Updates coming soon, I promise

But I am a busy lady.. concert tonight with Kennewick High, Recital tomorrow with my students (and dress rehearsal for Stake Choir), Stake Choir Saturday and Sunday! Nope, not overwhelmed yet. Maybe tomorrow, that's when the scheduling gets funky.

We printed our blog through blurb.com for all those who wanted to know.... and we LOVE it! I really recommend the site, you can customize all you want and have a lot of creative control, which I like. Ordering is simple and easy and it is shipped fast!

See you when I am done performing!

Shaylee

Joseph has an interview tomorrow...  please send positive thoughts and prayers his way.


**Update***
The interview went great! Unfortunately there is no open position, even for an internship, yet. The interviewer was really happy to meet with Joseph, impressed by his resume  he even  kept his resume. A foot in the door...hopefully. But it was a good & positive experience for Joseph. I am a very proud wife!

Quickly before bed...

Joseph does NOT have to report for jury duty!!! 

Can I hear you say "Hallelujah!!" ??

So we are heading to Spokane for Thanksgiving...
plans a little different than before.. 

But going to be oh so fun!

We saw Harry Potter 7 this morning... AWESOME!

Loved it! so so much...

Went to a friends Harry Potter Marathon...

Tasted butter beer (alcohol-free)

Finished some crafty Christmas presents 

(can't tell you what, someone might read)

Joseph Birthday/ Christmas shopped for me
 (with my parents)

Made treats for Primary

(read: 80 mini chocolate chip cookies, 

 baking while I was working on my crafts. 

Joseph told me I was doing too much all at once...

 but did I burn any cookies? Nope!)

Oh, we got our blog published...

came in the mail last week...

LOVE it! I am so glad we did that,

it's gorgeous, and amazing to have.

Sorry this was random,

but I am tired, and we are just so excited,

we can see our family for Thanksgiving...

And I got my scarves and gloves etc. out of storage...

there may be snow on Monday.

Bring on the Hot Chocolate!

Goodnight.

When life throws you a curveball....

hit that sucker out of the park!

And lately we have been up to bat, a lot.

I hate not making solid future plans with family and friends.

The thing is, we just can't. 

We don't know what life has in store for us even a month or two in advance,

sometimes even the next week, even day to day,

so I feel guilty making plans if we'll have to break them. 

Life right now has made this absolutely impossible!

This month's example (and reason for no updates):

we had made plans to stay a few days in Spokane,

in a cute inn,

for Thanksgiving (with the Mechams and Toths),

Forgotten Carols,

Sam and Kaelee's reception.

And just some quality alone time.

We had budgeted the money and I have that week off anyway.

But we had received an email from our adoption caseworker,

 a very strongly worded email,

 about possibly closing our adoption profile.. 

it has been inactive for over a year.

 and to keep it active we would have to pay the transfer fee,

 (which happened to be the same amount we put away) 

then bust our butts to finish again. 

Now for the clincher, given our current situation we may not even be eligible anyway. 

So sent off an email back explaining that although we would love to adopt, 

but our situation is what it is,

 and it isn't going to change instantly. 

And that we understand and accept that it may make us ineligible, 

but we needed to know before we handed over the fee. 

We waited impatiently for two weeks before he got back to us, 

then he set up an appointment for two weeks later... 

giving no hint at all as to whether or not we even had a chance. 

That appointment was Thursday. 

We politely chatted with the man and when he finally asked if we had any questions, 

we had only one...

 and the answer is no. 

We are not eligible to adopt with LDSFS.

 And we're okay with that, 

but he could have told us a month ago, 

in an email!! 

We just needed an answer! 

But he did have to forward our blunt email on and up,

 to the head honchos of LDSFS to get a real answer,

 our situation being very unique. 

 He said " I felt inspired by your attitude Joseph and Shaylee. How you have accepted your blindness and are in training for full time employment. Such a healthy desire, thinking, and a beautiful attitude backed up with inspiring actions."

So we were free to go forward with our plans... almost. 

Now we wait to see if Joseph ends up having jury duty... 

which happens to fall right at the same time as our planned trip.... 

this week he doesn't have to report,

 but now we have to wait until friday to see about the week after.  

Whatever, so we already cancelled our reservations. 

 We will have to wait and see.... 

and we are getting tired of waiting.

I love it!

About 3 times in the past week, we've been asked if we were newlyweds. I then ask why, people have offered a few answers, the way we look at each other, the way we sit together, etc. 

It's sweet. Well we're not really newlyweds, coming up on 5 years in May.

Here we are fresh out of the temple, newly married newlyweds.

This was just the beginning.

The beginning of our love.

The beginning of some of the biggest challenges of our lives. 

But we're here together

Always together.

An Idea

I have been toying with selling my photographs. I do NOT want to be one of those mommy photographers,  I don't want to have sessions and more things interfering with our already complicated schedules. I do LOVE photography and the photographs I am able to take and edit. It's a real art. I am thinking, seriously thinking about making an etsy shop to sell prints of my photographs. (or something like etsy... still in the idea gathering stage)  I want to know what you think. Would you buy prints like these? Do you know people who would buy them? Do you like them? Anyway I would love some feedback. Here's a few to look at in the meantime.

