A new beginning

Billy and Jen (my brother and his wife) were blessed to have this beautiful girl join their family on March 3rd. Her name is Jocelyn Marie and she is absolutely perfect!

I was able to go and visit them in the hospital and was definitely not expecting the tears that accompanied our first meeting! Peter and I have been talking a lot about our family and we are both feeling fairly certain that we are done having children and when I held sweet little Jocelyn my eyes just swelled up with tears and I couldn't help bur miss the feeling of having that brand new, warm and tiny bundle in my arms. It's such a weird thing for me to KNOW that we are done, but still want more. But I've come to the conclusion that I will always WANT more. But that doesn't mean that I SHOULD have more. I have five beautiful children and even though they aren't that little anymore I still love them so much. I can always hold and love on my nieces and nephews and neighbors and someday my grandkids, but it's time for me to move on from this stage of mothering infants and babies. I will miss it, and I realized how much when I snuggled sweet little Jocelyn in my arms. But lucky for me, before the summer is through will be blessed with THREE new beautiful nieces that I can hold. Billy and Jen's in March, and in May Joe and Jessica will be having a girl, and in August Chris and Stephanie will have their little girl.

I will say this though, I'm SO excited to have my body back (well, I'm excited to GET my body back). I've been pregnant or recovering from being pregnant for the last 9 years and as soon as I'd start loosing weight and getting in shape I'd get pregnant again! I'm running a half marathon in June and the Saint George Marathon in October and we are going to Hawaii in August so I've got plenty of motivation to get rid of my baby fat. I'm excited to be so young still and be able to have energy to be involved and active in my kids lives. When I'm 30 I will have Five kids ages 10 to 2 and four of them will be in school. That's pretty great! One of the blessings of starting young and having them all close together. We really want to go to Nauvoo and do a whole church history trip the summer before Tyler turns 12. We thought that would be really cool and if we do it right around the time when Tyler will receive the Priesthood and Logan will be 4 so the kids would all be old enough to sit in the car and not have a heart attack! Family Vacations get easier when the kids get bigger and when you keep adding a new baby to the family, those kind of vacations get pushed back farther and farther. It's an exciting new stage of life! But I'm still mourning the loss of the baby stage even though I'm not even out of it yet. I know I'm crazy but I really do love this stage. But here's the the beginning of the next stage!