Emily Jones Memorial Fund

Many of you have read last week's heartbreaking story of the passing of John Jones. If you have not read it, click HERE for the story.

John's wife, Emily, was left with a 14-month-old daughter and another child on the way. I don't know Emily as well as many other know her, but I did have the blessing of being her roommate for a few months at BYU. She is a strong, beautiful woman with a heart of gold. Her testimony is powerful and goodness just oozes from her. She was dating John at the time I lived with her, and he was always so wonderful to everyone around him.

Please include this family in your prayers.

With such a great loss that Emily has experienced, I can't do much to help. A memorial fund has been set up to help her and her small family. Any contributions are greatly appreciated.

Click HERE to donate directly to the fund.

Shattering Showers and Wonderful Husbands

I love my man.

Tonight when I was watching Elder Uchtdorf's wonderful devotional (click here to watch it if you missed it!), I realized that even though BFR (I'm tired of writing The Barefoot Runner....so that's his new acronym) may not be the only person who could have made me happy, he sure meets all the requirements the girl listed off to the genie in that story. I am one lucky lady! Here is a story to illustrate my point:

Yesterday morning, BFR left for work before I fully woke up. He said family prayer with me, kissed me goodbye, and headed out the door. I wandered my way over to the shower, and was opening the beautiful glass shower door when POP! BANG! shatter......the whole door fell to a million pieces around me. I stood in shock for a second and said aloud, "Oh my goodness," then calmly went to the sink to wash the blood off my hand. I panicked when it just came more quickly. Without thinking, I called BFR, who somehow knew to answer his phone at work, and before I could get two words out of my blubbering mouth, he was telling the missionaries to start without him, he had to go home and rescue his wife. He inspected the damage (first to my hand, then to the shower) and went upstairs to get the landlord. He stayed until I had settled down and was no longer bleeding, then returned to work minutes before his important meeting began. My hero!

That's not all, though. When I left, there was a huge pile of glass still in the shower.
We didn't have time to take care of it. When I came home, it was gone. He was sitting on the toilet (lid closed, don't worry) in his running clothes, scooping tiny shards of glass into a paper bag. He had spent 30 minutes there already, and was just heading for the vacuum to pick up the pieces he couldn't get by hand. The shower was immaculate, like nothing had ever happened (except for the missing door).

The moral of the story: Marry a good man. (And proceed with caution when opening glass doors of any kind!)

PS- No need to worry, the cuts on my hand were very minor, and now look more like a cat clawed me than like glass cut me.

I know, I know....

...it has been FOREVER since my last post. But here I am, making a second go at becoming a real blogger. So here's an update on our lives since I last posted:

1. Trip to Vancouver, Washington to visit the Scoville family. Lots of fun, swimming, eating yummy food, and being taken care of by Big Red (my wonderful mother-in-law). (Late July)

1a. Lu goes to Newport Beach with her side of the family to celebrate Grandma & Grandpa's 60th wedding anniversary. She miss the Barefoot Runner terribly while he's home working to pay for groceries and baby expenses.


2. Discover that our new apartment doesn't have a window big enough for a pregnant lady to climb out of in a fire. Fight with the fire code people. Lose. Give up and sell the contract to a desperate couple (Thank you, dear desperate ones, for being so desperate). Find a MUCH better apartment that isn't available until September 1st (the day after school starts). Be grateful we didn't die in a fire. Also, be grateful we didn't move into this rat hole at all. It was about 200 sq ft, TOTAL. (Early August)

This is the kitchen. To your right is a 3-foot slab of countertop with two barstools.
That would have been our kitchen table. To the left of the stove is the door to the bedroom.
Sorry, no picture of the 1 ft. x 2 ft. window in the bedroom.

3. Move out of our first apartment. I am grateful for morning sickness which rid me of my sentimentality toward that apartment. Otherwise, I would have been a basket case leaving our first home. (Mid August).

4. Crowd my parents out of their house for two weeks while we wait for our new apartment to become available. Thank you, Ma, for letting us sleep in your sewing room! (Mid August - early September)

5. Start school. 12 credits and 20 hours of work for the Barefoot Runner, 15 credits and 10 hours of work for me. We might have bit off more than we can chew. Oops. (August 31)

6. Move into our new, beautiful, basement apartment just a couple blocks from campus! (Early September)

This is our new, nice kitchen with custom-made cabinets and fancy new appliances.
Compare with kitchen above :-) It's about 3 times as big and 65 times nicer.

7. Barefoot Runner tries out for BYU cross country. Intense and fun, but mid-try-outs he discovers that he has been suffering from heat exhaustion for about three weeks. Disappointing, but a great experience. (First two weeks of September)

8. Lu tries out for BYU Concert Choir and makes it! Fun and a little overwhelming at times. Mostly fun. The baby seems to like the music, though!
9. School, school, school......more school.....

10. Find out we're having a BABY BOY! His heart is strong, his bones are healthy, and he is a BIG boy too!



11. Start Hypnobabies classes. We're learning how to birth naturally and calmly. It has been wonderful so far. Here's the link if you're curious: http://www.birthnaturally.org/index.htm (Mid October)

12. Get a couch for our new apartment! It is wonderful to have a place to rest our weary bones these days. (Mid October)

13. Keep chuggin' along.

We're really enjoying our apartment, our landlords and their fun family, our new ward, and our jobs. We are mostly enjoying school, as well! We're looking forward to the birth of our baby boy in February and to graduation in April. Then we aren't quite sure what it is we're looking forward to but whatever the chapter or our life brings, we're sure it will be great!

