We Are Looking to Adopt!

We are so excited about this new announcement and journey that are family is starting on. We are officially looking to adopt our next child!

 Due to some health and pregnancy risks that I have had in the past coupled with some new fertility problems we have been experiencing we have decided to take advantage of this wonderful option that we have to grow our family. 

We are going to be adopting through LDS Family Services and will soon have a profile viewable on their website. We are choosing to go with LDS family services because of their vast amount of resources they offer to not only families looking to adopt, but more importantly moms and fathers looking to place their children for adoption. LDS family services has impressed us with the fact that they offer counseling to both birth parents (mothers and fathers placing a child for adoption) and their families, along with covering all medical costs and often times basic needs costs incurred by birth-moms. We feel that having the birth moms emotional and physical needs met with out incurring additional worry or stress on an already difficult situation is important, and we have confidence that LDS services can provide that. Any expectant mother looking to place a child for adoption regardless of their religious background can use LDS services as their agency and advocate, and with 62 offices these services are accessible to nearly everyone.


We hope as we spread the word that we are looking to adopt that friends and family will be able to help us spread the word even further increasing our chances of finding that perfect match for our family. With so many couples in the same position as us looking to adopt we want to be as proactive as possible in growing our family through adoption.


We have more information about us and our hopes of adopting on our adoption website. WWW.HUTCHINGSADOPT.COM  

If you have any questions or know someone that is looking to place a child for adoption please feel free to contact us at hutchingsadopt@gmail.com or call us at 801.709.1326 and feel free to scan and share our QR code. Thanks!

You can also help us by adding our adoption button to your blog or website.

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I have a daughter

A much needed post for a much neglected blog.

Jayna is finally laying down for a nap in her "big girl bed". I can still hear her sick little coughs over the monitor, but can tell by the lack of activity that sleep for her is near. It feels like an unusual day since Jayna is sick and we had our first snow fall of the season. So I have been letting her watch movie after movie and have treat after treat. Hopefully she doesn't think this is going to be our new winter lifestyle. In between movies and crackers and cheese Jayna decided she wanted to be pushed down the slide in the living-room (which is really a storage box lid positioned down two steps) in a newly emptied Pampers box. I told her I would be there in a minute and from in the box positioned at the top of the slide she said "Mom what are you doing?" I told her I was trying to get the coriander seeds off my dried cilantro plant to put in the jar, to which her reply was "Mom that is too hard have Dad do it." She is so funny and clever and I could not help but laugh at her suggestion. She loves her daddy and I am pretty sure she thinks he lets the sun out just for her in the morning and and puts it away at night just so she can see the stars.

Last night as I sat braiding Jayna's blonde feathery hair for the first time, it hit me again that I have a daughter. I was actually sitting on my couch braiding my daughters hair in my house. Not a dolls hair, not the neighbor girls hair, not my friends hair, but my daughters hair. I have been thinking a lot recently about what kind of Mom I really want to be. I hope I can be the kind of Mom that is more sad than angry, and is more concerned than critical. I hope I can focus on more of the big things than the little things, and put more focus on the relationship than the rightness. In that moment on the couch I was just happy to have a daughter. I think no matter what kind of Mom you are you can have perfect kids and hard kids, and that is why I want to keep my happiness focused on just having them, that way at the end of the day perfect or not I still have love and a relationship with them.

Here are some catch-up pictures of Jayna:

playing at the pumpkin patch

bubble bath time

Heber valley railroad train ride

picking flowers with Mom

The New Addition

This is the new addition to our family that we got yesterday. I am still having mixed feelings about it, because to me it is in-between cute old truck and white trash truck. I am glad it will solve all of our "how do we get this?" and "how do we get rid of this" problems though.

This getting a truck thing started last week when we realized we have no way to get rid of a ton of sand in a huge ghetto sandbox in the backyard to make way for our landscaping projects we want to do this year. So naturally this week we bought a truck. Ridiculous! It was only $1000 and we bought it from a kid who got it from his grandpa and had been fixing it up forever. It is embarrassingly loud with duel exhausts (just like a 20 year old boy would like). I have to admit it is fun to drive and ride in though, and will for-sure add a sense of adventure to all our future Ikea and Home Depot runs.

Don't laugh, but I had to call the fire-department to see if it was even legal to put Jayna in her car-seat in this truck. It was, in-fact they said the older trucks are safer because they have no airbags, although I do not think we will be driving on the free-way with her in this truck anytime soon. So last night we drove to In and Out Burger for dinner no license plates and all and then went to Lowes to look at some things. There is something about driving an old truck to get burgers that is so right and 100% American. It was a blast!

I told Ryan that it was my the Bird and the Berry truck and he got really disgusted and told me "We are not Bird and the Berrying this thing up". I am guessing that means I can not put my blog logo on it or reupholster the bench seat in a print or tweed. But we will see about that.

Valentines & Anniversary Weekend

There could not possibly be a worst day to have your Wedding Anniversary than the day after Valentines.

