Jack's First Christmas

So this year I wasn't really up to putting up our actual tree, so last year when I helped my mom for her centerpieces she found these pre lit Charlie Brown trees and I got one. So that was our tree this year. Although Jack didn't really understand what was going on, it was an awesome christmas.

First at our Ward Christmas Party Jack got to meet Santa for the first time and although I was told to go to South Town Mall since that Santa is the best we just ran out of time so he got to meet the one that came to our Ward Christmas party, however he fell asleep.

We then had the Heinrichs Christmas dinner the Sunday before christmas due to Brook, Logan, Cristy and Landon going out of town during christmas. So we had a really nice dinner at moms house with Broccoli Cheese Soup (special request every year) her cheese rolls, salad, lobster and prime rib. After dinner it was time to clean up and put dishes away and then the big even opening presents.

Jack got a cool feeder spoon from Brooke and Logan a musical teething toy from Riley and Zack, a Vtech musical learning toy from grandma. He loved his presents and plays with them on a daily basis especially the musical ones he loves music.

On actual christmas eve we opened one present which ends up being magic pj's for Santa to come. Santa came and brought Jack some bath toys, learning v-tech toy, and some clothes. He loved it all and I think he ejoyed christmas. For our christmas present we got what we asked a family.

7 months!

Here we are 7 months later. I know I say this every time I type about the new month, but WOW time has flown by. As of right now MR Jack is eating solid foods twice a day (breakfast and dinner). He is rolling to get to where ever he might need to go as well as standing in an all four pike position then going to his knees then to his stomach which then he has learned that by doing the army crawl he can move as well. He is getting more of a personality and has just been a delight to 1 have in our family and 2 We can not picture our lives or family without him. We love him so much and just get excited ourselves when he completes little milestones. We are so excited to spend the first Thanksgiving with him and in a couple of weeks spend our first christmas as a family.

Baptism, Sealing & Blessing

On December 5, 2009 we woke up early to get ready for our nieces baptism. She turned eight on November 20 and was able to make the decision and become a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I of coarse was a wreck due to our aother engagement later that day.

It was so special seeing her dressed in her white outfit to be dunked under water by her dad. It only made me think back to when I was baptised and I had the choice to either do my baptism in the font or on one of the Hones Camping Trips. I opted to be different and since Jesus was baptised in a river I figured a lake would be close enough. So on one of our wild and outrageous camping trips my dad baptised me in a lake. I remember a few bits and pieces of that day and I remember it had been raining all day, so as soon as the clouds parted and the sun came out for the short brief moment, we figured this was it. My dad and I got all dressed in our white outfits and we headed to the merky freezing cold water. I dug my feet into the mud just to make sure that no part of me came up. It was a really neat experience and I wouldn't trade that for anything.

Later in the day we were scheduled to go to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple and have Jack sealed to us for all time and eternity. I couldn't believe that we were actually able to finalize and make this happen. All of our close friends and family were there - Thank you so much to all of you for taking the time out of your schedules and supporting us in having our family searled together. We got pictures taken, however as soon as I get them I will post them.

December 6 Jeremy was able to give Jack his baby blessing. We were able to invite again close family and friends to the circle and Jeremy did an fantastic job. Jack also look very handsome in his white outfit. We are so blessed and have enjoyed every minute with Jack. He has been the most special thing that has come into our family, and I can't picture our lives without him.

Jack Allen South Sealing/Blessing Announcement

Thanksgiving 2009

Jeremy and I are so thankful for each other, our families, our jobs, our home, our friends, and our lives, however the most important thing we are thankful for is our new family. Having Jack in our family, I cannot begin to express how we feel about this little bundle of joy. We have waited such a long time to start our family, and to have him here to let us do that has been so awesome. We love him so much and can't wait to see him grow up and become a man. We cherish each moment we spend with him and no matter what he does whether its laughing our crying he can always put a smile on our face, because he is worth everything.

For this Thanksgiving we went to my mom's house. It was so wonderful, yummy and fun. I love the holiday's so that you can be reminded of what they are supposed to really mean.

The two most handsome men in my life!

Our family

The table

Thank you mom especially for hosting the wonderful Thanksgiving at your house. Thank you to everyone else, for making this day and very thankful occasion.

Finalization

After 9 years of waiting for a perfect baby to come into our arms, and after 3 years waiting to be chosen to be adopted parents, and after waiting 4 months for a baby Jack to be born, and after waiting for 6 months to make it finalized, IT IS!!

We went to court to day to have Jack Allen South become officially in our family. We were scheduled at the Scott Matheson Court Building down town, where we met up with Les England our Attorney, Shannon our LDS Family Case Worker, My Mom, Jeremy's parents and grandpa and then Judge Glen Iwasaki. Our appointment time was scheduled for 8:40 and we were done at 9:00.

