Monday, June 20, 2011

My Sweet Child

Dearest Lydia,

I already love you so much, and I've never even seen your face. Just knowing that I will get to see you soon makes me a happy person, and even more excited to be your mother. I think that although being a parent will be tough, the experience will be well worth it. Every ounce of pain I've gone through during this pregnancy, whether it be emotional or physical, will not matter to me once you are here. 

I can't wait to be your mommy, hold your little hands, kiss your face, comb your hair, bathe you, sing to you. I can't wait to see you grow from a little baby to the woman you will become. Knowing that you are mine and that I get to teach you, love you, care for you, every day, makes me want to be a better person because I know that is what you will expect of me. 

Little Lydia, your daddy and I have so much love in our hearts for you. We can't wait to see the achievements you will have, and the good choices you will make. I want to teach you so much about your Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. I want you to have a testimony of the Gospel. I want you to know that Temples are important and I can't wait to see you get married in one, one day. I want you to have it embedded in your heart and soul, that you are not just my child, but that you are a child of God.

Little baby girl, I want you to succeed in everything you do. I'm going to try my hardest as your mother to give you the best life, not one free of trials or hardships, but one you can be happy with and love.

Lydia, I am so glad you are our baby. My baby.

I love you,


Mommy

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Mark your calendars!..

Okay, you don't really have to, but MINE are!


 Sooo we have a few exciting things coming up in the lives of the Stefans and Hernandez..ez... ;)

First,

This Sunday: Father's Day. A chance to celebrate, honor, and thank my dad for always being a hard worker and provider in my life. I see him as such a strong person and always willing to help others out.  In addition, my own husband, who, though he denies being an actual father at the moment, will be a father very shortly to our already amazing little girl. Jonathan is my best friend, always making me laugh and trying to please me in any way. He's one of my greatest strengths. When I feel like I'm too weak to keep going, he keeps my chin up. I know he will give all his love to our little girl as much as I will. And finally, my own Heavenly Father who has always supported me and shown His love for me. He's answered my prayers, given me comfort, and reassurance that although what we are going through is hard, we can make it.

Tuesday the 21st: We have another doctor's appointment. I'm not sure what has really changed since last week. But he said he does an ultrasound every visit. I am getting a little bit more crampy, but I haven't experienced hardly any braxton-hicks contractions...I'm kinda hoping that I will have some. So that when D-day comes it's not just full blown contractions. I want some practice ones in there first, please!!
Maybe my little dough just hasn't baked into a done bun just yet! :D

Wednesday the 22nd: My dad's birthday!!

Thursday the 23rd: I have a breastfeeding class I'm going to attend...woohoo! Should be interesting ;) especially.. with no baby yet hahaha

Friday the 24th: Jonathan's birthday!! Sunday we're going to celebrate both. I can't wait.

July 1st-4/5th: My dad has those days off and is taking his annual dipnetting trip to Chitina {wish I could go! haha yeah right}.. with basically my whole family.. Either Lydia needs to come the 30th .. or wait until or after the 5th so they all can see her right after she pops out.Whenever she does decide to come, my dad doesn't really care 'cause he's going fishing anyway hahaha. Kinda funny.. It doesn't matter to me if they are all there or present for it. Hospital rules only allow 2 extra people during the actual delivery. And they'll get to see her anyway. I'm sure we won't be going anywhere.

Tuesday July 5th!: Baby girl's due date! Hooray! And if she doesn't come then, well, doc said he usually doesn't allow them to go over a week. At this rate, I think she'll be right on time. I don't feel like much progression has taken place, so I dunno if she will come early.. Who knows? ;)

Oh and good news! Jonathan's parents decided that they are going to come up to Alaska from Texas for a short visit!!! They wanna see Lydia and see a bit of Alaska too. They're still unsure of the date. It probably won't be til maybe after she's born, we're not sure yet. But I'm glad they're going to come. It'll be nice having aaaaall the family there especially for this occasion. :)

Da End

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Time's flying by!

Tomorrow I have a doctor's appointment!!

I'll be 37 weeks!

And then I'll officially only have 3 weeks 'til Baby Girl's here :)
{of course, she can come on her own sweet time! but July 5th is when she should make her debut!}

So excited!!!

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Let me know if this is weird for you...

So I was trying to redesign my blog yesterday morning but I don't know if it's my computer that's making it weird or not. When I first get to my page everything's blank except the main blog with all the words. If I refresh once, the background appears (somehow I couldn't make it so just the background that I wanted appeared. I HAD to choose a template! So there's both.. lame!) but without my pretty fonts. I refresh again, and everything appears the way I want it to with the fonts. Or at least the way I had set it up. Also people are saying that my blog is removed. I had changed my website to my name so you can access my blog at http://annakhernandez.blogspot.com instead of what it used to be. I realize that this information may be useless to those who might need to see this if they can't even access it...haha. But oh well. In case you do read this and wonder why my blog is so funky that's why! I might do some more fix-ups to figure out why it's acting this way. OR let me know if when you go to my page it turns out all cute the way I made it (blog aligned down the center with background that shows the blog between bows, with patterns of lambs, puppies, and angels on the sides and a fancy font on the blog title). It may just be my computer... but who knows!


