Much Needed Vacation

Tomorrow we are leaving for our first vacation together in 2 and a half years! We are going to visit our friends, Heath and Adrienne, in Austin for a few days, then we're heading further south to spend a few days in San Antonio. We have never been to either city and we are excited for the adventure! We planned this at the perfect time, we both need to let go of some stress! Planning and packing for vacations usually stresses me out, thankfully that was not the case the last few days. I'm ready and raring to go, I just have a few things left to do, like get my house nice and clean...I LOVE coming home to a clean house!

Jobs, We Don't Need No Stinkin' Jobs!

Forest has had a feeling for a few weeks now, something was about to change. He also knew that the City of Dallas was renegotiating their contract with Compucom. He had a meeting on Friday and while his bosses fought to keep them, they are letting most of them go. Forest's last day is on Wednesday. The library will no longer have a designated support team (or, as is the case with Forest now, support person) and neither will public safety divisions, such as fire and police. One person will do the support for all of those things and for some reason they chose not to keep Forest (and he told me he wouldn't want to do that anyway!).

So, what does this mean for us? The best case scenario is that Forest finds a job in the next few weeks (he has a months worth of severance) and we save whatever severance we don't need to use, that would be wonderful! The next best and probably what will happen is that it takes the entire month to find a job and we break even. If we don't have to dip into our savings, I will be happy. Neither of us have been upset, or nervous about our future, because we know we'll be taken care of. Forest is happy to get some time to relax after the last 9 months of pure madness at the Library and it will give him time to get some things done that he's not had time to do. It comes at a convenient time for me as well, Gracie is going to be on the other side of the country for 2 weeks, so now I'll have Forest here to keep me company!

Although Forest will enjoy this little respite from work, he still does need to find a job, so if any of my blog readers know of any contacts in the IT world, please let us know. Thanks everyone! :)

More Flags, More Fun

Like I said in my last post, we go to Six Flags a lot. Forest had this last Friday off (May 28th) and so we went for the entire day. It was pretty slow, except for the water rides, which all had 30 to 90 minute waits. I have officially been on every ride in the park, except for the kid rides they won't let me on and Texas Giant, which I would seriously not suggest trying to ride right now!



See, right now it's a death trap. They are turning it into a steel/wooden hybrid and it'll back next season. I was told not to ride it before the construction started if I wanted to keep my spine in tact.

Forest said that he wanted to try some bigger coasters, so I took him on Shockwave last week! He got his head caught down when we went through the double loop and that kind of hurt, but he loved the rest of the ride. We went on it again on Friday and he liked it much better that time.







We went up on the Oil Derrick, it hasn't been open much this season. Here are some pics of us that we took up there.







That's the highest point in the park and has a great view of Dallas and Fort Worth. As you can tell in these pictures, when it gets hot, my hair just does whatever it wants. I did wear a bandanna to the park and lost it on the very first ride we went on. I just didn't think about it! Forest ended up winning me a hat at the "Guess Your Age" game. She guessed 27. I was really surprised she guessed so close! I guess Forest is starting to look his age...

Tomorrow (Memorial Day) we are actually not going to Six Flags (I know, shocker!) but are going with the Dendy Family to the Scarborough Fair in Waxahachie. I have never been, so I am very excited! I have been having really rough mornings though...I hope I can get up and feel good for the day. I'm sure we'll have a ton of fun, pictures to come soon...

Six Flags Therapy

- Waiting in line to ride Tony Hawk's Big Spin -
The very first time I went to Six Flags was in 2008, with the Dendy's. We left Grace with her Grandma and went for the day. I hadn't been to a theme park since 2002 and I fell in love with coasters all over again. Last summer, I went with Forest and my sister in law, Jan. Forest liked at least a few of the rides. He doesn't like big coasters (although he's never been on one!) but liked the smaller family rides. He told me then that he wanted to try a water park the next year.

So, a month or so ago, I asked Forest if he wanted to get season passes. We were planning a trip to San Antonio and since there is a Six Flags there, we'd get a little more use out of them. But, Six Flags Fiesta Texas (in SA) has a free water park, almost identical to Hurricane Harbor here that costs extra. After we found that out, it was a definite that we get the passes. I figured out that we spent about $35 extra than we would have if we had gone to Six Flags once and Hurricane Harbor once. But, being a pass holder comes with awesome benefits. We will more than make-up that $35 because we have free drinks for the day passes, bring a friend free on any day passes and skip the line passes. We have already been 4 times, we have been going in the evening for a few hours on the weekends and the park clears out shorter after we get there. It's great!

