Elder Jacob Walker

This post is an eclectic post about my littlest brother Jacob and the family events leading up to the day that he left to be a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the Edmonton, Canada Mission. We spent a lot of time together over the last couple of weeks with our family as we celebrated and supported Jacob and his decision to be a missionary.  I'm so proud of him and how hard he has worked to be ready to serve the Lord - he truly is an example of a dedicated disciple of our Saviors. 

On July 12th, our family met up to take family pictures as it would be one of the last times that we would all be together for two more years. We got some wonderful pictures of our family, and soon after we were finished there - we headed down to Manti where we gathered together in the Manti Utah Temple as Jacob received his endowment. I absolutely love the Manti Temple; there is such a sweet spirit that abides there. It was a beautiful experience to have all of my parents children and their spouses together in the Celestial room. What a wonderful thing to look around and see all of my siblings, their spouses, my parents, and my husband gathered around me in such a beautiful room with such an amazing spirit surrounding us. Even more amazing to think that just over five years ago I was standing in the same temple, just having received my own endowment - the first of any of my siblings. Our family has grown since then and I'm grateful that we were all able to be there together. 

Of course, we left Lydia and Camille with a babysitter (shout out to Lauren Larsen Ezzel and her train table/pet cat who entertained Lydia the entire time) - so Jenna and Kevin left pretty quickly. And because we weren't all together when we left the temple - for some reason no one thought to take a picture. Not a single picture. Which is lame. However, we did take some pictures at Fat Jacks Pizza (now called Ray's?) where we ate dinner. Our lovely family, as well as a few pictures of Lydia being impressed with Matthew and Jacobs plate-spinning abilities and her attempts to imitate them. 

The following weekend we headed to Morgan to support Jacob as he spoke in church before departing on his mission. He gave a very powerful sermon on obedience and happiness. He is going to be an incredible missionary - I'm so proud of him. 

Oh, also, because we came up to Morgan for the whole weekend - we happened to make it in time for the Morgan Parade on Saturday.  I have to include these pictures because they are just too cute. Lydia loved the parade, she's basically a pro at picking up the candy (and there was a lot of it!), and we had a nice time sitting outside and chatting with everyone. Pretty much everywhere we went, people were calling to Jacob - he's well known and well loved. I'm sure those traits will serve him well over the next two years! 

 

 

The weekend was wonderful. We always love to spend time with our family. Jacob was set apart as a missionary on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning we met up for one last hurrah before we dropped him off at the MTC. We went out to lunch at Golden Corral (which Lydia loved, even though neither of us was feeling our very best - she saw this picture and said "my chocolate cake!") Then we headed to the Provo Temple to take some pictures of our handsome and wonderful missionary. 

 

I know that I've said it before, but I'm so proud of my baby brother. It's not an easy thing to leave everything that you know to go and serve the Lord in a place you've never been with little contact with anything you've ever been familiar with. But Jacob has already learned how to rely on the Lord. He is truly an example to me and I've learned much from his dedication and his testimony. I pray that he will be able to continue to rely on the Lord and that he will be able to show many people, through his words and example, the happiness that comes from living the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

You'll be amazing, Elder Walker, and we will be praying for you. We love you very much! 

(Also, sidenote - I'm about 31 weeks pregnant right now. When Jacob comes back, he will meet his almost two year old nephew for the first time... and I will probably be pregnant again. Hopefully pretty close to the same far-along-timeframe as I am right now. Made us laugh.) 

Things we've learned this week:

1. Potty Training is exhausting. I've read several things and had several people give advice for the best way to potty train - but what no one tells you is how to transition from sitting on the potty all day (which we do great with) to actually going back to a regular schedule and wearing real clothes. Or telling you about how completely exhausting it is to help a two year old go pee on the potty 50 times a day. Seriously. It. Is. Exhausting. It's a miracle that anyone ever learns to use the toilet.

2. Picking a baby name that is cute, good for a baby, good for a man, not too popular, not too unusual, and that we both agree on is really hard!

3. Nesting energy is good for finally getting things hung on walls, even if it isn't in a nursery but in a living room that has been sorely neglected for a year and a half.

4. Sometimes one's efforts to make happy summer memories end up being less "We'll pick up some sno-cones, drive to a park, eat them in the shade, and then play on the playground with our toddler" and more "Wait in a drive through for 15 minutes then - Ahhh, these snocones are giant! Quick drink the juice before they spill all over. Drive faster! We've got to get to the park before bad things happen. Whoah, whoah, slow down! Oh noooooooooo - sno-cone everywhere! I look like I've been shot! I want some mommy's ice cream!  Quick grab the wipes and make for that picnic table over there. Why are these sno-cones melting so much? Oh well, let's play at the park, run some errands, and go out to eat regardless of the bright red stains all over our shirts/pants/toddler." However, the uncontrollable laughter by all involved makes for it's own happy family memory - even if it isn't "picture perfect". 

