The Suisse Family Robinson

Today we were driving to pick up my brother for a family event.  At an intersection I noticed a woman, probably early 20's, sitting with a "Homeless and Hungry" sign.  I felt so bad that I didn't have anything to give.  I had already given my food pack that I keep in the car for this purpose, and I hadn't refilled it yet.  I turned the corner and a few seconds later a little voice pipes up from the back "Mommy, I just saw a girl on the side of the road.  She's homeless and hungry and that makes me so worried."  I didn't realize that Vivi had noticed and had time to read the whole sign.  She has such a tender heart and really wished she could do something to help.  We discussed some ways that we could be better prepared next time and I told her that, as a family, we can find some ways that we can serve in our community.

Our church has put together a new website that is available for all organizations that are seeking volunteers.  The website is free to use and easy to navigate.

 https://www.justserve.org/

I can look up organizations in our area, see what projects are available, and can even make sure that children can participate.  Reed and I talked about choosing something for family home evening once a month.  Vivi really liked this idea and we also talked about that, as soon as possible, we'll put together some more food bags to keep in the van.  I am grateful for the opportunity to talk with Vivi about her love and desire to serve her fellow human beings.  And in the future I will be more prepared to help.

We took a family trip out west in June and spent an entire day in Yellowstone.  Yellowstone is one of my most favorite places to visit.  I have been 5 times and still haven't seen everything!
While walking around Norris Geyser Basin, my brother Josh asked the rhetorical question of "Wonder why Heavenly Father made this place."  Kimmi took this quite seriously.
She first started with the idea that Yellowstone was full of "pimples" of the earth that just needed to explode.
Then she went into a theory that because of Man's and Nature's relationship and dependency on each other, the Earth was like a mirror of the human body and "Well, everything needs to fart."  Thanks Kimmi...

Lara turns 8 next month and that means she can choose to be baptized and make a covenant with Heavenly Father.  With her introverted nature she is taking this very seriously.  She is quite nervous about the physical setting of being baptized (she hates being the center of attention so she doesn't want people to watch her) and that nervousness is heightened when we try to talk to her about it.  Last week she left me a note on my pillow.

Lara:  Did you know that when you are about to throw-up your nose gets red, Mommy?

Vivi:  If you are not feeling well, then you should just lie down and go to bed.

Thanks, sweethearts.

Don't worry, the fish in this picture was alive and well a few minutes later when we set it free. :)

To celebrate Mariella on her special day, here are a few facts about our red-headed little girl!

1.  She loves to dress-up and dance.  Once she steps into a place where she knows there are dress-up clothes then she is at once stripping down so she can pull on a princess ball gown.
2.  She loves smoothies, even ones with kale or spinach in it!  I have to drink my smoothies fast, otherwise she will steal half of it.
3.  She is my most natural potty-trainer.  Not early or anything like that.  She just didn't need a whole day set aside or anything like that.  That shows how independent she is and how she wants to be just like her sisters.
4.  I will go ahead and brag (because I am allowed to since this is my blog) that Mariella can match pitch and carry a tune like no other 3-year-old I have met.
5.  She has quite the adorable lisp going on right now that I have been assured is perfectly normal.

Happy Birthday, Mariella!  We love you!

There is a viral video going around FB called "How Frozen Should Have Ended".  It pretty much annoyed me more than the actual movie.  I like Frozen, I really do.  I do not, however, love it and choose to sing praises of it.  This viral video struck a chord though and made me thoroughly angry.

Last year I wrote this blog post about the Olympics which I remembered about this year.  Time just flies and it surprised me to remember that Lara was only turning 4 during the Vancouver games.  It has been great fun watching all the events with the girls.  We all picked our sport-of-choice today, meaning which one could we see ourselves performing.

Reed:  No surprise here.  Biathlon.

My talented sister, Jamie, created these for my birthday.  I love looking at them and it's amazing that she captured each of their personalities in the poetry.  It's great to see how my family knows my girls about as well as I do.  I am reminded how I am blessed to live near them.  I never thought that I would stay in Ohio after college.  I had applied to an internship in New York and on the drive there I remember thinking "Whoa, this is a long way from home."  It was a wonderful facility and right up my alley- school setting, a variety of abilities, and the director was awesome.  I got an email from the internship director saying that I was a top 2 candidate and asking if I was still interested.  I wrote back and said that I was impressed with the facility, however I was withdrawing my application.  I have never looked back at that decision and wish I did the opposite.

2013 in Review

January- Rang in the new year with family by playing Cranium

February- Lara turned 6 and got a real recurve bow!  She also cut her hair this month :(

March- Vivi had an allergic reaction to a virus and developed hives all over her body.  Steroids made it all better.

April- Attended the Great Lakes Regional music therapy conference in Columbus, OH.  First trip of the year to Dollywood for Spring Break!

