Little Brother

Well we dropped off this not so little anymore guy at the MTC. I am so excited and proud of him for choosing to serve the Lord. He will be awesome. Our week leading up to the event was full of fun.

   
Blaine flew up to Spokane to spend a week with me before he left. It was a good vacation for him and I think he enjoyed himself. The week was full of boating, canoeing, eating, and outdoor movie adventures. We spent one night sleeping under the stars after watching the first Lord of the Rings outside with a projector and sheet, complete with everyone's mattresses. I slept awesomely so we decided to try it again the next night, with Nathan's parents joining us. Well...that night ended at about 2 in the morning when the sprinklers went off and soaked everyone and their beds. Everyone was a little grumpy the next day. Gotta love those fun adventures.

After the week was over, Blaine, Elizabeth and I drove up to Utah to drop Elizabeth off at the BYU track and field camp for pole vaulting. She was a fantastic assistant driver in the front seat. She would unwrap my Kit Kats for me and everything.

Elizabeth making art with her pretzels

Nathan flew up a couple days later just in time for Chance's baptism. He was so adorable and so ready to be baptized. It has been a while since I felt the spirit as strong as I did when I watched my youngest sibling make the choice to be baptized. I am so glad I have the two little ones in my life. Our family would be sadly incomplete without them. Chance was a good sport the whole time even though he hates being the center of attention. He inherited that trait from his oldest sister ;)

I loved Chance's "little man" pants. So cute.

Blaine's mission farewell was a resounding success. He gave an incredible talk on family and made me, my mom and Erin cry like babies. He had so many people there to support him and it was a great day spent with our awesome family.

Monday night we got to go to the Spanish Fork rodeo. That is my favorite summer activity and I was so excited to take Nathan and Elizabeth to their first rodeo. I think overall they enjoyed it. The weather could have been a little cooler but it was still an entertaining night.

On Wednesday we packed up for the drive back to Washington. Luckily my awesome husband was there this time so I didn't have to drive the whole 11 hours. We also brought Erin back with us to spend a little time away from Utah. And we had to say a whole lot of sad goodbyes to Blaine. But I am so proud of him and wouldn't want him to be anywhere else. Look out Fort Worth, Texas, Elder McMurray is going to change your world!

Life Changes

For most of you who actually take the time to read about our usually uninteresting but still enjoyable to us life, the fact that we moved to Spokane, Washington probably isn't news. But for those who didn't know, surprise! When Deloitte gave me the option to defer my start date until January, Nathan and I decided to move up North for a few months and enjoy all that this area has to offer. I was just tossing ideas around awhile back while noting that we had absolutely nothing tying us down for a little bit. No school for me, no kids, not even an apartment lease that we were signed into. Little did I know that would start something stirring in Nathan's brain. Until he came to me with a proposition. He pointed out that Washington has a higher minimum wage and unlike Utah actually pays servers minimum wage rather than $2 something an hour. So he would be making the same amount in tips, potentially more since Utah eaters tend to be stingy with their gratuities, and substantially more in base wages. He wouldn't quite be making up my missing salary if we decided to go and I left my job, but his offer to let me stay home and focus on studying for this nasty CPA exam rather than studying and working was just too good for me to pass up. So here we are in Spokane. A quick month, a drop off ride to Boise and back, and an incredibly boring 11 hour car ride by myself later.

Life hasn't been that exciting since we got here. Nathan is still searching for a job and getting a little frustrated. Luckily we don't have any major expenses so we have enough money to make it by for a little while. Surprisingly I'm not too worried about it. I had an extremely hard time agreeing to make the move up here. Simply because it was against everything ingrained in me to leave my comfortable job at Novell that I have been at for the last five years without knowing for a fact that we had another job in Washington. We were giving up two sources of income that were guaranteed for one that we might potentially find. But after many nights of prayer and a temple session, it was made very clear to me that this was the right place for us right now.Who knows why, but I do know we made the right choice to move for a few months and I know we will find a job soon.

