Finding a Place to Settle

You want to hear a funny story?

Well, it's kind of an "aww, bummer" story, but still kind of funny.

Back in the 1850's my ancestors left their home in Tennessee and traveled north by flatboat to find a new place to settle.

They traveled hundreds of miles to the land of a newly settled town. They didn't think much of this new settlement. They had major doubts that it would be successful.

So they traveled back south a little ways and established a small settlement right alongside the Missouri river. They named this settlement Sonora.

So what became of that settlement they passed up?

It grew into what is now known as Omaha, Nebraska.

 

 What became of Sonora?

Somewhere in the middle of the Missouri river lies the settlement my ancestors began. The forces of the Mighty Mo took over and swallowed up their tiny town. It was a slow process, but it was inevitable, so they packed up and settled about 30 miles away.

I have heard this story a number of times and it always makes me think of where my family and I will permanently settle, if we "settle" at all. 

We have moved once a year the past four years. Not only does that take a physical and mental toll on me, but a major emotional strain as well. I get emotionally attached to a place and when I have to get used to something new, I get all out of sorts. That probably explains the overwhelming sadness I mentioned in my last post. Thankfully the adjustment to this house has been going a lot better.

Even though we seriously plan on being in this house longer than a year, we know that this isn't ultimately where we want to settle down. We've moved from place to place in hopes of something better. When we lived in Waverly we kept hoping to get back to Kansas City. When we moved to Kansas City we stayed with my in-laws until we could find our own place. Shortly after we moved to our apartment we knew that wasn't the place to raise our children. So now we are at a house, which is definitely a step up from our apartment, but will not fulfill our needs for the long run. While we are happy to have a house, a backyard, and no upstairs neighbors that make our floors shake, it's not the place we want to settle.

Ryan's parents have lived in the same house since Ryan was born. I love going through old photos and seeing how certain rooms have changed over the years and all the different remodels. I know Ryan enjoys going back to his childhood home. I have a couple of friends who can go back to their childhood home as well.

I know nowadays staying in the same house is somewhat rare. I don't really know of anyone in my generation or really even in my brother's generation that have stayed put. A lot of my friends have moved from state to state. Others have been in their house for a long time, but have plans to relocate when they get the chance.

I always have big dreams of where I want to raise my family. There are times I go back to my small, rural hometown to visit my mom and I'll be sitting out back on a nice day and I will have such a content feeling wash over me. My high school golf coach lives behind my mom and I'll see her and her family grilling and having a good time. A girl who graduated a couple years before I did will walk by with her husband and wave. I'll drive down Main Street and a flood of happy memories will drift into my mind. I can see myself raising my boys in this little town. (I have a whole blog post in my head dedicated to my hometown.)

Ryan and I will be driving out in the country. Anywhere in the country and I'll have this yearning to live in a big ol' farmhouse with a giant picture window overlooking miles and miles of fields and hills. In the middle of Kansas, Nebraska... I don't care where, but I just want a giant area for the boys to explore and a clear sky at night to see the stars.

I'll be driving to my cousin's house in suburban Kansas City and see kids running from one giant yard to another playing, moms and dads chatting with each other in their driveways and families out taking walks with their dogs. It has such a small town feel but there's a Target not too far away and multiple opportunities for family fun.

Other times we'll be driving through the historic neighborhoods of Brookside and I feel I would just love to live in one of those big old homes and send my kids to the neighborhood Catholic school where they can walk home in big groups of green plaid-ed kiddos. Walk down to Reading Reptile children's bookstore on the weekends or a nice stroll at Loose Park.

Sometimes my dreams go out of state. I would love to live in the mountains of Colorado or amongst the glistening lakes of Minnesota. A totally different state, totally different people... a different landscape... a different culture.

Who knows what the future has in store for us. I keep waiting to feel that at home, peaceful, settled feeling. Most of all, I want it for my kids. I don't want to constantly uproot them. I want them to be safe and happy and in a place to build good memories.

I'm sure God will lead us to where we need to go. I just hope we listen and settle in a good place...

.... that won't eventually be covered by a major body of water.

All Moved In

These past few days have been insane. We are finally moved into our new house. Mostly everything is in order... except the back bedroom that is crammed full of crap that needs to be put away. (Just think of Monica's junk room from the TV show Friends.) Joe has adjusted very well so far.

I, on the other hand, have not been ajusting well. I don't know if  it's PMS or just my melancholic personality, but I have been feeling a deep, hard sadness bearing down on me lately. I feel like I am absorbing all the sadness in the world. Maybe I'm just tired. I know I'm feeling very anxious about school and getting things organized.

