Fall Randomness

Fall has been busy. The first week of September, my dad visited for a quick trip. James was in heaven having a grandparent shower him with attention. I'm jealous of any kid who has a grandparent within a thousand mile radius. But on the flip side, it's such a treat anytime someone visits and makes seeing family that much more exciting.  We definitely don't take it for granted.

The day after my dad left, I got sick. I've been sick so many times since that I already don't even remember what it was I had. But thus started my two week bout with an awesome case of Insomnia. I've had sleep issues on and off my whole life but this was by far the worst cycle I've experienced. Every night for nearly two weeks, I literally could not fall asleep until at least four in the morning and then would wake up at six and not go back to sleep. I felt like a zombie, an emotional wreck zombie. It was a nightmare.

Not sleeping literally made me the worst, most boring mother and wife on the planet. No patience, no energy to function let alone do anything extra. I felt so bad for my kids.

Brian had to be in New Orleans for eight days at the end of September. I begged him to give me a blessing before he left. That night I slept soundly for the first night in weeks and I slept the entire time Brian was gone. I know it was a miracle because the second I dropped him off at the airport, even though I hadn't slept in  weeks, I felt like I had energy and that I could handle life without him. The second I picked him up at the airport, I felt that energy slip away again.

Right after Brian got home, I got sick with a cold and a nasty cough. Even my voice went away. I sounded like a smoker for about a week. It was actually pretty humorous. A couple days later, Brian's dad and brother came for the weekend. It was so much fun having family here again and James was on cloud nine having more family visit. Having people come visit us makes me so happy and grateful. I know traveling to Knoxville is totally inconvenient. There are no direct flights and it literally takes a full day to get here, so that people take the effort to do it just to see us is so humbling. I'm grateful for every single one of our visitors.

The morning we dropped the visitors off at the airport, we left for Orlando. Brian had a conference there, so we tagged along since Brian's work was paying for the hotel and rental car. To make it even better, an oral surgery organization was offering spouse scholarships for the conference. I applied a few months ago and was lucky enough to receive one of them. With that scholarship, mine and James' plane tickets were completely paid for (Livy still flies for free for a few more months), making the entire trip totally free. That is my kind of trip!We decided against all the usual-Orlando hoopla since we'd just done the whole Disney thing in May. The kids loved swimming at the hotel pool and playing in the kid's area and that was really all they needed to have a great, exhausting vacation.

My favorite part of the trip was our exclusive access to Harry Potty World at Universal Studios one of the nights we were there. The conference Brian was attending had rented the place out for a night. It was amazing. The streets of Harry Potter World were lined with tables heaped with amazing food, free butter beer (yuck!), and other goodies. It was so much fun. The afternoon of this event, I felt a sore throat and sinus pressure coming on and prayed my heart out that it would stay at bay until the next day, just so I could at least enjoy this one thing we'd been looking forward to. The next morning I woke up so sick I could hardly lift a finger. I stayed in bed most of the day while Brian did fun stuff with the kids. I felt so helpless and so sad that I was sick on our last day of vacation. Thus started my second round of Insomnia.

Some how I made it through traveling the next day--after a lot of  medication and prayers. The entire next week I was feverish and so tired and sick I could literally do nothing but sit on the couch in agony. Thankfully, I finally made it into the doctor on Friday and she provided me with some meds to start clearing out whatever it was I had.

To top it off, last Sunday I had to play the piano in our ward primary program. That Saturday was a rehearsal and just to get myself there was a chore. As I've mentioned before, I am not a good piano player and I usually dread having to play on a normal day. The rehearsal felt like a disaster. My head was so foggy and my nose so runny, I couldn't make my fingers do what they needed to do. I prayed that the next day would be better, but oh my goodness, it was so much worse. In fact, it was so bad that I laugh just thinking about it. I messed up majorly on every song but the last one, which, ironically, was the most complicated to play. The only thing that got me through and kept me from being totally embarrassed was that I was so sick I just didn't care. I felt like my mind was floating off in sick land and my fingers were doing their own thing, even though I'd practiced so hard for weeks that I'd been counting on muscle memory kicking in. I just wanted to get it over with. I felt bad for the primary president and chorister who probably thought I was a total mess and didn't practice at all. Sometimes, even with lots of prayers, things just don't go your way anyway. And you know what, that's okay. It's over and I don't have to worry about it again until next year! :

Yesterday was Brian's birthday. I've finally been feeling better the last couple days and had the energy to make all his favorite foods, decorate a little, visit him at work, take him out to lunch, and go bowling last night. We had a really fun day together and all went to bed exhausted. I sure love Brian and all he does for our family.

On the way home from our lunch together Brian and I were discussing our future and how most OMFS residents in their final year already know where they're going at this point and what does it say about us that we still don't know? We're in total panic mode. We started wondering how it is that things came together so easily for everyone else. They just knew where they wanted to go, or even if they didn't know a location at least contacts came together and things just worked out. We can't even seem to get contacts to pay us any attention. It's so frustrating. At any rate, it reminded me of my single years. How I would watch all my friends/roommates one by one date their future spouse and then get married and through the midst of it all I remained single and would think about what a foreign concept even considering marriage was to me and I wondered how in the world they had made it come together so effortlessly. I just didn't understand it. Then I met Brian and it really did just happen and come together. When things work out it is just a miracle in so many ways. I know one way or another, things will work out for our future. It may be frustrating waiting and trying to figure it out, but once it happens, it will be the right thing for us. The point of sharing that, really was to convey how grateful I am to have met Brian so unexpectedly that summer day seven years ago. He makes my life happy and everything about it better. The best part of all our day is when Brian comes home from work. I'm grateful that wherever we end up, that we'll all be together.

But until we figure it out, I'll keep enjoying what could be my last fall in the South.