I have been in a terrible rut for a few months now. My health has been declining and so I haven't felt like doing much of anything but sit around and watch Hulu and Netflix. We haven't been out of the house much and we found ourselves not really communicating to each other much. I haven't been nearly as active as I had been before, because I have just been so sore and stiff.

It seems silly at first to think that an amusement park could help me feel better, or help our marriage, but it really has! It dawned on me last night how great it's been for us. We spend a lot of time waking around, in the fresh air. There are no computers or TVs around to distract us. We spend the whole evening together, taking and laughing and that's so therapeutic for me. We have so much fun, even if we only get a ride a few things in between walking around. Yesterday we decided to go and didn't realize a storm was coming in. They shut down most of the rides, but we still had a great time walking around because the weather was so cool. It's also great to people watch, we have seen some really funny things! It's also nice that we can just go for a few hours and not feel like we have to do everything in one day. I get dizzy pretty easily, so it's great to take it slow. It's a (relatively) short trip to Arlington and almost a "free" night out. It's better than a movie because we're outside, getting fresh air, getting some exercise and it's of course, a far more social activity. Forest is also getting braver, he told me yesterday that he wanted to go on Shockwave...too bad it was closed the whole time we were there! There is always next weekend!

Stephanie Nielson

If you have yet to see the Mormon Message about Stephanie and her family, please watch it, it's beautiful and amazing.

I watched this a few weeks ago when I wasn't feeling very well. Forest asked me to watch it, I think he knew it would help me feel better. Today has been a rough day, it's been a rough few weeks. I knew I needed to watch it again. I found Stephanie's blog and went all of the way back to before the accident. She has a beautiful life, the life that I have always wanted. Faith, a wonderful husband and adorable healthy children. Even with all of the advercities she has to face for the rest of her life, she is still a daughter of God and knows her true worth. I wish that everyone could have that attitude. I love hearing the stories she tells of her and her husband, Christian. He is just as amazing as she is.

So, as I have been feeling down and out for weeks now and with feeling stiff, tired, unmotivated and everything else I have been feeling, I have let so many things go. I just don't feel like I have the strength to move on and get things done. Even going home and making dinner has been a challenge most nights after getting home from work (where, usually, I feel the best all day, that's a blessing). Forest has stepped up and pinched in more than he ever has. After hearing about how much Christian has done to take care of Stephanie, I didn't even have to contemplate for one second if Forest would do the same thing for me, because I know he already has. When my body revolts against me, he is right there ready to take on anything that comes with it. I could never express how amazing my husband is, there just isn't an earthly possible way to do it. He has faced much adversity in his own life and sometimes I feel like I should be ashamed with the issues I bring to the table, but he is always there to guide and help me, no matter what.

I find I am the exact opposite of most people when it comes to prayer. I am always very quick to pray in thanks to our Heavenly Father, to let him know I appreciate all of the wonderful things he has given us. I still find it so amazing that we live in a great house, we both have jobs we love, we have never struggled with financial problems, even when Forest was unemployed during parts of the first few years of our marriage. I even thank him for the time we have to share as a couple. Because we don't have children, we have had so much time to bond and develop together. While it is sad we haven't received that blessing, we know that He is waiting for the right time for Him. We are so thankful for the blessings he gives us in return for all of this waiting. On the other hand though, I rarely pray when I am having a rough time. I feel like He doesn't need to be bothered with my problems, that no one needs to be bothered with them. I sometimes wonder why the help isn't coming and it's because I haven't asked! I am trying to be better about that...

Stephanie's attitude toward her appearance has really uplifted me. I know she is sad that her former self is gone, that she is this new person. Her spirit about it is amazing though. I have read so many hurtful comments about her being vain, but not once have I felt that about anything she has said. I could only imagine what it would be like to go from looking one way to looking completely different and then top it off with immense pain and troubles with mobility. I have struggled with appearance issues my entire life, being my weight, thinning hair, premature graying, having hair where I REALLY don't want it, my big feet, those types of things. All women struggle with their appearance and it's a constant struggle at that! As a teenager I thought I would never be thought of as "beautiful". Meeting Forest changed that, as he tells me on a regular basis how beautiful I am, even if I don't feel it myself. I have slowly learned to love some of those parts of me. I have to dye my hair, but it's a fun bonding experience for Forest and I (because he has to help me!) and I have an excuse to try new colors. I have finally found a hair cut that I love, but is easy to hide my thin spot (and I get SO many compliments about it, even though I've had it for 6 months now). I have finally found a skincare routine that minimizes the redness in my face and takes care of blemishes, because I can't believe I still have them at my age! I have felt different my entire life, but we are all different and beautiful and that unites us as women.

