I Love to See the Temple

This last weekend I had the beautiful opportunity to attend the sealing of my dear friends, the Jones.

Stefanie has been my friend for more than seven years now. She has been there for me every time I have needed her. She has been one of the truest examples of a Christ-like friend I've ever had.

Almost two years ago she made the decision to be baptized and she and her family have spent the time since preparing to go to the temple together. It was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life to be able to be there as they knelt around the altar with their four children and were sealed together for time and all eternity.

Stefanie, Madison, Wyatt, Jason, Abigail, Isabella
Such a beautiful family!

The Joneses with "their" missionary.

Stefanie and Jason
Jason is so excited to have "another" anniversary. :)

I truly believe that one of the most precious blessings that the Lord gives to His children is that of friendship. The right friends, in the right place, at the right time. They teach us and act as His hands. In all of my adult life, I've never had the chance to live close to my family, but over and over again I have been blessed with just the right people coming into my life - always at a time when they were needed in exactly the way that they could give.

Over the years Stefanie has been like a sister to me, always there for me when I've needed a shoulder to cry on or an extra set of hands. She has given me so much and I feel so blessed to have been able to be there with her through this journey --- and through all of the fun adventures that lie ahead!

I love you, Stef!

A Short List

I'm ALIVE!!!!!

and actually thriving --- even if my blog isn't. :)

A few things in list form:

• We spent the entire month of June driving 3000+ miles all over Idaho and Utah. It was a wonderful time. I will post some pics . . . next week.
• Summer is here in Sandpoint and we are loving the beach. Glorious summers in Sandpoint!
• We may be moving (in town) again. The owner of our home *may* be in the process of selling. That thought makes me kinda want to cry . . . but I'm not going to. I will be excited for whatever comes our way.
• While in Utah, I was able to attend the temple. First time I've attended without some kind of serious time constraints in a LONG LONG time. It was marvelous and I can say without hesitation that the Lord hears and answers our prayers. I feel better than I have in quite some time.
• Took the girls to their first ever play last weekend, "The Wizard of Oz". They thought is was magical and it made my heart explode to see them so happy. 
• I'm going to sell my fish. Having too much of a good time keeping everyone else alive . . . something's gotta give.
• Instead I've developed a new-found love of non-fiction . . . Who knew?! Non fiction can be both thought provoking AND hilarious! I'm growing up!
• Two reasons why I love my husband: A) he talks in his sleep and B) he has the most perfect back-scratching-fingernails in the whole world.

That is all.

Perspective

This post was written while coming off four nights with only about 12 hours of sleep. Forgive the "emo" but even though it may be jibberish, there are some things here that have been profound for me that I don't want to forget. I feel like I've found my tipping point.

It's 6:45 in the morning...and I'm sitting on a plane watching the Arizona landscape slide beneath me.

I've always been massively interested in maps. I love looking at them and following my progress across the beautiful countryside. I love the mile markers. I love the hills, the mountains, the valleys. I love the freeways and highways and country roads that at times snuggle up close and cozy and other times cut deeply across the terrain.

I've always loved flying. Since having children, flying has been accompanied with a great deal of anxiety, particularly upon take off and landing. I live for more than myself and that makes me nervous (read - terrified). However, even as I pray to see the faces of Nels and my girls again, I am completely enthralled with studying the world 35,000 feet below.

This weekend has been quite the trip. Spending three days with two of the most introspective women I know. Two women that I admire and connect with so much that they are some of the select few people that I actually care what they think of me. And that opens me up to some incredible vulnerability that I generally go to great lengths to avoid.

It was wonderful.

Not only did I get to gab the weekend away with Clancy and Lynsey, but I also got to spend the time with Lynsey's husband, Ben. Ben is: A) a dear friend, B) Nels's college roommate and bosom buddy, and C) soon to be Dr. Strader (currently in the final stretch of completing his doctorate in psychology).

I expected the weekend to be spent with lots of feelings, fun, and late nights. And it was. But I didn't really expect to be leaving Arizona feeling like I was in emotional shock. I've made some discoveries.

I live my life making maps out of what's inside. - Figuring out how to get from where I am to where I want to be. I have a plan and I navigate my way carefully, with great tenacity. And it works, for the most part. However, there are some paths that I take on (whether by choice or chance) that are difficult. I know that there is a stunning vista at the end of the trail, but I get to places that are frightening or that physically can't be traversed alone. Sometimes I try to go around the obstacles and the scary places, I try to muscle my way through the brambles or climb my way out of the canyons, but I simply don't have the right tools.