After court we went to Breakfast/Brunch at the Original Pancake house and celebrated. We are so thankful to have Jack in our family and in our lives, we can't imagine what our lives would be without him.

The next step in his life is to get him Sealed to us for time and all eternity which we will be doing that on Saturday December 5 and then his blessing which Jeremy will administer to him on Sunday December 6.

George, Joyce and My Mom

Grandpa Pedersen (Jeremy's side)

Jeremy, Me, Judge Glen Iwasaki and Jack

Happy Birthday Jeremy!

MyHotComments

Jeremy turned 34 today. Jack and I was able to go shopping and help plan what we were going to do for his big day. Normally when its our birthday's we decide where we want to go eat and with Jeremy being such a BBQ fan, we decided to go try Que 4 U which has won awards for their BBQ. It's located in Kearns off of 5400 S and 4000 W and it was hardly busy for a Saturday night. There was only 1 waitress and I felt that their service wasn't that great, but then again they had 1 server helping the tables and processing the cash register. The food was good, I had the chicken sandwich and Jeremy had their sampler which came with Ribs, and Pork - he liked them, Jack had his mixed Vegetables. For Jeremy's present we bought him Star Trek the new one that came out, since he is such a fanatic.

We love you Jeremy and we hope you had a great birthday!

New Moon

Me and 11 other girls broke down and decided to get into the fanatic out of control obession to see New Moon, the second book from Stephenie Meyer. I have to admit that the second movie was much better done than the first. The characters seemed to have more chemistry between then, yes there were a couple of cheesy parts, however I really enjoyed it. In fact being pregnant there were a couple of parts my emotions took over and I cried in a couple of seens. Its amazing to have so many hormones and when you have experienced what you think to be true love and it bites you in the end I guess it just brings back memories.

Six Months Old!

I can't believe that six months ago we brought home the most precious baby. He has brought so much joy to our lives and I don't think we would know what to do with out him. He has grown so much now weighing in at 16lbs. We are feeding him solid food which it is quite interesting and funny to see what kind of foods he likes. He is rolling all over the place trying to get from here to there I can imagine he will be crawling soon.

We will be going to court to have his adoption finalized on November 23rd, which we are really excited about that, because then we will be able to take him to the temple have him sealed to us and give him a blessing.

We are so happy he is in our lives and enjoy him each and every day, I know he will be a good big brother to his sister who will be joining us on or around February 4th.

New Callings

So our ward split the sunday after conference, it been weird not seeing the same faces you used to see every sunday at church. Jeremy was released from Elders Quorum. He misses working with the Elders Quorum President who is in the existing ward (we are the new 10th ward).

However shortly after the ward being split, Jeremy was called as the Ward Mission Leader. Not too long after that I was called as the Relief Society Chorister as well as a Ward Missionary.

I am excited for our callings and we will see how things go.

Being Lame

Since Jack is too little to really know what is going on. Like knowing what he wants to be and wearing a costume, going to peoples homes to get candy, and staying up late going through all the candy he collected, we decided to be lame and hang out in the house and actually hand out candy instead of going out and collecting candy. Jack had a Halloween pajama outfit that he decided he wanted to wear, plus we wasn't feeling very well.

Hope everyone had a safe and Happy Halloween!

Five Months Old

I can't believe Jack is Five months old. Now that I am back to work, the time really does fly by. We started feeding Jack a solid meal at night and boy does he look forward to that time. He has had so far Green Beans, Bananas, Applesauce, Pear & Pineapple, Carrots, and squash, and at first he is not sure but after the second bite he wants more. He is rolling around more often, I think he may start to crawl in the next little while, which will be exciting, and he is turning into such a handsome boy. We are so lucky to have him in our family and we are enjoying every little minute we can of him.

Its a ...

That's right! Jack is getting a little sister. We are excited to say for now that are family is complete. Everything looks good with the baby and they believe that I will be delivering her February 4, 2010. My original due date was February 11, 2010 - so only a week early.

As the ultrasound tech was doing her check up on the baby, the baby was not cooperating, but what baby does? So the tech had to keep pressing down on my belly to make her move. As she was doing one view of the baby you could see her really moving and it almost looked like she was marching. The tech ended up saying "It looks like she is marching on your bladder." I couldn't have agreed more due to the pressure I was feeling down there. However as the tech had to change the ultrasound tape she lifted up the ultrasound wand and sure enough I could feel her moving, it almost felt as though she was trying to stretch anyway she could.

Here are some pictures of Ms Abigail Leigh South

Here are a couple of side profiles of her.