I doubt Stephanie will ever read this, I'm just one little spec floating around in cyber-space, but she really has me thinking about things I can do to change my life. I have many roadblocks in my way, but I can still try my best to get through them (or go around them!). I want to thank her for sharing her story, even if some days she just doesn't feel like it! Her blog is under my most visited now, I would encourage everyone to read it from time to time.

Field Day

The Northwest ISD has an adaptive Field Day every year for the special needs classes. I look forward to going every year, it's so much fun! This year's was Tuesday, May 4th. When we got to the field, we found out that *everything* was water based. Grace wasn't dressed to be wet, but since she had a change of clothes, we figured we could soak her. There were 8 high school kids waiting to help with the 8 kids in Grace's class and there was only one boy in the group. So, naturally, he had been assigned to be Grace's helper for the day! Grace flirted with him all morning. She was just a little bit wet until one of the kids in her class took a water-soaked sponge and squeezed it over her head! From then on she was soaking wet.













I think she really enjoyed herself, she kept screaming (in a happy way, I promise) and laughing all morning. She enjoyed her helper being there, he was very good with her. He reminded me so much of my friend Mark. He gave Grace a hug at the end of the morning and Grace tried to pull his hair. She's so cute, I love her so much!

May Flowers

All sorts of emotions are surging through me at this moment! I'm excited about the summer because we are actually going on vacation TOGETHER! Plus, summer always brings lots of fun things to do with the Dendys! We're going to the Scarborough Fair in Waxahachie on Memorial Day! I've never been before and I'm sure Gracie will get a kick out of all of the guys dressed up in crazy outfits. The Dendy fam will be on vacation for a few weeks this summer, so I'm going to take advantage of that time Grace will be gone. I planned a trip to San Antonio and Austin! I've lived here for 7 years and have never been south of Corsicana. We just got Six Flags season passes so we're going to go to the Six Flags park in San Antonio, do the Riverwalk, see the Alamo, etc, etc. Then in Austin, we're staying with our friends Heath and Adrienne. They know how to show visitors to Austin a good time, or so I hear ;)

Our living room is SLOWLY making it's way back to normalcy. The priming took twice as long as we thought. It's so thick it was just a pain to roll on. Now we are onto doing the texture and then we can (FINALLY!) paint. I think our couch and love seat are feeling neglected in the garage. Forest's friend from work came to help us last weekend, we were so grateful for that. Another friend of his is moving to the apartments near the rec center. I know Forest is really happy about that, it seems his closest friends are all on the other side of the Metroplex.

My year with Grace ends on the 31st of May. She had her evaluation about two weeks ago and they still haven't called back to let Jennie know if Grace has been approved for another year, which is causing me some stress (because I love to make myself stress for some reason!). Everyone who knows Grace will probably say a collective "WHAT!?" when I tell you that it's possible she may be rejected. The program she is in currently is the Medically Dependent Children Program, or MDCP. Medically, Grace is pretty healthy. Some of the things that got her into the program are no longer an issue, but others are still there. I really have no idea why I am worrying so much, because nothing has changed since her last evaluation, but the women who did the evaluation seemed a little more "business" and I think that has psyched me out a little bit. It would seem to me that if nothing has changed or gotten better and she is a year older, that would make it seem worse. The biggest and older she is, the harder it is to take care of her. I *really* wouldn't enjoy losing my job, but Grace receives so many more benefits from this program than just me. I wouldn't want her to lose them either.

Moving Right Along...

We are making "some" progress in our living room. Some of the plans have changed though and has caused a few hiccups along the way. We had to remove some drywall around our fireplace and realized that the flume is broken and not opening. The stone also has cracks in it and is just old and definitely not safe to use. So, for the time being, we have put drywall over it! The ballet is still out in my mind as to where the furniture will go now. I got a new hutch and storage cabinet to put in there, both very cute.

Pictures of this lovely little project can be see here in our photo album or here on Facebook. You must be logged in to Facebook and be my friend there to view the photos that way though.

Living Room Project

I just added the "before" pics of our living room to our photo album, if anyone is interested!

