Summer!

Wow I feel like I have a LOT of free time but with that free time comes the boredom of having nothing to post. But we have had a fun summer thus far! Can't believe we've been out of school nearly two months already....where does time go?

We are doing REALLY well considering the fact that life took a big U-turn! Ben wrote down about 6 jobs today that he wants to apply for, and even if none of them work out, at least there are JOBS. I am just going to enjoy the summer of not worrying and let life work itself out. Definitely relying on the Lord and lots of faith!

Here is some of what we've been up to....

Sweepin the backyard... (brooms are his favorite)

Hosing off in the pool...

Swimmin...

Blowin' bubbles

And that's pretty much how we spend our days. I am chastising myself because I have been REALLY bad at taking pics. My mom has been good (as always) but her camera takes blurry pics a lot. SO I'm getting my butt out there and taking some 18 month shots of him!

He's saying lots of new words including:

Duck

Meow

Milk

Bath

Grapes

Shoes

Socks

And my favorite...he's starting to say MA MA!!!! When he's mad or really wants something... yay those days have come! :-) More on little man later when I get some more pics up!

P.S. baby is growing well and in the 97th percentile...so I guess that means he's a good sized baby. He kicks and moves A LOT...so much that by the end of some days I'm exhausted and sick of getting sucker punched in the bladder. It's gonna be a long 17 weeks of this action! But I love it and can't wait to meet the lil' guy!

In one day..

A lot can change. Plans, perspective, attitude, etc. All of those things have definitely changed for me since my last post. I will admit yesterday felt like someone had died all day...because a dream and hope had died. But I was surprised with my strong sense of planning that kicked in. Almost immediately my brain started plotting out what our next step should be. Luckily my husband jumped on the bandwagon and my parents agreed to help out too. So here is the next plan:

We already had given notice to be out of our house by...TODAY. But we kept extending and they said no sweat just tell us when you will be out for sure. So I decided why pay rent here when I know I'll be spending most of my time in SG? I'm sick of packing an overnight bag...driving back and forth etc. And my house was already mostly packed up anyway......

So we are moving this weekend....into a lovely storage unit! Ha ha...we will store most everything and move in with my parentals for a couple of months. Hopefully by the time summer is over we'll have another job lined up. Yesterday I said we had no prospects but turns out we have a few, and some great connections have emerged. So we have hope..lots of it.

Ben still has to finish his internship but is hoping he can just come up 2-3 days per week to finish it. So Connor will be able to have a fun summer! Getting popsicles from grandma, watering the flowers with grandpa, going for rides to get treats with his aunt Desi and Tasha and swimming in the little pool in the backyard! And I can relax and enjoy the time with family before our next adjustment/move/life change...

I really am starting to feel so differently about things. I woke up this morning with renewed energy for the future and a peace about things not working out the way we thought they would. I still don't know where we'll end up...but maybe we're just not supposed to live that far away from our families!

Thank you for your support and love. The comments and texts have been super helpful. :-)

I don't even know...

I've been so excited to post that big "He got the job" post. Because I just knew it would happen. We had such a good feeling about this job from the start. Ben had two great interview experiences, ending with his personal interview in Connecticut last week. HR called him the day after he got home and negotiated salary. She had a real estate agent call us to help us look into housing. She requested a background check. She told him things like "You are the committee's final choice. You are the favorite..." So it was a given.

Well guess what? He didn't get the job. I've never been so mad at an HR representative in my life. Apparently two more people still came out for an interview after Ben. So she had no right to lead him on like that. They told him it was so close it was down to millimeters. He was completely qualified, but there was just one tiny thing this person obviously had that he doesn't. Maybe they live closer, maybe they didn't want to get paid as much...I have no idea.

All I know is my faith is shaken, I'm extremely stressed out and in shock, and feel terrible for my poor husband who woke up with the stomach flu and then got a phone call like that this morning. He immediately started looking for other jobs. There really aren't any....not yet anyway. It took 2 months from the time Ben applied for Yale to find out a verdict. I don't feel like we even have 2 weeks to find another job. I'm just sick. I know things happen for a reason....but right now I just can't see any silver lining. Maybe the fact that I won't live 3000 miles away from home but who knows where the next job application will take us....

