Yo

Ay-oh! I'm back from hiatus.Wow, that was a long time. I guess when a person gets out of the habit of blogging, it doesn't always occur to that person to blog anymore when time becomes available. But you'll never guess what JAMES said to me. These were his exact words, "I am formally requesting a blog post from you." I know, right? I was speechlessly flattered. So,

To James
Who always insists that I do cool stuff like take an oil painting class and get Lasik* and blog

So, what, 6 months? 8 months? Okay, BRIEF update:

We decided in about March that we would be moving to St. George because, well, we wanted to. We put our house up for short sale. We got an offer! (for $50,000 less than what we paid for it, oh yeah, and we put a painful widow's mite, and LOTS of time and sweat into it--you win some, you lose some). Then in July we were still waiting for the bank to respond to the offer, so we decided to just move on down to St. George and keep the basement rental rented out. Then the people who made an offer on the house said they would be willing to just move in and rent from us at a reduced rate if we were interested. Of course we were, so now our house is rented out. Meanwhile, we went ahead and found a rental house, which is a nice upgrade house-wise from the Cedar house. It is pretty nice, and we are loving it. The only downside is that our yard in Cedar was really great, and the yard here is, well, it would be a stretch to call it a "yard."

We have been here in St. George for the last 3 months. New town, new neighbors, new ward, new area. So far we have LOVED it down here. We live right at the mouth of Snow Canyon and it is just beautiful. We have already spoken in church and I have been called into the Young Women presidency. So far I have enjoyed the youth in our ward and have been glad to have the calling.

3 days before school was scheduled to start for Beth, we got a call from the charter school we had wait-listed her for (she was number 56 on the list when we signed her up) called to inform me that they had a spot for her! We were thrilled. Though I did have to buy school uniforms after I had already done her regular clothes shopping. And it is 20 minutes one way to the charter school. But we have been really happy with our experience there.

BORING. Okay, that brings us to now.

So, in the last 2 years I would say I have gone from seriously considering breezing through the hospital doors and politely asking the receptionist for a drug-induced coma, to feeling like life is really quite--dare I say it--manageable! I won't lie to you, hitting 3 was rough. For quiiiiite a while. Whoa, doggy.

This is always a tough message to accurately convey because these two truths seem to be contradictory:

1. I really love being a mother. It is something I always looked forward to when I was younger. I delight in my children so many times every day. They are so sweet, so funny, and just so delightfully unique. There is truly nothing I would rather be doing with my life right now than spending the majority of my time and energy nurturing my own sweet children, and running a household. It is the most deeply satisfying work I have ever done, and I really do feel most days like I am fulfilling my most important mission on this earth. I love my job.

2. Parenthood is a beast (I must confess I was a little tempted to use the B word there--sorry Mom and Dad).

Some people worry that their kids will feel like burdens if they know that raising children is hard work. Some children DO feel like burdens because of this. So maybe I am "going rogue" by admitting that fact referenced above in #2. But it's pretty hard to deny that it is true, at least sometimes. Am I right? So I haven't found the happy medium yet between making sure my kids know they are the most wonderful blessings, and, being honest about the experience of parenthood.

What other newsy things have happened... oh, Beth got a fat lip at school. When I picked her up and she got in the car, I was shocked at first and felt really bad for her. And then once the initial shock wore off, it became really hard not to laugh, because she seriously looked exactly like this:

When she got home and looked in the mirror, I was finally liberated to laugh, because she burst out laughing too. It was hilarious. HILARIOUS! Hilarious. (this is a phrase we adopted from viewing several episodes of Dylan's Couch on youtube)

Oh and, I laughed for a long time about this little cartoon I saw on facebook:



And how could I forget! This seems inconsequential to all of you I'm sure, but I've had these warts on my feet for over 10 years, and I finally had had enough. I have had them frozen off by a doctor several times. I have tried duct tape. I have tried nail polish. But since they are only a small annoyance I just gave up and hoped they would go away. But a small annoyance multiplied by ten years is a big annoyance. So I finally got serious and tried using medical tape to affix a slice of garlic to the warts, all night and every night for about 6 months. That is a long time to hear your husband complaining every time you get in bed at night. I wondered if it would be worth it. But the two plantars warts on the bottom of my feet are totally gone. And the ones on the top of my foot started to get really irritated from the garlic so I stopped using it and just used the Dr. Scholl's freezing stuff. I had to do it like 6 times and wait 2 weeks in between each time, but they are finally gone. And I probably have the joyful thought about 10 times a day that I am finally free from them. I can't believe it worked! I was beginning to think they were so ingrained in me that nothing short of amputation of my foot would rid me of them.

So, the reason that I don't have any pictures is because we have been without a functional camera for almost a year now. What a waste! But we just ordered a nice camera online a few days ago after months of deliberation. James is going to take a photography class and a lightroom class (photo-editing software) within the next few weeks. We are so excited!

But I will leave you with one really cute picture I took on my phone a while ago:


Oh, I love him.

*I am starting an oil painting class on Tuesday!! It is offered at Dixie as a community ed class. This has always been a closet dream of mine, so once and for all I am going to just hash it out and see if I'm any good, so that I can either become an amazing painter or let the dream die already. And the Lasik, I have been saving up here a little, there a little to go towards things that have been on "the list" for a long time now (we have been really poor for a long time, in case that isn't obvious, so now that the business is growing we are slightly less poor, but "the list" is really long because, like I said, we've been really poor for a long time). And James was the one who insisted that Lasik for me be moved to the top of the list, ahead of things like a new vacuum, bedroom furniture, etc. (eck, more parenthesis, maybe I should take a writing course at community ed instead- we have one thing in our bedroom right now. Our bed. No headboard. Nothing under the bed. No other furniture. Just the bed).