Our Family

Who we are

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Our Stats:

Dustin

Age: 31

Height: 6'0"

Eyes: Blue

Hair: Dark Brown

Ancestry: Caucasian - English, & Swedish

Education: Bachelors of Science in Nursing -BSN, currently applying for Masters programs in Nurse Anesthesiology

Occupation: Currently working full time in the ICU

Nicole

Age: 27

Height: 5'7"

Eyes: Blue

Hair: Light Brown/ Dark Blonde

Ancestry: Caucasian- Irish

Education: Bachelors of Science in Nursing -BSN

Occupation: Very part time nurse

And a very full time, busy stay at home mom!

Carson:

Age: 5

Height: Growing too fast

Hair: Light brown

Ancestry: Caucasian

Education: Preschool

Occupation: Teaching his sister new things

and keep all of us entertained!

Mersadie:

Age: 2 1/2

Height: Growing like a weed

Hair: Light blonde

Ancestry: Caucasian

Education: Copying everything her brother does

(seriously, EVERYTHING!)

Occupation: Being cute, teasing her brother

About Nicole- by Dustin

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I don't even know where to begin, there are no words to describe how amazing and wonderful she is. There have been many times that I have not been able to do anything but sit back in absolute admiration, she truly is awesome. Nicole is the type of person that brings out the best in people. She sees more in people than they see in themselves and she strives to help them achieve it. She is very family motivated, her family is one of the most important things in her life, and it shows in her actions and her words. Nicole has a big heart and is a very compassionate individual. She has a fun side to her as well, and can often be found playing with her children whether it is playing games at our house or racing them down the slide at the park. She lights up the room when she enters. I love her.

About Dustin- by Nicole

2010-03-30T21:31:00.007-07:00

Dustin is the most patient and caring person I have ever met. There are so many times I wonder what I did to deserve a guy as great as him. He is such an amazing father, he loves to play with his kids! He is a hard worker, and he would do anything to make sure his family has what they need. He has never complained about going to work, even while he was going to school. He is a great example in our home, he honors his priesthood and has a strong testimony and knowledge of the gospel. He is always ready to have a good time and loves to make us all laugh. We love him so much.

Nicole’s Family

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I am the oldest of five, one sister and three brothers. I grew up in a small town and when I was about 13 moved to a house in the country, we had horses, pigs, cows and of course dogs and cats. My parents were very passionate about teaching all of us to work hard, they owned their own business and therefore there was always something to do, however we also played hard. I have many wonderful memories of working and playing with my family. I have a great relationship with my parents. I consider my mom one of my best friends, we talk every day. When the whole family gets together there is never a dull moment. We love to have a good time, whether it's hanging out, talking, playing games, or some other crazy activity. We feel blessed to live close to them.

Dustin’s Family

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I am the oldest of four, one sister and two brothers. I grew up in a small town and my parents still live in the house I grew up in. My childhood was full of adventures. I loved growing up in a small town where I knew everyone on my street and we could run around the neighborhood and only come home when it was time to eat or it got dark. My family loved (and still loves) doing just about any outdoor activity. We love camping, four wheeling in the mountains, hiking, snowboarding, and playing games. Some of my favorite family memories are going to the Grand Canyon, hiking Zion's National Park, and going to Lagoon. My family also loves to just sit around the table and play card games, we are all very competitive and there are many games we still talk about.

How We Met

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We met while going to Ricks college (AKA BYU-Idaho). We worked at the same assisted living facility. Nicole worked the evening shift and Dustin worked the night shift. A lady that worked there had been trying to set Dustin up with a girl who she thought was cute, Dustin went on a date with her but things didn't work out. Then this lady said she had another girl she wanted him to meet. Dustin was a little hesitant, but then one night when he came to work Nicole was there and Dustin thought she was pretty cute, so he decided to give her a chance. We didn't start dating right away, at first we just hung out and got to know each other, and went on a couple group dates. It was about 4 months later that we stated to really date, we dated for one year, and then on a beautiful sleigh ride through the woods Dustin proposed. We were married 6 months later and the rest (as they say) is history!