Sometimes I come to strong, wide rivers that I have to cross. I wade in, bull-headed and fighting the current. I will NOT LOSE. I end up holding onto a rock in the middle of the river, unable to go any further. It's too deep, too strong. At times I just climb up on top of the rock, sunbathing and happy, shutting out the turmoil. Other times I hop back in, determined to make it this time. I NEED TO GET TO THE OTHER SIDE. Only to be swept just a few meters down to another rock where I claw myself out of the strong current and onto the next haven where I repeat the process.

Little do I realize that often the river never needed to be crossed, it just needed to riden. There was an easier and safer path at the end. Not as direct a route, but happier. And sometimes I don't realize that instead of trying to shove my through a tangled path or up a perilous climb, all I need to do is look to either side of me to find others who have been here before ready and willing help. They have the right tools and they know the way.

I'm trying to figure out why that's so hard for me to grasp.

Also, trying to get some new maps . . . or maybe just getting better at following the markers along the trail . . .

Landing. Again.

August was a doozie. I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to be learning during this incredibly crazy chapter of our lives, but it sure is a wild ride.

The whole summer, really, just flew by so quickly --- in the wonderful way that it does when you spend warm afternoons at the lake or with visitors.

August came along and I escaped to Utah for a week and a half, came home and packed up our whole house - for the third time in a year, celebrated our tenth anniversary, moved across town, unpacked the kitchen, packed our bags again, drove to Utah a second time, took family pictures, had a reunion, saw some dinosaur bones, drove 14 hours back home, and started school the next day.

Last week I kept thinking, "why am I so tired???"

I felt like I was never going to feel rested again.

But I'm finally starting to feel human again and it's really nice. All our beds are finally made and hopefully by the end of today, our clothes will be unpacked. There are mountains of laundry to be done --- which I'm actually feeling excited to do in our NEW washer and dryer --- and for the first time in . . . months, I've made a menu. Happy day! :)

Over the course of this move from "town" to the "sticks", I've not had internet access from anything except my phone. It's been weird and frustrating. - It is always annoying to recognize how dependent I am on the world wide web for my connections to the outside world - from cooking and socializing to information and shopping. :) However, when I live hours and hours and hours and hours from my family and most of my lifelong friends and I have five little children and a lot of work to get done each day, I guess it's a blessing that it's available at all.

I'm excited to be connected again. I'm excited to be able to listen to Dr. Laura and Rush Limbaugh again.  I'm excited to read blogs again. And hopefully I'll be excited to share some little updates of what has happened over the last month.

I Think Weird is a Weird Word

So I've been hiding out in Bountiful for the past week+.

It's been nice. SO nice to spend the time with my family. We've done some shopping for our upcoming family pictures and back-to-school, lots of hanging out and eating (always), not much sleeping, lots of feeding and holding LITTLE, bitty babies, and . . . well, my brain is tired.

We've done stuff and it's been fun.

I miss Nels - but better to miss him while I'm here than to miss him while I'm still at home - right? :) I'm really excited to see him tomorrow night.

.
.
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So, I've got this weird feeling somewhere between my heart and my stomach. I'm thinking maybe my liver? or pancreas?

I've been practicing my relaxation techniques and sometimes it helps --- as long as no one asks me any direct questions about my immediate future.

All I know is in exactly one week, all our stuff needs to be out of it's current location.

FFF

1. This is a fabulous day! The sun is shining, my tank is clean, and we are gonna get out of here. We're heading to Utah. I.Am.Excited. I can't WAIT to see my family!

2. God is good. So good. Nels is coming with us for part of our trip. We weren't sure if he was going to be able to, but things have worked out.

3. I am seeing physical progress as I've continued to work out. When we first started working out, running 1/4 of a mile was asking a lot (sad, huh?!), but last night I went 2.75 miles in 30 minutes and less than half a mile was walking. There is still a lot of room for progress, but I've come a long way in 6 weeks. I'm going to sign up for a 5K this Fall.

4. Clara has started saying "hi"and waving. Cutest thing EVER. She also gives kisses and says, "na-na-na-na-na-na" and shakes her head back and forth when she doesn't like what I'm trying to feed her. I love my baby!

5. Elsie finally decided to RIDE HER BIKE! She's been able to (easily) since this spring, but has refused to do it. Even after I pressured her into it in March, she still would ride her tricycle - never picking up her two wheeler. (so frustrating) Last week, without any forewarning, I picked her up, sat her on her bike, gave her a big shove, and told her to pedal. She finally DID and never looked back. :) Silly kid. I have SO loved watching her ride all over the neighborhood this week and be so happy with her own independence. We took a long bike ride on Monday and she did beautifully.


