"I'm Just Curious"

A quote shared by President Uchtdorf:
“Tell a man there are trillions of stars in the universe, and he’ll believe you. Tell him there’s wet paint on the wall, and he’ll touch it just to be sure.”

Tell Curtis the burner is hot even after it is turned off and no longer red, and he'll touch it just to be sure.

It only burned his fingertips, but the huge bandage really helped the emotional state of the victim. 

Here's a picture of it the morning after. We had just put hydrogen peroxide on it and were waiting for it to dry. My phone does not do a good job with pictures of wiggly hands. His 2 middle fingers have burns about the size of the rings on the burner. The pointer and pinkie only have a little burn on the fingertips. It's about impossible to see.

Weekend Bliss

Here are just a few (random) photos from our weekend at home here on the farm.

Phaedra made herself a car.

I had to take a picture of this moss. Our house is in the background (and two of our kids appear as blue blobs). I love how green everything is here. Even when the trees and plants are dormant, there is green, fuzzy moss growing all over the place. I missed all the moss.

We love spending time outside here! Whether we’re gathered around the chickens and our new chicks or just wandering around the property, we love it. I keep saying I would have the house more unpacked if I didn’t keep spending all my time outside.

At first, Cece was falling down in the mud all the time. She hated when she would get so soaked that I had to take her in the house. Studio Grandma recommended this Tuffo Muddy Buddy to help her explore and stay dry. I combined that with a pair of rubber boots 2 sizes too big (they don’t make a size 3—ha ha!), and she is a happy little explorer who can fall down as many times as she wants and keep on going. I wish they made one in Phaedra’s size!

All the kids love to hold and snuggle the chicks.

We have 4 chicks right now: 1 black and 3 yellow puff balls. Here’s a picture of them all out for a walk with their mama, Henrietta.

That’s all for now. We just love it here!

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.