If you are wondering why we have already arranged the furniture differently before we started to paint is because my husband is a geek. We have a home theater system and he needed to make sure the new furniture arrangement was going to work with speaker placement!d

Grabert Demolition

Tonight starts a process that will probably take a month or two to complete, updating 2 of the "worst rooms" in our house. To give you a little bit of a back story on our house:

Our house has 2 bedrooms, two full baths, a living room, an entry way and a kitchen with dining room attached. Every room has a problem with the paint, the two biggest offenders being the guest bedroom and the living room. Every wall in the house is covered in texture, texture that was not applied right and needs to be completely redone. This is some what of an involved process, we need to sand everything off of the walls down to the drywall. After getting the walls smooth, we'll prime the walls and depending on what the walls look like after sanding, possibly texture the walls and then (FINALLY!) paint.

The guest bedroom project started last summer. Forest and our friend Bryce tried to blend the uneven texture, but it was pretty much impossible to do. They also didn't realize that the previous owners painted right over the wallpaper! That absolutely needs to be removed. After that is done, we'll clean up the giant mess it will make, then move all of the furniture from the living room into the guest bedroom. Then we'll do the same thing in the living room. The texture isn't as thick, but the room is about 25X15 and has 12 foot ceilings! We are also going to replace every door frame and the baseboards. Home Depot has these nifty miter-less door frame kits that actually aren't any more expensive then doing it the old fashion way, and they fit right into my decor! Between the entry way and living room, we have 9 doorways. 6 of them are in the entry way! After we get the living room painted, we're going to move all of the furniture back into the living room. We'll then paint the guest bedroom and then install laminate flooring in the entry way and guest bedroom.

I know, it sounds like an insane amount of work. It kind of is, but thankfully we have a good idea of what we are doing now. Forest's major concern in this project? Where we were going to put the speakers for our Home Theater when we arrange the furniture. Since we are installing new baseboards and door frames, it will finally be easy to hide the wires somewhere other than under our rug. The TV is blocking the fireplace at the moment and when this is all done, I'll actually be able to show it off! I won't EVER use it (I live in Texas, after all!) but for some reason everyone loves having them down here.

The only problem I am worried about at the moment is color. Colors for the guest bedroom have been picked out for almost a year now (I know, sad right?) but Forest and I are debating for the living room. I want to do a beige color with country red trim, something very prim. He, for some reason, thinks the trim should be white, which is of course, very boring. So, I'm asking for ideas!

I am super excited about this project. It'll be a HUGE under taking but I am willing to deal with a few weeks of madness to finally update that living room. I'll post pictures as we get the project started!

Insomnia

During certain times...of my life...I suffer from severe insomnia. It's not in any pattern and comes sporadically. Thankfully it's usually before my days off or on a day where I can get some extra sleep if I ever do fall asleep. I was tired all day today, so you would think I would have crashed hours ago. It's nearly 5 now. Getting pretty tired of this, no pun intended (or maybe it is...I can't think straight).

I am taking this time to work on my new photo album. I suggest looking over to the left of your screen and checking it out. 2009 was a good picture year. We had some pretty fun adventures and I even helped delivery my friend's baby. How many times will I get to do that in my life? I'm going to finish this up and then HOPEFULLY get to bed!

New Year's Resolutions

Wow, I can't believe I haven't updated this in 6 months! It's been a struggle even reading my friend's blogs because almost everyone with a blog is also on Facebook. It's taken over as the method for pumping information out to the world. For the sake of my family, I should update so you don't have to hear about things from just my Mom! I suppose it should be a resolution, even...

Things have been going well for us in the last few months. Forest was laid off in October for one day before they came to their senses and realized things would crash and burn without Forest's keen knowledge of the Library's network (at least that's how I see it!). Unfortunately he is doing the job of three people all by himself now. He is down in a room all by himself and it was kind of taking it's toll for a little bit. Thankfully now he has someone helping him a few days a week and they get along really well.

Gracie is doing really well! She seems to love her new class at Lakeview and is still a joy to take care of. In November I found out I was chosen as "Attendant of the Year" from Disability Services of the Southwest (or DSSW, the firm that takes care of Grace's respite care account) The following is the section of the DSSW newsletter that I was featured in! I love the letter the Dendys wrote, it made me feel really appreciated. Working with Grace is the best job I've ever had!

And since the scanned picture didn't come out so great, here is the original!

I've been really busy with my calling at Church the last few months (I'm the Activities Chairperson), we had two dinners in three months! Our Chili Cookoff went very well (and since we live in Texas, Mormons actually know how to make Chili!) in October but what I was really gearing up for was the Ward Christmas Party. We had "Tex-Mex" food with some really fun country Christmas decorations. The food was so fantastic but we had so much left over that I am still even sick of mexican food.