Now! Off to pack!!!! Yay!

February: all in one post

Tick, tock, tick, tock . . .

It's May.

Oh well, I'm going to give you a quick (not) little (not) overview of what February was for us . . . crazy.

As part of his job, four times a year, Nels will be traveling for about a week. Shooting video at the seasonal photo shoots that Coldwater has in various different locations. I'm not gonna lie, when Nels told me that he was heading to Miami, while I stayed in Idaho . . . in February . . . I was a teensy bit jealous. :) Especially when he'd send me pictures like the one above. {{sigh}} :)

Someday, Rachel. Someday.

Because Sandpoint is an hour and a half from the airport and because he had an early flight, Coldwater Creek put Nels up in a hotel in Spokane the night before he left for Florida. The kids LOVE staying in hotels and so we decided that we'd drive Daddy down and then stay the night with him.

I had grand plans for our day. Nels only worked half a day, so we were going to get the girls early from school and then go to the children's museum and explore downtown Spokane a little bit before we headed over to the hotel to swim for hours and hours before bedtime. I was at least as excited as the kids and couldn't wait to get out of our tiny apartment for two days.

Then right before Nels got home I decided to take ten minutes to myself getting ready in the bathroom with the door closed and Violet found the laundry detergent that I'd left within her reach and decided to pump Melaleuca's fabulously concentrated liquid laundry detergent into about thirty different spots up and down the hallway and all over her bedroom. {{sigh}}

So instead of having fun, we spent about four hours that afternoon cleaning carpet.

I was . . . um . . . mad.

Poor Nels. I bet his arms were extra, extra sore for the next few days afterward. But at least during, he kept a smile. :)

So in case you are ever in a similar predicament, with a similarly mischievous toddler, I'm going to give you a rundown on how to get laundry soap from carpet.

First, I dumped salt into all of the soapy spots, which really helped soak up some of it and keep it from spreading further before we could get to it.

After you vacuum the soapy salt up, then the real fun begins.

You pour hot-as-you-can-stand water into the soap spot, then you vacuum it up as fast as you can.

Then you pour more hot-as-you-can-stand water into the spot, then vacuum it up as fast as you can.

Then you repeat that about ten to twenty times, depending on how big or saturated the spot is.

You just keep sucking and sucking and sucking that spot until your arms fall off and no more soap comes up.

Then you cry a little bit and move on to the next, even bigger, spot.

It. Sucked. For Hours. Literally.

Anywho, we eventually did make it to the hotel that night. At around 7:45. We picked up some pizza on the way and let the kids swim until about 10. Not quite the night that we were hoping for, but we still had fun being together with Daddy before he abandoned us. :) And as angry as I was that Violet did what she did, I said several prayers of gratitude that she did it before Nels left for Miami and not after. :)

Besides, as big of a handful as she is, I think I'll at least keep her till she stops being cute. :)

We all survived the week that Nels was gone, without too many more swearing-at-the-kids moments.

A few days later, Hazel had a really fun folk-dance performance at school that Nels was able to attend with her.

She was really excited! :)

Within a couple of days of Nels getting home, I got an email from the lady processing our short sale at the mortgage company. She was letting me know that they'd come to the conclusion that our home in Idaho Falls needed to be listed as our "primary residence" in order for our short sale to move forward. Period.

I told her, "Great. As of today, it is our primary residence. My girls and I are just 'visiting' my husband here in Sandpoint."

She then got all nutsy on me about how our furniture needed to be there (DONE!) and she would need to send somebody by to inspect our house, "just to make sure" that we were really there.

I was completely annoyed, but just really, really ready to move things forward with selling our house. So I packed up the three younger girls and headed back to Idaho Falls for an indeterminate amount of time.

As much as I hate driving so far, the drive between Sandpoint and Idaho Falls . . . well maybe more like: between Sandpoint and Butte . . . is actually really lovely. Montana at dawn is stunning.

We made it to Idaho Falls, set up house and tried repeatedly to get a hold of someone to schedule a time for this unnamed "representative" to come over and "make sure" we were there. It was maddening.

In the end, after "Angi" had apparently checked the box saying that our I.F. home was our "primary residence", our file immediately got passed on to the next lady in the chain of command. I finally got in contact with this angelic woman a couple of days after driving down (again trying to get the name and number of this "mystical informer" who needed to come over to our house), as we spoke it became clear that the last lady I'd been working with knew absolutely nothing and the mysterious "person" who needed to stop by our house was actually just a third party who would probably just drive past our house (if anything) to make sure that it didn't look "abandoned". Which means that thanks to one person's incompetence, I drove all the way to Idaho Falls with three little children and stayed there for several days for no reason. Nice.

