Life is like a 1,000 piece puzzle....

You know those seasons in your life when you have a million and one things on your mind at all times that seems to paralyze your productivity & desire to complete anything at hand because there's so much to think about  that you simply can't stay on track? And you have a decision and then another astronomical decision to make right after you are still transitioning from a recent decision you just finalized?  Those seasons when no matter what choices you make you feel like you have no control anyway which then forces you to learn patience, hope, & faith all at the same time?

THEN, more falls onto your plate and you are more deeply overwhelmed with the new roadblocks that stand in your way.  Uneasiness follows because all your previous decisions now hinge on this simple fact that the roadblock may cause all your plans to fall through the cracks leaving you with nothing else but an empty plate waiting to be filled with more decisions and a whole new plan.   Once these roadblocks sabotage your preparations, you wonder if it's a sign of "that was the wrong decision,"  or "hold on tighter, you just need to have patience to see everything start to fall into place."

----ok this was a very specific scenario I just described....you may have never felt all these feelings all at once, but I'm sure you've grasped & experienced parts & pieces......

Things "falling into place" is a phrase that has felt non-existent in our lives the past few months, but I guess any pessimist could easily feel that way.  It hasn't been until just recently, after looking at our situation in a more "the cup is half full" perspective, that we have seen and felt the generous blessings and can honestly see the step-by-step process of things working out for our benefit.  Things that seem weird or "just happened randomly" NOW is evident that we had a higher power looking out for us and we now know without a doubt we've received help from our Father in Heaven this whole time.

These feeling and emotions can sum up the past 6 months for us.  I was telling Chase we could write a small memoir of all the blessings, trials, inconveniences, surprises, & tender mercies on this particular season of our lives.

From all the craziness, I'd say we are fortunate that our eyes have been open enough to simply witness the lessons we have learned.  These lessons continue to hang over our heads, but not in a haunting kind of way, rather as a blessing to remind us to be grateful in our circumstances no matter what, because quite honestly, things could ALWAYS be much worse-- I mean much, much worse!

And being grateful in our circumstances isn't the only thing to be mindful of-- obtaining hope and faith that everything WILL work out and will eventually start to "fall into place" can bring immense peace, IF you let patience run your way of thinking.  Its like putting a ridiculously hard 1,000 piece puzzle together.  First you plan how you will start and execute the puzzle.  Then you organize the pieces into categories or groups to hopefully keep things easier to handle.  Once you start putting pieces together you feel great and the pieces are easily "falling into place."

Quickly you learn that success is short lived and the pieces start to look all the same, you lose any real direction, you get consumed with the overwhelming task of completing the puzzle that you become paralyzed in a sense and you want to quit.  It takes a lot of trial and error, patience, & persistence.

After time, that feels like forever and after many moments of wanting to quit, you get a piece in the right spot and then another, and then another.........this slowly but surely causes a little bit of peace & confidence within you that fires the light at the end of the tunnel that makes it seem possible again to complete.  The pieces literally start falling into place and you are soon looking at the completed product and reflecting at your recent process and realize how it really wasn't THAT hard.  The process just took patience, hope, and some faith.  In most cases in life, you know the general destination or the final puzzle and what it should look like, but there are some individual pieces that you swear are from a different puzzle.  You are forced to hold on to these unrecognizable pieces until later down the road you start to see why you couldn't use them before.  They start becoming bridges to different parts of the picture.  Once these puzzle pieces seemed annoying and frustrating but now are very vital pieces to the final product.

Maybe all this is just me up on my soap box ranting about something that makes no sense to anyone.  I have felt the need to write these thoughts down because what we go through in life and the feelings associated are short lived in only in those moments.  You quickly forget those feelings you previously had and move on to the next phase of your life.  That being said, I didn't want to forget these feelings I've written about, not only to look back and laugh at how easy my life was and how sissy I was to cry and endure through it, but also, to strengthen or remind me of how God works sometimes.  He is ALWAYS there, if we have patience or not, we will see his hand in all things......