Now there is a long story about why we picked that day to get married on in the first place, and non of it has to do with us loving the color red or the holiday. Although it was exactly 4 years to the weekend that we first meet, but even that was not the reason.

Over the years we have come to really dislike the timing of our Anniversary since everyone is trying to go out to dinner at the same time as us, hotels are more expensive, and the celebration of both Valentines and our Anniversary always get mushed together. This year was different though, I felt so special and like we were the only ones celebrating this weekend. It was perfect!

We decided to celebrate on Friday night since Valentines was on Sunday and we knew everyone in Utah would be going out on Saturday Night. So we forever in advanced asked Devin (Ryan's brother that is at BYU for college) if he would come up and babysit for us, and he thankfully said yes. We have little to no babysitting options. Devin had it pretty easy since Jayna goes to bed between 7:00 and 7:30 and we left at 6:30. So he just had to play with her a little and then put her down to bed.

We headed off to dinner at a Utah classic the Roof which we had never been to before. It is located at the top of the Joseph Smith Memorial building and is a buffet style restaurant. We were seated at just about the best table in the whole restaurant. It was away from everyone and was a window table that overlooked the southeast corner of the temple and temple square. The table had a single rose at it for me and a card on a little stand that read happy Anniversary. I was so impressed and I hadn't even sat down yet. After we went and got our salads a hostess came up and started apologizing about the rose that was on the table and explained that my husband had really ordered me a big bouquet which she then placed on the table. I was smiling so big I think my checks could have burst. The hostess made such a big spectacle of it that I told Ryan he probably got all the other men around us in trouble.

All the food was so good. We paced ourselves so we could have a little taste of everything, and I think we about did. The dessert bar was to die for though. They had everything you could want. I tried this pastry with a flaky crust filled with whip cream and topped with fresh berries and had to have another before we left. It was one of those things that I knew I would regret having two, and regret not having three all at the same time. It was the best thing I have ever had. I could not have imagined a more perfect dinner to have with my husband of now 7 years. It almost brought tears to my eyes to be sitting with him across from me and the temple glowing to our side on our anniversary.

I gave him his present at dinner which was a Craftsman 6 in 1 tool he has been wishing for. We have slight disagreements in our house about which power-tools we need to buy and in what order. He truly deserved this tool though, he works so hard for our family and always, puts me and Jayna first. He gave me my present after dinner which was that he is going to buy me flowers once a month for a year. Not one of those online programs, but that he is going to go buy them for me and give them to me each month. I thought it was so thoughtful, because he knows how much I would enjoy fresh flowers in the house. I am most looking forward to a bouquet of flowers from the farmers market this spring, they are so pretty.

So from our more than nice and fancy dinner we went to.... Nicklemania ... yes you heard right we went to the nickel arcade. It was a blast! We spent a million nickels and won tons of tickets of which we got a shocking pen, rabbits foot, and parachute man to pay our babysitter with.

After we were done playing games we headed back home. Ryan and I finished the night off with sparkling cider next to a warm fire in our bedrooms fireplace. It doesn't get used very often, but it is so fun and romantic to have a fireplace in our bedroom.

It was the perfect date with the perfect person. I cannot wait to see what the next year has in-store for us. I told Ryan that in 10 years I will have been with him longer than I haven't, since I started dating him when I was 16. Crazy to think about where we have come, where we are, and where we may be going.

Hidden Valley Mess

The other night Ryan and Jayna were making ranch dressing for dinner. Ryan filled the container with all the ingredients and put the little cap on the lid and started to demonstrate to Jayna how to shake the dressing bottle. Problem was he didn't put in fingers on the cap to hold it onto the lid. A few hard shakes and this is what we ended up with.

A big glop of ranch dressing shot Jayna in the face. She was petrified and very upset about the mess. Jayna hardly ever bawls about anything, but she hates big messes. It took us awhile to console her and show her that it could all be fixed and cleaned up. She is so funny.

Red came running out of the laundry-room during all the commotion too, and slipped and fell in the ranch pool on the floor. It was a pretty funny scene with both of them covered in ranch.

We managed to clean everyone up before our food was cold and still had enough ranch for dinner.

The Big Bubble in the Sky

Most of us look at this photo and see the moon, but if you are a little toddler you may see a glorified bubble.

We laughed so hard when we took Jayna out of the car last night and she pointed to the sky and kept saying bubble. At first we did not know what she was looking at and then we realized she meant the moon. Jayna loves bubbles and I am sure this looked like the most amazing bubble she had ever seen. She kept trying to touch it and we had to explain that it was too high in the sky to touch. So fun to think about how little ones see the world.

Move Over Madonna

Move over Madonna there is a new chick in town that likes to wear bras over her clothes and sparkly skirts.

I call Jayna the one boot wonder. She loves her pink suede boots and will walk around the house for hours and days with only one on. It's kinda like Michael Jackson's whole one glove thing except it's a shoe. It's her signature look. The rest of the outfit....well that's just Jayna.