Simplify

At the end of every semester comes the stress of trying to pick the best schedule for the next semester.  There are so many options.  So many factors.  For years I struggled because I wasn't committed to which degree I was working on, so I did my best to select the classes that seemed best at the time, unsure of where they were leading.  Finally, I know which degree I am completing and this next semester is the last one.  You would think that would bring a sense of relief.  It doesn't.  I am stressed beyond belief because this is my last chance to raise my GPA as high as I can get it, gain experiences such as research and internship options as an undergrad, and get exposure to certain aspects of my chosen field.  More stressful, even, than all of that is the fact that this is my last chance to boost my eligibility for graduate school.  If I get in for next fall, then nothing I do this semester really matters.  But on the chance that I don't get in, there are things that this semester could do for me in terms of making me a stronger applicant next year.  Sadly, I won't know which situation I am in until it is too late.

And so it is that once again I have nothing but prayer and faith to help me determine the course of the next several months of my life.  What an adventure.

There are so many pressures building up inside of me right now.  So many things that I want to do (internships and certain classes) and so many things I feel are necessary (seeking an immediate income).  As my mind goes in circles with the confusion of these questions and the implications of one leading to the next to the next to the next, I keep coming back to this gentle, calm and quiet idea.  "Simplify."  I am trying to filter  how many and which of so many good options I should select, and the answer I seem to continuously fall back to is, "none of them."

There is something so tempting about the idea of slowing down a little.  It sounds restful.  There is something so scary about slowing down a little.  It sounds, I don't know, uninteresting?  Although it makes my life chaotic in schedules and I am constantly on the run, barely getting to my boys in time, or relying on babysitters to help me out, I also find a satisfaction and stimulation in the work I do.  I feel rejuvenated and alive when I'm heading home from observing a therapy session or working on my CASA case.  After two years of living in a place where I had constant and immediate access to friends, and then the last six months of such busy but great experiences, I worry that I will feel lost and/or isolated if I simply register for three online classes to finish off my degree.

Last night I came home from an evening therapy session.  With Andrew working at nights, this was the first time all semester I had gone in the evening.  I have had a weekly evening class, though, and when that cancelled, I decided to get in some extra hours to finish up the semester strong.  Ammon, Peter and I all had the worst meltdowns last night.  I didn't pick them up until after bedtime.  Peter hadn't eaten dinner despite having brought his dinner with him AND being offered a different dinner.  Even though he hadn't had dinner, he was eating candy when I got him.  I just felt like he needed a mom to be there (instead of a very sweet and overindulgent great-grandmother who was kindly watching him.)  The kids fought over what they were doing, and didn't want to come home.  I felt like such a failure.  I began this semester feeling so very concerned about the amount of time my children would have neither parent with them.  Andrew and I discussed it and made a very deliberate choice that it would work for the short term.  Last night I truly regretted my decision and mourned the fact that Peter is entering the second half of his Kindergarten year and has had only small phases of his life where I have had the opportunity to truly be a stay-at-home mom.  I never envisioned myself as anything but a full-time homemaker and yet I am facing the reality that a homemaker is never something I'll really be.  I have long since grieved the small size of my family, but suddenly Peter's age is bringing on a new grief for the experiences I am realizing I will never have even with my small family.

As usual, some sleep helped and I felt a bit better upon waking up.  I am confident that this past semester, I followed the revelation I was given and gained invaluable experiences that I needed at this phase in my education and personal development.

This morning Peter was sick and I was able to cancel the plans I had to be running out to get internship hours at LifeStone.  I spent the day at home and started working on my application for graduate school.  I changed classes for next semester and added in the field study class (which is my school-credit for internships).  I kept trying to rationalize it and convince myself how much more balanced next semester would be.  But as the day came to an end, I started envisioning a different semester.  My eyes were opened to some of the quiet and simple things I could and should do both in and out of my home if I could just slow down a little.  I was reminded that I had known my answer all along.  I don't want to type it here, because I'm still not committed to it.  But I really do think that this semester is supposed to be a time of my life when I simplify.

Month 2 Results

I began my diet on September 20.

It has been less than two months and I am down 20 pounds.

Yay!!!

The second month was not as successful as the first.

A lot of factors played into that.

First, I wasn't as focused.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do when the food ran out.

I didn't know if I was full-on dieting, or starting to wean myself off of the food.

I fell into a trap of doing a messy combination of the two.

I am pretty sure that is a huge factor in my slowed weight loss.

Also, I started allowing myself a lot more indulgences.

I ate the food served at a birthday party, a relief society activity, a baby blessing and more.

I was just more relaxed in my approach.

Finally, I didn't monitor things as closely.

For the first few days I was frustrated with not losing as fast as I wanted.

I decided to stop obsessing and just let the weight come off in it's own time.