I have almost our whole house packed up because I just knew he'd gotten the job. Wouldn't you have thought so too after all that? So now we live in a hell hole dive of a house with nothing on the walls, everything in boxes, and nowhere to go. NOWHERE. I've really never been so scared of the future. My patriarchal blessing says to "doubt not and fear not the future". I'm trying really hard to heed that advice. But we have a baby coming in October, a toddler...a bad economy and no prospects. It was hard to even want to post this on our blog because it really is kind of embarrassing to have to explain that what we thought was going to happen didn't. I hope we see the reason for all things in our lives soon. I hope something even better comes along somehow.

Ben seems to be taking it ok, but I know he's just in shock. I am too but I think we'll switch mentalities very soon.

Please pray for us....

____________________________________________________________________-

****A few positives I've considered in the past two hours...

My husband interviewed for a job at YALE. This at least tells people how incredible he is, and he made it to the final cut. We may never know why they chose someone over him. But there's a tiny possibility they might come back to offer the job, if that person doesn't pass a background check. Not holding my breath...but still it's there.

There were about 75 applicants and my husband was one of the last two people to be chosen between. That's something to be proud of.

I'm incredibly proud of my husband, he is definitely handling this better than I thought. I know he'll continue to be dedicated to take care of our family and something will happen. Heavenly Father has got a plan for us and I have to have faith that we're not going to end up living in the gutters...

Lots of good things!

So for starters, Connor is going to have a baby BROTHER! We were really excited in the ultrasound. I have told basically everyone that I thought it was a girl...but at the same time since I kept saying that I knew in the back of my mind that it'd be a boy ha ha. Sure enough! I spotted his little boy business before the tech even found the money shot. So my first thought was "Oh boy...Connor is going to be even more crazy and hyper with a brother to harass!" But my second thought was..."Hey they can share a room a lot easier and we won't outgrow a 2 bedroom as fast!" So there ya have it! I'm not disappointed and I think it'll be a fantastic experience. Since I had all sisters the boys can keep coming as far as I'm concerned! :-) Here are some pics:

Oh and in other news, Ben is flying out in approximately 21 hours for Connecticut. Here is the itinerary he got a couple of days ago:

Below is an outline of your visit:

8:30-9:30 am Breakfast with Doris Cross, Michael Yaffe, and Paul Hawkshaw at the Graduate Club

9:30-10:30 am Visit at the Shubert Theater

10:30-11:00 am Tour of campus

11:00 am Meeting with Dean Robert Blocker (This is the guy who would most likely hire him if it comes to that!)

So it's looking good I'd say! :-0

I had my first meltdown today, because I packed up a lot of my house, and my parents came up for the ultrasound, and realizing they won't just be an hour away anymore really hit me. I cried my eyes out but luckily was able to talk to my sister in law online and she calmed my fears a little bit! But man....crying that hard just wears a girl out!

We are excited for what next week brings, and so happy we found out about the baby so it's one less thing we have to wonder about! :-) Happy weekend to all!

I just have a lot of feelings...

Remember that line from "Mean Girls"? I found myself thinking that today as I sat eating my lunch. Leftover homemade Cafe Rio...delish! I am pretty excited about the new developments in Ben's potential job! He will be flying out June 6th for an interview, so we'll probably have our ultrasound June 8th. It'll be a crazy week...hopefully full of fun, exciting news! :-) And that's where my "feelings" come in. I was so set on moving out mid June. But I doubt it'll be that fast now that it's still 2 weeks til he interviews. I look around at my disaster zone of a house and instead of being relieved that I still have a month at least to get packed up....I don't want to wait! I just wanna get out of here! I know the weather is bad everywhere but I feel like Cedar is the worst. Snow in May? COME ON. And this constant rain is really getting to me. I just want to go outside and exercise my fat pregnant self.

Speaking of...I am SO much bigger this time than I was with Connor. I know that's normal...but honestly by the end of the day I look like I'm 30 weeks pregnant. It's awful. But feeling the baby move makes it worth it. It's a very active baby so far, moves as much as I can remember Connor moving at this point! I'm blessed to feel my babies move pretty early on. I'm a worry wart and that movement keeps me sane.

Let's see...more feelings....I'm really tired because I haven't been sleeping well. I'm in that weird phase of can't sleep on your stomach but if you angle the body pillow just right you can sorta fake it...so when I toss and turn the body pillow comes with me. And I have already started getting restless legs. And they even hit when I'm asleep. So last night, while I did have time to dream of tornadoes, hair salons and the like, I feel like I didn't sleep at all. I know I get worse when I'm anxious...like the other night I got lost in our room. I was up to go pee and somehow got turned around in our room. I was sleep walking sort of...cuz I can remember it but I also know I did NOT have my eyes open or I would have quickly figured out that the closet was NOT the entrance into the bathroom. Ben woke up to a re-arranged bedroom. Whoops.

