Thanksgiving and Gratitude

Montana

This Thanksgiving, we visited my parents in Montana for 4 days and enjoyed great food, games, and quality time with family. I personally was missing my parents especially when the Fall season started and am so grateful I was able to come visit for so long. Claire enjoyed playing with a new house and toys even if she doesn't like sleeping in her Pack N Play or being stuck in a car seat for 6 hours. Luckily, our drive up wasn't bad because there isn't too much snow or storms going on this week, yet another things to be grateful for! Even though it was suppose to story the drive back was also pretty clear and we made it home safe.

Claire

Our little girl enjoyed exploring a new house and playing with new toys she has never seen but got bored sometimes and begged to go outside. She is so spoiled here with Grandpa and Nana wanting to love on her all the time and make her happy that I don't know how she is going to handle us not living with her other grandparents...more on that in the next section. She loved playing in the backyard and the day it snowed was extra exciting for her because this is the first time she is experiencing snow this year! It wasn't much but it was new and she seemed quite happy to play in the piles that formed, even if the dirt in the planting pots and rocks were more entertaining. We are just trying to keep her as warm as possible with mittens and her warm jacket she still fits in from Christmas last year!

Working

Chris was offered a job at a hospital in Utah starting the 3rd of December! We are very excited to be moving forward, not necessarily farther away from family, but at least moving onward in life. This is the first full-time job he has had to search out and go through the process of waiting for interviews, get rejections, and all that. Since finding out, we have searched out places to live that will suit our life style and are going to be spending early next week looking and picking a place to live then hopefully be able to move in next weekend. It it going to be a very busy week and I hope everything can work our in our favor with finding a place because he will be starting work and I can't move us alone. Prayers for our success are appreciated!

Thanksgiving

Although it feels like Thanksgiving can be mostly about the food, we also like to spend time with family and enjoy the company of those we love. It is a time to reflect on all the things we are grateful for over the last year and I want to share a list of things I am especially grateful for over the last year because I have so many.

1. Chris graduating from BYU-I
2. All the time I get to spend with Claire
3. My ability to work for VIPKID
4. Living with family for the past few months
5. Chris finding a job in his desired field
6. Having another addition to our family coming next year
7. Visiting my best friend in August
8. Knowing my brothers will be here at the end of the year
9. Being financially stable
10. Knowing I am loved and watched over

Reading

I was right! I wasn't good at taking time to be by myself to read my scriptures while I was visiting family for the holidays so I am a few days behind. I can either try to catch up or agree that I won't be finishing before Christmas like my timeline indicated, but I don't think either would be a bad option. I still expect to finish the whole book before the New Year to complete the challenge.

Searching and Planning

Future

I wish I could give the news that Chris finally got a job and we are moving, but unfortunately we won't know until later this week if they have made their official decision and then we can make the preparations to move. I've already done some simple apartment searching but don't want to do anything to serious until we know for sure. I've already spent one sleepless night worrying over what will come in the next week that I need to relax and let the Lord guide us where we are supposed to be.

Claire

She is getting more and more talkative and started making new talking sounds that is just way to cute especially when she fake talks on the phone. I love how she is getting so smart and will come up to me to grab my leg and take me to what she wants. She reaches for things when we hold her to tell us where to go and has learned to say hi and wave goodbye. She turned 15 months this past week and got some more immunization shots, but she was so brave and barely cried out. There weren't even any tears afterward and wanted her band aids off the very next day because they apparently didn't belong on her leg. We also got another peek at her little sister who was covering her face but is growing really well and still due the beginning of March.

Thanksgiving plans

We plan to be up in Montana for Thanksgiving this year with my side of the family who hasn't got enough Grandpa and Nana time recently. I'm very excited to visit them, especially since we are going to be there for about 4 days and Nana won't have to work at all during that time! We get to travel up there with my brother and his fiance, spend a day baking pies and Christmas sweets, have a traditional Thanksgiving feast, see movies, decorate, play games, and get all the holiday cheer I can stand. I keep thinking how great it is that they live closer than Missouri and we get to see them more often, even if I still think it's not enough.

Reading

We are well into Alma and working our way through all the great missionary work and soon to be wars that will happen. I'm a few chapters ahead of schedule even just in case this week becomes too busy with the holidays to finish what needs to be done every day. It is still weird to be in two parts of Alma and trying to keep it straight when reading with Chris because of all the wars that do happen. Keep up the good work ladies!

P.S.

Sorry I was bad at taking pictures this week...there will be plenty coming next week because of the holidays!

Into November

Weather getting colder, day light savings ruining by perfectly good schedule for work, and thinking about how Thanksgiving. That is what November has brought me and I'm only happy about one of those things.