These are her legs (as they were moving)

Finally, if you can see and understand what you are looking at...its a girl.

Four Months Old!

Here we are, four months later and enjoying every little bit of it. Jack is weighing in at 14lbs and 4.4 in, he is 25 1/2 inches long and his head is 41 cm around. He is laughing, talking and just being that bright sunshine that we love to what within him. He is working on sitting up still, and if he is laying on the ground you better believe he is ready to move around. Working on rolling over he does a pretty good job. We think he is teething due to his hands always in his mouth and the over flowing waterfall that lands on his bib. We started eating solid foods and so far with pears and pineapples he is enjoying it.

We Love you Jack and can't wait to see you grow up, but don't grow up too fast!

Won’t Let You Down

That is for dang sure. Keith Urban didn’t let me know. I had the opportunity to go and see Keith Urban, my boss Diana, told me he was coming and she has been to every show when he comes to town. So I asked Jeremy if he would buy me a ticket for my birthday. The ticket was only $60.00 which really isn’t bad and our seats were the 18th row above the floor. As we walked to the Energy Solutions Arena we walked by the ramp where all of the buses park and what not so we were teasing each other that we should run down there and rub our bodies against his bus that way he would have us with him always – we didn’t – we probably would have gotten arrested. We had awesome seats and got there about 7:00. At about 7:30 Little Big Town hit the stage. They were really good, I like some of their songs, but I was mostly shocked that they only sang like 5 songs. Most opening acts will sing for an hour. Not them. So they were done at around 8:00. So then we just had to wait for the man himself. At about 8:30 the MAIN concert began.

He played from around 8:30/8:45 to 10:45/11:00. It was awesome! He had the audience help him sing most of his songs. He ran back and forth on the stage and even walked through the floor crowd to get to the very back mini stage where he sang a few songs and made everyone laugh by saying "Now who has the best seats in the house." He wailed on his guitar and jumped around keeping everyone's energy going. As he introduced his band he had baby to growing up pictures of them and listed all of the instruments they could play which each of them (the guitarist) could play about 5 - 7 instruments, they also could sing, which Keith had each of them sing a song of their choice - one sang "Ain't no Mountain High Enough", another "Ain't no Sunshine when she's gone" and another that I can think of " Open Arms" which the whole audience started cheering. He talked made jokes, especially when he noticed all the people in the suites he said, " Thank You for letting us play my Lords." He did one anchore and he thanked everyone for traveling so far for buying a ticket for the concert in these hard times and was very thankful that his fans came to see him play.

One of the girls that we were with wanted to buy a t shirt so we waited then the person selling the shirts told everyone that if you were on the side of the main line you weren't going to be helped, so she decided she didn't need a shirt. So on our way back to the car as we started to get close to where the buses were, the security guard told us that we had to stop and wait. We started to complain due to the fact that we were tired and it was getting past all of our bed times. So we asked him why and he then told us that the buses were leaving, so Diana asked him, "Is it Keith's bus?" The guard said, "I don't know." So Diana said, "Please tell me its his bus." The guard replied, "Fine it is his bus." But as he said it he didn't seem serious, it was like he was just telling us what we wanted to hear. So I said, "Liar." And as I said that here came a cop car and then a huge bus making its way up the ramp and sitting in the front passenger seat was

KEITH URBAN

We started jumping, screaming and waving and we started shouting out we love you, and Keith was all smiled and waved back. It was the best end to a great night. When he comes again I will definetly be there. And whoever wants to come and join me you are welcome.

What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas

I loved every minute of Maternity Leave, however if you are used to working all day it kind of gets a little monotonous. So I decided to ask the girls on if they wanted to do a quick weekend in Vegas. I figured since Labor Day was approaching we could leave Friday afternoon and come home either Sunday or Monday since it would be a holiday. In the end Lauren and I headed to Vegas around 4:30 on Friday. We arrived in Vegas around 10:30 – 11:00. We stayed at my cousin’s house who lives just out side of Vegas. We stayed up talking until 2 in the morning their time, but 3 in the morning our time. We woke up around 8:30 their time and headed down stairs where we made a yummy breakfast – pancakes, eggs and bacon – we then decided to get ready and head to the strip. So we got in the car about noon and headed out, well Lauren needed a Starbucks coffee and apple juice was sounding really good to me so we used her iPhone in search of a Starbucks. It only took us 3 tries to finally find one. We were then headed off to the strip. So we decided to go to Caesers Palace and walk the Forum Shops. We wend to FAO Shwartz and I bought Jack a Fish that has a rattle, teether thing and it vibrates. We then went to this Chocolate shop that was recommended by Diana (my boss) called Vosges.

