In the Time Between This Entry and the One Before it, We Had a Baby

Seriously, Megan wasn't even pregnant the last time I wrote in this thing. Now we have the most adorable baby in the world and neither of us has a job. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I need to take things back to the very beginning. Before I begin, I must say that I wish I had written this right after the baby was born. It's unfortunate when you have to look back on a monumental experience and try and capture it with the same emotions you felt at the time. Let that be a lesson: write about stuff while it's still fresh.

So it was October of 2009 when all this madness began. Megan and I had talked about getting pregnant before, and we knew that it wouldn't be too much longer when we would officially be trying, but nothing had really been said. Anyway, we had purchased some pregnancy tests and hadn't used one yet. On Friday night, Megan had a dream about being pregnant. On Saturday morning we were watching the first session of General Conference. Megan couldn't shake this idea of being pregnant, and between the morning and afternoon sessions, she decided to use one of the tests. She wasn't gone very long, but when she came back she seemed a little shaky. She dropped the test on my desk, and when I saw the plus sign, we embraced, laughed, and one of us cried some tears of joy though I won't say which. It was very hard to pay attention during the next session of conference, even though I was taking detailed notes for my seminary classes.

On Sunday we broke the news to Megan's family over dinner, and I called my family on the drive back. I must say it felt good to be telling people that we were going to have a baby. It feels like you've arrived. When you get married, it's like you've joined this awesome club of people who know exactly what you're talking about when you sit around and talk like boring married people do. When you have a baby, you just jumped up to a new level in that club. Also, as a stage of life thing, it feels much better to tell people I'm 30 when I have a wife and kid than it would if I was single. It just makes me feel like I've made some correct choices along the way.

With the news broken and everybody wishing us well, we had only to let that little mass of cells in Megan's belly divide again and again and turn into a fully-fledged baby. It seemed pretty simple, especially considering the fact that all Megan had to do was eat and metabolize. That just goes to show that neither of us knew exactly what to expect on the wild roller coaster known as pregnancy.

Megan soon found herself inflicted with all the horrible effects of morning sickness which were also accompanied (at varying times and degrees) by mid-morning sickness, elevensies sickness, high noon sickness, mid-afternoon sickness, the part of the day where no pair of sunglasses and car visor will ever block the fiery rays of an angry sun sickness, dusk sickness, night sickness, and I haven't slept at night so don't you dare tell me it's morning now sickness. To put it bluntly: she threw up a lot. Her record was 10 times in a single day. Beat it if you dare. It got to the point where seemingly inoffensive things like breathing and water were enough to make her sick. I kid you not. Breathing and water.

If any of you have ever been on the Pioneer Trek, you must know that I now understand why the women's pull is a necessary experience for the young men. Nothing else that I have ever experienced in my life prepared me as well for the experience of watching my wife be completely at the mercy of her own body. There wasn't a thing I could do, so I did what I could. And remember, we haven't even gotten to the birth yet. This is just the price of admission you pay to get to the birth. I couldn't be more proud of Megan. You would think I play for the San Antonio Spurs the way I whine when I have a simple cold. I couldn't imagine throwing up hundreds of times over the better part of a year. Much respect to women for enduring the things they have to endure.

So Megan's constant sickness made a few things difficult. First of all, she could only throw up certain foods once because afterward she found them completely repulsive. She would stay in the opposite end of the house if I was cooking something she had previously thrown up. And with the number of times she got sick, the list of acceptable foods shrunk to almost nothing. The second difficulty that came as a result of sickness was that when Megan isn't feeling well, she doesn't like to be touched, hugged, kissed, talked to etc. So I really had nothing in my bag of tricks to help her feel better. It was a tough time for both of us.

As Megan progressed in the pregnancy, she kept looking for the time when she would start feeling better, as did I. Over time she wasn't sick as often or as violently (she once burst a blood vessel in her eye from violent puking), but I don't think she had a single week during the whole pregnancy in which she didn't puke at least once. I'll bet she'll love all this stuff I'm writing about the puking, but it really was a major part of the pregnancy and affected all aspects of our lives.

