Monday, June 16, 2014
Snowbasin
December 27, 2013
Charlee and Van got their first taste of skiing at Snowbasin this winter. With the help of Papa and Joel they had a really good time. Well, Charlee complained about her boots hurting her feet for the first hour, but besides that they had a good time. By the end of the day they were absolutely exhausted. They fell asleep in the lodge by the fire and nearly slept the entire way home.
Gingerbread Houses
December, 2013
Charlee's Kindergarten class made Gingerbread houses at school. I was able to come and participate. It was a lot of fun. Half the kids ate more candy than they put on the house, but either way it was fun.
Charlee's Kindergarten class made Gingerbread houses at school. I was able to come and participate. It was a lot of fun. Half the kids ate more candy than they put on the house, but either way it was fun.
Christmas
December 25, 2013
This year Christmas was different all around. Because Joel was shacked up in the RV park and working in Winnemucca, he was able to come out for Christmas, but all of the events leading up to and following Christmas were just a little different. My pregnant self and the kids stayed at Sandy's and had Christmas morning there. We then went over to my parents house and the kids were able to play with their cousins Cohen and Sawyer. We also got to talk to Carly via Skype. Her unofficial boyfriend Carsen was also there and it was SO sweet to see them talk face to face. She is going to be home so soon I can't hardly wait!! Between both sets of grandparents the kids were spoiled rotten. Every year Joel and I buy a few things for the kids and we get feeling bad because it doesn't seem like we get that much. Then by Christmas night when we are sorting through toys and organizing their new items we are taken back by the amount of stuff they get. This year was no different. The kids are absolutely spoiled rotten. That's all I can say.
Ogden City Lights
Holy Cow! I get cold just looking at these pictures. I don't know what it is about walking around in cold weather looking at Christmas lights, but whenever we do this sort of thing it feels like we go on the coldest day of the year. We are all bundled up, we have our hot chocolate but somehow we manage to freeze our butts off. There was a lot of whining from the kids because of the cold weather but despite that we had a good time.
Trolley Square
Rachel, Alex and I took the kids to Trolley Square. We ate at the Spaghetti Factory and then went to see the lights at the Salt Lake Temple. Charlee was once again, very shy with Santa Claus at Trolley Square. She was able to tell him that she wanted an iPad though... Van wouldn't even step near Santa.
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
Saying Goodbye :(
It seems like I just had to say goodbye to my friends from Utah and now I had to say goodbye to my friends in Illinois. I can truly say that I made some genuine friends here and it will be hard without them. Although, with technology of facebook and whatnot, I feel like I can still keep in touch and continue to see what everyone is doing. I recently heard a quote that said, 'I have friends, they're in my computer.' Boy am I grateful for that! Can you imagine living 30 years ago when in order to keep in contact with people you'd have to either send an actual letter or reach them on their landline? Good grief. If that were the case these days, it would be very interesting to see who I'd really stay in contact with. Thankfully that's not the case.
Goodbye. Goodbye being a concept that Charlee and Van don't quite grasp yet. They don't know what's going on other than- we're moving closer to the mountains to live by Grandma and our cousins. I sometimes wish I could be young again and have the lack of understanding to comprehend situations like this. In the following months to come, Charlee and Van would continue to ask if they could play with their Monticello friends. Van would ask when we were going to go back to our home in Monticello and so forth. Honestly, I think this was harder for me to hear these statements than it was for them. It's amazing how resilient kids are with change. I think the older you get the harder change is for people. In fact I know that's true!