They serve exotic chocolate ranging from Mo's Milk Chocolate Bacon Bar Applewood smoked bacon + alderwood smoked salt + deep milk chocolate OR Goji Exotic Candy Bar Tibetan goji berries + pink Himalayan salt + 45% deep milk chocolate OR Oaxaca Exotic Candy Bar Oaxacan guajillo + pasilla chillies + 75% Tanzanian chocolate, just to name a few.

After we bought our exotic chocolates we then decided we were hungry so we went and ate at Serendipity. It is pretty much like the Cheesecake Factory, as far as price, and it was really good food. So we decided we were done for the day and we headed back to my cousin’s house. At we got back the BYU game was on and we watched from about the middle of the 3rd quarter to the end of the game and I really can’t believe that they won, but go Cougars!

Finally Sunday came and we decided to head home so we can relax on Monday and enjoy the day off due to the Holiday. We headed out around noon. We stopped in St George and had an In and Out Burger. We made it home by 7:30. It was a nice break. We will definitely have to plan another trip again.

Back to Work We Go...

So August 31 I started back to work from Maternity Leave. Spending all day with a new baby you love, however you start to feel like you need time to yourself. So whenever I would go out with the girls I would come home to little Jack and I wouldn't quite miss him.

I am getting Jack ready Sunday night and as we are sitting on the bed I start to cry. I never knew a love for a little baby could be so strong. Jeremy came into the room seeing me cry and asked what was wrong, what could he do, do we need to do something different? I told him No and felt that I was using double the hormones and even if Jeremy was going to stay home with him I would be going through the same thing.

Monday came. Let's just say this is how I looked.

Tuesday came, a little less.

Then Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, was less and less. I decided I just needed to tell myself that I had to run errands all day and I couldn't take Jack and that I would see him around 6:30. Now I for sure miss the little man!

Final Week

This week the 24 - 28 is my last week off of maturnity leave. I am excited to go back, but sad to leave my little baby boy, however I know he will be in very good hands. I just hope he won't forget about me.

Personal Day care has been arranged, our neighbor Kelly and her little boy River will be watching him Monday & Tuesday, then our other neighbor Jennifer her little girl Lilly and little boy Reese will be watching him Wednesday, Thursday and Half day on Friday. I am excited for him to get some interaction from other people as well as their kids.

We hope to be able to switch this plan once Jeremy finds a job where he can either work a swing shift position or a night shift, this will help us with paying for Day care and will let Jack spend some one on one time with his dad.

Suprised Evening Out

Tuesday was a normal day for Jack and I. He slept in until 9:00 am I got him dressed for the day and fed. He then had his nap around 11:30 which then at 1:30 we would have to leave to go to Grandma South's house to get worked on. So we got there at 2 and then left around 4:00. At 5:30 called Jeremy to see when he would be home and see if he wanted hot dogs for dinner. He suprised me by telling me that Tawnie was going to watch Jack and we were going to go see a 6:30 movie. So we frpped Jack off at Tawnie's and went and saw Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Thus was the fisrt Harry Potter movie that we have actually seen in the theater.

It was great. Thank You Jeremy for suprising me 'like that and Thank You Tawnie forletting Jeremy know that you were free Tuesday night.

Three Months Old!

Three months ago Jeremy and I brought home the most handsome baby of all time. I can't believe that three months is already here. Jack has started smiling and every once in a while you can get him to give you a huge smile which totally brightens your day. He is also talking, but I guess for a three month old cooing also does the trick. He has figured our that his hands tast good and that instead of using them for what they were made for they can be found in his mouth. He is sleeping through the night, which Jeremy and I were really excited about and I think it makes him a happier baby. By sleeping through the night he then usually has 2 naps one in the morning and one in the evening. Jack's main goal I think for right now is conquering the sitting up on my own. Everytime we lay him in his Boppy he tries and tries to sit up. So we then help him, but I know he will get it one day.

I have already moved all of his newborn and 0 - 3 month old clothing to a bin and moved his 3 - 6 month old clothes in arms reach. We bought in an entertainment bouncer which has four different activities and the sitting area can spin around to all four areas. Although Jack is still a little short for the bouncer he is enjoys it for 10 - 15 minutes then he is ready to get out.

We have enjoyed every minute with Jack and would not trade him for the world. The funny thing is, although he is adopted, he is a South.

Sleeping through the night

I know I know that babies shouldn't be sleeping on their tummies until they can roll over by themselves, but we have found that Jack loves to sleep on his tummy and if he does he will sleep through the night. I feel that if they can move and lift their head they will be fine.

He is such a peaceful sleeper.

I love it when he falls asleep on me.

Its funny when he is so tired he will fall asleep being held. He fell asleep at 9:15 pm and slept until 8:30 am.