Nebraska

Over Mia’s second birthday we decided to take a trip back to Nebraska. I loved Nebraska. Let me try and explain why.

When we starting looking at Law school both Kent and I wanted to go out of state. We would have stayed if we had the opportunity but I think we both wanted the law school, the adventure, and the culture of living outside of Utah. Right before moving to Nebraska was a CRAZY time. Within in days we packed up, moved, finalized our oldest adoption, blessed her, sealed her, quit my job which was crazy and stressful all on its own, found a place to live, and had a going away party. Through all of this, I never really had the time or the chance to sit down and process, emotionally, what moving meant.

I can still picture the exact spot on the road. We had been on the road for 2.5 day and were just entering the city of Omaha. Suddenly it hit me. We were not just going to Omaha we were IN Omaha. For the first time in my life I was moving away. I was going to be living in a city where I didn’t know ANYONE. And it was scary. I got that feeling in the pit of my stomach. You know the one that you get right before you get up to speak in public, or at the top of a roller coaster when you are just a little bit scared. My stomach was at my knees and full of butterflies. But then the next day we woke up and got to work: moving, unpacking, settling in, living life, making friends, and exploring. And a funny thing happened, like on the roller coaster I had fun, I enjoyed the ride.

I remember the first few months of being there I was a stay at home mom who didn’t really know anyone yet, with one baby to look after, and my husband was in school. So off Missa and I went. We explored and found places to visit and to see.

I met some amazing people there, who we will be friends with for the rest of our lives. I fell in love with the hills and trees of Omaha, and with the wide open spaces and the prairies of the Midwest. But mostly I fell in love with the people. But one of the things I miss the most about Nebraska was my life there, the simplicity of it and the chance to be a stay at home mom. There were good days and bad days of course.

Of course we will always have a deep connection to Omaha because that is where Mia’s birth family is from and live. They were a major motivation for our trip. So we rented a minivan and off we went 2000 miles round trip.

The girls did really well for being the car that long. The minivan helped (I’m choosing to leave out the drama of renting said minivan). We didn’t make any firm plans but ended up with dinner invites every night we were there, and even had to turn one down. I was hard to balance our time as we knew it would be. We had so many people we wanted to see, and things we wanted to do, and wanted some time to be together as a family. But all in all it was a good time.

Kent went back to the law school, I went back to Fontenelle Forest, we played in the pool, we ALL went to the ZOO (oh how I miss the zoo) and to the big slides. We spent the day of Mia’s birthday with her family. Oh it was so good to see them and we wish we had had more time with them. We were able to have to time with the Journeys and many, many others friends. And all too quickly it was time to come home.

Pictures Hopefully to Come.

Plant eating children are better than children eating plants.

I know that every parent feels a great sense of responsibility for their children.  We are burdened with the job of making sure they turn out okay.  But I sometime think that because my children are adopted, I feel an even greater sense of resposibility.  Because someone gave me the most precious gift one can imagine.  They entrusted ME to raise their kids, to give them something that they could not.  And its more than just love because I believe that their birth parents loved them very much and continue to love them to this day.  And sometime I wonder if because I think this way and feel this way if I'm harder on myself then I ought to be.   

I'm not perfect.  So I screw up sometimes and make mistakes.  And sometimes I lose my patience, and sometimes when I lose my patience I lose my temper.  And after I lose my temper I feel horrible.  So bad that sometimes it can send me into a downward spiral of guilt, and pushes me to the edge of depression.

That is when I need to remember the plant eating story.  The planting eating story was something I read randomly somewhere, I think it was a blog.  The women writting it had children that were birth and adopted.  She related a story about her first support metting with other adoptive parents and how they were all stressing about the strange habits that their kids had and worring if it was because they were adopted.  She they relates all the strange thing her children did (that were not adopted) including eating plants.  She just assumed (rightly so) that it was just strange things children did.  And as adoptive parents we need to relax and just remember that kids are kids and not to stress so much about them being adopted.  I showed it to Kent because I thought it was funny and it became a running joke with us.  "Oh that's cuz shes adopted"  No we don't do this much around the kids anymore now that they are old enough to understand us.  But sometimes its still funny.

So I need to remember that even though I'm an adoptive parent, I'm a parent first.  Which means I'm a parent that loses her patience with her kids, whose kids drive her crazy at times, who sometimes wonder if they are worth it after all, and constantly worries if she's doing the right thing.  And its just because kids are kids, and parents are parents and sometimes it seems the two are incompatible.   

A Journey with the Journeys

We were so excited to have Bryce Laura, and Luke come visit us for a few days.  The first day we did the down-town stuff.  Temple square, the Conference Center, ate lunch at the Lion House, and Let the kids play at the Church History museum.  It was a long exhausting day, but we saw a lot.  The next day we went up to Park City and played at the Olympic park, where we rode some zip lines, an alpine slide and I somehow convinced Bryce and Laura to ride the bob-sled with me.  I loved what Laura said about it "Nothing anyone can tell you will prepare you for riding down an Olympic bobsled track for the first time. Dang, that was crazy!".   It was quite the experience.  We went 71 mph and experienced 3-4 G forces.  I thought it was awesome.  But glad it didn't last much longer than it did.  The next day we went up to This is the Place park.  The kids got to ride ponies.  Which Mia couldn't wait to do, then got scared and wanted nothing to do with the horses, and then wanted to ride them some more.  Such is life sometimes.  We also saw my ancestors house.  That afternoon we were going to go to the Museum at Thanksgiving point but opted for an afternoon of games.  Which I'm glad we did.  It was so fun to see Bryce and Laura again and to get to know Luke.  It was fun to have our old game nights back.  I even won two games against Bryce.  That's saying something!  Oh and how could I forget we watched Birdemic.  The funniest bad movie I think I've ever seen.  It was fun to have them here and sad to see them go.  But I also know that we will be friends for a long time so it wasn't really good-bye.

