Abra-Ka-Dabra

While putting our Christmas decorations away, Dawson found a new use for his New Year's party hat and the Christmas tree stand. . . .

 He would say, "Abra-Ka-Dabra......."

 "Suprise!" He pulled the bear out of his hat!!

 And again on the floor....

 "Abr-Ka-Dabra!"

 I'm not gonna lie- he is a pretty smart and creative kid! I love him so much and love how much he makes me and J.D. smile! He is getting so big and growing so fast! He is in the 98 percentile for height...but lacks a bit on the weight. He eats a ton and uses every ounce of it to grow taller. He can do so much by himself and loves thinking he is getting bigger and can do things by himself. Some things he still likes help with- which is fine with me because he won't always want our help. He says he wants to eat good so he can have huge muscles and be big like Uncle Parker. Dawson is pretty smart because Uncle Parker is probably going to be the tallest one in the Steven's family. He has the genes from both sides to be tall...so we will see! Plus he has the genes to have huge muscles like his daddy (J.D. is pretty muscular!)

Happy New Year!

We had been wanting to have a New Year's party to get together with all of our friends and play games....so I decided to really go through with it and invite everyone. It was AWESOME! We played Kent (which I found out that no one but probably Kanab people know what that is), and Buzz Word. The kids even played their own games in Dawson's room and watched movies. They all stayed up until midnight as well! We had tons of awesome yummy food, and drank virgin daquiri's! It was amazing!

The kid's party (L-R: Payton, Destry, and Dawson in the back)

 This was taken before the party- Our party hats were pretty festive!

 AND!!! The New Year finally came!! We counted down and blew our horns!

 I didn't get the kisses in pictures, but they happened. 

This is Andrea, baby Ruth, and Jeff!

 Here's Daniel, Destry, Loni, and new baby still in her tummy!

 Here's Jeff and Andrea! You gotta love all of our hats!

 I had to get a pic with little Payton in there! She was so happy to have a party! lol!

 Here is Megan and Doug! Doug is SUPER DUPER happy about the New Year!

 And here we are for the New Year! J.D. had to wear his Tommy Boy shirt too! lol

Thank you to everyone for coming and celebrating with us! 

It was definitely the way to start off the New Year!

The Andee Necklace

When we came home, some of our friends came to visit us. Jeff and Andrea Roundy brought us a necklace shaped like a heart. On the heart is says, "Andee M'lee" and on the back it is her actual footprints from the hospital. It is such a special necklace and continues to have more significance every day. Sunday, right before New Years we went to church. Dawson was brought to me by his amazing teachers. He said he was scared and felt alone. He just wanted to be with his mom because he was sad. It's so hard because I know Dawson has feelings and is still affected by Andee not being able to be with us. 

Me: "Daws, you really have to go to class because mommy needs to go listen in her class. What can I do so you won't be scared or sad?"

Dawson: "Well.....I have a great idea. (pause) Maybe I could wear your Andee necklace so Andee can be with me and I won't be alone.....?" 

Of course, I tried to hold back my tears, "That is a great idea. But you have to keep it a secret and wear it under your shirt so know one knows and it won't get broken."

So we put it on and tucked it under his shirt. He could feel the heart on his skin and said, "Mom! I can feel her heart on my heart." 

It means so much to me that he still has a bond with her, and thinks about her often. I don't want her to be forgotten and one of the biggest reasons we wanted another baby was for Dawson to have a best friend to always play with. Even though she can't physically be with us, we know he see's her and feels her. He doesn't just create the bond on his own, she really is with him and I'm so grateful for it. 

Merry Christmas!

Two weeks before Christmas we took Dawson to see the Temple in St. George, show him the Nativity they set up and all the lights. He absolutely loved it! He kept trying to touch the figurines- it was hilarious. He wanted to pet the camels too. Then he found the stairs and had to climb all the way to the top and then said, "Take a picture!"

 So we did. He is such a handsome little man!

This year we spent Christmas in Holden! We love going there for Christmas because the entire family gets together and sleeps in the same room Christmas Eve. It was so much fun! We had a pretty crazy adventure getting to Holden, but we did make finally in 6 long hours. 