When Megan finally started really showing, she was able to enjoy being pregnant a little more. She had always wanted to feel the sensation of having a tiny person living inside. Frankly, that's just the sort of thing I hope never happens to me, but Megan couldn't have been more thrilled when our little girl started kicking. If she turns out to be the next Mia Hamm it won't suprise me at all. Leah was very active in the womb. You could often see a little lump move all the way accross Megan's belly. It's like she was practicing bicycle kicks in there.

I should probably mention now that I had discussed with Megan that I wanted a boy. Megan was pregnant with the first Badger baby in our family thus far, as all my sisters have long since taken their husband's last names (shameful, I know). I wanted to make sure that our family name carries on. Anyway, when we had the ultrasound to find out the sex, the doctor pointed at three white specks on the ultrasound (I don't know how to figure those things out, by the way. I could hardly tell which things were baby and which were my wife's innards) and asked if we knew what it meant. We replied that with our limited medical training (I got whatever merit badge you get for knowing CPR and how to tie a tourniquet) we had no idea. He told us, "That's classic girl. You're going to have a little girl." While leaving the office that day, I felt perfectly happy knowing that we were having a daughter. Paul and Carrie can have a buncha boys.

As our daughter grew, we discussed possible names. Megan and I both have simple names and we both like simple names, especially Bible names. Megan had always been partial to Leah. The name does have a nice ring to it. We also talked about the middle name Marie, which we know is already the middle name of literally millions of girls and women across the globe. The high occurrence of Marie as a middle name notwithstanding, Megan and I loved the name Leah Marie, and we decided to keep it. It really changes things when you settle on a name. When you pray for the baby to be healthy, you aren't just calling it, "the baby" or even using the pronoun, "it." You get to say "Leah" and "she." It makes the whole thing a lot more real, even though one would think that your wife's puking problem and expanding belly would be proof enough of the reality. The name makes it real that there's a little person in there.

The days dragged on and as Leah's due date approached, the doctor would let Megan know that she wasn't dilating at all. It would appear that we would go past the due date, which was June 3rd. We had a Doctor's appointment right before the due date, and we asked about the possibility of inducing. He told us that they didn't like to do it until at least a week after the due date. So we were told that if Megan still hadn't had the baby on the Tuesday after the due date, they'd set up an appointment to induce on the Thursday. So at least we had a date for Leah to come. At least it would happen soon.

So that appointment was on a Tuesday, June 1st and our next appointment was on Tuesday, June 8th. At about 4:00 in the morning on Monday, June 7th I was awoken by Megan tapping my shoulder. She had the same sort of teary-eyed smiley-faced expression she had when she showed me the plus sign on the pregnancy test. This time she told me that her water had just broken. Having been prepared for this experience by a lot of book reading and speaking with Megan's Mom and Sisters, we both knew the delivery was probably at least 12 hours away. So we tried unsuccessfully to go back to bed. After a few minutes of futility, I decided to go shopping for the things we would need that we didn't yet have. This killed a little bit of the time.

The funny thing about early labor is that it isn't all that intense. Megan's water had broken and she was having contractions but they weren't that strong or close together. We had plenty of time to let the reality of the situation sink in. Seriously, a ridiculously long amount of time to let it sink in. Megan's Mom came over fairly early in the day and helped out quite a bit. Megan's Sister Kish came over a bit later, and was a great relief because she's a labor and delivery nurse.

After 12 hours had passed, we decided to go check into the hospital. It's a pretty funny thing to do when you've seen how it goes down on TV and in movies. Nobody rushes to your car with a wheelchair and takes your wife away. You waltz in there, she meets with a doctor for 15 minutes or so before you even get admitted, then you get admitted and your wife walks herself to the very room where she will experience excruciating pain in the process of bringing a child into the world. There's a lot less fanfare than you'd think, but it's still very exciting. You know that it's all a matter of time before you get to meet this adorable little person who's been elbowing your wife's backbone.

I must stop for a moment and tell you that I've always been terrified of hospitals. If I ever say the words, "Can you take me to the hospital," you can be assured that I am in a terrible amount of pain. I don't know why, but I've never been able to do hospitals. That being the case, it came as a terrific surprise to me that I wasn't trembling when they led us deep into the bowels of the hospital. I was perfectly at ease, and so was Megan. We even took a little video when we got into the birthing suite, and both Megan and I were laughing, smiling, and joking. There's proof of it on video.

