A Thanksgiving Thought

The other day Brandon and I were talking about how brave the Pilgrams must have been.  I mean, they got on a boat, sailed for months, and landed in a brand new land.  There wasn't even a dock to meet them.

We had trouble moving to Texas in the 21st century.  I can't even imagine what the Pilgrams went through.

Later we read this verse in the Book of Mormon that I think applies to the Pilgrims.  It's 2 Nephi 1 6-5.

6 Wherefore, I, Lehi, prophesy according to the workings of the Spirit which is in me, that there shall none come into this land save they shall be brought by the hand of the Lord.

7 Wherefore, this a land is consecrated unto him whom he shall bring. And if it so be that they shall serve him according to the commandments which he hath given, it shall be a land of liberty unto them; wherefore, they shall never be brought down into captivity; if so, it shall be because of iniquity; for if iniquity shall abound cursed shall be the land for their sakes, but unto the righteous it shall be blessed forever.

I don't know much about the details of the Pilgrams decision to migrate to America.  But I'm willing to bet that their leaders felt the influence of the Holy Ghost as they looked for a place to worship God according to their beliefs.  

I don't know about you, but I'm glad that they had the courage to come to a new land.  We owe everything to brave people like the Pilgrims.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Veronica is two months old

Where has the time gone?  I can't believe it has been 2 months since Veronica was born.  It seems like just yesterday that she popped out of my body and into my arms.

She's starting to smile a lot.  I love the giant grin that she'll flash at me.  She seems so pleased to be here on earth and part of this family.  

Tonight I filmed this little movie of Veronica (and Lydia).  It's kind of long, but that's because the Grandparents still have to wait 3 1/2 weeks before they can see Veronica in person.

I keep thinking back to that day in January when I found out I was pregnant. I cried so much.  I couldn't see how I could handle taking care of a fourth baby.  I'll admit, for the tiniest half second I thought about possibly aborting the baby.  I'd never go through with it, but I did wonder if it would make my life easier.    

Now that she's here I see how wonderful, beautiful, sweet, precious, and perfect she is.  I can't imagine my life without her.  And I know I am so lucky to have this little baby right now.

Before she was born wondered how on earth I could take care of 4 kids under the age of 4.  All I kept thinking about was the Jim Gaffigan quote, "What's it like having 4 kids?  Well imagine you are drowning and someone hands you a baby." (Click here to watch his hilarious and oh so relatable stand up routine about having 4 kids.)

The first time I heard him say that was when I was watching some late night TV a few days after Derrick was born.  I was nursing Derrick and I laughed out loud at that quote. I thought, "That's what three kids feels like!"

But in reality, adjusting to four kids has actually been easier than adjusting to three - or even two for that matter.

A lot of credit has to go to Veronica for that.  She really is an easy baby.  She sleeps through the night (knock on wood), she eats well, she takes a bottle and a binkie, she usually falls asleep easily, and she's cute - what more could I ask for in a baby.

Some of the credit goes to how easily I recovered from having her.  I didn't have a lot of pain.  And Brandon and Lindsey took such good care of me during the first few weeks of Veronica's life.  I was able to snuggle with her for hours and not worry about the other kids - I didn't really have that when the other kids were born.

Some more of the credit for the easy adjustment goes to Charlotte and Lydia and even Derrick.  Those kids love Veronica.  They are always sitting next to her and showing her things.  Whenever I talk about something we are going to do they ask, "Veronica too?"  Charlotte has the ability to translate Veronica's crying for me.  If Veronica's crying Charlotte will say things like, "she wants a blanket," or "she wants to eat."  And a lot of times that is what Veronica wants.

And the rest of the credit goes to me.  I think I've become something of an expert on how to raise my babies.  I know what works for me and what doesn't.  I know what bugs me, and what I can let go.  And I've come to the point where I really don't care what other people think of me.  I used to worry about what people thought of the things that I did as a parent.  Now I'm too busy keeping track of my kids to even really think about what's going on with other adults.  And I've learned to be easier on myself for anything I feel I am failing at.

Are there still times I feel I can't do it? Yeah.  I still get frustrated, and I still need breaks.  I'm by no means a physical embodiment of the mythical "supermom."  But hey, the kids are alive and happy, and I'm alive and happy so things are great.

I guess the point of these ramblings is that Veronica is wonderful.  I love her so much.  I am very grateful that she's part of our family.

Two Saturday 'ventures

It's cold here today.  The high is supposed to be around 40.  We're spending the day inside with the heat on while listening to Christmas songs.  

