Check this out! My sister, Erica, designed this t-shirt and won 2nd place in Woot.com's latest design contest! Good job Erica. I'm going to go order one before they run out. I hear giraffes run pretty fast.
If you want one too, go to
http://shirt.woot.com/Derby/
We had a great Thanks-giving day! We enjoyed a fancy dinner with my professor and his wife at their country club. I have been working for him for a year and we have all become great friends. And, boy, do they adore Marin! They feel like family.
I've gotten so burned out doing the single mom thing for so long, trying to keep up with a seemingly endless list of things that need to be done last week, not having time to call friends or not being able to get a hold of friends, and the house has gotten only more and more out of control, even though I feel like I'm cleaning all the time.
So, today I had forget about everything else for a while and do something for me. While Marin was preschool, I went to Barnes and Noble to just sit and read! I pulled 5 books off the shelves and got totally lost in those books for three hours, while listening to some of my favorite music on my iPod. It was great! I read about graphic design and watercolor and learned a lot. I hope to buy the books eventually, probably on Amazon.com.
Feeling so much better, I was able to come home to the house that's a wreck and start to get it more under control.
I hope to do some watercolor soon. I've done some watercolor in the past. I don't know a lot about how to do it, but I've come up with a few decent pieces of work. All but one is in storage in Utah. The one above is the one I have with me. It is of Thanksgiving Point, behind our house in Utah.
Jeff came home for 2 weeks at the end of August! It was wonderful to actually feel like a family again, even if so briefly, in the middle of 13 long months apart. This is his 3rd deployment since 9/11 and we are ready to be a whole family again.
We are proud to serve our country, and grateful that we can in such a significant way. But being apart for so long really takes it's toll on us as individuals, and as a family. I'm not saying this to complain. It's just how it is. I think any military family would say about the same thing.
I certainly have grown a great deal over that last several years, though, because of the challenges of these deployments, and I am grateful for it. I do love personal growth, stretching to greater heights, and becoming more than I was last year, last month, or even last week.
Honestly, I might be pretty bored in my life without these real challenges to push me so far out of my comfort zone. So, as hard as it is to be married to the military (yeah, pretty much literally!), I know the challenges in my life have been skillfully tailored for me by a loving Heavenly Father who knows me and my potential far better than I know myself. I know that I am well watched out for. What more could I ask for?