Why we are choosing adoption

2010-03-30T21:24:00.000-07:00

I (Nicole) have always wanted to adopt. I just always thought it would be later in life when my biological children were grown. I never had any problems getting pregnant and both of my pregnancies went smoothly. My second delivery however did not go so smoothly. A few minutes after the doctor broke my water I knew something wasn’t right. They could no longer find the babies heart beat, and I was really dizzy and things were turning black. Thankfully Mersadie was born within about a minute of this starting, which is most likely what saved her life. She was in a little bit of shock but after a few minutes she was ok. I however was not, I was bleeding a lot and the doctor was not sure why, I was coming in and out of consciousness but after I found out my baby was ok I think I pretty much checked out. Although I do remember bits and pieces. I remember being in A LOT of pain. I remember them asking me if I wanted something for the pain (which I did), I didn’t have an epidural which turned out to be another blessing, because if I’d had an epidural I would not have felt the pain, which was one of the clues to the doctor that something was not right. I remember them telling me the baby was a girl. I remember part of a blessing Dustin was giving me. I remember signing a paper, (although I was not sure what it meant at the time). Then the next thing I remember was waking up in the recovery room. I had just had surgery, Dustin was there and he told me that I had just had a hysterectomy, that was the only way the doctor could save my life. What?!?! At the time I could not wrap my brain around that. Then I woke up in the ICU, still not entirely sure what had just happened. My mom and dad where there, I couldn’t figure out why my dad was there, I knew he was supposed to be working, and I couldn’t figure out why my bishop and other friends were there. I was hurting a lot and still pretty confused. I did not realize how close I had come to leaving this earth. I spent about a week in the hospital and then on Mother’s Day 2008 I came home. I had talked to my doctor about what had happened and she said they only thing she could figure out was that I had an amniotic fluid embolism, although that can only be diagnosed with 100% accuracy through an autopsy, I was ok with skipping that :) After researching it online I learned that approximately 90% of women die within the first hour, and many survivors have very severe life long effects from this. Although I considered myself very blessed to be alive, it did not make the emotional hurt and pain any less. It took some time for me to completely understand what had happened and what that meant for me and our family. I cried (hard) many nights thinking of the babies I would not be able to have, and wondering why this was happening to me. After about a month the pain was not quite so raw and I was able to see other options. We always knew we wanted a big family, we talked about having a surrogate and other options like that, however deep down we knew that adoption was our path. We are so excited that this is how our family is going to grow, and not just with more babies, but with birthmothers, birthfathers and their families. We love the idea of having lots of people to love our children!

Top 10 Things We Want To Teach Our Children

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These are not necessarily in any particular order ...
1- We want our children to grow up knowing that they have a loving Heavenly Father, that they are a child of God, and that they can pray about anything and everything and receive answers.
2- We want them to know without a doubt that they have a family that loves them unconditionally. That their home is their soft place to fall, where they will not be judged, and they can make choices and learn and grow from those choices.
3- We want to teach them to make choices on their own and that their choices have consequences (good and bad), to think for themselves and develop opinions.
4- We want to teach them that they can be forgiven for choices they have made that may not have been the best, and that they can move on and start fresh again.
5- We want to teach them to love others and to be accepting of others and not judgmental, and have forgiving hearts.
6- We want them to learn how to control their emotions. We want to give them the tools to function well in society.
7- We want them to have good manners and to be polite.
8- We want them to know how to work hard and learn the value of a dollar.
9- We want to teach them how to be financially secure and manage their money in a way that will bring them peace and comfort in these troubling days.
10- And last but definitely not least, we want to teach them how to enjoy every moment, to be happy where they are in life and not to wish time away. We want them to have fun and find humor in life.

*** These are obviously our ideals, we are not perfect parents and we do fall short of these aspirations at times. But we also believe we have to have goals and aspirations, and with the Lords help we can get better everyday!

Family Goals

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We believe in setting goals and having hopes and dreams. We have many goals for our family that we are working on and look forward to accomplishing. Our main goal is an eternal goal and that is to raise a family that will be able to return to live with our Heavenly Father and be together for eternity.

Some of our more immediate and temporal goals are:

1. To get through graduate school
2. Buy a nice home with some land where we can have animals, a big garden and be more self sufficient, and where our kids can have room to run and explore.
3. Take lots of family vacations, at least one a year.
4. Have fun toys like a boat and four wheelers, for hours of family entertainment and memories.
5. To keep a good record of our family activities and memories. (This is mainly Nicole's, she likes to edit family videos and do digital scrapbooking)
6. We also have goals to develop new talents, like sewing for Nicole and Dustin's latest was Golf. We like to learn and do new things, and we like to encourage our children to have dreams and encourage them to do new things also.

