Remind Me Why I'm Doing This....?????

The next time I get the hare-brained idea to apply for a job that will require me to move my family 750 miles away, sell our home, start a new job, and look for a new job for my husband, please knock me over the head with a 2x4, because maybe -- just maybe -- that will knock some sense into me. Actually, I'm going to blame this one my Mark and Dad who seem to have really pushed the idea. Dad, are you trying to get rid of us? I am trying so hard to have faith but there are times, like this very moment, when it's so very hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. As of May 30 my husband will be unemployed, since he is leaving a perfectly good, stable, secure teaching job so we can move. Not only is he leaving his teaching job, but giving up the opportunity to be head boys basketball coach at the school where he teaches -- something he has wanted to be as long as I have known him. I am having a pessimistic moment. We have SO much work to do to get this house ready to sell. We have SO much work to do to get this house ready for my in-laws' visit -- and they arrive tomorrow. No sleep for me tonight. I have been having some health issues and saw my orthopedic surgeon today to get some test results. They don't look good. In the big scheme of things it's not horrific, but right now it's just not good. I will be seeing a rheumatologist in the near future, I suppose, for further testing and hopefully a diagnosis. Rheumatoid arthritis is a definite possibility, along with other joint problems. My husband does not have a job where we are going. We have moved like this before -- with him not having a job lined up before we moved -- and it worked out fine, as he is wont to remind me regularly as I have these pessimistic moments. But I would feel so much better about things if the school district there would at least call and schedule an interview for him. Just something to give me a little hope on that front. Alyssa is graduating from high school on Saturday. And the tears are already starting. I'm not ready for this. I haven't done enough to prepare her for the real world. I haven't done enough to prepare her to live on her own. I'm stressed about paying for the expenses that her scholarships won't cover (but in good news, she received another $1000 scholarship this week). There is so much to do right now, and just not enough time to get it done. Although I am continually blessed with answered prayers, the one prayer that has not been answered is my prayer for more hours in a day, less need for sleep, and more strength and energy to do the things that really, truly must be done ASAP. Oh, and did I mention that I have to speak in church on Sunday? And haven't had a chance to start writing my talk yet? And that I'm also playing the piano for seminary graduation Sunday night, where Alyssa will be singing in a group number? Yeah, I think it will be rather difficult to see the sheet music through the tears. Here's a word of advice -- just leave well enough alone. Maybe "good enough" is just that -- good enough. But on the other hand, there is a huge world of adventure out there just waiting for us...if we can just manage to hold on long enough to get there.

So Much to do in the Next Two Weeks!

It looks like our house will go on the market in about two weeks. SO much to do before then! Thank goodness my dear sister Melissa and her husband Bryan are going to be here to help us out. The project list: -Paint pretty much the entire house -Touch up all trim work through the entire house -Clean (spotless!) the entire house, including scrubbing the baseboards -Have the carpents professionally cleaned -Lay new flooring in the kitchen and laundry room -Order/install new countertops in the kitchen -Ceiling touch-up work (fortunately, it doesn't look like we'll have to scrape and redo the ceilings in some of the rooms like we thought since it looks like the faulty tape work can be fixed without having to redo everything. I hope so!) -Install new doorbell -Weed the flowerbeds and put down pine straw, and more flowers in the front beds -Declutter, dejunk, and pack up much of what is in the house -Fix outdoor wood trim and columns that need to be fixed I'm already exhausted. We may have to have a couple of "work party" days and ask for volunteers, although I really didn't want to have to do that. I don't like asking people to help with things like that, although several people have kindly offered. The realtor vetoed the flooring and countertops we had picked out and made a different suggestion. I like her suggestion, but I'm having a hard time picking out flooring to go with the countertops she recommended. I am not good at all at putting colors/textures/patterns together. I'm going to ask her to come back one more time before we order everything to get her stamp of approval on the things we picked out. I don't want to spend a lot on something that isn't going to look good. As for the selling price of the house, this is one of those moments when I'm kicking myself over our dealings with our builder. He cut two feet off of the house but we didn't fight him for a price reduction. We should have. There are other things we should have fought him on. We won't make as much as I had hoped on the sale of our home, but we're really hoping we won't lose money on it. If the Government ends up having to buy the house it looks like we WILL lose money, so we need to have this house in optimal condition when it goes on the market and priced right. We absolutely can't afford to lose money on this house!!! This is such a stressful process and I constantly find myself questioning my sanity and why we're doing this in the first place. I know this move is the right thing to do -- deep down -- but I find my faith wavering when faced with the prospect of potentially losing money on our home and Mark not having a job in Virginia yet. STRESS...much prayer, and many tears.

