To my sweet baby James

Today is your birthday! Oh how I want to squeeze you tight and hold you so you don't get any bigger! How can you already be one?! I can't help but reflect on what I was doing this time last year. And it reminds me that I want to record more of what happened so maybe someday you too will be struck with awe at all the miracles that have happened in the year you were born. I don't exactly know how far back to start. I guess I went through a few things about our house hunting in Chicago in this entry. Little did I know that that was just the tip of the ice berg. (I want to record all the details since it's so amazing...so bare with me if I need to post this in parts.)

Things did not go as planned with closing on our house--but some day you'll learn that things never usually do when you're buying. We thought we'd close July 1st but HUD kept dragging their feet week after week. (We were buying a foreclosed home from the government.) When you have a young family and you have to move across country, definitely rent first to get to know the area so you can be near the house you want to buy. There was so much headache involved with home inspections and utility turn-ons that our angel Realtor had to orchestrate. She was amazing! Her name is Cookie Lamb. Bekah immediately loved her because her name is so cool and they became great friends. Anyway, between lead paint inspections and water pipe issues, things weren't going too well. In the meantime, your arrival was only getting nearer and we needed a place to live! Eventually we realized we wouldn't be able to close until at least the last week in July. So we moved forward the best we could thinking now that your daddy would move out immediately after you were born with the moving truck to work on the house and prepare it for us to arrive a couple weeks later. One scenario was Papa (my dad) would help me drive our little van with you and Bekah at that time to move the rest of our stuff. Another scenario, and the one we settled on, was Papa going with Daddy to help work on the house just after you were born and drive the moving van, then both of them flying back a couple weeks later and Daddy driving you, Bekah, and me in our van out to Chicago then. Things were looking tight on time, but we'd be okay.

Then things got completely out of our control. The week you were born turned out to be one of the hardest weeks of my job as a Hall Advisor. Pranks were getting out of hand and fire alarms continued to go off at all hours of the day and night. I couldn't decide if I wanted you to wait to come so I could not leave the burdens on other Hall Advisors, or if I should take drastic measures to make you come earlier just to escape it. Anyhow, to get away from it and because we wanted to go one last time before we moved, we went with Daddy's family to a restaurant called The Mayan in Sandy, Utah, about a half hour North of us. We wondered if we should risk going that far, but we decided to do it, despite having had contractions off and on for the last several weeks. Not only is the food good and the prices reasonable, the cliff diver shows are so amazing! I hope we can take you some day. You would love it. We had a great time. As we were leaving the restaurant, your daddy went to get the car while we waited with Grandma Douglas. While leaving the parking lot to pull up to the front, all of a sudden the breaks stopped working! This resulted in a minor fender bender which thankfully the driver said don't worry about it. Daddy pulled into another parking lot by using the emergency break and we met him over there.

Then the miracles started pouring in. Of course I was having some contractions during dinner but they weren't progressing--yet still I knew we needed to have reliable transportation soon! We were so glad Daddy's family hadn't left yet, since this meant Bekah and I could sit in their air conditioned car while we figured out what to do. (The temperatures were VERY hot that day.) By a miracle we had signed up for AAA just two days before!!! so we were able to tow our van for free, and luckily there was a Les Schwab near by, our favorite tire chain. This was a Saturday, though, so no repair shops were open, so it had to sit over the weekend in their parking lot. I was able to reach my Uncle Richard, who lived just 15 minutes away, who let us borrow their new and very nice van for the weekend (with awesome AC and a DVD player I might add). So within just a few hours things were back on schedule with working transportation. Still the contractions weren't regular so we were okay.