Easter weekend was good. We got mostly everything packed away so that my brother and his two daughters could come visit after Mass. Mass was packed and I didn't really get to enjoy it, but the excitement of our risen Savior from all my facebook friends gave me some joy in the day.

I can't write much more, because I have a sick little Sam laying in my arms, and my left hand is falling asleep. Here are some photos from our weekend!

A family friend of Ryan's gave us their king size bed! As you can tell, Sam loves it!

Bow ties are cool.

My little loves on Easter

Enjoying our new backyard on a beautiful day!

Quick Takes- Late Edition

I have soooo much stuff to do. I'm not even joking. I really should be doing said stuff, but I don't feel to hot at the moment, so I thought I'd shoot out some Quick Takes.

1.

This is our last week in our apartment! Hence the me needing to do stuff... we are nowhere near all packed up. And Mother Nature decided to grace us with snow and even MORE snow on Saturday and Sunday so our progress will be hindered some. I really want to be out of here and have this place all cleaned by next Saturday so we can enjoy Easter Sunday. I don't think I'm going to get much out of this Holy Week.

2.

Whenever I look back on the different places Ryan and I have lived I get a sense of nostaligia and think on the fond memories of the place we once called home. I wonder if we'll ever feel that way about this place. It's nice to be  on our own, but this apartment has caused us a lot of stress. It's crazy how this year has flown by, yet seemed to have dragged on forever.

3.

Now that I think about it... I don't think I've ever announced on my blog that we are moving. I guess I just assume that those people who read my blog also know me on facebook.

Hey, guess what! We're moving!

I emailed our parish office a few months ago asking if they'd put out a mass email asking anyone if they had any cheap rentals. We got a few responses, and one of them was from our future landlady!

4.

The house is tiny, but it has a backyard and is only a mile from our parish. And I won't have to worry about our upstairs neighbors pounding around and exercising at 11:30 at night.

5.

There is one good thing about having loud upstairs neighbors. Every time they start stomping around Joe suddenly stops what he is doing, his eyes get big, he gets a serious look on his face and he whispers "Dinosaurs...."

So funny!

6.

I'm sure you've all been dying to know how my chemistry class is going. It's going very well! I am constantly doing this:

But my professor is really good at answering questions and simplifying things. Once I go over my notes and do the homework problems I usually catch on.

We had a test last Monday and he posted the grades that night. My score was not what I was expecting. I didn't do HORRIBLY, but I was wondering how on earth I missed so many. I had a test from last semester to study from and the questions were practically word for word. When we went over our tests in class I realized he didn't credit me 6 freaking points! That was the difference between an A and B! It is very important for me to get good grades so I can get into nursing school.

I was all like this in his face.

Haha, not really. I was all like, "Uh... professor, sir, I'm sorry, but, uh, I think you missed some points, sir, I'm sorry, uh....."

My internet class sucks, and that's all I gotta say about that.

7.

Something funny I saw today. This is TOTALLY me with EVERYTHING Pope Francis!

Have a good weekend! Stop by Jen's for more Quick Takes!

A Quick Note

I have a big chemistry test tonight, so naturally I'm piddle farting on facebook and catching up on some blogs.

I wrote about my Gus' third birthday last Friday. Later that afternoon we got three balloons and sent them to heaven.

Waving to Gus in heaven

I suppose I should get back to studying. I'm hoping to finish a couple of posts that I've been working on for awhile. One of them will be in a series hosted by Sarah at Fumbling Toward Grace called No More Mommy Wars.

Back to studying equilibrium equations!

My Little Saint's Birthday

In July of 2009 I got a positive pregnancy test. We weren't avoiding or trying to achieve a pregnancy, so it was a pleasant surprise. Well, more than a pleasant surprise... I was over the moon ecstatic!

My world was forever changed when we found out the following month that I had miscarried.

My due date had been set for March 15th. If my pregnancy would have progressed we would be celebrating our little Gus' 3rd birthday this year.

There has always been something going on each year that has numbed the sadness. I was around 13 weeks pregnant with Joe when Gus' first due date anniversary came around. It was strange to mourn a lost pregnancy when I was pregnant again.

The next year I was busy with a 6 month old and packing up to move.

Last year when his due date came around I was again packing up to move to where we live now.

This year... we're packing up to move again and I have two children, I'm going to school and I'm under a lot of stress with numerous things.