As we settled in to the birthing suite, Megan's contractions began to be more intense and closer together. As they did, those of us who were there with her (Carol, Kish, Shannon, and I) would go to our battle stations holding her hands, pushing the pressure points on her thighs, breathing with her, etc. We settled into our positions and bunkered down for what would turn out to be quite a long night.

Megan was contracting more intensely and regularly, but every time the nurses would come in, they would tell us that she still wasn't dilated or hadn't dilated very far. Once again the women's pull came to my mind as Megan was experiencing intense pain and all I could do was hold her hand and tell her she was doing great.

As the night wore on, we all got tired. Kish and Shannon got a little rest and when they got up they told me to go to bed. Our nurse was kind enough to procure a bed for me, and although it was hardly comfortable, it was a place to lay down. I slept for a couple hours and felt a bit like the Apostles sleeping through the Atonement. When I woke back up, I didn't leave Megan's side again until Leah was out.

It was another few long, painful hours before Megan was even ready to begin pushing. The contractions were coming a couple minutes apart and would last up to a minute. After each contraction I would look up at the clock and the hands didn't seem to move at all. I should mention now that Megan had chosen natural childbirth. I can't even imagine how intense the pain was. We all got a little sleep, but Megan really hadn't had any until the nurse offered to give her stadol to help ease the pain of the contractions. After she was given stadol, Megan would be wide awake for her contractions, but would be snoring almost immediately after. She would get a quick 60 seconds of sleep and then go right back to contracting. It was a little funny to watch someone go from extreme pain to dead asleep in a matter of seconds, but I would never have told her that at the time.

Eventually Megan was fully dilated and the nurse called Dr. Holmes. What I didn't know is that the nurses do most of the work and the doctor shows up at the end for the exciting part. Dr. Holmes told the nurse he'd shower up and come over. What we didn't know was how long of a shower he was planning on taking or how far away he lived. We hoped the answer to both was, "not very" because Megan was ready to push and Leah was ready to make her grand debut.

The nurse suggested that Megan get in a few preliminary pushes to make sure she knew how it was to be done and generally get a feel for it. After a few pushes, Leah was crowning. Megan was pretty anxious to get Leah out, but Dr. Holmes wasn't there yet so the nurse had to show her how to not push.

After what seemed like an eternity, Dr. Holmes made an entrance and we got down to business. Once everything was set up, Megan started pushing and things just happened. It was only a few minutes and Leah was out. I thought for sure I would have passed out somewhere along the way, but I handled it surprisingly well. I even cut the cord. Obviously Megan handled it better than anyone. When she was pushing, her sisters said she had a determined look on her face. Here eyes were on the ceiling and as Kish and Shannon tell it, "Megan looked like she was staring the devil in the face." She was certainly determined and all the nurses couldn't help but tell her what an amazing job she did.

Once Leah was out and unattached, they handed her to Megan. They were both so beautiful. It was a sight words can hardly describe. After a minute on Megan's chest, they handed Leah to me. I couldn't believe how bright-eyed and curious she was. She was looking all around the room and taking it all in with wild-eyed wonder. I also noticed she could move her toes independently, just like her mother. If she doesn't someday learn to draw with her feet like her mother does, I'll be surprised. I held her for a minute before they nurses needed her back.

The nurses weighed and measured her and she was much bigger than any of us would have thought. She was 22.5 inches long and weighed 9 lbs. 2 oz. We couldn't believe how much hair she had or how dark it was. Megan and I thought for sure we'd have blonde-haired blue-eyed kids. At least we got the blue eyes right. Leah has beautiful blue eyes and is still as curious as ever.

It has been a truly amazing experience to be home for Leah's first days. Nothing can prepare you for how much you'll love your child. Megan and I sneak into her room every night just to see her sleeping. We absolutely adore our little girl and she definitely has me wrapped around her little finger even though she can only now barely wrap all of her little fingers around one of mine.

