Rambling update

Ok so this will be my first attempt at writing on the blog. Leesa has tried to encourage me a few times to do it and I have tried to stay away from it just because I don't feel like I really know what to say or write. But my mother-in-law left a message for Leesa that told her she has missed reading our blog. So I thought I would take it upon myself to write one so the pressure was off Leesa for now.

So why is Leesa so busy that she can't update our Blog? Well she is student teaching at Blackfoot High School!!!! Yay for Leesa. She is almost done with her Bachelor's from BYU-I. She has been with her cooperating teacher for about 3 weeks now and is really starting to love teaching. She used to always say that she never really wanted to be a teacher, but now that she has been getting classroom experience in a High School she has started to changer her mind. She did luck out in her placement to not have to teach much sewing. This was something that she was fearing quite a bit. The biggest challenge for her right now is doing Culinary Arts and writing her lesson plans. She spends hours on the computer outlining, creating, and perfecting her lesson plans. This is the one thing that she has not been enjoying, but she has been making many sacrifices (ignoring me) to get them done.

So there really isn't much more going on in our lives. We moved in to my parents home to try to save some money while we are transitioning. It has really been a big help, but it is harder than we thought going from a two bedroom apartment down to a single bedroom for us and all of our stuff packed in boxes in their garage. We tend to spend a lot of time to ourselves hiding out in our room. But it is nice to still have our own space.

Since we are living back with my parents we are now back in my old home ward. This is also a little weird going from a married student ward to our first family ward. Back in Rexburg Leesa was in the nursery and I didn't really have a calling, but that isn't the case now. We were called last week and set apart this week as Sunday School teachers for the 14 and 15 year olds. They were pretty unruly when we taught them today, but it will get better as time goes on. It is just odd teaching teenagers when there weren't any in our ward for over 2 years. But it is going to be a great blessing to the two of us.

Well I am not sure of what else to really blog about right now. There isn't much going on for me. I am just waiting to leave on March 6th for San Antonio, and from there I will head to Missouri for more training. Right now I am working at McDonald's in Blackfoot until I ship out for 5 months.

Hopefully this doesn't seem like I am rambling on, but that kind of happens when nothing has been posted for 3 months.

Officially a Military Wife...

And I'm not 100% sure exactly how I feel about it. 

So Kevin officially joined the air force about 2 weeks ago. Technically, he's in the reserves right now. He's just waiting for a job and to find out when he's going to basic. It sounds like it will be sometime in January or February, just depends on when a job opens up that he wants. He scored a 93 on the ASVAB, so he can pick whatever job he wants (Mr. Smarty Pants). He really wants to continue with engineering, just depends on whether a job opens up at the right time. We're not sure how long we want to be in right now. We're thinking probably 6 years right now because he can move up in ranks faster if he commits to 6 instead of 4.

He'll already start out as an E-3 (the third level for enlisted) but he'll still only be making about $20,000/year which is not a lot. However, I like the fact that it is a salary that goes pretty much directly to what you want (i.e. no rent/no medical insurance/food allowance, CHEAP to have kids) so that will be nice. His plan is to get his degree either online or, if we're stationed near a college, to get it there. I told him he has to get his degree and either become an officer or get out because you don't make anything when you're just enlisted. It just depends on where we end up. 

He really wants to go back to Alaska, I'm not too fond of that idea. Although I wouldn't mind sunsets like this:  

That's one thing I'll miss about Idaho. The sunsets.

I just don't know how I feel about living in a place that is completely dark all day for part of the year, and then the sun doesn't go down at all for the rest of the year. But we're also thinking Tacoma or Italy (if there's jobs open in those areas). But we won't know until he's done with basic/tech school I think. And depending on what job he gets, tech school could be up to a year long. And we won't know where tech school is until he gets a job. So our lives are still up in the air, only with a little more stability now. But that's about it as far as future plans go.

I'm doing pretty well in my classes. I think I have all A's so that's nice. However, I only have a few weeks of work left because the majority of my school work is towards the end of the semester, so I put my last day to be Nov. 20th and since I only work weekends, I only have about 5 more days left of work because I'm going to Utah for a conference for a class and then I have the PRAXIS. I am not looking forward to that by any means. A few months ago, I took a practice one without studying and I passed, so hopefully the one I take will be like that one. A few girls in my classes are having study groups a few times a week and I think it's helping. I guess I'll find out on November 12th if it actually helped or not. Well actually, I won't find out for a month after (when scores come out). Hopefully I pass though, because it's the only time it's offered before I student teach. And since you have to pass it before you student teach, I would have to fill out a "special request" form or something like that in order to still be able to student teach on time. But I don't think they would tell me I can't student teach once I already have a placement and everything. I would just have to take it while student teaching. I guess I'll just have to wait and see. I'll walk in the graduation ceremony in December and then Student Teach from January-April.

