Made it okay (and so did Sam).

Praise the Lord!  We made it to Iowa with no problems and I just got a call from Sam saying he's on his way!  Woot!  There is a storm coming in tomorrow and one ended yesterday morning so God's timing is perfect.

It's cold and Nathaniel hates wearing his coat/hat/mittens.  He's gotta get used to it though because -13 is not the type of weather to go without those things.

There is no internet at my mom's so if you need to reach me, call my cell phone or text me.

Bye!  And Merry Christmas!

Heading to Iowa (fingers crossed).

Lots has been going on this week. Between my mom flying in, finishing up church stuff and doing the whole "graduation" thing, it's been super busy. Tomorrow morning bright and early we are flying back to Iowa where I will catch up with the rest of my family, see Sam (!!!), and just relax.

Here are some high lights from the week. I will update again after I get back in January (since my mom's computer is a dinosaur with crap Internet).

-Nathaniel was very well behaved at graduation. I was so proud.

-Wicked was great (again) and I was happy to share that with my mom.

-Baccalaureate was a great experience. I got to sit with a lot of faculty, which was a hoot, and the whole thing was very touching. I missed Sam like crazy, especially since spouses were honored at this event.

-I've become a weenie in the cold as I'm NOT looking forward to the -7 degree weather tomorrow and when it rained all day on Wednesday I just wanted to cry (and I ran my heater all day long).

-I'm so grateful to God for all He brought us through the past four years and am looking forward to this next chapter of my life. Woo Hoo!

Gingerbread houses and stupid questions.

On Friday Nathaniel and I went to Sam's Sunday School's gingerbread house decorating contest. (I say Sam's because I have yet to actually attend since I teach second service all of the time, but the people are great!). It was a lot of fun. Of course, Nathaniel did not help me at all. He ate a cookie, ate a candy cane, grabbed a handful of pretzels and then ran to play light sabers with his friends, leaving me to decorate the entire house by myself. It was nice to hang out with friends though, and to watch Nathaniel running around with a bunch of other kids. He is such a cute kid.

I posted a few pictures from the night:

A picture of the three of us (Mommy, Nathaniel and baby boy number 2)

Posing with our house. Notice the pretzels on the roof. It took forever!

Nathaniel making a funny face. Gosh, I love this kid!

On another note...I was super excited to see the top photo because I don't look like I'm stowing a house under my shirt. Seriously, nearly every day for the past two weeks someone different has asked me if I'm having twins. I know I have big babies, but why do people feel like they must ask me if I'm having twins? I'm not big all over, just in my tummy. In fact, since I'm doing laundry tonight, I threw all of my maternity clothes in the wash (I have three pairs of pants) so I'm currently wearing non maternity pants (sure, they are my fat pants buttoned under the belly, but the point is they are up and buttoned!) and a non-maternity sweatshirt. Just proving my point. It really is all baby!

So, if you see me waddling down the street, please don't ask if they've found the second heartbeat yet. I may throw a pencil at your head. :)

Who are you talking to?

Nathaniel has quite the imagination.

Either that, or the signs of schizophrenia have set in extremely early.

This morning I took some time to clean and bake some pies (for a party that didn't happen) while Nathaniel played with his toys. It figures that for the past two years I've been trying to get him to play happily by himself and he finally gets the hang of it after I'm done with school.

Anyways, all morning he was pretty happy playing with his firetruck (putting out fake fires), his tractor and his airplane. As we were eating lunch he was sitting there just chit-chatting away to himself. I was trying to follow what he was saying, but then I realized he wasn't talking to me.

Here is a sample of the conversation he was having:

Nathaniel: "Hi! How are you!?"

(Switching chairs and changing voices): "I good, how are you?"

(Switching chairs and voices again): "Good, okay, bye!"

So I asked him, "Nathaniel, sweetie, who are you talking to?" He looked at me like I was the dumbest mom in the world and said, "Cody."

Nathaniel doesn't know anyone named Cody. He doesn't watch any movies or t.v. with characters named Cody. Craziness! I asked him where Cody was and he pointed to the chair next to me (which was empty) and said, "Right there!" Okay...

Today at supper I asked Nathaniel how old Cody was and he immediately answered, "4".

They say that kids with imaginary friends are smart, right? Either that or I'm raising a pathological liar. Time will tell.