5. Taking a picture with a cell phone of three syrup-covered family members and two giant sno-cones is harder than it appears. Also - our new cell phones take awesome pictures.

6. The Wild Zucchini is delicious. We should have tried it much, much sooner. (Editor's note from David: This is totally on me. Shantel has been trying to get us to go here for over a year. However, I was really reluctant, because I was not sure it was going to be my kind of food. I was completely wrong, it was super delicious and so fun to be there with Shantel and Lydia.)

7. Earning 5% on every purchase with our new Target Red Card may not actually save us any money overall.  Pictured are only a fraction of the items we've purchased from Target this week. Let's call it a nesting spending binge. Fortunately this is all stuff we either budgeted for a year and half ago and just finally found something we like (Kitchen Rugs) or stuff for our new nursery (curtains and sheets). We had a really fun time buying all of these things and our house looks awesome!

Baby #2 - 30 Weeks

In some ways 30 weeks feels like we are almost done and will be meeting our baby boy any day - I don't know why, I guess it's just that hitting the 30 mark makes it seem so much closer. However, I'm relieved that we are actually a good 10 weeks away because we still have a lot of preparations before our newest family member arrives. I've been feeling really nest-y lately, but it's been focused on other rooms in the house rather than the nursery. I've felt like I have to get those other rooms the way I want them before I can start working on the baby's room. We got a new toddler bed and gorgeous chair for Lydia's room, finally collected the perfect combination of items for the living room and hung them (it finally looks put together after a year and a half of living here), and bought curtains and rugs for the kitchen. All of these things have needed done for a while, but it's taken my nesting energy to finally push us to get them finished. Also, we had to rearrange some furniture upstairs - moving dressers around from room to room and such- and I felt like I couldn't start the nursery until I had the extra dressers out of there so I could really start organizing. I'm so excited though, because now that we've gotten some other things out of the way we are finally starting to make some headway in the nursery. We bought navy blue curtains, navy striped fabric for the bassinet, and some bold navy striped sheets for the crib. I've had a hard time nailing down my vision (not that we will be doing anything extravagant - but I do want things to look nice and put together in there), but with those navy design staples - I'm really excited to get in and start organizing and start adding some more things on the walls and such. It's going to be darling - but good thing I still have ten weeks to work on it! 

Name wise we don't really have anything that we love yet. We have a few names on our list that are starting to grow on us a little bit. (Last time I mentioned this, I had an overwhelming response in support for the name Logan - however, I'm feeling crazy about the name picking thing and I'm worried that if we name him Logan it will reduce his desire to attend Utah State, and that would be so sad!) Our list currently consists of: Austin, Jared, Owen, Oliver, Henry, and possibly Curtis. One of those names might start growing on us, or we may find another name that isn't on the list yet, it's totally up in the air. (Note: Our real favorite names are Oliver and Henry - but they are SO popular, which is the reason that Jackson got nixed from the list. It's hard to know how to balance "too popular" with "we just really like them", so they are staying on the list for now.)

I've been so tired lately. I don't remember feeling this way until I got a little further into my third trimester last time. But I. am. exhausted. It's not a mental exhaustion as much as I just physically am tired and have to push myself to do pretty much anything. We've still tried to hit up the swimming pool a couple times a week because Lydia loves it and it feels so nice, but we've almost completely stopped going to the museum/the farm/the park. I just can't keep up with Lydia and I'm ready to leave a half hour after we get there. At my 28 week appointment, they said that I was a little low on my iron which could explain some of the tiredness (but I'm almost always on the low side when it comes to iron count - even when I'm not pregnant - and I was only slightly under their "just fine" distinction). I've been trying to eat more iron rich foods (pineapple juice anyone?) so hopefully that helps a little. 

Ten weeks seems so close, but when I think back to ten weeks ago we were at our 20 week appointment being told that they were seeing some abnormalities on the ultrasound. That seems like forever ago. (In some ways it doesn't even feel real, because everyone pretty much ignores the fact that it even happened after our follow up ultrasound with Maternal Fetal Medicine. We've decided not to worry about it, because even if something does come up after baby boy is born it won't change how much we love him and we'll deal with it as it comes.) So much has changed in the last ten weeks, and I'm sure that even more will change over the next ten weeks as we prepare for this sweet baby boy to come home to us.