The Sherwoods: November 2013

Archive for November 2013

Why?

Once upon a time i was in a family and child advocacy class.
it was definitely in my top 5 favorite classes i have ever taken.
in that class we talked a lot about why some people believe in not having children.
why people are scared to have children.
and why people should have children.
i ended up writing a very large paper on this topic and would often discuss it and research about it with a professor.
the other day he emailed me this video.
and its pretty good.

thanks.

garrett mentioned that my last post was "sad"

this one will not be. (well, in the end)

i have a habit of reading the news every morning at work.

and listening to npr in the afternoon.

lately there are headlines like;

"Terrified 91-year-old woman fights off nighttime intruder"

"Man charged with forcing women into prostitution"

"Girls escape parents after months in captivity"

"Thieves take donation jar from business, burglarize convenience stores."

for every 20 headlines like the ones above, there is an uplifting one like

"Muslim donor will match contributions to LDS relief efforts in Philippines"

i usually end up leaving work not only stressed out because of work, but because of everything i read and heard in the news.

garrett has been in idaho preparing for his christmas show.

that means i spent my first night alone in salt lake (took me back to him working graves. woof)

which also means i didnt fall asleep until about 4:45am.

i had a lot of time to think.

(especially about the article about the 91-year old women who fought off a night time intruder)

instead of all of the terrible things going on in the world, and in our own city

i tried to focus on what i was thankful for.

and though im sure you can guess what my top 5 are right now, im going to tell you any way.

and in no particular order.

1.garrett

2. our animals and friends

3. family

4. nature

5. hot drinks & weekends

1. garrett. he gets to experience me at my best and my worst. and he still sticks around.

he lets me day dream about buying a house, an rv, having kids, traveling, "when we have money we can get this...!", and everything else. he encourages me to do what ever it is i want to do. he's the biggest blessing in my life and i am so thankful we ended up together.

2. our animals and friends. weird that i put them in the same category? no. here's why. our friends are the best you can find. and so are our animals. our friends love our animals, and our animals love our friends. they are all there for us when we need them, let us stay at their homes when we are in idaho, come to visit us in salt lake, and love us even when we are hard to be around. sal and jay are the best company to have when garrett is busy.

3. family. garrett and i are both blessed with families that support us in all of our adventures and love us unconditionally. they live an hour away from each other which makes vacations nice on us, because having to pick which family to see would be way too hard.

4. nature. this earth is incredible. there is so much to see and do outside, and there isnt enough time. i love living so close to the mountains and having them right up in my face all of the time. we are so blessed to live where we do.

5. hot drinks & weekends. hot drinks because, have you been out side lately? its cold. and there is nothing better then snuggling up in bed with a hot drink in hand, garrett to my side and some episode pulled up on an iphone for us to share. weekends?whats that? this is something i am thankful for in the future. our weekends have mainly felt like an extension of our week. but im am excited to have our weekends back to sleep in, estate sale shop, get breakfast, and do what ever we wan to do.

things take time.

thin places

for the past few years rexburg has been the home of many of my thin places.
(the term thin places comes from celtic spirituality)
thin places meaning a place where the boundary between heaven and earth is especially thin.
i think of them as my own holy grounds tucked in my own little corners of my own little world.
the secret places i would go on my own and have those aha moments and my eyes opened wide.

this weekend when we were in rexburg it seemed old, tired, and distant.
and cold, very cold.
i went to one of my thin places,
(off the bike bath, down the bank, under the bridge)
i sat there for a while and realized my thin places have changed and moved.
but im not sure where they are at now.

lately life just seems to go go go go go go.
and ive been hard on myself.
i get home from work and i feel like im going to burst into tears.

i havent been to the gym since before deep love
our car hasnt been cleaned since before we moved to salt lake
most days i dont run a brush through my hair
we havent been actual grocery shopping in who knows how long.
my house seems to always be one giant mess.
and a cold mess at that.
we have yet to make any friends here (no time for that) (also, our rexburg friends visit often, so we havent needed to)

between work, church callings, rock operas, christmas programs and life, we havent had time for any of those things above.
which makes me feel not as bad.

ive been fighting with time, energy, emotion, creativity, and how to allocate these precious resources.

come december 21st life will slow down and i will be okay with that.
(well also be lake side in guatemala and im ok with that too.)
but come february, you will probably find me on here complaining about how boring our life is and the only thing we have to look forward to is summer.

as you can tell from the pictures below, i spent a lot of time with sal this weekend.
garrett was busy doing christmas bells stuff so i spent the majority of my weekend with sal wondering around rexburg aimlessly.

i bought a keyboard this weekend. we didnt know sal could play the piano!

we had breakfast at paradise donuts. a little piece of heaven in rexburg.

