Yesterday around 3 am, Aftyn woke up with a fever. And continued to not feel well the rest of the day. I started feeling sick around 2 pm and continued not feeling well the rest of the day. Bronwyn thankfully was patient with the 2 of us and sat around while we watched movies from my bed until Reed finally made it home around 9:45, just in time for me to already have put the girls to bed and to have missed most of the sickness as I was beginning to feel better.
It was a hard day, it was a tiring day. But guess what it showed me?! I can do hard things. I can get through our present hardships and our kids will help. We can live with parents and we can stick together. My kids have my back. My husband has my back. We have kind parents who give us what we can't afford to give ourselves right now and who are willing to help us.
Heavenly Father knew what he was doing in letting me feel awful yesterday. I am so grateful it was just a 24 hour bug and I now have my normal amount of energy and strength to keep up with my girls and do the things that need doing. I can do this. I've got this.
Loving our ever changing, crazy, fantastic life
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Monday, July 15, 2013
Look! No Net!!
Sorry for no pictures, but well, that's life right now.
Since coming back to Idaho, life feels like a precarious balancing act.
We are so grateful for parents who kindly take us in and let us live with them, we are so grateful for Reed's job that is slowly but surely helping us get back on our feet but we know that that is going to take us a while
at this pace.
We are precariously hanging on to the tiny tidbits of the familiarities of the life we knew before.
It feels like if we let go of our old ways of doing things, of our habitual rituals that we might topple over into some scrambled pile of rubble with so many body parts and no one quite sure which ones belong to them. This is a tough time for us.
We are trying to make a home life for our family in someone else's home.
We are so grateful to have the home but still hard to find the balance of doing things their way and losing our own ways.
Bronwyn seems to be manifesting the most problems with all this change.
Poor thing is on day 3 of digestive issues that we can't seem to quite get under control.
And no, it's not the stomach flu because no one else has gotten it.
We are mindful of our blessings.
We are so grateful for our health and our happiness, so grateful for work and for our baby on the way, we just feel very uncertain about what Heavenly Father has in store for us in the future.
And what we're supposed to be doing in the meantime.
Have you ever felt that way?
I just can't seem to figure out what our path is supposed to be right now.
This whole outcome has been so totally out of the blue that we haven't known or figured out what's next. Hopefully we will soon.
If nothing else, in about 4 months we'll have a new little person to brave this unexpected journey with. Hopefully she's cute.
That might make up for all of this, just a little. ;)
Since coming back to Idaho, life feels like a precarious balancing act.
We are so grateful for parents who kindly take us in and let us live with them, we are so grateful for Reed's job that is slowly but surely helping us get back on our feet but we know that that is going to take us a while
at this pace.
We are precariously hanging on to the tiny tidbits of the familiarities of the life we knew before.
It feels like if we let go of our old ways of doing things, of our habitual rituals that we might topple over into some scrambled pile of rubble with so many body parts and no one quite sure which ones belong to them. This is a tough time for us.
We are trying to make a home life for our family in someone else's home.
We are so grateful to have the home but still hard to find the balance of doing things their way and losing our own ways.
Bronwyn seems to be manifesting the most problems with all this change.
Poor thing is on day 3 of digestive issues that we can't seem to quite get under control.
And no, it's not the stomach flu because no one else has gotten it.
We are mindful of our blessings.
We are so grateful for our health and our happiness, so grateful for work and for our baby on the way, we just feel very uncertain about what Heavenly Father has in store for us in the future.
And what we're supposed to be doing in the meantime.
Have you ever felt that way?
I just can't seem to figure out what our path is supposed to be right now.
This whole outcome has been so totally out of the blue that we haven't known or figured out what's next. Hopefully we will soon.
If nothing else, in about 4 months we'll have a new little person to brave this unexpected journey with. Hopefully she's cute.
That might make up for all of this, just a little. ;)
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Little Pieces of Life and Our Travel Log
Last time I wrote, I left you with the good news of our new little girl! We are still so excited to be expecting our 3rd little girl. I've taken to calling her baby Patience. She has had to be so patient for us to have the time to think about her and begin to look forward to her impending arrival in a few months. We have never had such a stressful time of life as now and I'm sure it's only going to be getting busier.
