Brrrrr...

It's getting late now but I have this problem where if I stay up past 10pm I get a second wind and don't go to bed until about 2am, or later. No wonder my metabolism is so screwed up! Oh well. So as I sit here typing my fingers feel like they are slowing down and freezing, I am seriously so cold! Even with my thick sweater on and being wrapped in my big fuzzy yellow blanket! Now I know what all you family out in Colorado and everyone else where it doesn't get above 30 degrees as the daily high for the next 4 months are thinking, especially my cold-temp loving siblings! Your thinking "girl you are the crazy one, if I were you, where you are, I would be wearing shorts and a t-shirt!" Well, your not me and I am realizing I am more like my mom than I like to admit. You know, I used to be one of the ones who would make fun of her for being cold all the time, but now dagum it, I am turning out just like her! Guess that's karma for ya huh!
This is kind of a random post, not much new is going on, we STILL don't know what we are doing about the house, but then do we ever know what we are doing? Say it with me now... "No Wendy you guys don't". Don't worry, you can say it, it won't hurt our feelings... well ok, so Josh is over in the corner crying, but I'm doin just fine! Lol. But seriously hopefully we will know more of what, or if there is anything else that we can do by the end of this week, we'll see. If not our plan is to just walk away and find a nice refrigerator box, maybe two if we are lucky, and go live under I-10 and Sun Valley Parkway, I hear the Sunsets are beautiful out that way! Then Josh can get side jobs working on cars that will be mysteriously breaking down along that stretch of highway from shards of broken light fixtures, or pieces of tile that would strangely match up with items from the house that we had to leave... hum, interesting.
Ok, wow I am getting a little tired and probably a lot crazy so I think I am going to go and try to sleep, if I don't freeze trying to make my way up the stairs that is!

Gratitude

I sit here, trying to swim through all the thoughts and feelings going through my head and my heart right now. Things in life just seem to completely take over and I realize only too clearly that I am so in over my head right now. But at the same time, I realize that when I feel like I can't make it, and I just want to crawl in a dark hole and never come out, there have been and are things that keep pulling me through. I wanted to make a list of all of those things, mostly for my benefit (so I don't actually try to find a dark hole) but also to share with all of you the things that I am so grateful for in my life right now...
1. Josh, he is my everything and I don't know where I would be without him. Even though we are going through this together, I don't think that either of us could make it alone. Together, I know we have a chance. Even if things don't work out the way we want them to, we will always have each other and that is worth so much more than any material thing we may have.
2. My Parents and J's, they give us so much good advice and even if it is just to listen, especially when they are so busy. I know they care and they show that by not judging us but just by always being there for us, no matter what.
3. Being given the chance to take care of some very wonderful little girls. They are so sweet and I get to spend a lot of time with them. It is kind of hard to explain, I want so much to be a mom! I feel that I have bottled up all this "nurturing" that just has no way of getting out, except with Josh, but I know he gets tired of me "mothering" him. So I am grateful that I have time each week that I can care for these girls. While I know I can't and don't want to compare to being their Mom to them, I am still so glad that I can be there for them when Mommy and Papa can't, that they call me "their Wendy" and that they are always happy to be with me.
4. For my "big sister" April. I never did have a big sis growing up, that's who I am in my family, but April has been such a strength to me. She is always there for me and is always willing to listen, even when the times were so crazy and hard for her, she always goes out of her way for everyone before herself and I look up to her for so many things. She always follows her heart, she is determined in everything she does, she cares deeply for everyone she knows, especially her family. She has been through so, so, SO much and yet she is still pushing on and succeeding. I am so thankful that we "followed" April and her family here, I really believe this is where we are ment to be, I think Heavenly Father knew that we would need each other.
5. I am so glad I can drive down the highway and see all the green fields of the various corn, cotton, and whatever else it is they grow here. It reminds me so much of home when I was younger. And that home feeling is here now, I really feel that where we are now is "home".
6. I am not necessarily glad so many people are going through such hard trials right now, but I am grateful for how these very dificult and diverse trials so many of us are going through, friends and family alike, have brought us all closer together. I don't know if this will make sense to everyone, but I have seen it and felt it very strongly in my life, and I feel that the "bonds" that have been made during these hard times will be the kinds that will last indefinetly, and for that reason I am grateful.
I look back on this list and realize now most of these "things" I am grateful for are actually people. So thank you all for being a part of my life and for being there for us, my heart is so full of love, thank you for helping me keep my focus on the things that are truly important in life, no matter how hard life may seem at any given time.