We had a very quiet Christmas! It was just the two of us and our dog. Your dog, you ask? Yes, we actually got a dog! I'm sure everyone already knows about this because he was featured in our Christmas card, but to give you some of the details...a friend of ours, Laney, put a post on FB asking if anyone would like a 2 year old Bichon Frise that her neighbor needed to find a home because her son was having severe asthma. I told her I would love to give him a good home and it all fell into place. We got him on December 14th so he was the perfect Christmas present! His name is Pippin and we just adore this little dog. I've taken him over to Jennie's to play with their puppy and both of the dogs just love having someone to romp around with. Here are a few pictures with our cute little doggie!

One of our Christmas card pictures:

Playing in the snow:



After we got him groomed for the first time:

You may have noticed all of that snow - we finally had a White Christmas! While the rain was pouring in Michigan, we had a good 5 inches of snow fall on Christmas Eve. It was snowing hard enough that it soaked my camera and I only took a few pictures when it was actually still snowing. The first picture is from when it was snowing and the second two are when it started melting. Pippin enjoyed running around in the snow and we bundled up to go play with him in it. The weather has been one big yo-yo, going from the 30's to the 70's, down to the 20's and it's supposed to be in the high 50's early next week. Right now it's in the 20's and we're not liking that too much!

Things are good for us and we hope everyone around the country is having a wonderful New Year so far!

The Best Kind of Update - Full of Pictures!

So much has been so much going on the past few weeks!

Our windows are being installed on Friday!

Our guest bedroom looks like a warzone!

Okay, it's been cleaned up since then, but we haven't started painting because we can't open our old crummy windows.

Speaking of war zones, we have had some interesting weather. Last Wednesday the Alliance Airport area was hit with a massive storm that rocked the community. Our street was littered with tree branches and our house took a slight hit. One of our turbines flew off of the roof! We have a little bit of water damage in our living room ceiling, but other than that we fared pretty well. I cannot believe that neither of our trees were touched. It doesn't even look like a single leaf is missing. We lost power for almost 3 days. It finally came back on Saturday afternoon. We are so thankful for the Wrights who let us stay with them the first night (until they too lost power) and the Dendy's for letting us borrow their mud room refrigerator and also their guest bedroom. We'd be out an awful lot of food and money otherwise!

Also last Wednesday, a city-hired contractor started digging holes on our street. We weren't notified and we didn't find out until today what they are doing. Wednesday they hit a gas main which I didn't know about until after the storm settled (which I am grateful for because storms stress me out enough as it is!). We came home from the store this afternoon and found a freshly dug hole in our front yard! I don't mind the hole so much now that I know they are installing street lights (that are MUCH needed), but none of us on the block knew what was going on. For some reason they felt the need to drive a tractor on my lawn though, which I am hoping they will fix. They apparently "fixed" it today, but as you can see from the following pictures, it still looks pretty terrible. As far as I can tell, we're the only house's lawn they did this to.

Looking at that picture makes me think our lawn is kind of scary. Forest mowed it last Monday. We got so much rain though, I'm not surprised it looks so wild!

A few weeks ago, Grace graduated from Kindergarten! She was so cute getting her diploma although she looked pretty confused about all of it. Next year she is off to Lakeview Elementary! She thankfully has stopped having seizures recently which means she has lost some benefits with MDCP. This doesn't affect me too much, I'll make a little bit less this year but work a significant amount of hours less than I did last year. It's worth it for her not to have seizures anymore!

And here are some random pictures of Grace that I think are adorable!


We broke down and got a new camera. We got a Canon SX10 and it is HUGE. Thankfully it's pretty light. I love that the view finder is "flexable". I took the picture below of Grace and I and Grace is looking at herself in the view finder. It takes amazing pictures, much better than on our old camera (which you can see in the shots of Grace above).

And because it's just so darn cute...

I guess that is everything for right now...it's been a really crazy week, we spent most of today catching up from not doing any laundry or housework for 4 days. It's amazing the things we can take for granted. Not having power impacts your life in every single way. I hope we don't have to do that again anytime soon...

Spare Oom

Our guest bedroom/workspace is affectionately called "Spare Oom". If you get that reference, I bet you are smiling! It's the smallest room besides the bathrooms and it probably needs the most work. The carpet has things melted into it and is pink in spots. The walls are smooth in some places and textured in others. The ceiling looks like a child had some fun with cottage cheese. It's just a really bad room. All of that is going to change! I'm planning a major overhaul.

First, the floors. We are going to install laminate flooring. The type I picked out is gorgeous and looks just like real wood. The color is amazing. This will also be installed in our front "foyer" area. I would love to have this put in my entire house because of our allergies, but I think we may just do our bedroom eventually. You kind of need carpet in the front room...