First- we had to take the truck because there was no way we could fit everything in our car. This was a huge blessing in the end. We also were taking my dad's 4-wheeler and trailer up to Holden for my brother Choc to take to his place. We got about 1 mile before the paragonah exit and there was a guy on the side of the road with a thrashed tire. J.D. said, "Man, that guy has a thrashed tire." I didn't quite hear him, but thought he was talking about our own tire. I looked in the rear view mirror and said, "J.D.! The trailer tire is gone!" He didn't quite believe me, but thought we'd better check. So thank heavens the Paragonah exit was right there. We pulled off and onto the frontage road. Sure enough- the tire was completely gone! SO- we called my dad who had to go to Walmart to get a new tire on a rim, and drive it up to us. 

In the meantime, J.D. was working his mad negotiating skills on getting a discount on a tire with the Walmart Tire Center manager. You see, the tire that had blown completely OFF was the brand new tire J.D. had just bought not even a month prior. Mind you it was freezing outside and only getting colder as J.D. stood outside for over an hour negotiating, pacing (because he cannot stand/sit still while on the phone), and fixing the tire with my dad. Dawson was fast asleep and I accomplished winning several Solitaire games..... I passed winning over 1,000 since we'd had the Ipad, which wasn't even a month. My dad took the trailer home- second blessing even though it wasn't under the circumstances we'd prefer. 

Coming out off of the mountain down into the flats before Kanosh a HUGE drift of snow blew across causing the car in front of us to slam on their brakes. It forced the car we were passing off the right side of the freeway into the ditch, and swerved back into us, ramming into the truck, causing us to slide down into the median. We kept a good speed so we could try and get back up on the freeway. Needless to say, J.D. is the best drive (next to me) and we were okay. We backed up to the other vehicle who hit us and spoke with a guy who was in the driver seat. The police came about 20 minutes later telling us to drive down to the Kanosh exit. There we waited for another 1 1/2 hours waiting for the cop to come talk to us. He sent another cop because he was busy with other accidents. We saw 7 tow trucks with banged up cars while we waited. Not only had we waited, but the drivers in the other car switched....so we told the officer. Because we didn't actually see who was driving during the accident, the officer couldn't charge them.... however even their stories didn't match up with who was driving. They were Arabs from California driving a rental..... so since then we've been dealing with insurance trying to get our vehicle fixed. Everything should work out soon, and we were so grateful that we were in the truck with 4 wheel drive, and didn't have the trailer and 4 wheeler hitched up.

When we did make it to Holden, we were exhausted and ready to have a more 'Merry' Christmas. During our adventure i had talked to my dad several times, not just the trailer, but also because he used to be a cop and knew a little more on what we could expect from insurances, and the officer. He kept saying 'Have a merry Christmas..." At the end of the conversation before we got to Holden he just said, "I'm not gonna wish u a Merry Christmas until you are in Holden.... soooo goodbye." When we made it to Holden, my dad said, "So you are inside the house, warm, and safe?" I replied, "Yep!" And then he said, "Well, then you have a Merry Christmas!" haha! It was hilarious!

The next day J.D. woke up with a rash forming all over his body. 5 days prior to the day J.D. had gone to the doc and found out he had a sinus infection. So the doc prescribe ammoxacillin (sp?). 5 YEARS prior to this J.D. had been prescribed the same thing for mono and he broke out in a rash all over. They said it was because he was diagnosed wrong.... well we found out he is actually allergic to penicillins. SO- he stopped taking the medication, but it was too late. The medicine was in his system and it took 2 weeks for the rash to disappear on his skin and another 2 weeks for his insides to stop itching. 

Back to the fun side of Christmas....
Here is Dawson the night before Santa came.... sooo many presents already!

We all slept in Loni and Daniel's room upstairs on the floor. We woke up around 8:00 and made our way to see what Santa had left us. This is the grandkid line up from oldest to youngest (Taylee, Dawson, Destry, Kyson). Usually we do the kids and grandkids, but we are getting so many grandkids, we decided to just do them.

