Jenny's Family the Harts!

These are some fun pictures of Jenny's family taken in September. They were done by our sister-in-law Jennifer Eliason Photography (http://jennifereliason.com/blog/). I just thought that they turned out so dang cute that I had to post them on our blog. Anyway here's my cute nephews, neice, parents, and siblings!

Our Journey with Fertility!

Everyone probably already knows what a struggle Andrew and I have gone through to start our family. We have been married for 8 1/2 years, and we started trying for a family almost 5 years ago with no luck. We were approved for adoption last November through LDS Family Services, and haven't heard anything on a baby for us through that process. We have had our share of trials with this, and we both have learned a lot from the Lord in asking him why this has to happen.

This past summer we made the decision to try a further step in fertility treatments and consulted with the Reproductive Care Center in Sandy. The cost of In-vitro Fertilization has kept us away from considering it as an option until now. I'm 29 years old, and I know that I would regret the decision to not try IVF at least once while in my twenties. I knew that we'd have a better chance at success with this treatment if I was younger with more eggs available. So we got the go ahead, and started the process of IVF at the beginning of August.

Honestly for me, I was soooo pessimistic about the whole thing. I learned to 'preserve' my feelings by not hoping anymore. So that was the theme for this new journey. As far as hormone injections, blood draws every other day, and ultrasounds every other day go.... it couldn't have gone better for me. I felt fine. On egg retrieval day they took 11 eggs, fertilized all of them using a newer technique called 'ICSI'. They grew all embryo's in the lab for 5 days, and on day 5 we had 6 good looking embryo's. We decided to transfer 2 embryo's on day 5 and the other 4 embryo's are frozen in the lab for later use when we are ready.

So after all of this, I had a positive pregnancy test. We waited until I was about 6 weeks in my pregnancy and went into the fertility clinic to verify fetal heart tones through another ultrasound. Just as soon as they did the ultrasound it was very obvious that there were two babies with little heart beats! We couldn't help but laugh :) I couldn't believe that all of this actually worked! I had heard lots of horror stories of people I know spending all of this money on fertility and it never worked. I guess now I know that everyone has their own story and their own journey in life.

Our faith has really been tested through all of this, and I know that without a doubt Heavenly Father has blessed us with these babies. I know that this is just the beginning of our journey, but I am so grateful to know that we have someone on our side through all of our trials in life. We have certain things to learn while on this earth, and this was one thing we needed to go through. For me, I've learned to be patient and that there is a time for everything.

Anyway.... So we had our first OBGYN appointment today. I'm almost 10 weeks, they did another ultrasound and we saw cute little 'gummy bears' moving around with their little hearts still kicking. My due date is May 13th, but since I'm having twins the average delivery date is usually between 34-36 weeks. So probably beginning/middle of April.

Our ultrasound today( 9wks5days) with two babies moving around. Not much of a profile, but still pretty cool to see two separate babies growing.
Two rice sized babies at 6 weeks
Day 5 Blastocyst ( the clump of cells on the right and bottom right turns into the baby)

Annual Powell Trip!

Rainbow Bridge with Cousin's, Uncle's, Aunt, and Grandma
Fishing for carp! Yuck!!
Extreme Tubing: A-Teamer's Rule!!
Our cute Grandma was always looking out for our safety!
Trudging up the Sand Hill..... again. You'd think one time was enough in your life!
Warning: PG-13! For adult eyes only! Talk about Euro Trash swim wear!! P.S. Padding involved!

Cliff jumping tandem!

Our third annual Hart Lake Powell trip was awesome once again. I encourage all the Hart relatives who couldn't make it this year, or ever, to seriously consider coming next year. You don't know what our are missing! We have such a great time together, and can never find enough mischief to get into. The weather was perfect staying in the low 90's during the day and high 60's at night. This year we encouraged the A-team (aka children and in-law's of Donna Mae) to do some extreme tubing wars. It was a first, and very hilarious!

