It's All Coming Together

We’re swamped.

I really don’t have time to be typing this, but I’m too tired to do anything else. I wanted to give a little update on the details of our move. We have been so blessed in this process!

First off, I started looking at possible places for us to live in the Eugene/Springfield area a little over a month ago. We figured we wouldn’t actually choose a place to live until we got to town. The plan was to get to town and stay with Grandma for a week or two while we searched for a cheap place to rent that could get us through the end of the girls’ school year before we found a slightly better place to rent more long-term and moved again come summer.

I contacted two friends who are the only people I know in the area to ask them about schools and good sections of town, etc. During the course of that conversation, I found out that one of those friends, Laura Cherry, would be moving out of town early January, just before we get there. That was sad for me since it knocked down the number of friends I have there by 50% but it also just so happened that Laura was trying to help her mom find renters for the house in which she had been living.

The more we talked about it, the more it seemed too good to be true. Laura had been living in a house owned by her mom that’s on 10 acres of land, just outside of town (will take Grant about 19 minutes to get to work). I had seen pictures of her property, and at first, I was pretty nervous about what we would do with the cows! COWS!! But the cows are on a portion of the land, fenced off from the house, and the next door neighbor takes care of the cows. We, as the renters, would not be expected to care for the cows. (I like to say they’ll be our decoration cows.) The rent is affordable. The house is lovely; Laura’s husband is a contractor and has been doing all sorts of updates inside. Laura is even going to leave us her chickens so we can give that a try (I’ll be calling my mother and mother-in-law for Chickens 101). Also, I’ve heard great things about the school the kids would attend—I love that their school day will be a half hour shorter each day than school is here! I get more of my kids!

I spoke with Laura’s mother, and she thinks our family is the perfect fit for her house. So everything is squared away, and we have a farm waiting for us when we arrive in a few weeks. We won’t have to bounce from place to place after we get to town. I’m so excited to let the kids run outside! Grant finds it funny that we’re moving from a big city area out to a farm in the west, and he keeps singing “Green Acres” to me. I told him I’m not old enough to get that reference.

But that’s not all. When my friend Shauna, who is one of the sweetest people I know, heard we were moving to Springfield, she mentioned that I might end up in the ward where her brother-in-law is bishop. We did some checking, and sure enough, the bishop’s wife is my friend Shauna’s sister! Small world! Her sister, Kirsten, has already contacted me and said she’d love to have our family over for dinner when we get to town.

On top of all that, the sisters in the Relief Society in our ward asked on Sunday how anyone could help us out with the move. We now have people offering to come play with the kids while we work and bringing us dinners.

Packing is going so slowly. We’re trying to make progress every day, but we’re not getting done nearly as much as we’d like to. It’s frustrating and exhausting, but we’re getting help along the way. I’m hoping the packing will come together like everything else has, and we just need to get to the other side of it.

The time to leave is drawing nearer. I can feel the goodbyes coming, and I don’t want them to. We have made such good friends here. The people in our ward and Grant’s work (and even our local library) are so kind and so dear to us. I wish I could take them all with me! I know there is much happiness ahead for us, but this part will be sad.

And since you probably just want to see pictures of my kids, here are a few pictures from when we decorated our (“Charlie Brown”) Christmas tree. The kids were disappointed at first that I insisted we get a smaller tree this year (to bring down cost and the amount of decorations I’d have to put away), but after we had it up, everyone thought it was cute.

I feel bad that my far away family haven’t seen much of Cecilia lately in pictures because I’ve been too busy to share much. Here she is putting the angel on top of the tree. She has changed a lot in the last few months. She’s walking and running and doing the best she can to keep up with the older kids. This week, she finally got brave enough to try going down the stairs on her own. Now she goes up, down, up, down again and again. Thank goodness she has older siblings to spot her every time she tries going down the stairs on her own.

Here are my lovely older daughters, all dressed up for the winter concert at their school. They both sang several songs with their classes, and Eleanor got to perform with beginning band for the first time playing the alto saxophone. She has loved learning to play the sax. That was one thing she immediately realized she would miss when we said we were moving.

And this is what my lovely older daughters look like when I tell them they can pose however they want.


Now I really need to go pack or organize something. Or go to bed. One or the other.

Course Change

“Realize when you are asked to sacrifice that Heavenly Father wants to give you something better.”