But I think I would have been better off to continue tracking things more frequently.

On Sunday night I ordered food for a third month.

I also started exercising this week.

I think I've lost more than two pounds just since then.

(five days)

I am recommitted to doing this diet exactly.

(Although I think I'm giving myself Thanksgiving day to be a normal non-dieting person.)

I don't know what will happen after the food from month 3 runs out.

But I just can't worry about that right now.

For now I am enjoying seeing the numbers continue to melt away.

Even with 20 lbs down, my goal is still to lose 42 more so there is still a long road ahead.

I'd like to get through the holiday season keeping things pretty strict.

I want to develop some long-term lifestyle changes.

I expect my weight loss will slow at that point, but it will be better in the long run.

I'm hoping to get to my half way point before I make the switch off Medifast, though.

That means my goal is to lose 11 more lbs before I wean off of Medifast.

Wish me luck!

:)

Name

I just stumbled across a "This is Me" challenge on Pinterest, and I thought I'd go ahead and try answering some of the personal history questions.

Today's installment is centered around my name:  

What is your full name and how did you get that name?

I feel like my mom should be the one writing this down since I am bound to get it wrong.  All I can do is write about the explanations and storied I remember hearing as a child.

My name is Jennifer Lynn.  The fact that my middle name is Lynn was always obvious.  It is my mother's first name.  Jennifer is a little less obvious.  In fact just last night I was telling some friends that my mom actually wanted to name me Amalie.  The way I have always heard the story is that my dad nixed the name Amalie because it sounded too much like hominy.  He figured a girl with that name would get teased and be called "Grits".  Apparently hominy is a corn-like item that is used to make grits?  As someone who has never been in a culture where hominy is common, this story has always confused me.  But I digress.  Mom wanted to name me Amalie, and Dad nixed it.  He had his own brilliant idea.  My dad wanted to name me Jerusha!  (Because that wouldn't induce teasing of any kind...)  It was meant to be a tribute to Hyrum Smith's first wife, who was a wonderful woman.  But I am still pretty glad that my mom tabooed that one.  In the end they settled on Jennifer.  I was told, with a shrug, that it was the first name they agreed on and so that was that.

I was always distraught by the commonality of my name.  For the first several years of elementary school, I was always guaranteed to have at least two other Jennifer's in my class.  To make it even worse, my middle name, though in my case given for my mom, was often associated with the first name Jennifer.  I always wished my middle name with Elizabeth.  Not only was it a beautiful name, but it was also the name of my favorite character in my favorite book series (Sweet Valley Twins).  And as if that wasn't enough, if my name had been Jennifer Elizabeth Nunes, my initials would have been J.E.N.  And that would have been cool!

Do you have any nicknames?

My parents always told me that my nickname was Baby-Bundle, though I don't have any memories of being called that. I was born five weeks early in the middle of winter. I weighed 5 lbs 11 oz. My parents talked about me always being kept in a bundle of blankets and that is where that name came from.

Other than that, my nickname was always Jenny.  It worked well and pretty soon I had six younger siblings with matching nicknames:  Katy, Joey, Danny, Jimmy, Davy, Becky.  As adults my sister Katy and I are the only ones who didn't switch over to more formal versions of our names.  (And my brother Jimmy, who died the day he was born.)

When I was in 7th grade we moved and my mom told me it was a great opportunity to "change my identity" if I wanted to.  She knew I wanted a name that was more unique.  I think I passed at that point, but as I entered High School she brought up the same option.  In trying to come up with a more stand-out version of my name, we came up with - are you ready for this:  Jenn.  With TWO n's.  Yeah, we were WAY out there!  In retrospect I always wished I had drawn on my middle name and gone by something like JLynn.  (Jaelyn?) Oh well.  It wasn't meant to be.

In High School I did have one other name.  To my very large group of friends, I was known as Bob.  As was typical, my group of friends had more than one Jennifer in it.  People were getting confused so my friend and neighbor Tim decided to solve that problem by naming us Bob and Chuck.  Those names seriously stuck!  My name evolved into Jenny-Bob and when "Chuck" got married (to Tim!) she was known as Jen VanShadel.  Then I married into the Shadel family as well.  We were back to the old conundrum of matching names.  There were now two Jennifer Shadel's.  We were talking about it one day and brought up our old nicknames.  My mother-in-law stopped us right then and there and banned those "boy names" from ever being used in reference to her daughters-in-law.  Ever since then I have been exclusively Jenny,a name my SIL has never gone by, and she varies between Jennifer and Jen.

I have always hated being called Jennifer.  I always say that being called Jennifer is the most blatant sign that the person talking to me doesn't know me at all.  I have NEVER gone by my formal name.

Weekend Projects

We got our first real snow!

The last snow storm brought a light dusting and was melted away within hours.