Work

I had a perfect schedule of getting up in the morning to teach 5 classes from 5am-7:30am and then going to take a nap before starting the day with Claire but now I can't teach that late. I don't want to wake up earlier that than so now I'm only teaching 4 classes and working until 7am then trying to make up those missed classes on an evening which has become a flop. The only evenings that I get scheduled to work are Friday and Saturday which is when everyone wants to do things. I also don't like my husband watching me teach and would rather him be sleeping like he has been in the morning classes. My schedule might end up changing soon anyway because he has applied for more jobs and we hopefully will move and need to work around his new working schedule. All still up in the air...yay.

Claire

Is adorable! Look at how long her hair is getting! I can get them into these cute back pigtails now and she is just so much fun to see running around with her hair actually done. She is still moving nonstop and wants to get into everything, especially whatever I'm working on at the moment. The short time she was downstairs while I was teaching showed that all she wants is to be where I am and unfortunately that is the one place she can't be. Daddy has been good about watching her for my two evening sessions of classes I had this week and now we have to decide if we will continue evening sessions with Claire wanting the attention.

Reading

I'm already into Alma now and can you believe how fast this is going? Reading with Chris right now is nearing the end of Alma so it is a little crazy to be in two different parts of Alma with reading. I've been loving the spirit I get when I make time to read every day and even though I missed a day this week I was able to catch up by reading extra on other days. As I put the scriptures as a priority, I have been able to see how they can make my life every day a little more like Christ and I can make my home a more Christ centered home. I hope I am this good with the new program that will be starting at the beginning of the New Year and look forward to sharing those thoughts and the progress we make.

Halloween!!

I have actually been waiting so long to write this post, because I am very proud of the Halloween costumes I made for our little family. It took a while to decide what we were going to be and it was between two things, but of course I thought about it two months ago. Then it took another couple weeks to get all the pieces together once I made my decision, a little more time to make what I needed to make, and then was able to finish everything so we had it done by Halloween. I've very in love with our costumes because not only do we match, we are including our little one that is still hidden in my belly! This might be a generational costume because not many older people know the Pokemon anime and the younger generation only recognized Ash and Pikachu since they are still the main characters. Poor Misty has been forgotten by anyone who hasn't seen the first couple seasons of Pokemon, those were the classics!

Making and Planning

As you can see in our picture, Chris was dressed up as Ash Ketchum with Claire as his Pikachu from the TV series Pokemon. I was dressed as Misty and our little unborn girl was the Togepi she carries around in the early seasons which is still half in it's egg so it just ended up being too perfect. We didn't have anyone to be Brock who is also in the crew, but that wasn't as important in my opinion. Our hair was also not the right color of course but, I did get my hair contained to a small side bun for her short hair because with it down it was crazy long and anyone who knew Togepi knew I was Misty.


I went to DI and found the cloths we didn't already have for Ash and Misty, including the hat that was originally all red and I painted white and the symbol on the front. I had to buy the suspenders even though I'm sure I used to have some, they were either given away years ago or now packed away in all the stuff we aren't using right now. I made Togepi out of felt and hot glued on my yellow shirt knowing my belly would make it more 3D. We originally bought a hat for Claire to wear to become Pikachu but she refused to wear it so I tried to make ears that would attach to her piggy tails. Of course she didn't like that either and tried to shake them and pull them out. In the end, her piggy tails are the ears because that is as much as she will let me mess with her head at this stage in her life, we put styling gel and face paint color in her hair and they look cute with her little cheeks and nose. The tail is made out of a cereal box with felt hot glued on then a little fabric paint for the brown, then I safety pinned it to her but and top of her onesie so she didn't drag it on the floor. I also had those back stripes I cut out and hot glued onto her onesie and pants to complete the outfit!

Life

I won't say everything is as happy as making a matching costume for Halloween, but we are trying to deal with life as it comes. Waiting for a call for a job has brought on stress and unwanted tension that has only increased with the more applications that Chris puts in. We try to have the best attitude about what the future holds for our little family and know that Heavenly Father is guiding our lives. I think we are being prepared for what is to come and getting time with family and friends here in Blackfoot is good for us if we end up having to move farther away. The holidays are coming and I hope to be able to see my family soon too because I keep feeling that we are going to end far away.

Reading

It is pretty amazing how far you can read into the Book of Mormon when you read so much! We are already half way into Mosiah! If I was reading at a normal rate I would probably be just barely getting into 2 Nephi and still have all the Isaiah chapters left to go. I hope everyone else who is reading, has kept up with the pace and after calculating a little and continuing at the pace of 3 chapters a day, I'll be finishing right before Christmas! I will even catch up to the reading we are doing as a family and pass us at the beginning of December.