Reed and I did indeed move come July 1st. We had been all set up to move on the 29th of June but after measuring out our trailer space in our apartment and trying to fit boxes and things into it quickly decided that that trailer would surely not be big enough. After reserving a bigger trailer for the following Monday and waiting all day Sunday to receive a confirmation e-mail for Monday, Reed decided to call UHaul Monday morning to find out what was going on. When he called he was informed our reservation had been changed to the next day and even then, the location we thought we would pick our trailer up from did NOT have our trailer. And would not have our trailer. Reed called around, found the right size trailer 35 miles away, drove there, discovered his drivers license had expired 4 months earlier, drove back and picked myself and the girls up so I could pick up the trailer with my unexpired drivers license. In the meantime, we had to re-arrange our moving schedule with all the guys from our ward until later in the afternoon when we would have the trailer. Oh my goodness I was so frustrated. It was probably not my most favorite day ever in my life.
BUT we managed to pack it all up, finish cleaning our apartment and get out of there by 1. AM. LOL.
Yes, that's right, we packed ourselves and our girls into the car carrying the trailer at 1 am Tuesday morning mostly because 1) we had told our rental company we would be out by Monday and 2) we didn't want to have to sleep on the floor with only our pillows and a few lap blankets we had managed to keep out for ourselves to travel with.
I drove for about 1.5 hours before I couldn't keep my eyes open. We made it to Ludlow, Ma. and stayed in the Holiday Inn Express. I have to HIGHLY recommend that motel to EVERYONE! Seriously. Best breakfast, best room, best pillows, best service and happiest workers I have seen. Ever. We were out of there mid-morning and drove to Bowling Green, Ohio. We arrived there at 3:45 am. Only because we had a motel reservation that allowed us to stay there for free. It was torture to drive so long and completely wore poor Reed and I out BUT in spite of having no air conditioning in the car had such great cloud cover and rain most of the day that we were never really hot all day! What a blessing!
The 2nd day we drove to Des Moines, Iowa. Another cool, rainy day. What a blessing. We arrived at a much more reasonable time probably around midnight.
Day 3, the 4th of July. We drove to Ogalalla, Ne and stopped there in spite of wanting to make it to Cheyenne, Wyoming because Reed thought he noticed our car dripping anti-freeze at a pretty heavy rate and he didn't want to chance having problems in the dark of night with our car and not many big cities in between Ogalalla and Cheyenne. In hindsight, it was a smart call on his part. It was SO. HOT. THE. WHOLE. DAY. We spent the night in the Days Inn. My poor pregnant ankles resembled elephant feet, and I'm not joking. That night as we were driving, Aftyn LOVED seeing all the fireworks. She just oohed and aahed over them all. What a little sweetheart and she was so game about getting/having to see them from the car. Bronwyn was already asleep by the time we started seeing them.
Day 4 was the day we had hoped would be our last day driving. (It had been pretty hot, but we had been getting some good cloud cover that helped to cool us off.) As we finally made it to Cheyenne and stopped for lunch, we had no idea what lay ahead of us. 20 miles after leaving Cheyenne, going up a fairly steep hill, our car completely overheated and we knew we weren't going any farther that day. After lots of help from my dad and brother, we got a tow back to Cheyenne and our cheap and very interesting Motel 6. It was too late by the time we were towed to make it to any kind of mechanic and boy were we worried since it was Friday night that we could potentially be stuck there all weekend until Monday when most mechanic shops opened back up. Thanks to Reed, our insurance and Midas (who we have nothing but GREAT things to say about) we were fixed up by Saturday evening at 5 pm. I could have kissed those mechanics sweaty feet since it meant we could finally finish our long long drive on Sunday.
Sunday we woke up at 5:30 and managed to hit the road by 7:30. Go us! We made it home to my parents house around 11 pm. I was never so glad to be done driving. Also, Sunday was Reed's and my 6th anniversary. Good way to show your level of commitment, driving 15 hours and just being grateful to almost be done. I'm not sure I ever want to take another road trip across the U.S. in the summertime. Even with air conditioning. Maybe if I could relax and just enjoy and stop whenever I found something interesting to go look at. But not anytime soon, hopefully.
