Twentyone

If you want to know how our life is going…

                Marcus is stressed to his chest with homework and his job and making up a bad test grade. Plus we need to take the car in to the shop because we cannot see the dashboard. Period. I mean, in the day time we can see the speedometer, but nothing else on the dash works. It’s kinda scary that we can’t see when we need to fill up with gas. Also, the transmission is starting to go out. It keeps jumping. I told my mom about it and she said we would probably have to buy a new car within the next two years.

Oi ve.

This car has been good to us, but it’s pushing 300,000 miles. This poor car has had quite a life. We’ve gotten the oil changed when it needed to be, and we’ve taken it to car washes, and we have tried to keep it alive for as long as we could. This is the main reason we are flying out to California for Christmas. I do not think that the car would last traveling there and back. Plus it would be difficult to keep track of how many miles we’ve gone to fill up the gas with.

Marcus hates to spend money. So, when we do need to buy a car, and we will need one with the baby coming in March, it will be a horrible day for him. BUT I do know that it is okay to go into debt for transportation, a house, and education. Marcus will just have to deal with it. It’s hard enough for him to take out student loans for school. In due time, he will be okay.

As for me, I am 21 today. It is a nice time in my life to be this age. I am happily married to the love of my eternities, pregnant with our first child, and finishing up college. I will be done Spring 2013! There is now only a year and a half to go. After I graduate I will be student teaching somewhere here in Idaho. Probably in Idaho Falls, but I am hoping for Sugar City because it is only ten minutes away. Not that Idaho Falls is too far away, but it’s not as close as Sugar City.

I am getting a little blah about the apartment manager thing just because I have applied to so many places and we are not getting called for interviews or anything. I suppose, though, that the Lord will help us be able to afford what we need. We don’t need the job to survive the costs of being married in college with a baby. We don’t. We can make it. We just need to learn to stretch the dollar a little bit.

I was talking to Marcus the other day about how much people actually make in a year. I grew up in a pretty wealthy community in California, but my parents were not wealthy to say the least. They were teachers. I could not understand how people could buy their children brand new cars and still make their payments on everything else. It turns out that even earning $150,000 a year is actually more than enough to make bill payments and still have 3 grand a month to waste on whatever… plus these people most likely did not make 10% tithing payments given from every paycheck. Some of these people even made more than $150,000. It’s just crazy to think that the division between poor and rich is ever increasing.

I am excited to live in the Celestial Kingdom because there, there will be no poor among us. We will live the law of consecration and everyone will have all they need and more.

It is nice to have friends and family who can see the good in me because lately it has been really difficult to see anything good come from me. I am trying to be a good wife and friend and sister and daughter, but I feel like there are so many improvements I need to make in myself and it is a little draining to think about how imperfect I am. I mean, I know no one in this life is perfect, except the Lord Jesus Christ, but when I look at myself and what I do here in this life, I feel unaccomplished.  I want to be so much more than I am.

This morning Meeshell, one of my best friends, gave me a birthday present. It was a pair of earrings from Jerusalem. They are called widow’s mite earrings. She said that they not only represent the law of the tithes, but also our dedication to give all that we have to the Lord.  She said that I have given her so many things in life and that she knows I try my best to give my all to the Lord. It was nice to have someone notice that I am trying. Life is so difficult and there are too many crappy things that happen to let our own selves become our enemy. That is why I feel that President Uchtdorf’s address to the Relief Society was so important.

He said in his talk "You Are Not Forgotten" that we need to forget not to be patient and compassionate with ourselves. I never ever thought about this. I, and I am sure very many other sisters, try so hard to focus on being our best for the benefit of those around us, but we forget to think about being patient with ourselves when we do not do things perfectly, or even think to do things until after the opportunity has passed. It is hard being mortals with many flaws, but we are fortunate to have a loving Father in Heaven and a loving brother advocate for us. Our Savior Jesus Christ makes all things possible. He even makes us perfect through His atonement. The only condition he has is for us to repent. Easy peasy. Although, repenting also means turning away from sin, forsaking sin. That means we can never go back to the way things were. We need to be fully repentant to receive that blessing of perfection.

                My birthday, so far, is super relaxed. It is a great day because it is not too hot outside. It even rained a little. It is overcast. It is beautiful. The fall colors are popping out so nicely. I love it. Everyone else has work and school, so I am here at home typing this up alone. Soon I will have a baby to be with me all the time and that will be nice. I am very excited for when and what I get to learn from this little gift from God.

                This week I get to have my 16 week check-up. This is the ultrasound that they check to see if anything is seriously wrong with the baby like birth defects and such. I think the baby is perfectly healthy, but I won’t be sure until even after birth. But this appointment will allow me to have some bit of relief or some amount of time to prepare if something does happen to be wrong. If something is wrong, I don’t know how we would deal with it moneywise. We are on Medicaid and it covers everything for the baby up until a year old, but what if the baby needs medical attention after that? It just concerns me.

                We had a little birthday get-together last night. We cooked hotdogs and burgers and had some friends over. Our house was nice and full. I love that feeling of togetherness. I wish all my friends and family could have been there. We just sat in a circle of chairs, ate, and talked. The single guys in the group talked about how dating was difficult. It was kinda sad to see that they had such little confidence in themselves. Plus they have many misconceptions about what women want and what they think. All the ladies tried to explain their views, but the guys just didn’t get it. I hope they find love, I really do. It depends on them, though. I hope they gain more charisma and self-confidence.

Marcus and I got to practice our first tradition of birthday pies! I made my mom’s famous cherry cream cheese pie and Marcus stuck candles in it and everyone sang happy birthday to me and I blew out the candles. We both love pie and dislike cake. So one day when we were talking about traditions we would hold we decided that instead of birthday cake we would have pie. There was still cake though, for people who didn’t want pie. But it will be cool to be a little different than other families. Our children will think birthday pies are normal until they meet all the other families that do birthday cakes.

This is Me and Marcus October 1st; the Saturday before. We went to Olive Garden with Sabrina and Meeshell.

This is my new cute red hat my mommy got for me. 

This is Meeshell and Sabrina having a good time. 

Here is a funny story about that night really quick; our waiter was awesome and weird and funny and then he stopped showing up and a girl came over and told us he cut himself badly. Poor thing. He got all bandaged up and came and told us of this tragedy and then they sent him home.

Thank you for checking in!

XOXO