There is an expression that I use to describe certain life experiences that are supposed to be transcendent or otherworldly. The word is "lifey." What I mean by it is that so many of life's experience, especially the big ones feel exactly like life. There isn't as much fanfare and you certainly don't feel much different. Think about some of life's big experiences: turning 18 feels exactly like 17 did, only you get to eat cake. Going on a mission feels exactly like life, but it happens in a different place. Getting married feels exactly like life. All these experiences are very lifey. That is not to say that they are not wonderful, memorable, or important. Such experience are certainly all these things and more, but at the time it feels just like it feels at almost every other moment in life. It's life. You get older. You go through rites of passage, but a lot of time the growth or change inherent in these events takes time and hindsight to be apparent. Now that you understand the concept of things being lifey I will say this: having a baby is not lifey at all. It's indescribable. It's transcendent. It's otherworldly. It is absolutely unlike any other experience in the world.

Well, I should probably wrap this up. It's been a mammoth post and I've got a wife and a baby to go love. I will say this: I have no idea how often I'll be writing now that I've gotten back on here, but I'll at least try to hit the highlights. I couldn't go much longer without having recorded some of the experience of bringing Leah into the world. Anyway, I close this entry and turn it to my lovely wife who will add all the pictures.

I'm Not Dead Yet

Hey all,

I just heard that this blog got marked inactive. Sorry. You know how it is when it's crunch time for teaching and there's a baby on the way and every single facet of your life is going to be different in a few short months. I don't know when I'll have the time to post again, but I want this here blog to still be active when I do. So consider this entry filler.

It's Been a Million Years, So I Thought I'd Drop a Note

Hey everybody. I know it's been a million years or so since I last wrote in this blog. I think the last time I wrote I didn't know I was going to be student teaching yet. Yeah, it was a strange turn of events. I was #7 out of 6 student teachers I didn't think my phone would ring this summer, but fate intervened. Brother Barker, whom I have not met but I have every reason to believe is a fine upstanding teacher, had ASU up his credit requirement and he didn't graduate. Since you have to have a Bachelor's degree to teach, he got bumped and I got his spot. It's certainly a lot like being called up from the minor leagues in baseball: you don't get to come up unless someone else gets hurt. Anyway, I got my call from Brother Moon and he asked if I would like to teach and it took less than a millisecond to decide.

So I've been teaching for nearly a month now (yeah, I know I'm covering ground everybody is familiar with now, but I need to have a record of it so I can look back and remember) and it's been a bit of an emotional roller-coaster. At first I had just two classes out in Queen Creek. The schools out in Queen Creek are on a modified year-round schedule, so I started teaching on the 19th of August. It was a bit weird because at first I was making the big commute out to Queen Creek bright and early to teach my first and second hour classes, coming back home to change into my work duds and working the last half of the day at the balloon store. Working at the balloon store got a little depressing because it was a job that paid the bills, but it wasn't what I wanted to be doing with my life.

Fast forward to the point where I had been teaching at Queen Creek for a week and a half and we were having our last preservice inservice, and Brother Moon asked if anyone wanted to pick up another class. I told him I would pick up the extra class and he told me he would work on it for me. I was super excited because I thought I could quit my job at the balloon store and start focusing on just teaching. Brother Moon called me back and initially told me I would get the class, but he then called me back and told me that they wouldn't have the class for me after all. During this time I had put in my two week notice at the balloon store and had to retract it. Then I got another call from Brother Moon who offered me a class at Heritage Academy. Once I got that class I put my two week notice in again and I was off and rolling.

The fun thing about Heritage Academy is that Brady Bingham is the other teacher there. It's funny because they're the other people Paul and Carrie stay with when they're down here. So all the stars were aligning and it was hard to believe that this would be anything but a bed of roses.

Of course the truth of it is that it hasn't been a complete bed of roses. When I taught my two weeks at Mesa while I was taking the classes, I was working with a class that wasn't mine. They liked having a change of pace for two weeks, but they knew that in the end they would be going right back to Brother Dixon. I've found it a very different experience teaching a class that is mine and mine alone.

It's been an out of the frying pan into the fire type of experience. There are classroom management things that I'm having to take care of that I've never taken care of before. There are discipline issues that I'm taking care of that I've never taken care of before. I've even changed around my seating chart because two of my students went on a bad date and some feelings were hurt and they needed to not sit so close to each other.

Also, the strengths I have always fallen back on as a teacher don't seem to matter right now. I know I'm being pulled and stretched, but I have to admit that at times I go home and wonder if I'll ever learn to teach the way that seminary teachers are supposed to teach. My problem is that I talk too much and I don't let my students do enough. That has consistently been my weakness.

