Well, Happy Holidays to everyone! I wanted to post a blog entry before sending out all our Christmas cards and asking everyone to visit our old, stale blog. But if we're lucky most of you have been too busy to look here before now anyway! In that case, I am not too late!
Our last entry was in October, and it talked about something we did over the summer. So as far as insight into our lives over the last six months, there is next to none in our blog. So where to begin? I will try to hit on some of the salient points of our lives, which have been eventful.
1. Still no kids. Some would say this is a blessing, some would say a curse. I would say that it is neither, just working on the Lord's timing here and we don't know what is in store. We can do what we want, when we want, and that is nice, but we're getting to the point where that isn't really as satisfying, we have spent seven years being able to do whatever we want. In reality we have a stronger desire to raise and educate some little ones, and take on that responsibility, take on that new challenge. Trust me, just thinking about yourselves can grow old pretty quickly.
We're still working the fertility front, because we don't have any definitive answers either way in that area. We are also working the adoption front. We welcome any help and advice in the area! It is uncomfortable to be required to sell ourselves. I mean, we both have the desire and means to raise some kids and we think we'd do well at it, but to actually have our picture floating around on cards is a little out of our element. However, it really is necessary if we are going find a baby who needs a nice home, and start a family that way. So we are very grateful for all your efforts out there to help us spread the word. So let us know if we can get you more pass-along cards!
2. Joanna is working at the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. She started shortly after the dedication this summer and has been really feeling blessed by the opportunity. I think our lives have really been blessed by her work there as well. The blessings have come in getting along better than ever, having a stronger spirit in our home, having the drive to visit the temple more often together, and in many other ways. She works there for two shifts a week. She also volunteers at the Bingham Creek Library on Fridays as well, and finds other opportunities to assist in the community. I feel blessed to have a good job that provides us enough to allows her to serve the community and not have to work.
3. Joanna has gone off the anti-coagulants. She has been off now for about a month, and the clot in her subclavian vein hasn't returned. We hypothesize that a long string of events beginning with a bad chiroprator led to all this trouble in the first place. Through the course of some recent physical therapy, we discovered that she has a muscle that somehow got damaged (we think from an ill prescribed heel lift) and pinches off a nerve in her leg because it is so tense. This causes her muscles to tense up on her right side including muscles around the vein and pinch it off. As always these are only theories, but acting on this assumption has shown good results. Now that we have some ideas how to manage this, we think we have some ways and can make some lifestyle changes to keep it from happening again. Plus at this point she has developed many collateral veins so that if it does block off the effect should not be very pronounced.
4. My job has been a particular challenge the last six months. We have been a bit short staffed and as such I have taken on two full time positions, one of which I have been quite new at. I didn't work 80 hours a week, though I did push 55-60 some weeks in these last few months. The real result was that I learned a great deal about managing priorities. I couldn't do either job really well, so I had to just perform the critical items for each job and keep from getting distracted. It has been quite the rollercoaster. A few weeks ago we hired someone to take one of the positions, but it will be a few months before he can really take the reigns.
5. Thanksgiving was really great. We had a big Thanksgiving at my parents' house. Joanna and I, my parents, Ben and Julie and family, Amy and Kevin, Kevin's sister Tiffany, Grandpa Magers, Marilyn, and Julie's friend Becky. It was a special time. The food was wonderful, the company was great, and we sang Christmas carols as well. It was great to have Becky there if only for the piano playing alone, but everyone contributed so much to the great time we had that evening in many ways. My cousin Scott Anderson also dropped by in the evening, it was good to see him and catch up.
6. This Christmas season has been great. I'm ward choir director, and it is a real priviledge to work with our ward choir. We gave a wonderful presentation in sacrament, and the choir sounded like angels. The choir also sang in the Stake Christmas devotional, and at the ward Christmas party, so it was a busy group. Brad, a friend in the ward, also did the persuading necessary to put together a men's quartet. It consisted of Brad, Judd, Danny, and myself. We practiced a few Christmas songs and went out caroling one night. It was hard to make the time for it, but it was well worth the experience.
Joanna and I just spent Christmas at my parents' house we stayed the night Christmas eve, and had a very nice time discussing the gifts of our Savior and enjoying a Christmas movie and some games. On Christmas day we spent the afternoon at Ben and Julie's home with the nephews and nieces, that was a great experience.
There is really so much more that has gone on. I have a couple entries in the draft stages that are my own pontifications on a couple topics which I am hoping to finish up during the Christmas break, and I'll add pictures to this as soon as I get a chance.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a great 2010!
