Brody's Blessing/Last Weekend in St. George

The weekend before heading to California was a busy one.  We had planned a while back to have Brody's blessing on September 7th.  Then, out of nowhere things fell into place for the California move and we realized we could kill two birds with one stone and have his blessing, plus con all our family who came to support us into helping pack, load trailers, clean and move us.  GENIUS!  It really did work out great...except that I had already packed my camera by the time the weekend rolled around without realizing I probably would have wanted some pictures.  I did take a few with my cell phone, but that's it.

Luckily, Emily (my sister who will now have more free time on her hands than she'll know what to do with since we left St. George and she won't be constantly babysitting us...yes, "us", she took care of me too) offered to take some pictures for me.  Unfortunately, she took a few, then we got distracted and I totally forgot to take any more.  So, yeah...you get what you get.  We also got ZERO pictures of Brody in his blessing outfit.  WE ROCK! 

Saturday afternoon, the cousins rolled into town.  We got some takeout and had a picnic in our empty house.

My mom was thrilled about this picture...she loves that we always take pictures of her sleeping.  So this is actually a picture of Brody sleeping, my mom just happens to be in the picture.

On Sunday, Brody was given a beautiful blessing by Marty, the spirit was so strong and we all felt Ben there watching over this new little boy who also carries his name.  Brody wore the same blessing outfit as my nephews (Aspen's two boys) and maybe this is a huge stretch...but Ben was at the blessing of the last nephew and held him in the outfit.  It felt a little extra sentimental.

After the blessing, we went to Emily's house (since my house was all packed up and empty) and had a nice brunch.  Thanks to our fabulous families for providing EVERYTHING, we just showed up.  

Before Les and Ina (and Marty's brothers Todd and Craig) left, we snapped a few pictures...and then forgot to get any with my family...because, as stated before...WE ROCK! 

Marty with his boy...who was kind of sad... 

We then attempted a cousin picture...it went like this...and yes, that is my child on a slide with a toy computer.  It was the only way she'd even come over...stinker.

 

 Then we attempted some of my and my little (except not so little) family:

Finally the closest to a good picture we could get...

After that, we let the kids play as long as the cousins could stay before heading back up to their homes.  It was fun stuff!

Molly enjoyed a chocolate creamie...

And Marty played cowgirl cowboys with Molly

It was a great weekend, and made moving that much harder as the realization that we are now even FURTHER away from family set in.  We miss everyone SO MUCH and keep hoping and praying that this path will eventually lead us back home so we can make more great memories with all those we love!

Arriving in California...

This post is just for record keeping, and is very long.  I need to write some things down, because I always tell myself "I'll never forget this" and then a week later someone asks me questions and I realize I can't remember a darn thing.  Got to love having a horrible memory.  I can't even tell you how many things I packed in St. George telling myself "I'll remember where I put this, no big deal." and I still have yet to find them...because I CANNOT REMEMBER!  Argh...

So, we made it to California on Monday.  We had a ton of help Saturday to load the trailers and clean the house, then we blessed Brody on Sunday (I'll do a separate blog post with the fun things from the weekend), finished loading our last few things Monday morning and were headed out of St. George by about 10:00 a.m. 

Oh, the joy of packing...

Saying my last goodbye to the house...so sad to see it completely empty.  Tears were definitely shed as I closed the doors and locked up for the last time.

Loading the cars and hooking up trailers

What was supposed to be a 5 hour trip turned into an 8 hour trip as we were stuck in major traffic...IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE.  We had planned to arrive to our new home at about 3:00 p.m., and had people lined up to help us unload the trailers. Marty was able to call them and let them know what was happening.  Unfortunately, a few of the people couldn't come later as they had other obligations, so I was starting to worry about having help.  When we finally pulled in around 6:00 p.m., we were all hungry, exhausted and frazzled and feeling a bit overwhelmed at how much needed to get done, three hours behind schedule.  But thankfully, the ward caught wind of what happened and we had a good turnout of men to help unload, I think we had it all done within a couple hours.  (A couple women and children came by to say hi as well.)

Brody and Molly were pretty worn out...I thought this picture was funny.  My two tired babies.

Apparently we got through Vegas just in time as well, because a couple hours after we went through, I-15 was washed out from a huge rain storm. One sister-in-law said to me that St. George was crying because we left...I think she's right.  My dad and Emily and her girls came with us to help us settle in...I was OK with them being stranded in California for a while, but they found an alternate route to go home.  Boo.  I will be forever indebted to them for all the help they gave me.  Emily got my kitchen and bedrooms pretty much all put together while I dealt with a fussy baby.  (Brody didn't get the memo that he's supposed to be happy in California)  I definitely cried when they had to leave.  Claire saw me crying, and wrote me this INCREDIBLY sweet letter.  That girl is just the sweetest thing ever.

