Remodeling
We got our living room remodel finished late last night and it looks great! The ugly wood paneling and “log” paneling were removed and the walls were textured using a trowel and plaster/mud, then the whole room and ceiling were painted. We put in crown molding and a new chandelier. It looks like a brand new house! A friend from church did more than half of the work, and Chris helped with painting and did other odds and ends. It took about 7 hours a day for 7 days. That’s because when we took off the paneling big pieces of the wall and plaster had water damage and had to be replaced. Tonight we’ll put the furniture back and then we can get a Christmas tree :).
Chris and I are gonna go dancing in Salt Lake tomorrow night for my birthday (I'll be 27). We're going to a dance club that has LDS standards. Yay! Also we’re going out to dinner at a surprise place. Our friends will watch Abe. Chris is also taking the day off of work tomorrow so we can hang out for my b-day because he’s worn out from working on the living room after work until midnight or later each night and I’ve been going crazy watching Abraham 24-7 without a living room while Chris did that. Abe can’t go play outside much because it’s too cold and there’s 6 inches of snow so he has been really bored and acting up. I take him to the mall to play in the kids’ play area when I’ve had enough.
We just got a dishwasher and I used it for the first time last night and it works great! You don’t even have to rinse the dishes.
Surprise! I'm pregnant.
I've been keeping really busy lately renovating our house, working on my businesses, and being pregnant! I'm 7 months pregnant, due April 23rd. This is our first baby. There are a lot of things I want to get done before the baby comes, so I'm working a lot but it's fun and I'm happy. Once the baby is born I don't plan to work much.
We don't know if it's a boy or a girl; we want to be surprised! We're old fashioned like that.
I Saw the Prophet! and Bye-Bye Brother
This week I got to do two cool things. On Tuesday I attended the dedication of the new Joseph F. Smith Building at BYU. I went with my brother who is a student at BYU. You can read about the dedication here: http://byunews.byu.edu/archive05-Sep-dedication.aspx. President Gordon B. Hinckley spoke about Joseph F. Smith and said a prayer to dedicate the building. The rest of the first presidency of the church was also there along with many other notable people. Cool! This was the first time for me to actually see the Prophet in person, although he looked very small from where I was seated.
I also got to take my other brother to the MTC and see him off on his mission to California. That was such a cool experience.
I Moved to Utah
Wow, I haven't blogged in forever! I can't believe it's been so long, I was doing O.K. for a while there. I've always been bad at keeping in touch with people and keeping a journal. I think the two are kind of related, they have to do with talking about what's happening in your life and I like to live my life but I think I don't like to re-live it, especially if that means writing it down. I'd rather be doing something more fun. And then I'm also critical, when I go back and read my journal entries I don't like what I wrote and I don't feel like it represents my life well. I usually give up or start over. Now I'm finally going to push through and keep a journal, even if I can't write that often. I'm keeping this online blog of what's going on in my life for my friends to read but I've realized that I don't feel comfortable writing very personal things here including a lot of my spiritual experiences, because anyone can read it and make fun of the things I consider to be special. So I've decided to keep a separate journal of personal things, mostly spiritual experiences that I've had so that I can remember them and so I can share the experiences with my close friends and family and someday my kids can read it. A lot of the scripture that we have is like a spiritual journal that someone kept. So using scripture as somewhat of a guide I can see what would be important for people to know about my life and it's not the everyday mundane things, it's the important spiritual things that I learned from and that other people might be able to learn from as well.
My husband and I are living in Provo Utah now and we really like it! I like living in the city. I can walk everywhere, like to downtown Provo and to the store. I always wanted to live where I could walk places and get exercise that way. Some of the places where we lived in Tennessee were way out in the country. There are definitely pros to that (lots of land, it's pretty, it's quiet) but I didn’t like having to drive for 20 minutes just to pick something up at the store.
Our new ward (church congregation) is a good mix of all ages of people. There are a lot of young couples which we like but there are also all ages, kids, teens, middle aged people, old people, and I like it that way. I always felt like singles/student wards were not as spiritual or something. I just didn’t like them. I think it’s because they lack kids and parents and I think kids are a really fun thing about church. So I’m glad we’re far enough away from BYU to not be in a student ward.
Our house needs a lot of fixing up and so far we haven’t had much time to do it. We haven't even finished unpacking and we've lived here for over a month. I'm doing stuff little by little.
I Have A New Family
Sorry I haven't written in so long! Life's been really crazy and I've been working especially hard to reach my goals since the beginning of the year.
Ready for a confusing story?
My Mom's parents split up when she and her twin sister were a few years old. She and her twin sister were raised by their mother and a step-dad and never saw or heard from their biological father.
So my Mom has been looking for her biological father since she became an adult. She's paid various services who say they can find anyone, but with no luck; they would find a person with the same name and birth date but it wouldn't be him. Last month she tried again with an online people finding service and found someone who seemed to be a match. All they gave her was his address so she wrote to him a letter asking if he was her dad. He received the letter and called her about a week later confirming that he is, in fact, her dad.
They started talking on the phone regularly and couldn't wait to meet each other. My Mom lives in Mt. Juliet, TN. She found her Dad living in Detroit Michigan, where she was born. This past weekend the long-lost dad came down to meet my Mom and her family for the first time (that is, the first time since she was very small). My Mom's twin sister who lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico also came down to meet her Dad. The long-lost Dad brought his wife with him. He married his current wife soon after he split up with my Mom's Mom so long ago. When he met his current wife she had two kids of her own, a girl and a boy. The couple never had children together but he raised those kids as if they were his own. The crazy thing is that those two step kids raised by my biological Grandpa happened to also move to Mt. Juliet, Tennessee several years ago. So my Mom has a step brother and sister who were living right around the corner all this time.
The reunion of the families was awesome and emotional. It was like a scene from the Montel Williams show. Everyone loved getting to know each other. I got to meet my new Grandparents and Aunt and Uncle and cousins. They're all really sweet people, I love them. When my new Grandparents came to visit, they and my new Aunt and cousin came to church with my Mom and Dad and my family and my Mom's twin sister. My Mom and her twin sister sang a duet of the song "Families Can Be Together Forever" in the church sacrament meeting. My new Aunt and cousin are even coming to church with us regularly now and coming over for family night often. My new Grandparents are planning on moving to Mt. Juliet, Tennessee to be closer to their children, and also want to come to church with my parents again.