May- Started and completed a 3 week cleanse and felt great!  2nd trip to Dollywood.

June- Celebrated 8 years of marriage together!  Trip to Wicked with all the sisters and 3rd vacation to Dollywood.  Happy 2nd birthday to Mariella!

July- Officially stepped down from a full-time music therapy position at Helping Hands to spend more time at home.  Attended the CONS Young Women's camp for the second year as music leader.  Pregnant.

August- No longer pregnant with a miscarriage at 16 weeks with complications that resulted in a 3 day stay in the hospital, ending with a DNC.  4th trip to Dollywood!  Reed turns 31.

September- New job for Reed with the Columbus Facilities Management Group for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  The big 3-0 birthday for me!

October- Celebrated our 100 month anniversary.  Attended the Association of Ohio Music Therapist's state conference at Ohio University, my alma mater.

November- Road trip to Washington D.C. for Auntie Ruth's wedding.  Another miscarriage at 6 weeks that ended in another ER visit and another DNC.

December- Vivi turns 5 and we celebrated Christmas with family.  5th and final 2013 trip to Dollywood will happen on New Year's Eve.

We wish all a Happy start to 2014!

Reed told me the other day that he thought I was doing a great job as a Mom and that he knew it must be hard to be a mind reader all day.  I thought about it for a minute and then said that I didn't think I was so much a mind reader as a body reader.  You know what I mean- the way you have to look for signs to see what your kids are actually trying to tell you?  And, if you have multiple kids, each one is different?   Case in point-

Sleepiness: 
Lara sucks her thumb A LOT when she is tired and gets really whiny.
Vivi just gets crazy.  It is almost like she purposefully picks exactly the opposite of what you want her to do and makes really bad choices.  Like a few days ago when she whipped Mariella in the head with a pair of pants and thought it was funny.  She was exhausted.
Mariella find her pacifier and caresses her stomach with her Snow White Doll.

Hunger:
Lara and Vivi get super whiny but Mariella just goes into the kitchen and finds whatever she wants to eat.  I'm not sure which one is better.

Need for Attention:
Lara is getting to the age where she can actually tell me that she wants to spend time with me.  That's always nice when kids can articulate their needs.  :)
Vivi starts hugging me a lot and telling me that she loves me.
Mariella starts doing things like pulling hair, or destroying a book shelf.

That's just to name a few.  I do like it when they can actually tell me what's going on.  But if that's not the case, I can at least rely on these few signs to help me out!
  

Today was Reed's last day working with Erik at Mars Irrigation and Landscape.  It would have been 10 years in April, can you believe that?!  In that type of industry, that amount of dedication and loyalty is basically unheard of.  Erik has been a wonderful boss and friend and has taken care of us for so long.  Although Reed and I are looking forward to this new opportunity, it was still sad to leave.  It is so wonderful that Erik is also a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, like us.  He was able to receive his own confirmation that this was a good move for Reed.  Just another perk of having such a great boss!  Erik told Reed that he could pick wherever he wanted to work, a non-profit of some sort to do some work pro bono.  Of course, Reed picked Helping Hands and they did an amazing job beautifying the grounds!

Reed will start his new job as a mechanic for the facilities management group for our church on Monday.  We are so grateful for this new direction for Reed.  It is an amazing blessing in our lives and one that came from a loving Heavenly Father.  Sometimes, I want Heavenly Father to just make it easy on me.  I always said that I would stay home when Reed had a job that lasted the winter and had benefits.  When he was invited to apply for this new job, it was back in April.  After a few months of not hearing anything (the job hadn't even posted) I started praying for some direction.  My contract is from September to September and I wanted to give my job plenty of time to find another music therapist if I was going to be resigning.  Heavenly Father told me without a doubt that I just needed to jump in, without knowing what was on the other end.  That is scary.

So I did it.  In July, not knowing what was going on with Reed's job, I said that I would like to move to an hourly position and give up the benefits.  Our insurance ended the end of August.  With my miscarriage at the beginning of the month and all of this uncertainty, I felt like a pretty emotional wreck.  A week later the call came that Reed had the job!  Such a relief and I immediately thanked my Heavenly Father for watching out for me and my family.  He always knows what is best for us and it's just up to us to choose whether or not we are willing to trust him.  I am happy I did.

I am grateful...

That we still had health insurance during my hospitalization.  I saw the EOB recently for all the medical stuff and it was over 23,000 buckaroos.  We aren't paying that of course, I was just flabbergasted at the cost.  That's way more than a real live birth!  So I am glad my miscarriage happened in August and also at a good time in the year to meet our out-of-pocket expenses so that everything else is 100% covered for the rest of the year.  (Maybe Reed can have his knee surgery this year).  Yay for HSA's and high-deductible plans.

There is something huge to be grateful for and it's killing me that I can't announce it.  Big news to come...  soon....  It's killing me.

