Sunday = BYU TV !!

So on sunday's at our house we watch BYU TV on our sattelite. It's great. I just listened to a wonderful talk given by George D. Durrant called Granpa are you there? It was great. He shared experiences about him and his kids and his grandkids, and of course his wife. I only caught the last 10 minutes, but it was great.

So my word today is OUCH. My back went out on Tuesday and it is still out. I think the hardest part is when I get discouraged. I can handle the pain for the most part (remember, 2 kids, labor!) but I just want to cry when I start thinking about how long it could potentially be out. I think it will go back in a few days (crossing fingers) but who really knows. I was pregnant with our first daughter when my back was last out. It was out so bad I walked with one hip down and the other up. I got used to it after a few months, but I remember my Mom was always asking me if I was ok. It must have looked painful. Anyway, it went back in a few weeks before I had our daughter. I was very thankful. I think it was out for about 10-11 months total. This time around its more complicated. Before I worked about a 30 min drive from my house. My Chiropractor was on the way home. Now, since I don't work, I have to drive 30 min to get to the Chiropractor. Also, because of hubby's work hours I have to bring the kids. Luckily my chiropractor has toys for the kids, and his receptionist was able to hold the baby. I'm starting to think about finding another chiropractor closer to home, but I really trust this guy. He's always been able to get me through it in the past. Plus he's LDS. His Mom is the receptionist, and the sweetest lady. So I trust her with the baby. I guess I'll see how long my back is out this time before I make any decisions.

I've figured out this time around that moving around is best for my back. So I decided to stay home from church so I could walk around, lie down, etc. whenever I needed. I really wanted to go to church, but it just felt like it would be too much. Hubby came and picked up C because she loves nursery so much, and I'm home with the baby. It's amazing what you take for granted until your back goes out! Just picking up the baby, carrying her around, standing up while holding the baby. Ouch.

Well, enough about my back.

I've decided I'm not going to promise anything about how often I'm going to post. I'm just going to post when I need to talk. Probably daily for a while and then a couple times a week or so.

So I promised more about my family.... Well, with 10 kids in my family, and 7 kids in hubby's, One question I keep expecting is, "so does that mean that you guys are going to have a big family?" Well, we actually will probably have a smaller family. We were thinking 3 -4. Thats a number we feel comfortable with, and feel that we can handle financially and otherwise.

My parents were great. They weren't perfect, because no one is, but they did their best. Dad grew up on a farm and milked cows and has stories about how he picked up potatoes in a field for 10 cents a bag. He worked for his father for the first few years of their marriage. Grandpa had a earth moving type buisiness. They lived in an area that was somewhat up in the hills and they built sewer systems, roads, etc. One story I remember him telling was about some guy who owned a piece of land with a lake on it. Well, he didn't own the whole lake, the forest service owned about 1/3 of the lake. This guy owned the half that had a water source that fed the lake. I don't remember why, but think it had to do with something the forest service was going to do on the lake or something, but this guy hired Grandpa to build a wall of dirt along the property line of the lake. So Dad had a backhoe or something and scooped dirt and built this wall. he mentioned how he would drive along this wall (just about as wide as his backhoe) and dump his dirt and then have to back all the way back along this wall to the shore again. I don't think this lake was very deep (6-8 feet?), but I'm sure Grandpa didn't want the backhoe in the water. Anyway, I think the forest service's side of the lake dried up or something like that, but I think the guy made his point and the forest service stopped whatever they had planned.

The whole family had a family reunion in the area a few years ago and we went to visit this lake. Kind of a family history tour of our family. The wall was still there, and the guy had planted trees along the whole thing. Probably to hold the dirt there. There was still water on the other side of the lake, but I didn't see anything over there. The guy had a buisiness or camp there at the lake where he rented canoes and other smaller watercraft to the public. It was really cool to see this place that I had heard about a lot.

We got to see the house that Dad was born in, and the first few homes that our family had lived in. We also got to see one of the schools that Mom had taught in. Mom went to Weber State in Utah and studied to be a teacher. I think at one point she taught gym. But in this small town she had opened a private kindergarten. I've actually seen one or two pictures of some of the classes she had. Great beehive there, Mom! Mom and Dad lived in several small towns before settling for about 10 years in this town where Dad had grown up. Dad worked for Grandpa and I seem to remember that early in their marriage he worked at a scout camp as a leader for a few summers. There are a couple of stories there, but I don't remember them well enough to tell them. So I'll see if I can have Dad tell me again and then I'll put them in here.

Dad built their home from one of those kits you could buy from a hardware store (a house kit, you get everything you need, you do the labor) . It was a great house that had a deck that wrapped around the back of the house, and small pasture out front.

I remember Mom telling the story of when she was pregnant with #5 & 6 (twins!) . She was getting big pretty quick and the doctor suspected twins (Mom was a twin). He sent her over to get an x-ray. She was walking back from the x-ray and had it with her. One of her friends- a nurse - stopped her, begged her to let her look at the x-ray. Anyway, She told Mom it was twins and was so excited.

I was # 7 and we moved from that house when I was 6 months old. Mom and Dad had a hard time selling that house because it was worth more than a lot of homes in the area (large house for large family) and because the town was pretty small, Lots of farms, and not a lot of people moving in and out. Mom and Dad asked the family to fast. I remember my older sister W saying that she went to school and was really hungry and some kids ate in front of her. :) I seem to remember that the reason for moving was that Grandpa was selling his buisiness or retiring or something, so Dad had to find a different job.

Anyway, they were able to sell the house and moved about 3-4 hours away into a bigger city. They lived there for about 6 months. Then Dad found a job with the church's Deseret Industries. They hired him to be a production manager in one of the Oregon stores. We moved into a house that had 3 bedrooms and 1 bathroom upstairs (along with kitchen, front room, etc) and a seperate apartment downstairs with 2 bedrooms and a bathroom along with a kitchen and family room. It had a huge garage that I remember Grandpa driving up to help Dad out in converting it to a huge family room. This was necessary because to get from the house to the apartment you had to walk through the garage. So in order to convert it to a huge house for a large family, you had to somehow connect this space. I think they decided on another family room area because Mom was going to do daycare. Yep you heard it right, daycare with 7 kids already! So our house was always busy and filled with kids. I forgot to mention that a very small portion of the garage was kept for Dads tools. It was pretty pitifully small. But at least it was a place for his tools. Also, this large extra family room worked well when mom was called to teach early morning seminary (not enough kids for release time). I remember all the chairs and also the "Free to Choose" videos Mom would watch so that she could decide if she wanted to show them to her class. "I'm free to choose, to win or lose, no matter who... something something la la la"

So we lived in Oregon for 10 years and then Dad received an offer for a job transfer to Idaho. After prayer and asking us kids for a vote, we moved. Mom and Dad decided for some reason to have Mom look for a job rather than doing daycare. I think it was because The youngest 2 (also twins) were in kindergarten, and so there was no reason for Mom to be home all the time anymore. She got a job at the local Beehive Clothing, and eventually moved up to manager. So this is where they still live today in a house with 6 bedrooms. All the kids have moved out, and I believe that they will be moving into the same town we live in in the next few years.

I'm sure I could go on and on, but I should get up and move around for my back.