Cross Family Newsletter 2011

Once again, I find myself too busy at Christmas to send out Christmas cards or even a paper newsletter. How does life get so crazy? Well, this year, we had a pretty good excuse! As many of you know, for the past 12 years, our family has been hoping and praying for a baby. We've explored adoption and considered foster parenting. Last year, a miracle occurred and hope was rekindled that I might actually be able to get pregnant. After a year of trying an infertility medication with no luck, we decided to look in to In-Vitro Fertilization. I had started working full-time hours at my job last year and so received State of Iowa health benefits. I knew there was an infertility benefit but had my doubts that it would be very good coverage. In-Vitro can cost around $15-17,000, so even 50% coverage can leave you with a big chunk of change! However, we learned that the benefit was much better than 50%. So, we decided to go for it! On September 22nd, Mom went with me to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics Women's Health Center for an initial consultation. It was decided at that visit that I was an excellent candidate for In-Vitro! Four days later, Tim and I went for our Pre-IVF visit, where we were overwhelmed with information and I have to say...a little freaked out by the journey ahead of us! October and November were filled with appointments at the U of I as well as taking medications and administering self-injections at home. We spent most of Thanksgiving Day at the U of I for the egg retrieval procedure and then 5 days later two embryos were implanted. I was ordered to rest and take it easy for the next few weeks. On December 9th, after giving a blood sample for a pregnancy test at a local hospital, we anxiously waited for the results. Later that day, we learned the very happy news - WE ARE EXPECTING A BABY!! Just last week on the the 29th, we made one last visit to the U of I for an ultrasound. Our little peanut is about a centimeter long and has a heart rate of 129 beats per minute. We are overjoyed and grateful beyond words at this miracle that has occurred in our lives. What a wonderful Christmas gift this has been!

At this Christmas time, we have celebrated the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ and reflected on the most amazing miracle of all, that He came to this Earth, lived a perfect life, taught us how to live, performed miracles, and restored faith, and then suffered and died for us, bestowing upon us the ability to repent of our sins, endure to the end, and return to our Father in Heaven's presence. This little miracle in our lives has renewed and strengthened our faith that our Father in Heaven loves us, is aware of us, and has a plan for us. We feel so very blessed!

Eliza and Amanda have been very involved and personally, emotionally invested in this whole IVF adventure as well. In fact, Eliza, our future nurse, has even been administering my daily injections for almost 7 weeks now! She does a great job at it, too! Both the girls have been a huge help putting up Christmas decorations, doing laundry and helping around the house. The day we found out the results of the pregnancy test, we had them come to my work where Tim was already with me, and presented each of them with a gift bag, telling them the gift would let them know the results. Tim put on an excellent sad face, so the girls were very surprised when they pulled out baby bibs from the gift bags!
I was waiting in my office since I knew my face would give it away immediately. The girls came running into my office at full speed, nearly knocking me over with their huge happy hugs! It was one of the most wonderful moments of my life!!! We followed it up with a celebratory dinner at Red Lobster, went shopping for a Christmas tree, and then high-tailed it to my parent's home to share the good news. I don't think my Mom has ever hugged me so tightly and for so long and laughed and cried so much all at the same time, and Dad couldn't wipe the grin off his face! Another wonderful moment!

I feel so privileged to have been able to participate in the IVF process. It is an intense rollorcoaster ride of emotions - you're excited one day and terrified the next. You worry about getting accepted in to the IVF Program, then you're worried about how much money this is going to cost (insurance doesn't cover everything), then you worry you're not going to remember all the instructions and you're going to mess up your medications (I did a couple times, actually, and it still all worked out fine!). Next, you worry your body won't cooperate, you worry the procedure won't work, and then even once it does work, you worry about miscarriage, and then, believe it or not, you worry about actually having a baby!! It's been 14-1/2 years since we've had a newborn in this family, so yeah, I'm a little terrified! However, in the midst of all the worrying, you find faith, you find a greater closeness to your spouse, you find yourself in awe of the medical knowledge God has granted to mankind, and you find yourself amazed at the miracle of the creation of a human life!! You find the courage to face your fears. You find abiding hope, utter joy and deep gratitude. We will be eternally grateful to the men and women at the U of I who worked with us and were instruments in God's hands to make this dream possible, and to our Father in Heaven who bestowed all we have upon us!

So, that was our big adventure of 2011! Among many other adventures which have been documented in this blog!

Now...for family updates!!

Amanda, our 14-year-old high school Freshman, keeps herself busy with Church activities, including working on Personal Progress and attending early-morning Seminary, and with school activities, including never-ending homework, Student Council, being a manager for the Varsity Volleyball team, participating in Color Guard and playing percussion in both the Janesville and Waverly-Shell Rock bands. She continues to wow us with her poems and artistic talents, as well as being a straight A student with big plans for her future. She is a happy, beautiful girl and a great joy to our family!

Eliza, our 17-year-old high school Senior, is not taking it easy her Senior year! She took one college course her first semester and has 3 college courses next semester, including a Certified Nursing Assistant class which will earn her a CNA license! She has also been busy applying to colleges and filling out scholarship applications. We are hoping a few of them will come through!! She plans to go into nursing and hopes to attend BYU-Idaho. She is also busy in school with band, Color Guard, Speech, National Honor Society, and Student Council, and in Church activities, including Personal Progress and Seminary. She works hard in school, earning top grades and constantly impressing her teachers. We will miss her beautiful face and bubbly happy personality when she goes off to college next year!