THANKS!

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Home, Sweet Home

I love Alaska! Need I say more? 

 {okay, so it's an old picture, but who cares!}


Despite being married and living with my parentals and crazy siblings, I actually really love it here. I feel really relaxed and not so stressed out, even being 4 weeks away from my due date. In the states everything was always so busy and noisy, and even if there wasn't something for me to do I felt like I had to always keep going going going. Always worrying about something.

Although we don't have a job at the moment, a car, or a home of our own, we're being well taken care of by my family, and the Lord. I also got onto health insurance YESTERDAY. In 1 day! And today I made an appointment to see a doctor for next Tuesday. Success! Also, Jonathan applied at Home Depot on Monday. There are some good chances he might get a job there. One, my brother works there. Two, his sister and good friend work at HD in Colorado. Her friend works in the human resource department so she's going to pull some strings and shoot some emails to the office up here. It sounds pretty promising. We're keeping our eyes open for anything though.
While amidst the hardship, I already feel so blessed by being here. Surrounded by a loving family who love having us back, everything has already been 90% easier than living in Omaha! I'm so grateful we were able to make it up here.


Now if only the mosquitoes didn't really SUCK here!!


I get bitten every night! While I'm defenseless! Those little suckers!!! ;) Ohhh well, if that's the only "natural disaster" that I have to deal with, then I'll take it!

It could be worse!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QyzPUDcgM8

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Don't worry, I'm still alive

In case you were wondering why I am MIA...

I'm not completely...just in Denver, Colorado with my sister-in-law and her family. 

You see, things weren't working out with our job in Nebraska, so they told us to pack up our things Sunday night (from our lovely abode that we've been staying at for a month and a half...cough cough.. a hotel) and go home. 

Only.. we don't have a home.

We banked on going to Nebraska, doing well in his job, having the baby there, and then figuring out what we'd do afterward, having a nice cushion of money to fall back on, either returning to Rexburg or fly to Alaska when the time got closer. I had no idea that if you didn't do well in the job (make sales) that they just kick you out. I would have been waaay more prepared (and also skeptical) had they even mentioned that to us when they recruited us! Not to mention they told us to leave all our kitchenware behind because the place that we were eventually going to move into would be furnished. Sooo when we head to Alaska we're starting out brand spanking new, especially since we're leaving our car behind. Poor Elenor, she can't make the trip. We really got screwed over. 

So... I am a little frustrated right now. I had just barely been seen by a doctor in Nebraska, after almost 6 weeks of waiting for stupid insurance and everything to go through. And now I have to do the whole process in Alaska.. in 5 weeks. Why 5 weeks? Because that's all the time I have left before lovely Lydia's due date. 

Not to mention, on our way out from Omaha, Monday we got caught in the middle of a tornado! There were tornado warnings above us and below us on the highway going through the town of Kearney, NE. We were stuck there for about 4 hours, in our cars under a bank drive through for protection, listening to the radio provide updates. Although the tornado didn't touch down in that town, we underwent a severe thunderstorm with nonstop lightning. Oh my heck, it was scary. I had a panic attack. I've never been through one of those and just seeing the damage done in Joplin made me way nervous. But Jonathan said we should pray, and the clouds started clearing about 15 minutes afterward. And we were able to leave. I was so happy to leave Nebraska behind. And thankful the Lord always takes care of us!

Amidst all these unfortunate events and nonstop stress, I am trying to stay positive, and thankful.

We have awesome friends who are making the trip up with us. Jonathan is riding with a friend through the Alcan (bold, I know!) and I am flying this Saturday out of Denver to Anchorage where my dad will meet me and we'll go back home to North Pole. Then our friend's wife will meet the boys next week in Anchorage when she flies in from Texas and they'll make the trip to Fairbanks to drop off all our stuff. I'm really grateful for all their help as well as their truck that was able to fit all our baby things/suitcases! They've been such a blessing especially with our financial situation. 

I'm also thankful for my mother, who willingly paid for my plane ticket up when we couldn't rely on other people who said they would help us out. And I'm grateful for my dad for giving up his dipnetting trip (that he takes annually) to drive to Anchorage Saturday day and pick me up at the airport. 
I'm happy because even though I probably won't get to see my husband for over a week (hay, that's long to me okay!) I do get to see my family in 3 days, as well as all my many friends who are still in Alaska. 
I'm thankful that my parents love us so much they're willing to help us out, and are SO thrilled that we are going to be up there, especially for the birth! This will be the first grandchild on my side of the family, and my parents and siblings are excited. :) 

I know it's going to be a super stressful month...heck, probably the next few months will be, I'm counting on it.. but I'm willing to tackle it. We've learned and are continuing to learn a LOT of lessons from this whole situation, which, at the time seem hard to overcome, but we need it. All I know is, I can't wait to get up to Alaska.

I'm sooo done with the states!