THE BIG REVEAL

I never thought I would do this. Ever since people started taking advantage of the fact that we could identify the gender of a baby months before birth I have said I wasn’t going to be one of those people.

I don’t care if people do it. I understand the convenience of knowing and preparing ahead of time, I mean who wants to pick room decor or make baby blankets or blessing outfits without knowing if you are preparing for a boy or a girl. I understand some people can bond better when baby has a little more identity, and I get the ease of figuring out a name when you have half as many of the millions of options of names to choose from.

On the other hand I love surprises. I know it is still a surprise even if you find out early, but I know myself and I like the suspense of waiting. I never understood people who shook their Christmas presents to try to figure out what they were before Christmas day. I wanted a total surprise on the day of.

That having been said, sometimes the things we say we will never do are the things we find ourselves doing and I found that despite all my years of saying I wouldn’t, I have done it. So for all of those who are curious what we are having, here goes…

Some of Our New Neighbors

Marriage has brought many changes including move to a new house. It has been fun to start our life together in our place and whe have had some fun meeting our new neighbors. Here are the pictures of some that I didn’t feel like I had to get permission from to post.

Georgina, we first met her hanging out by our pine tree, she wouldn't leave when hollered at and ran quite slowly and was kind of fat when she finally did move on.

The reason Georgina was so fat, one of her babies, hiding out under our porch when scared by the lawn mower.

Gracie's two babies. Hard to see but they were always in our yard, I don't know how I didn't get better pictures since they were here so much.

Of course Tom the Turkey. He was actually at the local Y where I would go all the time. I don't know why wild turkeys in our neighborhood still amazes me.

Parker the turtle, coming to visit at our back basement door. I thought it was Lucy, until I got close and realized there was no way this could be a Lucy.

Other neighbors not pictured are Edward the Fox, Bartholomew the Squirrel (likes to run on our roof), and Penelope and her baby (I am almost convinced Penelope is one of Gracie's babies from last year). I feel like I am forgetting some but there you are our neighbors right here in the suburbs.

Bitter Sweet: Closing a Chapter

I should have written this post over a year ago. The memories and emotions would have been a little more expressed when fresh. I have gone through two new starts to school without going back to work and even well over a year later, I still feel it.
So when I started writing about various distractions and fun things I was waiting for last year, a lot of it was tied to teaching. As I had mentioned in my post about the post “Looking Forward to the Next”  I discussed my gratitude for a good job yet the struggle I had with it. Again I am very grateful for that time in my life where the Lord blessed me with what I needed. These things supported me and built me up to become a better person and more prepared for my future as a better servant of the Lord, daughter of God, future mother, self sufficient person…The list goes on and on when it comes to the things that job gave me.

I know I have never been afraid to tell people that I did not care for my job. I couldn’t stand the apathy oosing from those kids and often parents and on occasion co-workers, but not so much the co-workers. Overall teachers love what they do and are usually pretty good at it and they get a bad rap far more often than they should.  Sorry for that side note. That is the beauty of writing a blog, I can ramble all I want and probably not even do it grammatically correctly. ;)

So, back to what I was saying. I had a very hard time with teenagers not wanting to do anything they simply didn’t feel like doing. I could go into all the beliefs I have about why I think this is and how society and broken homes feed into this entitlement and "I don’t feel like it so I won’t do it" attitude, but this post isn’t about that either. I was frustrated with this part of teaching and sometimes the politics, although I usually just ignored this aspect of the job and stayed out of it.

But at the end of the day I really like teenagers. I could sit and chat with them all day. I like hearing about their lives and understanding what they are going through I like to help them see the world can be hard but there are things to  look forward to. Although, I had a hard time teaching some of these principles without saying “hey, you have great potential, you are a child of God!” And I think that is one of the things that added to my dislike of the job.

So when I became engaged we were both on board to start a family soon and teaching, while maybe I could have done it for another year, was one of the things I gladly let go of to become a homemaker and prepare more to be a mother. I really was tired of the aspects of teaching and was ready to be done.

I counted down the days and I looked forward to so many distractions so I could get myself from one point to the next. But then the day came when it was time to leave. It was one of the most happy and sad moments I have ever experienced. I didn’t tell most of my students until the last day. I got a lot of disappointed reactions and I knew that I would be relieved and sorrowful to not be returning.

The last days of the school are spent doing finals and once your grades and keys and everything were turned in you could leave and summer vacation began. I had the fortune of having my last class be my planning time so when it was time for the last finally I simply had a couple more tests to grade and turn in. I remember going and turning in everything, saying a few goodbyes to some teachers and secretaries and sneaking off campus before the last finals were completed. 

As joyful as the moment was I cried. It was a hard eleven years of my life but all very cherished and quite frankly the kids that made it so hard were also the sweetest part of it all and I while I don’t miss my job I miss them and thus it has been a bitter sweet chapter for which I am truly grateful!