Not only that, but I had an evaluation this week and I didn't even get into the important part of the lesson because it was a shortened day and there was too much business to get through at the top of the class. So my evaluation came back really poor and I got a, "Why did you think they needed this lesson?" type question. It's been very hard to handle. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever grow up to be a good teacher.

Now that I've taken everything down, here's the up: every seminary teacher I've talked to has had experiences like the ones I've had. Brother Johnson, one of the other teachers at Queen Creek, told me that when people tell his wife they are thinking of going into CES she tells them, "Are you sure? Are you really really sure?" She asks because he felt a lot of the same things I've felt so far. The good thing is that Brother Moon is a very nice guy. Brother Woodbrey had a preservice director who used to say really mean things like, "I can't believe I thought it was a good idea to put you in the classroom" or my personal favorite: "Your students would have been better off if they had ditched today." Brother Moon is very good when he gives me criticism and I take it in the spirit in which it is intended.

Also, I understand that in order for me to become a good teacher, I have to rid myself of some bad habits and allow myself to be rebuilt from scratch in places. I am putting all my time and efforts into becoming the teacher I'm sure you all think I am. I know I can be a good teacher and I'm not giving up on the dream. There's still no reason to think that I couldn't turn this all around and become a very good seminary teacher. I just needed to make sure I record the fact that it hasn't been a bowl of cherries. It's hard to be a seminary teacher. It's harder work and more exhausting than you would think. I am only now beginning to understand why there is such a tough screening process. Not everyone is meant to do this for a living. Very few people get to do it. I just hope I get to be one of them.

Down From Four

Hey everybody. I've only got a couple spare minutes and then I need to head out to a stake priesthood meeting, but I wanted to drop a quick post because it's about time.

Megan and I took a bit of a quick trip to Pima this weekend. Megan wanted to go to Christine's baby shower, but didn't want to make the trip if I wasn't coming. So we worked it out for us to go spend the night at Kimberly's and then Megan, Kimberly, Kelly, and Carrie could go to the baby shower together and Emmett, Paul, and I could light stuff on fire and whatnot.

Anyway, we had a nice time at Kimberly's. They are the proud first recipients of the first batch of Badger Family Classics. As some of you may know, I'm working on making DVD's of movies we love that have never been released on DVD. Things like Pure Luck and One of Our Dinosaurs is missing. Anyway, since Kimberly and Emmett don't run on DVD's too much anyway, I ripped my copies of the DVD's to their Apple TV.

It's getting to the point where Megan and I have a little bit of a harder time leaving home because Gamera is getting almost too big to fit in his old terrarium. Actually, he's way to big to live in his old one, but we can let him spend the night in it. When Megan and I take some time off over the 4th of July (We're going back to St. Johns, so if anyone else thinks that might be a good time to go home, we'll be there. So if that isn't a reason to go, I don't know what is) we'll have to pay one of the neighbor kids to come feed him. There's no way we're going to take him with us because his new terrarium (that Megan and I built with our own bare hands) is too big to move around.

I got released from some callings today. I got a default release from my Elder's Quorum teaching gig because they got someone else to do it. I was also released from teaching Sunday School for the 14-15 year olds. It was funny because I had only taught them for a few weeks but they were really upset when I told them I wouldn't be teaching them anymore. They told me they had scared off a couple teachers before and they didn't want me to go. They can be a rowdy bunch, but I liked teaching them. It's funny because I can really feel myself settling into my Elder's Quorum calling. I would much rather teach, but I find myself concerned with home teaching and other such stuff, so I guess I'll stick with this calling for a while. They still haven't released me from being a clerk, but I guess that'll come with time. The ward clerk has been gone the last couple weeks, so I've actually gotten some clerk stuff done despite him telling me, "Don't even worry about clerk stuff. You have too much going on as it is."

Well, that's all my time for today. Megan and I are doing well. We'll miss you all at the reunion, but it just doesn't look like it's going to happen. We'll get 'em next year.

Real Quick

Hey everybody. I had a minute and I was sitting in front of the computer so I thought I'd drop a quick post while I have the chance.