We don't have any plans today either which means I have a chance to blog about some of the things we've done on the past few Saturdays.  

First up I have pictures of something we have planned to do FOREVER - feed the ducks and geese at the duck pond.  We live one highway exit away from Central Texas College.  I'd drive past the college to go to my OB/GYN appointments.  I could see the duck pond from my car and it always looked like a fun place to take the kids.  But somehow Brandon and I never took them.  We talked about it a lot, but things always came up. In fact, the day Veronica was born we'd been talking about going to the duck pond that evening.   

I think the kids were starting to believe that they would see DisneyWorld before they would ever see the duck pond.  So two Saturdays ago we finally just grabbed some bread, got in the car, and drove 2 minutes to the college campus.  Why is it that the easy things seem so hard? 

The kids were so excited to see the ducks and geese.  Lydia ran around saying, "quank quank quank" for a while.  Derrick made friends with this lady who brought a ton of corn for the ducks.  She gave Derrick bread to feed to the ducks.  I thought he would eat it, but he threw it to the ducks.  

We've had encounters with ducks and geese at other parks and the girls are usually afraid of them.  But they weren't afraid of these ducks because they were behind the fence.

I'm usually a pretty chill parent, but I was really nervous when the kids were on this bridge.  I kept imagining scenarios where they fell in the water and I had to jump in and save them with Veronica strapped to my chest.

When we were out of bread we went for a walk around the campus.

The kids were so cute walking together.

Here is the hospital where Veronica would have been born.  It's called Metroplex which always made me think it was a movie theater.

The campus was really pretty.  It reminded me of a combination of Snow College and the Salt Lake Community College.  The kids started getting tired and we were about to go back to the car when this fountain caught our attention.

The fountain had these county line markers by it. Apparently the campus straddles two counties.  Veronica would have been born in Bell, but she was actually born in Coryell.

Derrick stood and stared at the fountain for a long time.  I sat by him and got lost in my own thoughts as well.  Some of them were about how awesome his jacket looks.  I want a grown up version.

The girls entertained themselves by throwing leaves and things into the fountain.  I thought that Brandon was keeping and eye on them, but then I turned around and discovered that he was asleep.

We eventually broke free from the calming influence of the fountain and made our way home.

Last Saturday we went to a place I'd just read about in the Traveling Soldier section of our newspaper - Miller Springs Nature Center near the Belton Dam.  We told the kids we were going to go on an adventure in a few hours.  They kept asking, "when we go on 'venture?" over and over again.  Right up until we walked out the door.

We started out with a picnic lunch at the pavilion by the parking lot. We had Pringles and "Zebra Cakes" as our special treat.  

The girls started playing in the grass.  Lydia is so funny.  She wanted to wear her princess dress on the 'venture.

We cleaned up our picnic and then started walking on the trails.  You can't see it very well, but there is a huge mural depicting different things about the Belton area off in the distance.

The weather was absolutely perfect.  There was a breeze, but it wasn't cold at all. I love fall time in Texas.

Brandon remarked that the area reminded him of what the moon would be like.

Everything was really flat and then suddenly there was a canyon next to us.  It just opened up out of nowhere.  

We found a trail down into the canyon and introduced the kids to switch backs.  We hiked through trees and then tall grass.  

Derrick tripped and ended up with a bloody nose.  The girls had fun picking grass.

We went down in elevation again and ended up in some tall sage brush.

The kids were all kind of hiked out at this point and getting sad. But then we found a pond and they perked back up.  They all enjoyed the time honored tradition of throwing rocks into water.  Derrick laughed every time the water splashed.

We kept hearing something that sounded like a garden hose.  We followed a trail towards the sound and found a little waterfall.

Then we hiked back up.  The kids were moving pretty slow so we motivated them by telling them that they could have their other Hostess Zebra cake when we got to the car.  That kept them going enough to get all of us to the car.

Brandon saw a dead squirrel in the parking lot and he had to take a picture of it.

Today we are taking advantage of our lazy Saturday to gear up for our adventure for next week.  We are going to spend Thanksgiving with Lindsey and John in Houston.  Then the next day we are all going camping!  Hopefully it warms up again.  (It should, the weather here is pretty bi-polar.  It was 80 degrees on Thursday and I almost let Lydia play in our swimming pool.)

Thankful Thursday: Week 3

I confess, I totally slacked off in the Thank you note department this week.  I didn't write a single one.  The reason is that I've been working on our Christmas Card/Newsletter and Veronica's birth announcement.