..........eventually! :)

Life Lately

Oklahoma is exactly how you would expect it to be.  At least in my opinion, if anyone ever mentioned "OK" I would quickly envision a flat, open, desolate, place....well, that's pretty much it.  Of course, you have your big cities like the capital that looks like the typical downtown- tall buildings, ballpark, eateries, etc. But if you were to drive out right out of town you will find lots of open, unused space-ALL OVER the state.

Our drive over here actually felt just like that.  It's funny how each state has it's own feel & cultural atmosphere.  Wyoming was COMPLETELY barren...holy cow.  Rocky terrain and straight, long, long freeways with lots of truck spots--true cowboy land.  Colorado seemed like a quiet, spread out (more desert-like) place, with lots of wind.  Colorado was surprisingly OPEN and had so much growing room everywhere. It seemed to be a nice place. Kansas was also just how you'd think it would be.  A lot like OK, but even more flat and empty. It was fun to witness all the pumping jacks along the freeways, and all 10 billboards in the whole state that advertised a "Wizard of Oz" museum. We didn't go, even though that would've been fun. Then we reached Oklahoma, both Chase and I were surprised how different each state; the the very moment we passed a state border we could tell it was a new state.  I couldn't help but feel happy for our country and it's diversity yet still all feeling like every state and all the people belong.  

Yay USA.

This is what we've been up to the last several weeks:

We have first and far most learned to entertain ourselves in our little hotel-suite.

We have a medium fridge, small kitchenette that includes a stove top with 2 burners, microwave, and pantry space.

When we decided to stay here we ran to Walmart to grab a few vitals like a cheap pot, a pan, a plastic spatula, a couple plates & bowls, & a $0.88 can opener that quit working the second week here.  DON'T WORRY, we've figured out how to manage.  It doesn't turn so we manually clamp down on the can all the way around the top in a quick repetitive manner. We've gotten pretty good at it.

The kids color multiple times a day.  I have at least a dozen sheets of paper lying around daily. We either grab out the cheap spiral notebooks or go downstairs to 'our office' to print off coloring pages. Because Sailor has developed an interest we have taken lots of time learning how to draw. She will tell me what she wants to learn and I will get online to find a "how to draw...." tutorial for kids.  It's been a lot of fun and I love to watch Sailor continue to get better.  Seryn hasn't taken much part into that but draws right along with us.  She usually likes to follow along with the tutorial but then gets bored and wants to finish her own way. 

Below are some of my favorite work from Sailor:

Can you guess these characters??---It's the "Wizard of Oz"  This wasn't tutorial-learned but I loved it.  The two lines on top of Dorothy's head is the yellow-brick road.

Rudolph. I thought she did a fantastic job here.

Hello Kitty.

A striped cat, a bunny, & frog.

Panda

Robot.

A cute Japanese-like cartoon girl & a bat.

Unicorn & other artistic creations.

Owl.

Here's one portrait of myself illustrated by Seryn, which I loved.  If you look close enough, she drew our little baby in my tummy.

And a bandaid.  This was one of her brilliant ideas since we didn't have any real ones at the time.  She noticed I had a hurt and thought to make one up for me.  How darling.

Sailor likes to use paper and tape for everything. 

Puzzles are great for entertaining the kids as well.  A girl from Chases' work doesn't have kids but lives with her in-laws at the moment.  And when she told her mother-in-law that Chase has some kids, she sent over so many puzzles and toys for us to borrow since they figured we had very few with us!  These are people we hadn't met yet...some people are just plain thoughtful!.  The puzzle below is one we brought from home but on the journey misplaced a piece.  Sailor's idea of fixing things with paper and tape made this puzzle complete!  She told me we need to just make a new one and asked if I could trace it on paper and then add the Statue of Liberty to it...since she remembered that's where it went.

We've been fortunate to make some good friends & visit old ones too!  

We spent an evening with the Sparks  who live 30 mins away from us.  We had an awesome time catching up and eating Rob's famous ribs.  Thanks guys!!

