Bad Day...

Do you ever seem to just have a bad day? Its so frustrating when something small gets your spirits or your train of thought in a depressing or negative spot and no matter how hard you try you just can't change it. Its the kind of day that if what you felt inside was the same as the weather it would be rainy and gloomy all day.

Last week I had one of those days. It started off normal as can be & was all fine & dandy until I went to break time at work. Usually the conversations are your typical break time topics ranging anywhere from the latest TV shows to people's kids, to anything in between. Pretty much all topics are acceptable and most can be truly entertaining. If you show up at break you take what you get - no real ground for complaining - after all its your choice to be there. - (right?)

Well when I went to break that day I had no idea that the topic would effect me so much. (Nor did I have any idea what the topic would be.) That day conversations started with the latest news/updates & that quickly got the ball rolling - a woman in the community (whose husband was my high-school history teacher) had experienced a massive heart attack earlier in the week and was, from what I gathered, alive but still in the hospital receiving treatment. This "update" quickly sparked a conversation around the room on various people's experiences regarding those they'd known who had experienced heart attacks & survived them.

I sat frozen in my chair. I had totally not bargained or expected that topic on that day. I didn't know what to do. After all it has been 6, almost 7 months, since my father passed away from a sudden massive heart attack. I should be more than able to deal with this type of topic right? That's what I would have thought and what I tried to keep telling myself.

I sat there staring down into my coffee cup repeating (in my head) "you're okay - its no big deal, it is what it is, its been over 6 months you're fine, you've accepted what has happened, deal with this, be an adult & just look up & you'll be fine."

I really don't know much about the details of the rest of the break time conversation. I know I heard others speak & I know I kept sitting there. At first I had thought about just standing up & leaving but I totally did not want to draw any attention to myself & if I tried to move I figured I'd probably just trip or fall or something totally embarrassing like that. So I just sat there. I must have blinked over a thousand times a minute to keep myself together. I tried thinking about anything & everything to stop my train of thoughts but somehow I couldn't. I just sat there with my head screaming what my mouth couldn't (or what I wouldn't let it scream) "why couldn't I have a story like that to tell - - why couldn't he have survived, what makes all those other people so special that they lived through a massive heart attack but he had to die?"

Oh, you do not have to worry about me - I know the answers to my questions - It was the Lord's time for him to go - it had been set before he ever took his first breath. I know this truth, I believe this truth, and I have accepted this truth. My heart, however, still aches for one more hug, one more smile, one more conversation with my father.

You probably need to realize as you read this that my father was not just my Dad, but he was one of my best friends. There is next to nothing that he did not know about me. I was one of those crazy people who would come home from a night out with friends or from a date & I'd run to my parents room, plop down on the end of their bed, (waking them up of course) and proceed to tell them everything about my night. When they moved these conversations did not stop - they simply transitioned to long phone calls or skype conversations. Everyday on my maternity leave I would sit on my computer & have a conversation (or multiple) with my Dad on skype.

Anyway - by the grace of God I was able to choke my tears & pain down long enough to get through break, walk out of the room & make it to the bathroom before my gut, my head, and my heart exploded & I literally had a total bawl-fest. It was like the moment that first tear snuck by I had lost any chance of holding it together. After a few moments I was able to compose myself & make it back to my desk but from that point on my day was shot. I spent the rest of that day, that night, and even the next morning just sulking in my grumpy state. It really sucks when as much as I know I "make my own weather" (from "The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People") that I can control how I feel, I simply didn't feel like I could choose to let go of my sour mood.

Its days like those, the really "bad" days, that I am so thankful for my darling little girl. She's a great daughter & an amazing little girl - I couldn't have asked for a better child. She is typically not cranky but an incredibly happy little girl & best of all she sleeps 12 hours a night! :) One thing she is not, however, is a cuddly child. I can't seem to understand it considering I am a total "cuddly" person. I absolutely love hugs & cuddle time. I even find myself going into her room at night, picking her up & cuddling with her (while she stays sleeping) to get my "fix" of cuddle time with her! - - I know I'm crazy but I promise she stays sleeping the whole time and if she wakes at all its just to open her eyes, look at me, and the she goes right back to sleep - (she already knows her mom's crazy).

