Migraine blessing

As background, I am a migraine sufferer.  Before kids, I would get them a couple times per month.  During pregnancy and breastfeeding, I usually got a reprieve and got them far less often.  I was telling my BFF last week how it had been almost 2 years since I'd had a migraine.  Huge blessing.  :)  However, somewhat ironically, last Friday I got a migraine. 
I'm the Teachings for our Times teacher in our Relief Society (our church's women's group). I was scheduled to teach on Sunday.  For me, the best way to "treat" my migraines is to take medicine when I get the aura, then get to sleep.   So, that is what I did.  Unfortunately, it didn't kick the migraine this time.  I woke up on Saturday still with an awful headache.  I rested, I napped... I took medicine, but I could not focus at all. 
I knew I needed to finish preparing my lesson, but I was feeling completely useless.  I could see the words on the page, and I thought I was reading them, but I could not seem to retain them or make any sort of coherent thought about them.  I wanted to pass off the lesson to someone else, but my "backup" teacher was out of town and I didn't feel right about passing it off so late to anyone else.  So, Saturday night, I sat down at the computer and forced myself to create an outline.  I really don't even remember any of it making sense STILL at that point, but I got some questions ready to ask and made some handouts with quotes from the talk I was supposed to be teaching. 
I went to bed early hoping to kick the migraine and wake up with some clarity of thought so that I could fix the lesson plan I started.  No such luck.  Still foggy and hurting Sunday morning.  Begin super praying.  lol.  really though, I was not feeling capable of teaching, so I prayed as hard as I could muster that the Spirit would teach the lesson that day. 
As I got up to teach, I hoped that the migraine would melt away for at least the time I had to stand up there.  It didn't.  But something else happened.  Despite my feeling as though I couldn't make a coherent thought, and could hardly read the words on my paper, I WAS able to teach.  It was as though my spiritual self took over for those 45 minutes.  I had people tell me that they never would have known I had a migraine unless I had told them.  My body was weak at that moment, but the Spirit was strong.  I honestly don't remember a lot of the lesson, but I know there was good discussion and a feeling of peace and hope in the room. 
The Lord doesn't always remove our physical challenges, but He DOES strenthen us when we are striving to do His will.

Debating

So, here it has been almost a month... again... since I last wrote.  Somehow, life is super busy with 5 kids.  :)  Who knew? Lots of laundry, lots of dishes, cooking dinner, sweeping floors, picking up toys.  I could go on, but I know you all know.



So, I've made the decision to go back to school.  I'm starting in the fall at the local community college.  I have a handful of pre-requisites I need to take, then I'll apply for the nursing program there for Fall of 2013.  I'm really excited, but also really nervous.  I took all but 1 of the pre-req's to get into the nursing program at BYU.  I tried to take the last one twice, but withdrew before I failed.  To be clear, I have always been a good student.  I got good grades in HS, and got into BYU.  At BYU, I got mostly A's and B's.  However, when I tried to take the anatomy class there, I failed every quiz for the first few weeks before I withdrew.  Granted, I was newly married and didn't want to spend every waking hour in the lab studying cadavers...  but I DID study and I was failing.  So, as I mentioned, this makes me nervous to go back.  Especially to start with Anatomy as my first class.  But, I have to believe I'm at a more mature place in my life, and I know I can do it!!!  I worked for years as a medical assistant doing most of the things the nurses did, but getting paid a fraction of what they do.  No longer!!!   I will get those magical letters to add on to the end of my name and I will LOVE IT.  :)


As for my business, I've not been doing much with it.  Every once in a while, I'll get an order off of my website or Etsy, but not very frequently.  I don't feel much push to promote it myself.  Its really a hard thing to do online.  I usually got the most sales during the craft shows I would do each fall, but with me starting school this fall, I don't think I can manage juggling shows as well.  So, I'm a bit in limbo about what to do with my business.  I suppose I can just put it on hold and see what happens with life.  It would be nice if I could figure out a way to sell my art without putting all the work into a show where I may or may not sell anything.  I'd also like to branch out a bit and try some new crafty things.  Anyway, I suppose this is just ramblings.  I'm not likely to close up business to the point of refusing a new order if I got one.  So, I guess I'll just see how things roll.

The kids are all doing well.  They are anxious for summer to show up here.  Although, weather wise, we've hardly had spring!   We had 2 days last week when it was in the upper 80's, then 2 days later the high was 45!!  I would love to have more than a fleeting 70 degree day.  Just a week or two in that range is all I'm asking. *sigh*

I'll leave you with a few pictures from the last few weeks.  I feel very blessed, life is good.

