Nick officially finished his first year of law school!! Woo hoo! We are so proud of him!  He has seriously worked his butt off this year.  I had this plan to have some close friends and family send pictures to me so I could print them off and have them hanging up when he came back home after his last final.  I loved the pics we got.  I posted only SOME of them below.  We had more but for some reason I can't find the folder on my computer.

 Nick seriously loved walking in and seeing all the pictures.  However...my plan didn't quite work out how I envisioned it but it was still fine.  I had this plan to be there with Georgia holding a sign and a milkshake for Nick when he got home.  Georgia had an eye exam that day (just a precautionary test they do with kids that have hearing loss--her eyes are fine FYI) and it took over 3 hours!!! The doctor seriously saw Georgia for a total of 45 SECONDS! It was the biggest joke ever and I was so frustrated and in the worst mood ever.  My patience completely ran thin! So by the time I got home Nick had already seen the surprise with pictures and I wasn't even there to see it.  So he told me he would reenact the whole thing like he was seeing it for the first time.  He went and picked up a milkshake for himself even.  Georgia and I got home from the eye appointment and she just had barely fallen asleep (after missing her nap with the ridiculous 3 hour appointment) and so when I got home he reenacted it and gave me a big hug.  While he was hugging me, the milkshake in his hand flew in the air and landed all over the floor and it woke Georgia up.  It was a disaster. :) But...we totally laughed about it ...4 hours later when we were in Charleston!  Sometimes I think these disaster moments are the ones we will remember the most and I am glad that things didn't go as planned.

Just some more pictures...

At the Kelly's Cinco de Mayo pool party--Georgia and June

Georgia is looking and acting like a moviestar in this picture it kills me.

Here are some pictures of us in Charleston.

This is her totally laughing--love this pic!

These two..love them!

 
We made it to Utah from our road trip across country.  We will be here for just a couple of months.  I am SOO done with driving though!!  Georgia did a great job and cried for probably 2 minutes the entire three days.  But she got kind of spoiled being in the carseat getting constant entertainment (book reading, songs, toys, etc.)  So now in the car she demands that one of us be back there with her.  (not to mention she likes to take out her hearing aids and put them directly in her mouth!!--stinker!!)...so we have to be back there to make sure she isn't doing that. :)

We love being in Utah with family and friends but also miss North Carolina too.  It is hard loving two places so much.  I don't even want to have to decide where we will end up after law school.  I am looking forward to going back to North Carolina already but at the same time I am already thinking about how sad I will be to leave Utah in a couple of months.  Georgia is loving being with family and getting lots of attention.

We also got to travel down south to Arizona for Daven's baptism and to see my dad.  It was so fun and I am so proud of Daven--he is my first Nephew and I can't believe he is already 8 years old!! He looked so handsome on his baptism day and I can't believe I didn't get a picture of him in his suit! Here is one I stole from Rickie...

My Grandma Hatch got to meet Baby Georgia. :)

Grandpa Hatch did "Shoe the Old Horse" with Georgia and she thought it was silly. :)

Ummm...and yes we are obsessed with this little girl.  She is such a little ham bone. :) We are really pretty ridiculous sometimes.  For example...she sneezed the other day and both of us were like, "Bless you" in the most enthusiastic cheesy way..and then we did a silly laugh.   Now she just smiles and laughs every time she sneezes--even when we aren't watching.   She is getting so big and growing so fast!

As if finals aren't hard enough...

...This cute little distraction certainly doesn't help....  It is so hard for Nick sometimes to get anything done because he has too much fun with this Georgia girl.

 Here is Georgia with her best friend Georgia.  Slumber Party!! haha

Learning a lot...

We have learned so much since Georgia has been born.  And a lot of the things we have learned are things I never wanted to learn.  I know that sounds horrible because I am grateful for what we have been learning and we have grown so much in the past few months.  But...being a mom has been harder than I thought it would be.  Nobody plans on anything happening to their baby...I certainly didn't.  We have had several tests we have needed to do for Georgia.  Most of them have been hearing tests but those are NOT fun and they are really long and hard for babies and parents!  She also had to have an EKG of her heart as well because the heart develops at the same time as the ears so sometimes there are some heart issues.  Her heart is fine.  She had several ultrasounds and x-rays for her hip dysplasia.  Her hip is now fine.  So NOW we are just dealing with the hearing issues. I KNOW that a hearing loss is really not a huge deal especially in perspective with so many other things that could happen.  Initially it felt like our world WAS crashing down and even though in comparison to other things that could happen it doesn't change that it still has been hard.  If I could have my hearing completely taken away from me just so Georgia could hear normally, I would.  In fact...there is this poem called "Welcome to Holland" that somebody told me about after we found out Georgia had mild hearing loss. I think it helps those people understand what it feels like when they haven't been in a similar situation.  Here it is:

When she was 1 month old she had her first ABR (which is a more detailed hearing test) to determine the degree of hearing loss that she had.  Most of the sounds woke her up but they couldn't get a reading that she could hear the lowest decibel of sound.  This made me so sad to see her hooked up to all of these monitors and wires!

 Welcome to Holland

"When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland."

 I feel so lucky that I get to go to Holland!  :)   And now more onto the positive...I do want to say that with all of these hard things we have been dealing with, there have been SOO many more good things.  I have never been happier in my life now that we have this angel living with us!  I now definitely understand why people say motherhood is hard but it is so worth it! Seriously...there are so many times every day I just look at Georgia and want to cry because I love her so much or I just smile because she is so dang cute. Or just times that I can just see what a good person she is and am just so grateful that she is ours!  How did we get so lucky?

She finally got her hearing aids! YAY! They are so cute on her and technology is really amazing.  It feels so good to just take the positive approach on this.  We are not out of touch with reality we are just choosing to be positive.  Just as her ENT doctor says, "She is going to be completely fine especially with the hearing aids." They are just a part of who she is and we even love her even more because of it! :)

She has got somebody wrapped around her little finger.  :) These two are like two peas in a pod!

She has her hearing aids in these pictures with bunny ears but you can't even see them!

You can kind of see her pink hearing aids in this picture. So darling on her!

5 months old!!

My good friend Alena took this picture at an Easter Picnic at the Stone's house.  I need to get one of all the babies.  Everybody is growing up so fast!

Did I tell you we have the best friends out here? I know we were meant to live here so we could know all of them! We are so lucky and so blessed!