From now on when I have a bad day I have decided I'm just going to look at this picture and remember how great my little girl is - after all how can anyone be made when they see this face grinning up at them?

Now I'm guessing by looking at this picture you'd figured out that what she's standing by is indeed a toliet but in my defense I couldn't stop her from pulling herself up & standing by it nor could I resist taking a picture of that sweet face looking up at me! Sorry to those of you who find it "offensive" or "gross"

From Party Poopers to Mixers to Places to call home

Why are there some people who seem determined to ruin good times? Is it honestly because they simply can't break out of their bubble, their shell, their comfort zone, or whatever else you want to call it? Or is it more because they have to have things exactly their way & do not like any deviation from that way? I wish I knew.

I myself am a person who has a hard time "coming out" of my shell. I tend to be rather self-conscious and only open up one of two ways. Either I'm super nervous & I start rambling only to say way too much and make a fool out of myself or I truly feel like those I'm with are my friends and I am comfortable with them which allows me to freely make a fool of myself. Being this way has led me to dislike things such as large group activities, spot-lights or stage events, and most of all mixers. However, just because I dislike these things and would 100% not choose to do them in front of strangers does NOT mean I'd ruin a fun game around my friends! After all, aren't our friends the people we are supposed to be ourselves around? And what is more "being yourself" than being willing or able to make a fool out of yourself in order for everyone to have a good time?

Anyway, Don't you just 'love' mixers as much as I do? Sense the sarcasm. That's because I truly do totally, completely dread them. Mixers usually involve one of two things-
1 - Putting yourself out there to get to know new people in embarrassing or odd ways through the use of games. Don't get me wrong I love new & exciting games. Especially ones that truly are hilarious and or challenging. But I personally think that any games which are totally out of my comfort zone (i.e. embarrassing, odd, humiliating) are only supposed to be played with my friends, not total strangers! I mean after all, who else are you supposed to look like a fool in front of if not your friends?

or 2 - through those fabulous pre-set questions - "Tell us your name, how old you are, where you're from and something no one else knows about you..." SERIOUSLY? Whatever variation the questions are two are almost always included, your name (duh) and where you're from. Why is this a main question in every group mixer? I seriously hate this question. This question is not easy to answer because it to me it can be interpreted many ways. Are they asking where I was born? Where I lived the first years of my life? Where I've lived the most? Where I live now? Come on now people, its not like these questions all have the same answer! (at least not for me!)

I for one, do not have a set answer to that question. Each way it can be interpreted is a different answer for me. Undoubtedly when I answer the question with an "I don't know where I'm from" I end up getting another question like "well, where do your parents live?" or "where do you live now?" or "why don't you know?" Then I have to go into a long explanation of why I live in X but was born in Y but spent the beginning of my life in Z and lived the longest in A but now live in B and oh yeah my parents live in C... as you can see it gets pretty complicated! So if I ever run into any of you who don't know me or want to have a "mixer" please read on so you know the answers to the "typical" questions & come up with some new ones, okay? This perhaps is also why I plan to never move again!

Just so you know/realize what I'm really talking about...here's a recap of all my moves from my first days until now. I was born in Sibley, IA, but at 2 months old I was moved to Napa, CA (not that I complained during that move!) until I was 5 years old. Just before my 5th birthday we moved from California back to Iowa where I lived in Rock Valley until I started college. (That move I complained about but can you blame me,..California to Iowa? seriously who does that!)

When I graduated from high school I decided that as I'd watched each of my siblings move away to go to school I really didn't like people leaving & wanted to stay close to my parents so I moved only 20 minutes away & went to Dordt in Sioux Center. After only a semester there my parents decided that Dad had to take the call (he was a minister) to a church in Lethbridge, Alberta - in CANADA - not 20 minutes away but more like a 20 hour drive! Okay so its only 18 hours but still its not "close by" like I wanted! Apparently I had little to say about it because by May the house was packed up & off they went. I then had to find a place to live once my freshman year of college was over - not like I could go "home" again like most people! So I moved into my first apartment in Sioux Center. I lived there a whopping 8 months or so before my roommate moved home & I had to find a cheaper place to live. Micah found me a basement apartment which was affordable so I jumped on it & moved in - - after discovering I really didn't like having to walk through the older woman's kitchen & living room to get to the basement door where I had no kitchen of my own and certainly didn't have much privacy I moved again (after only six months) to another basement apartment. This one came equipped not only with a private entrance (that actually locked!) but a heated garage stall, a kitchen, and tons of square footage! It was finally a place I felt like I could call home!