We got home and put Bekah to bed and decided we wanted to watch a movie to try to relax after the excitement of the evening. Within 15 minutes of starting The Bourne Supremacy though I was pacing back and forth trying to breath through very sudden and painful contractions. So about midnight we called my cousin Cameo to come stay the night with Bekah while your daddy and I were at the hospital. We were so glad she was home and could come over right away! I was also glad you decided to come when you did since I was going to be induced in a few days so we could make sure Daddy was here before he had to go close on our new house. (Your due date was July 25th.) The hospital checked us in quickly and your daddy and I settled in for what we thought could be a while. The epidural was started sometime soon, maybe around 3AM, and we both tried to grab as much sleep as we could between nurse checks. I woke up for good around 6AM and could tell things were getting close. I think my nurse's name was Jenny. She was very nice. Dr. Glenn was my doctor but since it was the weekend, Dr. Broadbent was on call. I'd never met him before but he knew what he was doing. I think it just took 15 minutes of pushing, and you were born. 7:15AM. All 6 pounds 9 ounces of you. All 18 inches of you. With your dusting of dark hair and surprisingly olive skin. We couldn't get enough of you.
Actually we still can't.
We are so grateful we get to be your parents.

There is so much more I want to tell you...of all you had to endure in your first few months of life. But that will have to wait. For now I am admiring the balloons and streamers and the ice cream-soaked mound of cake on your high chair tray, uneaten cupcakes, new toys strewn throughout the house. And thinking maybe now your dad and I can finish watching The Bourne Supremacy. Or maybe we should just catch up on our sleep.

Fathers & Love

I guess I could refer to this post as "the one I should have done for Father's Day" because I'm about to get personal about my dad. He's been out of a job for a long time now, over a year, and he's still doing his best to look for work. I know he wishes so bad he could be working again, not just to have the stability and security and good self-esteem again that it brings himself and my mom, but more so for so many other reasons--like wishing he could help out a struggling newlywed son who just moved completely across the country, like wishing so bad he could relax and go visit his grandkids in Delaware and Illinois and send them everything they want for their birthdays or Christmas, like helping two of his kids and about to be a third in graduate schools make it day-to-day and at the least make those vacations to Oregon possible, and now wishing he could give his newly engaged daughter the wedding of her dreams. On the surface it can appear like without money he can't be the father or grandfather he wants to be. Today during a lesson at Church I realized something else that God may have been trying to teach me and maybe other members of my family through this trial.

The lesson was based on a talk called "Adversity" by President Henry B. Eyring, one of our church leaders. Here is some of that talk:
There may be periods, sometimes long ones, when our lives seem to flow with little difficulty.... Particularly when the comfortable times have gone on for a while, the arrival of suffering or the loss of material security can bring fear and sometimes even anger.
The anger comes at least in part from a feeling that what is happening is unfair. The good health and the serene sense of being secure can become to seem deserved and natural. When they vanish, a feeling of injustice can come. Even a brave man I knew wept and cried out in his physical suffering to those who ministered to him: 'I have always tried to be good. How could this happen?'
That aching for an answer to 'How could this happen?' becomes even more painful when those struggling include those we love....
My purpose today is to assure you that our Heavenly Father and the Savior live and that They love all humanity. The very opportunity for us to face adversity and affliction is part of the evidence of Their infinite love. God gave us the gift of living in mortality so that we could be prepared to receive the greatest of all the gifts of God, which is eternal life....
It is clear that for us to have that gift and to be given that trust, we must be transformed through making righteous choices where that is hard to do.... That education can come only as we are subject to trials while serving God and others for Him.

I thought of Christ having to suffer while being on this Earth for all of us. I thought of how much I'm sure God the Father was up there wishing He could just jump in and spare Him from all this pain and suffering. I know now as a parent myself that He must have ached to rescue His Son. And yet He knew that if He did, Christ wouldn't learn what He needed to learn to fulfill His mission, and so he had the strength to stay His hand and only offer His love and comforting Spirit.

I have thought many times, especially in the last year, how I wished my mom and dad could just rescue me from my trials. Sometimes I still want my parents to make it all better. But now I'm that parent that's supposed to make it all better for my little ones. And I find myself doubting my ability to stay my hand and not rescue my children from the trials they need to go through to learn what they need to learn to fulfill their missions. Maybe in the future Jason and I will need to lose our jobs so that we aren't even remotely able to rescue them financially or be there in person to make everything all better because if we had the funds and time we wouldn't be able to stop doing for them what they need to do alone.

