A REALLY long post, but worth it I promise

When I was younger and people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer changed on a weekly basis- including, but not limited to, zoo keeper, weather girl and veterinarian (usually whatever Brooke wanted to be the week before.)

However, by the time I hit high school I knew what I REALLY wanted to be- a mommy. In high school I had a teacher tell me that was a waste of my talents, and it made picking a major in college very difficult...how do you pick what to study for 4 years when you ultimately want to be a full time mother?

A couple months after Jared and I started dating we went to see his brother's baby in the hospital right after he was born. Watching Jared hold that tiny body so gently, I knew he would someday make a terrific dad. It was then that I KNEW he was who I wanted to raise my children with.

2 years ago this month, Jared and I decided it was time to start our family. It was that same summer when I witnessed a friend struggle to have a child. I remember having a conversation with Jared where I said I would NEVER be able to handle that trial, I was definitely not strong enough. Well, I guess Heavenly Father decided to prove me wrong.

The past 2 years have been hard, to say the least. I have discovered you can actually cry so hard your heart literally hurts. However, as painful as it has been, we have learned so many valuable lessons:

We have learned how strong we are as a team. I have heard that an experience like this many times pulls a couple apart. Fortunately, the opposite is true for us- we have become so much stronger. I think some of the sweetest moments we have had occurred because of this trial. There have been so many nights when we have laid in bed, Jared with his arms around me while I cry- I hope I never forget how comforting that is.

We have learned we can be happy for other people's blessings (although Jared is much better at it)- and not to "measure" God's love for us with blessings. Others are not more loved than us just because they receive a blessing we are still waiting for.

I have learned to overcome physical fears. I have learned that when you want something enough, nothing can stand in your way... not even an irrational fear of needles. I can now proudly say I have given myself a shot in the stomach- tough stuff, huh?

Finally, and probably most importantly, we have learned to rely more fully on the Lord. I know that Heavenly Father has strengthened us throughout this trial and eased our pain. He has not left us to deal with this alone.

During October's General Conference we were having an especially hard time. Elder Condie gave a talk, and we both felt like he was speaking directly to us. While speaking of Rachel's inability to bear a child, he said "In this age of one-hour dry cleaning and one-minute fast-food franchises, it may at times seem to us as though a loving Heavenly Father has misplaced our precious promises or He has put them on hold or filed them under the wrong name. Such were the feelings of Rachel. But with the passage of time, we encounter four of the most beautiful words in holy writ: “And God remembered Rachel. And she was blessed with the birth of Joseph and later the birth of Benjamin"....When heaven’s promises sometimes seem afar off, I pray that each of us will embrace these exceeding great and precious promises and never let go. And just as God remembered Rachel, God will remember you."

I wanted to do this in a cutesier way, but I have had so many emotions running through me as I sat down to write this. God has remembered us! In December we will be welcoming our long awaited miracle baby into our home. We are so excited and feel so incredibly blessed. We also realize this is mainly new news to people living far away, since I have been looking pretty pregnant for awhile now- thank you fertility treatments for making my ovaries HUGE! I will post some belly pictures as soon as I find the camera cord.

We had another appointment today (week 13) and everything looks great. Here are some pictures from today's photo shoot (sorry so many, we are just so excited he or she no longer looks like an alien).

Help!

It looks like flowers have completely invaded this blog so I decided to add my own bit of flavor.