 Being three is exhausting

The trampoline is "hair-raising" fun. 

Fun for the boys at Papa's house

Tank's phonic spelling.  Someone is not allowed to touch the remote every day.  LOL.

Digital Scrapbooking

So, I'm way way way behind on scrapbooking in the sense of putting pictures together to make cute photo books.  I think the last page did was for when Tank was born.  She's 6.  Where does the time go??!  Anyway, I'm thinking about digital scrapbooking as an alternative to get it actually done.  I found the shabby princess site that has a handful of free designs available to download and this is what I did today.

I think I could get into this.  :)  Any of you have any great sites you want to share for getting more templates?

Guess who is . . .

taking steps!!!  Just in time for her upcoming birthday!  I'd say she is walking, but its still not her preferred method of getting around.  Though, she does LOVE the attention she gets for it.  :)

Funny story, she was taking a couple steps between my Mom and I.  As she got close to either of us she would sort of lunge forward and fall into our arms.  Adorable right?  :)

Twister could not handle the amount of love and praise she was getting for this.  So, he says, "Look Mom, I know how to fall too!"  He walked from behind my mom over to me and fell into my arms.  :)  Hilarious.  He could NOT understand why we thought this was so funny.  It was charming and amazing when Cinderelly did it.  Why not him?

Children's museum

Just a few pictures of our family trip to the children's museum. You tell me who you think was having the most fun. :)

So much to do

... and all I want to do is procrastinate it.  About a week ago, Benson and I decided to do some major re-organization in our house.  We have a 3 bedroom house and 5 kids.  And girls have a LOT of stuff,  :) so having all 3 girls in a 10x12 room was getting a bit overwhelming. 

That was our inspiration. I offered (though somewhat reluctantly) to give up my craft room for a bedroom.  We put the boys downstairs and split up the girls in the 2 rooms upstairs. 

A while back we were given 2 loft beds, so we put them to use in our efforts.  Goose now has his own play space up above the floor in his room. 

And Sweetie is sleeping in the other loft bed leaving the room below available to double as a playroom. 

My craft stuff has been split throughout the house, but so far it hasn't been a problem.  Of course, I also haven't had a major project yet either.  We'll see how this goes when I have my flower stuff out for my next piece of art.  :)

Anyway, I wanted to share some of the pictures.  We're still working on getting everything put away, but we are making progress. 

I missed writing about a few things, so here are a few more pictures of stuff we've been up to this past month. 

playing in the snow

daddy daughter dance

Tank turned 6!!!

Goose earned his arrow of light scouting award

Twister learned to use the toilet! 

And lots of other random fun too.  :)  Life is good.

Snow day!

I only got one "during" picture...  I took this last night before it really got  bad.  There wasn't a huge amount of snow all at once, but the WIND!!!  It was absolutely crazy.  I think you would have to hear the storm to really understand how intense it was.  I had a hard time falling asleep. 

And this morning...  Pictures just never do snow full justice.  This is trying to look out our sliding glass door.  That drift "wave" as the kids called it must have been 5 feet tall. 

Looking out into the yard.  You can sort of see a bit of our fire pit there.  Well, if you compare to the before picture you can anyway. 

This is looking out or front window.  If you enlarge it you can see how deep the line is that the guy across the street was snowblowing out of his driveway.

Cinderelly looking out the back window.  This gives a little better perspective on how tall the drift was.  The door goes out and has two steps down to get to the patio level...

Goose actually climbed out our front window and went around to the back to try to help shovel out that drift.  It was pretty comical actually.  He didn't get very far before Benson pulled out the snowblower.  That persuaded him that shovelling was futile and he came in.  :)

After the snowblower.  Thank heaven for that piece of machinery!!!  I have a feeling Benson is going to be helping a lot of people find their way out of their homes today.  He is currently at my parents house helping them to find the driveway.  Anyone who has seen my parent's house will have recollection of how LONG the driveway is.  My dad usually plows it with an attachment on his lawnmower.  Not this much snow!  Benson might be over there for a while.  Not to mention our neighbors who I don't think even own a shovel. 

Haha, look at the snow drift on the roof.  :)

Yea, so check out the walkway to the house.  Looks like 2 feet of snow there to me!  It was a crazy storm. I'm just grateful we kept power!!!  Oh, and also for the snowblower.  :) Yes, VERY grateful for the snowblower.