THE BIG DISTRACTION

So I suspect I am way overdue for a post and especially this one. Of course there were many things I was looking forward to while finishing out my teaching year but the biggest one was Spring Break! Ok, lets be honest, it wasn’t just spring break, it was what was happening over spring break, OUR WEDDING!

I think rather than tell you all the details I will just include some pictures of the wedding day and maybe a few of our Hawaii trip. Note a new temple added to my list. :)

 I realize not the greatest pictures of us, but look at the views behind!

Another Distraction: The Dress!

Returning back to my discussion about passing the time to get through day to day at my challenging job; it is now time to draw attention to the dress. I don't really intend to go into a lot of detail, it was a bit of adventure trying to find a store that had dresses that were modest without flying to Utah. We did go to the one store that is in the area and I tried on literally every possible dress in my size or that could be gotten in my size within the time frame we had. Nothing looked remotely good on me. OK, there was one that was slightly flattering, but it was for someone about half my age... but I digress.

Finally we went to another store that we knew had dresses that weren't modest but we thought if we could at least find a shape that I liked we could consider somethings online. Of course I found the dress I loved! And of course it wasn't even close to modest.

Fortunately for me, the store worked with the designer and she could redesign it and make it a modest dress. So they had her fax a sketch of what she would do to it and I loved it even more than the one in the store. They then took all my measurements and sent them to her (she lives in Canada) where she started making my dress.

Exactly a year ago today we were privileged to go and meet her (She had come to do a trunk show at the store where we were purchasing the dress) and she did me a nice autographed sketch of my dress. Here are some pictures of my mom (it was her birthday) and my sister and myself with the designer and maker of my dress, Lee Ann Belter. Also is included the sketch she did for me.

 

She did a wonderful job and it fit perfectly! Now I had to figure out what to do for shoes and with the hair...

Here is a picture of me in the dress for those who may have missed it or just dying to see it again. I know everyone is.

Before and After, In the Lovely Garden

So the past couple of years we have been working on a garden in a church/community plot donated by a member of our church. We weren't as faithful as getting there this year but we were sure blessed at what we got despite the fact that we didn't go as often as we should. First you see a picture of a Hawk we saw on the road to the garden one evening. Next we have some pictures of some of the things from our garden. I will call these BEFORE pictures.

All three pictures are from different days of picking. I didn't take pictures every time I picked either. The eggplants came in a variety of sizes. We had some nice big ones and a couple of cute little ones.

OK, no before picture of the watermelon, we had three I think that we managed to pick at the right time and eat, the others either got picked too early or were left for too long.

Tomatillos 1st in the bag (mixed with a few cherry tomatoes of course), 2nd in the sink then 3rd husked and washed.

 

Now it is time for the AFTER pictures :) 

 (sorry I have no pics of what happened to the tomatillos, but don't worry, it was all delicious.)

 

Homemade pizza with fresh vegetables has become one of our favorite! And this stuffed eggplant was delicious!

So if you are going to have eggplant you have to have ratatouille, it was sooo good and I made french bread to go with it.

 

Don't get grossed out by the name but this is tomato pie. I think I would describe it as a pizza pie with a white sauce and mozzarella cheese. It was sooo Good! We made it at least three times this summer.

Our Next Adventure

While I know I don't have a lot of followers, I know the two I have have been waiting. So here we go with Idaho and Utah.

Honestly it was a whirlwind of a trip. We both have family out there so of course we both had sets of people we wanted to go see. We started with some of my family, then some of his, then some of mine then some of his...

Here are a few pictures of some of our time there.

 Met my newest nephew.

 Nap time.

 Went bowling.

 Sister time.

  We went to the Bountiful temple, another for the list. :) (I stole this picture from the church website)

We also visited Temple Square, I wonder if my parents would take this picture for their wall...I am probably being presumptuous though.

 This night we also volunteered at a soup kitchen with his sister's family, sorry no pictures. :(

We spent Christmas there. We had stayed with his parent's for a couple of nights but went to his sister's on Christmas Eve to be there Christmas morning. It was really nice.

So everything is really out of order because the first pictures with my sisters came after Christmas as did visiting Bountiful temple. There were some nice walks and playing wally ball and various activies in between the pictures too. We went to my brother's and his brother's. It was just a nice trip meeting new people, spending time with family...

The day before we were to come home we took a cold walk out to this park. We didn't actually walk in the park because of the snow, but rather we walked around it.

Somewhere in there we stopped for a bit so he could ask me a certain question...I said yes! We took some pictures (isn't he great for thinking of bringing a camera for this occasion!) then, since it was actually quite cold, we took a little drive up the hillside and found a spot to talk a bit and to make some phone calls. The next few hours were followed by texts and phone calls to tell people the big news.

 This was his grandmother's ring, I love it and I am honored to wear it! I am also glad it was cold enough to shrink my hand enough that it would fit. :)

So here I am, ready to embark in my next set of distractions while preparing for the transition to my new life.