We also met and spent some time with our new friends- the Moores.   Chase works with Julie sometimes, who is a part-time optometrist, who has two girls just a year older than mine.  The girls all got along well.  We went to a museum, a tea party cafe for lunch, & played some more at a local park.  We fell in love with them instantly! And what an awesome person Julie is, she hadn't even met us yet but gave us all of her girls' hand-me-downs!  You kidding me??  She is so thoughtful and just figure we could probably use them. Again, how plain thoughtful some people are.
It made my girls' day! :)

As for me, I'm growing, and so is that little baby inside there.

This picture was taken about 24 weeks. I guess I'm almost 28 now...and I feel it.  I'm ready for it to be JUNE!  I feel like the swelling has begun!

We had a great surprise visit from my grandparents!  They are from WA but just happen to be driving through OK to get to TX so we had them over to our ward on Sunday and spent a few hours with them until they were back on the road.  It was the greatest surprise and so nice to have familiar faces in such a faraway land. :)

They drove a full 24 hours STRAIGHT from ID to get here.  My grandpa drove all through the night and even attended all 3 hours of church with us; without falling asleep! :)  We spent our time with them but then left for a dinner date with some friends so they could rest a bit before they were back on the road. My grandma was already snoozing by the time we took this picture.

We like the parks, going to the local library, an of course swimming when the pool is open.

Here's a view from a park.  Chase actually works right at that building on the left side of the picture.  And our hotel is down the freeway a bit.  I didn't know it until we got here but Toby Keith is from this humble little town.

So, we've had a lot of 'firsts' happen since we got here...A LOT of things. Once we got here another issue occured in our car, and because it kept having issues after we had taken it in to get fixed the first time (in Jan) we decided to just trade it in.  We ended up getting a car instead of a explorer like our previous.  While we were trading that in, the dealership gave us free tickets to an auto show not far from us so we decided to check it out one weekend.  The girls were thrilled to meet these two characters who made a presence:

The girls have done really well since this change occurred. 

They could careless where we were, as long as they could run around and be kids.

Plus, sleeping on a hideaway bed every night doesn't get old to them.

  

One weekend we made a trip down south to Dallas, TX to visit some family.  My grandparents (who stopped to visit us) were heading that way and stayed there for a week, so before they left we drove down to spend some family time.

We spent a couple days at my aunt & uncles house where two of my cousins and their families came to meet up.  

I can't express enough how great this time was.

We hung out, did lots of catching up, ate out, & hung out some more.  My aunt and uncle are just a few years older than me, so they had 3 young girls that are around my girls' ages.......you can imagine how fun the "Frozen (movie) Sleep-over" was for them!

To summarize, we are still alive and doing fantastic, & feeling grateful.

I am trying to keep up with our non-consistent, ever-moving, so many decisions to make in the next couple months kind of lives.

We will keep in touch. :)

While on our way to Oklahoma

Over the past month, our little family has made home in a local hotel room in Moore, OK.  This was never the plan, in fact, we had an apartment deposit paid for and spent several hours in our new apartment for a night until the next morning-- we realized we may be on the wrong side of town!  But before I delve into that drama let us rewind back to mid-February when we pulled out of Idaho to venture over to the other side of the country.

We left Boise on the 19th of February after noon.  Chase came home from work and looked at the map and thought, 'maybe we should leave tomorrow morning'.  I had been packing the car all day and was preparing to leave that hour. Because of that, and a feeling I had that kept nudging me to get on the road ultimately persuaded us to head out then. Chase quickly changed his mind and agreed that we should get going 'just in case anything happens along the way'.  

Not 30 minutes on the road we started to feel a foreign shaking, swurvy feeling in the car.  We thought it could've been gusts of wind, but that shakiness accompanied a sliding feeling similar to the feeling you'd get if you were sliding on ice. The roads were completely bare and there wasn't much wind, so we were left a little confused but we kept going thinking it was probably alright.  The previous week, we took the car into a dealership  to get the oil changed, tires rotated, pretty much an overall check up in preparation for this long trip, and since they said "everything looks great" we figured it wasn't a car issue.  So we kept driving but Chase definitely felt the need to be extra cautious.  