Projects for this Weekend....

Now that it looks like our move date is more official (we will leave here on or about July 29 or 30), it is really time to get to work on preparing for this move. The biggest job is getting the house ready to sell. Have I ever mentioned how grateful I am for a husband who is truly a handy man? There are very few home repairs that he cannot do. Evidence: He fixed our broken dryer a couple of weeks ago and he is now waiting on a part to fix our broken washer. He has spent countless hours stripping and preparing our bathroom ceiling to be re-popcorned. He has been working in the yard and on all sorts of other little projects. He stripped and painted the vanity in our master bathroom. We are going to be painting several rooms in the house and he can do that...we are going to put down new flooring in the kitchen and he can do that. It's so nice to be able to save money on those kinds of things! We are meeting with a realtor tomorrow to talk about what we need to do to get the house ready to go on the market. We already know we need to clean, paint, put in a new kitchen floor and countertops, declutter, get as much stuff out of the house as possible, and spruce up the flower beds and things like that. But we want the realtor to give us suggestions on paint colors and any other "quick fixes" we can do (inexpensively) to get the house ready to go on the market. We can't put the house on the market until I have my PCS orders, and that could be the end of next week. We won't have everything done by then, obviously, but we are hoping to at least get a good start. A huge blessing in our lives -- my sister Melissa and her husband Bryan. They're coming here in early June and have promised to spend lots of their time helping us with the house. We are so grateful that they are willing to give up some of their summer vacation time to help us! So the projects for tonight and tomorrow morning are as follows: -Clean the kitchen, clear the counters and top of the stove, and around the computer desk. -Clean the living room, dining room, hallway, and bathrooms, including dusting and vacuuming really well. -Pick up the girls' bedrooms (easier said than done for Alyssa since she's in New York City for a few days! I think I'll just put everything on her floor in a big box and she can deal with it when she gets home.) -Pick up our bedroom. Also on the list for this weekend -- addressing Alyssa's graduation announcements and getting those in the mail. And submitting some job applications online for Alyssa. We have got to find that girl a job! Here's hoping we have a productive weekend!

