Where are we now

I have a week off from schoolwork so I figured I would catch up on my housewife duties and update the blog.
First off..... Chris Graduated from school.... Last year. I was just realizing ,after all the graduation pictures on facebook, that it's been a year since graduation. Chris didn't want a big deal made about it and he almost didn't walk. I convinced him that it would be good closure to that chapter of his life. Even if we all had to sit through a boring hour of random speeches. It was a lot of hard work for me too and I wanted to be able to celebrate that part of Chris life and the hard work we both put in to get him there. The 8 hour shift followed by school and late nights of studying. We only got the weekends to relax and most of it was full of studying again. Chris parents sent money and helped with a car while he went to school and after we got married, I worked full time so he could go full time to school. We deserved to see him walk and celebrate in his hard work and ours in getting him there. But mostly he deserved it. I am so proud of him and all he did in order to provide for us after I had Samantha. He wanted to make sure Sammy would have a mommy there for her full time. That was huge for all of us. He is everything I could hope and dream for in a husband and father. Chris you deserve all the goodness life can bring you and we are so proud of you!

Then there was our first home purchase. It was a crazy process. We started looking for homes in Salt Lake County. We started looking during yhr real estate boom in June. Almost all the houses in our price range were short sales and almost all of them had offers within the first day if not within hours of being on the market. 3 months later, a different realtor, and after taking a break to allow the market to slow down a bit, we got pre-approved and found our house on the first day out looking. It wasn't Salt Lake but it was north Utah county and in between Chris work and my school. We put an offer in for our very first little home in Saratoga Springs. It had enough room to grow and there wasn't much needed to update (Chris loved that).
Here we are 6 months later and we are still loving it.
It's been a slow process to decorate it and make it ours. Chris and I have been having fun building a sand box, gardening, and improving the yard. Samantha loves her new sandbox.

I am still going to school to become a midwife. It's been very informative, its pushed me, it's built me up and its challenged me to my core. My beliefs are constantly shifting and changing and I have been learning SO much. Midwifery has definitely been a part of that. I was apprenticing for a year but took a break form it last December. I would be gone for 40 hours at a time coming home for a few hours of sleep and then heading back out. Samantha and I were still nursing and my milk supply suffered from all the 20 hour stretches of being gone. It was definitely a strain on me, my family and school. It was a great opportunity and I feel so blessed with the experiences I had but I needed to take a step back and reevaluate myself as a mother, wife and student.

 

I also needed to figure out where I saw myself professionally and where I wanted to be in 2 years. I have had some big realizations and I am hopeful for the future as a student and midwife. We will see... more on that to come.

Samantha is an absolute joy to be around. I am one lucky momma. It's not all good and I definitely have days where I feel like life is impossible but I can honestly say, I overcame PPD and I am a stronger woman from it. Motherhood has been the most challenging part of my life but I was very lucky to have Samantha be the one I went through it with. She is such an inelegant, sweet girl, and patient. She absolutely adores her daddy.

Chris and I have had conversations at night on wither we want another baby. We have come to the conclusion that we don't regret having Samantha and she has definitely added positively to our lives but we are not intetrested ,or even desire, to have a larger family. We love babies but we love Samantha, our marriage and, frankly, ourselves too much to add the emotional and financial stress of more children to our family. This isn't to say that having a larger family is wrong.We just know our limits and we don't want a lot of children. For us, 1 or 2 children is plenty, and that's okay. It's been a freeing realization. That doesn't mean we wont have another one. We are just not in the place to have another baby and still enjoy each other and the life we have right now.

Life keeps going with it's ups and downs. We keep leaning and growing. I'm looking forwards to the ups and I just hold on with the downs. The good thing is that there are more ups than downs these days. Life has been pretty good to us.
For that I am grateful.