Reed started back to work last Tuesday with his old employer, Total Scales. We are grateful for his job and ability to begin making money so quickly for us. We will be living with my parents in the meantime until we have an idea of how long we may be here. We are so grateful for both of our parents in hosting us in their homes on and off while we're here. We really miss Massachusetts and hope that someday we can go back and see more than we saw in our year and a half there. We will miss our old ward and friends there. But we are looking to settle in here and make the best of things right now. I like to scare Reed sometimes so I remind him how swiftly our little girly could be here. It's amazing how fast this pregnancy has gone thus far. She will be here sooner than we can even comprehend. We are grateful for her addition to our family. We are grateful for our blessings as a family right now. And that's all I've got tonight.
Reed and I did indeed move come July 1st. We had been all set up to move on the 29th of June but after measuring out our trailer space in our apartment and trying to fit boxes and things into it quickly decided that that trailer would surely not be big enough. After reserving a bigger trailer for the following Monday and waiting all day Sunday to receive a confirmation e-mail for Monday, Reed decided to call UHaul Monday morning to find out what was going on. When he called he was informed our reservation had been changed to the next day and even then, the location we thought we would pick our trailer up from did NOT have our trailer. And would not have our trailer. Reed called around, found the right size trailer 35 miles away, drove there, discovered his drivers license had expired 4 months earlier, drove back and picked myself and the girls up so I could pick up the trailer with my unexpired drivers license. In the meantime, we had to re-arrange our moving schedule with all the guys from our ward until later in the afternoon when we would have the trailer. Oh my goodness I was so frustrated. It was probably not my most favorite day ever in my life.
BUT we managed to pack it all up, finish cleaning our apartment and get out of there by 1. AM. LOL.
Yes, that's right, we packed ourselves and our girls into the car carrying the trailer at 1 am Tuesday morning mostly because 1) we had told our rental company we would be out by Monday and 2) we didn't want to have to sleep on the floor with only our pillows and a few lap blankets we had managed to keep out for ourselves to travel with.
I drove for about 1.5 hours before I couldn't keep my eyes open. We made it to Ludlow, Ma. and stayed in the Holiday Inn Express. I have to HIGHLY recommend that motel to EVERYONE! Seriously. Best breakfast, best room, best pillows, best service and happiest workers I have seen. Ever. We were out of there mid-morning and drove to Bowling Green, Ohio. We arrived there at 3:45 am. Only because we had a motel reservation that allowed us to stay there for free. It was torture to drive so long and completely wore poor Reed and I out BUT in spite of having no air conditioning in the car had such great cloud cover and rain most of the day that we were never really hot all day! What a blessing!
The 2nd day we drove to Des Moines, Iowa. Another cool, rainy day. What a blessing. We arrived at a much more reasonable time probably around midnight.
Day 3, the 4th of July. We drove to Ogalalla, Ne and stopped there in spite of wanting to make it to Cheyenne, Wyoming because Reed thought he noticed our car dripping anti-freeze at a pretty heavy rate and he didn't want to chance having problems in the dark of night with our car and not many big cities in between Ogalalla and Cheyenne. In hindsight, it was a smart call on his part. It was SO. HOT. THE. WHOLE. DAY. We spent the night in the Days Inn. My poor pregnant ankles resembled elephant feet, and I'm not joking. That night as we were driving, Aftyn LOVED seeing all the fireworks. She just oohed and aahed over them all. What a little sweetheart and she was so game about getting/having to see them from the car. Bronwyn was already asleep by the time we started seeing them.
Day 4 was the day we had hoped would be our last day driving. (It had been pretty hot, but we had been getting some good cloud cover that helped to cool us off.) As we finally made it to Cheyenne and stopped for lunch, we had no idea what lay ahead of us. 20 miles after leaving Cheyenne, going up a fairly steep hill, our car completely overheated and we knew we weren't going any farther that day. After lots of help from my dad and brother, we got a tow back to Cheyenne and our cheap and very interesting Motel 6. It was too late by the time we were towed to make it to any kind of mechanic and boy were we worried since it was Friday night that we could potentially be stuck there all weekend until Monday when most mechanic shops opened back up. Thanks to Reed, our insurance and Midas (who we have nothing but GREAT things to say about) we were fixed up by Saturday evening at 5 pm. I could have kissed those mechanics sweaty feet since it meant we could finally finish our long long drive on Sunday.