You'd think that this being the "third year" and being so busy that I wouldn't be so upset.

But my heart breaks today. More than it has in a very long time.

My Gus has been on my mind heavily these past few weeks. I had a dear friend call me shortly after she went to her 20 week ultrasound to tell me her baby had passed away. I think her level of pain is much different than mine, since I lost my baby at only 6 weeks, but when I heard her sobs... it brought me back to the day of my own ultrasound where I was hoping to see an 8 week old little baby jelly bean with a fluttering heartbeat... and there wasn't.

My heart is breaking for my friend and her family, but to my shock I started mourning my own miscarriage. I know the pain never really goes away, but I was doing so good for so long. Why now am I getting so upset?

It's because I feel a lot of guilt. I feel so guilty because there are weeks, months maybe that I don't think about my child in heaven. What kind of mother is like that?

I feel guilty that I didn't do something to honor Gus. I could have had a Mass said. I could have done something- anything. I am thankful that someone pointed me to The Shrine of the Holy Innocents in New York, where they have a Book of Life to put the names of babies who have died before birth and that have no grave. I take comfort knowing that in those moments where I slack thinking about Gus, there is someone always praying for him, thousands of miles away. His name is memorialized. I guess that's something.

I know this is nothing I can help, but I hate it that there's no real resting place for Gus. My miscarriage was simply a very heavy period. Somewhere in all that was my child... I do remember seeing a very large, I guess you could say clot, but it looked different. It was grayish and when I saw it, maybe in my grief, my naivety, I thought maybe somewhere in that mass was the little beginnings of my child. I grabbed it out of the toilet and wrapped it up and sobbed, sobbed, sobbed. Later, when my husband came home we buried him next to a bunch of yellow flowers. We marked it with a rock. I went to visit it quite often, but mysteriously, when we moved, we couldn't find the rock. My husband comforted me by saying that Gus isn't in the ground in Waverly, MO by the Bartlett Grain elevators... he is always with us. But now, I so desperately want to visit him. I cannot imagine the devastation to plan a funeral and make burial plans for a small, precious baby, but I wish I had some of that closure... and a place to honor my baby. Who knows if that mass of tissue contained Gus. And now I have this gut wrenching feeling that he was just flushed away. I know there was no possible way I could have kept any remains of a miscarriage that early, but it still makes me feel helpless.

The weird thing to think about is if Gus were born, there would be no Joe. I got pregnant with him just two months after my miscarriage. He wasn't a consolation prize for having a miscarriage. That's just how things happened. Sam probably wouldn't be here either.

I cannot imagine my life without my sons. But I still mourn the loss of what could have been with Gus. God's plan in mysterious and always good. It doesn't always make sense, but someday it will. I find hope in that. Despite my first loss I have two living, breathing, drive-me-crazy blessings right in front of me.

I'm trying very hard to stop the guilty feelings today. I know those feelings aren't from God. Today I want to focus on how lucky we are to have our own saint in heaven praying for our family. I want to focus on being a better Christian so I can get to heaven to see him (or her...) Today I am going to teach my boys that they have an older sibling watching over them. When Ryan gets home we are going to go get three balloons to send up to heaven. I know some people were upset when I announced to the world that we had a miscarriage, and some people may be upset that I'm still talking about it and plan on talking about it to my kids. But I want to honor my first child. Because Lord knows I haven't been doing it lately.

Happy birthday, little one. 

Pray for us dear Gus.

It Ain't Easy Being Catholic...

I have two posts in my drafts folder that I was bound and determined to work on and publish this week.

Then a little thing called a CONCLAVE happened and this is what I spent most of yesterday and today doing:

No clue where my kids ran off to

These past few days have been exciting. I was glued to social media and the TV looking for those first signs of white smoke. A certain brother of mine may have used the word "obsessed" to desrcibe how I was acting, and I can't say I disagree with him.

Today was full of anticipation. I don't think I've ever stared at a chimney on a screen so long before. I can tell you I've never been so amused by a seagull sitting on one. Once that puff-puff-puff came out... it looked dark... but got lighter and lighter. I may or may not have reacted somewhat like this:

Then the waiting game began... who was this new pope? What name would he choose? The Catholic world was all a flutter with excitement. The bells ringing, the crowds cheering, the bands playing- talk about Holy Ghost goosebumps!

Soon our new Father came out to greet us. He looked so humble. So simple. He prayed. He asked for a blessing before he blessed us. He told his flock good night, good rest... just like a good father does.

