Long time no post

I decided I would try to be better and post once and a while again. At least once every couple weeks just to keep up with life a little more. So since my last post....it was a long and difficult summer. I am so glad that is over and that we made it through. made the biggest mistake of my life and learned a very hard lesson that I do not wish on anyone. That being said, we made it through and are moving on to the next chapter in our life.

L had decided to get her degree in public health and go to Physician's Assistant school. She is really excited and more challenged in school than she has ever been before. This term is going to be hard, but she loves it. I am going to school online and looking for a job after losing mine at the end of September. I loved my job, but guess it was not supposed to be. I am now working on getting my general education degree and will then transfer to a university to continue. That is unless I find something that really catches my interest in the meantime.

I have gotten into knot trying these last couple months. I love it! It is something that takes focus and is technical. I am stuck on making survival bracelets in many different knot patterns and colors. I am also going to expand my selection to belts and at some point other awesome things as well. I am looking into what it would take to start a small side business to support my new love and get some awesome stuff out there for people as well. More to come on that when I figure it out.

Anyhow, life is awesome right now, I love it, and I love my wife. The holidays were great, and being back in school this term is great!

What a day... :-)

Soooo, this morning we sold our Subaru. It was pretty sad but time to move on and get a different car. We are waiting and shopping around so we will be a one car family for a little while. I'm hoping for a truck or car, either a Honda, Toyota or VW. We'll see, were looking and drooling and comparing all over town.

Next good thing today...I GOT A JOB! I have been pondering over the last few months if I should apply for a position with Early Head Start, a program in Oregon that works with at risk children and families at their homes and also in the classroom. I had been encouraged by many to apply, but held off with one excuse or another. Going back a little, I have been volunteering at Family Building Blocks, a very similar program for the past three months and LOVING it! One of the head people there actually pulled me out of the classroom last Tuesday to talk to the training and hiring coordinator for Early Head Start and was asked why I had not applied yet. I did have my resume halfway done at home and told her I would send it when I got home, was given her personal email to send it to to expedite the process, and was sent back to finish my day. I sent it off that afternoon, and by Thursday had an interview. I thought it went well, and apparently it did because I got the offer this morning. It is still yet to set in that I just got my dream job.

On the other hand, it is finals week and I have so little but so much left to do. I have a prop box to complete and write about the development of children when using it. I have 3 hours in the lab and 3 hours for environments day, which is basically deep cleaning and redoing the classrooms and outdoor area, and to lead a music time. Sounds like fun...then I have one day off and start my new job on Friday with First-aid/ CPR training.

Time to get my Oregon drivers license.

OH and my sister and niece Natalie (who is 2 months old today) are coming in exactly ONE month for a visit! I can't wait to see her in person and take her hiking and hold her and lover her and show her off!

Ok, back to work...HAPPY MONDAY!

A long long time ago...

I blogged, but then I stopped due to work and school and not having free time for anything. Well, winter term ended, I no longer have a job, some awesome friends came to visit for spring break, and spring term has started at school. I know, a lot has happened, but that is not the best part! My little (by almost 2 years) sister and her husband had thier baby this evening! Her name is Natalie, and she is adorable. 21 inches, 7 pounds 14 inches, and best of all healthy! She is over 3000 miles away, but I decided to make her a softie for her birthday. It is my first, and my first solo project on the sewing machine after just one other project, my pillowcase last week. here is the pillowcase first, I only sewed a little of it though, I was learning!

Then today I made Lumpy, Lumpy the horse.

I think Lumpy could also be named frankenstien, and this is why...

Bob Vila made it look so easy...I think practice is in order!

Thats all for tonight, happy birthday Natalie!

Gush

Ok so after not blogging but once a month for so long, three days in a row is weird, but I have to say it is a nice release to do it. my lovely wife is off learning about police stuff at the civilian police academy tonight, which I am proud of her for doing and so glad to see her doing. She has fianlly found something she loves, and that makes me very happy. This one tonight is all about her...although she may not read it. Hope she doesn't mind... :-)

I love her, I love her, I love her, and boy am I proud of her. She is an amazing woman who has come a long way not only physically, but also emotionally. L started out overweight when I met her, and as I got to know her more, she put on more weight. I have since learned this was to try to scare me away because she had been alone for a while, and was scared of something new and something different. For this, I feel terrible, and even more so because I let it happen...I watched it happen, and I was the reason for it. As she started gaining more weight, our lives became more sedintary as the things she was physically able to do were lessened, and mentally I think she got it stuck in her head that she could not do it either. We would sit at home and watch movies, or go to basketball games, but we would not do anything physical because she hurt and could not breathe well. As time went on, I realized how bad it was getting, and was honestly scared for her as I know she also was for herself. A trip to the hospital one morning was a huge eye opener for both of us among many other smaller things.

