My Future Dentist...

Our Future Dentist...

Ruark is growing up SOO fast these days, I'm not sure when it happened but it seems like over night, he looks like a little boy instead of a baby :) Right now he is so funny, he LOVES brushing his teeth. He brushes twice a day, when he wakes up and when he goes to bed, and then every time he's done eating. I get him cleaned up and out of his highchair, he runs into the bathroom and wants to brush his teeth clean :) I brush them for about 15-20 seconds and then he brushes them for about 3 minutes afterward. When I take the toothbrush from him, he screams and cries. Heaven forbid when he learns about flossing!!! I'll spend all day cleaning his teeth! I'm hoping this trend will last with him, as for now we call him our future dentist! Who knows!

Keep Moving Forward... the theme of Ruark's FAVORITE movie, Meet the Robison's. So as we move forward and look toward the horizon we are finding so much joy. Spring is coming, we bought flowers and plants for our gardens. I can't wait for the blossoms and for my beautiful Roses. Chase bought we tons of rose bushes last year and all summer I had beautiful arrangements inside of my house! This year I'm planning on adding even more roses and lots more flowers I can add to my arrangements.

Our house will...soon be our house!! We're finally going to be able to finish up our loan. Last year when we went to close, the stupid government put up new regulations on self employed people. So we had to wait until we had our second year of self-employment taxes, which is this year. The people we are buying our house from have been AMAZING waiting so long!! They will be lasting friends. I can't wait to close!! We have such a beautiful home, and I feel so privileged to live here and to raise my children here.

We feel so blessed to have such wonderful family and friends to lift and support us when life gets hard. One thing I've realized through this process, no one has an easy life, and everyone at this time is experiencing their own trials. So as I have been lifted, I hope now to be strong enough to lift all of you and bear your burdens in return.

Calming the seas...

My life has gotten more crazy since the last time I blogged. I feel continuously bombarded with problems. Not small problems. But scary, keep you up all night thinking about them problems. Handfuls and handfuls of them. This has been going on for over two months and at this point I felt dead inside. Numb to everything. My mind was exhausted, my body was exhausted and my spirit was weighed down. I prayed, I tried to feel the spirit, but I felt unable to really connect with anything. I laughed with my son and my friends, for a few moments but then felt pulled down into the despair.

Then I found out I'm pregnant, something neither Chase or I were planning on, but what a joy we felt. We started thinking about Ruark being a big brother and what a wonderful life we would have as a family of 4. Now when my hormones change, my body does not handle it well. Even with no stress with Ruark I was continually having problems with panic attacks. The calls did not stop, the stress continued to build. My hormones went out of control, I couldn't calm myself down. Panic attack after panic attack came and went. Until finally, I lost the baby at only 6.5 weeks.

I called my mom, I told her I was trying to be strong I was praying for strength to get through these trials. She told me to stop praying for strength and to pray for peace. Peace to calm the storm. I prayed with all I could muster, and yet the phone kept ringing with more problems.

Dragging myself to sacrament meeting last week I heard words I really needed to hear from the youth speaker. My ward has the most spiritual youth, we currently have out 17 missionaries and something like 36 priests getting ready to leave. We are so blessed to have Ruark grow up in this ward. The youth speaker said, "Sometimes the Lord calms the sea, and sometimes he calms the sailor in the storm."

I went home and prayed for my family to have peace in the midst of the storms around us. Alas that night the problems escalated into a very scary encounter. The storm beat against my home, and we were kept safe and peaceful inside. That disconnect I was feeling now only pertains to the storms around us. For the first time in months, I have even forgotten about the storms for a few hours. What a relief.

I am finding joy in the small and simple things. I am thankful for a loving Heavenly Father who knows my needs and has calmed by soul.