Rural America-Right Next to the Corn

Dan and I just moved to Rural America. We are actually living in a town instead of some unincorporated county area, but the town is probably six blocks on either side (if that). We don't even get to have mail boxes at our house, we have to have a PO Box because our town is too small. Also we don't have a sewer system. Yep, everyone has septic tanks (and some people just have ses pools-sick). Let me first say living here wasn't my idea--I never pictured myself in a town where everyone owns their own horse. I told Dan that the place we end up in has to at least have sidewalks. There are a few things that I absolutely love about the place we live in though. There are also some things that I think are cute/funny.

• Last night as I was driving home from work Dan called me and asked where I was, wondering how long it would take me to get home. When I said, "I'm at the slow part next to the corn," he knew EXACTLY where I was! How often do you hear that about your drive home?
• The valley that we live in is riddled with little lakes/swamplands. On my way home I get to see these beautiful vistas. Yesterday there were herons (at least that's what my uneducated eye thought they were) in one of those areas.
• I love to look at all the different crops growning and being harvested. It really is beautiful.
• Everyone in our town waves at each other. If someone is coming by you wave, even if you have no idea who they are. You will soon.
• There is a town square which is closed from dusk to dawn. They sell hunting permits in the town square during that time of the year.
• When we first moved in our neighbors would look out their windows checking us out each time we would go in. Now that we've introduced ourselves they must have figured we were OK and they no longer had to "keep an eye on the place" for the owners.
• Each person is linked with the house that they live in and each house is linked to the ORIGINAL owner/person who built it. Our in-laws "live in Sid's old house." We're "renting the Godfrey's trailor."
• I think half the town are Godfreys.
• I think at one point they've all had to spend some time living in our trailor.
• We have town pic-nics.
• You can see ALL the stars in the sky at night. It really is breath-taking.

If that doesn't make you love our town then you're crazy! There are things that I miss, like a grocery store less than half an hour away, but for one year of my life I think we made a great choice.

Because I never thought I'd be happy living in a place like this, and I am happy I was wondering if anyone else has had that experience. It doesn't necessairly have to be about living in rural America.

***Note, I will still want to have a sewage system, grocery store, and sidewalks in a town that I decide to live in for any extended amount of time.***

Grandma/pa

Growing up we always called our grandparents by their first names. For example, Grandma Jane or Grandpa Mel or Grandma Margie. When it came to great grandparents we called them by their last names like grandma DuBois.

My husband's family calls grandparents by first names (Grandma Whiting). Although this isn't unheard of to me, I've always figured that my kids would call their grandparents by their first names. My parents have always planned on this as well. My in-laws seem to be ok with it too. My father in law is even ok with me calling him by his given first name because Grandpa Greg and Grandpa Craig are a little close that it might confuse. The other people in my husband's family have expressed ideas that my way of addressing grandparents is unheard of/weird and (this part I may be extrapolating since it has never really been expressed this way) I'm just trying to rock the boat. (Since my husband is the youngest the tradition of Grandpa and Grandma Whiting is well established with the other grandchildren.) I love my in-laws and I don't want anyone to think I'm complaining about them so don't think that. I just want to know the opinions of others out there.

So my question is this: Do you call your grandparents by their first names or thier last?

***Note regardless of what people say I will probably still have our children call their grandparents by their first names so long as the said grandparents are ok with it.***

Da-Da-Da-Daaaaaa (Read: The first four notes to Monday Night Football)

My husband loves football. Not as much as he loves wrestling, but since wrestling (the real kind not the WWF kind) isn't really a big televised sport he puts his athletic entertainment into football (except for during the summer when it's baseball, YUCK!) I don't know if my readers know this but yesterday was the first night of Monday Night Football. Those four little notes really mean that the next hours of his life my husband will be glued to the television. He even has this old NFL quilt that I'm pretty sure is a hand-me-down from one of his brothers. This is the only quilt he owns and he's pretty attached to it.

I on the other hand have so many quilts it would probably make your head spin. This is a combination of factors really. First, I quilt so some of them I made myself. Also my mom and grandma quilt so I have ones from them. Finally, I'm cold all of the time so I actually use all my quilts. My husband thinks I have WAY too many quilts.

