Freedom Isn't Free...

That ever so true saying that "Freedom Isn't Free" became as real as ever 1 year ago, on Monday, February 23, 2009 when my beloved brother (I refuse to use in-law, he was never that to Josh or myself) Micheal was killed during combat in Iraq.

I can still remember what I was wearing and where I was standing when I got the horrible news. We had just come home from the hospital the day before from having our sweet Halle. We hadn't even been home for 24 hours yet. Amy had called my mom, who was staying with me to help me with our new little one. My mom was sitting on the stairs when she suddenly burst into tears and her hands were shaking up and down as she screamed, "No, Amy! No, No, No, No!!!!" In the moment, I knew. I knew exactly what it was and it felt as though my heart had dropped to my feet.

That day Micheal became a hero! Not just to all of his family who already knew this about him but to our entire country!

That day another became a hero. Amy! It takes a hero to realize that you will never see your eternal love again during this earthly life. It takes a hero to bury your hero, knowing that he died for this country, knowing that he gave everything and knowing that if you'd just said, "No" to joining the Army when he asked you about it, none of this would have happened but KNOWING that wasn't the will of the Lord, accepting it and saying, "Yes" shows how much of a hero she truly is. Knowing this was a possibility and doing it anyway shows courage.

I miss seeing this family of 4.

I miss seeing my husband laugh with his best friend. I miss the smart alec remarks the 2 would make to Amy and I. Micheal was Josh's best friend. I've never seen him as close with anyone as he was with Micheal. They talked about any and everything. I don't think I've seen Josh genuinely laugh so hard that he almost pukes as he did when he was with Micheal. They fed off of each other. I miss seeing that smile on their faces when Amy and I would do something that "embarrassed" them. I miss hearing them ask each other, "What did we marry into?".

I wish that Amy wasn't doing these marathons in remembrance of Micheal. I wish it was just for fun so that she could see Micheal's face beaming with pride as she crosses the finish line. I wish I could change so many things.

My Dad has always been a very patriotic man, always. This past year was his 20th year of running The Freedom Run, a 15K over the 4th of July. My insanely amazing father carried this flag the entire 9.3 miles of the race in memory of his son, Micheal.

Micheal, was in what you would call a "comfortable" stage of life. In the middle of the year he quit his job as an elementary school teacher and joined the Army. Micheal was an amazing teacher, there's proof of that just in the fact that so many of his students talk to Amy all the time on Facebook and tell her how much they loved him as their teacher.

I remember Amy telling me that there was one of the guys in Micheal's platoon that Micheal helped to get accepted into a school. Micheal was a human encyclopedia. She had told me about how he had helped another soldier write letters or reports, something and how he helped him to go back to school.

Micheal touched more lives than we can probably even imagine. My favorite in this picture is the boy in his scout shirt, saluting. I don't know what it is about him but when I saw him and as I look at this picture, that boy and his expression bring tears to my eyes. I don't even know if he was one of Micheal's students but there's something different about him from the others.

I have always respected the American Flag but now I can hardly look at one waving in the wind without tears streaming down my cheek.

As I watched the dads and brothers placing their boutonniere on top of the casket, I could see and feel all of their emotions just in the way they set their flower on top. I remember each of them very distinctly as I was taking pictures, it was as if time had stopped as I observed each one of them.

An American Hero. Micheal was and is every meaning of those words.

His funeral was just as he would have wanted it. It was his favorite kind of day. It was gray, dark and gloomy, his very favorite. Who loves that kind of day? Our Micheal did and it was perfect!

I miss Micheal. Words really can't explain it. Some days it still doesn't feel real. Some days it seems like he's still just on deployment. My heart aches for my sweet sister who is in tremendous pain. I feel like my pain is so overwhelming that I might just combust into a million pieces. If I feel that way, I can't even begin to understand or comprehend how she feels. I love her so much and I'm amazed, literally everyday, at how she does what she does!

I also cannot imagine the pain and anguish that Micheal's parents are experiencing. No parent should ever have to outlive their child. I love Boyd and Susan and have spent a lot of time at their house this past year and have really gotten to know them. Well, have been able to get to know Boyd as well as you can.... I swear the man never talks! I have had many great talks with Susan. The entire Alleman clan have become a part of our family. We may have lost our brother but we gained an entire new family in the process!

