The Seven of Us

The title of this post isn't the best; I've been told a sentence should never end with a preposition. I couldn't help myself, though:  I am truly in a good place. And it feels literal and  physical, not just metaphorical. I haven't blogged much for awhile. I haven't journaled much, either, but my thoughts are always there, swirling around my crazy mind. And my heart is one big, open book. I become more honest every day-- I'm not good at hiding my feelings and am sometimes too honest or even blunt (I always regret being blunt, but never being honest.  I'm thankful I'm comfortable enough to be honest. I hope I never hurt anyone's feelings. In reality, my goal is just to be authentic, real, and true to myself and my convictions.)  Also, I've realized how much I benefit from listening to others who are honest, even about their hardships. I want to be like that. And I think I'm getting there. Back to this place I'm in, though. Sometimes...

With my parents when they visited in 2017. A picture of me on a ride.  I haven't blogged for a very long time, so here's a recap of the last 22 months. December 2016: We went to Washington for Christmas. The kids weren't all sure they wanted to walk away from their lives for nine days, but everyone ended up having a great time. At the time, Caleb was a senior and was dating Allie, and it had been a difficult 6-9 months with him as we tried to navigate through that situation. Taylor had been to BYU- Idaho for an entire year, but had transferred to Ft. Collins and was midway through her first year at Front Range Community College. So we had some different dynamics at play than we had previously. We arrived on Christmas Eve afternoon and stayed about a week. Everyone was begging to stay longer. Caleb was cousin Caiden's buddy, Taylor and Kenna slept the vacation away, Isaac had fun playing with this new drone, and Corbin enjoyed pla...

This week I attended trek in Wyoming and had a great experience. I was able to meet a few new friends while experiencing a little bit of what the pioneers endured on their journey. I wasn't bothered by the walking, which made the rest of the experience easy to enjoy. I had a cool family, with the keys being the  parents (the Mackeys).  This is me with Kaylea, a girl from my family. Last night   was probably the best night of my life. I had the privilege to live my life's dream, ever since I was eight years old: pitching a perfect game. We were playing in my Babe Ruth championship baseball game, the last one that I would be young enough to compete in .   It was Haxtun versus SedgeCo. I started off the game with a 3-0 count on a batter, and I was thinking that I had better make some adjustments if we were going to win.   Fortunately I proceeded to come back to strike out the next two batters. After 3 innings, I realized that not a single batter h...

I hope I remember this day for a long time. Often, our days seem monotonous, hectic, or just unremarkable.  I've had a lot of those lately--so many, actually, that I was starting to be afraid that life was giving up on me. Not fun. This weekend, something changed. Yesterday was a good day, but I've had a lot of good days. Jared and i were able to spend some quality time together, and we went furniture shopping and grocery shopping and did some stuff around the house. It was  good day, but not an off-the chart-amazing day. Today  was an amazing day.  I was really looking forward General Conference, and I wasn't disappointed. (General Conference is a Mormon thing--it's a televised meeting that happens twice a year. Leaders of our church speak, and the kids love it because we get to stay home and watch it on TV.)  During college and at other times, I've looked forward to conference and been so uplifted by what I've heard. Today, I had that same experience ...

Our prelude to school was crazy!  We had about 11 doctor's appointments within a ten-day span in August:  physcials for school, which led to Caleb having an EKG and Echocardiogram, both of which were normal. (The doc was concerned because he had both a heart murmur and brachycardia. I wasn't worried about the heart murmur, since I have one, but the doc was concerned  about both together. Had I realized that my dad has a very low resting HR, and thought about the fact that mine is fairly low, I wouldn't have worried) At the end of a crazy two weeks, I saw that Haxtun was hiring an aide and applied. I was hired on the spot--one week till GO and still some doctor's appointments to go to.  Though I knew I needed a job, I had been looking forward to some peace and quiet when the kids started school.  Well, that went out the window.  But before I get into the school year, here are some pictures from July and August: Isaac went fishing at the town fish ...