Then when Micah & I got married 8 months later there was NO way I was moving! We stayed there past the 1 year anniversary of my moving in and right up until May of 2006. At this point Micah, my husband, decided he wanted to please those in his life (other than me) and agreed to go to Vet School which meant "we" had to move to Ames, Iowa. I say "we" because after purchasing a trailer home (not "trailerish", like you might imagine or are picturing in your head right now - I was insistent on that) and moving our stuff down there so I could start my new job, Micah remained in Sioux Center working and we saw each other only on the weekends for about two months until he finally came down to Ames and found a part time job to do before school started.

After 4 months of living in Ames and a whole week and a half of vet school, Micah decided he did not want to live other people's dreams for his life & instead wanted to make his own plan for his/our life so he quit vet school and we headed back to Sioux Center.

Only at this point we only had our trailer in Ames and no place to live in Sioux Center. So what did we do? We moved in with his parents and siblings.

It took about 6 weeks of living in an upstairs bedroom before we started renting the old Dordt swine farm house. Let me tell you - that place was a real beauty! - Definitely spacious as long as you didn't mind sharing your home with mice, wind, and spiders! We lived there about 9 months before we bought our first house! Most people think we're crazy but we now live only 4 houses from Micah's parents.

We have been living on the Middleberg blacktop for almost two years and loving almost every minute of it! I have absolutely no plans to ever MOVE again, expand, remodel, & redecorate plans but definitely no moving plans! Especially after watching and helping my sister Sarah & my mother build a house together - I've decided I am completely content to live right where we are! So now you know all my moves & you can come up with your own answer to the "where I'm from" question. Hopefully Alexa will thank me someday for being able to always know her answer to that question!

Anyway I think that's enough of a tangent for me to go off on for today. Perhaps again another time.

Alexa & Kiko

Last week was a milestone week for our little family.

Alexa became MOBILE! She started crawling and is of course getting into everything! I have several nieces and a nephew so I would like to think my house is somewhat "baby-proof" but who was I kidding! No way! Not for an 8-month-old who thinks everything is suppose to go in her mouth. She tips over the flower pot (thank goodness its fake), chases the dog everywhere, trips to snuggle up in the dog's blankets, she's totally crazy! Tonight she literally tried eating out of the dog's food dish - TROUBLE - thankfully Micah stopped her just short of her tipping the whole thing over...so now we have to find a higher home for the dog's dish. Unfortunately our dog is about 6 inches high (seriously) and is way too lazy to jump. So sorry Kiko (our dog) but you're going to have to starve - at least you already looks like you never eat so people shouldn't notice too much!

September & Beyond...

Where to start? Who knows. I don't honestly know where to start but I suppose I should get the big things out there. The last years have held both the best and worst moments of my life and I have to say that through it all I may have finally figured out that no matter how hard you try you honestly can not control everything in this life! For me, this is a HUGE realization. I have spent more than half my life trying to control everything around me. It took a difficult but much desired pregnancy, the birth of my first child and the unexpected death of my father to make me realize it but I finally have!

Last year started off in the best and worst way - I was pregnant for the first time and although overjoyed I found myself incapable of consuming any foods. I had always thought, "morning sickness", "no, that won't happen to me." Yeah right! Totally wishful thinking. And why, may I ask, do they call it morning sickness when it lasts ALL DAY & ALL NIGHT? Alas, it is all worth it though, isn't it? In June of 2008 we welcomed our first child, Alexa Joy, into the world and she has become the light of my life. Without her I do not know that I could have survived the emotional challenges I faced over the last 7 months.

September has always been my favorite month of the year. I know people probably think I'm crazy, after all Christmas is in December, but for me, my favorite time of year has always been September and the start of fall. It may help that September holds both my own and my husband's birthday. It may also be contributed to the fact that I LOVED school and September always brought that wonderful new school year excitement. Mainly, I have always loved the beauty and awe of the changing colors of the leaves and the beautiful warm, yet not hot, days and cool enjoyable evenings. That all changed this year. September 6th, one day before my husband's 25th birthday I got the worst phone call of my life.