Anyway, that being said, we as a family dealt with a lot of change in a very short period of time. In December we put our home up for sale. I was not too optimistic about our home selling. Odds were against us in the fact that we were 1. Listing our home in the dead of winter. 2. It being in a small town where homes were not selling fast. 3. Not exactly being in the best price range. However, while at work one night at Kirby I was talking to my friend Julie Wilson who recommended that I bury St. Joseph in my yard. She, being a devout Catholic was sure that in doing so he would help us sell our home quickly. I of course was more than skeptical, but being barely awake and delirious at two in the morning I half heartedly ordered a St. Joseph statue off of Amazon for a mere $6. When it arrived at my home I kept it on the counter until the day we moved. We buried it our front yard minutes before we drove away from Monticello forever. When our home sold in 2 MONTHS, we of course recognized this as a blessing from Heavenly Father (and St. Joseph).
Being that we were unsure of how fast our home would sell, we devised a plan that would end up being very memorable. Joel stayed in my Grandma Betty and Grandpa Don's RV at the Winnemucca RV park for $400 a month while I stayed with the kids at Sandy's house. This was WAY harder for Joel than it was for me. He had no heat in the trailer and had to buy a propane space heater. He ate nothing but quesadillas, cereal and coke for three months and he peed in red solo cups. Yeah you heard me- he PEED IN RED SOLO CUPS. Because the bathroom in the RV was not functioning and going to the public RV outhouse was not always optimal in below freezing weather, Joel would pee in cups and then dump it outside on the rocks in the morning. All the while I was sleeping indoors and eating home cooked meals. Anyway, the kids and I stayed with Sandy up until I had Frankie (story to be told later). Then we moved to Winnemucca that same week and were finally together as a family again under the same roof. Whew! I'm spent! Sorry for the novel. If you've made it this far in my ramblings give yourself a pat on the back. You deserve it.
Goodbye. Goodbye being a concept that Charlee and Van don't quite grasp yet. They don't know what's going on other than- we're moving closer to the mountains to live by Grandma and our cousins. I sometimes wish I could be young again and have the lack of understanding to comprehend situations like this. In the following months to come, Charlee and Van would continue to ask if they could play with their Monticello friends. Van would ask when we were going to go back to our home in Monticello and so forth. Honestly, I think this was harder for me to hear these statements than it was for them. It's amazing how resilient kids are with change. I think the older you get the harder change is for people. In fact I know that's true!
Anyway, that being said, we as a family dealt with a lot of change in a very short period of time. In December we put our home up for sale. I was not too optimistic about our home selling. Odds were against us in the fact that we were 1. Listing our home in the dead of winter. 2. It being in a small town where homes were not selling fast. 3. Not exactly being in the best price range. However, while at work one night at Kirby I was talking to my friend Julie Wilson who recommended that I bury St. Joseph in my yard. She, being a devout Catholic was sure that in doing so he would help us sell our home quickly. I of course was more than skeptical, but being barely awake and delirious at two in the morning I half heartedly ordered a St. Joseph statue off of Amazon for a mere $6. When it arrived at my home I kept it on the counter until the day we moved. We buried it our front yard minutes before we drove away from Monticello forever. When our home sold in 2 MONTHS, we of course recognized this as a blessing from Heavenly Father (and St. Joseph).
