Cancer Sucks

My mom was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer back in October. Breast cancer is generally pretty treatable, but triple negative is more aggressive, fast growing, and more complicated to treat. The good news is that it responds really well to chemotherapy and if she goes into remission, it is less likely to come back later. She went through chemotherapy this winter, and had a double mastectomy in April. She's still recovering from the mastectomy, but not even that could keep her from going to Quilt Market this week, just 4 weeks after surgery! She will still need to go through radiation and reconstructive surgery, but I'm feeling pretty good that the two seemingly hardest parts are over. 

My mom has been so optimistic the whole time she's had cancer and that rubs off on the rest of our family. It was hard to see her lose her hair and be so sick, but because she has a good attitude, it's less scary for the rest of us.  We feel like this experience has brought us closer together and we have seen so many miracles.

Her hair is even growing back! 

The Finley Fam

Best Dad Ever

A lot of wives say that their husbands are going to be the best dad, and I'm going to say it too, but my husband really will be. If you've ever met Riley you'd know that he'd rather be holding a baby or playing with the kids than hanging around adults. And he is a total baby whisperer. Seriously. Babies love him. And he loves them. He's already planning on teaching our little boy how to fix leaks and ride a horse, so he'll be all set for life.

Riley's been wanting a baby for a long time and I can't wait for him to meet our little boy because I know he will just want to do everything for him (which will make my life easier). I married a really good guy and I just love him to pieces.

Good thing we had a new niece and nephew last year, right?

Baby Lyman at 20 Weeks

We had our 20-week ultrasound on Thursday and everything went great. It made us feel better to know that 1) our baby was, in fact, a boy (I was a bit skeptical after our 16 week appointment) and 2) that he looked healthy and normal. Not deformed. All ten fingers. Enough fluid. Etc. The best part about it was that Riley was literally on the edge of his seat the whole time saying things like, "this is amazing!"  and "that is so cool!" He looked like he was about to cry; it was just the sweetest thing.

Baby Lyman waving to us 

When we first got married, people told Riley to just wait 6 months and Talia will want to have a baby. The funny thing was that right around 6 months after we were married, he's the one who wanted to have a baby. I was definitely not ready, so we waited to try until we'd been married about 2 years. I was still kind of nervous about having a baby (our lives would change so much and I just loved our life the way it was) when we first started trying, but when we had a hard time getting pregnant I felt so bad that I'd made him wait and now we had to wait even longer. When we finally got pregnant, though, instead of being a bit apprehensive like I was at first about having a baby, I was just plain excited. We're not nervous that having a baby will be hard while Riley's in school (he graduates this month!!),  or about not having enough time just the two of us, or about pregnancy being hard, but we're just excited. I think Heavenly Father had the perfect timing for us.

So far I've had the easiest pregnancy of all time. I have never had morning sickness and didn't start really showing until 20 weeks (wore maternity pants for the first time this week. Hey yo! They are sooooo comfortable!). The only symptoms I have are peeing a lot, being tired sometimes, and my back hurts like crazy when I sit for too long. I thought for sure I would have terrible morning sickness like my sister but I felt totally fine. Everyone tells me I'm lucky, but when I never felt sick, we were worried that I might miscarry. I'd heard there's a higher chance of miscarrying if  you're not sick,  but once we made it past the 1st trimester, we felt much better.

I just know that because I've had a great pregnancy (I hope this I doesn't jinx it!) that I'm going to have a hard labor and/or a terrible baby. Haha. It can't all be easy, right? But we are so excited we don't even care. 

Baby News

We are so so so excited for the Baby Boy that will be joining our family in August!

We'll post more details soon. If we remember. Because we're terrible bloggers...

PS Can you see Riley's mustache? Ew.

The Incredible Edible Egg

Our regular carton of eggs wasn't cutting it for us, so we recently bumped it from 18 up to 5 dozen (that's a normal bump, right?) Riley literally eats 6 eggs for breakfast every morning (sometimes more), and we LOVE breakfast for dinner. Sheesh! There's only two of us! I can't even imagine what our fridge will look like with teenagers!

My New Skinny Jeans

One of my most embarrassing moments captured on film. 

New skinny jeans are awesome.

Pedicures are awesome.

Skinny jeans and pedicures are not awesome together.

Especially when you had a tough enough time getting them up over your calves for a pedicure and you LITERALLY cannot get them back down when you're done.

At one point I thought I was going to have to 

a) rip my brand new pants

b) amputate my leg because I had basically made a skinny-jean-tourniquet

Thankfully, two (yes, it took two) Asian ladies were kind enough to get their skinny fingers in what little space was between my pants and calves. It was hilarious and terrifying and I'm happy to say that my calves and jeans escaped unharmed. 

Cruising Cousins

In January we went on a cruise with Riley’s second cousins. That’s right. I said second cousins. They’re his dad’s cousin’s kids. I don’t even know my parent’s cousins, let alone their kids, so I think it's pretty awesome that they are so close. 

When I met Riley, I already knew his immediate family and I absolutely loved them. (In fact, two of my friends and I wanted to be Lymans so bad, we made a plan that each of us would marry the 3 oldest Lyman boys. I was supposed to marry Riley--obviously I followed through with my part of the plan--but I was the only one who did...) When I met his extended family before we got married--even though there were so many of them, and it was a little overwhelming--I loved them too. So when they invited us on a cruise almost 2 years ago, we were going to make it happen.

It was nice to have a warm break in the middle of January. There's seriously no better time to go on a cruise. There were 7 couples and even though there was a little bit of an age gap (us and Garrett and Kellie were the youngest there), it didn't seem like it at all. It was a good group...a really good group.

We did the Western Caribbean, and we went to Half Moon Cay, St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, and Grand Turk. Riley and I had only been on one cruise before (on our Honeymoon to Hawaii), and it was really great. But going with a group of people was SO MUCH FUN! We did almost everything together as a group and I loved every minute of it. Every night we played cards, tried out the shows (which were sooooo lame. Come on Carnival!), waited until they started playing good music at the club, and danced all night long. We were usually the only ones dancing in the club (if you can imagine 7 Mormon couples just cutting a rug), but there were a lot of other drunk people watching us. Creepy. When it would get too hot in the club, we'd start a dance party on the deck. One lady actually recognized us the next day at breakfast as the dancers from the deck party the night before.
Hey oh!
Dancing Reputation.
Dream come true (if any of you people from Jerusalem read this, you know how much I loooove dancing).

 I had heard that the food on Carnival isn't always good, but we thought it was great. There was one night at dinner when Riley couldn't decide what he wanted, so he literally ordered the entire menu. Appetizers and all. And he ate all of it. I have a hard time keeping him full at home, so I was glad he was getting enough to eat. We definitely got our money's worth...

These two were always sleeping on the hammock together. Good thing they're brothers....

Basketball-playing-model-twins

I just want to draw attention to Riley and Garrett's wardrobes. They BOTH bought white pants for the cruise (without talking to each other) and they stole Rodge's Hawaiian shirts. 

Scootering in Grand Turk

Tiff and Marie

Gangs all here!

You know we loved the magician

Clubbin'

Half Moon Cay, Bahamas

St. Thomas (Fran, remind me how much those yachts cost?)

The guy's favorite part: playing football on the beach.

Kel and I snorkeling in St. Thomas

Puerto Rico

I literally cannot say enough good things about these people. I'm lucky to be related to them. Love you guys!