Wow, I am getting really bad at updating this thing- sorry. So this blog will be the random thoughts I have had over the past few weeks.
First, a little shout out. Did you notice my oh so crafty header? My friend Kelly taught me how to make it with online scrap booking stuff, and I LOVE it...so thanks a ton Kelly.
Second, I need to make a few corrections, an author's retraction if you will. First and foremost, my cousin Adri was a HUGE part of my summer's fun in good ole' Round Valley. Sheena, Adri and I brought a fresh new meaning to the 3 amigos that summer! Second, I forgot one of my favorite scars on my ankle, and Sheena helped me remember. I was assaulted with a BB gun, ok assaulted is a strong word. Some boys thought it would be fun to shoot bb's (am I even spelling that right) at me and some friends. One hit my leg, and didn't even break the skin but has left a tantalizing, perfectly round scar on my leg. The best part is it turns blue if my legs get cold, foxy huh? Last, Brooke didn't want me to get away with blaming my scarred knees on being clumsy as a child. It is true, the biggest scar was created when I was 12 or 13. A bully tripped me on purpose in the church parking lot, but in the name of full disclosure the bully was a 3 year old boy. Thanks for my dignity Brookey.
Enough with the scars, although I did forget I wanted to hear some good scar stories from anyone that has any. Think of it as a scar "tag" and I tag all of you!
Anjane, you left a message on my blog, and it made my day. However, when I clicked on your name, it didn't give me a way to contact you. Do you have a blog? If not, feel free to leave your email, I would love to catch up.
I have a couple of bad habits involving correspondence. I am HORRIBLE at calling people back. I don't know why. The best I can come up with is I listen to a message and then delete it thinking I will remember to call back, and then I forget. One would assume that I would learn a valuable lesson after a certain amount of times of messing up, but I keep making the same mistake over and over. I also am bad at saving people's phone #'s when they call me. So a week later, when I really want to call them their # is nowhere to be found in my phone. Once again, you would think I would learn... I am also really bad at keeping in touch with people who I don't see often. I have let many dear friends slip away from me because of that flaw. I think part of the problem is I don't want to call/write/email someone I haven't talked to in awhile until I have a long time to catch up...but I never feel like I have that time. Finally, and this is why I am writing this, I don't save people's names on my blog as often as I should. So even if I haven't added you to my friends and family list, I am still blog stalking you and you WILL be on there soon. Also, I have started using Google Reader, which has saved me tons of time. However, for some reason it has caused me to stop writing comments. I will try to be better, but if you have updated your blog, know in your heart that I am reading it. I am just too lazy to click on your blog link and leave a comment. Wow, this made me sound like an awful person, I hope other people have the same flaws...I also hope no one was offended by this!
I think my final thing will be a cry for help. My apartment STINKS!!!! While occasionally it is partially due to dishes in the sink, the biggest thing is something I have not ever dealt with- thank you Rexburg bubble! The people who lived (they moved out 2 weeks ago) smoked like it was their only hope for survival. I am talking all day every day, and never outside, always in their apartment. As luck would have it, the smoke seeped into our apartment and for awhile we smelled like chain smokers as well (hopefully this will clear up any one's conscious who has noticed this but not reported us to the bishop- I repeat, we are NOT smoking). Anyways, since they have moved out, it has helped a little, but our house still reeks of smoke. If anyone has been in a similar situation and has some advice to offer, PLEASE do so!

Did you miss me?

Wow, I think this is the longest stretch of non-blogging I have had since I started this. I don't really have anything great and important to write, but I was thinking about something last night as I was trying to sleep, and I thought I would share.

I missed my grateful Sunday, so I would like to say today I am grateful for scars (sounds weird, just hear me out!)

Have you seen the show Scarred? It is this awful show on MTV where they show people who have caught their "scarring" accidents on video. Usually, they are engaged in acts of stupidity, trying to look macho on a bike or skateboard for their friends. Really a disgusting show, but sometimes, like a car accident I am passing on the road, I find myself unable to look away.

So I am laying in bed last night, and for some reason that show pops into my head. Not really what you want to be thinking about as you are trying to drift into sleep. Slowly, my thoughts go from the show to my own scars, and before long I was having nostalgic thoughts and giggling to myself. Much like the show, many of my MANY scars are from acts of stupidity, and I would like to share my 6 favorite scars, in order of appearance:

1. When I was probably 5 or 6 my parents used to drop Brooke and I off at the top of the hill and let us run down the hill to our house. Of course all of you know I have the grace of a newborn giraffe learning to walk, so I spent alot of time being overcome by gravity. My knees are COVERED in nasty scars. I realize not all of them are from my racing down hill, but that is what I think of everytime I look at those scars.

2. This is probably my favorite: I have a scar on my lip. In Kindergarten I went a birthday party for some twins in my grade (I can't remember his name, but her's was Jessica) at a rollerskating rink- you can't tell me that doesn't bring back some memories for you! Anyways, we were all in a circle singing happy birthday to them, and I had a momentary lapse of judgement and stuck my hands in my pockets. Now keep in mind, this was the 80's and the tighter the jean the better. So in go my hands and seconds later gravity is once again getting the better of me. I go careening toward the floor, and low and behold, I can't get my hands out of my pockets. I land flat on my face, and as I am laying there, still trying to get my hands free from their denim prison, the lady standing next to me starts screaming, "blood, blood!" My lip swelled up so much, my family called me Daffy Duck for a couple of days. Unfortunately, it was not photographically documented, so my scar is the only momento I have.