So ready to be done with school

But since Kevin will most likely be leaving in January, I want him at my graduation. However, that means that Thomas, Kelly, and Dillan won't be able to be there and that makes me really, really sad. I wish I would have just graduated on time in April. But it's too late now.

In other news, it's already snowed here once :( I was pretty upset. Although it seemed to be a fluke snowstorm because it's been in the 50s-60s every day since and it was probably 80 degrees two days before the storm. And according to weather. com it's not supposed to snow through nov. 1. At least that's what it said today. Who knows if/when that will change. 

Anyway, that's about it as far as our lives go. Very intriguing, I know...

These folks...

I've been thinking a lot about these 2 love  birds this past week. Mostly because they just got married and I am SO! excited for them, but also because every time I see them, I miss them. 

A. Lot.

Let me just say, it's about time they got married. They've been together/basically already married for over 5 years now. Just without the added benefits of actually being married.

There are so many memories with these two, and even more with just Emily.

When I was home for their wedding, I was going through all my old high school stuff so that I could bring it back to Idaho with me and I came across my high school yearbooks.

This is part of what you wrote junior year, Em.

"Thanks for all the times I vented to you about Austen! When I liked him & when I didn't."

That year was filled with so much (plays, New Years, Superbowl party, tanning appointments, and then Florida :)

Oh, Florida. Where you guys finally decided you wanted to be together-it only took you the entire year prior and then another month afterwards to make it official.

And now it's official for the rest of your lives :)

I wish I had more pictures of our memories, but these will have to do.

-Engaging in a TP war almost every weekend.

-Going dress shopping in Tacoma and writing down random quotes from that day. I wish we still had that list of quotes! -Most of them were from Emily-they usually were.

-And of course, no matter where we went, Austen was always there-Just one of the girls!

As I was sitting there watching the wedding, I'll admit, I was a little jealous of all the new people they had in their lives. I wish we would have stayed in better contact over the past few years :(

But, that is life sometimes.

I wish you two the best of luck in your new adventure! Marriage is definitely an adjustment, but one I'm sure you'll make effortlessly. I would offer you words of wisdom and advise on how to be successful,  but let's be honest, you two have basically got it all figured out. You've had years to figure it out :)

I love you both!! May your lives be full of love, faith, and family (emphasis on little Wiederspans, k?)
Congratulations Austen and Emily Wiederspan :)

Catch up

So I figured I should get caught up on what's been going on recently.

June-I went home for Kelli's graduation. The night I got there we sat in her room and talked and got caught up (a little too loudly apparently) and my mom came in to tell us we needed to be quiet. I also got to meet Dillan for the first time. He was even more precious in person. I got to babysit him for 2 days. I realized how boring staying at home can be. I will definitely have to come up with lots of activities for our kids when they come along. It was good to get a baby fix. I should be good for a while.

He's trying to get the monkeys on his feet :) I just want to eat him up!

Congrats Presh!!! (And yes, we did yell Presh from the stands)

June/July-Rexburg opened a water park at the end of June so on the second day it was opened we went with our new friends Jemma and Eric and had a lot of fun. Then we went to Applebees half price appetizers. Kevin made the observation that we now have friends that like to eat out as much as we do! This makes us very happy :)

Which brings us to another fun event. Last night Kevin, me, Jemma, Eric, and 3 other co-workers went down to Buffalo Wild Wings in Idaho Falls to enjoy some famous wings. Being the adventurous one that I am, I chose the two most mild sauces they offered. They were good, just kind of dry. The waiter was fantastic though. Eric mentioned that he didn't like the waitress that he had the last time he went and the waiter from last night (Richard) totally talked bad about the waitress as well. Next time we go, we'll definitely ask for Richard again. 

They have HUGE TV screens everywhere in the restaurant. A lot have sports on them, but several have interactive trivia that you can play. They even give you little tablets so that you can play. Way fun.

July-Amie came up and stayed with us for the weekend on her way home over the July 4th weekend. It was a really fun weekend and I was sad to see her go. We didn't fight once!! That's quite impressive for us. We went grocery shopping the night she got here because I was in dire need of groceries and otherwise we would have had nothing to eat. She helped me while I subbed in nursery and became best friends with a little boy named Cole. Sunday night we went down and had a BBQ at Kevin's aunt's house with his family. They did some fireworks before we left and a cop that lives across the street brought over some other fireworks that he had confiscated last year and let us use them. It was a lot of fun.
On the 4th we went to Idaho Falls! We introduced her to Rumbi Grill (so good!) and watched the firework show on the river and then didn't get home until 2 AM. I love traffic. Especially when I had to be to work at 4:45 the next morning.