Sunday we woke up at 5:30 and managed to hit the road by 7:30. Go us! We made it home to my parents house around 11 pm. I was never so glad to be done driving. Also, Sunday was Reed's and my 6th anniversary. Good way to show your level of commitment, driving 15 hours and just being grateful to almost be done. I'm not sure I ever want to take another road trip across the U.S. in the summertime. Even with air conditioning. Maybe if I could relax and just enjoy and stop whenever I found something interesting to go look at. But not anytime soon, hopefully.
Reed started back to work last Tuesday with his old employer, Total Scales. We are grateful for his job and ability to begin making money so quickly for us. We will be living with my parents in the meantime until we have an idea of how long we may be here. We are so grateful for both of our parents in hosting us in their homes on and off while we're here. We really miss Massachusetts and hope that someday we can go back and see more than we saw in our year and a half there. We will miss our old ward and friends there. But we are looking to settle in here and make the best of things right now. I like to scare Reed sometimes so I remind him how swiftly our little girly could be here. It's amazing how fast this pregnancy has gone thus far. She will be here sooner than we can even comprehend. We are grateful for her addition to our family. We are grateful for our blessings as a family right now. And that's all I've got tonight.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Wanted:
A person capable of creating a child within their own body, while at the same time managing to keep a 2 and 4 year old alive and not fighting, box up and prepare to move a family of 4, and various other tasks such as selling and fixing items to sell on craigslist.
Organizational skills a plus. Patience not necessary but certainly nice. Pay minimal. Would you accept homemade chocolate chip cookies as payment instead of money? The cookies may have a bite or two missing since my 2 year old took it upon herself to taste test them for you.
Another skill needed is optimism for the man in the home who is applying for jobs like mad. Must cheer him on and cheer him up and have dinner ready when he gets home. Sandwiches are totally acceptable. As is cereal.
Also, beware the 2 year old and markers. There seems to be a magnetic draw between the two, as the sheet on my bed can now attest as I took 2 minutes to put tights on the 4 year old today.
Also, the 2 year old is showing tendencies towards neatness attributes.After sitting down for a meal or any sort, she quickly loses her shirt if she deems the meal too messy and tries to keep her clothing clean. How thoughtful and helpful! Please encourage her when she tries to sweep the floor and makes a bigger mess. She holds and dumps the dust pan like a pro! She must have picked up that skill from her 4 year old sister who is also a great dust dumper. Beware the 2 year old's too long visits to the bathroom to go potty. We have deducted after doing her business she likes to put on makeup, spread soap, unroll toilet paper and any other "fun" task that catches her eye. Including but not limited to dunking toothbrushes, toilet paper, hands and anything else "fun" into the toilet water.
The 4 year old currently has an affinity for bed jumping. But she can make her bed like a pro.
And is learning all kinds of other useful skills like using scissors on her own gogurts, drawing stick figures, folding towels and spelling her name out loud. She's a great assistant in helping the 2 year old into clothes, going potty and most other things. The 2 year old doesn't always think she's such a great help though.
If you think you could fill this position successfully: Congratulations!! You too must be amazing!
Organizational skills a plus. Patience not necessary but certainly nice. Pay minimal. Would you accept homemade chocolate chip cookies as payment instead of money? The cookies may have a bite or two missing since my 2 year old took it upon herself to taste test them for you.
Another skill needed is optimism for the man in the home who is applying for jobs like mad. Must cheer him on and cheer him up and have dinner ready when he gets home. Sandwiches are totally acceptable. As is cereal.
Also, beware the 2 year old and markers. There seems to be a magnetic draw between the two, as the sheet on my bed can now attest as I took 2 minutes to put tights on the 4 year old today.
Also, the 2 year old is showing tendencies towards neatness attributes.After sitting down for a meal or any sort, she quickly loses her shirt if she deems the meal too messy and tries to keep her clothing clean. How thoughtful and helpful! Please encourage her when she tries to sweep the floor and makes a bigger mess. She holds and dumps the dust pan like a pro! She must have picked up that skill from her 4 year old sister who is also a great dust dumper. Beware the 2 year old's too long visits to the bathroom to go potty. We have deducted after doing her business she likes to put on makeup, spread soap, unroll toilet paper and any other "fun" task that catches her eye. Including but not limited to dunking toothbrushes, toilet paper, hands and anything else "fun" into the toilet water.