3. On my right palm I have a blue dot scar. I was in 3rd grade and trying to flirt with a boy named Luke, and decided the way to get his attention would be to slap his hand as hard as I could. Unfortunately, he decided to erase something at that very moment, so my hand came down on his pencil with a vengeance. When I lifted my hand, the pencil came with it and when I took it off, there was hole in my palm. Although it wasn't as bad as I am sure it sounds, I learned the valuable lesson that the way to a man's heart is NEVER violence.

4. When I was 15 Brooke and I went on a ski trip with the Meadows. We stayed at a friends house, and much to my dismay the room we stayed in was also home to their pet turantula. I am TERRIFIED of spiders, so all night I had nightmares it was on the wall next to me. In my sleep, I would climb off the top bunk to safety and then realize I was dreaming and climb back up. However, on what turned out to be my last descent of the night, I climbed out tushy first. I landed on my rear, but not before my head took the brunt of the fall on the corner of a desk. At that point I am sitting there in a daze, and Brooke yells at me for waking her up yet again, so I climbed back up in the bed. Then I went to feel my head, and all I could feel was blood, so I told Brooke I was really hurt. She flipped on the lighted, screamed, and bolted from the room- leaving me abandoned (just kidding Brookey). They ended up supergluing my head back together to avoid an emergency room extravaganza, and I still have a big, bulging scar to back my story up- as if anyone would make an embarrassing story like that up. The best part was I was sitting in the bathroom while they are glueing me back together, kinda like humpty dumpty, and Christian (the older son who I had the BIGGEST crush on) walks in and starts mocking me for my sleep falling ways.

5. When I was 16, I lived in Eagar, AZ for a summer. I don't remember who my fellow criminals were, but we decided to climb a water tower- highly illegal, might I add. We saw someone coming toward us with a flashlight, so made a run for the hills. One of the boys (I think Tim) yelled something over his shoulder, but I didn't understand him... until I ran into exactly what he was warning us about. I ran full speed, which let's be honest is not actually that fast, into a barbed wire fence. I have a couple of scars right above my knee which always remind me of the mischief Sheena and I got into that summer.

6. Last one happened at EA, when Rachel and I lived behind the Goodman apartments. I was running around the back in the middle of the night (don't remember why) and it was pitch black. All of a sudden, I am on my face in the dirt with one of my legs suspended in the air. I hobbled back to my apartment, only to find a NASTY gash on my right foot. Rachel nursed me back to health, and in the morning we went to see what had attacked me. There was a huge, broken flower pot just hanging out there, waiting for some unsuspecting person to "stumble" upon it, literally! That scar always makes me think of all the fun times I had at EA, including my time face down in the mud.

So if you didn't gather this from the above, I am grateful for scars because of the memories. They are not only permanent reminders of what a clumsy fool I can be, but they take me back to good times that I would have forgotten if my skin was perfectly flawless!

Today's thoughts

I am sure you all know what it feels like to be forced to do something before you are really ready for it. We have all had that feeling, whether it was the first time dad let go of the bike to see if we could ride without training wheels, or maybe having to take an exam you just don't feel fully prepared for. Well, I had that feeling yesterday.
We moved on a Saturday/ Sunday and then both had to go to work full time, so this move has been really slow. Our living room and kitchen look terrific, but our bedroom and guest bedroom look like disaster areas. The best part is our clothes are either in a pile waiting to be sorted or in bags waiting to be unpacked. It makes finding desired articles of clothing very interesting and sometimes impossible. I have been rummaging through the clothes the night before to find my outfit for the next day but didn't do that Saturday night.
We have church at 9am, so I got up at 7:30, and slowly showered and got my hair and face ready. I had about 10 minutes to find what I wanted to wear and get dressed. Sounds easy, right? WRONG! The skirt was pretty hard to find, and pantyhose were no where to be found. Which is were my intro to this post comes into play...
My legs made their spring debut before I had mentally prepared myself for the trauma. It is always hard for me to go with my legs exposed to the world for the first time after a long, sunless winter. Usually I have to pump myself up for it, or I sit in the sun for a couple days so they have at least a LITTLE color.
Neither of these options were available in such a time crunch...so I just had to grit my teeth and walk out of my apartment with my dry, whiter than white legs. Putting on lotion in the car helped...a little bit. I would like to publicly apologize to everyone in my ward yesterday who was forced to meet the albino twins, and I promise to re-introduce them to the sun before you are exposed to them again!