We continued to drive but anytime the road even slightly swurved or we had to take an exit the car was swuvring and sliding.   We rotated the weight in the back of the car a couple different times hoping maybe the weight was distributed unevenly.  After reading in the car manual, after we noticed the "trailor-sway" light blinking on, Chase eventually slowed down well under the speed limit which prevented most of the sliding feeling we were experiencing.

After 4 hours of driving, we got to Ogden, UT and we felt impressed to top off the gas before turning onto a freeway that would be taking us through the mountains.  All along the way we realized we were being guided and directed.  We took an exit towards a gas station but it took us up a weird hill and onto a toll road.  Chase was slightly annoyed that we had to pay money to go get gas so he was about to turn around and take another exit further down the freeway, but I had a strong feeling that we should get the gas NOW.  

We paid the toll and then drove a few miles up the road to a gas station. But, as we pulled into the gas station Chase noticed a weird clanking sound under the car--this sound just started to happen at that moment.  The girls  and I went in to use the restroom while Chase was investigating. He drove the car in circles in an empty parking lot trying to figure out the sound.  We both got under the car and checked it out, but everything looked good and nothing seemed out of place so we were in the car ready to head back towards the mountains and onto our journey, but at that moment I decided last minute to grab some food for dinner.

 So I jumped back out of the car, ran back into the gas station to grab a couple corn dogs I spotted minutes earlier.  I went in and all the corn dogs were gone.  I asked the man at the cash register about them (since that was the only food in the area that I knew my girls wouldn't fuss about), and the man's response was that he just threw them away. He offered to make more so I said that would be great and called Chase to let him know it was going to take several minutes. Chase decided that was fine and he was going to drive around a little bit more to see if the clanking sound continued. 

This was a blessing because it took 10 minutes for me to grab the grub, which was JUST enough time for the TIRE TO FALL OFF.  

I was just about done paying for the corn dogs when Chase calls me and says ," the tire fell off and I'm stuck in the middle of a road right behind the gas station."

I got out there and see it's hanging off of the car at a 45 degree angle.  The car wouldn't move!  Not 3 minutes later a cop pulls up behinds us and was incredibly nice to sit there with us as we call the car insurance, call for a tow truck, and then wait for a taxi to take us to a hotel that night.  Long story short (I know, too late), the tow man and cop were a blessing.  We didn't have to take a taxi because the tow man and cop didn't want for us to pay for that, so I rode in the cop car and the kids and Chase rode with the tow man. They took us straight to the hotel and then the tow man decided to drive the car straight to the dealership.  The cop said he'd follow the tow man there to make sure everything goes well.  That night we were so glad everything went so smoothly and as we looked back at all the little instances on the way there, we realized we were SOOO lucky it didn't fall off going 80 mph on the freeway.  We felt like we were inspired to make the smallest little decisions that helped us to have a very safe, and smooth car 'issue'.

The next day, our car got fixed, and we were on the road again by 4pm and after a few miles on the road, again we realized we were SOOOOOOOOOOOOO incredibly blessed that the tire fell off where and when it did rather than on the road we were heading on.  The road was the swurviest road we had been on thus far with water and cliffs on both sides of us.  Chase was driving both days, so he instantly realized by the way the car was driving the previous day it could have easily swurved off of the road.  We quickly said a prayer of gratitude.  We were so grateful for our safety!

After eventually getting to Oklahoma (it was like 10pm- Friday night), we had another great TENDER MERCY or blessing.  As we pulled up on the road that our apartment was going to be on we noticed a tattoo parlor, an adult shop, & a bar right down the road from our new "home."  We felt a little uneasy about that and then pull up to a not so nice apartment complex that looked livable but a bit sketchy.  As we park we notice a man struggling to walk towards the apartment...most likely drunk...and barely clothed.  Yikes!