The walls are in okay shape, just need a new coat of paint. We are replacing the baseboards and door frames. The window doesn't have a frame, but we may install one. We decided on Behr paint (they have $5 off each gallon for memorial day, score!). The walls are going to be "Promenade", which is a sagey-green and the trim is going to be "Warm Muffin", a pale yellow. Lastly, the door (which will also be new) is going to be "Polar Bear", which just looks like white to me, but I like the name! Alexa said "Polar Bears are promenading while eating warm muffins". I wish I could name paint colors. Whoever has that job is awesome.

The closet currently has no doors, but I don't think we'll replace them right away. I am going to wait for them to go on sale. The ones I want are the mirror sliding doors. They aren't anymore expensive than the normal sliding doors, so I figured the mirrors would look really nice.

Lastly, we bought almost all new furniture for this room. Generally, it won't have a bed in it. Last year right before we closed on the house, we got a great deal on a fantastic queen sized air mattress. It's 25 inches tall and really comfy. Even my parents slept on it and thought it was great. This saves us a lot of room when we're not using the bed. My sister directed me to a great website that has all real-wood furniture for a great price. They had a special going on, so I ended up getting something for free. I bought an armoire, a nightstand and a cute little bench. I found a desk at Target for my computer.

The other thing we're doing is replacing all of our entry doors. They are all in pretty terrible shape and are rather inefficient. We're getting our new windows installed in two-three weeks, so what is the point if our doors are leaking too?

My only problem right now with all of this is - what color do I paint my front and back doors? I want to paint them blue (the guy at Home Depot even suggested blue!) and Forest is saying we should just paint them white. White is boring! Anyone have any suggestions?

So, we are going to be insanely busy coming up here, and apparently very poor too! After this project is done, I am going to be resting for a while. I think my dear husband can only take so much of this!

July 8th

I can't believe it's been 16 months since I have been to Michigan. I thankfully have been able to see my parents since then, but I miss my sister (and occasionally my brother!). Crystal and I are both planning trips there for the summer. I went back and forth between driving and flying and with how many miles are on our cars, flying won. Due to some heavy financial "burdens" we've had lately (I will talk about that later), we decided that I would go alone this time. I bought my ticket from DFW to DTW, but I haven't booked my flight home yet. The flight there has a lay-over in St. Louis of all places (an airport I am NOT fond of, but I will deal). I'm still debating on what airline to take and it wasn't any cheaper to book it round trip either way I went. I'm being a cheapskate because I don't want to pay a single cent more in fees for anything. These luggage fees are just insane considering I'm paying nearly $75 more for this ticket than I normally would. I pre-packed to make sure I could fit all of my clothes into my carry-on luggage and I managed to fit it all. On the way home, however, I may fly Southwest so I can check a bag for free. I'm going to pack a duffel bag flat in my carry-on and stuff it full of my clothes for the trip home. I'll check that and bring anything I buy home with me in my carry-on. It saves me money and the flight home is non-stop. So, I definitely leave for Detroit on July 8th and I'm pretty sure I am coming home on July 22nd (but at 6:30 in the morning).

As for the financial "burden" I was talking about, we just bought new windows. I cannot wait until they are installed because looking out of my old ones makes me depressed! We went with top-of-the-line windows that are eco-friendly and all of that. They are double hung, including the huge picture window in our kitchen, so they will be a breeze to clean. None of our windows currently have screens either, so it will be so nice to be able to open them (which will probably be in the fall, as it's in the 90's here already). Our electricity bill will be pleasant to receive those first few months too. This is the first big project we've started in the house. It's hard to believe we closed a year ago!

Things are good around here, we've been keeping very busy. My calling keeps me on my toes, I once spent 6 straight hours on my computer e-mailing, making bulletin posts, organizing our calendar year for the Ward. It's great, I love it! I'm not being sarcastic either, I really do enjoy this. I used to spend whole weekends organizing my room. I wish I were that motivated about things now in my house...at least I can be with my calling.

sprucing things up

We have had a very busy few weeks, getting things cleaned up and fixed up around here. I have a list of plans a mile long and I have no idea where to start. Forest keeps telling me "one at a time..." but I don't have any clue of which one to do first!

We have made great progress with our landscaping. We built a pathway from our gate to our deck, planted two square foot gardens and have a lovely flower bed along the house with great lighting for when we entertain outside. Our front yard needs a bit of work, we're going to lay out a new flower bed in the front. My pansies are still looking great from the winter, at least the ones that have survived the torrential downpours and hail storms. I think it's finally time to install gutters. I think we will end up doing them ourselves, unless anyone in DFW knows of a great company that can do them for us!