I'm so very pleased with our new pope! Today has been so emotional, and I should be sleeping now (1:00 a.m. is the dead hour for me), but instead I have to get some thoughts out there into the wonderful world of the interwebz.

When I had my spiritual growth spurt I was so excited and on fire about the Catholic faith. I loved the history, the traditions, the stories of the saints. I coudn't get enough. I could sniff out a Catholic book store five miles away and I would spend so much time in there and dream about winning the lottery so I could BUY ALL THE BOOKS!

During these last few years, that fire has fizzled quite a bit. I still love being Catholic, but I wasn't all excited when Pope Benedict got on Twitter. I wasn't a Cardinal Dolan groupie. I never waivered on my beliefs, but I just wasn't passionate about them anymore.

But these last few weeks my love for all things Catholic has come back again with great joy. I'm practically giddy!

Why do I love being Catholic? Because the Church points me to Jesus and to heaven. I know a lot of people don't like organized religion or they believe that one should have a personal relationship with Jesus. But the great thing about the Catholic Church is we have TONS of tools to help us to get to know Jesus even BETTER. To help us when we need help the most. We have saints, sacraments, history, music, colors, paintings, statues, prayers, liturgy, Scripture, gestures, oh my goodness... just thousands of different things to help us get to Jesus! A lot of this stuff looks foreign to people outside the Catholic Church. I've had a few friends comment to me on facebook about things they didn't know before regarding the Catholic Church, asking me questions and expressing their fascination. I'm so humbled that they asked me and I am so grateful that they are asking questions instead of straight up dismissing the Church. I've seen comments during this week that expresses ignorance toward the Church and that makes me mad and sad.

That brings me to the hard part. The part of being Catholic that has been on my mind for years now. It's so incredibly hard to be a faithful Catholic. It's not easy to be any kind of faithful Christian in this world, really. Our world just isn't built to have Christianity be a part of the norm. But I feel it's especially hard as a faithful Catholic. You have non-Christian people who think we're homophobic, against women, and intolerant. You have other Christian denoms thinking we're the whore of Babylon, a cult, a part of the anti-Christ. We're even ridiculed by other Catholics who think we are lunatics for not using contraception and think we do what we do because of blind obedience. I'm not saying everyone out there is like this, but sometimes it sure is lonely being Catholic.

Years ago I was confused and even kind of weirded out by some of the traditions of the Catholic Church. But I questioned, I wondered, and I learned. Soon I accepted it all. I'm all in, even though there are many things I still struggle with. Many of the things we have in the Church are gifts from Christ himself- confession, the Eucharist, the papacy... the list goes on. Jesus loves us so much that he gave us guides- multiple guides and tools to help us stay on the right path. He knew we'd be confused and lost without these gifts.

Sometimes I feel like we're having to defend ourselves from all sides. It gets tiring. It gets incredibly frustrating. Sometimes I get embarrassed by the looks I get when I say I went to confession or when I say I use natural family planning. But Jesus said being his follower wouldn't be sunshine and sparkly unicorn farts. We have to die to ourselves. We have to sacrifice. The path to heaven isn't easy. What we believe and what we do usually goes against what everybody else is doing. And, well, that can just plain suck sometimes.

But the suckiness is worth it. Today, I joined in with about 1 billion other Catholics, not only by social media, but in prayer and we were united by the Holy Spirit to see our 266th pope say hello to the world. I saw tradition. I saw things of old (the chimney) and things of our modern age (tweets and Facebook posts about the day) come together. I saw a glimpse of Christ in this very secular and sad world. And I saw in myself a new wave of hope and excitement for my faith life.

Thank you, Lord Jesus, for the gift of the Catholic faith. THANK YOU!

(Still get chills every time I see this video!)

Catechism Lesson

I'm on spring break this week! PAAARTAY!!!

Oh, wait. HAHAHAHA.

No partyin' gon' be happenin' here.

I have a chemistry midterm on Monday and a "scavenger hunt" hunt about the great state of Missouri due this Friday. So I'll be livin'. it. up.

I'm hoping to get a few blog posts out that don't consist of me talking about how blah I've been feeling and cute pictures of my kids. This Friday marks what would have been the due date for my first child, Gus. This year, the anniversary of his due date is hitting me extremely hard.

So in the meantime, I'm going to post a video of Joe saying his prayers... in just his diaper... climbing on my head. He stepped on my neck and pulled my hair at the end... hence all the screaming. :-)