Yellow Wallpaper

We just spent this weekend in Wyoming at a family reunion that was absolutely perfect. I wasn't sure that things were going to be so great on Friday afternoon during the long drive, which included a stop to get my sister at the airport in Salt Lake before heading up. Things started looking up when she bought us all ice cream bars in Evanston at the Maverik. Two hours later we pulled into my aunt's driveway and I immediately started to relax thanks to the clean mountain air and the gorgeous scenery. My aunt is amazing for hosting everyone at her home (not everyone slept there), and it was a fabulous time. Friday night we ate burgers around a bonfire in the yard and the kids ate smores with freshly roasted marshmallows. The next day we got up, had a big pancake breakfast, and headed over to my grandmother's house to work on cleaning it out. She passed away three years ago, but this weekend was a good opportunity to help my uncle clean things out. There was plenty of junk, li...

I can't believe that nearly a week has gone by without a post; we've all been adjusting to living in a new home in a 'new' place. Some things are good, like the fact that we have family members close by that love to visit and even like to have our kids over for sleepovers. Others are mixed blessings, like the fact that Mr. Fob got promoted to full-time at his job. Yes, it's a blessing, since the money is great, but it's an adjustment for all of us as he transitions to working that many hours a week. Plus his company is too small to offer benefits so we've spent many hours this week trying to arrange some sort of insurance coverage for us. I'm hoping Mr. Fob will get some sort of benefited position at a local library before next February so this baby doesn't bankrupt us. If not, at least we're saving our money now. I've also been avoiding posting because I don't want to spend all my time moaning about how crappy I feel. I already did that ...

During the last year or two we have increasingly described ourselves as 'vegetarian', but the truth is we are more like ' flexitarians '. I haven't bought meat for about a year now, but we still indulge in fast food from time to time and will often eat meat when others serve it to us. As I typed that sentence about not buying meat, I realized that I have been buying some fish, so it is probably simply hopeless to attempt to label ourselves and we should just go ahead and eat what we want. Lately we've decided that adding some beef back into our diets would probably be a good thing. We're scouting out sources of local, pasture-raised healthy beef so we can buy some for this winter. I know that many women can have healthy pregnancies with a vegetarian diet, but I've struggled with anemia in the past and my digestive issues make me wary of adding too much iron in supplement form. We will probably still eat meat only about once a week and will put some fish ...

When I started this blog four years ago I didn't realize that it would turn into a chronicle of the constant upheaval that has marked our lives for the last few years. A quick look at the archives reveals over twenty posts labelled " moving ", and reading through them brings back such strong memories that the stress hormones start racing through my blood all over again. I thought this time would be different because we had a nice house picked out and we were moving somewhere familiar and cheaper. Plus we weren't dragging things out over several days or weeks and Mr. Fob actually still has a job. Well, I discovered that moving is never fun. This move was a little less painful than others, but more in the way of ripping off a band-aid rather than peeling it slowly. Still hurts. Friday morning we picked up the moving van and loaded it up. That morning actually went pretty well; we had a lot of people show up to help us load the truck and clean our apartment. I was so gra...

Even though I decided a few months ago that I was done with grad school and that we wanted to move on to something else I've still been feeling a lot of angst about the decision. This morning was S- Boogie's end of the year program at school and I felt some pangs of regret while watching her singing in Spanish along with all her friends. My decision to drop school and our decision to move back to Utah aren't totally related, but as much as we like living here it's still far from our families and expensive. But it keeps feeling like the right thing, even though in many ways it looks like the wrong one. This afternoon I had a little meeting with the graduate advisor and it was much better than I had expected it to be. I basically told her that I'd loved the program here (really, it's an awesome place for grad school), but that it just wasn't the right choice for me in my life right now. And she agreed. She told me that I'm young, I have small children, an...

This past week marks ten years since I went to the temple for the first time and received my endowment . For most of my life I remember wondering about the temple because I had heard so much about it from other people. My mother went regularly and was a good example to me of faithfulness in attending. During the last few years I haven't been so great at going to the temple. It's been more of a challenge with my busy schedule and the distance (although both those things are poor excuses). I've decided to commit to going more frequently once we move, and I'm trying to decide on a reasonable goal. Every two weeks seems like a lot, every month seems like a little. I think I'll see how I feel in the upcoming months as well. I guess my testimony of the temple is mostly based on how I feel when I leave. It's a place to spend some time away from the rest of the world and commune with God, to get a handle on who I really am and to focus on what I can do to live a better ...

My waning enthusiasm for school is clearly evident in the amount of books I've read during the last two months. I wonder if I'll keep up the reading habit now that I don't have anything to avoid. East of the Mountains by David Guterson I picked up this book because one of Guterson's other books, Snow Falling on Cedars , is one of my favorites. This one has equally beautiful writing, but the characters and plot just weren't as compelling. I also thought the ending felt a little too pat and didn't seem to fit with the protagonist's personality. The Country Ahead of Us, The Country Behind by David Guterson I happened to be in the short story section of the library and decided to grab this since I had just finished reading the other book by Guterson . As in his other work that I've read, the writing was beautiful and very evocative of time and place. But most of the stories felt just like most other short stories I've read recently and did not impress...