A New Adventure...A New Beginning for Blogging

In case you haven't heard the news yet, we are moving this summer. Wow...it was a lot harder to type that than I thought it would be. I have accepted a job in the Washington, DC area and so we will be moving. I never in a million years thought we would leave this small town, but Heavenly Father obviously has other things in mind for us. I had put together a list of conditions that I thought were nearly impossible for any job to meet, and this one has met them. We have spent much time in prayer and pondering, have been to the temple, and have fasted about it and we know it's the right decision. That doesn't make it less scary...and, in fact, I'm learning that it can often be scary to do the right thing. But we do have the peace of knowing it is the right decision. No, Mark doesn't have a job yet. That's what I'm praying for right now. That and that our house will sell quickly and not at a loss! I decided I'd better get better about blogging since this will be a great way for our family and friends to keep up with us after the move. So what have we been up to lately? Well, Alyssa is getting ready to graduate from high school. She has received many awards and honors and is her class salutatorian (which means she has to give a speech at graduation). She will be attending BYU this fall (full tuition scholarship!!). Brienna is finishing up 7th grade and has had straight As all year, as well as being captain of the academic team, on the basketball team and soccer team, and pretty much being involved in any school activity she can find. Mark and I continue to work and work and go to the girls' activities. A run down on where we're at on the move so far... I have packed three boxes of books and a box of my sweaters. The girls have packed some of their winter clothes. We painted the shutters and front door and Mark is working on prepping ceilings to be painted. We have SO much to do and it's really incredibly overwhelming. We are meeting with a potential realtor on Saturday and we'll see what she has to say. One thing that has been impressed upon me in this process is to always listen to the Spirit, even in small and seemingly unusual promptings. Especially in small and unusual promptings. Case in point -- about a year ago I felt impressed to start working on updating our home. The impression was to work on one room each month, putting in a little money to redo paint, replace some of the light fixtures in the house, decluttering, and generally just sprucing things up. I had the best intentions...but didn't follow through. The prompting continued to come and yet I didn't follow through. Things are always so busy and there wasn't much time or money for things like that. And so I didn't do it. In January I started a decluttering group on Facebook and I've done a pretty good job at following through on that, and so that has helped. But then when we found out at the end of April that we would be moving this summer, I really, really, really, really began wishing that I had listened to and followed those promptings to work on the house -- decluttering, deep cleaning, and updating. Because, had I followed through on the promptings, we wouldn't be stuck right now trying to do about a year's worth of deep cleaning, updating, and decluttering in just a couple of weeks and on a shoestring budget. *Sigh* Lesson learned the hard way!

The Week in Review...

This past week was a really quiet one. Alyssa is still at GHP (two more weeks) and she's enjoying that. She is taking a computer programming class (Delphi?), math in art, math in sports, and various communicative arts (translation: English or language arts) classes. She's spending time with her friends, meeting new people, and generally having a good time. We're so glad that she has this opportunity, but we definitely miss her!

We started off the week with the 4th of July, which we celebrated by painting Brie's bedroom a lovely shade of robin's egg blue. They also assembled her new dresser. After that we had a cookout at Mom and Dad's house which included Brie and I making homemade blackberry ice cream...the custard kind, from scratch. It was delicious, but it was an awful lot of work for the amount of ice cream it produced. Next time, I think I'll stick with an ice cream mix from the store and add blackberries to it. LOL After it got dark the kids did some small fireworks and sparklers in the front yard. It was nice.

Mark and Brie bought the wood this week for their summer project -- building a new bed for Brie. This should keep them busy for the next few days!

Brie and I had the opportunity to go to the Atlanta Temple yesterday for a youth baptism trip. I was so excited to get to go with the youth, and especially because it was Brie's first temple trip. It was a wonderful experience and I'm so glad I got to be there. She and I did a little shopping on the way home...can't believe school starts in less than a month here! Yikes!

Mom and Dad are out of town right now. They went to Mom's family reunion in Idaho and will be going to a memorial for my Granddad tomorrow. We miss him so much and wish we could have gone to the memorial but it just wasn't possible. *Sigh*

Mark and I are working on our preparations to be group leaders for about 40 youth at a church tri-stake youth conference later this week. I'm excited to be able to be there and be involved in this -- it's going to be a lot of fun and a great experience for the youth.

And in other news...can't wait for the premier of the final Harry Potter movie later this week! We love the Harry Potter books and movies. It's sad that this is the last one...but I'm excited about my plans to take the girls to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter park in Orlando in December. *smile*

An Update

I won't even apologize for not blogging. I have good intentions but they just don't come to pass. I'll just say that I'm feeling rather pensive this morning and thought that, perhaps, physically spilling the contents of my jumbled brain out into words might help.

My sister Melissa and her family moved away yesterday. They will now be living about 2 hours away. I know that really isn't that far, technically, but with our busy schedules I don't know that we'll see each other much. Next to Mark, Melissa is one of my closest friends. I love all three of my sisters, but for some reason Melissa and I seem to share a special bond...much like the bond I see between Andrea and Erin. Maybe it's that we have more in common...infertility, being Moms who work outside the home...maybe it's all of those summers that she spent living with us in Alaska, when we really developed a close friendship...I don't know what it is. But it's there. I was so thrilled when she and her family moved down here last summer, and I'm so sad that they're gone now.