Instead of giving a detailed account of the past week, I decided to make a grateful list because there are a lot of things to be thankful for!

I am grateful...

1.  That Reed was home when I had the miscarriage.  He had been out of town for the past 3 days and I don't know what I would have done.

2.  That it started while we were at church.  OK, so that sounds weird.  We were able to leave the girls in good hands and not drag them to the ER though and that was a comfort.

3.  For all the wonderful hospital staff.  Between Sunday, and then my Tuesday through Thursday hospital stay I met a LOT of nurses, OB/GYN staff, ER doctors, PSA's, and then all the surgical staff.  I especially found the mixture of business and caring interesting during the actual miscarriage Sunday.  The ER doctor who gave the diagnosis was very business-like and gave it to me straight.  Not totally uncaring, just straight.  I appreciated that because I don't think it would have made a difference either way.  Then it was the nurse who held my hand and made sure that I was OK.  It was like that through the whole week and I really appreciated all of the staff.  And a special shout-out to Brother Nagel who is an ER doctor at Riverside and stopped in just to check on us and say hi.  Which brings me to my next grateful point...

4.  For our ward family.  They have been wonderful.  We had meals, flowers, boxes of tissues, chocolates, offers of babysitting, etc for the whole week!  And all the thoughts and prayers, it has just been wonderful.

5.  For our immediate family.  My mom was able to come on Tuesday to stay with me overnight in the hospital so that Reed could go be with the girls.  She was a great strength to me, especially on Tuesday which was my worst night.  My mother-in-law had Mariella and Vivi all week and I know that it gave them some sense of stability.  My dad brought me a chocolate peanut butter milkshake late on Wednesday night before I had to start my surgery fast at midnight.  He made it right in time at 11:40 :)  I know that all of my siblings have kept us in their prayers and that was awesome to know.

6.  For all of our friends.  We have had such support with thoughts and prayers from all over the US.  Facebook is wonderful for that reason :)

7.  This next one sounds really weird- I am actually grateful for my hospital stay.  It was really hard when I ended up in a labor and delivery room on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning to have what I call another "clean-out".  I started crying because I didn't think I would be in that room without a baby.  I think though that is when I realized that I wasn't going through all of the pain for my baby that died.  I was doing this to make sure that my body was safe for other babies.

8.  For our knowledge of the gospel and the wonderful plan of Happiness that the Lord has set-up for us.  I don't know all the answers to my questions.  I don't even know the gender of the baby although Reed did see the baby during the miscarriage.  I don't think either of us was in an emotional state to ask.  I do know that the baby is eternally ours and everything will be sorted out later.  I do know that my Heavenly Father loves me, loves Reed, and loves our family.  Some days may be harder than others and he will help me get through them.

9.  I am especially grateful for all those who have shared with me their stories of going through a miscarriage or other loss.  During the actual miscarriage, Reed and I made a list of all the people we knew who had gone through this.  It was quite a list and now it has gotten longer!  I have found it a comfort and strength to hear all the stories and see that this is not the end or a permanent problem.

Another huge thanks to everyone who has kept us in their thoughts and prayers!!!!

Our ward had a polynesian luau in celebration of Pioneer Day.  Of course, I thought this was a wonderful idea because my pioneer heritage is not what one thinks of usually.  None of my ancestors came across the plains in the early days of the church.  In fact, all 4 of my grandparents are first-generation members (or very close to first-generation) of the church.  One of my favorite pioneer stories is that of my grandpa who is full-blooded Samoan.  I may be a bit fuzzy on the details so if anyone knows more facts, just let me know.  From what I remember, Grandpa joined the church as a young boy in American Samoa and became less-active as a youth.  He joined the military and came to San Francisco where he met my grandma (who is Chinese).  Grandma joined the church and both he and my Grandma became active to the point where Grandpa decided that some of his cultures customs and traditions got in the way of truly living the gospel.  He pretty much gave up his status in the family to live the gospel as he thought was right.  I think it paid off for him!  All of his sons served missions, 4 of his grandchildren have served missions, 1 is currently serving, 1 will be leaving on her mission in November, and 1 more will be putting in his papers shortly, 8 of us cousins have been married in the temple, and he has 8 great-grandchildren with more on the way.  I am pretty sure none of us would be where we are if Grandpa hadn't made the sacrifices he did and I sure love him for that.

I already posted the ultrasound picture on FB so I won't post it again.  So here are some answers to Frequently Asked Questions :)

1.  Of course this was planned.  Mariella is getting too big, I'm turning 30 this year, and this is already the largest time span between kids.  If I want 6-7 kids then I'd better get to it!

2.  No, we're not moving any time soon.  Our place will work for at least another year and then hopefully we'll be in a better financial situation to move to a bigger place.  That being said, we always welcome information on houses in the area, preferably Powell ward because we would like to stay!

