Our missionary!

In our church, young people have the opportunity to serve full-time missions. For young men, it is required. For young women, it is an option for those who have the desire to serve a mission. Young men can serve at age 18 and young women can serve at age 19. Previously, the ages young people could serve were older (boys at 19 and girls at 21), but a somewhat shocking announcement was made 6 months ago by our church leaders, lowering the age limits. 

My sister, Camille, is 21. She has been planning on serving a full-time mission for several years now. Because my family has all girls and Mitch has one little brother and two little sisters, we really didn't know how many missionary siblings we'd have. Mitch served a full-time mission for our church from 2006-2008 at age 19-21. His brother is also preparing to serve a full-time mission right now. 

Full-time missions mean a lot of sacrifice for these young people. Girls serve for 18 months and boys serve for 2 years. This means 18 mo - 2 yrs away from their family, living with a missionary companion somewhere in the world. They do not pick where they serve; they are assigned a "mission call" somewhere around the world (of course, disabilities, health restrictions, and other factors are all considered). These missionaries do missionary work 24/7. They do not watch tv, read magazines (outside of church magazines), read books (outside of scriptures), or have much leisure time. It is all work, all day, all for the Lord. They call home twice a year, on Mother's Day and on Christmas. Other than that, emails can be sent to anyone they wish, but computer time is very restricted. Written letters are, of course, always allowed as well. Missionaries hope to eliminate as many distractions as possible, so they formally defer from college (or serve a mission before they start), and most aren't involved in long-distance romantic relationships.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we got a chance to drop Camille off at the Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Provo, UT, where she will spend 2 weeks learning how to be a missionary. She'll take classes, adopt a full-time missionary's schedule, and develop habits of daily healthy eating, exercise, and personal scripture study that will help her for the next 18 months. After that, she will leave for her mission. She was called to serve in Charlotte, North Carolina and will be there by the end of the month! 

I had never seen the MTC before; Camille and other BYU students have access to it to volunteer there since it is so close to their campus, and Camille has volunteered there many times, so new missionaries have people to practice teaching to. Because of this announcement regarding missionary age six months ago, a surge of missionary applications and mission calls have been received and sent out. Camille is 21, so she's not one of the 19 year-old missionaries, but she is still caught up in this huge surge of new missionaries with everyone else! 

Because my parents live so far from Utah, they sent her off at the Kansas City airport, and that was the last time they'll see her in 18 months. She had a friend pick her up at the Salt Lake City airport and was with her until we could drive from Idaho to pick her up. We spent the day doing last-minute errands and shopping that she needed, as well as just enjoying time together. We got together with friends from home that we hadn't seen in a long time, which was really fun! Poor Nathan was SO antsy after several hours in the car; he was kind of a banshee at the restaurant! Our friends who'd never met him definitely didn't see his fun side!

We ALL look terrible in this picture...Camille had stayed up all night packing, then caught a 6 am flight. Mitch and I had been up early, gone to classes, and then drove to Provo. It was a long day for all of us!

On Wednesday morning, we did some more last-minute shopping and went to lunch. Then we said our goodbyes across the street from the MTC and got ready to go drop her off. It was a madhouse, but the people working were very well-organized, so it was busy, but it all ran very smoothly.

There were a few rules to follow, like saying goodbyes across the street in a big field and parking lot, so the MTC parking lot and circle drive won't get too congested. Only the car with the missionary in it is allowed in the MTC parking lot; not their car and their families' five other cars with extended family. You only get 2 1/2 minutes to say goodbye to your missionary, just to keep things flowing smoothly. So, we had a very well-orchestrated plan to get her unloaded and say goodbye quickly; we even got a "nice job, guys!" from the missionaries that helped unload and that were directing traffic!

These pictures are kind of repetitive, but I know my parents really wished they could be there, so I just took enough pictures to help them feel like they were there. Enjoy!

Playing around in the field across from the MTC. Camille's drop-off time was 1:15, so the sun was in my least favorite spot...

There was tons of construction going on to expand the street in front of the MTC, to make dropping off easier. The famous hot spot for pictures, the "Missionary Training Center" sign isn't even there anymore.

We loved throwing mulch at the tree :o)

Last-minute bonding time with the auntie who won't see him again until he's FOUR!