(click on the picture to make it bigger) 

I've had a hard time accepting that California is our home now.  I know we haven't even been here a whole week, but I'm kind of in denial.  Usually when we move, I get right to putting everything away and putting up decorations and curtains to make it feel like home.  This time I've basically put away the bare minimum and haven't had any desire to put up decorations.  Granted, it's much harder to get anything done with 5 kids, so I haven't necessarily had the opportunity to get it all done, but I also just don't have a strong desire.  Like I said.  I'm in denial.

One of my goals was to have some semblance of order in the kitchen and main living area.  So, this is what the family room looked like (not that this matters...but those are not our curtains and have since come down): 

And this is what the rest of the house looked like:

I did get the little girls room put together with Emily's help (minus any decor)

And Brody's room as well

As for the older girls'....well, their room looks like this:

And the loft, a.k.a. playroom, looks like this (although we've worked on it since and it's getting better)

Today was a particularly rough day, Marty had to go into work and I found myself being very short tempered with the kids.  I took a moment to gather my thoughts and realized the kids weren't being bad, I was just taking my own frustration and sadness out on them.  So, we had a little heart to heart, I apologized for being a mean mommy and that I just missed Utah and our families, and told them I'd try harder.  And wouldn't  you know that about 10 minutes later, a lady from my new ward (who came Monday) called to just check on me and see how things are going. She gave me the rundown of where some stores are, what areas of town are better than others, where the mother's lounge in the church is etc.  It was so nice to go from feeling so alone and homesick to having someone here think of me.  She definitely was inspired to call at that time.

Some random/happy pictures from the week:

Molly is quite a fashionista lately

Brody smiles up a storm...but I must always shake when he smiles, because the pictures are always blurry!  But it's still cute.

Talking to Claire

 

Life continues to carry on...we've just about got school figured out for the kids (including Addison who is VERY excited) and I know we'll eventually feel settled here.  But for now, I kind of feel like we're just stopping by for a visit....

Straight Hair Bliss

I don't know if it's been established on this here blog or not, but Addison doesn't particularly love her curly hair and asks me - constantly - to do her hair straight.  We've had many talks about, "But you and me are the only ones with curly hair, I love having a hair twin!" and "People wish they had curly hair like you!  You are always getting stopped everywhere we go so people can tell you how pretty your hair is!" or "Heavenly Father doesn't make mistakes.  He wanted you to have curly hair." 

Sometimes it works, sometimes not.

And apparently, after telling her primary teacher MULTIPLE times about not liking her curly hair, he finally said, "Well, maybe in Heaven your hair will be straight."  GENIUS!!  That kept her content for a while, but now we're back to complaining about curly hair.  

Anyway, this is just to establish that on the rare occasion (maybe once a month) that I do give in and straighten her hair, she is absolutely beyond thrilled.

Yesterday was a straight hair day...and she did not disappoint with her hilarious commentary:

"Mom!  Me and Heidi are totally twinners now!  We both have long straight hair, and blonde streaks.  We're twins!"

(Heidi = Heidi Klum...the super model and judge on America's Got Talent.  Addison watches AGT with us and is apparently on a first name basis now with Heidi.)

When she leaned over, she noticed her hair fell in front of her face...curly hair doesn't do that so much.  So she kept standing up, and then bending down to flip her head upside down over and over.  

"Mom!  When I go upside down like this, my hair sticks straight down and it looks so cool!  WATCH THIS MOM!" 

Not sure how she didn't get light headed and pass out.

After spinning around, her bangs kind of landed in front of her eye:

Addison: Mom!  Do you see how my hair is like this?

Me:  Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Addison:  It reminds me of this show I saw about a girl that was spinning around and her hair went in front of her face like this, and her hair was supposed to be curly but she got it straight that day...and her name was Addison.  It's called World of Bizzerly.

Me:  [laughing] Uh...OK.

Addison:  What?! It's a real show mom!  I watch it every day in my mind.....and it's about ME!

I think I need to do her hair straight here and there when I'm having a bad day, because it always ends up being quite entertaining.

Life. . .

Gosh, where does one even begin to unload the weight of our life right now?

The weight is keeping me from blogging at all, because I just don't even know how to spill it all out, but at the same time don't necessarily want to write a huge vent fest or overshare on the blog.  But I do need to get some of it out there...for my own sanity.  So please, read on with the understanding that I am exhausted and possibly emotional.  Or don't read on...whatever you want, I'm not your mother.