In other news, we celebrated our 5th anniversary last Friday. It's hard to believe that it's been 5 years already! We have had good times and sad, thankfully more good times than not. Forest surprised me with a gorgeous ring. My wedding ring is wonderful and I love it, but it's not practical for work. It also has an interlocking band, so I wasn't able to just wear the band either. I let him know what I wanted and we found one together. It's just perfect, like my dear husband :)

march madness

I'm not a basketball fan, I will admit, but I do hear a lot about March Madness while working at the Dendy's (Dallas is a huge sports fan). The March Madness I am referring to is the crazy weather we are having again. It was gorgeous for almost the entire month and I was longing for when the pool would open. We packed away the winter clothes and blankets. Yesterday the temperature dropped dramatically, back into the 30's. Warm weather, come back to us!

If you can believe it, my toe is still recovering from my plate drop. I'm convinced I put a crack in the bone and it's just taking it's time to heal. It doesn't bother me much, but if I put any pressure on the top of my toe, it hurts like the day I injured it. I have two new injuries at the moment. My arm started to ache last week and it feels like I pulled a muscle in my elbow. This causes some issues with carrying Grace, but since she can walk with assistance I usually make her walk everywhere and I'm sure she doesn't mind! Yesterday Forest and I were walking out of Wal-Mart and my neck just started to ache like I had slept on it weird. It's still feeling really sore, but I'm not sure what I could have done that would have made it feel so bad so fast. It comes and goes too, but if I stay pretty still it doesn't hurt at all. I think it's weather related, the drop in temperature does weird things to me.

Forest and I planning a trip up north this summer. We're planning on driving through St. Louis to see the Arch and then of course up to Michigan. On the way home we are going to see Nauvoo again. We were there 4 years ago but we didn't have our Temple Recommends so I am so excited to be able to go do a session at the Temple. We'll also be able to go see the Pageant, as we'll be going sometime in July. We haven't been to Michigan in a while and it's also been a long while since we've seen some of my friends and family, so it'll be a nice visit.

Not much is going on with us for now. We're re-landscaping our backyard and I will post pictures when we get it all done. It should look really nice. Hope everyone is doing well!

I'm Getting Bad At This...

I need to post more often. I have been entirely too busy lately. Right now I am getting a bit irritated with the weather around here. It was gorgeous on Thursday at 87 degrees. Right now it's in the 30's. The dramatic drop in temperature has reeked havoc on my body, I feel stiff as a board right now. I did something stupid yesterday, I dropped a plate on my toes. You wouldn't think that would hurt all too bad but it hit me in exactly the right spot and it is seriously painful. It didn't bruise, which was strange, but it hurts if I touch it. Thankfully I was able to move it this afternoon. It seemed like every time I walked passed Grace she would throw a book at me and it would land right on my foot. She has some sort of pain radar and hurls things toward it.

I still cannot believe it, but I was recently called as our Ward's Activities Chair. This is the biggest calling I've had and I'm pretty excited about it. We both have been on the committee for a little while but after our Chair was released they apparently thought it was a great idea to have me replace her (I know, what are they thinking, right?). Our first activity is next Saturday, so for all of those in the TC Ward, please come and remember to bring your favorite soup, a pretty good prize is on the line here!

Right now I'm sitting in my dining room which seems to be the most freezing room in the entire house. We finally got a new dining room table after not having one for the last 9 months. We moved some things around in here and it looks good. I will have to post some pictures in the next few days once I get my decor all straightened out finally. I'm having a book club meeting at my house in 9 or so days, I hope everything is done by then! Wish me luck!

I'm going to go cuddle with my husband and get warm. I know it's February, it should be cold, but I wish the weather would make up it's mind! Maybe March will be better...

It will be fine...

Something dawned on me a few months ago. Forest and I got married when I was almost 21 years old. My Mom was also 21 when she married my Dad. She was 23 when she had my sister, Crystal, and was just about to turn 26 years old when she had me. That means when she was 25, in the fall after her birthday, my parents decided to have another baby. If I were running on that same time line, I would already be pregnant with my second child. My parents planned us out pretty well, we are all 3 years apart, nearly to the day. Part of me wishes that it were that easy for me.