(sooo glad were eating gluten until january!)

lots of cuddles between sal and garrett this weekend.

has anyone seen sal?

(he would try to sink in as much as he could, wiggle real hard to try and get leaves on top of him and hold real still, as if i couldnt see him.)

and lots of rehearsing for the christmas bells cast.

(ever seen a show written and produced in 4 weeks? me neither. but its happening next week. and its sounding reaaaaal good.)

hobby search.

the other night as i was falling a sleep i had a sense of panic rush over me.
i asked garrett if he locked the bad guys out.
"yes"
both of them?
"yes. all of them"
(this seems to happen every night. and by both of them i mean both locks. not both bad guys)
i continued to try and fall asleep and then i realized the panic was from what i was thinking about before i asked about the bad guys.

here's the thing.
i married a very, very,VERY talented man.
which is great. on most days.
he writes, does slam poetry, plays music, writes rock operas, and christmas programs, has the most unique voice most people have ever heard, is so kind and sincere, and honestly the list goes on and on.
he is good at any thing and everything he tries. and the first time too.
and his hobbies keep us busy.

today i said "i dont know what i want to do right now."
naturally he suggested "write a rock opera."
like it aint no thing.

this is why i was panicking as i was trying to fall asleep:

1. i realized i no longer have any hobbies.
since school and work have consumed my life for the past 5 years i didnt have time to have hobbies.
i always had a job through college and seemed to always be taking 14-19 credits per semester.
i felt guilty if i did something such as a hobby instead of spending that time studying.

2. (and my biggest concern)
our kids are going to realize how talented garrett is and say "mom, what can YOU do?!"
and i will have no answers.

so ive been hobby searching.
luckily, this great city of salt lake has lots of opportunists.
im going to try and attend workshops such as a paper flower making class and a cross stitching class.
im currently in the market for a key board so i can bring back some piano skills i once had.
im going to try some new recipes.
maybe take up knitting.
basically at this point, im willing to try anything.
plus, only having a job and not going to school leaves my evenings free.
so i actually have time for fun hobbies!!

one year.

we have been married for one year and one day.

it feels like we've been married for a lot more years and days then that. (in a good way)

but i am so glad i, as garrett puts it, "wooed" him enough to

asking

"wanna date?"

and then

"we could get married or something...?"

and eventually"

i've got something for you."

he is the best man for me and i am so blessed to have him for eternity.

are you kitten me?

The story of how my phone ended up in the bath tub was not funny.

Right after it happened I screamed for garrett. I told him what happened and he started laughing.

Even yesterday when it was brought up again, it was not funny.

I told my mother the story, she too laughed.

But I have decided that it is in fact funny.

I had to get over the initial shock of potentially loosing my sweet baby iphone.

Because heavens know im not about to pay for a new one.

But here’s what happened.

It had been snowing here, and I was cold to the bones.

So I decided to light some candles, set my phone up across the room to watch some netfilx and take a bath.

[Side note- almost every door in our house doesn't close all of the way. With a mere push, the animals are at your feet.]

With that said;

Sal was chasing Jay,

jay ran into the bathroom,

he couldnt stop himself in such a tight space,

knocked my phone across the room,

the phone landed in the bath tub,

the cat did too,

the cats tail then caught fire from one of the candles,

mean while I was trying to get my phone out of the tub,

the cat was clawing up my arm trying g to get the rest of his body out of the water,

while i was also trying to put the fire out that is on the cats tail.

Woof.

He’s lucky he’s cute.

(he also broke a mirror this week. We just bought our 4^th mirror since moving to Salt Lake. we still only own 1 mirror...)

sorry.

my laptop is broken.
my phone is sitting in a bowl of rice.
our cat is as clumsy as i am- meaning he is breaking lots of things.
all of the time.
(which garrett just informed me that my older brother warned him before we got married that we cant have nice things because i will break them.....)
my house is a disaster.
work is a lot right now.
blah blah blah.

so until i get my life in order im just going to dump these photos right here. and not in order.