Happiness

The other day I found out that one of my friend is expecting a baby. Oh, how I enjoyed being pregnant and having brand new babies (no wonder I had 6 of them)! In a small moment of baby hunger, I had to remind myself. I am not in my baby era. I am in the Kindergarten Era. I am in my sixth grade era, my missionary serving era and my 3 oldest thriving away from home era, my married to a PhD student era. My youngest is in Kindergarten. And she loves it! She is doing amazing things! I drop her off in the morning with a carpool and then I have the mornings all to myself. Can it get better than this? I suggest not. 

I haven’t blogged in here for awhile. But, now I’m back! Hopefully you are all still with me.  Life has been busy! I’ll just briefly hit the highlights and then move on from there! Elizabeth turned 23! Hooray! Ethan came home from selling pest control and started working at In n Out. He and Jonah left together for BYU Provo in August and are rooming together. They are having the best time! We sure miss them though.  Asher had three areas and four new companions and hit his one year mark in September! He’s doing awesome! School started and with is Declan started 6th grade and Rosie started Kindergarten half day in a Montessori program. They both love school and say those exact words “I love school!” What a blessing to have found a great fit for these kiddos. Josh continues to work and take a few classes each semester for his PhD program in Complex Adaptive Systems. He absolutely loves school too! I have been staying home- cleaning the house, exercising, resting and reading. It’...

  A year ago, I started having weird stomach issues. Whenever I ate something with dairy or fat in it, my stomach would hurt for 3 or four days and I would be tied near the bathroom. I went to several Drs- my Primary Care Dr who ordered tests and tests of samples (you don't want to know!) and a GI Dr who ordered a colonoscopy. That was not bad- just the prep was really, really gross tasting. Yuck! just thinking about it. The tests showed inflammation and the colonoscopy showed one small polyp which they quickly removed and told me that I would need a colonoscopy every 3 years instead of every ten. Oh, well. Glad they caught it! And so, nothing really new developed. I stopped eating dairy and anything fried or red meat. I met with a new GI Dr who ordered an ultrasound (which was weird with a lot of pushing and breathing in and tugging) and some blood work. I finally had some dairy with some lactaid the other day and it went okay. I have an appt with my GI Dr next week. It's been...

School started yesterday! The kids first day of school went well! Asher is a Senior at Highland High School and Declan is in Fourth Grade with Mrs Yocklin at San Tan Charter School. Asher has a few challenging classes and Declan likes his class.  Elizabeth will be a freshman at Mesa Community College majoring in Conversative Biology and a Rosie will be at home with me. Ethan is currently in Blackfoot, ID for his 3rd transfer and Jonah is in Woodside/Queens for his 3rd transfer as well. They are both doing very well and we are so proud of them and their service to others and to the Lord. Josh is going back to school too! He got accepted to the PhD program of Complex Adaptive Systems at ASU. He can work on his degree while working at the same time. He is also teaching an online class.  I have eight piano students for this school year and I love each one of them! I enjoy teaching during the week. It’s going to be a great school year! I’m excited!! 

Back in May I accepted a 5 hour shift at the Gilbert Temple and was set apart to be authorized to do so.  Hooray! I had been wanting to work in the Temple for a very long time! Since 2008. In 2008 I asked the leader of our Church Group if I could work in the Temple. I loved being there so much! He said that I needed to wait until all my kids had left the house. That was going to be a long time as my youngest Asher was TWO at the time. I went home a little disappointed, but understood the meaning behind it (making family a priority). Fast forward 11 years.  Josh and I were attending a large Church meeting for our area (Stake Conference) and I heard the speaker mention that anyone was allowed to work in the Temple now. What did beautiful news did my ears just hear?! I turned to Josh and he knew what I was thinking. I waited a few months to make sure I was really willing to commit to such a time commitment each week and then met with my Bishop to ge...

 Blogging. We finally have wifi and I am on our old computer, browsing blogs like the good old days in Maryland when my babies were small and they would play or watch t.v. and I would read blogs and write and cry and laugh and thank God for the internets. One of my favorite bloggers has written a book and in celebration of such wonderfulness (bloggess turned official book writer), I am going to write and enjoy writing. As you know, I have a killer headache. Killer. It's not killer all the time. Just whenever I think "I have a killer headache!" Which is about 60% of the time. Lately.  I've gone through lots of stages with this headache- denial- this isn't here, anger- are you serious?, extreme anger- wanting to throw things anger (on a few occasions), submission- ok, what can I learn? and finally, today, humbleness . Humbleness.  I jumped in the car tonight to grab a walking toy for Declan from a facebook yardsale group ( the boy is nine months and so ...