-Elder F. Enzio Busche

It’s no secret that I have struggled while living here in Chicagoland. It’s hard being so far from friends and family, and the frigid, snowy winters haven’t helped my moods much. But I’m afraid I’ve been too vocal in my complaints and haven’t said enough about the things/people I enjoy around here. I think the reason for this is because I have been too busy enjoying to stop and write about it, but when things get hard, it helps to “get it out” somewhere. I haven’t been consistent about blogging; it’s so hard to keep up. I don’t feel like my blog has accurately reflected our experience. There is good here. We have had happy times along with the struggles. And it has been a grand adventure.

And just when I’m getting used to this adventure, just when I’ve convinced myself that I can be patient—find ways to enjoy another year, maybe two, in this home we’ve made for ourselves—our adventure here comes to a close. Time for a new adventure, a new chapter, a change of course.

I was not prepared. I’ve spent so much time working (sometimes working so hard) on being happy here, on accepting our reality, on blooming where I was planted . . . that I didn’t even know what to do with myself when Grant told me we could move on.

For those of you who don’t know, Grant applied for a job as a Dean at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon. He went for an interview in the middle of October. When we didn’t hear anything after a week . . . two weeks . . . I shook it off and got busy trying to embrace another winter here. I even started reading up on the Danish concept of “hygge,” and told myself I could learn to love the winters here. I was in the zone. I imagined us as crossing monkey bars—we could let go of one job hope just as we reached out to grasp the hope for another one. I would just go from hope to hope and try to enjoy the space between.

And just when I was comfortable with that idea, Grant called and told me they offered him the job. I was so stunned. I think that’s the most speechless I’ve been in a long time. I was at our favorite library with Curtis and Cecilia when Grant called. When I got off the phone, I had to go apologize to the librarians with tears streaming down my face because Curtis had tattled on me for taking a phone call. So the first people I told were the librarians in the children’s section, some of my best friends who have no idea they’re my best friends. One of them, “Miss Julie,” even gave me a hug.

While it was all sinking in, I had no idea what to say or what to do. I was just so filled with surprise and disbelief! We had assumed Grant was out of the running, but he was their top choice. They just took their time to tell us so

After much talking, praying, and fasting about the decision, Grant and I decided we would be foolish to pass up this opportunity. Grant accepted the position last Tuesday.

I have felt really overwhelmed about the move across country—again! It feels much like going into labor and childbirth before amnesia from the last time has been able to take effect. At first, I wanted to put my head between my knees and breathe into a brown paper bag . . . for a day or two. There are so many variables and so many questions of what we will do! But I’ve had a chance to start some research this week, and things are slowly falling into place. Every question answered (or even a step closer to being answered) has brought me comfort.

I’m getting used to the idea of going back to Oregon, and as I get used to it, I get more and more excited. This will be a good thing. We can be in one place for a longer time this time. We can put down some roots. We can be with family. Grant’s career can progress.

I always thought of coming here as the sacrifice we had to make to further Grant’s career. But now it feels a bit like leaving here is the sacrifice we will make to move on to better things. I am so grateful for the time we were able to spend here, and I know there are good things to come.

Drumroll Please

She's walking.

But this is old news. 

Cecilia was taking 2-3 steps at a time a week or two before her first birthday. At the very first of October, she had worked her way up to 5-6 steps before she would fall down or sit down to crawl.

The following video was taken on the 8th of October. I got a video of her walking several days before that to try to get her wobbly, unsure steps, but there was some kind of problem, and my tablet didn't store the video.

She's still pretty new at it in this video, and I love how she moves the whole side of her body with each step. She reminds me of a little cowgirl.

About 2 weeks ago, she decided she was just going to get it figured out once and for all. She would walk across the room and then slowly pivot, pivot, pivot on one foot until she was turned around to cross the room again. At the end of the week, she got to practice walking all over the empty church building while Grant set up to cast a live feed of Stake Conference to our building.

Now she is working on running. She's in a big hurry to do all that her siblings can do.

Role Reversal

I took this picture last month, on Eleanor’s birthday.

I had completely forgotten about my last post and all the trouble I was having with Phaedra. She has been much better; I think it goes in waves. This week, she was my superstar! She hopped up and got to work on chores whenever I asked her to, and once she finished, she asked for more! She was very helpful and obedient in many ways, and I have told her so many times. We have still had some bedtime trouble with her and Curtis, but at least our daytime has been better. I’ll take what I can get, and we’ll work on the rest.

On the other hand, Eleanor has decided to be trouble this week. She and Phaedra are very different forms of trouble. Phaedra is a loud, boisterous, and also screechy form of trouble. Eleanor is just a slow, lazy, space-case form of trouble. We had a lot of difficulty with responsibility and following through this week. I got so fed up, we grounded her from TV for the whole week. She would be asked to go clean her room, and a half hour later, I would find her reading a book, never having touched her room. Or she would move at sloth speed when picking up a room. Or she would be upstairs getting ready for school and get caught reading or playing around instead.