Being that we were unsure of how fast our home would sell, we devised a plan that would end up being very memorable. Joel stayed in my Grandma Betty and Grandpa Don's RV at the Winnemucca RV park for $400 a month while I stayed with the kids at Sandy's house. This was WAY harder for Joel than it was for me. He had no heat in the trailer and had to buy a propane space heater. He ate nothing but quesadillas, cereal and coke for three months and he peed in red solo cups. Yeah you heard me- he PEED IN RED SOLO CUPS. Because the bathroom in the RV was not functioning and going to the public RV outhouse was not always optimal in below freezing weather, Joel would pee in cups and then dump it outside on the rocks in the morning. All the while I was sleeping indoors and eating home cooked meals. Anyway, the kids and I stayed with Sandy up until I had Frankie (story to be told later). Then we moved to Winnemucca that same week and were finally together as a family again under the same roof. Whew! I'm spent! Sorry for the novel. If you've made it this far in my ramblings give yourself a pat on the back. You deserve it.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Elder Bednar
One thing I have yet to mention about the Mahomet Ward is that we happen to be in the same ward as Elder Bednar's son. We had the privilege of hearing he and his wife speak to us in Sacrament meeting two times. I had never heard an apostle speak in person and it's hard to explain the difference between hearing an apostle speak in General Conference vs in person but there IS a difference. I don't think I've ever been that early to Sacrament Meeting to ensure a seat, and I don't think I've ever listened so intently to every word spoken in a talk before. The messages that he gave will most likely stay engrained in my memory forever. One main thing he emphasized was the importance of reverence in Sacrament and from the moment forward I've never attended a more reverent congregation before and after the meeting. He said that there should be no mingling in the chapel. In 2001 Elder Bednar gave a devotional at BYU entitled 'In the strength of The Lord'- he based his talk in church on this devotional. The moment that will NEVER be forgotten is when Elder Bednar bore his testimony. He spoke directly to the women in the Mahomet ward. I listened as I sat on the front row within 2 feet of him. While I cannot recall his exact wording, and while I doubt I could even do justice in summarizing his testimony it is something that was truly FELT and KNOWN to be truth. When you hear an apostle bear his "apostolic witness that Christ lives", you can't help but feel the spirit so strong. I am truly grateful that I was able to hear him in person on these occasions. I doubt, if ever, I will be able to be part of such a unique, almost one on one encounter with an apostle.
Tornado
Throughout the past couple of years living in Illinois we have seen some crazy weather. I remember one night in particular being at work at Kirby while sheets of rain literally came out of the sky. We were slow on patients in the ER and I spent a good amount of time standing underneath the ambulance bay watching the rain just pour while the lightning continued non-stop. While this was going on Joel was watching our street fill up with rain and our yard nearly flood.
An interesting thing about Illinois weather is that it is constantly changing. You might wake up in the morning to temperatures in the 30's and then find yourself taking all of your clothes off by noon because it's changed to 80's and sunny. You just can never tell what the weather will be like. When you hear people talk about Chicago as being the "Windy City" that's pretty much the dead honest truth. Terms like heat index and wind chill were not in my weather vocabulary prior to moving to Illinois.
Tornado's. We quickly learned the difference between a tornado watch and a tornado warning. We quickly learned that the tornado sirens were tested the first Wednesday of every month at noon. We on a couple of occasions had to stay in our basement as the alarms went off in Monticello.
The week before we moved and on our last Sunday at church, we were in the second hour of Primary and I had just sat down to play the piano for singing time. Someone came into the room to let us know that there was a tornado spotted in the area and that we needed to get to the center of the building. As the kids made there way to the hallway it became very eery. The sky outside was a dark gray and the glass doors to the outside were being opened and closed by the pressure and wind from outside. The primary music leader made the comment, "God won't let a tornado get us, there's WAY too many priesthood holders in this building." I had to kind of laugh at that. Pretty soon the bishop made his way into the hall. He said a prayer and asked that Heavenly Father protect us, especially the children. The kids then spent singing time singing hymns without the piano. You could really feel the spirit in that hallway. Needless to say, we were kept safe that day, but several tornados struck within miles of our church building. We were protected that day.
An interesting thing about Illinois weather is that it is constantly changing. You might wake up in the morning to temperatures in the 30's and then find yourself taking all of your clothes off by noon because it's changed to 80's and sunny. You just can never tell what the weather will be like. When you hear people talk about Chicago as being the "Windy City" that's pretty much the dead honest truth. Terms like heat index and wind chill were not in my weather vocabulary prior to moving to Illinois.
Tornado's. We quickly learned the difference between a tornado watch and a tornado warning. We quickly learned that the tornado sirens were tested the first Wednesday of every month at noon. We on a couple of occasions had to stay in our basement as the alarms went off in Monticello.