This comes on the heals of another dear friend moving away almost seven months ago...Jenee, you know who you are! I have an easy time making "acquaintances" but a harder time making close, deep friendships. I only have a few, really, outside my family...Gena, Denise, TJ, Jamie, and Jenee. So having Jenee leave was very, very hard. I am so thrilled that she and her family are happy and enjoying life where they are, but I selfishly admit to missing her terribly. Reading books just isn't the same without her to talk with...and I miss the calm, steadying presence she is in my life, not to mention the wonderful, beautiful example that she set for me. I miss movie nights, dark chocolate, cuddling her precious little girl and just loving all four of her sweet kids, talking about books, having her help me figure out my new cell phone... And we won't even get into her being, really, a second Mom and friend (in the true, grown-up sense of the word -- a true friend) to Brienna, and how much Brie and I both miss that.

So two of my dearest friends have now moved away and left me, and right now I'm feeling rather abandoned. Alyssa is off at Governor's Honors Program, and so one of my children has also left me (although only temporarily). This is preparing me for when she leaves for college next year, I suppose. I've decided I don't want her to go away to college. I don't think I can handle it! LOL

But she's having a great time and learning wonderful things and being exposed to all kinds of fun -- like salsa dancing! She actually tried salsa dancing! And she discovered that she really enjoys computer programming -- who would have thought?! So it's an amazing, good experience for her.

Another loss in the last few months...I was released as YW President in our ward. That has been absolutely devastating. Not only did I lose the twice weekly (and sometimes more often) companionship of my precious young women, but also the sisters who served with me, and a huge chunk of my heart. It really has felt like I lost part of my identity...of who I was. It's been two months and I still feel it deeply every Sunday and Tuesday. It still feels incredibly wrong.

And one of the biggest losses of the last few months...my Granddad passed away in March. Not a day goes by that I don't think of him. Whether it's looking at Alyssa and seeing her blue eyes which remind me SO much of his...or seeing the airplanes fly overhead at work or driving by the air museum...or seeing my Dad, who reminds me so much of Granddad...or talking to Grandma Gaye...or driving by the house on the corner they used to live in and seeing the flowers and trees he and Gaye planted and the bricks they laid around the flowerbeds...

So for me, the last several months have been characterized by loss. It hasn't been fun or easy. As I posted on Facebook the other day -- I just can't take one more person leaving me. I can't do it.

I had surgery a month ago today and the "3 to 5 day recovery" took closer to 3 weeks, with continuing residual discomfort at times. And it seems that the surgery didn't solve the underlying problem, so it feels like it was a huge waste of time, money, and pain.

I think sometimes the Lord strips us down and takes away and takes away and takes away and takes away, so that He can build us back up into something better. I hope that's what's happening. I don't feel it yet, but I hope that's what's in store. Because right now it just feels like there has been a lot of taking.

That isn't to say that there haven't been wonderful things in the last several months, because there have. I got to go to Time Out For Women in Nashville with my Mom and two of my sisters...both girls continue to do well in school and sports...I got to go to New York City with my Mom and all three of my sisters and we had SO much fun...my entire family got to be together for a few days and we went to the beach (even though my brother was only there for one day)...our precious niece Aliscea's adoption was finalized and she was sealed to Bryan and Melissa last weekend...they found out that they're going to get Aliscea's younger sister, hopefully this month, and so we're getting a new niece...two of our nephews are serving missions right now and are doing well...we got to participate in the events surrounding the rededication of the Atlanta Temple and that was wonderful.

But there are times when the losses lately seem to outweigh the gains and I wonder just how much taking away and tearing down Heavenly Father intends to do before I start to see the fruits of the rebuilding effort. Faith.....