Anyway, when we got married I packed up his one NFL quilt in a box that I thought he would never open since the quilt is sort of old and falling apart and, well, I don't really like it. He found it when we moved this last time. I was making the bed and I needed a quilt to put on it and I asked him to get me one to which I replied, "Anyone you want." He came in with the quilt behind his back and sang, "Da-Da-Da-Daaaaa!" as he revealed his choice. He said it was in honor of Monday Night football coming back. So now we have the old stinky NFL quilt on our bed. He's lucky that I love him. And also that our comforter covers up the quilt. And also that his brother has satellite TV because without satellite TV or digital cable you can't get ANY channels in our little town (even with rabbit ears).

Miracle Worker

The medicine that the doctor told me to take was half a pill of Unisom and vitamin B6 that had been put into one capsule. Last night I started taking them and it was a miracle! It was the first time I've slept through the whole night without having to get up and eat something a couple of times. Also when I ate breakfast this morning it totally stayed down! At this point I love my doctor! And I love the miracle of modern medicine.

Twins

Today I went to the doctor and got my first ultrasound to check my due date. The doctor found out a few interesting things....twins.

Just kidding. If I had twins I would be more overwhelmed and scared than excited right now. I've just got the one. The fun thing about my baby was that as soon as the doctor saw whosit (that's what I decided to call the baby until I figure out the sex and the name) he said, "Woah! You have a very active baby!" It's arms were waving and legs were moving and it was sort of bouncing up and down and it made me laugh. Everytime I laughed it would move some more. I think that was well worth the being late to the appoinment because I was busy throwing up everything in my stomach all morning. Yes, I went to the doctor's on a completely empty stomach. I almost threw up during my check up too, but I was able to breathe it down. Luckily the doctor called in a Rx to treat mild nausea that I can pick up later today. The other thing the doctor was worried about was that I've had a kidney stone before. He said I had to really stay on top of being hydrated becasue of that and my throwing everything up. If I get dehydrated my risk for kidney stones goes way up. Just what I need. I can just see myself throwing up and passing a kidney stone at the same time. Yuck. Anyway, now I will really watch what I drink.

I'm so excited! Two arms, two legs and one enormous head. At 3.5 cm, little baby whosit is perfect!

Strep Throat

I don't have strep throat (which is a very good thing I think). The other girl that works at m y work does. Since there's only the two of us and she has strep it fell to me to work for her today. Not that I mind, it's not like my job is hard, I just sit here waiting for customers to come in, I just wasn't mentally prepared to come in. After she left I used our Clorox wipes and wiped every surface that she might have touched because there's no way I want that sort of thing. My boss, the owner of the store, lives about an hour away so she was really very happy that I could come in at such a short notice. The only cramp that it put in my day was that today was supposed to be the big pack-up-and-move-every-last-thing-we-own day today so tomorrow could be the big clean-the-basement-spotless day so that my aunt would be happy she let us live there for practically nothing for two months. My husband says he's getting off work early today though so maybe that means he'll do the parts of the packing that I don't want to do before I get home, although I doubt it because they're probably the parts that he doesn't want to do either. We'll probably just end up doing them together.

Anyway, back to work. Since I had no time to prepare for my hours on end of doing nothing I feel less prepared than yesterday. Although today I brought in some CD's that I like so I don't have to listen to the same stupid commercials over and over again on the radio. I also brought my bag of free things that the doctor's office gave me which has four baby magazines in it so I can at least enjoy some very light reading about baby issues.

As for baby names, sorry anonymous, my husband's family (read: my husband) likes to do the whole name the baby boy the dad's first name and then call them by the middle name. My father in law goes by his middle name and it never seemed to bother him. I don't have strong feelings either way. My problem is if we have a boy we're not going to get to name him anything since neither of us can agree on any name. It looks like Douglass is out because my husband said, "It's OK, I guess" (read: I hate it). We haven't narrowed to anything as far a boy names go so hopefully it'll be a girl. That's my secret hope anyway because I like the idea of having a little girl.

I almost forgot to talk about two things that have brought much warmth and excitement to my pregnancy lately.

1. Yesterday my sister-in-law's sister brought over her baby that is only five days old. She weighs approximately 6 pounds and I got to hold her for a while and it just got me so excited!
2. My sister has been sending me little baby gifts almost weekly. They are so cute! I wish I could show all of you photos of them. First she sent me onesies. I took one out of the package and sat with it on my chest and marveled at how little they were! Then she sent me some duck bath slippers that I immediately put on my fingers. This week I got a two pack of hooded bath towels and washcloths. The one I took out had a turtle on it and was SO CUTE!