Bryant (J.D.'s dad) had started Andee's cradle, but she came 4 weeks early...so we never got to see it finished and I didn't know if he would finish it because we didn't have a baby. When we got downstairs, there is was- our baby cradle. We didn't want to make Christmas sad, but J.D. and I just couldn't stop crying. I tried to hold it together for Dawson and be excited for him and what Santa brought him, but it was the most sentimental and sacred gifts we have/ and probably will ever receive. In it were 3 baby blankets that were J.D.'s when he was a baby.

Dawson got a imaginext space ship set, a baseball tee, a puppet show, some books, a story with Grandma and Grandpa's voices recorded reading it, a dream lite pillow, a race car track thingy, and a remote control helicopter (which was my suprise to him and J.D.). 

I got a heated blanket, the cradle (for J.D. and I) some movies, a porcelain doll that has brown curly hair (just like Andee's), a Chi straightner and curling iron, necklaces, and again for J.D. and I a scentsy thing. 

J.D. got a clay pigeon thrower, the helicopter thing, Gospel Answers book by Joseph Fielding Smith, some movies, and a blu ray wi-fi player.

It was pretty awesome! We had a delicious breakfast! and later we went to play in the snow! Here is Dawson, Jetta, and Brant being pulled behind the 4-wheeler!

 It snowed all day Monday, and Tuesday! It was so awesome! Dawson just loved army crawling and laying in the snow. It covered him up!

 He was so happy to be with his cousins and outside. He absolutely loves the snow!

 More sledding on the 4-wheeler! Lucas was awesome and tipped them a couple of times into the fresh powder! It was so funny to see the kids go flying!

 Brant, Jetta, and Tilden got igloo snow brick molds to build forts and things! So they did! Brant and Dawson built there's while Jetta and Jessie built the girl fort.... we didn't make it for the snowball war, but the forts were pretty awesome!

As we leave Holden, we never fail to make sure we go see Andee's grave. We feel like we are leaving her everytime we leave Holden. We hope one day we can make it back and have a home there so we can see her grave more often. 

The snowmen are solar lights that turn on at night. Dawson says they keep her safe so she doesn't get scared in the night. I know this is just her body here, but we do feel like she is there with us when we go to her grave. 

Christmas was so much fun and we opened more gifts when we got back to Cedar with my family. The only bad part is that Dawson wants Christmas to be every day!....

Surgery

Unfortunately (some would say fortunately) I am not going to post pics of the back surgery I had after the funeral. A little history of why I got back surgery- well for many years I have had this lump on my back. I didn't think anything of it until after getting married and J.D. giving me lots of back massages and telling me that the lump was getting bigger. While pregnant with Dawson, our doctor said we could probably get it removed after the baby was born and that he didn't think it'd be a problem getting in the way of the epidural. I ignored doing anything about it because I didn't think it was a big deal. This time around with Andee though, I wanted it gone because even I could tell it was getting huge and it was causing me a lot of unnecessary uncomfortable pressure.

We saw a general surgeon before having the baby and he said the lump was a lypoma and definitely met the requirements for our insurance to approve getting it removed and paying for it. A lypoma is very common and basically is abnormal fatty tissue growing. It's usually caused by constant stress to the spot where the lypoma would grow. So it builds up protecting the spot that's receiving stress or constant pressure over time. For mine, it was probably caused from dance all growing up. I was pretty excited knowing this thing would finally be gone, but even more happy after the experience with the epidual in the hospital. The morning I got the epidural to deliver Andee the lypoma was in the way of getting the epidural in the right spot, so the anesthesiologist had to put it in a lot lower which really hurt. So after Andee was born, and after the funeral we scheduled the surgery.

It was an in office surgery and didn't take long at all. It was kinda painful, but only because my body metabolizes anesthetics really fast. J.D. recorded the procedure and in the end we couldn't believe how big that thing was! It had veins running through it and was feeding itself plenty of nutrients. GROSS! It was pretty sucky having to deal with stitches, but I can definitely say it was well worth it. There is still a large cavity in my back from where the lypoma used to be, but overtime it is supposed to go away.

