We moved! Last year we matched to Albuquerque, New Mexico in Radiology, Josh was over the moon and was so excited about matching to radiology. I was happy because we got to stay in Arizona for intern year and we lived in M&D's guest house to save money and for help while Josh was gone so much. I LOVED it! I loved living by M&D. It is where we brought Luke home and he learned to crawl and took his first steps. He loves M&D so much. He loved running though all the garages to go see "papa". He is learning to talk and he does this funny thing where it sounds like he is talking through his nose except when he is excited to see Dad. He runs to him and jumps in his lap. He knew right where the office was and always stopped to say hi. We would walk in through all the garages and yell Marco... sometimes we'd hear a Polo from the sewing room or Mom's office. I don't remember when it started but josh and I have been doing to Marco, Polo thing for a while and we used it a lot at M&D's. It was so fun to see the cousins a lot. They gather at M&D's and we lived there so it was always a party. I will cherish the time we spent in Arizona and am so glad we got to spend a year there before we came here. Rachel used to live here in ABQ (which is one reason I was excited to interview and potentially match here) but she moved back to Mesa. I am so glad I got to spend a year living close to her. There is nothing like a sister. I really want a sister for Addie but I don;t know if it is going to happen. My back has been so bad the last year and the thought of carrying another child doesn't sound very back friendly. We'll see.
Addie is 5 and going into Kindergarten...how do I have a 5 year old?? Crazy. She's a pretty little girl but she had developed some...sass...I think she might get some from me but hopefully not this much! Girl... She is mostly sweet and we put a lot of responsibility on her. She helps a lot with the boys and is very independent. I am not worried about her going into kindergarten... she'll do fine...our house might fall apart though.
We have already made a few friends here and a lot have kids close in age. I made a lot of really good friends at Midwestern but since then I haven't had any friends that were obligated to be nice to me because we are family. :)
Since we have arrived we have met with friends frequently which makes my social heart very happy:) We walk to the Marshall's a lot and have already swapped babysitting for date nights. I think we are going to be very happy here in ABQ. Hopefully we can get Grant potty trained before we are finished with training in 4 years...kid...is...going...to...drive...me...crazy! I swear he spends half his day in time out for whining/ throwing fits. He is 3 years old and man...it is rough. I am sure every child is hard to potty train but Addie was COMPLETELY potty trained at 2.5. I have not worried a minute about her since then and Grant is struggling... I want to give up...and I have... but he doesn't want to... it is oh so much fun.
We celebrated our 9th anniversary before we moved and I will be 30 next month. I honestly didn't think I would live this long... I thought I would be gone a long time a go. I rarely dreamed of living this long when I was first diagnosed but did sometimes let my mind dream of the day when I would have children and a home of my own. All my dreams have come true. I have 3 children and a beautiful home. Honestly, I love my life. There are hard long days but everyone has bad days. Sometimes I am grateful for the hard days...I am just glad to have more days...hard or easy.
I was a Beehive adviser before we came here and it was one of the best experiences of my life. Those girls changed me. I learned so much about life and myself in those few months we had together. I miss them all. Wednesday nights are so quiet and I think I learned more than they did in our Sunday lessons. Oh man, they were not shy. Those girls were eager to share their thoughts and feelings and would always participate in the lessons. They were so good about being respectful and I know they were listening. I poured my heart out to those girls and I can testify that you do love who you serve. I never served a mission so I never had an opportunity to continuously serve others who were not family. I prayed for those girls and thought about them constantly. I truly love them and all of their personalities. My heart kinda aches every Wednesday and Sunday. I had a hard time when they changed to 2 hour church because it meant that we only saw our girls every other week. I am one of those weird people who loved 3 hour church. We are trying to do the Come Follow Me and Josh is better at it than I am. The kids like having our nightly lessons that honestly can't last for more than 90 seconds before the kids lose interest. I tried to teach them how to pray last night and I felt like I was talking to myself but as odd as it is I think I needed to hear what I was saying... I was asking the kids to try to be more thoughtful and less repetitive, to first thank, then ask. I tried to be more thoughtful last night while Josh and I were saying prayers and Josh told me he had never heard me pray like that before... yea... I need work on being less receptive. You would think with a life like mine, full of miracles, that I would never falter and have the strongest of faith but I do falter. I do have many times when I don't study and pray as I probably should. I feel like there is so much that I do not know about the scriptures and it is overwhelming how much there is to know and how much I do not know!
Well this got rather long winded...
Kids, if you ever find this, know I love you...even if you are EXTREMELY hard to potty train...GRANT JOSHUA