I love you, Micheal! Thank you for the freedom that I enjoy everyday! Thank you!

1 Year Ago Today

Dear Halle,

One year ago today you came into our lives. I was only in labor with you for 20 hours, as opposed to Chloee, who I was in labor with for 30 hours. Thanks for cutting that down for me!

You came early for a reason and you were/are the answer to many prayers. You came to us at a very specific time. You have been a healing force for so many in our family but especially to your Aunt Amy. A tragedy happened just 3 days after you were born. Your Uncle Micheal was killed in Iraq. Your daddy and him were best friends. Aunt Amy, Uncle Micheal and Mommy and Daddy were best friends. We did everything together. You came as a comfort, a healer and a peace maker through it all. Amy needed you so much, for you helped heal her aching heart. You always choose her over anyone else to hold you.

Something happened to Mommy a few months after you were born and I had to be away for a while. Amy took care of you and you thought of her as your Mom. You often, well always chose/choose her over me. There is definitely a great bond between the two of you!

Oh, look from the moment you were born you hated being bathed. See you're not at all different a year later.

I cried the first time I held you. I was so happy to be able to hold you and I felt so overwhelmed with joy. I was crying partly because I was so happy that I had decided not to breast feed and my life already felt so much easier than when I had your sister. :) JK

You've always been a daddy's girl.

Here we are with the wonderful doctor who delivered you! Dr. Horsley is amazing, that's why even though we live in Layton, we traveled up to Cache Valley to have you.

Awwwhhh, this was just the beginning of sisterly torture, which you've already begun to experience.

I love you Halle, probably more than you will ever know. I knew you were coming down with a specific purpose. That was evident in the fact that I had so many promptings to have you but I still didn't want to be pregnant again yet. It basically took beating me over the head with a hammer for me to realize how important it was that you come right then and that I needed to get pregnant. I now can see why! Thank you for being a part of our family!

When you were born these were your stats:

HALLE PAIGE ADAMS
(Your middle name is unique. Your 2nd (or farther back) great grandpa was adopted into the Adams name. His lineage line is Page. We decided to name you after that line.)

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2009
(You weren't due until March 6th)

8 LBS 3 OZ
(Thank heavens you were 2 weeks early or the doctor said you would have been over 10 lbs.)

20 INCHES
(You looked longer to me than Chloee did and she was 21 inches.)

6:12 PM
(Once again, thanks for letting labor with you only be 20 hours, instead of your sister's 30 hours.)

Love Always and Forever,
MOM

Sirens and All

Ignore the Police car and School Bus, this post is about the Fire Truck and Ambulance. I just thought this picture was cute so I decided to use it even though it has those other 2 in it.

When I got home from a doctors appointment on Tuesday, Josh said Chloee had thrown up. She had been whining all day about how she didn't feel good. I'm just glad she did it on Josh's clock. Halle was throwing up on Sunday. Then Tuesday night, well I guess Wednesday morning, I started throwing up at about 4 AM and just kept going. I swear that I will NEVER eat what we had for dinner that night EVER again. It was a pasta dish with a tomato sauce base, zucchini, carrots, sausage (evidently bacon sausage, GROSS). I can't even stand the smell of it. Curse you Melissa Davis for giving me that recipe, I blame you!

Josh went to work early and came home after 2 hours because I couldn't take care of the girls because I couldn't be more than 5 feet away from a toilet. On the bright side though, I did weigh myself Tuesday night before I went to bed and then weighed myself again Wednesday morning and I had lost 7 lbs. If I didn't hate throwing up so much, I'd become bulimic. Just kidding!

As I'm sleeping, all of a sudden the smoke alarms start going off. I'm freaking out, come running down the stairs, almost had a heart attack and Josh was just checking them. Great, I puked once again because of that episode. He realized that our CO detectors don't work as he was checking everything and he was on the phone with the company that made them. Great! He was worried about maybe a gas leak and that was why all of us were getting sick. It did start with the youngest and littlest first, which is how it would work if there was one. Considering that the CO detectors don't work, even worse.

