Wrapping Up Summer

A few days after Jack's birthday, Rob and I celebrated 17 years of marriage. I can't believe it's been 17 years already, but I also can't believe it's only been 17 years, if that makes sense. In two more years, I will have spent half my life with him. The road has been harder than either of us expected it to be. In a society that touts "happily ever after", there isn't much room to teach that the most amazing experiences also take the most work.

The work is absolutely worth it though. Even after 17 years, Rob is still my very best friend and favorite person in the world. He is still the first person I want to talk to when I wake up and the last person I want to talk to before falling asleep. He still makes my stomach do flip flops just by looking at me. He still tells me I'm beautiful every single day. We are so lucky we found each other and I'm so glad we have eternity to spend together.

We celebrated our anniversary by going out for Brazilian food, a tradition we started 7 years ago. Afterwards we went out to see a movie (Guardians of the Galaxy). Megan babysat for us. We love that she is now old enough to babysit!

Rob's anniversary gift to me was a new, much smaller, laptop for work. It is basically a tablet with a detachable keyboard. My old laptop is huge as we got it for school and it is much easier to see full websites with a larger screen. It's really heavy though and it doubled the weight of my work bag.

My gift to him was a plane ticket to Oregon. Rob's best friend, Wayne, got married last week. We flew Rob out to spend some time with Wayne (and the rest of his group of friends). Out of his original group of friends, only one wasn't able to make it. Rob also got to spend time with his parents and brother and got to meet our niece and nephew for the first time.

As he got back the night before the first day of school, we took pictures at the pool before he left to commemorate the end of summer. This summer all four of the older kids swam without any kind of floaties. Eva and Laura both became very comfortable in the water and Eva even jumps off the diving board now! Laura swims on her own (with the help of an inflatable ring and sometimes arm floaties) and is very adamant about not receiving help. We are so grateful to Jojo and Dan for letting us use their pool every week! There is no way I would feel comfortable taking six kids swimming at a public pool full of kids as I would never be able to keep an eye on all six of them.

Nature blessed us with a rainbow towards the end of our time at the pool :)

FINALLY!!!!

I graduated in June. I got my MFT exam results the second week of July. I filled out all remaining paperwork required for licensure and sent it in.

Then we waited . . .

And waited . . .

And waited . . .

I called three times, checking to make sure that they had received the paperwork and making sure I had turned in everything I needed to turn in.

The last time I called was Tuesday morning. I was told everything had gotten there and I was third in line to be processed. I checked the website every 30 minutes or so. My license number finally appeared that afternoon. I tried not to cheer too loudly as I was in the office and other therapists had clients. I texted Rob and Jojo and Betsy and Susie and Christy and ran to tell James and Melissa (both of whom didn't have clients that hour) and Mark (once his client session was over). Then to make it official, I posted it on facebook :)

Mark and James took me out for dinner to celebrate.

I kept looking at the website that night. It seems so surreal that I am finally licensed. School is actually over. I can finally start getting paid. I feel like I can finally start actually contributing to our family again. I could tell Rob that he never has to work a second job again.

The last two were the most important to me. Rob has worked so hard to support us for so long, working two jobs some of the time without complaining. He stood for hours working as bartender for a catering company, freezing, coming home with feet that hurt so much it was hard to walk. He missed out on so many milestones with our children. Now he gets to work an 8-5 job and then come home and spend time watching his kids grow up. He doesn't have to try to climb the corporate ladder or spend days out of each week traveling.

I know I have worked incredibly hard to get where I am (we have both worked incredibly hard), but I feel so blessed to have the job that I have. So many therapists work years to get into private practice and I had it handed to me. I told a friend this week that it felt like it was handed to me on a silver platter. She corrected me and said that I worked my butt off for this opportunity. I did work hard. Both of us made so many sacrifices so I could do my schoolwork, so I could make it to PDI each month, so I could help facilitate the 12-step group every week for four years, so I could complete my year of internship. It seems unreal that there aren't really any more hoops to jump through.

I am a LMFTA, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Associate. I have to complete another 3000 hours, 750 of which need to be relational. Until those hours are complete, I need to have a supervisor that I meet with regularly. Mark has offered to continue in that role. I think I'd want to meet with him weekly even if I didn't have to though, so that doesn't feel like much of a restriction.