Thanksgiving

I unfortunately did not take any pics from our Thanksgiving adventures, but I do want to write about it and share. As most people eat their dinner during the afternoon, the Shelley's don't eat until 7:30 ish.... right about the time Thanksgiving is ending. It works perfect for Shelley folk because we tend to enjoying sitting around and watching the hours pass by until we finally decide that someone should really start cooking if we are going to celebrate this holiday the traditional way. So about 2 or 3 we started putting everything together. We didn't have a ton of fancy things... we used left over dinosaur napkins from Carson's birthday party, paper plates so we didn't have to do a ton of dishes, and we made the main course favorites for the dinner. We did manage to bake a few pies- of course we couldn't leave out dessert!

Dawson wanted to say the prayer... which was short and sweet, but in our hearts I know we all were thanking the Lord for more. J.D. and I scarfed down as much as we could so we could make it to the Hurricane Walmart for some Black Friday shopping! We made it there, split up to our designated items we were in charge of getting, and still had 10 minutes to spare! I was in charge of movies... needless to say I am an amazing shopper with really quick hands because we got every movie and more of what we planned on getting. You can't beat those $2.00 deals so any action necessary to get these movies had to be taken seriously. J.D. succeeded on his items too! We met up with all our items  standing in line for the next rush which started at 10 pm. We made it home later that evening with another successful Black Friday Adventure and no bruises or black eyes.

We headed up to Holden for some Christmas Tree hunting with the Stevens'. We made it just in time and hours later we found some beautiful Christmas trees for our families. We didn't get one because we borrowed a fake one from my mom. With how much we are gone during this month, its much easier to not have to worry about watering or picking up pine needles. We ate some snacks and headed back home to take some long naps. We stayed the whole weekend and had such a good time sledding, visiting, building furniture, going to the movies, seeing the light parades, and riding in a horse buggy thing. Grandpa Stevens drives the team and pulls people around for a ride during the holidays. Dawson got to ride up frontwith him and had the biggest smile on his face the whole time.

Now- during the light parade they always feature Santa on the fire truck. We were pumping up Dawson to wave to Santa and he couldn't hardly stand there waiting. FINALLY the fire truck went by and Dawson started to wave really BIG and say "Hi....sssaann"and it ended. He got this confused look on his face and then turned to us saying, "That's not Santa. That's just some guy in a costume." Yes our 4 year old can tell if it's Santa or just some guy dressed up. So I said, Ÿa, Sant couldn't be here so this guy is helping him out."After that, Dawson didn't care to even go sit on his lap. He just said, "No, I don't need to tell him because he's not Santa. I will just wait until the real Santa comes."

It was an awesome Thanksgiving spending time with all of our family. We did go up to Andee's grave and decorated it along with J.D.s sister's headstone, Aunt JoAnn's, and Grandpa Stevens'. We put glow in the dark snowmen, and poinsettas. Dawson thought the snowmen were a good idea so Andee wouldn't get scared in the dark. He's such a good big brother! :-)

Andee M'lee Stevens

Andee M'lee Stevens was born on November 7th, 2012 weighing 6 lbs 6 oz., and was 20 inches long. She was born 4 weeks early and was stillborn. She was honestly the most beautiful baby with precious features. She looked a lot like my baby pictures except she had more hair- beautiful brown curly hair.

The birth was the most spiritual experience and it continues to leave the biggest impression on so many lives. One week prior to her birth I had gone in for kick counts- she felt like she was slowing down compared to her normal ways. Everything was fine- it was like murphy's law. The Sunday before she passed away our sweet Dawson and I were waiting in the car and 

Dawson said, "Mom- Andee needs to go back to Heavenly Father and Jesus."

I replied, "Why would you say that? That makes mommy really sad."

Dawson, "It's okay mom. Don't be sad. She's happy. She's with family. . . . She'll come back to us though."

I had a great concern fill my heart because since I'd gone in for kick counts, I had been telling J.D. all week that she just wasn't as active as she'd been. I told J.D. what Dawson said and we both didn't quite understand if 'coming back to us' meant the second coming or if she was just going to leave for a bit and come back to earth to be with us here. The next evening I stopped feeling her move. I wanted to go in for kick counts again, but last time they had made us feel really dumb for coming in because she was doing just fine. So we didn't go in- however I'm pretty sure that's the day her spirit left.