I called the West Point Fire Department and talked to the receptionist and asked her how much it would cost for them to come out and check the house. She told me that the best thing to do was to call 911, yes 911 and tell them, then they would dispatch them out to come check it and it wouldn't cost anything because our tax dollars pay for it. I told her that I wasn't going to call 911, it wasn't an emergency. She told me that it is if there's a leak. I really didn't want to but did anyway. I told the lady that answered that it wasn't an emergency the fire dept told me to call, I was so sorry. She was so nice and said it was fine and they get calls like that all the time. That made me feel a lot better.

Of course though, they come out here with their sirens on. I wanted to die. I actually started to have a panic attack. Not good. Well, long story short, they came in and checked all of the levels in the home for carbon monoxide, thank heavens, there was no leak. Yeah! They did have to check the levels in our body though as well, that's why the ambulance had to come out. They had to put one of those things on your finger like they do at the dr office when they're testing some level of something on you, I have no idea. They did say there was one minor thing that we do need to fix on the flu line, but it wasn't causing a gas leak.

They were very nice. I apologized over and over again. They said they get calls like that all the time. They gladly come out to check if you're worried about a gas leak. No problem. We did somehow get on the subject of people who call 911 and say they cut themselves (probably assuming it's a suicide attempt and they cut their wrists) and they get there and some guy had accidentally cut the top of his finger open just a bit with a knife. He said they tell them to put a band aid on it and leave. Someone actually called 911 once because they stubbed their toe.

UNBELIEVABLE!!!

Babes of 2009

Every year The Herald Journal, which is the newspaper in Cache Valley, does a babes of (whatever year it was) edition. You pay $15 and submit a picture of your baby that was born that year and their information. It's fun to do.

This year they said they were going to be doing a "random drawing" because all babies are cute. Oh gag me, you know that some dumb mom threw a fit that her baby didn't win last year and probably threatened to sue them because her baby was the "cutest" out of all of them. Duh, of course the parents always think their child's the cutest. It's sick, who cares if your baby doesn't win, it's fun to enter.

Lots of babies this year, 280 to be exact. We put Chloee in when she was a baby. She won one of the runner up prizes. I should have sued The Herald Journal for not making her the grand prize winner.

Hallsies didn't win, but we don't care, oh wait yes we do. We already have a lawsuit in order. Here is Halle's little picture with her stats.

This little baby was the grand prize winner. She is a cutie!

This was the front page with all the winners. There's the grand prize and then all of the runner up prizes or whatever you call them.


I think that all babies are cute but sometimes I really can't stand what the parents do to their children. Sorry if any of you are one of those moms. Amy and I went through the whole thing looking at all of the babies and here are just a few of the ones that stood out to us as "WHAT?".

Could this girls bow be any bigger?

You can't even see this child's face because the flower covers it up. Who took that picture?

Amy said that this one looks like she's got a lillypad on her head. It does, it's weird. Turns out I know the dad of this baby. I really like him but I hate when the accessory overtakes the baby.

Why would you do this "fohawk" to your child?

Why do parents put flowers the size of JUPITER on their child's head?

This is actually a BOY!!! Yes a boy, you read right

Evidently, the "IN" thing right now is to 4 name your child. What's with that? Especially for a girl because eventually she'll have 5 names. Just to give you an idea:
Vetinia Penelope Sunday Cannon or
Konnor Kapono 'O Kalani Kirby.

Revenge of the Wisdom Teeth

I had my wisdom teeth taken out at the first of December. Since then I have had an infection that will not go away on my left, bottom side. We've tried 3 different medicines and it goes away for about a week and then comes back.

My oral surgeon wanted to see me on Thursday to look at the infection again. While I was there, he decided to just fix it right then. Thank heavens that Josh was in the waiting room with the girls. He took me back, numbed me up with the fabulously huge needle, which didn't totally numb me so he had to inject me 6 different times. Let's just say when he put the needle into the infected area I thought I was going to die it hurt so bad. He cut me up in 4 different places and cleaned out the areas. There was lots of tough tissue and puss that he had to clean out. He sewed me up and I was on my way.

The left side of my mouth was so numb that I felt like my lip was huge and of course you can't talk and you sound like an idiot. One of our friends said I looked like Two Face from Batman. Lots of swelling, I can't eat real food for 3 days or so, only cold liquids. It's been fantastic. Let's just say lots of Lortab and Ibuprofen is what's getting me through.

Why can't we ever do anything the easy way?

Why You Don't Comment At Church

A few weeks ago the lesson in Relief Society was on a certain talk in the Ensign. I can't even remember who it was, one of the quorum of the twelve. The talk focused a lot on The Book of Mormon. It was an excellent lesson.