I am so grateful for those who have helped me get here. For my classmates and teachers and friends and family who have provided support. For Renee and Janette for letting me be part of PDI, the STOP school, and the 12-step group. For my in-laws who sacrificed so my mother-in-law could help take care of Rob and the kids during each of my residencies. For Mark who did an amazing job of being my supervisor and helping me make the transition from student to therapist. For my kids who sacrificed countless hours of time I could have spent with them so I could do schoolwork or work. For Rob, who was always there, pushing me on when I couldn't take one more step, filling in wherever I needed him to, taking care of me and the kids and the house. Thank you. I couldn't have done this alone.

Jack Turns 7!

Jack's birthday was on Wednesday. As I work every Wednesday from about 11am-10pm, we celebrated the Saturday before. Saturday morning we got up and got everyone ready to go. We loaded all six kids in the car and headed out. Sonic was our first stop and all the kids got kid's meals, a special treat as we don't eat a whole lot of fast food and almost never order kids meals because getting six of them is pretty expensive. After picking up our lunch, we drove to a movie theater, one of the few still showing "How to Train Your Dragon 2".

Usually we celebrate birthdays by letting the kids pick one friend and taking the birthday kid and their friend out to lunch (anywhere the child wants to go - within reason) and to a movie. Kylie never got to make it out to her movie for her birthday this year and we had problems getting in touch with the friend Jack wanted to invite, so we let them take their siblings and both parents. One good thing about having a huge family is that you always have friends to hang out with :) The kids did an awesome job behaving at the movie. Afterwards, we stopped by my office to get water to drink and to give the kids a chance to use the restroom. Plus Kylie, Beth, and Jack had never seen my office at all and the last time the other three were there, I was working out of a different office in the suite. We had an awesome day :)

We had signed up to feed dinner to the missionaries that night, so Jack didn't get to pick dinner. He was fine with that as we told him he could wait until Susie and Drew get here (they are moving here this week!!!!!) and we'd all take him out to Golden Corral. Golden Corral is the kids' favorite restaurant now, primarily because we tell them that once they eat a serving of protein and a serving of vegetables, they can eat as many desserts as they want. Kylie's current record is 20 desserts. Plus they have cotton candy. We only let the kids have one cotton candy each.

Even though Jack couldn't pick dinner (one of the missionaries doesn't eat meat and all the meals he wanted had a lot of meat), he and I ran to Kroger and picked out a birthday cake. He picked a oreo ice cream cake. The elders couldn't stay for dessert, but we definitely enjoyed it! Jack also got to open his presents from us. He got a Pokemon boxed set, a special small set of Pokemon cards, and an Iron Man 3 figurine. The Pokemon sets were picked out by a little boy I found drooling over the Pokemon cards at the store. I asked him which ones he would pick and bought those. Jack strongly agreed with the ones the little boy picked out :)

Trying not to blow out the candles before we finish singing . . . 

Sisters?

The picture of Laura from the other night reminded me of another picture we took over a decade ago . . .

Laura 

Megan

I think they might be related ;) And Rob, you've changed just a tad in the past decade :)

Blessed

Sometimes it hits us just how amazingly blessed we are to have our munchkins. We were told so many times that we would never be able to have children. It took us 5 years to have our first, but we seem to have made up for it :)

We went swimming at Jojo's again tonight as usual. Right at the end, Laura (who had gotten out because she was cold - it was only about 90*) decided she wanted back in. Rob scooped her up. She squealed "Jump, Daddy! Jump!" as he threw her in the air. I loved the look of pure joy on her face as he tossed her up and caught her over and over.

We stopped at Sonic on the way home. Usually we just let the kids get shakes, but this time we let them pick any item they wanted (just one though). Eva asked for a strawberry shake, but when the food showed up, she changed her mind and decided she wanted a burger. She completely fell apart over it. As we don't respond to tantrums, we started driving home. Once she finally stopped crying, we explained to her that it was ok to be sad, but that tantrums won't get her what she wants. Then I gave her part of my burger that I had saved for her. We have so few years where it is possible for us to fix "everything" in our little ones lives. I'm so glad we can still do it for Eva.

When we got home, the kids all got ready for bed, then Rob discovered American Ninja Warrior (I think that's what it's called) was on. They all piled into our room, cuddling up to us as the eight of us watched the show. I love moments like that. Laura and Eva fell asleep on top of me :) Definitely a Kinkade moment :)

Megan's Party

Usually for birthdays we have the kids pick one friend and they get to go out to lunch and a movie in lieu of a party. We've told the kids they get to have two birthday parties; one when they turn 12 and one when they turn 18, so Megan got a birthday party this year. She asked Miss Jojo if she could have a pool party at her house and Miss Jojo and Mr Dan graciously agreed.