Now before you start thinking I'm some sort of over-achiever getting them done before Thanksgiving, you should know that I have wanted to send out a newsletter type thing ever since we arrived in Texas.

Its taken me 11 months to get the newsletters done.  I've worked on them on and off during that time, but this week they have taken up all my evenings.  It takes a lot of time and effort to take a family picture that I like, gather addresses, write the dang thing, buy cute stationary, wait for Brandon have time to do the layout in adobe illustrator, print the newsletter, print the picture, address envelopes, order Christmas stamps from USPS, and stuff the envelopes.

Everything is finally done except for tracking down about 5 addresses, and licking all the envelopes.  Hallelujah!

Today I made up for my thank you note slacking by writing - by hand- 6 thank you notes to mail with the newsletters.  Since I want them to be a surprise, and some of the recipients read my blog, I won't list who I wrote this week.  Maybe I'll do it next Thursday, but that's Thanksgiving so no promises.

Sending out newsletters is hard because I can't afford to physically mail one to everyone.  Mostly they just go out to family and close friends.  But I can e-mail them to as many people as I like.  So if you want a copy of our newsletter for this year please fill out this form.  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/121d3y3QGSCE4K-ypvNZWIp8XGTO2M5so64ki_heBxXw/viewform

Getting out of Debt: Two years down

Guess what? It's only November and yet this is what our debt payoff tracker looks like right now.

Yep, we paid off a year's worth of student loan payments in only 11 months.  That's thanks to the extra payment we paid back in March.

We still haven't been able to afford double payments every month.  Heck we haven't even been able to "practice" doing them like I'd hoped.  Brandon's Army income is higher than any other job either of us have ever had, but our expenses are a lot higher than before too.  We are paying for our own internet now.  We have four kids.  We don't live within walking distance of the library, store, or church anymore so we needed to buy a second car (not to mention we needed to make room for Veronica). Having another car means we have to pay more for maintenance, gas, and insurance in addition to making payments on the Honda.  

But this post is about celebrating victories not moaning over what hasn't happened.  So lets focus on the fact that we made all our payments this year.  We've paid off more than $7000 in less than 12 months!

A few months ago I read an inspiring blog post titled, How we paid off more than $27,000 of debt in 6 months and still ate paleo.

We haven't paid off as much debt as the author and her husband did, but we still have paid off debt.  I thought you might be interested in some of the ways we make sure we have enough money to pay our student loan payments each month.

How we manage our money

Pay tithing - I know it may seem counter-productive to pay 10% of our income to the LDS church while we are trying to stay out of debt, but believe me, the blessings far outweigh the cost.

I once heard that it is impossible to have a need go unfulfilled when you are paying your tithing.  And I've seen that occur first hand.  For example, out of the blue a neighbor offered us a crib for Veronica.

We rent our home - I talked about this one in depth a few months ago in this post.  So I'll just add this.  I love that we don't have to worry about paying for maintenance on our home.  A few months ago we had an ant problem in our kitchen.  I didn't have to worry about paying the exterminator.

Live on post - This one is kind of unique to the military, but we certainly save a lot of money living close to where Brandon works.  Plus we get free utilities which is so nice.  I especially enjoyed the fact that I could blast the air conditioner all summer long while I was pregnant.

Save our tax refund money - Thanks to being poor and having kids we get rather large tax refunds every year.  We usually use the money to buy a few things that we've needed/wanted and then save the rest.  That savings acts as an emergency fund throughout the year.

We don't have smart phones - Brandon and I like to make snide comments about how smart phones are for dumb people.  But really the reason we don't have smart phones is because we don't want to pay for the data plans.  I also like the fact that we don't have to worry about the kids breaking expensive phones.  I can let Derrick chew on my phone and know that it was practically free.  My last phone worked for 4 years before it quit charging.  We have looked into plans that work over the internet, but we aren't ready to give up our network - yet.

We buy just about everything used - I love shopping at thrift stores and yard sales.  Especially when I'm buying things for the kids.  Once again, it's nice to not have to worry about the kids destroying something expensive.  Our kids actually have no idea that toys come in packages, because I've never let them see the toy aisle at the store.    

And a lot of time I don't even bother with stores.  I love hand-me-downs.  All my kids wear hand-me-down clothes from my aunts' and friends' kids.  I have a lot of clothes from church clothing swaps.  And don't even get me started on how many times I have saved furniture from being thrown away.  (Remember when I went dumpster diving for this dresser?)