L and I got married on 8/8/08 in beautiful Humbolt County California which is near the oregon California border and the redwood forests. It was amazing, small just a few friends, nothing fancy and was the barefoot beach wedding we had talked about for years. Our amazing friend Brooklyn was deputized so she could perform the ceremony, for which we will be forever grateful. We wore button up shirts with our pant legs rolled up and we camped in tents for a week before and after the wedding and toured the redwoods and surrounding towns thoroughly. We found a perfect place on the beach right in front of that very front rock that looks like a woman sitting looking out over the ocean.

It was amazing, and I was so happy to finally be marrying the love of my life, my everything matter what. I did't care that she weighed so much, I married her anyhow. In case she ever does see this I am not going to post what she weighed at this point in time, but it was considered morbidly obese.

After much research and discussion, she decided she wanted to have gastric bypass as she was told that on her own she would have about a 2% chance of losing the weight. This was a huge blow for her as well as me. We want children, and we both want to be there to chase them and play with them, watch them get married and have kids of their own if they want to. Needless to say, we were worried she would not get to see our children grow up or get to sit in rocking chairs on our porch together someday. We did many pre operation preperations, etc and on Nov 4 2008 I found myself sitting in the waiting room at the hospital while L had her surgery. I have to say that was probably the longest 3 hours of my life. After a succesful surgery and three rough days in the hospital, she was released and I was able to take her home with me. If you have never slept on a hospital cot in a room meant for one person...it is an experience. I am just thankful the nurse allowed me to stay every night as they could have kicked me out at any time.

I took good care of my wife, making protien shakes and making her eat, making sure to carefully measure out her meals and keep track of when she ate. I poured my heart and soul into helping her to succeed. I even changed my eating habits to help her succeed. I had a protien shake with her, I didn't eat in front of her, I cut out soda, fast food and sugar totally. This was something to change both our lives and I wanted to support her as much as possible. Well, of course my wonderful wife did amazing. It has been to this point a very long and dificult journey since Nov 2008, many tears, but even more accomplishments and smiles. She looks amazing and I am so proud of her. In just over a year my beautiful wife has lost over 130lbs. and is still losing all the time. She is healthier than she has ever been, both physically and mentally. Her eyes are brighter, she wants to go jogging (and I hate running), wants to life weights and build muscle, and most of all never wants to get heavy again. just a couple months ago we walked through DollyWood for 8 hours, something I NEVER thought would even be possible in her previous state. The top pic is her 3/10/2008, and the bottom is on 12/29/09.

I AM SO PROUD OF HER! The differnce is amazing, and the great thing is that she is finally aware of how good she looks. She never saw it before, but now she has confidence in herself and she is not embarassed for me to be seen with her. We go out for walks with the dogs, wrestle, laugh harder than we have ever laughed and every day I love her more. The bad part is she can almost wear my clothes...I'm starting to have to share some of them...but if that is the price I have to pay to have my wife around for 30 extra years...I'll live! She only weighs 20lbs more than me right now and that is something to gush about!

Her newest endeavor in all of this is doing what she wants to do and not what other people think she should do. I am pushing her to follow her dreams like she never had the ability to before, and that is to work in criminal justice as a police officer. She is all for it and I don't think I have ever seen her this giddy about something...ever. She is pouring her heart and soul into it, and it's all she talks about. I LOVE IT! I love that she is so excited about something that she wants to talk about it, and she isn't complaining at all. She is taking 20 credit hours, all criminal justice classes as well as doing the civilian police academy and attempting to be a housewife. The housewife part is showing improvement little by little, but I have no doubt she will succeed because she wants it.

So I suppose the whole point of this was to just express my extreme happiness and put into words how proud I am both of her and to be with her. I love my wife!

I love my choice!

I just have to say I love my choice to work with children! I am going to school for early childhood education and really want to work with infants and toddlers. One of my current classes requires me to work in the child development center at the school 3 hours per week. I spent my first 3...well 4 because I didn't want to leave there today, and it reminded me why I made this decision in the first place. I love the kids, and love getting to help them learn and grow as humans, and to see their faces light up when they figure out how to do something on their own. I love kids, and I can not wait until it is time to go back and spend more time with them! Oh, and I know we are not supposed to have favorites, but I do already! My little boy with blond wavy hair who wants to dance with me and hold my hand! Love it!!! I just hope that everyone who reads this has a job or something in life that they love and that really makes them happy, becuase without it...what a bunch of cranky miserable people we would be. Thats my thought for the day.

Time to play catch up...

So I started this blog a long time ago it seems to try to document a journey, but as you can se I have been abandoning it for a variety of reasons. Number one being motivation. I wanted to use it as a documentation of the process of pregnancy/ life through it and beyond, but since those plans have been put on hold a few months, did not feel like blogging. Number two being time. I work full time when not in school, and durring school, I go to scholl full time and work about 30 hours per week as well, so time is something I do not get alot of unless it consists of homework. it may not blog everyday, but one of my goals this year is to blog at least once a week or so, and include more than what I originally planned. I figure if people with three jobs and a kid, or no job but two kids can do it, I can as well!