Steph (me), age 29 (yeah, right!), serves as the Sunday School teacher for the 12-17 year-olds, and works full-time as a secretary at Juvenile Court Services. I still enjoy reading, stitching, sewing, quilting and painting, but basically only have time for stitching anymore. I do try to get together with my mom once or twice a month to work on a quilting project. My newest "quest" is to organize 18 years worth of pictures to prepare for Eliza's graduation open house! Yikes!

Tim, also age 29, serves as the Sunbeam teacher in Primary. You can't imagine how cute and patient he is with those little ones! He is still working for John Deere as a maintenance electrician, but will be moving from the foundry to a different department in February, a much needed and anticipated change for him, and truly a blessing! He has been keeping very busy working on finishing our basement. He has the bathroom done and is now framing in the bedrooms. In the spring, he is hoping to also build a garage. Our hope is that it will all be finished by the time the baby comes!

Merry Christmas to all of you! We love you and miss you all so much and wish you the very best this coming year! Happy 2012!!

Love,

Tim, Stephany, Eliza, and Amanda (Baby Cross and Josie, too!)

December 20th, 2011 Color Guard Christmas Performance

During the half-time of the boy's basketball game, the girl's Color Guard group performed to a couple Christmas songs. They did such a great job! They're SO cute!!

(The video quality is absolutely horrible, so to help you find my girls...Eliza is in the front on the right wearing red reindeer antlers. Amanda is in the line on the left, 3rd one back, wearing a red Santa hat. We are going to start using our actual video camera since the quality of videos our camera takes is horrible!)



This dance is in the dark with glow sticks. It was so much more awesome in real life than on video, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.

October 12th, 2011 Janesville & Waverly Band Concerts

Amanda is playing in two bands this year: Waverly-Shell Rock and Janesville. They just started offering high school band this year at Janesville and have made accommodations for kids who want to participate in both. To my knowledge, Amanda is the only Janesville student participating in both bands! She wanted to stay with the Janesville band partly because she loves her Janesville Band Director, Mrs. Limyao, and partly because it gives her more practice and experience, and because it is such a small band, she gets bigger parts more often. Her Dad and I insisted she try Waverly-Shell Rock Band for at least one year. It is a bigger and more competitive band and includes marching band. We felt she'd gain greater experience with this band - hopefully, lots to add to her college applications and possibly even shoot for a percussion scholarship! We have been very impressed with WSR's band directors and with Eliza's experiences with the band. Plus...we would get to go to Florida again! (Every 4 years, the WSR band takes an awesome trip to Florida - you may remember, we went with Eliza in 2008.) So, much to Amanda's dismay, she signed up for both bands, and now she is SO thankful she did! (See, it pays to listen to your parents!) She has made so many wonderful friends in the WSR Band. Their drumline is like a little family and she has absolutely loved it.

So, on December 12th, she had two band concerts to play at!! WSR and Janesville accidentally scheduled their concerts on the same night! When they realized it, Janesville pushed the time of their concert back and made sure Amanda's band played first so Amanda would be able to get to the WSR Concert on time.

Here is Amanda at her Janesville Concert. In this picture, she's getting ready to play the timpany. Look at that FOCUS!!

Here is their first song. Listen for the awesome snare part - that's Amanda!!! She sounds SO great!! Mrs. Limyao does such an amazing job with these kids that even though they are a tiny little band, they sound awesome! We were very impressed!


Now, here she is playing timpany. She does such a great job...we are so proud! I cut this song off because it was SO long!



We tried to take pictures at the Waverly-Shell Rock concert too, especially because both the girls are in it and we would have loved to have some pictures & videos of Eliza, too, but none of them turned out at all. They don't allow video cameras or cameras in their auditorium so Tim had to use his cell phone and with the lighting in there, they just didn't turn out. However, during the intermission, while they rearranged the stage, they asked the audience to step out into the lobby area for a special percussion ensemble performance of Christmas songs. If I had realized that was going to be happening, I would have brought our video camera, but all we had was Tim's phone, so this didn't turn out so great, but you can at least get an idea. It was one of the coolest and most beautiful performances I have ever seen or heard!! I wish you all could have been there in person. In this video, Amanda is about the 5th percussionist down in the front row. She's wearing a Santa Hat with a white brim.

October 15th, 2011 Waverly-Shell Rock Band in the Wartburg Homecoming Parade

October 14th, 2011 WSR Band Plays at Janesville and Daddy's Big Oops!

Eliza and Amanda play in the Waverly-Shell Rock Marching Band at every Friday night Waverly-Shell Rock Football Game. Consequently, they don't get to go to very many Janesville games. But once a year, the WSR Marching Band travels to Janesville and plays during their half-time. Here they are performing one of their songs.



Before their last song, the announcer announces the names of all the Janesville students that play in the WSR Band and the kids run out to the front of the band when their name is announced. If you listen carefully, you'll hear him announce Eliza and Amanda's names. You can also hear a little bit of Tim's "Woo-Hoo" after we hear their names announced!



Tim added a little extra excitement to our evening. Before the football game started, Tim was at home working on the basement and I was out running errands in Waverly. I was just about to stop somewhere when Eliza called me on my cell phone to let me know Dad had a shot a nail through his thumb!! I immediately headed home, thinking the worst of course! By the time I arrived home, Tim had pulled the nail out, wrapped it up and decided he wanted to see the girls' performance at the game before going to the emergency room. I thought he was crazy, but he said he'd be fine! So, we went to the game and once the half-time show was over, I took him to the emergency room. They cleaned it out and bandaged him up! Here's a picture of his thumb the next day. Look at the size of that nail - it's hard to believe that thing was in his thumb and that he didn't pass out from the pain! When Tim saved this picture to the computer, he labeled it "Proof that Daddy can be stupid!" It's good that he can laugh at himself!