The next night (July 5th) we still had some fireworks left over that Kevin had bought so we invited our neighbors over to watch them with us. It was a lot of fun. Although about 10:10ish we see this police officer pull into our parking lot and sit over by the mail boxes. We finished the fireworks just as he's heading over to talk to us. He asked if we were going to be done soon and we told him we were already done. He told us to just remember that there are people with young children around and the sound ordinance goes into effect at 10:30. However, our neighbors that we out with us have a 2 year old and an almost 1 year old and they were getting such a kick out of it. And it wasn't even 10:30 yet and they were still legal because the kind we were doing are legal on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th in Idaho. So I didn't quite understand what the issue was. I asked if he got a phone call, and he did. Good to know we have up tight neighbors. And if you are reading this and you called the cops, you could have just come talked to us. We're quite nice people.

I think I've mentioned before that I had said that nursery would be my ideal calling. I've been subbing in it for the last few weeks and actually got called this past Tuesday. It's a little more boring than I remember nursery being when I was in it, but that's ok. It's still pretty fun. 

And finally, we're leaving for Florida in only about 5 weeks. Kevin is already spending too much time researching things he wants to do down there. But we're both really excited about Disney World. It will be a lot of fun. Hot and humid, but fun.

Green Thumb?

Tonight I went to a Relief Society activity. It was all about plants and how to take of them. Let's just say I am in no way someone that does well at taking care of plants or anything in that category.

A girl that majored in horticulture gave a little lesson and then we planted out own plants and played bingo to try to win a spider plant. It's a plant that looks this.

Although mine looks a lot less full. I think it's just in it's beginning stages. I didn't feel like taking a picture of my plants so you get a google image. Sorry. Yes, I'm that lazy.

So we'll see how long it takes me to kill these plants. Right now I have 2 aloe plants (from our friends the Hart's) and now 2 more plants from tonight. I haven't managed to kill the aloe plants yet, but they've molded a little bit so apparently I'm watering them too much. So I didn't water them for about 3 weeks, maybe more, and they seem to look better now.

Also at the activity I mentioned that my dream calling would be to be in nursery. Lucky for me, someone that works in the nursery was there and was super excited about it because they just realigned the ward boundaries and they need help now. She said there were 20 kids this past Sunday so they need all the help they can get. So we'll see what happens with that. With my luck, I'll get in there and not enjoy it at all. Oh well, good birth control right? Just kidding...

In other news, I was flipping through channels tonight and I came across a "Real Housewives of..." episode. At least I think that's what it was. I didn't watch enough of it to really figure it out. Anyway, in of the women's interviews she said something that really struck me. She said,

"If the grass seems greener on the other side, you need to water your own grass, not buy a new house."

I'm sure that's been said by other people before, but it just caught my attention tonight. Very good quote. 

Just food for thought I guess.

My daddy :)

This is my daddy.

I love him very much.

We're actually very similar. Pretty laid back, don't take things too seriously, yet still practical.

He was always at all my softball games, even coached me in basketball one year on an all boys team haha.

He always supported me in no matter what decisions I made.

I am definitely a daddy's girl.

Every time I go home I get really excited to see my dad.

We have very similar senses of humor and laugh all the time together.

That's probably why we get along so well.

I love my dad very, very much and couldn't have wished for a better daddy.

What a difference a year makes

This past year has undoubtedly been one of, if not the hardest, years of our lives.

However we have been blessed immensely by Heavenly Father in ways that I never thought possible.

Let me do a little explaining.

2 summers ago (2009-the summer we got married) I started taking birth control. However, my body is not a fan of the hormones that birth control contains whatsoever. Over the summer I started to feel numbness in my hands, face, etc. I didn't connect the numbness with birth control at that time however. 

Then one morning I woke up and my wrist was hurting. You know how sometimes you sleep on your wrist wrong and it's sore the next morning but after a little while it goes away? I just assumed that was the case. However the next morning, I woke up with the same pain.It gradually got worse and worse to the point of my ankles hurting and it being hard to walk. Not terribly hard, just quite uncomfortable. Then I started feeling more numbness in my hands, fingers, feet, etc. I had trouble with my fine motor skills with my hands such as typing, brushing my teeth, etc. So I went to the health clinic here on campus and told them what was going on. They said it might be lupus. I freaked. Then I told them I started realizing the numbness shortly after starting birth control. They flat out told me that birth control can't have those sort of effects of someone. Obviously I believed them-they are doctors of course. 

Anyway, Kevin and I decided that maybe I should stop taking the birth control and see if my symptoms went away and if I happened to get pregnant, then that was okay too.

