was meconium in the amniotic fluid when my water broke. Dr. Lepetich came in looking like he had just woken up because it was 5 in the morning. He is a great doctor and a really funny guy. He had slept the night at the hospital instead of going home earlier so that he could be there right when I needed to deliver. I started pushing again and in about 10 minutes her little head was out. I could feel her come, and when she started to cry Kyle and I started bawling. With the next contraction she was all out and they placed her on my chest. I couldn't stop crying as I looked at her and felt her little body. It was overwhelming! Then the NICU team had to take her for a second just to make sure she was okay, everything was great and then they handed her right back to me. All of the nurses and doctors were great, they helped us take pictures and congratulated us and gave us hugs! It was so amazing and then everyone left and it was just us. It was incredible to see her little face and to hold her in my arms. She is perfect.

Abigail Cordner was born at 6:16 on May 25th, 2o11. She was 7 lbs 10 oz and 21 inches long.

All of the nurses kept telling me that my labor and delivery was so unique, it hardly ever goes that easy for a first time mother. We were very blessed and it could not have been a better experience. We only spent one night in the hospital after the delivery. Everything looked great with me and with Abby so they let us go home. We were very anxious to get home and get our new lives started. She is now 9 days old and doing very well. She sleeps very well at night which is great for us! She is a little sweetheart and we love having her here with us!

Call me Gus Gus

Do you remember this part of Cinderella? This is how I feel every day when I try to get dressed.

This is what I look like at every meal... and I'm always still hungry. But I was like that before baby girl so I guess I can't blame it on her ;)

This is me when someone brings it to my attention that I am still pregnant. Thank you captain obvious!

We are 39 weeks and 1 day. The doctor says that baby girl could come any day, and we really wish she would decide to come today. We can't wait to meet her and see her sweet little face and hold her and cuddle her. Hopefully it won't be to much longer, May 21st is a good day for a birthday, May 22nd wouldn't be so bad either. :)