I'm posting from my Ubuntu box (my old desktop). I don't know if you knew, but Megan and I have had some funny business going on with our computers in days past. My desktop was getting really finicky and hers was just plain quitting on her. To solve my computer woes I got to buy a new computer. I didn't buy a top of the line machine. My old machine is 6 years old, which makes it a dinosaur in computer years, so it didn't take much to buy a better machine. I got a decent computer and slapped some spare parts in it and made it better than it was off the assembly line. As for Megan's computer, we bought her a new 1Tb (That's terabyte, not tablespoon) drive and it came right back to life. My new machine also has a terabyte hard drive.

Anyway, since I got a new machine, I have my old one just sitting around. Since I am the self-titled King of Used Electronics, I figured it just wouldn't be right to leave my old trusty rusty machine to collect dust. So I backed some of the more important files up and turned this machine into a Linux Box. I'm running the latest and greatest installment of Ubuntu. I am really loving it. I guess I'm slowly but surely turning into open source Greg.



Well, this post has taken a turn for the nerdy. I was just super excited to be posting in Ubuntu. It's a first.

So Megan has girl's camp coming up and she'll miss a day of work. Then she will be taking 10 days to do some freelance for Skyline, which is the last company she worked for. It's going to be an interesting month. I won't see her as often as I usually do. It's funny because I've gotten used to seeing Megan all day every day. We work together and we come home together. There aren't very many times when we're apart. The couple times I had to spend at work when she was sick a couple months ago were hard. I guess I'm spoiled to have her around as often as I do. I do, however, think it's funny how many people ask us if there's any tension with us working together. It's the classic sitcom plot: the husband and wife work together and the wife shows up or embarrasses the husband and the they find they don't work together as well as they thought. That hasn't been the case with us at all. We've been basically the exact opposite.

I'm going to really start pounding the pavement for a better job soon. As most of you know, I'm no fan of job searches. It's part of the reason I'll stay at a less-than-ideal job for way longer than I really should. But Megan and I need to be moving onward and upward and I really need to pick up the slack and go win some bread for us.

I guess we should post some pictures sometime soon and show what we did with the living room. I don't think most of you have seen our amazing paint job. Also, I need to show you the new terrarium we built for Gamera. He was getting too big for his old one. He's really growing. We hope he'll be comfy in his current home for at least another 6 months or so.

Well, this post has been all nerdy, disjointed, and fairly pointless. I'm a little rusty. Give me a little time and I'll try to start posting a little better and a little more often.

Thoughts on Our First Year

Hey everybody. As you may well know, it's been a really long time since I posted here. Part of that is due to the fact that I'm not sitting in front of a computer with nothing to do all day like I was when I worked at the library. The other part of it is that I really didn't want to talk about taking 7th place in the seminary teaching sweepstakes. Then days turned into weeks and I don't know how many months it's been, but I don't want to bother looking at the moment. Let's just suffice it to say that some time has passed and I have a little catching up to do.

I guess all sorts of interesting things have happened since I wrote last. But let me do something else entirely before I launch into a discussion of things you may want to know (and some you might not. I dunno. I just write this thing).

It was a year ago today that Megan and I were married. In some ways it feels like it's flown by all too quickly and in other ways it feels like we really should be married for more than a year by now. I feel like I've known Megan forever and I can hardly remember what life was like before having her around. I can still vividly remember how excited I was the first time we held hands, the first time we kissed, and when I finally convinced her to marry me. It's all been one amazing ride thus far.

In the past year we've had more than our fair share of trials and hardships. I'm proud to say that during all our trials Megan and I have pulled together rather than apart and we have grown so much closer than we were a year ago. Our first year of marriage has definitely been an interesting one. Megan and I have lost three jobs between us. I've held more callings than I thought one person ever legally could. We've somehow managed to stay afloat financially in difficult times. We have been blessed beyond measure, but we've also been lead to some transitional states and I honestly don't know where we'll end up. It's all been one amazing and frightening roller coaster ride thus far and I'm sure it will continue to be interesting in the years to come.

I am grateful to have Megan in my life. I can't even quantify how much better my life is since she's been in it. She inspires me to be my best self and believes so much in what I can become. I have been told time and time again by various people how lucky I am to have Megan as my wife. I know I'm lucky. She has been an amazing wife. I have been happier in the last year of my life, trials and all, than I have ever been at any other time. I love Megan more than I have power to express. I think if I can hold on to her, no matter what happens in life I'll be ok.