However, we made the most of the situation and were able to visit with a lot of friends and drove down to Utah to see my family - which was fabulous.

My sweet siblings all came up to my parent's house to see me and my girls on Sunday. I love my family. Love them. And miss them incredibly. We had a good time laughing at Genny's incredible dancing doggy. :)

Tuesday my mom went with me and the girls to IKEA and then to Gardener's Village in south Salt Lake, where Elsie and Violet had a grand time trying on a whole wall of scarves. It was a beautiful day and so nice to spend time with my Mommy.

One of my biggest original dilemmas about going to Idaho Falls had been that I wasn't sure I would be back to Sandpoint in time for Valentine's Day or Nels's birthday which is the following day. As it turned out, we didn't make it back for V-Day - which wasn't too big a deal - but Nels made it special for our girls at home by making them special heart pancakes and by "doing their hair really nice". :)

He's such a good dad.

We did make it home for his birthday the next day by driving from Idaho Falls to Bountiful Tuesday night and then packing up at 2:00 in the morning Wednesday and making it home to Sandpoint by about 10:00.

This is a picture of how Elsie "wasn't tired" on the trip back home. :) Violet didn't sleep at all the whole way, but Elsie and Clara slept most of the way home. They were all little troopers.

I'd had plans of making Nels a big yummy dinner and a cake that evening, but after driving all the way home the girls and I were completely pooped and not feeling real hot, so I promised Nels that we'd do it the next night - which he was completely fine with.

However, it seems that while we were in Utah, we'd contracted the plague and I spent the next several days sleeping on the couch or standing outside on our balcony with one or the other or both of our little babies while they tired to just breathe and cool off. Poor Violet and Clara both had raging fevers and congestion and hacking, hacking coughs. Elsie had pink eye and then Nels had pink eye. Then Nels and Hazel got the plague virus as well. It was horrible. In the end, right around the time that everyone else was starting to feel better (more than a week later - it was such a nasty bug!) I started to get sick. Because that's the way life goes.

We eventually DID celebrate Nels's birthday, sometime. I don't really remember when, it was all such a haze of tiredness, but I have pictures to prove that it actually happened. We're so glad he was born!

How could we not love him? He's just so awesome!

Happy Birthday!

TO

ME!!!

He's such a ham. No wonder our kids are weirdos. :) I'm so thankful for Nels. He makes me laugh daily and he's the best friend I could ever ask for.

Dyer Circumstances

One of the enormous perks of living in Northern Idaho is that it is considerably closer to my dear cousin, Amber and her family!

Two weekends ago, Nels got a Friday off and the girls +Nels had Monday off for MLKJ Day, so we decided to jump on a perfect opportunity to head over to Monroe to visit the Dyers. -- Not to mention, I think if we'd all been cooped up in this apartment for four days straight, we may not have been feeling so lovey by Tuesday. :) -- Thank you, Amber for letting us crash your long weekend!

Hooray for snow! This was their first snow and all those Dyers were so excited. :) I'm just glad that we brought our snow clothes. The kids had SUCH a wonderful time playing in the snow together.

This was my personally favorite trick! :) Riding the sled down the slide. :)

Sweet Hannah

 

LOVE kids in diapers and boots! :)

The night before we left, Clara was running a bit of a fever. I just passed it off, sure that it would pass. Alas, Saturday came along and she STILL was warm and getting more and more fussy so we finally took her into the Urgent Care down the street. Poor little baby had an ear infection. After some antibiotics, she cheered up quite a bit, but she was not in top shape the entire time we were there. I felt bad that everyone didn't get to see her generally smily and pleasant self. Amber's girls were SO in love with her and wanted to hold Clara every chance they got, but because she wasn't feeling well, she wouldn't let anyone but her mommy or daddy hold her for very long. Luckily, next time probably won't be too far off. :)

We took a few minutes before going sledding on Monday to take a quick family picture for Amber.
They all turned out SO cute!

The drive home Monday night was quite snowy over the pass coming out of Seattle. Luckily our van is a beast in the snow and zips right along with nary a slip.

It was such a great weekend. I'm so thankful for Amber and the wonderful friend that she's been for me my whole life. It was so great to see our children developing sweet cousin friendships as well. It made my heart happy. They all had so much fun and got along so well. Being at their home was also good therapy for me. It felt like home.

Thank you, Dyers! We can't wait until next time!