Let me say that I love having an avid reader. I love how much Eleanor loves to stick her nose in a book. But I don’t love finding her reading whenever she knows she’s supposed to be doing something else! Grant got pretty fed up with her this week, too. She got assigned to load the dishwasher each night (her most loathed chore) besides all her regular chores. Every time she did something else (like leave her spelling list at school so she could come home, spend a half hour “trying to remember her spelling words” and then say she wouldn’t be able to do her spelling homework), we tried adding extra chores, but that didn’t work. She did her regular chores so slowly (in spite of our nagging, prodding, and threatening) that she had no more time left to do extra chores.

We kept at it all week, and I can say that we’ve seen some improvement in the last few days. It took a long time at first to impress upon her the gravity of her situation. I think she thought she could appeal to the parent who wasn’t as upset. We tried to make it very clear that we were equally upset. I don’t know what finally did it, but she has gotten better.

While I’m mentioning good things about Phaedra, I wanted to write down this moment from the first of our week. Since General Conference, our family has decided to “ponderize” one verse of scripture every week together. This week, we told Phaedra it was her turn to choose the scripture we would ponderize for the week. Grant told her on Sunday to think about what scripture she might want and she could tell the family during Family Home Evening on Monday.

She told Grant that she already knew which scripture she wanted us to ponderize: John 14:15.

“If ye love me, keep my commandments.”

I figured she must have been taught about that scripture recently in Primary and thought nothing of it.

On Monday evening, when she presented her scripture to us, Grant asked her why she wanted to do that scripture. She said she remembered it from Carole M. Stephens’ talk from General Conference. She told us she liked the story she told about the little girl who kept taking off her seatbelt in the car.

I was so impressed! I remember Sunday of General Conference weekend. After the morning session, I asked the kids what talks they enjoyed from conference, and I was met with blank stares. I told them that conference was not just for the grown-ups. I told them I really wanted them to listen to the next session to see what they could learn, and I would ask them again what talks they remembered after the afternoon session.

I was thrilled that evening when I asked Eleanor and Phaedra what talks they remembered and they mentioned Sister Stephens’ talk, with the story about the girl who took off her seatbelt and Elder Keetch’s talk about the barrier keeping sharks away from the surfers. I was glad they had paid attention and listened as I had asked them to do. But my joy was even greater still when, weeks later, Phaedra still remembered that scripture and felt it was important after paying attention to conference. Grant and I were so proud of her in that moment.

Sisters

I’m trying to get back into blogging a little more regularly. But most of the time, when I sit down when I finally get a moment of quiet, I either want to fall asleep or at least shut down my brain. Compiling a string of pictures and actually telling a story about them is just too much.

But to give you something, I told myself I could muster just one picture, and I grabbed the first one that stood out to me. Baby steps, people; baby steps. I took this on Phaedra’s birthday last month. I snapped a few pictures just before school. Phaedra was having fun doing poses for me, and this was the first one I took after asking Eleanor to jump in. I love it.

I needed to see it tonight because there have been days (recently) when I have struggled with one of these girls . . . really, really struggled. I imagine you can guess which one, but if not, I’ll give you a hint: the younger one. They say you either marry or give birth to your greatest challenge in life. I did NOT marry mine.

One of Phaedra’s friend’s moms texted me last night to see if she could come over to play today. I was already having a hard time with Phaedra, but I thought we could turn it around. I even used the invitation as motivation. I gave her so many chances to shape up. When Grant eventually got home last night, he gave her so many chances. She blew it. Time and time again. She wouldn’t do chores. She wouldn’t obey. She wouldn’t stop when asked to stop. To say that my patience is wearing thin would be an understatement.

I usually hate to keep her from an opportunity to get out and be social. I usually do everything I can to turn a negative situation even a tiny bit positive so I can get away with saying yes. There was no way for me to do that this time. As much as I wanted her to go, I kept her from going to play with her friend. I thought it might be the only way to get through to her.

Today she showed some improvement, but I’m not extremely impressed. I wanted so badly to be impressed. That’s probably why I just want to shut off my brain or go to sleep. I love Phaedra so much, and I know she has a lot of amazing, redeeming qualities. But she also knows exactly how to suck the life right out of me.

So enjoy the picture. I’ll try to say something more positive and upbeat next time.