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OUR FAMILY FAVORITES

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Favorite Things To Do At Home:

We are perfectly content to stay at home and hang out with each other. Our top 5 favorite things to do at home are:
1. Play games- any kind. Board games, card games, silly games. Hide and seek is Carson's favorite, even though he always gives away his spot!
2. Sing and Dance- Nicole loves to sing and dance with the kids, (even though I am terrible at both) We turn on silly music, use whatever is handy for a microphone and hope that no one else is watching. Every once in a while Dustin will get in on this fun.
3. Living room Wrestling- This is Dustin’s specialty. He loves to play wrestle with the kids, and they love to gang up and tackle dad, it makes everyone laugh so hard.
4. Play in the yard- we love to be outside in the yard, whether it is doing yard work or just laying in the hammock. The kids could play in the dirt all day long.
5. Watch movies and eat popcorn- who doesn't love to curl up on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and a good movie. We love Disney and we are always quoting movies and trying to stump each other.

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Favorite Traditions-
We are still trying to develop our own little family traditions. Here are a few of the ones we have already started.

1-We have decided that we want to take a family vacation every year. We love seeing new things and we love spending time together. So far we have been to some pretty cool places, and look forward to seeing lots more.
2- On our family vacations we collect books, each place we go the kids get a book about one of the places we saw. We love this! We wanted to have souvenirs from the places we went but we wanted it to be something that wouldn't turn into clutter or be something we would want to through away later. (Nicole loves to clean things out and throw "useless" stuff away) So collecting books was the perfect answer!

3- Birthdays have become a big deal at our house. Every year Nicole makes a 3D cake, and we usually have a theme, everything matches and the entire house is decorated, Dustin likes to do the balloons and streamers. Mersadie is too little to really understand this yet, but Carson gets so excited to pick out what his cake is going to be.

4- Maybe this isn't really a tradition but we're throwing it in here anyways. Nicole has made up a song for each of our children. It is to the tune of something else, and is just a silly little song, but each of the children know its "their" song. And they love it when Nicole sings it to them (even though I couldn't carry a tune if my life depended on it) Someday we are sure they will be thoroughly embarrassed by it! :)
5- This may not be considered a tradition either but it is something that we do every summer. We love to hang out on the lake! We love to be on the boat and the water, we can't wait until we can get a boat of our own.

6- We also have a few Holiday traditions. Like for Thanksgiving we like to talk about all the things we are thankful for and of course have the big meal and spend time with extended family. For Christmas we like to get a real Christmas tree from Grandma and Grandpa's Christmas Tree farm. We decorate the house and sing lots of Christmas music. Then on Christmas Eve we like to have a little "program" every member of the family brings a story, or a song, or a poem, or just something that has to do with Christmas and everyone shares something. Sometimes its funny and sometimes it is very touching and spiritual. Then we have a smorgasbord and each little finger foods, cookies and treats until we are completely stuffed, then we get to open one present (which is usually pajamas) Then we go to bed and wait for Santa to bring the goods.
* We are always in the process of developing new traditions as our family grows.

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Favorite Vacations-
Pretty much all of our vacations have been great and so they are all our favorites. These are our bigger vacations over the years.

1. For our honeymoon we went to Hawaii. We spent a week at a condo just across the street from the beach. We had so much fun driving around the Island, hiking and hanging out on the beaches.
2. Our second major vacation was when Nicole finished nursing school, but before we had Carson and we decided to do something spontaneous and fun. So we booked a cruise! We had no idea that it would be so much fun, we still talk about it and look forward to when we can go again.

3. When Carson was a year old we took him to Disneyland. The plane ride was not a whole lot of fun, Carson gets really sick in the car and the plane was no different. Disneyland was definitely a little overwhelming for him, but overall we had a lot of fun and don't regret taking him. Although we would love to take him again when he can remember it a little more.

4. Then when Nicole was pregnant with Mersadie Nicole's family decided to go to Hawaii for a month so we decided to take advantage of that and went and stayed with them for a week. Hawaii is a place we could go to over and over and never get sick of it. Carson was in love! He could not get enough of the sand, we are pretty sure we were still finding sand in his ears when we got home.

5. This past summer we decided we were over due for a vacation so we took two weeks and went back east to Washington DC, Pennsylvania and New York. We saw a TON of sites, had a lot of fun and were very impressed by how well the kids did. It wasn't until the last two days that they started acting like they were ready to go home.

These are our major vacations so far, we hope there will be many more to come.