Chasing Life

We are happy to announce the birth of our son, Kye Aaron Nystrom. He came quite fast (5 hours total of laboring and pushing), making his first appearance at 4:39pm on Saturday, December 20th. Despite my previous c-section, it was a normal vaginal delivery with no epidural (not by choice this time...he just came before they were able to get it put in). He weighed 7 pounds and was 20 inches long. We are home already and are very excited to be able to sleep in our own bed tonight. Kye has spent most of his first 28 hours of life sleeping, which we really hope he plans to continue!

Hello again. I’m less than a month away from my due date now so I thought I’d better get another update out before the baby comes. In October we went camping with our small group at Lake Henshaw, CA. It’s only the second time we’ve been camping since Paul and I met, so despite being 7 months pregnant I thought it would be a fun adventure. Well, it surely was an adventure, but I’m not sure I would describe it as fun. It got down to 37 degrees at night and we definitely were not prepared for that, especially now that we have adapted to San Diego weather. I can’t remember EVER being that cold. We did enjoy hanging out with our small group friends, however, and were also able to take a nice hike on a mountain above the lake and treat ourselves to the infamous caramel apple pie and fresh apple cider in Julian afterwards so it wasn’t a total loss. After camping we headed up to Joshua Tree National park for one night since it was a long weekend for us. We did a couple of short hikes that Kade...

It’s that time again, to let you all know how we’ve been the last few months and share with you which exotic places our travels have taken us to most recently! First of all, Jacey turned one on June 21st. First birthdays aren’t too eventful in our house, but we did still get some good pictures of her eating her sugar-free, whole wheat corn bread cake and opening her very exciting gifts of a whistle, a bracelet, and a pair of shoes! Then Paul and I went to our first Padres game the following weekend. They were commemorating a military operation during the pre-game activities, which is why Paul wanted to go. We’re not big baseball people, but it’s always good people watching and it was interesting to see the new Petco stadium from the inside. Our friends from Phoenix came to visit us again for July 4th weekend, and we were able to watch fireworks from our bedroom porch (which was very convenient since our kids had already been sleeping for almost 4 hours by the time the fireworks started...

Since the last time I wrote, we haven't had too much going on (which is a change for us). We did hand out hygiene kits to the homeless people in Balboa Park and downtown San Diego with our small group. We included McDonalds gift cards and also gave them some punch to drink and they were all so grateful. Before we were even out of sight we saw many of them already washing up with the wet wipes from the kits. Such a simple thing to do that was so appreciated! We also had several visitors in May. First some friends from VA stayed with us for 5 nights while they did some house hunting. They will be moving out here in July, so it will be nice to have a couple of familiar faces from the past living close by. It was in the 90s the whole time they were here so of course that was the time that our portable air conditioners decided to stop working! We were able to get them working enough to keep us cool but not without a lot of headaches! A friend of mine from IA also came into town for a wo...

Just wanted to tell you about the past couple of months since our last update... We took our trip to Big Sur, CA over Easter weekend and it turned out to be one of our best trips ever. It was more relaxed than many of our trips in the past have been. We spent four days seeing the flower fields in Carlsbad, hiking and touring the old Mission in Santa Barbara, going to the lighthouse and aquarium in Monterey, and hiking in Big Sur where there are redwoods, turquoise beaches, waterfalls, cliffs, and creeks all within a couple miles of each other. If you ever get a chance to come out to California, I would highly recommend Big Sur! I think it's my second favorite place I've ever been to. One interesting thing that happened on that trip was that a bus ran into the side of the Monterey Bay Aquarium shortly before we got there. I think there were more people taking pictures of that than of the animals in the aquarium! Gotta love how us humans can't help but gawk at accidents of an...

It's been so long since I wrote an update that I had to go back and look at our pictures to remember what we've done since October! This may get long so feel free to skim! We got back from Hawaii at the end of October and definitely felt like we needed a vacation from our vacation, especially with all of the drama from the fires out here! Although we don't really celebrate Halloween in our house, we did dress up the kids in safari outfits and go over to a small gathering at our neighbor's house where we ate tortilla soup and raided some of their candy stash. In the beginning of November Paul and I participated in the Muddy Buddy race in Los Angeles and I learned just how out of shape I was after having Jacey! The race consisted of running, biking, and obstacles, along with a big mud pit you have to crawl through at the end. There were so many hills in the course that I was walking my bike probably half of the time on the verge of losing my breakfast! I definitely was no...