Finding me Again

Being human and being subject to this mortal existence, the concept of me or my perception of myself will always be changing, as life is always changing. If I didn’t change I would be a hard, rigid and intolerant being. I try not to be that. I want to be a kind, caring and gracious woman. That being said, I feel that infertility has robbed me, taken away parts of me that I am sill piecing  back together, even two years after our last miscarriage. Along with Infertility, Joseph’s loss of sight has wounded me, wounded us. Those trials have been a severe beating personally for each of us as well as to our marriage.

“Heavenly Father loves us unconditionally especially in the face of out trials. He knows our individual worth and our potential. For some reason, when we are faced with seemingly unending trials, we may feel that our Heavenly Father doesn’t love us. He does, and He knows exactly how we will benefit from our trials. He is the master sculptor and refiner, and though we cannot see our ultimate potential when we look in the mirror, He sees us for who we will ultimately become.” (Lost Children, R.J. Christensen)

While Heavenly Father never loses sight of our individual worth and divine potential, we can and do.  I know I have. During the thick of it I became what I had to in order to survive & cope.  Having “witnessed the repeating pattern of life, which begins with birth and ends with death, and [viewing] this as natural and normal. But death before birth…well that does not seem to fit our understanding…” (Christensen) I built up walls to protect myself during the constant upheaval of my idea of what my life was supposed to be. I did what I knew I had to. Some days I just went through the motions. All the while trying to figure out and understand what was happening, why it was happening, what was wrong, how to fix it, if it could be fixed.

Miscarriage is so difficult to understand, even more difficult to talk about as it is somewhat of a taboo topic. This quote is the best I found to express my feelings about it. "This was a real baby, and we were planning and preparing for it. But not everyone [understands]  the whole gamut of emotions we [face]. For many, miscarrying may not seem the same as losing a loved one, but for the mother (I'll add father as well) experiencing it, that pregnancy was the beginning of the greatest love of [their lives]." (Christensen).

"The most severe cases of grief result from a death that is unexpected, tragic or unexplained. Miscarriage falls into each of these categories." I will add that Joseph's blindness fits also. We mourn our lost babies, our failed attempts at parenthood, we mourn for the family we could have had. We mourn for Joseph's sight, and how that has changed our relationship. These things are HUGE, they are life-altering, they've helped make us who we are today. They've helped us bond together, throughout it all there has been one constant: our marriage. We face our challenges head on, face first, together holding hands. We are a team.

We've deal with infertility: the uncertainty, the tests, the hormones, the drugs, the surgeries, the scars, the bills. We deal with Multiple Sclerosis: the uncertainty, the MRI's, the Dr appointments, the medication, the heat sensitivity, the steroids. We deal with blindness: the uncertainty, the doctor visits, the diagnosis, the exams, the resting nystagmus, the white cane, the paperwork, braille, adaptive technology. We've done adoption paperwork: the pile of paperwork, the health checks, the background checks, the fingerprinting, the interviews, the research, we've had our personalities, relationships and marriage dissected and investigated then spelled out on paper for a committee to tell us if we are approved to be prospective adoptive parents.

Life is hard, it's brutally painful, but what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, right? Sure. I am helpless to fix Joseph's vision, as much as he was helpless to fix my reproductive system. But we are both here, one-hundred percent absolutely unconditionally for one another. We are growing, and learning together. I am fighting for Joseph's right for health care. He is doing all he can to adapt and learn new skills, in fact he is currently looking into getting some sort of internship and getting back to work. Yes, he IS absolutely amazing!! The adoption stuff is in limbo- our situation is what it is and we've let our case worker know as our profile is near extinction (in other words they only keep profiles inactive for so long, and we've gone a little longer than that). We are now waiting to hear if in our current situation we can be approved to adopt, if we can we'll finish, and fast! If not... well we will see now won't we?!

We're doing all we can we're trying to be proactive in advocating infertility awareness, adoption, multiple sclerosis and blindness. But we're getting impatient. When will life stop being so darn hard? when can we have a home of our very own? When will we be a family that includes children?

Neal A Maxwell said "Patience is tied very closely to faith in our Heavenly Father. Actually when we are unduly impatient, we are suggesting that we know best- better than God does, or, at least we are asserting that our time table is better than His." I hope one day soon our patience in the Lord's time table will pay off...

Two Words

Jury Duty

Joseph got a Jury summons this week, we'll see if he has to

.... I am worried, there are some nasty cases going to trial soon. 

Although not as bad as the one that's on right now...

yuck.

At least he'll get paid.

Our Fortunes

A couple weeks ago we went out to lunch 

our fortunes read:

Remember three months from this date! Your lucky star is shining.

Remember three months from this date. Good things are in store for you.

Just had to share.

Some pics from the weekend

Traveling through Montana

Joseph pushing John on the swing...

don't stand too close or 

you'll get this in your face!

There were kittens on the farm we could play with, so cute!

"Hey, what's that over there?"

"I don't know, let's go see." 

John and his buddy

Self portrait with a kitten

(why are my self portraits sans makeup?)

"Thanks for visiting!"

I'll probably post more pictures, later.

S