My husband says it might be a little too soon to be getting the baby things out and gushing over them, but I say if he were barfing everyday he'd look for the up side to it too. I love babies! I'm going to have a beautiful baby!

A new feeling of calmness

Well, yesterday I went to my first prenatal visit. It was just the nurse's consult, but it was so much fun! Well, fun probably doesn't really describe it, they told me all about common questions and concerns and then did a urine and blood test. I hate getting blood drawn, mainly because it's never really smooth going. Apparently I have the smallest veins that a grown adult should ever have. They always have to use the child size stuff. This time I told the nurse that I get nervous, but I am perfectly fine and not to worry. Then she put the arm band thing on my arm and tried to find a vein on that arm and said, "hmm, I can't even feel anything on that arm. Let's try the other arm." In the end she made another nurse do it because she wasn't confident that she could find a vein. On the plus side the other nurse did just fine and I couldn't really even feel the whole thing!

One weird thing is that they didn't even weigh me to see my starting weight and track the gain. I bet they'll do it on Monday when I actually see the doctor. Not that they need to quite yet because I haven't gained any weight. I think that's a good sign though because you're only supposed to gain about 3 pounds during your whole first trimester (which I'll be done with in two weeks!)

Today at work my boss for some reason thought two of us needed to be scheduled to work. I have no reason why because I've been here for an hour and a half and nobody has even come in. Plus, the other girl that came in had a cold and a big red rash all over her body. I didn't want her to even get close to me because I really don't want anything that she has. I told her she needed to see the doctor and convinced her that it would be a good idea to go then called my boss and told her and she said it was ok for her to leave. So now I'm here by myself. I really need a good craft project or something to occupy my time! I think I'll look into getting a Christmas craft then I could have it done by the holidays.

I'm back

Sorry its been so long since I posted, but I haven't really had time to go to the library to get to the internet. Now I have a job that gives me hours of free time with nothing to do so my activity will pick up I'm sure. In fact I'm at work right now.

Pregnancy Update

Although being pregnant has been nothing like what I expected it to be it's still pretty good. I throw up pretty much daily, but it never hits at the same time of day so it's hard to plan around. I'm worried about being at work by myself working all day with nobody to cover me when I have to go to the bathroom to barf (which I have already done once at work and I don't want to repeat.) I'm still worried about money with this baby. If that got figured out I think I would be able to relax a lot more and enjoy myself. I didn't know I would feel like I have the flu for two months straight. Also that I would spontaneously burst out in tears for absolutely no reason. I know I've heard about all this, but it never really described everything that I'm feeling. Right now I'm starting into my 10th week so hopefully the sickness will calm down soon.

Church Update

So we just moved into this ward in a small town in Utah and last week the bishop asked us if we would be on this pannel talking to the laurels and the priests about dating (since we were newly married). There were two other couples with us and it was ok. Well, in all honesty I was pretty shocked about what they were telling the youth about dating and how unrealistic it was. I'm not going into the whole story, but they told them that your spouse being the first person you kiss is the right thing to do. I wanted to turn to the bishop and say that these girls and boys had probably already kissed people and that kissing wasn't a sin so there was nothing wrong with that. I didn't though. I just kept my mouth shut. I don't know about other religions, but sometimes the messages that get sent to the youth of our church seem incredibly judgemental and completely unrealistic. Plus, that's not the church's official stance on the topic anyway.

Big Jimmy

As I have been spending a lot of time with my wonderful niece and nephew I thought I'd take a moment to post something about how cute they are. My nephew has an AMAZING imagination. It's better than any other child I have met. He has an invisible friend named Rankeler. I'm not entirely sure how to spell it, but I do know if you pronounce it wrong (like wrangler) you are corrected. Anyway, Rankeler has an entire life outside of ours and occasionally he comes over to play. It's amazing his life's story. My nephew also has another imaginary character named "Invisible Jack." Invisible Jack shows up much less, but also has lots of fun with us. Whenever my nephew plays dinosaurs he has to be Big Jimmy. Sometimes you can hear him talking and you think he's talking to himself, but then you realize that he's talking to an imaginary person. He will ask a question and then wait for their response and then respond to them. It is truly amazing!

My sister-in-law is also pregnant and a couple days ago we were sitting around talking about names. She asked my nephew what he would name their baby if it were a baby brother and he said, "I would name him Rankeler Jack Whiting." We all thought that was a great name.