We'll try to keep you posted along the way...

the latest fashion

Yesterday a friend and I made our first attempt at making homemade Cafe Rio salads. I underestimated the aromatic potency of Crockpot pork and garlic-y beans, and my pregnant nose couldn't handle the smell anymore. SO, we banished the pork to the bathroom counter and closed the door on it.

Since the stove is only in the kitchen, I had to bear with the rice and beans fragrantly simmering away. Lucky for me, I have this fancy new accessory to go with my apron, lovingly donated by the Barefoot Runner. It's a Speedo™ nose plug. And isn't it the cutest thing?

(The strings hanging down are intended to keep it on your head while you swim...I don't like that tight strap around my head so I let it dangle ever so beautifully from my nose as I cook)

I'm thinking about creating designer nose plugs and marketing them to pregnant women throughout the world. I could call them "Prego Plugs." Or maybe "Shnoz Saverz."

By the way, the Cafe Rio turned out to be delicious, with much room for improvement.

collisions

We experienced two collisions on Friday:

Collision #1- Influenza hits morning sickness head-on

About two months ago, I joined that coveted group of women who find out they're pregnant and shortly thereafter feel like they will soon throw up the baby since that's the only thing they can seem to keep in their tummy! My lovely husband, family, and many friends have been helpful in keeping me fed and periodically rediscovering the buried counter and sink in my kitchen. It has sure been a lesson in "do less, be more."

When we went to Washington for a week, it drastically improved. My mother-in-law's constant care, a change in scenery and smells, and a drop in temperature were just what the baby ordered! While family reunion-ing on the Oregon Coast, I felt even better. I thought I was home-free, destined to feel slight bouts of nausea here and there and then be ravenously hungry in just a couple weeks. Goodbye, morning sickness!

But then came Thursday night. Tossing and turning, sitting up, lying down, walking around, sucking on any kind of lozenge I could get my hands on, I found no relief. I had been hit, and hit hard. By Friday night the lack of food in my tummy and the bumpy plane ride had reintroduced my morning sickness, and the flu was taking its toll. I lay shaking uncontrollably under the down comforter, the fan blowing on my hot face and my sinuses screaming for relief.

The Barefoot Runner ran to the store and got creamsicles and fudgesicles, which proved to be my saving grace. I have eaten 14 popsicles in the last 72 hours. Please don't tell my dentist.

I am recovering well, and the morning sickness has again taken a back seat, only popping up its head when I'm starving (usually around 4 am). I look forward to cleaning my house and making dinner myself sometime soon!

Collision #2 - Metal rod hits windshield at 80 mph, also head on

After my bumpy plane ride, the Barefoot Runner picked me up from the airport, trying to get me home as soon as he could. After about 20 minutes of driving, this is (kind of) how the conversation went:

"So, what do you want to do tonight?"

"I don't know, give me a second. I need to tap my forhead and take deep breaths before I can answer you or I'll lose my plane snacks."

CRASH!, shatter, BANG!, ping ping

"What WAS that?"

Whatever it was (and we think it was a metal rod because that's what it looked like), this is what it left:


For some strange reason, although the sun was behind us, I had put my visor down on the way out of the airport. The glass that flew through the air and headed for my face was stopped by my visor and instead trickled softly down to my lap and scattered itself along the dashboard.

There is no question, we were protected by some unseen hand.

Insurance took care of the windshield and when I went to pick it up from Safelite (in less than one hour, by the way...they're great!), the guy said in amazement, "WHAT hit it?" It sure did a number on our windshield, but I'm grateful it stopped there. The Barefoot Runner, the baby and I are all safe....AND we have a new sparkly windshield!

Little Sisters

Sometimes people think little sisters are annoying. And they can be.....but so can big sisters (like myself)! Well, I have a wonderful little sister. I have been feeling under the weather lately, and haven't been able to do lots of things that need doing like picking up after myself, unloading the dishwasher, etc. The Barefoot Runner was gone at work for 12 hours yesterday (bless his heart), so Bob came and stayed the evening, spent the night, and then spent all day today with me. This is what she did:

-cleaned the living room
-loaded & started the dishwasher
-handwashed all remaining dishes
-made a fantastic lunch for The Barefoot Runner and I (grilled cheese sandwiches and a delicious green salad)
-cleaned up after lunch
-played 100 games of Skip Bo and Phase 10, with a little Yahtzee to mix it up
-made me tea
-asked what else she could do

You know that cheesy slogan that everybody makes fun of but secretly loves deep down in their hearts? The one on all those family commercials aired by the LDS church? Well, I think Bob could have starred in one of those. Family. Isn't it about...time?

Thank heavens for sisters! How would we survive without them?

I have a question.

Call me Molly Mormon, but I love the visiting teaching program....sometimes. I loved it today. Something we discussed today in a visit was a quote from President Monson's Oct 2007 Priesthood address:

"As we offer unto the Lord our family and our personal prayers, let us do so with faith and trust in Him. Let us remember the injunction of the Apostle Paul to the Hebrews: 'For he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a reward of them that diligently seek him.'"

The follow up discussion question was:

HOW does one pray with faith and trust in God and what is the practical application of this?

What do you think? I am sincerely seeking answers to this question and would love some of your pearls of wisdom (that is, if you don't consider me swine in front of which you don't want to cast your pearls!). Leave me a comment with your thoughts. Thanks!