Things are - complicated - right now.  I guess that's the best way to describe it.  In a million years I never imagined I'd be single parenting 5 kids all under ten years old while Marty worked in California.  Sometimes I feel like if this were the only hurdle, we'd probably be better able to handle it.  But there are so many other things that just multiply the immense stress!

For example:  Marty just found out he has to be out of his current living situation by the 28th of this month - yeah...where will he go after that?  NO IDEA!  We certainly can't afford for him to stay at a hotel or rent an apartment.  He jokes that he'll live out of his van and get a $20 a month gym membership to use a shower.  Who knows, maybe it'll really come down to that.

Then there's the fact that we're trying to sell our house and have had more than one person approach us interested that we hold off moving forward with advertising our house for, only to have them walk away at the last minute.  We did just get a realtor, so now I'm also trying to keep up on cleaning so that I can be ready at a moments notice for a showing on top of just trying to maintain regular life and figure out a newborn...challenging doesn't even scrape the surface.

If you were a fly on the wall at my house, I'm sure that you would probably wish to be swatted by a fly swatter or stuck in a bug zapper, because it is CHAOS around here.  Just the other day Molly fell off the back of the couch onto our tile floor while I was making a bottle for Brody so I wasn't there to stop her.  She did this while Brody was screaming in the swing and Brielle was trying to force his binky in his mouth to calm him down, at the same time Marty calls and Brielle decided to answer, so she's yelling into the phone over all the screaming and crying.  I can only imagine how that seemed to him.  We did survive...but those situations aren't all that uncommon, and man, oh man, do I wish I had a second pair of hands and a reprieve from it all in the evenings.  But alas...I don't.  Yes, I know, people have it worse.  But this is my blog, my complaining.

Add to that that I have to go back to transcribing from home because living in two different states is a huge strain on our finances. (I think this is the biggest challenge...seriously...nothing like trying to transcribe while kids are screaming in the background, but I have deadlines to make and we need the money)  I mean, I wouldn't even consider our situation "making ends meet" at this point.  It's beyond frustrating, because if the house would just sell, things would improve vastly.  Marty wouldn't miss out on family time, I would actually be able to breathe, we would have money to catch up on financial matters, we could have our family together again.  But for whatever reason, we are being blocked at every turn.

And the guilt - oh the guilt - I constantly feel guilty that I am not able to give my kids all they need.  I can't be two parents, and unfortunately the one they've got right now is not exactly doing the best.  It's hard, but I think it's normal as a mom to put a lot of pressure on ourselves.  And I always feel like I'm failing.  I'm working on it though.

There are a few other things also weighing on us, but I feel like I need to keep those private for now. (Especially since my children have discovered the blog and like to read it...Brielle...go do your homework!)

I definitely don't feel like I have the strength to do it all.  But somehow, I am still going, still surviving.  I may go 3 days without showering, may not ever leave the house, might forget when the last time I bathed the three little kids was, and yell WAY more than I ever thought I would, but we're alive.

But among all this craziness and stress, I am trying to look for the good.  First off, I am so incredibly grateful that I made a ton of freezer meals before we had Brody, and then didn't start using them until Marty had gone back to California and my mom had gone back home.  Otherwise my kids would be living off of PB&J or cereal.

My kids are healthy, beautiful and happy.  My sister, Emily, lives near and helps out WAY MORE than I deserve.  We do have a roof over our heads, food on the table and a vehicle to drive (although sometimes we have to ration the food and gas in the car to get to pay day...but you know...that's always fun).  The older girls LOVE being back at school with their friends and are doing great.

To help remind me how there is still good hiding in all the negative, I just want to unload some pictures from my phone.

Having a little "movie party" on Claire's karaoke machine

Stuffing grapes in their cheeks to look like chipmunks 

Walking around the temple grounds

Molly started putting all the flower clips on her head (with a little help from me) so the other girls joined in.

Claire and Addison being a "two-headed person" zipped themselves up into my sweater.  Apparently it was quite cozy, because they stayed like this to watch a movie.

 Molly wears her little stuffed animals around her neck...I think it's hilarious.  They have velcro hands, so she hooks them on and stays this way for hours.

This cute boy smiling more and more

Molly got a cute new haircut

 So bummed this was blurry...but caught a good smile.

 Caught the end of a smile

Put a sprinkler out on the park grass and let the kids go crazy for a while

 Addison made a sweet mask out of tulle and pipe cleaners

This boy knows how to lounge

And this video...oh be still my heart
(ignore my annoying baby talking voice)
 
 

So yes...I do have a lot to be grateful for.  It's hard to remember that at times when you feel like the walls are closing in.

But all in all, I do know I'm blessed.  Very, very blessed.