*sigh*

Well, I finally got around to getting our car into the shop for it's oil change and to get the cooling system checked out (since I've been working on getting it fixed for three years and no one has been able to fix it). I love having all of this extra free time on my hands now. I had one of my students come over while Nathaniel was napping, grabbed a book and a peppermint hot cocoa from Starbucks and took my car in to the shop to get fixed.

Two hours later, still no word from the technician. Hmmm...what's going on?

Then the mechanic approached me, handed me a pair of safety goggles and said, "I want to show you what's going on with your car."

He then led me back to the shop and showed me my poor Buick. Apparently, they don't know what is wrong with it, but back two years ago when the brilliant technician told me that it was fine to put water in my cooling system it only made everything worse for my poor aluminum engine. My entire cooling system is full of orange goo (aka rust) and there is a leak somewhere which means any number of things could be wrong with my car. There could be a gasket leak or a hose leak or something somewhere in the middle of my engine.

Ugh. There went my nice relaxing afternoon. Both mechanics leveled with me and told me that I should either buy a new engine or just count it as lost and get a new car.

At least they were honest with me and didn't screw me over by taking everything apart and continuing to add up my bill.

But, now just as student loans are coming due I have to go car shopping. We were hoping that this car would last us a few more years (it's only a 2002 with 90,000 miles on it) and that when we got a new car it meant that we would have two cars instead of one. It also means that I have to buy a car without Sam's consultation! Not that I can't do it, I'm completely capable. I just hate making large purchases like that without him around.

At least I only had to pay for the oil change (which I needed regardless) and the diagnostic. 50.00, totally doable. Sigh. Time to do car research!

FINISHED!

I just crossed the finish line! I just printed out my last paper, due tomorrow. I simply have to do my victory lap/cool down (attend a class and go to my graduation stuff). This is amazing! 4.5 years of hard work, sweat and many many tears. I've earned my M.Div.!!! (and, not that it matters, but I'm the only girl graduating this semester with this degree and I did it with honors!!!!).
More later, we're going to disneyland!!

Pictures from Sam's visit.

We had such a good visit with Sam over Thanksgiving and the week after. It was just so nice to be able to do family things, like cook dinner together (even though we ate Thanksgiving dinner for about a week...) and put Nathaniel to bed together. It was just really nice to have a "real" family for a little over a week.

Yesterday was really hard for me. It was hard because while I knew that Sam leaving was inevitable and that I can survive this (I've done it before, I can do it again), I hated seeing him say good-bye to Nathaniel. Nathaniel doesn't understand that daddy is gone for a long time. It's just so hard to know that Sam's leaving and that the next time he's home for good Nathaniel will be 3 1/2. Gosh, that's just hard. It's even harder to explain.

So, here are some pictures from Thanksgiving and beyond.



This last picture needed to stand alone. It's hilarious (I think so anyways). For Thanksgiving we had our wine glasses out with a variety of beverages in them. Wine (for the non-pregnant, non-atkins people), soda, milk, etc. Sam and I have a pair of plastic wine glasses which we got 6 years ago at a Tony Bennett concert in Iowa. So, we gave Nathaniel his own wine glass with water. I think it's funny that I have a picture of my two year old drinking his water from a wine glass. That's class (ha!).

Cheers!

Transitions.

December will be a month of transitions for our family. In fact, I believe that I can sum up all of 2008 as a transitional time. We moved (again), Sam deployed (again), the number of children we are having will soon double (that sounds so much cooler than simply stating we are having another one), I'm graduating from Seminary and my internship ends. It's crazy!

Honestly, as graduation nears I am super excited but I'm apprehensive as well. What am I going to do with my time?! I've never "just" been a mom. I've always balanced three or four different tasks at once. Student, intern, wife, mommy, t.a., etc...Yet, come January 4th, after I get off of that plane from Iowa I will be faced with the daunting task of being a stay-at-home mom. Sure, it's a privilege that not many people get, but I'm nervous.

I'm mostly nervous because I thrive on adult interactions and while many of my fellow stay-at-home-mommy friends get to look forward to their husbands coming home at the end of the day, I will not have that to look forward to. It's all a little overwhelming.

I know I'll be fine, I know I have a wonderful supporting community around me, but still...it can be a bit daunting.

But, for the next 24 hours I can ignore my homework (I have three classes left to attend next week and minimal homework prep so I can pretend it doesn't exist for the time being), listen to the hubby bathe the boy and pretend that we are a "normal" family. I can live in denial that my world will be completely flipped on its head in one month and simply enjoy the moment.

(I will update with photos and Sam's visit at a later date).