Nathan's face is awesome. Also, I'm swelling with this baby and the car trip didn't help at all...ignore my swollen face and legs! It was my last chance to have pictures with my sister; I didn't care how I looked. I don't even know if I put makeup on before this!

We made Camille pose for pictures across the street from the MTC. Anyone who knows Camille knows she hates pictures more than most anything else, but we didn't give her a choice :o) She always just throws her hand on her hip and calls it good, haha.

Not only was the sun directly overhead, but there were ugly orange cones everywhere! I took them out in some pictures.

 Last picture before she grabbed her bags and went with the "host missionaries", who are in the MTC themselves, and assigned to curb duty to help missionaries part with their families. We did NOT want to be (1) the slow ones holding everything up, or (2) asked to please hurry and say goodbye. So, we were super efficient :o)

I just had the thought, "wouldn't it be funny if she and that random missionary met up later at BYU after their missions and got married, and I had this picture of them?" haha...

Camille will be awesome. She is now "Sister Larson" and will probably not say her first name more than 3 or 4 times over the next year and a half. She is more prepared than most people I know that go on missions because it's been her goal for so long. Farewell, Sister Larson!

One more quick post!

Happy Easter to you all!

I posted some studio pictures I did of Nathan (attempted to do, actually...2 year olds...) but I don't have time at the moment to upload them here. So, here's a public link. You can supposedly see the pictures and the album without having a facebook account at all! Enjoy!

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1958451119565.1073741826.1191360617&type=1&l=211cc66e8b

I should be doing dishes...

I have a photo shoot for a friend at my house in 2 hours, and my house is NOT company-ready. It's also a few weeks before finals, and it feels like the whole world dropped on Mitch and me this week, especially schoolwork-wise. We are just trying to keep a pace and keep motivated! School officially ends with graduation on April 12th, and classes end the 10th (Mitch always has to work graduation, so we always go by that date).

We're also leaving town in three days to see my sister, Camille, in Provo, UT before she leaves on a year-and-a-half long, full-time mission for our church. I couldn't be more proud of her, but it's also slowly starting to hit me that I won't just be visiting my sister; I'll be saying goodbye to her for 18 months! She won't visit home or family until after her 18 months is over, and she gets 2 phone calls home per year. We'll keep in touch through emails and writing, but my family has never had a missionary leave before (boys are required to serve for 2 years, and for girls it's encouraged...my family, as most of you know, never had any boys join us!), and I'm a bit nervous that we'll all just fall apart emotionally! It's not hard to imagine me doing that, being a crier as it is AND adding being 7 1/2 months pregnant.

So, we're working really hard to be ready to skip 2 days of school during such a critical time at the end of the semester. We're doing homework non-stop and trying to function beyond that in the meantime. 

We also have a secret that's added a bunch of (good) stress to our lives. We haven't said anything online about it at all, which as you know coming from me, is hard to do! There was just so much uncertainty and inability to plan that it was easier just to wait out this decision for awhile.

The big news?

We're moving! On May 1st!

Now, we are absolutely in love with our duplex. The owners, who live in the other half, are our age and have the sweetest little girl (she was the one whose birth I was there to photograph). We have become great friends with them and we hope to always be close. We love having a yard, on-site storage, and a garage (in Rexburg, where it snows non-stop for like, 7 months!). We love the people we go to church with. We love having the best park in the city (with a free splash park) a block away. We love the rent we pay; this place is a steal! We love that they saw our need for a dog and made it happen before we could get him approved as a companion animal. We moved here about a year and a half ago and never planned on leaving; it is actually cheaper than living in our old (smaller) apartment and paying for a storage unit! 

However, we are tired. 

 Tired of working as hard as we can, only to see money spent on things like debt and catch-up.

 We are tired of paying rent with student loans.

We are tired of seeing Dave Ramsey's books on our shelves and feeling shame when we look at his face!    

We are going to have a new start.

After six months on a subsidized housing wait list, we are IN. We have an apartment offered to us. The rent is too good to turn down for selfish reasons like comfort and lifestyle. We are learning a hard lesson, but we got ourselves here, and we're bound and determined to get ourselves out.