The next morning we went in for kick counts, and we couldn't find a heartbeat. The doctor informed us our baby had died. It was words that will never be forgotten and I still hear them. We scheduled to be induced the next morning. During the rest of that day was the longest day and night of our lives. My mom came to be with us as soon as she found out. 

The delivery was truly amazing. J.D.'s brother Lucas and his wife Molly, and Loni came at 7 am to be with us the entire day. I can't describe how much comfort that was for us to have them be there the entire time helping us through that hard day. I was already dialated to a 3.5. I was checked at 9:00 and had made it to a 5. Then at 10:30 exactly the nurse came in and we decided she'd check me again at 11. She walked out and I turned right to J.D. and said, "Go get her, I think it's time and she needs to check me now." She checked me and sure enough, it was time. She hurried and set up, the doctor rushed down and within 2 pushes, less than 30 seconds, Andee M'lee was born. No stitiches, no tearing, and she beat Dawson's delivery by 1 push (I only pushed 3 times with him). Everyone kept commenting on how beautiful she was! It was true! She had color and features that were so stunning. Dawson was SO PROUD! He wasn't scared at all and understood that she wasn't coming home with us, however, he understood her spirit was right there with us as well.

J.D.'s brother Lucas and his wife took care of everything with the funeral. J.D. and I were able to just hold Andee at the mortuary all day Thursday and Friday and Saturday morning. The funeral was so perfect. So many answered prayers and support. My brother drove his whole family from Missouri, my dad drove from Colorado, J.D's aunt and uncle came from Idaho, tons of family from everywhere came to be there. J.D.'s parents and Chet and Bobi Sue were coming home from a cruise- and because of the storm, a lot of flights right after theirs were cancelled to fly into SLC. It was a huge blessing they were able to make it. The snow was prayed for by J.D. He asked that if we were to have any precipitation let it be snow. We were driving home the night it started to snow and just felt like it represented Andee's pure spirit and also that it covered up all the bad in the world to make her funeral more pure and clean of any bad in this world. 

Dawson and I made a bracelet for Andee and Dawson was so excited to put it on her. He is so proud of her and I know he has a special bond with her even though she isn't physically here. He continues to love her everyday and reminds us of it- it's the sweetest thing.

 Saturday morning we got her smelling like a little baby and made her look beautiful for the day. We'd asked my mom and J.D.'s mom to be there to help us. It was one of my favorite memories because it was the first time and last time here on earth that I would be able to doll up my baby girl. The dark spot on her cheek as discoloration happened that morning- before that she stayed pink. The dark spot was a blister that had dried up which was invisible to everyone that day. Only the pictures show it was there.

 J.D.'s parents gave us some golden baby shoes with diamonds in them to hang in our window. It's so when the sun shines through, rainbows are reflected everywhere which is to remind us of Andee. Dawson shook them and just kept trying to keep her happy he said. It was really  like her spirit was there and he was interacting with her.

 We got lots of pictures and family photos because this is all we will have of Andee here on earth. Dawson was loving showing off his sister and kept introducing her to everyone. He is so amazing and we couldn't be more grateful for him being here with us.

Everyday and every moment is a struggle, but we know her spirit is here. Dawson tells us so many things about Andee- it's so neat. We don't know what we'd do without him. He keeps reminding us of how happy Andee is and how she is with Heavenly Father. He's our little spiritual giant and gets us through most days. I can't describe all the spiritual experiences we continue to have, and how Andee's passing has truly opened our eyes. We know she must have been pretty special to only need 36 weeks here on earth to accomplish he mission and then be granted celestial glory immediately. We definitely miss her and can hardly wait until we get to raise her. Thank goodness we have the knowledge of the gospel to help get us through- I can't imagine going through this without the gospel knowledge. 

As we left the graveside to go to the church for a luncheon that the Holden ward had prepared for us (THANK U) we looked into the sky and this is what we saw. The heavens opened and I could only imagine Andee holding hands with Aunt JoAnn and walking away to the spirit world. 

Thank you to everyone who has been praying for us and supporting us. :-)