So to catch up over the past couple months...L and I spent two weeks over Thanksgiving in North Carolina and Tennesee trying to relax and get a little family time in. We did indeed get family time, although it was not as relaxing as we had hoped for. I won't get into that, but it was still nice to go do some things we wanted to do, and see family. We got to meet our nieces who we had never met, and love them! I know we have both talked about wishing we could have seen them more and hope this is something that can happen in the future. We also got to go gem mining which we look forward to from the minute we leave the mine each time, and came home with a bag full of emeralds, rubbies, a sapphire, garnets, and many other pretty rocks. L got her wish and I accompanied her to DollyWood. If you ask her what there is to do in Tenessee, you will hear Dollywood be the first thing out of her mouth. I have to say, it was awesome! We rode rollercoasters, including the Mystery Mine (a close up of our picture take on the ride)

Needless to say, it was awesome, we rode it a couple times. We also rode all the other rollercoasters that were open, meaning none of the water ones, and took the train ride into the foothills of the smokies to look at Christmas lights. The train is a real steam engine, and you even get the ash in your eyes from the coal it is powered by. It was awesome, but a little cold. We had a blast there, and I would go again, even though there are not as many big rides as there are at Six Flags! On the way back from North Carolina there was a huge storm and all the flights routing through ATL (Atlanta) were delayed or canceled. Well, the nice gentelman at the desk thought it would possibly work if they rerouted us through MSP (Minneapolis St. Paul) instead, and we thought that to be a great idea as well. L, knowing the travel industry, being very friendly and lighthearted about the whole thing, and not being shy asked about being upgraded to first class. He said well I don't know if I can do that, so she asked for free bags instead since you now have to pay 15 per checked bag, and he said he didn't think that was something he could do either. We were ok with that as it never hurts to ask, and he got us on the flight to MSP, and didn't charge us for bags which was awesome. Well, as we were standing in line for security looking at our tickets seeing that we got a meal on the flight...we suspected it may be fist class. The more we looked, the more like first class it appeared we were to be sitting. needless to say our flight was delayed for 6 hours even going to MSP because the plane we got on was coming from ATL. So, we knew we would miss our flight from MSP to home that night, and planned to sleep in the airport as the airlines had already said that since due to weather, no accomodations would be made, or compensation either. We did make a couple awesome friends in the airport, and enjoyed talking to the them all day, and thankfully we were right next to the Cinnabon as well. So, when it was finally time to leave, we were indeed in first class, and man, dinner was amazing! I don't have any pictures of it that night though as I didn't think about it until it was to late. Then we get to MSP and at the counter waiting for us were hotel vouchers and food vouchers for dinner and breakfast! AWESOME! Go Delta, seriously so glad to sleep in a bed, not a chair! So we went to the hotel and went to bed.

Next day, it is snowing when we get up, just a little bit, but I was sooo excited about it and had to play in it for a few minutes. So we get there and cash in our vouchers at Starbucks for as much as we can (most of which ended up making it all the way home with us), board the plane which L had also talked us into first class for the night before, and away we go. I do have pictures of this, as I figure it will not happen often, so here are a few...

And yes, the third is my amazing breakfast complete with free wine...and real silverware! So that about sums up our trip...there was much more and many more pics, but three is enough for now. It was awesome, I love to fly, and first class really made it even more amazing!

Then came Christmas, which was awesome all around. We did Christmas with my family on the 16th as my sister was in town, some gifts recieved by us were a pea coat which I have really been wanting, Beatles Trivial Pursuit from my sister, L got a really nice cashmere sweater from my grandparents, and a lot of yarn from my sister, and my mom got us a new set of sheets which are really soft and our new favorites to sleep in among other things. My favorite gift that we gave this year was for my mom, a history teacher who is especially interested in WW2 a cigar box that we turned into a propoganda box. We took the cigar box and covered it in well known and not so well know WW2 propoganda posters and made a collage inside and out and then used buttons off an old military uniform to make a closure for it. I have a lot of pictures of us creating this, but until I can find the cord to the camera, imagination will have to suffice.

Oh, and the last thing I will tell you about Christmas, my absolute favorite part was L opening her gift from me. As some know she has lost over 130lbs since Nov 2008 and her wedding ring was falling off her finger. So, I went out and got her a new one that sparkles and suprised her. She had no clue and teared up when she opened it. It made me so happy to see her face and now to see her wear it everyday, and that was the best part of my Christmas this year.

Oh, and Sarah, thanks for telling me how to add pictures and links!

A free give away by a super cool lady...

So a friend of our Sarah is doing a giveaway on her blog for an awesome hand made softie. No strings attached, just something fun for her to do for her readers and also to get more readers. Check it out, it's going to be awesome!