The apartment complex is actually very nice for being a bit older. It has a yard, a playground, and plenty of storage, although it's still smaller than where we are now. Our duplex was built in 2004, so we've gotten used to newer and nicer (our old apartment wasn't much older than that either). But who are we kidding? We are in college. We aren't buying our first (or second) home. We aren't here forever. We don't deserve anything, really! (We've really worked on not having a sense of entitlement around here, feeling like we deserve this or that.) We are college kids living on nothing while trying to support one, almost two kids.

The biggest motivation to make a change before it's too late is the fact that I'm done with classes in April. Besides doing an internship in the fall (which may yield an internship scholarship, but not more than that), we're done with my grants and loans and won't have any access to them anymore. So, we're cutting our "income" in half while doubling our number of children. Mitch is getting further into his major and is having to work harder and harder to get the grades he wants. He can't afford, grade-wise, to take on more hours at work or another job right now. He already works two jobs and donates plasma to support us, bless his heart!

Mitch and I prayed hard about this decision. We talked it out. We plugged numbers into our Dave Ramsey Personal Finance Software (MAN was that easier than me doing all the numbers pen-and-paper style every semester!). The answer was clear, but it was still hard. 

We are excited to live in the same complex as my cousin and her husband, along with their sweet little boy. They are some of the funnest people we know, and we can't wait to be neighbors!

So, four weeks before our baby girl is due, we will move. At least it's not a winter move like our other two moves have been! The road in front of our place will most likely still be torn out and being replaced. Joy. We'll see how this goes :o)

And, to reward you people who made it this far, here are some recent pictures of the Nathan boy!

Mitch actually caught these gems for us :o) Nathan loves to cuddle with baby Eliza, and he can actually say her name quite perfectly, too!

Just enjoying some (saggy) diaper time in the blinds :o) They've never stayed up well on their own, so he usually chooses just to play like this.

The new place has a sliding glass door, which will yield a TON of light for pictures (yay!!), and a ton of space for Nathan and Apollo to look outside. They both look outside using this method right now!

Playing with daddy's coin jar...fine motor skill building at its finest!
(Mitch is still mad that he totally appears to be a lefty so far in his little life!)

Cue meltdown in 3...2....1....

We walked to our favorite park (the one a block away) one Monday night for family night. It was a bit colder than we expected it to be, but we were just excited that it was in the 40s and we were having trouble keeping Nathan and Apollo cooped up inside! (They're true Idahoans, I guess! 40 degrees = play outside weather!) Nathan went down this slide probably 20 times. It was really nice that we were the only ones there so big kids weren't pushing him on the "shake shake bridge" (Thomas the train reference) and he never had to wait his turn, which he loved.

The "shake shake bridge"...the engineer for this playground was an idiot for putting the railing so high; I've seen at least 2 arms broken and probably 30 kids fall and bawl about it, really hurt, from this bridge.

Well, that's it! Glad you made it this far...gold star for you :o)

All you Provo people from my "past life" in Kansas!? I get to SEE YOU GUYS on Tuesday evening for dinner! Let's celebrate Camille and hang out like old times!

There's a First Time for Everything...

We all know that the first few years of a child's life yield a lot of "firsts". Most of them are good. Some of them are just discoveries made by curious little toddlers, anxious to do everything mom and dad do.

Because apparently we color on ourselves with Sharpies. 

Okay, I'm sure every parent has this question, but

WHY do SHARPIE CAPS come off so EASILY!?!? 

And yet I know plenty of kids who are learning to use Crayola markers and just can't get their dang caps off! I'd be much more okay with a Crayola mural, all washable and erasable, than a Sharpie mural.

haha that face!

Thank heavens he didn't destroy property; little boys are easier to wash. Especially being renters, the last thing we need is him coloring all over someone else's property or losing part of our deposit when we have to pay for paint/primer/whatever to get Sharpie off. (Of course, we'd call our moms or check Pinterest first for tricks to get Sharpies off of things...)

He DID, however, get it all over his scalp. Which didn't come off so easily. Lysol wipes took it off our kitchen table just fine, as well as his belly, face, and arms. We did have to scrub him down after using the wipes, though. This poor kid's skin struggles with excema and we didn't want a nasty rash!

Can we be DONE taking pictures!? This isn't fun...

 You can tell how remorseful he is by the expressions on his face! We had a good long talk about what we color on and what we don't...although I'm sure this won't be his last struggle in this area...

I must add, the little rebel DID get extra brownie points for saying, "Marker black like Diesel black!"...Diesel is a train on Thomas and Friends who is made of black steel. 