I have been spending my days studying and sleeping in. I have had a job since the day I graduated high school and I don't remember the last time I had so much freedom in deciding how my day would go. I am absolutely loving it. I think I deserve a good break after my last intense five years. I get to run around with the dogs, hang out with my husband exponentially more than I have been able to in the past, and just pause to enjoy life. Except for those few and random moments where I happen to accidentally clock my husband in the eyebrow with a seven iron. Those moments aren't enjoyed as much. I think that was the first time I have heard my husband use, well, a not so nice word. Haha obviously he is a much better person than me! So let this be a lesson to all, do not stand close behind your wife when she is practicing her ridiculously awesome and strong golf swing. Luckily the cut is healing nicely and didn't require any stitches. It was extremely swollen the first few days but has since gone down and Nathan just looks like he is wearing some really dark eye shadow and liner. I would like to point out my awesome aiming skills though. Nathan was wearing his glasses while we were playing and I swung and hit not more than an inch above the glasses, avoiding a situation that could have been much, much worse. Thank goodness for those guardian angel moments.

"In sickness and in health"....but mostly sickness

Life has continued to be just as busy as the last time I posted. School has increased in workload and I am spending way more of my time than I would like to researching the tax code. Yes, such an exciting major. But weirdly, I don't completely hate it. I guess I made the right choice :)

On, the bright side recruiting season is finally over and now I just have the decision of where to accept my internship. There was a huge sigh of relief once I realized that all this hard work I have put in the last few years and will continue until my graduation are not for nothing. I'll have a job when I graduate!

Lately in our home there has been a lot of sickness and more sickness. Nathan came down with an awful fever/sore throat a couple of weeks ago. I did my best to avoid it with excessive hand sanitizing and wiping every possible thing Nathan touched with Clorox disinfecting wipes. If I get sick, I don't get better for weeks because my busy schedule doesn't give me a lot of time to sleep and recover. Plus I had a couple of office visit interviews that I had to be on my game for. I thought I had missed it but just when he started to feel better, I got the same sickness with a vengeance. Try giving a presentation in school when you can't stop coughing, sniffling, or sneezing. I'm quite proud of the fact that I made it through :) Needless to say, we have been eating a lot of soup in our house lately.

We also lost my good, ole car a couple of weeks ago. That car has been through a lot, including a high school wreck, a deer collision, and even a few incidents with ducks......haha don't ask. So I have been driving around a mini-van and we are trying to figure out what to do about a method of transportation.

A few other things have happened lately in addition to sickness and the loss of my car that have made the statement, "When it rains, it pours" completely applicable to our life. And for those who know me well, I am a stresser. I stress about money and I stress about the future and I stress about....well everything. But I definitely married the right kind of person to mellow me out a bit. I was talking to a friend today who gave a great analogy of life that relates a lot to me and Nathan. Life is a road and in the past, on one side of the road, are rocky mountains you have already made it through. The other side, the future, is a straight drop off cliff. If you start veering too far to the left you are living in the past, which is never a good thing. If you start veering too far to the right, you become anxious and stressed. So ultimately we need to stay in the middle of the road to live a happy life. Live in the present and enjoy life as it is. I tend to be a person who veers strongly to the right. But my husband is amazingly talented at staying happy and in the middle. I noticed that there were a few talks this last General Conference that gave this point as well. This is an area that I have always been trying to improve on and now that I'm married to Nathan, I think I may finally be making progress. I am blessed to have someone as grounded as he is to constantly remind me that Heavenly Father is watching out for us and will make sure everything works out for our good as long as we are doing our best to follow Him. So regardless of the fact that I have felt like every possible little thing that could go wrong has gone wrong lately, I have to have faith that everything will work out. There's my little feel good thought for the day :)

In between work, school, and homework we do occasionally find time to have some fun. A few weeks ago we went to Color Me Mine. For those who don't know, this is a ceramic painting studio. Nathan picked a monkey and I painted a Volkswagen bug piggy bank. I am not even remotely artistic or creative and I found this experience way more frustrating than it was enjoyable. Nathan on the other hand spent hours articulately painting every inch of his monkey. It was the funniest and cutest thing. Ultimately though, I have learned I can never go back because my perfectionist personality makes my art hideous. I start with a cute idea but I take it too far, and then it becomes overwhelming and too much. I gave up about 20 minutes into painting and just hurried to finish the rest of it. I am completely left brained. I didn't inherit any artistic ability.