Mother's Day 2012

Today started out with a wonderful breakfast of crepes, made by Dave, served with all the toppings.  Yumm-o!  I think this will make it onto our family tradition list.  Dave presented me with my very first Mother's Day gift of a necklace with two charms that have Ian and Suzette's name on them and a mother of pearl dangling from the chain.  I love it!  After stuffing myself with three filled to the brim with an assortment of fillings (peanut butter & banana, nutella w/ berries and lemon juice & sugar) we got Ian and Suzette up and ready for church. 

 I LOVED the program our ward did for Mother's Day.  The Young Women and their leaders organized it with a variety of beautiful musical numbers, short talks spot lighting women of faith from the scriptures and brief testimonies of motherhood all done by the girls themselves.  The Spirit was so strong and I almost lost it every time one of the girls would get choked up sharing just how much their mom meant to them.  As a mother of my own daughter now that just takes on a whole new meaning.  I hope and pray that if I do my job right Suzette could be standing at the podium professing those same words of love and adoration for me one day - a mother can dream! 

For me this day has not always been the easiest.  I've become more open with sharing this part about our lives recently, but at the time only a handful of friends and family members knew (but I'm sure many other assumed).  After our second year of marriage a diagnosis of unexplained infertility was confirmed, meaning after a reproductive endocrinologist ran every test possible on me and Dave - twice! - there was no medical reason we were not conceiving.  The next three years we were forced onto the infertility roller coaster as we tried to get pregnant.  The details of our journey including procedures done, number of attempts and methods tried will remain something I choose only to share in person with close friends and those whom I feel could benefit from knowing our story.  I will say this, with out questions it was the single hardest trial in my life that not only rocked me to the core of my foundation, but chipped away at it piece by piece until I gathered the strength to build it back up, which was a long, long process.  I felt betrayed by my body since it could not do the divine purpose it was created for.  There were many other feelings and emotions I experienced during those years and I know I could not have married a better person to be by my side and endure that trial with me.  Mother's Day to me during that time was like squeezing lemon juice on an open wound.  It stung and made me wince.  And each year without fail my heart would hurt. 

So for my first Mother's Day as an actual mother today was glorious!  I relished every moment of being with my two beautiful children and amazing husband.  Today my heart was beyond full of joy and hope and love.  Today I looked into my children's eyes and saw a beautiful future of promise.  Today was a good day - right up there with the top 5 of my life.  

 And knowing come November Suzette and Ian will have a little brother or sister makes today even sweeter.  That's right, the Traxler Tribe will soon be a family of five!

Traxler baby #3 waving hello!

More pregnancy details coming soon...

... and just an FYI only family members heard about this from us in person.  ALL friends are finding out about it for the first time via blog/facebook today.