Greeting from the Cazin Family

Merry Christmas to all of you!!!! Yes, once again I have decided that our Christmas letter would come in the form of a blog. The nice thing is that I can include several pictures and be able to share more information. Our life lately has been absolutely crazy, but super blessed. This has been a year of just seeing God provide in incredible ways. We have come through so much and grown closer and stronger through it all. I am incredibly thankful for my amazing husband and our wonderful family.

January: We hunkered down in January and spent the winter enjoying Jack. He grew so much and started to explore so much more. The last day of January (actually the due date I had with Jack) we found out that I was pregnant. We were both so excited and ready to expand our little family.

February came and we celebrated Jack's first birthday. I could not belive how fast the year had gone. It was great to be able to celebrate our little boy. We had many family and friends over for the celebration. There are a lot of preschool children at church who just love Jack. It was fun to have them come celebrate with us. Charlie made the birthday so fun with great games for all the children. I made Jack a frog cake and he really enjoyed digging into his cake.

In March we finally got snow. We went up to my parents house for the day to play in the snow. We made a snowman and took Jack sledding. March was also the month that Jack decided to start walking. We were having dinner one Friday night before I went to have a girl night with some friends. As soon as I got where I was going I got a call from Charlie to find out that Jack started walking. I had just missed, but I was so glad that Charlie got to see him take his first step.

We also celebrated Easter with our family. This is always a special holiday for me. I really want Jack to understand what Easter is all about. We spent the morning at church celebrating the ressurection of Jesus and then we spent the afternoon with our family.

April: My sister was expecting her first child in mid-april so I planned a trip our to see her in Texas. Jack and I traveled to Texas with my parents for 10 days. Charlie had to work so he stayed home. We also could only afford for me to travel. Kristen found a place for me to stay and everything worked out perfectly. I really enjoyed spending time with my sister and seeing her new little girl. It was very difficult to be away from Charlie for so long and he said he will never let me leave for that long again.

May was kind of a slower month. We celebrated my birthday and mother's day. Other than that we just relaxed as much as we could because we knew the summer was going to be crazy.

June was a super busy month. We spent sometime together. We celebrated Father's day together. We took Charlie to a baseball game. Then at the end of June my family had a reunion in Southern California. We planned a great vacation packed completely full. We stayed with CHarlie's aunt and uncle in Yorba Linda. From there we had the family reunion on Saturday and got to see a lot of my cousins. Then on Sunday we all went to an Angels and Dodgers game. Charlie was very excited to take Jack and the Angels won so it was even better. On MOnday we spent the day at Disneyland. It was everything I had ever hoped for. Jack was so excited about every thing he saw. The best was the parade. He was so involved and loved waving at everyone.

In July Charlie took me to see Reba McIntire in concert. We had amazing seats. We left Jack with my parents overnight and we just had a great time with each other. It was exactly what we needed and it was a time of refreshing before the baby came. I am so thankful to my husband for blessing me in such amazing ways.

In August Lisa and Katie came to visit. We took them to the county fair. It was a fun day.

September we started to prepare for the arrival of Chloe and we celebrated Charlie's birthday.

October: Then on October 10, 2012 Chloe came into the world. Now our family was a family of four. It was the most amazing blessing. We were so excited to bring another baby into this world and Jack loves having a sister to love on. He is so good with her and I am so glad to have a little girl.

November: We celebrated Halloween and the next day my sister traveled out here from Tennessee with her daughter to spend 2 weeks with us. It was so much fun to spend time with her. Since it was not a holiday we really had a lot of time to just relax and enjoy each other. We did a few fun things, but we also just spent days letting the kids play, watching movies, baking and living life together. I was still on maternity leave so I had a lot of free time. I absolutely love spending time with her. It is time like these that make me miss her living so close. We spent one of the days at Apple Hill.

 

Then a few days after Kristen left my brother came to visit. Alan brought home is fiance for thanksgiving and it was so much fun to get to know Erin. We really enjoyed our time together. On thanksgiving I was able to get some really good pictures of the kids. That does not happen very often and I will cherish these pictures.