This storm brought inches and inches of heavy, wet snow.

The boys were in heaven!

They went out and played in the back yard.

I think every last inch of our yard has footprints covering it.

Those two had a blast!

For what felt like the first time EVER, we had a Saturday with no plans.

We hung out at home and LOVED it.

Then we got ambitious and decided to tear out the kitchen cabinets we wanted to remove.

Andrew did a great job and we couldn't be happier with the results.

(Although we still need to do some of the cosmetic/finish work.)

This is the cabinet we are using to replace the ones we tore out.

We intend to build a larger one across the wall that will hold the trash bins as well.

But in the mean time, this one is working out wonderfully for us.

We finished our family day at home with a fun dessert project.

I saw this idea on Pinterest (when Kara pinned it) and knew we would HAVE to try it.

The boys (Andrew included) LOVE candy corns.

With a cookie dough center, they worked hard to transform their candy corns into

corn on the cob!

It was a great finish to a fun family day.

Fondue

At the last minute, we decided we would have a Sunday Roast for dinner.

It had been a while, and it sounded yummy.

On a whim, we decided to throw in a fondue dessert.

Andrew headed off for our standard Saturday night shopping trip and picked up all the supplies.

We had talked about inviting people over either for dinner or just dessert.

But I had a BIG paper due, and I couldn't commit to hostessing.

I ended up getting far enough done, however, that we decided to invite Andrew's parents over.

The meal was delicious!

Andrew had woken up before me and gotten everything into the crock pot.

We ate dinner and then whipped out the fondue.

The boys were in heaven!

Ammon became a chocolate MESS.

It was hilarious to watch him eating fondue.

Peter loved it, although he was just as content to eat the fruit without the chocolate.

Tonight was spent with good food and great company.

What more can a person ask for?

Uncle Andrew

Yesterday we had a chance to attend a birthday party with Andrew's side of the family.

This past summer, two new baby girls joined the family.

I always make Andy hold the babies.

He always complains.

But I am convinced he loves it!

(Just look at the smiles he has in those pictures!)

He also had fun helping Birthday-Boy try on his new helmet.

Andrew would never say it about himself - he doesn't believe it.

But he's good with kids.

And I love to see him with them.

It was a good party.

Fun was had by all!

And we'll all be together again in just a few short weeks for Thanksgiving.

:)

Halloween

We had a fun Halloween.

The boys dressed up for school and I was able to sneak in to both class parties.

Peter was having a great time making cookies.

Ammon had actually gotten sick swinging on the tire swing during recess.

His teacher said he was starting to get his color back.

But by the time the parade stared, he was doing well.

My sister-in-law and I sat together and watched to parade.

We were right outside Peter's classroom.

When he finally circled back and was finishing his portion of the parade, he was excited to say,

"I saw Grandpa Fred!"

I had invited my grandparents to come see the parade, but I hadn't followed up with them.

They had made it, though, so I moved locations and watched the rest of the parade with them.

We saw Ammon come through.

He had lots of fun, but he was mostly excited to point out his two favorite costumes:

A toilet, and a Rubik's Cube.

After school we headed over to my parents house for a visit.

We have always done our trick-or-treating in their neighborhood.

This was the first year we really had our own responsibility of handing out candy.

I guess that's the downside of home-ownership - No more trick-or-treating as a family.

Andrew came home from work in time for dinner.

Every year on Halloween he makes Red Beans and Rice.

I had been counting down for weeks!

It was delicious!

Ammon had two friends at school that had arranged to trick-or-treat with him.

I joined with one of the friends mom's and we took our group around the nieghborhood.

Andrew stayed home to pass out candy.

He was excited to see his primary kids.

He bought them each a custom ordered super-sized treat.

Andrew's dad came and hung out with him for the evening.

We never did get to see Grandma Peggy on Halloween since she was being Nurse Peggy.

At one point I lost Ammon.

He was racing from door to door, which I was fine with.

Until it got dark and I realized he was in all black.

And we got to a point where he could have gone about three different directions.

I didn't know which one he picked.

But we found him after a few minutes.

Soon after that Peter got tired.

Andrew came to pick him up.

He brought a glow-stick necklace to keep Ammon visible.

I was shocked when we finished trick-or-treating by 7:30.

But the boys were satisfied with their loot and content to call it a night.

Amazingly, kids were in bed by 8:00 and sleeping soon after.

The Halloween of the Ninja's was a success!

Contradictions and Grief

The past month or so has been interesting to experience.  Time and again I have been filled with this immense gratitude at the circumstances of my life.  I have felt blessed beyond measure - so content and filled with joy. And yet, in quiet moments I have also been filled with a fresh wave of grief and loss at what I imagined my life would be.