Two Weddings

I had two nieces get married in two months.  Its hard to believe that they are married now.  Some of my earliest memories of Kent and I's courtship involve them, when they were just toddlers.  I specifically remember Sonnett singing I like it I love it I want some more of it by Tim Magraw, when she was maybe 5.  I'm excited for them to begin their lives as a married couple.  I hope they enjoy all the ups and downs that come with marriage.

Sonnett got married in the Salt Lake Temple.  The ceremony was beautiful.  My mother-in-law made matching dresses for all the cousins.  When she had extra material she made some extra dresses for the temple/play in.  Here are a few of my favorite pictures.

Collectively these girls are ages, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1.  If someone would have told that would happen 5 years ago I would have never in a million years believed you. 

Shannon got married in the Manti temple.  I must admit that I grumbled and complained about them choosing the Manti temple because it was an inconvienance for me.  (I know I'm so selfish sometimes, like they would have picked the most important day of their lives around my connivances.  DUH).  Anyway I debated till the last minute whether or not to go down, I did and was so glad I did.  The temple was perfect for Shannon and BJ and completely fit their personalities and theme of the wedding which was cowboys and sunflowers.  Plus I've never been to the Manti temple.  Since its so old (even older than Salt Lake) yet not as busy as Salt Lake it retained a lot of the old pioneer feel to it.  I was noticing how it seemed like the restrooms where stuffed in a corner, and were really tight and small.  Maybe that is because back when the temple was built there wasn't in-door-plumbing.  The layout was all werid compared to most temples.  It was really fun to be there, almost like taking a step back in time.

Again Grandma made matching dresses.  I LOVE dressing the girls alike.  (She also made some Easter dresses for my girls that makes 4 home-made dresses in two months THANK YOU GRANDMA we are really blessed).

When did these kids grow up?

Stay there...

Just stay there for one second....

At last the bribery works. 

Melissa and Alyssa

This is a great wedding it has toys!

***Warning Warning Warning I will now wax philosophical and slightly religious (maybe more than slightly):  All of this marring going on starting me thinking about; well marriage.  More specifically I've been thinking a lot about the sealing covenant.  The sealing covenant is the sacred ordinance that binds families together, it is the ordinance that we often refer to as "temple marriage".  I have a special place in my heart for the power of the sealing covenant.  As I witnessed these two beautiful girls be sealed to their husbands, the thought occurred to me that if you were to take all that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is, and focus it down to one moment, like focusing a beam of light into a Lazar, it would the sealing of families.  If you were to try and compress all that the church works towards, is all about, is the reason behind everything we do and are, I think this would be it.  It is pure power.  I have felt it numerous times.  And yet this fact has far reaching consequences not all of which positive.  For example those that live in the Church and do not marry, or those like me that marry but struggle to conceive, or those that live in the church but are divorced, or the churches stand on social issues like gay marriage.  I'm not really sure what my point is in all of this.  Maybe it is to simple say that for me at least the sealing of families one to another for all of eternity, (as annoyingly cliché as the term families are forever has become), it is capstone of our religion.  It is the crowing principal and purpose for the church as a whole. I am so thankful for it in my life and the lives of my family.  And I'm thankful to have had the opportunity to be reminded of that and to be apart of it.  ***End philosophical religious rambling.

My House

So You Want to Buy a House...


Thanks to Uncle Sam, a lot of adoption expenses, a change in tax laws, and a good accountant that knew or could figure out everything much easier and with a lot less screaming and pulling of hair than I could, Kent and I ended up with a VERY large tax return. Large enough that it was like try to answer if you won amount x on a game show or a lottery what would you do with it. (okay maybe not that much but it was a good amount). With a huge student loan debt, two dying cars, and a desire to buy a house what would you have done? Well we put some if it toward our student loan (the private loan that wont get paid off if Kent stays with his public interest job for 10 years). And then we decided to put the rest into a down payment on a home.

So began the process of buying a home. At first I was so excited I was giddy. Then we actually started looking at homes, and I went from frustrated to confused and back to frustrated. I we didn't even look that long. There was so much more to think about. What about the schools, are they good, how do you really know. Could we get them into a school outside the boundaries, what about charter schools. Is it a good neighborhood, and mostly how much could we really afford? Every spare moment we had was used to search and search the internet for houses, or to drive through neighborhoods. And then one day I'm talking with our realtor (who is awesome) we go to see a house that night and the next thing I know we are under contract. The excitement is still there but so is a lot of anxiety and a lot of work.

We closed on Thursday morning.  Monday we began scrubbing walls. 

My M&Ms: The Princess Instict is Strong

Big M loves clothes.  She was picking out her clothes and trying to dress herself by the time she was 18 mo old.  Little M (although I can't really call her that anymore since she's not so little anymore) would rather run around buck naked.  Getting her dressed in the morning is always a battle.  I'll give her the choice between two shirts and she'll look at me, look at the clothes, throw them on the floor and take off running down the hallway, and if not caught and forced dressed in a timely manner will shimmy out of her diaper, thus accomplishing the task of complete nakedness.  So I was a little surprised this morning when I put this dress on her...

And she refused to take it off.  Then she started prancing around the house patty her pretty dress.  

The princess instinct runs strong.

Little M

They say kids grow up over night, but sometimes I swear its true.  In the last week Mia has learned to say and the meaning of:

• Cake
• Root Beer
• Elmo
• Einsteins (a tv show)