Also, some of the men decided to surprise us all with a little european culture by sporting some fashionable swim wear from the great continent of our ancestors! The people who were unfortunate enough to hike the sand hill the same day had to experience the blinding pain with the rest of us.

We always get a little cliff jumping in, and my dad Bill aka Silver Fox jumped off a 35 footer this year which was very awesome! My brave husband Turk took it upon himself to win some 'man' points by being the only one to jump off the 60 footer, which I might say, will be the last time he ever does that!

The last night we had a great fireworks show with some illegals from Evanston. And my cousin Barry had our entertainment each night organized by bringing some awesome equipment down. He had a movie theater set-up on the top of the houseboat for us to unwind too each night before bed. Very cool!

We miss it already and can't wait until next year!!

Weekend Getaway

Jameson & Daphne
Andrew and Jameson climbing a tree
Daphne being her cute self
Some of the Family
Ethan & Jameson on the 'Volcano'

Last weekend my mom rented a condo at the Zermatt Resort in Midway for our family. It was such a nice, relaxing weekend getaway full of swimming, tennis, golf, and eating. My whole family was there, so it was pretty cool for us to be all together for a small vacation, which doesn't happen very often. We got some cute pictures of the kids, and they were so much fun to play and hang out with.

Our Cute Niece

My brothers little girl Daphne turned 'one' yesterday. They ask me to take some pictures of her before her party up at Snowbird. She is getting so big, and was so cute in her poke-a-dot dress.

We got a few fun pictures of her walking around the resort.

Must Read! By Jenny

I've been slacking on my reading lately. I love more than anything to get into a good read, and it's been awhile since I've read one that I just can't put down... until now. So I just wanted to share with you my recommendation. You have to read " These is my Words" by Nancy E. Turner.
I finally had the chance to sit down and get into it this week, and I can't put it down. It has a kind of 'Gone with the Wind' style to it, set during the 19th century in the Arizona Territory. The two main characters Sarah and Jack are soooo irresitible and I'm in love with both of them. I think I can relate to her personality cuz I can be pretty stubborn and independent. And I was raised with only boys around in my family too. Maybe that's why I like her so much. She's tough and I like that about her!
So if you need a good read for a summer vacation get this one. It took me until about page 40 to really get into it, but as soon as I did, I couldn't put it down.
Thanks for letting me share, and if you read it call me and let me know what you think.

Tuscany

The Arno in Florence
The Duomo in Florence
Via dell Amore, Cinque Terra
Manarola, Cinque Terra
Manarola, Cinque Terra
Ashliln, Gabe, Lucy, Natalie, Jonah, Becky, and Andrew
Vernazza, Cinque Terra with our neice Lucy
Pisa
Our nephew Jonah holding up the Tower for us.

Italy Turks at our apartments in Lucca
Gelato!!!!

Our last four days in Italy were spent with Gabe Turk & Fam. in Tuscany. We rented two apartments in the town of Lucca. The apartments were converted from old stables at a families home. It was so nice for the kids because we were able to swim in their pool every evening after an exhausting day of site seeing. It was such a nice change to be in Tuscany. The weather was cooler, and it was much less crowded. We were pretty centrally located only being an hour or so away from all the sites. We visited Florence first with the highlight being Michaelangelo's 'David'. The shopping at the local outdoor markets in Florence were awesome. I got the chance to do a little shopping there. The next day we hiked to some of the villages of Cinque Terra along the Italian Riviera. Our last day we went to Pisa to see the leaning tower.
It sure is amazing seeing so much. We were always so exhausted at the end of each day. We had such a great time visiting Italy and family, but were ready to come home after all the site seeing. We took the train from Lucca back to Zurich which took about 8 hours. The next morning we flew out of Zurich back home to Salt Lake City already to return to Europe as soon as possible!

Goodbye Italy Turks! We loved every moment we spent with you! It was so memorable and we will never forget the fun memories we created with you!