Being with no job, no friends, an extremely busy medical-resident boyfriend, and seven disgusting roommates, Shal packed up the car and came for an overnight visit to Houston. It was so fun to have her get to know Ryan and of course to play with baby Willa. I forgot to take pictures, but here is a photo of us from freshmen year.
Oy, look at that crazy hair! If you can't tell by the enormous hair, I'm on the bottom left. Shalece is the girl right next to me. Good times, I think this is when the boys in our FHE group took us to Betos for their nightly midnight Mexican food run. We thought we were soooo cool and grown-up going out at MIDNIGHT to eat! Tee he he he (insert ridiculous freshmen laugh). At Betos there is a surprise in every burrito and a guaranteed stomach ache the next morning. Now I wonder, was the stomach ache because of the food or because we were consuming enormous breakfast burritos at 1:00 a.m.?I had such a great time hanging out with Shalece, I hope she comes to visit again! If we lived on the other side of Houston and she lived on the other side of San Antonio, we would only live 2 hours apart. Urban sprawl is bigger in Texas.
Some friends in the ward invited us to a murder mystery party on Friday night. We enlisted the help of our trusty babysitter Breeze and off we went! It was a new experience for us, but we enjoyed ourselves. The downside was that we all waited until our kids were in bed before getting together, which made for a later start time. Since I like to go to bed at 9:00 p.m., it was quite the late evening for me. Sometimes I look back at our time in Los Angeles and wonder why we didn't do more things. Here is what I remember: A) Ryan was studying ALL THE TIME B) I like to go to bed at 9 p.m. C) We had no money. I think that about sums it up. I might add in another point about traffic, but that's just cliche.
On a more sober note, we had some disappointing news, recently. This time in our lives has been very hard and stressful because of uncertainty with Ryan's job. We both just want OUT of this trial, but I can't really think of any trial that someone doesn't want to get OUT of. I had a hard time yesterday thinking about where we were and our options. I came across this talk from General Conference.
It's entitled "Continue in Patience" by President Uchtdorf and it came at just the right time; it felt like a tender mercy that the talk came up right when I needed some help. I know that Ryan and I are very blessed. It's hard not knowing the endgame right now, but our present situation really isn't that bad! We have so much to be grateful for, most importantly each other and Willa. I really like the idea of having patience and working hard for a solution, but also working patiently for one.
There is another conference talk that I really love called "Gratitude: A Path to Happiness" by Bonnie Parkin. https://lds.org/general-conference/2007/04/gratitude-a-path-to-happiness?lang=eng&query=gratitude
She has this really great discussion of gratitude being an expression of our faith, which I really like. I don't want to be a drag on anyone, I mainly like to post about happy things. Still, I don't want to give the impression that our life is oh-so perfect. We all have hard times!
Here are some pictures of Willa-bear that make me smile:
Helping fold the socks:
Flying through the air - there is this expression of true glee on her face:
I think Ryan might be a father who likes to embarrass his kids because he always LOVES the photos where Willa looks the worst. Here is a photo that caught her in the middle of a blink, but of course it just looks like she's a drunken sailor.
I could tell it was you by the hair.
ReplyDeleteWilla's skin and complexion look really nice in that last picture.
Willa will definitely appreciate the drunken sailor photos when she's older. I know I would.
ReplyDeleteHere's another great talk to add to your list. It has helped me a lot recently: http://lds.org/general-conference/2000/04/content-with-the-things-allotted-unto-us?lang=eng
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