Month in Review

This might be a little long, so friends and family...ignore this post if you want. This is mostly so my brain doesn't forget all that we've been up to this month!:)

It's been another busy month at the Smith home. Spencer is talking up a storm. I've been trying to write down everything he says, when he says it, on our calendar that hangs on our fridge, but it's becoming too tough--there are so many words! My favorite thing he has learned (he said yesterday) is "Uh-oh...Sk-ehttios!" Definitely my fav. He also likes throwing balls at us and saying "catch" or "up." My other bittersweet fav is "Hehhhwhoaoooo." Bittersweet because he has learned to wake up, bang on the wall that his crib is next to at 6 am and says it. And then he yells, "Mommma!!" Luckily Adam and I have learned that he's content if Justin goes in and plays with him next to his crib. IF, of course, Justin has been awakened by Spencer's antics!

Justin had his 7th birthday (see other post) and his last day of 1st grade was this past Friday. Weird to think that I'm going to have a 2nd grader at home! His first baseball game of the season was yesterday, and the dumb mom that I am...I signed him up for the wrong age-group team...he's in with kids a grade older. The online signup was messed up and I thought the Y would get it figured out, but they didn't. Oh well. I think it's a good challenge for Justin anyway so we'll see how it goes. Justin has been enjoying being able to play outside with the neighbor kids and enjoying the warm weather. We've decided that we're going to have to make a summer schedule to keep him and Spencer busy. Our list of to-dos is quite long, but Justin is excited to get a bit of a break from school.

I've had an interesting month. A sister from our ward passed away and I was able to help with her funeral a bit. What a neat lady, she and her husband worked in our stake family history center for many years together as the directors. And in fact, her husband passed away there, at one of the computers, working on family history work right until the end, a few years back while we've been out here. Very neat people. She was one classy lady, always done up just so. Reminded me a lot of my Great Grandma Malan who passed away when I was 14. I've been trying to re-learn how to crochet, which has been fun. My goal was to make some baby blankets for some friends who are having babies soon, but I'm thinking that's not going to happen! I'd forgotten how long it takes to crochet a blanket! But still, I love that kind of stuff.

During the month, a friend of mine sent a link to the most fabulous talk from Jeffrey R. Holland, "Lessons from Liberty Jail." I read this talk right after our trip to St. Louis, where we drove through the Kansas City area, right by the turn off to Liberty. We've been able to go to Liberty a couple times and it's a wonderful experience. But this talk gave me a totally different perspective, and I'm truly in awe of the message contained. I think every once in a while we come across something that is so truly profound and we remember it for a very long time and refer back to it often for strength. This talk is that for me.

I'm SO enjoying going to Body Pump at the Y. I found an instructor who I think is THE BEST...but he happens to be at 5:30am. Which maybe is a good thing, really. It can be difficult to take the kids to the daycare (mostly for the germ-a-phobe reasons that I can think of!) so when Adam isn't on call and I can go, it really is nice. While I HATE getting up early (always have! It's one reason why I liked working nights!), once I'm up there's something calming and quiet about the drive to the gym with no one on the road that I like. And I can appreciate my surroundings more. So I'm just trying to commit to exercising 2-3 days a week for now. It's not much, but it's more than doing nothing! And I really love how my body feels after Body Pump...which brings me to Adam's month. I told him he'd LOVE it too, and he was hesitant. He kept asking things like "There's not going to be any dancing or aerobics nonsense type stuff, right? Because if there is, I'll just leave!" So on one of his days off, while Justin was at school, he and I went. And while it was a different instructor, it was still the same "good" music track that I knew he'd like. And being the silly husband that he is, he PILED the weights on his bar. And I told him he'd regret it. And he did. Boys can be a little dumb sometimes, but I've been married to Adam for 9 1/2 years, I KNEW this is exactly what he would do. He had some major trouble climbing stairs the next day!:) He still runs and does weights almost daily (nice he can find time to do that daily at the hospital gym, amidst his work...I still don't quite understand how he finds time, but I'm glad he does. It's what he likes to do.), so luckily he wasn't in deathly pain like I was when I started going to Body Pump a couple months ago! He wants to go back and I think it would make a fun date night to go to once a week together...if we can find that time!

We're gearing up for an insane month. He'll be on call 11 times this coming month. Not fun for either of us. But this whole year was leading up to this awful month so we (or at least I!) have been mentally prepared for this. It'll be tough that he won't get to go to even one of Justin's baseball games, and miss most of church, but such is life and the sacrifices he has to make so that someday we will have him home a lot more and live comfortably. We look forward to that so much. So much so that we've been looking at dream houses and places to live online. Hopefully someday, someday. The next hard part will be deciding on a fellowship--the search continues for THAT! Some big decisions will need to be made quite soon!