This has been a very poinient time of growth for each member of our family, and most of it stemming from things either happening or not being able to happen because Dad doesn't have a job. There are already hundreds of blessings and lessons learned I'm sure each one of his children could list that have come in the past year. So today I guess I learned that if Dad had kept his job and had the money that comes from that he quite possibly might not have been the father or grandfather that God needs him to be. Like President Eyring said, it's the evidence of God's love that He allows us to face adversity so we can be prepared to receive the greatest of all gifts...which is worth more than anything this world has to offer. Suddenly, I feel empowered to face these trials on my own. Suddenly, I don't feel that life is unfair. If I can just keep my eye on what lies ahead and keep that eternal perspective, I think I can be the parent He needs me to be.

Thanks dad. For always being who God needs you to be.
Happy belated Father's Day.

Backyards

So my last post talked about the baby grand piano someone was giving away. I've been meaning to write about our other big find last month. We frequently see people listing their wood towers/tree houses/swing sets, etc. for free on Craig's List...all you have to do is disassemble them (which still is a LOT of work). The catch is you have to respond in the first half hour to have any chance at getting them, since around here posts on Craig's Lists are highly viewed and responded too. (Don't forget our van sold on Craig's List in five hours!) So once we decided we wanted to do this, we watched faithfully and luckily were able to get one that was only 15 minutes away. This proved to be a necessary part of the ordeal as we had to make multiple trips. The set is old, and we had to buy lots of bolts, nuts, and screws...and sandpaper and stain...and replace a couple wood pieces...but it's worth it when you see how much those new sets cost and that's completely out of the question for us right now! We didn't actually plan it this way, but Bekah sort of started saying it was one of her birthday presents. And she will use it well.

This first picture is how it was in the people's yard we got it from (partially already disassembled) and the second picture is it starting to go up in our backyard. (It's much more put together now, but I don't have a picture of that yet and if I waited I'd never get this posted. :) It's just the tower and slide and a baby swing, not the wood swings next to it, but we plan to price out adding that on later. For now, our tree swing is very loved!

I keep saying this, but the longer we are in this house the more I love it. For the last month or so, I'm loving the backyard. The late afternoon sun hits it just right to make it appear magical when the kids (that's including us parents who get to act like kids again!) are out back swinging and singing and riding bikes and scooters and drawing chalk and playing tag and water gun fights and playing catch and soccer and frisbee and grilling dinners and toasting marshmallows...I love our back yard. It may be hard to tell from pictures we've posted before on the family website, but it seems to be just the right dimensions for us right now. And sometime soon we're going to start planting a garden. (If you would have told me that when I was a teenager I would never have believed it! Thanks, mom, for making me learn.) I'm sure there are people out there who are so glad they don't own a house and are content to rent forever, but owning a piece of land just does something for me. It's like I can claim a small corner of the world and make it a safe haven and create a small dent in the world for good. Where we can be who we want to be instead of held back by landlord rules and/or condo rules. I love being able to send Bekah out the side door into a fully fenced yard and look out my kitchen window while washing dishes and just watch her think and explore or chase bubbles she's able to blow herself now. The list could go on forever. Even James can't get enough of being outside. We just bought a kiddie pool so we can have even more fun out back. So as long as the mosquitoes stay away and the weather is good, you know where you'll probably find us. After having to rent for the last several years and the last two of those years in a one-bedroom dormitory apartment, this almost feels too good to be true. I think I can even say that though trials are hard, I'm glad God sends them because I would never feel this much joy at what many might think is having so little while times are tight right now if I hadn't already been without what we have now. So enduring the one-bedroom was worth it, enduring the constant partying of freshman was worth it (well, maybe not the 2AM fire alarms), enduring cinderblock third-floor apartments with no AC was worth it, and yes, even enduring having no place to call home for a month and a half almost this time last year...was worth it.

"For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If it were not so...righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad.
...
And [Adam and Eve] would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin.
But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things."
2 Nephi 2: 11, 23-24