Her party was yesterday. She invited six friends, three of whom were able to make it to the party. Megan is quite the planner and has spent the last six months figuring out exactly what she wanted her party to be like. She found a cake tutorial for a "Moshi Monster" cake (Moshi Monsters is a show they watch on the computer) and asked if she could make it for her party. We couldn't find Moshi Monster figurines or every type of candy she needed, so she improvised and made a jungle cake instead (same design, just with animals instead and no rainbow over the waterfall). Paula came over early that morning to help with the cake.

It was a fantastic cake! Rob said it looked like a jungle sugar bomb had exploded. Jojo thinks she should go into professional cake decorating. 

We headed over to Jojo and Dan's house that afternoon. Megan and Paula drove with me and we stopped and picked up pizza for dinner. Megan's face lit up like a Christmas tree when we pulled up to Jojo's house and she saw that Jojo had gotten her a birthday balloon and tied it to the mailbox.

Megan had Paula, Ali, and Allison at the party. Kala and Patrick also were able to come. With our five other kids and Jojo and Dan, we had a full house :)

For the first time ever, Laura jumped into the pool and paddled around completely on her own! We'll have to get her a ring like Eva so it's easier to keep her head above the water. She was very proud of herself :) 

After swimming for a couple of hours (with occasional breaks to eat pizza), everyone got out and we opened presents and had cake and ice cream (Jojo got the ice cream).

Megan got three homemade necklaces from Allison, a Cold Stone Creamery gift card and two bottle of nail polish from Ali, a purse (with $25 in it) and headband (both from Panama) from Paula, a beautiful necklace with an intricate cross from Kala, and a card with $10 from Jojo and Dan.

It took a few minutes to get the candle lit, but Dan and Jojo came to the rescue. The wind kept blowing them out, so we moved the cake to the end of the table. Patrick, having just had a birthday party, blew most of the candles out, but Megan, having several younger siblings, didn't mind :) The cake was delicious and Megan let the other kids pick animal figurines to keep. 

Kala shared her cake and ice cream with Laura. 

As far as birthday parties go, this was one of the easiest ever :) Everyone had a wonderful time :) Thank you so much Jojo and Dan!

Megan Turns 12

Megan is at church right now, going to Young Women's (our youth group for girls) for the first time. (I stay home and sleep all day on Sundays. If I don't get enough rest, I can't make it through the week without having to have Rob come home early from work and we burn through his vacation days really fast when we do that. Last year, we ran out in August. I usually can't rest on Saturday as that is the only day we have Rob home so we can get things like grocery shopping done.)

Anyway, I can't believe she is old enough to be in YW! She's going into seventh grade. In two years, she'll be in high school. In six years, she'll be in college. Six years doesn't seem very long. I need to figure out how to start going on some type of family vacation again so she has some memories of those with us. The last twelve years have gone by so fast. I know the next six will fly.

We are so proud of who Megan is and who she is becoming! Ever since she was little, she has always been so bright and so curious about everything. She asks more questions than I think any of our other kids do, and she's genuinely interested in the answers. She has really stepped up in the past year and helped Rob and I, especially with Laura. She is one of Laura's very favorite people. Rob and I both know how hard it is to be the oldest, and Megan does an amazing job. She has significantly improved her cooking skills this summer and cooks dinner for the family once a week. She babysits for us when we go on dates or when I have doctor appointments and does a great job entertaining the kids and keeping things going. She reads huge chapter books in a day or two. She makes pinball machines and houses for her Barbies, complete with rugs and pictures on the wall, out of empty boxes. She is a beautiful, intelligent, amazing girl and we are lucky to have her in our lives!

Her birthday was this past Thursday. I was able to make it home early, so we went out to dinner as a family to Golden Corral (Megan's choice). Megan opened her presents from us when we got home.

Megan's top request was for a stuffed "Squirtle" (a pokemon) and she even picked out the specific on she wanted, so we were sure to get it for her.

Rob and I also got her six pairs of earrings. We picked out ones that looked like little Roses as that is her favorite flower. 

Megan also got an outfit that she had specifically asked for as she wants to wear it to her first day of school. 

And a bonus picture of Laura watching a show on her own on my new laptop/tablet. I love this shot :) It reminds me of so many of our other kids at this age!