Christmas 2016 - Daxon's birth Jan. 10, 2017

This may seem like an impossible feat... but I'm going to try to get caught up!! Yes.... almost a year has past!!  The thought of writing down my feelings throughout the year seemed easier just avoided.  We've also just been so busy that time and life just keep flying by.  But I don't want 2017 to have no record!  I print these out every year as our family scrapbook.  It was an increbily hard year but also an incredibly amazing year!  We did amazing things, had amazing experiences, and made amazing memories that I don't want to forget.  So I'm just going to do a post/2017 month and hope by keeping them simple, it will not be such a daunting task haha.

This way 2 days after we found out something was wrong with Daxon, but we didn't know what.  The doctor suspected Trisomy 18 but wasn't certain.  We did the amniocentesis and were painfully waiting to find out.  We were told we would have the results by Christmas Eve.... which we didn't.  But that's probably for the best.  The timing of all this now seems to make sense.  We were able to stay busy, be around family, and focus on the Savior.
We stuck with our plans to go down to Oak City to visit family.

Cute little princesses!!

We had a good Christmas Eve with the girls.
Festival of Lights....

Candy Cane hide and seek...

Christmas bingo...

Feeding the reindeer...

Cookies for Santa...

Christmas Jammies...

Christmas morning magic...

Sledding...

That afternoon we went down to Delta to spend time with the Miller side...

Cute little cousins...

Played games...

Lainey is a big fan of the snow haha...

Sledding in Gammy's back yard...

24 weeks pregnant...

That weekend we went to Luke's 4th Birthday party...

We had our friends over for a New Year's Eve party...

It was the strangest Holidays.  At moments you feel normal, happy!  And the next second you want to break into a million pieces.  We had no idea exactly what our future held.  Would he go till full term?  Live for a little while??  Be gone in the next minute??  It was awful.  But we had soooo much support from family and friends.   We had many people praying for us.  And I truly felt the Savior by my side throughout.

I remember this day vividly... Tom had the day off after the Holiday and we wanted to take a family day.  We took the girls to The Natural Curiosity Museum.  It was so fun!  They loved it!

That afternoon when we got home, I got a call from Dr. Ludlow saying they had the rest of the results... and that our baby boy had Trisomy 9.  He didn't know much about it because it is so rare, but knew it's severity is worse of the Trisomy's and that babies with it don't usually live past the first trimester.  He wanted to meet with me the next day.
So of course we spent the whole night googling to try to learn as much as we could.  It was probably the worst we've ever felt... just sick.
The next day I went to my appointment and the Dr. basically wanted to let me know my options.. A) Do nothing and let natures take it's course... likely resulting in a stillborn.  B) Schedule a C-section around 27 weeks for the chance at meeting him alive.  We didn't want either option obviously... and although I would've loved to hold a living baby, even briefly, I couldn't come to peace with essentially  deciding when to end his life.  It was awful.  Tom and I taked in circles about it.  Thankfully Heavenly Father knew best and we didn't have to make that decision.

I think part of Tom's coping mechanism throughout this time was the guitar.  He taught himself the basics and played constantly.  He hasn't really played since haha

For some reason... it looks like we had cake for breakfast? haha lucky girls!

We had some good snow that week!

The girl's "cooking dinner"

And you know the rest... Jan 9th there was no heartbeat.  Our sweet boy had passed.  We went in to deliver that afternoon.  The girls wanted a picture while I was in labor so we put on our best smiles to send to them.
2:10 am January 10th, 2017 we got to meet our little angel.