The 4 year old currently has an affinity for bed jumping. But she can make her bed like a pro.
And is learning all kinds of other useful skills like using scissors on her own gogurts, drawing stick figures, folding towels and spelling her name out loud. She's a great assistant in helping the 2 year old into clothes, going potty and most other things. The 2 year old doesn't always think she's such a great help though.
If you think you could fill this position successfully: Congratulations!! You too must be amazing!
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Oh The Joys of Moving
Craigslist. I love to love it, I love to hate it. I just finished dealing with a person who tried to get me to drop my price by $2. While he was here to pick up the pieces. When you're paying less than $10 for something that's worth easily more than I'm charging, that's a problem. I think when you find yourself insisting that they pay that extra $2, that's when you know you're poor. When $2 is worth the pain of insisting on someone paying it. If I was going for a garage sale atmosphere, I wouldn't be selling on craigslist. Okay, end of rant.
Also, I'm getting tired of arranging my time so people can come over and pick up the stuff of ours that they are buying. We're trying to fit back into the same size trailer we came out here with almost a year and a half ago. *Sigh* I hate having to start completely over acquiring furniture for a household. At least this time we're moving with a chair. A folding chair. Also, don't mind my attitude. It has to do with saying goodbye to perfectly usable and nice pieces that we've been given or gotten fairly inexpensively and are now saying goodbye to instead of having them last a whole lot longer with our family. Hopefully this will be one of the few times in my life that I have to do this. Again.
I sound ungrateful. I am really just tired. Moving isn't anyone's most favorite thing to do. It's interesting trying to box things up with two curious little girls who like to pull things out of piles and play with and move them to new places. Oh the joys.
Also, something I feel I should have more time to be excited about. We find out what we're having on Tuesday. I'm excited when I think about it but I don't have time to let that be something for my mind to rest on for very long. At least this pregnancy is going by quickly and fairly painlessly. I'll take it!
Okay, there's your update for now. Still no job. We'll let you know as soon as we know. Either way, June 29th we are leaving this apartment unless something job-wise comes up in this area. We're not making any REALLY concrete plans at this point for anything.
Also, I'm getting tired of arranging my time so people can come over and pick up the stuff of ours that they are buying. We're trying to fit back into the same size trailer we came out here with almost a year and a half ago. *Sigh* I hate having to start completely over acquiring furniture for a household. At least this time we're moving with a chair. A folding chair. Also, don't mind my attitude. It has to do with saying goodbye to perfectly usable and nice pieces that we've been given or gotten fairly inexpensively and are now saying goodbye to instead of having them last a whole lot longer with our family. Hopefully this will be one of the few times in my life that I have to do this. Again.
I sound ungrateful. I am really just tired. Moving isn't anyone's most favorite thing to do. It's interesting trying to box things up with two curious little girls who like to pull things out of piles and play with and move them to new places. Oh the joys.
Also, something I feel I should have more time to be excited about. We find out what we're having on Tuesday. I'm excited when I think about it but I don't have time to let that be something for my mind to rest on for very long. At least this pregnancy is going by quickly and fairly painlessly. I'll take it!
Okay, there's your update for now. Still no job. We'll let you know as soon as we know. Either way, June 29th we are leaving this apartment unless something job-wise comes up in this area. We're not making any REALLY concrete plans at this point for anything.
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
17 Days Left
Well, we've not been up to much here. Packing, taking things to Salvation Army, selling things on Craigslist. We're taking about the same amount of things out of here as we brought in which really isn't much. Beds, clothes, kitchen stuff, toiletry items. Kinda sad about losing some of the things we've gathered here, I had such big dreams of changing and painting. Hopefully I'll get to do that at our next place. Here are some much needed pictures from lately.
Aftyn's 4th birthday!!
Also other awesome news, I hurt my right wrist again. Ugh. Just had to document it b/c it's really bad timing for that.
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| It got really hot. We slept terribly for 4 days.Hence Bronwyn falling asleep randomly on the floor mid-morning. |
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| The girls in their birthday dresses from Grandma Bishop! So cute and ready for church! |
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