On a less somber note, I AM ON SPRING BREAK!!!! Hooray!!!! I have been looking forward to this week since Christmas break. I have big plans to do NOTHING... and in between sessions of nothing, of course clean and unpack as to avoid the situation above.

The move and a sad attempt to cook

We are all moved into our new apartment... or should I say all of our stuff is in our new apartment. We have definitely NOT organized our house all the way. We were in such a time crunch to get out of our old apartment, that we would just fill up boxes then dump them out in the new place, and take them back for more. Luckily, the chaos has been mostly contained in the 2nd bedroom as you can see. We are really excited to get stuff organized so we can enjoy our new, spacious apartment. It is a 2 bedroom 2 full bath apartment, and we are paying a couple hundred $ less than the old place. The only one who doesn't like it is the cat. She goes through angry stages after we "disrupt" her life. Last time me moved, she would walk behind us and bite our calves. For now, she just walks around hissing at nothing (I tried to find a picture of her being mad, so this one is right after we gave her a bath). Other than that, we are loving it so far, although I am not looking forward to decorating. I am a horrible decorator. For example, my first year of college, Becky, Rachel and I decided to whip out the big guns to class our place up... so we hung Mormonads (unframed, of course) all over the apartment by sticky tack. Let's just say my skills have not improved! Any volunteer's to help????

I can't believe I am posting this, but it has been so long since I did a post (my life is so exciting, haha) I thought I would throw it in. The other night I was STARVING and we didn't have a whole lot of food since we were in the middle of a move. I decided I would make home made mac and cheese, my mom used to make the best macaroni and cheese ever. Although I have never made it I decided I didn't need a recipe, how hard could it be? So I bring milk and butter to a boil, thinking it would thicken by itself (since then have learned I should have used some flour). I turn off the heat and added grated cheese, but it wasn't thick like I thought it would be. I then made the fatal error of putting it back on the heat to try again. The cheese curdled (at least, I think that is what happened) and absolutely no thickening occured. This was the final product(this image is NOT for those with weak stomaches)... and no, we didn't eat it. Poor Jared, I need to take some cooking classes!

Grateful Sunday

I am so grateful to be able to learn from people who increase my testimony and knowledge of the gospel. I was so thankful to be able to watch General Conference this weekend. I always feel strengthened and ready to better myself after Conference. One thing that struck me over and over was what we need to do when we face different trials. President Monson said something like this (not sure what the exact quote was) : When we are facing trials, turn to the Lord in faith. He may not take our afflictions from us, but He WILL comfort us in whatever storms we may face. Also Elder Bednar said something to the effect of every sincere prayer is heard and answered, although it may not be when or how we want it to be.
I know I need to work on this for sure! Sometimes it can be difficult to see the Lord's hand in our lives, especialy when He doesn't take our afflictions from us right away. However, if we have faith in Him, He will answer our prayers.

I definitely missed President Hinckley in this conference, so I just wanted to share a part last month's visiting teaching message from him. I loved the part that said this:
"We know not all that lies ahead of us. We live in a world of uncertainty. For some, there will be great accomplishment. For others, disappointment. For some, much of rejoicing and gladness, good health, and gracious living. For others, perhaps sickness and a measure of sorrow. We do not know. But one thing we do know. Like the Polar Star in the heavens, regardless of what the future holds, there stands the Redeemer of the world, the Son of God, certain and sure as the anchor of our immortal lives. He is the rock of our salvation, our strength, our comfort, the very focus of our faith.
In sunshine and in shadow we look to Him, and He is there to assure and smile upon us."

I love that we are all SO different, but we all have one thing in common and that is Jesus Christ. I don't know about you, but that brings me so much comfort to know that will never change!