Picture this if you can, my husband and I are sitting on the couch on a wonderful, warm Saturday afternoon. We had gotten Alexa down for a nap shortly after lunch and had sat down to watch TV together. We were watching a version of the 9/11 movie re-telling the horror the people had gone through & we sat there, telling each other how we didn't know if we'd ever be able to survive something like that - how awful it would be to loose someone you love in that way. The phone rang and as it always seemed to be my parents calling on Saturday afternoons, Micah turned to me and said that I had better answer it because it would be for me. I laughed and told him "No, my parents are golfing in a charity event, there's no way they'd be calling me now." He obliged and answered the phone. After a few short, odd sentences he tells the caller that yes I'm right here & he'll put me on. I take the phone and have forever wished I hadn't. Maybe what happened next wouldn't be true, maybe I could forever pretend its not real.

The man on the phone identifies himself as a member of my father's church and he tells me that he's sorry but my father has gone home to glory. The next words out of my mouth blow me away to this day. I honestly asked, "Are you joking?" - Please tell me, who asks this? Who responds this way? Who on earth would actually pull a joke like that? To this day I keep replaying that day, that hour, that conversation over & over in my head. I still am horrified that those words were my response. What does that say about me? I think I'll leave that one unanswered.

The next few days were spent in total absolute denial. My parents have spent the last 5 years living in Lethbridge, Alberta (Canada) where my father served as the minister of a church. Therefore upon hearing such news its not just a horrible moment which needs to be processed, but its a moment that needs to be followed by immediate action. A massive travel program had to begin to get all of us children to Canada(I have two brothers & two sisters all in various locations across the US). My oldest sister, Anne, lives in Wisconsin with her husband and their three children. We managed to get them on flights along with my brother, Joel, who lives in Minnesota. My sister, Sarah, lives with her husband and their two children in Iowa so we drove up to Alberta together. My brother Jon is in the army so he technically lives wherever they send him. At that point he was oversees and almost totally unreachable, thankfully Sarah was able to use the Red Cross to get him home. As you can imagine it was quite the fiasco. For my denial it was great. Needless to say between organizing flights for half the group and driving the 18 some hours (if you go straight-through) with a 2-month-old, I was given almost a day to live in denial. After denial came the busy mode - put on a pretty face, say the right things, help Mom, deal with the overwhelmingly generous church congregation, figure out the details, etc.

It wasn't until we were done with the family visitation and we were left almost all alone in the church standing there, looking at the pulpit where I had seen my father stand only a dozen times and staring at the coffin and his empty shell did it hit me like a ton of bricks. He's gone. Not gone on a trip, not gone for a little while, but 100% totally gone. As in I will never have another vivid discussion with him. I will never again sit in church and hear his amazingly powerful voice preach a sermon. The hardest of all though is the thought that he will never see Alexa grow up.

It has been six months. Six months ago we laid his empty body in the ground. To me it feels like yesterday. I look at my quickly growing little girl and I think where has the time gone? She seems to have grown up overnight and yet September and the pain that was there seems so fresh.

How do you "move" on? By learning from the experience, right? By applying this life lesson & using it to better yourself as a person, right? That all helps but does it heal? Does it make it go away? I can't figure that out. I have indeed learned that although I can not control everything (a hard fact to swallow) the amazing part about this life is that God can. He is absolutely, totally, in control of my life and has always been.

Crazy thought right? All those stupid, immature, completely childish moments I spent in high school and college, all the mistakes I have made, He has used them all to fulfill His purpose! They, no matter how much I may regret some of them, have made me who I am today. The have all been used in one way or another to teach me "life" lessons. Its a truly amazing and humbling thought. More than anything its the biggest comfort we have. :)

Giving in

So I have finally joined the ranks. That's right, I gave in and gave up my title as the only one on the admin team that did not have a blog. Although I highly doubt anyone will want to read my thoughts here I am spending time writing them down & putting them out there for all to see. Crazy I know but here goes.