When we do buy new, we buy quality things - We do a lot of research before we buy anything that costs more than $100.  A few years ago we needed a new stereo.  We went to a lot of stores, but couldn't find one that we liked.  Brandon finally found one online that fit our specifications.  It's worked perfectly for us and probably will continue to work for many years.  

We use cloth diapers - I talked about my thoughts on cloth diapers in this post.  Cloth diapers have saved us a lot of money.  The money we saved from switching to cloth diapers was one reason I was willing to take out a car loan when we bought the Honda.    

Brandon fixes things up - I love that Brandon is handy.  He can fix things that most other people would just give up on.  Recently the belt on our dryer broke.  Brandon made a few phone calls, picked up a new belt for $20 at a parts store, and had the dryer purring again by the end of the day.  

We use what we have to make things - I love being crafty, but I hate having to go out and buy supplies so that I can be crafty.  So I just use what I have.  I made a picnic blanket out of old pairs of jeans.  And I've been working (forever) on a quilt made out of our old T-shirts.   

We hardly ever eat out - and when we do we consider Burger King to be a splurge.  Eating out adds up - especially with 4 kids.  That's why we go on so many picnics.  It's a lot cheaper to "splurge" on a box of Twinkies for $2.50.   

   

We have really small Christmas's - It seems like we are tight on money every time Christmas comes around.  This year is no exception because we are planning on driving back to Utah for Christmas.  So every year we only buy a few small presents for each other.  I like doing that because it helps us focus on the importance of Jesus, love, and family rather than cool toys.  We wait to buy the big stuff until we get our tax refund.   

What's next? 

Well despite all our efforts, at this rate there are still 13 years left before we will be debt free.  That's kind of disheartening, but we keep making the payments anyway.   

We are hoping that Brandon will become a Warrant Officer soon.  He'll get a pretty nice pay raise when that happens.  Hopefully we will be able to funnel most of it into extra payments on the loans.    

I'm also planning on using any money my new blog happens to make into paying off the loans.

And one day all the kids will be in school and I'll go back to work.  Then we'll be able to do what our original plan was and use one of our incomes exclusively for debt payoff.  

But for now we just take it one payment and one square at a time. 

Thankful Thursday: Week 2 and LOTS of good news

Today has been incredible!  I haven't been doing the whole 30 Days of Thanks deal on facebook, but I totally could have caught up on it with just the awesome stuff that has gone on in the last 24 hours.  In fact I think I will try.

1. Brandon got a signed letter of recommendation from his Lieutenant Colonel.
2. His Captain will have a signed letter ready for him soon.
3. A Warrent Officer should be back from the field next week and will meet with Brandon and then write a letter of recommendation.
4. Brandon's security clearance is taken care of.
5. Veronica's social security card showed up so we were able to get her on our insurance with a week to spare.
6. Brandon found out he will be a gunner for a Bradley - no more sitting around bored while they drive around.
7. I registered the domain name for my new blog.
8. We paid the last student loan payment for this "year."  (Only 13 more to go!)
9. The kids and I skyped with my sister's pre-school kids as part of their lesson on communication. (Technology is awesome.)
10. I got all the laundry put away.
11. All our bills are paid for the month.
12. The kids all slept in until 8:00 am.
13. We babysat the neighbor kids for a couple hours.  Those kids kept the twins from taking a nap so they went to bed early and easy (YAY!!!!)
14.  We ate ice cream to celebrate all these things. I put white chocolate and sprinkles on the cones to make them extra special.

We are so grateful for all these things that have happened - especially in relation to Brandon's Warren Officer Application. Lately, Brandon has fasted and prayed a lot for Heavenly Father's help in this process.  After today he has a much stronger testimony of fasting.  He told me today, "If you want the Army to move fast, you should fast."

In addition to these things that we are grateful for today I've also been feeling thankful for many things that people have done for me over the years.  Here is the list of people I thanked as part of my month of writing Thank You Notes (or, more accurately, Thank You Facebook Messages.)

Thursday November 7: I lived in Ephraim, Utah during the Summer of 2006. I lived in a house with other girls for most of that summer.  But my contract ended 3 weeks before my job did.  I moved in with my friend Cheysi and her family for those 3 weeks.  I had so much fun living with them.  There were things that they did like say, "I love you" to each other all the time that I wanted to do with my future family.

I messaged Chesyi's mom, Sunshine, and thanked her for opening up her home to me.