That was in November of 2009. That following February we found out I was pregnant. We were so excited, but also scared out of our minds. How would we pay for this baby? Would I finish school? And tons of other questions.

Everything went great for the first 5 months. Then we got some genetic testing results back with a positive result for spina bifida. The nurse said that didn't mean the baby had it, just something in the blood work showed a higher chance. I freaked again. We set up an ultrasound appointment with a specialist in Idaho Falls  for late June. Naturally I did some research on what can cause it and taking hot baths will basically "cook" your baby in a way. I never knew that, and I enjoyed several of those baths early in my pregnancy.

However, we never made it to late June for that ultrasound appointment. 

At my 17 week appointment, my blood pressure was quite high. This is quite unusual so early on in a pregnancy, so they started drawing lots of blood and doing lots of tests the next few weeks in order to figure out why it was so high.

Then I had another appointment to check on my blood pressure and the nurse practioner checked the heart beat which was strong. But my blood pressure was still high so I set up another appointment for the next day.

The next day the doctor had trouble finding the heart beat with his little stethoscope thing so I had another ultrasound. His face looked a little off to me as he took measurements but I didn't think anything of it. I mean, I had just heard the heartbeat the day before and saw my baby kicking only a few weeks before in my last ultrasound.

Then the doctor said they baby had stopped growing right around the time of my last ultrasound. That was about 5 weeks prior. I freaked again, 

We moved up the date of the appointment with the specialist to the next week. Over that weekend was Kevin's mom's birthday so we went down for the weekend. I started feeling a few cramps Sunday night, but didn't think anything of it really. On Wednesday we went to the appointment in Idaho Falls only to be told there was no heartbeat. I thought my heart might stop beating as well when I heard the doctor say that. He was kind of a jerk about it too. His exact words were, "What I see here is a baby with no heartbeat, so that means this pregnancy has been lost." And then he walked out of the room. I instantly started bawling. My helpless baby that had been fine just a few days before was now dead. I couldn't believe it.

I thought about all the people who already knew. I was 20 weeks the next day, so we had announced the pregnancy almost 2 months before. Everyone knew. Thinking about calling my mom to tell her was more than I could bear. I made Kevin do it. I still regret making him do it. Although I spent countless hours on the phone with my mom in the near future, I still wish I could have had that moment with her regardless.

I spent the next 24 hours in the hospital waiting to deliver a baby I wouldn't get to take home. I heard several healthy babies enter the world that night crying, and I myself cried along with them. 

He was born one year ago today at 2:21 AM. From a medical standpoint, we can't be 100% sure he is a boy because he stopped growing at 14 weeks, but we both felt the whole time he was a boy and I'd like to think there was a little boy part that had started to grow down there. That being said, if there is a little girl waiting up in heaven for us, I'll have to apologize for putting her on the church records as a boy named Matthew Derek Elkins and referring to her as such until I die. But I'll still love her regardless.

Now onto the blessings part of the last year.

The reason why he died was because I have a clotting disorder which makes me prone to multiple miscarriages. All of my future pregnancies will be considered high risk and I'll have to take a blood thinner everyday in order to reduce the chances of developing a blood clot while pregnant. Because it's genetic, my sisters got tested for the disorder as well. One has it, one does not. The one that has it has had multiple surgeries in the past and her doctor said she should have died from a clot at some point. That alone is a huge blessing.

Another blessing is that Kevin and I have a much better plan for our future now than we did a year ago and I feel much more secure in our future plans than I did then. This may seem quite selfish, but we weren't ready to be parents really. Don't get me wrong, we would have figured it out eventually, but I think we're much more prepared now. Even though I know you can never really be ready.

Our relationship is so much stronger now than it was. Going through that kind of trial/experience (especially in the first year of marriage) is something I would never wish upon anyone,but it really brought us closer and more in tune with each other.

So you know how those doctors at the health clinic on campus said birth control can't cause those side effects? Yeah, I asked my OB-GYN about it, and without hesitating he responded, "Absolutely it can cause those kind of symptoms." I will never go to that health clinic again. 

We went to the temple today to celebrate Matthew's birthday. He was definitely there. It was great to feel him so strongly. We're also celebrating with a cheesecake. We decided that will be our tradition every June 17th. Temple and cheesecake. Hopefully eventually our future kids will become part of that tradition too.

I'm sure I had more thoughts I was going to write about, but I'm all blogged out. This is by far the longest post  I've ever written-pretty much a novel.

So happy birthday, Matthew. Daddy and I love you very much and can't wait until we actually get to meet you. Say hi to all your brothers and sisters that are up there celebrating with you today :)