We call the landlord, who was a very nice lady, to meet us and sign papers and what not.  She took us to our new apartment, gave us the keys, and said to come into the next day or so to sign the contract. At that time it was late so she wanted us to rest. What a blessing that was that we were able to wait to sign any contract because the apartment was disgusting:

It was a furnished apartment (so we didn't have to bring a uhaul of stuff like our beds, furniture, etc.)  There were wet, used towels, used bars of soaps, non working toliet, tv remote had a band-aid on it holding the battery casing on it, smelly, doorstep covered in cigarette butts and garbage, & more. But most disgusting was the girls bed...we look in the sheets and there were hairs ALL OVER IT...BARF .  I instantly felt sick to my stomach feeling really uneasy about the whole situation; partly because I felt so far away from family and anyone we knew, but also because I was trying to talk myself into staying there for the next few months.  We decide to spent the night there and wake up in the morning to check out the area in the day time, hoping it would look better or make us feel better about the apartment.  Through out the night there was music playing, people coming and going right outside our window, small groups of people smoking and hanging out in the early morning hours, etc.  

We woke up that next morning and started driving around the area.  Chase was definitely inspired because the first place he decided to drive to was the closest LDS church- just because....no reason at all, he just felt like we should.  We get there and another car pulled up behind us so Chase felt like we should ask them about the area.  We introduced ourselves, told them we just moved there the previous night, and asked if they knew the area well.  The guy responds with, "Well, I'd be the person to ask because I am a detective for the police department for this town."  WOW.  He told us the apartment  we were at is where he gets drug-bust calls for quite frequently, stolen cars, and even some shootings over our way.  He told us where to go & pretty much where to avoid.

 And as we drove away......we felt so overwhelmed with gratitude....... AGAIN we felt so blessed!

We continued to drive around, scope out the area, & look into apartment complexes that the detective recommended.  Unfortunately, no openings were available so we looked into the hotel extended rates around town for the time while we waited for one to open up.  

Well, it's been 7 weeks since we got here and we are still calling our humble little hotel room home for now.  :)

It has turned out that this situation is better for us right now... 

plus, the girls get to swim again in the indoor pool!!

We are enjoying our little adventure thus far and appreciate the kind people we have encountered these past several weeks.  If we have learned anything this past month,  it would be that the world is full of kind, generous people...

...AND that it pays to listen carefully to those sweet promptings that the Holy Ghost so graciously sends.

First Born

At the end of December, I, my sisters, & mom threw Macey (my other sister) a little open house baby shower right before we all dispersed after the holidays.

(T is not photographed here)

We threw it at my aunt's house which turned out great.  A sweet, small, comfortable gathering where we snacked on hot cocoa, scones, and fruit while we caught up with everyone. 

As we mingled, we had a table set with crayons, markers, and such for those who were adventurous enough to draw a picture on a page in Macey's baby girl's "ABC" -alphabet book.

I bought a book-making kit off of amazon that send the papers and materials to make a book.  Once your done coloring/designing it, you send it back to the company and they compile your book into a hard-back cover.  The book/pages turned out sooo cute!  We had each person pick a letter and design a page from there.  The book is currently at the company getting compiled, so once it gets back I'll have to post pictures of some of the cute artistic creations people came up with.  Most people got really into it, looking up ideas on their phones, and really spent some time on their pages-- it was great!!

Fast-forward to February 13th....little Harper Olive was born!

She is beautiful!!

I was praying she'd come when she did, because her due date was a day after Chase, the girls, and I would be leaving for Oklahoma.  She was born at the right time for my mom and T to drive from WA to ID to pick me up and then further more to eastern ID to spend a couple days with Macey, Christian, and Harper!  It gave me just enough time to get back to pack and carry on to OK.

We got there on Valentine's Day right as they were leaving the hospital.

For the next couple days, we visited, ate out, made some freezer meals for Macey's freezer, made an adorable car-seat cover for sweet Harper, finished up on the couple pages that didn't get done in the "ABC" book, & kissed and hugged that sweet, sweet newborn every moment she wasn't asleep!!!

Harper is a VERY beautiful newborn--such thick, awesome hair!  I just ran across my kiddos newborn pictures the other day and didn't realize how hairless they were--pretty much bald....

Harper must have gotten that from her daddy. ;)

Harper is a definite mix between her parents though....

I miss her already.