Gone Again!

This morning we dragged the troops from their cozy beds at 4:30 so we could drive Jaron up to the airport.  My brain is too foggy to concentrate on homework so I decided to do something else "productive" instead - write on the blog. :)  Jaron's off to Idaho to spend the week interviewing for JOBS (we've gone way too long without a real job in our family!) - for rural family practice residencies, to be exact.  I'm crossing my fingers that they like him.  Western Idaho is close (enough) to family and Boise sounds like a really nice place to live!

"Wait," you say, "didn't Jaron just get home?"  Why yes, yes, he did.  Right now we are in month 5 of a seven month span where Jaron will spend about 7 cumulative weeks with us.  He's got lots of away rotations in a row and lots of traveling for residency interviews squeezed in between.  The kids are utterly confused.  They'll pray for him to have safety on his trip when he's upstairs sleeping and they're constantly asking, "Where is Dad again?"  Haha.  He will be home the weekend of Christmas but he'll have to drive back to South Dakota (where he'll be at that point) on Christmas day. :(  Each rotation away is a really good opportunity for Jaron to get to know residency programs and for them to get to know him so they're too good of opportunities to pass up.  His being gone so much sure makes us grateful for when he's around!  Jaron's a great Dad.  The kids love to wrestle with him.  Last night he spent a long time playing hide-and-go-seek in the dark with them.  And he's a great mediator when "mean mom" starts to show her face!  We miss him when he's gone but I'll still always be grateful that he's working toward something great for him and our family.

On the homefront, things have been busy and tough at times with short relaxing intervals in between.  We are excited to be expecting a baby in May(!) but having Jaron gone during my sickest weeks was tough.  The kids just so happened to get a stomach flu about 6 weeks ago so they began to see my daily retching bouts as an extension of their stomach flu.  It was amazing to me how oblivious kids can be - I would be turning my insides out over the toilet and Alden and Eli would bang down the door, fighting over something.  Geesh, can't I have a moment?!  I also remember being tired in previous pregnancies but I don't remember being so downright exhausted.  One day I realized that this is the first pregnancy that all my kids haven't been napping.  I'll admit, there were a few Sundays that I bribed the kids with Halloween candy if they'd let me sleep an hour.  Haha, that was only marginally successful.

We are really excited at the prospect of having another little one come to our family!  I feel so honored to get to be a mom.  Without us prompting them to, the kids have long since been praying for another baby to come to our family.  It was hard to keep the news from them but we didn't tell them until Jaron came back from Arizona when I was 13 weeks along.  We told them first thing one morning and Alden said,

"OHHH!  That must be why you're so fat, mom!"

Haha...ha.  He made up for it that night, though.  Jaron and I were heading out to be wined and dined by a residency program here in the city.  Alden asked if we were going to a healthy restaurant.  I told him I thought it was healthy and asked him why.  "Because you need to eat healthy food for the baby, mom."  Sweet kid!  Alden is definitely the most excited for #4's debut.  For Eli and Gracen, it seems to be too far away and too abstract a thing for them to be much affected by the news.

It took more than a year for us to become pregnant this time.  Throughout that year, I'd have moments where I'd be convinced that Gracen might be my last baby.  And then I'd have moments where I'd be grateful that we didn't have one more thing on our plate yet.  Now that we are expecting, I am once again really grateful for the Lord's timing!  Although it's going to take a little stepping up of the effort, I just might be able to finish my degree before baby comes.  If I'm not quite able to, I'll have only one course left and I'll be allowed to take a three month leave of absence.  I'm trying to get done as much school done as I can right now but it's funny how "life" still happens when you're trying to accomplish something. :)

Yesterday we had a year-end appointment with our bishop at church.  He was asking about what's coming up for our family and after we discussed what's going on for us he said, "Wow, a lot of big changes for your family all at once."  And it made me realize that we DO have a lot of big changes at once!  In May Jaron will graduate, I will (hopefully) graduate, and we'll welcome a baby to our family!  Then approximately 5 weeks later we'll pack up our house and move across the country!  Yikes!  Are there any other big family changes we could add to that?!  I guess change is good!