Freaked Out!!

So I got home on Monday evening, after meeting with another wedding photographer April and I are looking at doing some second shooting with, and I walk in the house, the TV was on, the back door was slid half way open and Josh was no where to be found. I started to get concerned. We never leave doors open randomly so this was odd. I tried calling his cell phones (personal and work) but he didn't answer either. So I thought there would be a good chance he was over at our neighbor Shae's house, J and Shae hang out a lot, so I went over and checked with them, but he wasn't there either. I started freaking out a little bit, ok a lot a bit, because this just wasn't normal, especially with things being so fresh with what happened with Brad, I was very very concerned. After calling Todd and April to make sure he wasn't with one of them, and after Shae rode his bike up and down the street we finally found him, across the street at Aubrey and Mike's house, another one of our neighbors we are good friends with. By this time I was crying and thinking that the worst had happened. And I am so grateful nothing did happen, but it made me again, realize how much in this life I have and take for granted sometimes. When I first thought I might have lost my Josh I was so so so scared, I love him so much and I don't know what I would ever do without him. So even though he drives me crazy sometimes, and the ho hum de drum of everyday gets a little too routine I guess you could say, when it comes down to it he is the most important thing, person in my life and my reason for living and I hope that I can always remember this and not take him for granted, even when things are so hum drum.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

It is halloween night and I am having fun handing out candy to trick-or-treaters! When we first moved here I got a call the day before halloween from Josh and he was like, is it halloween today because there are kids everywhere going trick or treating(downtown Buckeye where he works). We found out later that Buckeye has a tradition of trick or treating the night before Halloween and then the town puts on a huge Halloween Carnival. I think that is such a fun tradition, but it kind of sounds like it might be dying out because of all the new people, like us that have moved in over the past couple years, cause when J called me last night he said he didn't see hardly any kids out. That is kind of sad, and I think it is just because most of the people that have moved here, like us, just don't know about it. If I was still a kid I would be all about two days of halloween! Anyway, I didn't even decorate this year, because I am trying to get ready for moving, but I was looking through some photos and found a couple pics of the pumpkins we carved last year. That was so fun,ahhh...good memories!

This was Josh's...

This was mine...

Making Changes

I don't think I realized how hard it would be to make all these changes that we have to make now... even working, i didn't think it would be hard to stop working, I thought it would be great, and it is in many ways, but I feel like I have kind of lost a bit of my identity. Not that work was my life, but, well I guess it kind of was because that is what I spent the most of my day doing everyday was working. So now, I have all these things I want to get done, but there is so much that I just don't know where to start. I feel so displaced, especially now, not knowing what is in our future, I know we will have a roof over our head and I am so grateful to have family close by that love us enough to help us, but it is hard to work for something I can't see and can't comprehend right now.

Choices

So much for keeping an up to date record of our daily lives, I've never been able to keep a regular journal, but hopefully I can do better with this. I am so grateful for the families that we have, I don't know what I would do without them. They give us so much support and so much love and I am so so blessed to be able to call all of these wonderful people my family, our family. Josh and I are trying to make some big decisions and it has been so hard to know what the right thing to do is, but today has been a day of revelation I guess you could say, I think we have gotten an answer to our prayers to know what the right thing to do is and we feel so at peace with this decision. It is one that will help us and let us grow even more and change, hopefully, the rest of our lives. I have hope again and the peace I feel is what we have been waiting for for a very long time.

Just another day

This is my very first blog and I am so proud of myself, I set it up all by myself - which is a huge feat for me (computers and I have a hard time getting along) so Woohooo!!!! Josh and I went and looked at houses yesterday, but I don't think we found the right one yet, but I guess we still have time, it is just hard to make the change. But it is a change we have to make and we are hoping we can be smart and choose the right place for our family to call home. Things have been going so well since I stopped working. I feel so much better, I get the sleep that I need and I think before long we can maybe think about starting to have kids. A huge scary step for me but one that we are so close to being ready for. It will be a big change for us, we have gotten use to a lifestyle where it is just the two of us, but we are both ready for something more. Even though it means sacrifices we have to make, those sacrifices are mostly just things and in the end things are just things and they don't really matter.