The week before we moved and on our last Sunday at church, we were in the second hour of Primary and I had just sat down to play the piano for singing time. Someone came into the room to let us know that there was a tornado spotted in the area and that we needed to get to the center of the building. As the kids made there way to the hallway it became very eery. The sky outside was a dark gray and the glass doors to the outside were being opened and closed by the pressure and wind from outside. The primary music leader made the comment, "God won't let a tornado get us, there's WAY too many priesthood holders in this building." I had to kind of laugh at that. Pretty soon the bishop made his way into the hall. He said a prayer and asked that Heavenly Father protect us, especially the children. The kids then spent singing time singing hymns without the piano. You could really feel the spirit in that hallway. Needless to say, we were kept safe that day, but several tornados struck within miles of our church building. We were protected that day.
Winnemucca
OK, so it's about time I face reality and write about Joel's new job. Back in July, Joel had applied for a position in Utah at a place called Sun Products. He had some connections with a current employee that he knew from school and it seemed pretty promising. He had flown out to Utah and interviewed for the position and felt pretty good about it. With baby number three on the way, we'd been talking about getting back closer to home in Utah where we could be closer to family. He however did not get the position and was pretty disappointed about it.
Since that time he had applied for another position in Winnemucca, NV. Now, with the let down on the Utah job, I didn't really get my hopes up. I also didn't look in to where Winnemucca was or what the area was like. I think in the back of my head I hoped that he wouldn't get the job (I know that sounds horrible). After all, I liked Monticello, I was fine being here- I liked my job, my friends and the city itself. I knew the kids liked their friends, our neighbors, Charlee's classmates and teachers, Van's classmates and teachers. I thought it would be good to be back closer to family, but throughout the whole application and interview process it never really occurred to me that he could actually get offered the job and that we might actually move forward with the decision to move... AGAIN. Well, what happened? Joel was offered and accepted the job. I can't say that I was excited. I STILL, four months later as I write this, can not say that I am excited. With everything that was going on in our lives a million things were running through my head. I thought about selling our home again, looking for a new home in Winnemucca, having another baby, starting Charlee in a new school, leaving my job. It was hard. It IS hard.
Since that time he had applied for another position in Winnemucca, NV. Now, with the let down on the Utah job, I didn't really get my hopes up. I also didn't look in to where Winnemucca was or what the area was like. I think in the back of my head I hoped that he wouldn't get the job (I know that sounds horrible). After all, I liked Monticello, I was fine being here- I liked my job, my friends and the city itself. I knew the kids liked their friends, our neighbors, Charlee's classmates and teachers, Van's classmates and teachers. I thought it would be good to be back closer to family, but throughout the whole application and interview process it never really occurred to me that he could actually get offered the job and that we might actually move forward with the decision to move... AGAIN. Well, what happened? Joel was offered and accepted the job. I can't say that I was excited. I STILL, four months later as I write this, can not say that I am excited. With everything that was going on in our lives a million things were running through my head. I thought about selling our home again, looking for a new home in Winnemucca, having another baby, starting Charlee in a new school, leaving my job. It was hard. It IS hard.
Monday, March 31, 2014
#3
October 2013
Guess who's pregnant with #3? We are expecting a little peanut on March 10th. Bring it on. AND IT'S A GIRL!! I've been really lucky working at Kirby because I am able to do ultrasounds as often as I want (which is pretty much once a week). It is SO amazing to watch her change week to week. I love hearing her little heart beat and watching her twitch around. I've seen her with the hiccups, upside down on her head and in some pretty weird positions. I can't wait to meet this little bean.
Guess who's pregnant with #3? We are expecting a little peanut on March 10th. Bring it on. AND IT'S A GIRL!! I've been really lucky working at Kirby because I am able to do ultrasounds as often as I want (which is pretty much once a week). It is SO amazing to watch her change week to week. I love hearing her little heart beat and watching her twitch around. I've seen her with the hiccups, upside down on her head and in some pretty weird positions. I can't wait to meet this little bean.
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