Yesterday we went over to the temple to do some sealings in commemoration of our anniversary. It's always great to be reminded of the covenants we've made and the blessings that come with them. After the temple, we went over to Deseret Book to pick up a picture of Christ to put in our living room. We have pictures of our wedding, and a picture of the temple, but we really wanted to get a picture of Christ. We really wanted to get "O Jerusalem" by Greg Olsen (pictured below)



But they wanted $50 for it and that seemed way too much for a print. We ended up buying this picture, which is a detail from "Christ and the Rich Young Ruler" by Heinrich Hoffman.



I really like this picture and it will look really nice in our living room. As time goes by and we build more and more memories here, this house is really starting to feel like home.

So I got set apart for my fourth calling today. That's right: I currently have four callings. They gave me another one and haven't released me from any of the others. My four callings are 1) Membership Clerk 2) Elder's Quorum Teacher 3) Sunday School teacher for the 14-15 year olds and 4) 1st counselor in the Elder's Quorum. I just got set apart in the Elder's Quorum today. A couple members of the bishopric joked that they might have another few callings for me before all is said and done. At this point I don't know whether I should take them seriously or not.

I'm glad to serve in the callings I have, but I have not sought out these callings at all. This has been the 2nd time in the year that we've been in this ward that I got the "We have a calling for you. Bring your wife" call from the Stake Presidency. I don't mind serving but I don't want to get a reputation as a mover and a shaker. I'd like to get one good calling and stick with it for a while.

When I told the ward clerk about my fourth calling he said, "Yeah, I heard about it in bishopric meeting. I told them that the third calling was funny but the fourth was just cruel." I thought the third was funny and the fourth was scary. The ward clerk all but kicked me out of the clerk's office today telling me I had way too many things to worry about right now and the last thing I need to be doing is figuring out why a new child of record shows up as accountable (I still don't know how I took a left turn in making that record. We might just leave it because he'll be accountable 8 years from now). All I can say is that this is an interesting position to be in.

So I guess I ought to talk a little about being #7 in seminary teaching. I knew going in that this was going to be a hard year. There were 2 guys in my class who were already teaching seminary classes due to some interesting circumstances. So they basically had a semester's head start on the rest of the class. I also knew they were taking fewer student teachers and that I had some pretty stiff competition. Before the evaluations began, my Mom talked to Brother Greer, my old seminary teacher, and he said, "Couldn't James have picked some other year to go into seminary teaching?"

As fate would have it, it has been an extremely difficult year for seminary teaching. There were 5 preservice locations that didn't have any student teachers hired (Arizona was one). Everybody has been surprised by how difficult this year has been for student teachers and prospective student teachers.

When I went in for my interview with Brother Moon, I expected him to tell me how much he enjoyed my teaching, which he did. I expected him to mention how well I bonded with the kids, which he did. Then I expected him to say I was either #2 or #3. I was being realistic and I knew my competition. When he told me I was #7 and that I was the first alternate and would not be teaching next semester unless someone drops out, I was stunned. I thought I would be teaching for sure. Everything in my life had aligned for me to take the classes and all signs were pointing to me student teaching next year. I just couldn't figure out why things didn't work out.

As I've considered my options in moving onward and upward in my life, I can't escape the fact that I have never been as excited to do any job as much as I was to teach seminary. I loved doing it. There are very few things in this world that I have loved as much as I loved my two weeks of teaching. Of course I'm frustrated not to be doing it this year, but there has to be a reason for it.

One reason I am seriously considering is timing. It would be very difficult to get hired if I was student teaching this coming semester. Chances are it will be easier to get hired next year. So I'm not letting go. Of course I'll be applying for other jobs and moving on with my life any which way I can, but there's no reason why I can't go back next year and try it all over again (aside from them telling me I can't, which I haven't explored yet). So there is still hope that maybe someday I might get to teach seminary. Also, as the first alternate, I'll be the first one called if anyone drops out and Brother Moon said he's never had a summer where he didn't have to use the alternate. This could be the first summer where he doesn't. I don't know how it will go. But I'm not giving up on the dream too easily.

Well, I feel like I've written enough. I need to go and spend some more time with the wife now. It is our anniversary after all. I won't make any promises about how often I'll write in the future. I'll only tell you that I'll try.