I am looking forward to all that moving on with life entails...a new place to call home, new friends, new everything. But man I'm nervous. It's not cheap to live out there. We're most likely going to end up in a three family home...which is so weird to me. Three families living on a different floor of a big house? I thought it was hard to be attached at the garage to someone...oy. And then there's the fact that my aunt pointed out New Haven is the 4th most dangerous city in the U.S. um....... (Ben said it's only certain parts...which doesn't comfort me in the least).

I need to get on here and post about Easter, our anniversary and all that jazz. For now my innermost thoughts will have to do. I hate these blustery days....

A new week

So last week was pretty much the pits...we sat at home most of the day for 4 days straight waiting for that phone call...and it never came. And to add to the anxiety it SNOWED and rained all week! GRRRR..By the end of each evening we were SO anxious we could barely function. But each day/night we got an email from one of his references letting him know they had talked to them that day and that it had gone well and sounded promising. So that helped appease our nerves. We knew they were still doing things to pursue Ben. After Friday afternoon came Ben decided to send another follow up email to them to check on the status of things. The man who has been checking his references wrote back and let him know that he'd be hearing from the Dean soon. So that's a good sign....if it were bad news I think we would know by now, and since the Dean would be the one to hire him we're crossing everything..fingers, toes, hair, EVERYTHING ha ha. At this point it's Yale or BUST! And Ben just called to tell me that one of his references they called told him this morning that they said it was between Ben and another candidate, and the other candidate had a background in dance. They both have strong backgrounds, but we are hoping since Ben's background is more in line with the job he will be chosen. OY!

So...onto another week. Connor has been driving us craaaaazzzzyyyyyyy this past week. I think it has been worse since Ben has been home and it throws off our routine. It's great to have him home but Connor just gets more hyper and busy for some reason and we both end up exhausted by the end of the day!

I had a hard 2 weeks trying to adjust to this new life that will be mine forever now...no school...no job--just mommyhood. And I LOVE mommyhood...don't get me wrong. But it's weird to have nothing else to do. I asked Ben a few days after graduation- "What do people do? Like what am I going to do all day long?!" I'm slowly getting into a groove and realizing it isn't much different, I just don't have the stress of assignments being due, and at night I can just veg instead of study. I'm trying to line up some goals for myself, and putting my life into perspective. Since there's a great chance we could be moving across the country and I'll have to start all over again in terms of friends, ward members and all that jazz I'm preparing myself mentally to deal with that anxiety. I'm SO excited to move on with our lives, but of course it's SCARY!

I've been eating like crap for the past month or more. I HATE being in the kitchen when I'm pregnant and I thought it'd wear off after the first trimester, but it hasn't gotten all the way better. So since I didn't want to cook and Ben was too busy to cook at the last part of the semester, we got into this bad habit of eating out...A LOT. In the past I have gotten sick of eating out, but not this time. I could eat out every single day and not bat an eye. I love fried food, I love pizza, and I love pizza factory salad bar. I'm outta control! So this week is truly a NEW week because I'm getting into better habits. WAY better habits. I realized that I feed Connor SO well and he eats healthier than anyone in our house so I'm going to start eating like him! He has a vegetable, fruit, whole grain, dairy and protein with every meal (no veggies at breakfast usually though) So this morning I made us both some scrambled eggs, he had fruit and I had a fruit smoothie, he had Kix and I had a piece of toast. I felt SO full and way better about myself after even just one good meal! So let the good times roll. Today I'm going to make Cafe Rio beef here at home and we'll have yummy home made food for dinner!

So there ya have it...it's a new week. Hopefully better weather and lots of fun with my sweet Connor!

In other news, Connor went to the dentist for the first time...SO funny! The video quality is so bad...it looks much better on my phone. I'm so mad I forgot the camera...grr. Anyway, this is what I did get!

In the first clip he started talking to the dentist while he had the mirror in his mouth. He was all excited and had a lot to say! I just loved seeing him laying on the dentist chair. There was a TV above his head in the ceiling but he wasn't all that interested...he was just happy to be there! I love this kid to pieces!