3.  We have waited until the baby is born to find out gender and will be doing that again.  Lara has put in her requests for a brother though.  We don't care either way and don't have any inkling whatsoever if it's a boy or a girl.  As Reed likes to say, we hope it is one or the other.

4.  I'm feeling OK so far, there are some good days and bad days.

5.  Due date is end of January.  I'm purposefully keeping it general because I'm tired of getting close to a "date" and getting antsy.  By this time I know my body and I know when I'm ready.

6.  Lara is excited, I don't think Vivi really gets what we told her, and Mariella has a surprise coming. :)

Oh boy, it's been too long since I last blogged.  It's been super busy with vacations and work and life!

1.  I did finish the cleanse and it was hard but I am glad I did it.  I will make it a habit for after pregnancy/nursing.  I lost 10 pounds over all and I feel great.

2.  Mariella turned 2!

One more week to go...

Day 10

1. Breakfast- Green Smoothie with coconut water, avocado, kale, and mango
1. I used fresh coconut water although I've heard you can buy packaged coconut water in some health food stores.  I wanted to try my hand at cracking fresh coconuts and draining the water since I am part Samoan...  so I should be able to do it quite handily.  Meijer's had pre-scored coconuts so they were easier to break apart.  Reed first drilled two holes so I could drain the water and then I smashed them on our back porch step.  How thrilling!
2. Lunch- Indian food
1. The music therapy department at HHC has a tradition of taking our interns out to lunch for their end-of-their-internship celebration.  One of our interns this time around picked an indian restaurant.  So I stuck close to the chicken and veggie dishes although I did have one piece of naan and one bowl of rice pudding.
3. Dinner- Berry Shake with coconut milk and cinnamon
1. Yummy!  This used coconut milk plus some meat from my coconuts.                                                               

Day 7- Mother's Day

1. Breakfast- Energy Shake from day 5
1. The girls were excited to make me breakfast in bed :)
2. Lunch- remainder of Energy Shake
1. OK.  And a piece of cheesecake and a piece of pizza.  The priesthood brethren treated the women in the ward to an after church luncheon and I couldn't resist!
3. Dinner-  Chicken Cordon Bleu
1. So Mother's Day was not a wonderful day for sticking with my cleanse.  The food was gooooooooood though.  I definitely felt it the next day.  I felt different- sluggish, a bit bloated, I had to really knuckle down and drink my smoothie.

Day 8

1. Breakfast- Mango and Coconut Smoothie
2. Lunch- Leftover Halibut
3. Dinner-  Pineapple, Lime, and Fresh Mint
1. I am lucky to have a chocolate mint plant growing in my backyard and I have been using it a LOT for this cleanse.  I'm not sure if the pineapple came out slushy from the juicer because that's how pineapple usually is or if it was because Reed had accidentally stuck it in the freezer.  Instead of a juice it was more like a slushy.

Day 9

1. Breakfast- Fennel and Apple Juice
1. I've had fennel seed before but not the actual veggie.  This juice was awesome!  I will definitely be making this again.  The green apples gave the sour and the fennel balanced it out with a licoricy sweetness.  I only used the head of the fennel for the juice- the bulbs I saved for a chicken dinner that everybody else ate tonight and I will eat on Thursday for lunch.
2. Lunch- Leftover stir-fry with buckwheat noodles
3. Dinner- Zucchini Basil soup
1. I am loving my onion chopper these days.  It makes creating these soups a cinch.  I diced the zuchinni, onion, and celery using this.  Voila, soup in 5 minutes.
   

1. Day 5
1. Breakfast- Energy Shake with tahini, cardamom, and frozen peaches
1. Probably my favorite shake so far.  You can substitute almond butter for the tahini.
2. Lunch- Chicken with Stir-Fry Veggies and Buckwheat Noodles
1. I found out that the juicer I'm using is also a pasta maker!  So instead of buying buckwheat noodles I made them.  Very easy.  Kids did not like them.  I think they are delicious!
3. Dinner- Spinach and Avocado Soup
1. The spinach and avocado soup is pureed with coconut milk.  It makes a very creamy soup with a little sweetness.  I would make it again.

Fifth Third had been contacting us for months about refinancing our home and we never thought it was the right time.  For one thing, we're not going to fit in the condo forever and for another thing we don't have money for closing costs and other re-fi.  After a while Reed decided to look into it and see what they could actually do for us.  I was very wary and said that if he did all the paperwork and felt good about it, I would be fine with it as long as it wasn't going to set us back in our budget.  It took 2 months but we signed all the paperwork today and we are re-financed!  We didn't have to pay anything, in fact we get a check for $250.  New payment plan starts in July.  Even if we are only here for another year, it was still worth it.  I asked Reed why this was all working out and it sounded too good to be true.  He said I should thank President Obama.  I think I'll thank the Lord instead.