It is not a secret that Forest and I are having a hard time having a baby. If you are reading this and didn't know that, I'm actually quite shocked! I would be lying if I said it didn't bother me, but not in the way you might think. I have suffered miscarriages and so many false alarms. There are times I get so discouraged and curse my body for being so uncooperative. For the most part though, I am actually okay dealing with all of this. From a very young age, I have always known that I was going to be a mother. I wanted to get married young, have a few children and live happily ever after. I did get married fairly young and I know that I was ready to. In school it seemed we were constantly writing papers about where wanted to be in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, etc. I'm sure all of those papers included owning a house, being married, having children, etc. I had a teacher named Ms. Maul, she was my Allied Health teacher and also my absolute favorite. She always told us that none of us could have kids (or get married for that matter) until we were 25. When she found out I got married she still told me to wait until I was 25 to start having kids. I would blame this all on her, but I'm 25 and still nothing!

A few weeks ago I started having really bad food aversions, night-time nausea and other tell-tale pregnancy signs. We got our hopes up really high actually. We have been on this spiritual high for the past two months, we felt that this really could be it, that us getting Sealed was going to finally bring us this miracle. It didn't. Dealing with this is something that I have to do, talking about it and knowing that it's really alright. There is so much of me that wants to hold our first tiny little thing in my arms. I think there is more that we need to accomplish first.

The true purpose of this is to let all of my friends and family know that it is alright to talk about this. There are so many of my friends who have had problems having kids in the past and as much as it pains me that you are having to deal with this too, having you there helps me know that anything is possible. I will always be sad when it doesn't happen, but I will continue to be sad if I can't let it out and let everyone help me get through.

I can tell you who probably helps me the most and doesn't even know it is Gracie. She has taught me so much about patience in the last 18 months. I'm sure she has learned to be patient with me sometimes too. No matter what mistakes I might make with her though, I know that she has unconditional love for everyone in her life. She sees the things in me that I can't see in myself.

I feel like my life has been put on hold slightly, like we are just standing around waiting for this big change. We have made a lot of progress this last year though, we have made several huge leaps forward so it seems completely unfitting for me to feel this way! I guess that is a big thing I need to work on, knowing that we need to move on with our lives and enjoy being in it with each other and the people we have surrounding us. We are so blessed to have what we have, our friends, our family and our home. Thank you for your patience, whoever took the time to read this, those are my true friends and you know who you are!

Our Sealing

Today I went to my friend Christi's baby shower, which was very cute! She is having her first boy after 4 girls, so we stocked her up on all sorts of very blue things. I just got home from that and I normally don't come home until 6 on Saturdays, so I have a little bit of extra time. Time to finally sit down and write about our Sealing, even though it was almost a month ago now (I can't believe it either!).

I woke up to a down pouring of rain. I was so sad that it was pouring down rain because I thought for sure we'd never get any good pictures. Here in Roanoke it stopped raining just before we left. I took my parents with me and Forest took Heidi, Mark to my sister-in-law Laura's so she could watch the kids. We were on 635 in Dallas and we realized we were driving right in the storm. My knuckles were bright white because I was driving so nervously. We passed the aftermath of two accidents and I didn't want that to be us! Thankfully we got to the Temple in one piece and it had stopped raining! Forest was a little late, but that was okay. We both got dressed and when you are Sealed, you are able to use the Bride's Room. There were several weddings going on that day, so it was a bit crammed. I was completely fine getting dressed in the changing area, but the matrons wanted me to be able to use it on my special day. We had a chance to sit in the Celestial Room for a few minutes before they called us in to the Sealing room and that was wonderful. We have only been there when there are several people there with us and we were completely by ourselves. We were called into the Sealing room and the first three people I was able to see were Christi, Meredith and Valentyna. As soon as I saw them smiling at me, I was starting to lose it!

The ceremony was quicker than I thought it would have been, but it was very to the point and wonderful. I can't wait until I can hear those words again. I was so focused on Forest and how much I loved him that I'm not sure I heard everything! I also completely forgot to look in the mirrors, I was just looking at my husband the entire time. Afterward we headed outside and took some fantastic pictures with our friends and family.





After this, we got dressed back into our street clothes and it was time to leave. It was already over, I couldn't believe it! Forest took Heidi to go get Laura and the kids so due to room constraints, Mark came with us. It was a good thing too because my car started acting funny while we were coming up Preston back to 635. It dawned on me that we were running out of gas and just a few hundred feet from the entrance ramp (and a Shell station) it finally puttered out. Mark and my Dad pushed the car into the gas station and I filled up my tank. Needless to say I quite embarrassed. In my defense, I was driving Forest's car and it doesn't have a gas light!

Despite the tiny inconveniences, it was a very nice day. I thank everyone who was able to come support us and for those that were there with us in spirit! I have some more pictures from the Sealing, but I haven't uploaded them yet. I will let everyone know when I finally do.