Easter Fever!

This picture is from Easter last year. Abbie was still in the hospital but it was just that morning that we recieved the news that Abbie would be going home the next day!! What a wonderful Easter miracle that was! This is one of the few times she wore clothes while in the hospital, but it wouldn't be Easter without a pretty Easter dress! We've come so far and we feel so blessed that Abbie is doing so well. This year, however, Easter didn't quite turn out as we expected. We had planned to go down to Beaver for the weekend for the Annual Moss Easter Egg Hunt. We were so excited for Abbie to run around with her cousins and find eggs. I guess she had different plans though, when she decided to have a fever, and do nothing but sleep and cry for four days. Poor thing! We had to nix our Beaver plans and have a quiet weekend at home instead. She was starting to feel better late Saturday and Sunday so we did get to do a little Easter celebrating. We decorated some eggs and tried to have some Easter egg hunts but she didn't really have the energy to walk around to find the eggs. Luckily, we had a ward Easter egg hunt the week before so she still got to have that experience. We also had a nice Easter dinner at G & G Johnson's house and then went to visit Great Grandma Johnson. Abbie even let us enjoy most of General Conference. Overall, it was a good Easter. We really missed seeing all of our family down in Beaver but fortunately we'll get to see them in a few months for the Moss Family Reunion! Yay! Hope everyone had a great Easter and Conference weekend!

Here are some pics from last weekend:

Abbie wasn't quite fast enough at first

She got one!

Calling her girlfriends to tell them about her pretty Easter dress

Now some pics from this weekend:

This is what she was doing for 85% of the weekend

What a hairdo!



Abbie's version of egg decorating

Visiting Great Grandma J

Family Easter Pic

Pigtails: Attempt #1

So Abbie's hair is getting kind of long, but only in the back. She looks like she has a mullet. Anyway, I thought I would try my hand at some little pigtails. Poor little thing had to suffer through her mother's lack of hair-doing skill. It turned out cute enough but I don't think Abbie will ever let me do it again. Plus, it made her look like a boy from the front because you couldn't even see the pigtails. Oh well! We'll try again someday!

From the Front: You can't even see them and it looks like she has boy hair

From the Side: Cuter, but see how she has no hair on the sides?

From the Back: Cutest. I think they turned out pretty good (at least from this view)

St. Patrick's Day Memories

For some reason, I have a distinct memory of last year's St. Patrick's Day of all days. I probably remember it because Abbie's nurses made her all of these really cute bows and I was so excited to use the pretty green one for Abbie's first official "holiday" St. Patrick's Day. Anyway, I just thought it would be fun to do some comparison photos from last year to this year.

The famous green bow

Sitting up in a chair for the first time

One year later...man what a difference a year makes!

Hope everybody had a great St. Patty's Day!

Happy Birthday Abbie!!!

Birthday Girl loved the balloons!

Yesterday Abbie got to celebrate her first birthday with lots of cake, balloons, presents, and family! We had pizza for dinner, cause what's a party without pizza? Abbie loves pizza crusts, so it worked out great. Next, we opened presents and she loved every one of them. It took awhile, but you can't expect a one year old to open a new toy and then just move on to the next present without playing with it first. She got some cute new dresses and outfits for Spring, new books, some stuffed animals, a beautiful toy chest (made by Grandpa J), some cool new toys, and a play tent. After presents came the cake. She took a couple of swipes at the frosting and decided she didn't like getting messy. Oh well! More undamaged cake for the rest of us to eat! Here's a little video of Abbie going at the cake.

While we were eating cake, we watched a couple of slideshows with pictures from Abbie's first year. The kids were kind of bored so Abbie and her cousins went to play with her tent. I was sitting there, watching the slideshow when I noticed that it had gotten kind of quiet and both of Abbie's cousins were sitting there watching too. I asked Haley where Abbie was and she said, "I think she's trying to climb the stairs." Yikes! We all got up and ran to the stairs. Lance's brother Ren was the closest but we were all just a little too late. We don't really know what happened, but I think she fell from the 2nd or 3rd step up and bonked her head pretty good. She had a big goose-egg and was crying pretty hard for a few minutes. We knew she was okay though, because after the initial scare, she wanted to get down to play with her new toys. Poor girl! What a birthday present!

Can you see the red bump on her forehead?

Anyway, thank you to all of our family for making Abbie's birthday special. This year has been a challenging one for us, but we are so happy to have this sweet little angel as part of our family. She makes us smile and reminds us that life is precious. Happy Birthday Abbie! We love you!

Loving the party hats!

Playing in her tent

Long Day, but Good News

Getting checked in. Not a happy camper!

Abbie's heart cath was yesterday and boy was it a long day. We arrived at the hospital at 9:30a.m. only to be told that somebody had told us the wrong check-in time. We weren't supposed to be there till 11a.m. and Abbie's procedure wasn't scheduled to start until 12:30p.m.! That left 3 hours for us to try to keep Abbie entertained and somewhat happy. We managed, with lots of help from the toys at the hospital and a little nap. So 12:30 rolls around and we still haven't heard anything. We asked the nurses in the waiting room to call the cath lab to see what was going on and found out that they were going to be delayed. We ended up waiting almost 5 hours before Abbie was finally called at 2p.m.. The procedure itself took 3 hours, and then we had to stay at the hospital for 5 more hours to make sure Abbie was ok. We ended up leaving the hospital at 10:15p.m. Yikes!

Making lunch for mom and dad while we wait

Abbie taking a nap in a wagon

Anyway, that was our long day, now on to the good news. The pressures were a lot lower than before and it doesn't look like there are any other big problems. Abbie's heart is definitely unique and it's just going to have to be monitored to make sure it is growing and working properly as Abbie grows. So, bottom line is nothing is changed from the original plan and Abbie is doing well. Here are some cool x-rays of Abbie's heart. I just thought it was neat to see the pacemaker and the lead wires that are attatched to her heart. You can also see how her sternum was wired shut after her open heart surgery.

Abbie's procedure

We have an appointment set for February 16th to get Abbie's heart cath done. The procedure itself is supposed to take about 3 hours and afterwards, Abbie has to stay flat on her back for 6 hours!! Hopefully she'll be somewhat sedated or else that is going to be a torturous experience for all of us! Anyway, just wanted to let you all know. Any thoughts or prayers on that day would definitely be welcome!

Groundhog's Day

Yesterday was Abbie's first Groundhog's day! I know that sounds funny because nobody really celebrates Groundhog's day. Well, we do. Since we've been married we have a little tradition. We make special Groundhog cupcakes that are chocolate cake with green frosting and half a twix sticking up in the middle to represent the groundhog. We build a fort and pretend to be "underground" like a groundhog, and of course, watch Groundhog's Day. We didn't have time to watch the movie this year, but we did the other stuff and Abbie loved the fort! She crawled right in and started playing peekaboo. Anyway, just a random little tradition.

Mom and Abbie in the fort

Abbie playing peekaboo with Dad