Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

Last week, Ethan was headed to Virginia for a work trip, and so Rebecca decided to bring the babies and come spend a week with John and me.  I would like for us all to step back and think about that for a moment.  I don't know if I have ever heard of a daughter-in-law who chooses  to spend a lengthy amount of time with her in-laws, so props to Rebecca.  As she so aptly said it, "Sometimes I think I am  a core Kennedy." There was another reason for her to come as well.  Baby had been to a new orthopedic surgeon in Maryland, and Rebecca was told that her hips were bad and that they needed to schedule surgery.  This has never been the verdict--not from Dr. Farley at Michigan, nor from another doctor in Utah--so with a mother's wisdom, Rebecca decided to get a second opinion.  Since she was coming back to Michigan anyways, she very luckily got an appointment with Dr. Farley. Sometimes it feels a bit exhausting, having the babies around but maybe t...

Querida Glo, Espero que todo esté bien!   This week we have had Rebecca and Baby and Brother with us so it has been a sweet week of family time.  We all miss you and wish you could be here. I hope all is well with you and Hermana Whitney and all your investigators.   Mommy is talking to Hanni right now and Rebecca is putting Baby to sleep.  She and Brother are so sweet.  They are a lot of work but bring so much joy to our lives. I have had a rough week but there are some blessings from the Lord that I wanted to tell you about. I was listening to Alma 5 this week in my reading.  I listened to these scriptures: Alma 5 -  5 And behold, after that, they were brought into bondage by the hands of the Lamanites in the wilderness; yea, I say unto you, they were in captivity, and again the Lord did deliver them out of bondage by the power of his word; and we were brought into this land, and here we began...

It's been almost a year into my calling as first counselor in our ward's Young Women presidency, and as much as I've complained in the past about some of my callings, I want to go on the record as being extremely grateful for some as well. I came into the calling all wrong.  I thought I knew what was best for my girls (and to my credit, I was right), but entering a calling where the other members have already been working together for a year, I should have laid low in the beginning.  I had it out with my president a couple of times (it wasn't me saying anything--she was just mean to me and rather rude), and I realized that I needed to change my attitude.  I prayed that things would get better and that I would know how to sustain her, and everything changed after that.  And I admit that she was working on loving me just as much as I was working on loving her.  It just took some time, but now we are dear friends, and we appreciate what we are both able to do. ...

This past Sunday, just when we thought things couldn't get any worse, they did.  It seems with our life lately, that's just par for the course.  If our life feels pretty terrible, hold on because there's something even worse coming. On Sunday, after a very nice Easter sacrament meeting (and a painful Sunday school lesson), we picked up the mail from the mailbox.  In it was a large white envelope with a lawyer's return address. John opened the envelope before he'd even gotten out of the car and told me that he was being sued.  This, of course, is in addition to him fighting for his career with Chelsea Hospital.  (As a recap, he hasn't been allowed to work for six months now, and the hearing is scheduled for June 5-6.) We were fasting, and surprisingly, I hadn't felt inspired to fast about anything, but with this, I fell down to my knees and begged God to give us the strength to keep enduring.  You might think that I would ask Heavenly Father to take any ...

Today we are in Beaumont, 92 miles east of Houston and still along the Gulf Coast.  John dressed up very nicely this morning (I always love seeing him looking so good) and headed out for his interviews.  I can't say much about what actually happened, but the one thing John texted me was that the doctor's lounge at the hospital has full buffet breakfasts and lunches for FREE everyday of the week for the doctors.  If that isn't a win for John, I don't know what is. We headed out with a realtor for a tour of Beaumont at 1:00 (after attending my YW presidency meeting via conference call).  It literally feels like a different world here.  Our realtor, Lauren, could tell us what places had been flooded and what hadn't during...let's see...Hurricane Rita in 2005, Hurricane Ike in 2008, and Hurricane Harvey in 2017.  SERIOUSLY??  And the state of Texas makes it mandatory for its residents to buy "wind protection" insurance from the state of Texas, and flood ...

Since John and I don't know what's going to happen in our future, we are taking steps to "study it out in our minds".  We figure when the hearing is over, we'll have some ideas in our back pocket of how to move forward if necessary. A couple of months ago, John found a job posted for Beaumont, Texas.  I'm not sure how he made the connection, but he happens to know a guy from his residency who works and lives in Beaumont.  On a whim, he called him up, and the guy, Kevin Waddell, was unbelievably happy to hear from John.  Without giving away any of the bad details, John told him that he's looking for a new job. Well that's all Kevin needed to hear.  He literally pounced on it.  John was ahead of him by a year in residency, and Kevin always thought really well of John.  Kevin called the hospital higher-ups and people were contacting John almost immediately. The main hiccup in even thinking about working here is that it takes eight months to get a Te...

If there's one adjective I could use to describe the weekend from this year Celebration of the Egg, it would be happy .  I think the entire family agreed that everything just clicked, and it felt wonderful to be together again! The first night together.  Everyone was stuffing eggs.  There was so much laughter around the table. Our house felt full again. Here are some highlights: The temple.  Hannie flew in on Thursday afternoon, and since John and I have work a temple shift Thursday night, she was more than willing to just come with us (after finding an Apple store in the area and being told that she'll need to send in her computer to get the battery changed which is not happening the week before finals).  I was working in the initiatory booth, and then as a patron in sealings, and then cleaning the lunchroom, so she just followed me around.  It was wonderful! Then, the next morning, Hannah, Rebecca, Beth and I all headed back to the temple to d...