We've been using Thomas to learn our colors, which works out well since he loves the characters. So far he knows "Blue like Thomas", "Green like Percy", "Yellow like Mollie", "Black like Diesel", and "Red like James". Yeah, you still win us over, kid. :o)

Life as of February

Well, it's been awhile, so I better write just for my own sake, even though not much is going on!

We've all been sick for awhile; Mitch got a bad cold 2 weeks ago and it lasted him about 10 days; Nathan and I got the same cold a week ago; he's better, I'm not quite better yet. But, we're glad to be over the worst of it, and that it was just a bad cold, not influenza!

Nathan's jamming out to his Pandora station on tv...this kid is so uptight that he NEVER dances. I love the rare times it happens, and I love that he recognizes so many songs from his little toddler lab class!

I love watching him in toddler lab through the observation booth one-way windows. It is SO FUN to see him and how he acts when we're not there! He is loving it and having so much fun! He doesn't cry when he goes anymore, but is still clingy for awhile after Mitch or I pick him up. We turned in his application for next semester already; if he gets in, he gets in. I told the teacher we'd be having a baby in the middle of the semester and that it could either be a good constant in his little life amidst everything else changing, or it'd be too much and we'd have to pull him out. She said to go ahead and try it. I just really think his timid little personality that's so afraid to try new things (THAT part he got from me...) will benefit from more than one semester of socialization and play time with things we don't have or do at home. So far he loves painting; I haven't braved that mess yet at home!

Mitch is doing well in his classes and studies very hard. He ended up dropping a class because it was requiring too much combined with his other classes, but we'd both rather he keep his GPA in mind than try to cram in credits while he's also working a lot and is feeling the impact of responsibilities at home. I don't have much patience for my classes; I'm SO glad this is my last semester! I'm so DONE!

I went back to counseling today. It was awesome. Not much to say about it in detail, mostly just planning out goals for the time span that I'm going, but it was so nice to be back with that resource. My counselor is awesome, and it was great that I didn't have to explain everything, all over again, to someone new! The one different thing about this counseling center (on our school's campus) is that, because they're offering the services to any student, FREE of charge, they ask you to stop coming as soon as you can; not to draw out the process unnecessarily because there are so many students on their wait list that may desperately need someone to talk to. Of course, everyone's needs are met, they just try to help as many students as possible.

On a random note, I got a very sweet, sincere compliment from a woman working in the store that Nathan and I were shopping in. It made my day! So, give compliments...it means a lot more than you think!

Miss Eliza is doing very well! I realized some funny things about this pregnancy: (Not really funny, just interesting)

- I feel so much more AWARE of everything that's happening. I think having done it before really helps.

- Feeling her move all over, at SUCH an earlier point in my pregnancy than Nathan, is really fun!

- She totally has a pattern and schedule already; luckily her movements aren't strong enough yet to wake me up at night, but they work themselves into my dreams :o)

- My coughing fits scare her sometimes, poor girl!

- Nathan points to everything pink he can see and says, "for baby sister!" It's really cute!

- I haven't been as diligent at figuring out how many weeks I am exactly, like I did with Nathan. I think the novelty has worn off a bit. I didn't even take a belly picture until THIS week, at 23 weeks! (I labeled the picture 22.5 weeks on Facebook until I realized that I was, in fact, 23 weeks as of TODAY. Thank goodness for the Kindle app that tells me or I'd never know!) 

Here is the said belly picture and some other random pictures of what's been going on lately:

This is a comparison of my baby bump at 23 weeks with Nathan and with Eliza!

We had a crazy weird snowstorm a few weeks ago and the snowflakes all stayed perfectly separated and complete! I was kicking myself that I sent that macro lens back so I couldn't get a perfectly sharp shot, but I did the best I could with what I had!

Nathan looking cute in the snowy weather :o)

 Nathan was hammin' it up in the bath the other night, and I love taking bath pictures of him, so here ya go!

Brushing his hair :o)

Haha I love this face, eating his duck :o)

Bathwater never hurt anyone, right? lol

He's pretty OCD these days and was mad that the shampoo bottles weren't lined up just right.

 My favorite cute little boy :o)

I asked him, "where's cute Nathan?" and this is what I got :o)

I will never get over my love of little feet :o)