Dusting off the ol' blog

Wow.. I haven't blogged in over a YEAR! So, so much has happened in my life that I don't think I even want to attempt catching up but maybe I could just start from where I am now? 2015 has been a very transitional year for our family and it has also been the hardest year of my life... so far.  Even thinking about this past year makes me emotional. Maybe that's why I stopped blogging because it makes me think deeper and address feelings more than I want to. But I need to think deeply and I need to put my thoughts down somewhere.




I was reading back through my old posts and I miss that girl! I miss being carefree and driving home and visiting friends whenever I want or hanging out with my cousins ( I MISS my cousins) I miss my friends... (the ones that still talk to me anyway, ha ha). But I do hope with age that I have become a more mature person, more caring, more loving, more aware of others and their needs. One thing about this blog is that it really isn't just a family blog. I will definitely talk about my family more than anything else, but I need this space to write my thoughts out. We recently moved 2000 miles away from family and since I don't talk to other adults about anything besides my kids (oh yeah, I have two kids now!) I will just write everything here! It won't be grammatically correct or flow well but that's okay with me!




Anyway.. where to begin..




I think I will catch up on this past year a little bit. To start off the year, we had a son and his name is Benton Cory.. we love him so much. He is the sweetest little chubby pink thing. He is now 9 months old and he loves to crawl and cruise and get into all the cupboards.





Adalyn is 2.5 years old and is a fiercely wild and loving spirit. She is so sweet and she can also drive me to the edge of my sanity (literally). I didn't realize how busy and wild she truly is until we moved and have been around a lot of other little kids. She climbs on everything and we went over to our friends house and she had torn apart both of their kids bedrooms with in 10 minutes. Embarrassing. She really humbles me every single day. I really do love being around her though, she is very funny and sweet.




Cory graduated from BYU I and is now attending Eastman School of Music working towards his master's degree. He got a job at a Presbyterian church as their music director, and to tell the truth, it pretty much fell into his lap. We know we are supposed to be here in Rochester because several things like Cory's job have happened and things are working well here. 




That's not to say that it hasn't been hard. The transition from seeing family all the time and being so comfortable to moving so far away and being uncomfortable a lot of the time is very hard.  All the sudden I am with my kids all.day.long. with no breaks pretty much ever.  I was called to work in the nursery at church so I literally have Addie pretty much all the time! I love my kids but I also thoroughly enjoy my time away from them. I don't know if other mom's here feel that way (I'm sure they do) but I need to get a girls night going or something.  Anyway,  we are being bent, stretched, molded, melted and shaped into different people than we were. It really is crazy how fast those changes come! We are a stronger family and have better relationships than we did before. We feel like our own family unit and that is a wonderful thing! We have each other to rely on, and we love being with each other. I couldn't hope for anything more comforting than that.




I do get discouraged though when I think about how often we will go back to Idaho in the next 1.5 years.. probably not much at all! That makes me feel claustrophobic so I try not to think about it. Instead I try and make a plan to go see Jimmy Fallon sometime in NYC while we are here, haha!


Going back to earlier this summer.. We worked at Island Park Scout camp for 6 weeks. I ran the trading post and Cory was a camp commissioner (he basically went and checked in with campsites and made sure they were having a good experience). He carried Addie around all day in a backpack and Benton stayed with me all day in the trading post. That was also a very hard experience and I was mad at Cory at least once a day because of the stress but we still talk about it ALL THE TIME. It was such a fun experience we miss it so much!! We lived in a tiny trailer and that was hard with two kids and I would probably never do something like that again, but we truly loved it and I cried when it was over. Mostly because I realized that I had to go home and pack because we would be moving two weeks later, oy!




And at last, but certainly not least in any way shape or form-- Cory's dad passed away on March 1, 2015. I have been wanting to write about this for a long time but it is still really emotional and I wasn't sure what I wanted to say. All I will say for now is that we miss him so much and it is still a very emotional subject. Grief for someone who was part of your everyday life is new territory for me and Cory (especially Cory). When we moved I think our mourning took 3 or 4 steps back. It will be interesting to see how the holidays go without Dee. I have spent my last 4 Christmases with the Whittiers!




Well, I think that is all I will write for now! I am hoping my future posts will be more lighthearted. In the meantime, we are happy, healthy, and trying to figure how to make friends and memories here in New York!