Who Knew 16 Years Could Pass So Quickly?

Last year, A turned 16. Yes, you read that right. 16. Our first baby is now 16. I am proud of myself for managing not to cry about this milestone!

A little over 16 years ago, I was in a hospital room on the preterm labor unit. My husband had gone fishing with my Dad a few hours away...after all, I had been in the hospital for a few weeks and nothing was really going on...we didn't think anything would happen for a few weeks yet, and poor Mark had spent every night sleeping in my hospital room. And so we sent him off on a fishing trip with my Dad. How could we have known that things were about to change and our baby would be arriving much sooner than planned???

Fortunately, she was not born while he was gone. He made it back with plenty of time to spare. And then, in the early morning on a cool Anchorage morning in late August, our sweet A made her way into the world. Her arrival was not without drama, of course. (We should have known that was a harbinger of things to come...our beautiful, sweet drama girl!) She wasn't crying when she was born...she was bruised from head to toe and having difficulty breathing. Our bishop at the time happened to also be the head of the neonatal unit at the hospital and was on call at the time of her birth and a woman in our ward was her assigned nurse for the first day of her life and kept a close, close eye on her. They were two of several angels who watched over our sweet baby in those first difficult few hours and days. It was a traumatic event for all of us. The first time I held her she was hooked up to IVs and an oxygen mask and a feeding tube. She was so small (well, not compared some of the tiny preemies in the NICU) and I felt so helpless and scared as I held her. But somehow, I knew we would manage. The hardest part came a day or so later when we had our precious baby at the hospital when I was discharged and she wasn't able to come home yet. Never before had I had to do something so difficult (at that's saying something since I did natural childbirth, LOL).

She was a beautiful baby, even bruised and jaundiced and tiny. And she was all ours. She was and continues to be our "guinea pig"...she has suffered more than her fair share "first time parent-itis" mistakes on our part. Like the time her Daddy accidentally dumped her out of her car seat onto the floor...or the time I left the videocamera case out on the floor and she flipped over the top of it (I can't watch the video of that moment because it still scares me!)... She quickly became the center of our lives and before she was ever born she had completely captured my heart.

And last week, 16 years and 2 days after she entered this world in all her dramatic glory, I waited again as a bundle of nerves with baited breath. I wasn't waiting to hear her first cry this time, the cry that took so very long to come. This time, I was waiting for a message from her letting me know that she had made it safely to the school on her first solo drive. Just as it went against bit of my maternal instincts to leave her at the hospital as a tiny, fragile newborn, it went against every bit of my maternal instincts to let her get in the car by herself and drive away from me...alone. Don't get me wrong -- she is an excellent driver. But I can't say the same about the thousands of other people on the road! We have new rules in place...things like requiring her to send me a text message when she arrives at seminary safely, when she gets ready to leave cross country practice to drive home, when gets anywhere safely and is ready to come home.

We are long past the days when we had to carefully scrub up in the NICU washing area before entering to make sure she was protected from outside germs...and yet, as we send her out in to the world on her own, I wonder if we have done enough to protect her...enough to prepare her to protect herself from the influences and dangers of the world.

She is an intelligent, talented, beautiful, strong young woman who doesn't see how amazing, lovely, and incredible she really is. I wish she could see what we see in her...what most people see in her. But more than that, I find myself wishing that I could keep her enclosed in a little isolette and protect her from all of the dangers of the world...dangers that I fear she steps closer and closer to facing on her own every day. Have we done enough to protect her? I can only hope and pray that we have, and then try harder each day to build her up before she goes back out to face another day.

I am eternally grateful for this sweet young lady who first made me a Mother. I know I've made many mistakes along the path of motherhood, and there are many mistakes left to make. I feel bad that she gets to be on the receiving end of those mistakes. But most of all, I'm just grateful that SHE is the person I get to make those mistakes on. That she is mine, forever.

I love you, A. Don't be in too much of a hurry to grow up and leave me.