Somehow, when Peter was born, I knew he would be my last child.  I hoped it wasn't true and after prayerfully wrestling the situation again and again, and coming to a definite and irrefutable answer, I still explained it away to myself as I extended the "no more children" answer I kept receiving into "no more children NOW".

Our family size is a complex combination of choice (based on so many different factors), revelation, (which is the only real explanation), and fertility complications (which could likely be overcome with minimal effort).

These flashes of grief, which I thought were long-settled, are suddenly showing up with greater frequency.  We always said that we would be done having children by the time I reached the age of 35.  From a medical perspective, age 35 is when a lot of risks increase.  And after Andrew went through the terrifying circumstances of Ammon's birth, we were recommitted to the idea that I, of all people, was not one who should knowingly jump into a circumstance of "increased risk" for anything medically related.  Still, a few years ago as I longingly hoped that the answer that no more children would come was only temporary, I determined that with Heavenly Father in charge, anything was possible, and even my age couldn't be a deterrent.  In my mind, as many arguments and reasons I have, including physical factors that are potentially out of my control, the fact that the family I have is Heavenly Father's design for me is the only valid explanation for my family not being the larger size I had always hoped and dreamed for.

But whether my age is a true cut-off for the possibility of more children or not, turning 35 next month does seem to remind me that I am reaching a point in my life which I pictured very differently than it is.  And as much as I have found peace and even joy at the things in my life, a part of me is mourning afresh for what I thought it would be.

Gratitude

Every day I am filled with an awed sense of gratitude for my husband.

I feel fortunate beyond measure.

He is my best friend.

He brings the romance into my life that I have always craved.

He helps with laundry, cooking, child-rearing and every home fix-it project he can find.

He works hard day in and day out.

He supports me in my schooling.

He watches out for my emotional well-being and steps in when I need a break.

He is a THE super-hero in my life.

Without hesitation he showers me with every good thing within his power to give.

I once had a friend comment that she had never been to my house

without having been a first-hand witness of my husband serving me - 

in one capacity or another.

And as I reflected on her comment, I realized she was right.

His ways of service are quiet.

He always brings me a drink, or checks on the kids, or gets me my socks when my feet are cold.

He lets me put my icy hands on his chest to warm them up.

He drives Ammon to school.

He lets me sleep in.

He makes breakfast for the boys EVERY day.

I know I am spoiled.

I often daily think I would be lost without him.

As each evening comes to an end we snuggle into bed together.

We laugh and talk and reminisce about our day.

And when I am adequately talked-out, I roll over onto my side - 

My "sleeping position" he knowingly teases.

I literally grin from ear to ear - because I know what's going to come next.

He rolls over behind me, wraps his arm around me, and then we both drift off to sleep.

It is the happiest moment of my day.

This sleeping pattern began for my benefit.

I am the one who has to be on my side to finally fall asleep.

And I am the one who wanted to be wrapped in his arms.

But he recently admitted that he can no longer fall asleep any other way.

Life can feel so perfect.

But many of you know that this perfection didn't always exist for us.

We have had a challenging past.

And there were days weeks months when I genuinely believed our marriage wouldn't last.

Those were hard, dark days.

And to make it more challenging, they came and went and then came again.

There were good days and bad days muddled and confused.

Until eventually all that seemed left was the bad.

I thought the end of our marriage had come with a finality.

I began to plan for a life without him - the single parent of two very young boys.

I looked into my future laid out in this way and felt keenly that the hardest years of my life were ahead.

I couldn't help but wonder -

If I know that these next few years will be hard,

and if I commit to fight and work and be drug through the mud of life,

would I prefer my prize to be a new future, divorced and ready for a better chance at love?

Or would I want my prize to come rewarded with the richness of all that was good in our past?

For me, the answer became increasingly evident.

In my situation it worked to stay true to my covenants.

"For better or worse."

We made it through storms that seemingly couldn't have been worse.

And having come from a place such as that,

I have never since spent a single day taking our love for granted.

I know how close that love came to being lost forever.

And constantly I am struck with the understanding of how fortunate I am.

***

A few weeks ago I was touched by the strength of people around me.

People who are fighting battles and facing severe struggles.

This week I became aware of many more difficulties born by those I know.

And it seems to never end.

Yesterday I looked into my Grandma's eyes -

weary with concern for her husband's health.

She is four decades further along on the path of life than I am.

Shouldn't life  be easier by then?

But in His love and infinite wisdom, Heavenly Father did not create a world of ease.

Rather, he provided a plan that offers strength and healing.

We would not believe the strength we are capable of, were it not tested through trials.

And we would never know the power of healing offered through the Savior,

were we not to experience it firsthand.

Though it may be a hard lesson that we continually learn as we journey through this existence, 

I know that the opportunity to develop this strength and gain this healing is a priceless gift.

These blessings come from God,

and as such,

they bring with them infinite peace and joy beyond measure.

***