Friday November 8:  My Aunt Cheryl has passed a lot of her daughters' clothes to my girls.  It seems like every time I visited her house she had another box of clothes to give me.

Saturday November 9: The very first week Brandon and I went to our Branch we were very impressed by the Sunday School Teacher.  Brother Simons knew how to keep the class on topic, but he also could take us on interesting and insightful detours as the spirit directed.  I loved attending his class.  After he moved out I eventually was called as the Gospel Doctrine teacher.  I hoped I could be as good of a teacher as him.

Sunday November 10: After Veronica was born we ended up in the hospital on post.  A sister in my ward named Penny works there.  She brought me a big cup full of candy.  I was so happy to know that I had a friend in the building.  

Monday November 11: This was Veteran's Day so I decided to message my friend Kim.  Her husband died in combat several years ago.  I wanted her to know that I was grateful for his and her sacrifice.  I've known Kim since 7th grade and so I also thanked her for being my friend back then.  She was in 9th grade and I really looked up to her.

Tuesday November 12: Way back when I was 11 I hated Primary.  I was the only girl my age and I just wanted to move into the Young Women.  But then I had a teacher named Tish who I adored.  She made me like coming to church and learning about the gospel.

Wednesday November 13: Remember way when I was 8 months pregnant with Derrick and I decided it was a good idea to move our family from our up stairs apartment to one downstairs?  Well lots of people helped with that move including the Sister Missionaries.  One of the sisters, Sister Snow, was brand new to the mission.  She came and helped clean my bathroom and kitchen without ever having met me before.  Later we got to know each other and became friends.


How about you?  What are you grateful for? Who have you thanked?  Leave a comment if you want to share. Even if you aren't able to write 30 Thank you notes you should at least write one.  Some of the people I thanked wrote me back saying that I had made their day.  This really is such an easy way to give service.

Big News and a Request for Help

A few months ago I did something that terrified me.  I applied to be a blogger for our local paper.  I knew I was under-qualified -- the job needed someone with newspaper experience and I've never even taken a journalism class.  But I went ahead and applied anyway because I thought it would be a good learning experience.   

The hardest part of the whole application process was when I wrote my cover letter.  I second guessed every word I wrote.  I knew that letter would be read by someone who wrote for a living, surely they would sneer at my sentence structure and diction.  And I laughed at myself as I tried to talk up my little personal blog that usually only has 100 page views per post.  

And then I screamed as I hit send to submit my cover letter and writing samples.  That was one of the scariest things I've done because it was the first time I've really put myself out there professionally in over 3 years.       

If this was a Disney movie I would tell you that I got the job.  But this is real life.  I didn't even get a "Thank you for your interest e-mail." 

But ever since then I've been wanting to write "for real."  I've thought about trying to get this blog more page views (I promise having Veronica at home was not a publicity stunt).  However, I didn't feel comfortable letting this blog - where I talk A LOT about my kids - be accessed by Google searches.

On Thursday the thought popped into my head to create a new blog for reviews of all the places where Brandon and I have traveled. 

I have not been able to get that thought out of my head.  I honestly can't believe I never thought of it sooner.  I LOVE planning our vacations. I start thinking about them at least 6 months in advance.  I love exploring new places, and finding unexpected stopping places along the way.  After the fun of going on the trip is over I love to reminisce with Brandon about the cool things we have done.  And of course I love blogging about our trips.

This new blog will be different from the way I currently blog about our trips.  On illguthlife I do it more as a journal - a record of what we did each day.  The new blog's posts will talk about each place separately.  I'm going to start out writing about places we've already visited, but I plan to add lots of new material - especially as we move around the country (and maybe even world) throughout Brandon's military career.  

I've spent the weekend giving myself a crash course in professional blogging.  I've learned about things like: blogger vs wordpress, branding, registering a website, something called whols, copyright laws, layout, etc.  

I'm planning on launching the blog in January.  I have a ton of ideas for things I'm going to do.  It's been a long time since I was so excited for something.  I just have one tiny little problem.  

I have no idea what to name the blog.

I want a name that says something like, "I know about lots of cool places to visit in this country. And you should go on vacation to those places because they are awesome.  Oh and bring your kids because they will have fun too."  But shorter and catchier.

Please leave a comment if you have an idea for what to call my blog.  If I pick your suggestion you will have eternal bragging rights.  Also leave a comment if you have any suggestions or encouragement - I need all I can get.  

And don't worry, I'll still write about our day to day adventures on this blog.