Towards the end of the lesson, the teacher asked if anyone had any experiences with The Book of Mormon that they' like to share. A lot of people commented and I thought I would too. I said,

"When I'm pregnant, I buy a Book of Mormon from the Distribution Center and I try to read the entire thing during my pregnancy. I add in more pages in the back so that I can write notes in there about the different scriptures that I read and really touched me. I mark the scriptures all through it and make notes in it. It's weird how the things that are marked and highlighted are completely different from each child's book. You can be reading the same thing over and over but it is something that is written to help you through all the stages of your life, much like your patriarchal blessing. Because of the different things I was going through with each girl, different things in it brought peace and comforted me through what I was going through at the time. When my kids get older, I am going to give them "their" book so they can see what I was feeling and what was special to me while I was pregnant with them."

Alright, that was super long but I decided to put the write the whole thing. Two days after, I went visiting teaching to one of our ladies, who is the bishop's wife. As we were sitting there chit chatting at the beginning, she says to me,

Joyce: "Kimberlee, I just really wanted to tell you congratulations!"

Me: "What? What do you mean congratulations? What about? Did I win the lottery and no one told me?" (ha ha)

Joyce: "Well, didn't you announce on Sunday during your comment that you are pregnant?"

Me: "What, no! How did..."

Joyce: "I guess I should probably tell my husband that you're not pregnant. Everyone thinks you are!"

Evidently, when I said, "When I'm pregnant....", everyone missed the first word and heard, "I'm pregnant...". My gosh, I wanted to die. So I asked her if anyone else said anything about it. She said that whole side of the room was talking about it, everyone thought I was saying I was pregnant.

I am going to have to have the bishop make an announcement in Sacrament Meeting and tell everyone that I am NOT pregnant. See... that's what you get for making a comment in church. All of a sudden, you're pregnant.

Gotta Love Nicknames

Josh has many, many nicknames for me. So many that I can't even count them and it would take a very long time to name them all. I rarely am ever called Kimberlee by him, if ever. Moving on with my story. The latest nickname he's been using is Kimbo, which rhymes with Bimbo, so he calls me that a lot. He's not really thinking about what he's actually saying because to him it's just a nickname.

Today while we were in Target we had a funny experience. I was headed down an aisle into the main area and Josh was trying to get my attention. He shouted, "Hey Bimbo, come here!" It was hilarious because the couple that was passing me turned and looked at him like, "Did you really just call her that. You're a pig." It gave us a good laugh!

Stupid Punxsutawney Phil

Of course he saw his shadow. Why wouldn't he? I can't remember the last time that he DIDN'T see his shadow. When I was complaining about 6 more weeks of winter to my mom on the phone today, she said, "Not like it really matters whether he sees it or not. It's always 6 more weeks of winter here." Good point mom!


This one is for Josh. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to post it!

Ok, I can't get this stupid picture smaller and I'm tired of trying. The guy looking underneath the "groundhog" is saying,
"HEY! IT'S AL GORE!". Classic!

Food For Thought...

When you get to your wit's end,
you'll find God lives there.

Opportunity may knock once,
but temptation bangs on the front door forever.

God Himself doesn't propose to judge a man until he is dead.
So why should you?

Coincidence is when God chooses
to remain anonymous.

God doesn't call the qualified.
He qualifies the called.

God promises a safe landing,
not a calm passage.

The will of God never takes you to
where the grace of God will not protect you.

If God is your Co-pilot, swap seats.

Prayer: Don't give God instructions,
just report for Duty.

The task ahead of us
is never as great as the Power behind us.

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass.
It's about learning to dance in the rain.

It's easier to preach ten sermons
than it is to live one.

Many folks want to serve God,
but only as advisers.

So many of us are going through very different trials in our lives. Some that others can relate to and understand and some that we cannot. We need to remember to turn to The Lord and our Savior, Jesus Christ. Our brother knows of all our pain, every last ounce of it, for he suffered it all, for us. He knows EXACTLY how we feel and what better person to turn to than the one who knows every single ache, pain, turmoil, anger, sadness and happiness that we have and will ever feel. On earth there are people who can relate to some of our trials, but no one can relate and understand ALL of them, except for our Savior.