The day after Thanksgiving it is a tradition in our family to go get our Christmas tree. Alan really wanted to take Erin so we went with them. It was a fun day and Jack had an amazing time in the tree farm.

December: The week after Thankgiving we picked  up Charlie's mom from the airport and she spent a week with us. We had so much fun spending time with you and then we were able to celebrate Christmas with her. That was a blessing. She also got to babysit Jack the two days that I worked.

Here are the two newest babies of the family. Elizabeth was born one month after Chloe. It will be fun for the girls to grow up together. They are so close in age we are having a lot of fun.

For Christmas I love to make gingerbread houses, so I wanted Jack to enjoy this tradition. I have to say that he had a great time. It was fun to watch him enjoy this project.

Christmas Eve!!!!! Merry Christmas!!!!!! I hope you all had a great Christmas. This has been a great year for us. We are so blessed and could not asked for anything more amazing. We love you all!!!!

The Birth Story

I have finally gotten around to blogging. It is so difficult to believe that Chloe is almost two months old. I can't believe how fast the time has gone. I know that a lot of it has to due with the fact that it is the holiday season and that always seems so fast. I finally have a rainy day at home and both children are asleep. I have not had a day like this in a very long time.

Chloe was due on October 6th. Two days earlier I was having several contractions and was very uncomfortable. Charlie come home from work early to go with me to my doctor's appointment in case they thought I was going into labor. Well, after our appointment I have to say I was pretty disappointed because the contractions I had had all day did not make any difference on my progress. Since it was not my due date, I thought it was not really a big deal. We scheduled my next appointment the following Tuesday and at that appointment we would talk about what we wanted to do.

From the very beginning of this pregnancy I had decided that I did not want to be induced. I was induced with Jack and my labor was extrememly intense. I had heard that that can happen when you are induced. Well, about a week before I was due I found out that my dad was leaving on a business trip coming up and there was a chance that he would miss the birth. I really did not want that to happen. As my Tuesday appointment we decided to induce the next morning.

Tuesday night we had dinner with my parents and then Charlie and I left Jack to spend the night and we went home to enjoy the evening together. We relaxed and just spent some time together. It was a great way to prepare for the birth of another child.

Wednesday we woke up and before leaving for the hospital we had an amazing time of prayer and just asking for God's protection over the day. I was really nervous about the entire process. By the time we left for the hospital God had given me a great amount of peace. It was a very special time with my amazing husband.

At 9am the doctor induced me. It was an even smaller dose than they had done with Jack. It took about 2 hours for my contractions to start, but they were really mild. It seemed as though the induction had not worked. By 4pm I had not really progressed at all. I was really discouraged. The doctor was trying to decided whether or not to increase the medication or just send me home. We thought we would wait another hour and see what happened. By 5 my contractions started getting much more intense. At 5 I was still at 4. THey doctor left to prepare for me to get more medication. Then all the sudden labor hit. Between 5:30 and 6:30 I went from a 4 to an 8. It was the most painful hour. By 7 I was able to get a walking epidural and then I was pushing by 8:30 and Chloe was born at 9:07pm. It was pretty crazy starting at 5, but the overall experience was so much better than with Jack. I felt that this time I got to experience what labor should really be like, without being induced. Also, my walking epidural was more mild so I was competely coherent during labor and I did not having any side effects. I think that this time was a much better experience and I was not in as much pain the days following her delivery.

We spent two full days in the hospital so they could monitor Chloe and we were home by Friday evening. Charlie took two weeks off and we adjusted pretty well. It took the entire two weeks for Jack to get use to Chloe and when Charlie went back to work Jack had to readjust, but he is doing wonderful now. He absolutley loves his little sister and I am love having a little girl. It is fun to be a family of four.

We have been fairly busy, so I think there are times that we still are in disbelief that we have an infant in our home. It has been great to have so much family come and visit us. My sister was here with her daughter for the first two weeks of November. THen my brother and his fiance came for Thanksgiving. This week Charlie's mom is out visiting. Maybe after Christmas things will slow down. We will see. It has been so much fun.

I will have to do a few more posts to keep everyone updated on our life as a family of four.