I am oficially full term pregnant.

I am not even going to apologize for not posting. This November is rough. I am a hero even for sitting upright right now.

We had our last Primary Program Practice. It went much better. No broken feet. No kamikaze jumps off the podiums. No Maracas. Our piano player did stop playing, in tears because she thought the sunbeams were all going to die, but I think she was over-reacting a little. We have six sunbeams and three adults sitting between them. No one else was crying. But, then again, the more I learn about primary callings the more I see how frustrating it an be to be a chorister or pianist who has to be ready all the time, but doesn't necessarily get a say in what's going on.

Also, though going well-ish, the program was stressful enough to start me having some contractions. That is no bueno. I have to hold out until the program.

I was going to write some more but I can't even.

Late start

Well it's November and I am starting NaBloPoMo two days late. In my own defense, my whole body hurts. Lets do a quick recap of where my life is at to get everyone (my adoring and faithful masses of readers) up to speed. This is my first November pregnant. The baby is due December 1st. (It's a girl).
We are living in Eugene, Oregon. Chris is in his first year of law school...again, but this time are getting paid an Army salary and the government is footing the bill. Thanks, Government,

Sophia, and Mary (oh, did you know she goes by Mary now?) go to an elementary school right by our house. Grace stays home with me and plays imaginary My Little Pony games all day long.

After we'd been here about three weeks I got called to be Primary President. I had never been primary president before. It looks a lot easier when other people do it. Our first program practice was last week. We had one kid attempt to jump off the podium and then one other little boy almost broke his foot in one of those folding chairs. I think the lowest point was when some well meaning teacher gave all the sunbeams maracas. So basically, it was your typical practice. We'll see how next Sunday goes.

Good enough catch up. I'll do a real post tomorrow.

I AM THE WINNER!

Yep folks. I did it. I wrote 50,000 words of my novel in one month. I am a hero. It was really hard, and annoying, and fun. Whoop Whoop! I'm going to put it aside for  week and then come back and do some major organization and hopefully finish a rough draft in January. Hooray for me! I am the best.

I can do hard things now (maybe because I have an easy life)

That's me at the bottom right. I look like I'm dying.

In September I ran my first ever half marathon. It was in Scotland. (Oh that's right I just flew to Scotland for the weekend and ran a half marathon. No biggie. Yawn.) I would have never thought I could do that--but I did! (Not very fast, my time was 2 hours 16 minutes.) It made me feel so awesome, not just that I had the willpower to run for that long, but also that I was able to practice every week. I certainly wasn't perfect at practicing, but I almost always got my long runs in on Saturdays. I was impressed that I could make a long term, difficult goal and keep it. I was also impressed that I did it to meet no one's expectations but my own. It was a purely Anna thing. 

Now it's November and I'm doing NaNoWriMo, which is a commitment to write 50,000 words towards a novel in a month. Uh, I'm not done yet. I have one day and 2,000 words left to write. But I know I'll finish it. FYI it is pretty hard for me to do. I have been writing about 2 hours every day. After thirty days, that's a long time to be writing. And a lot of it is pretty terrible, but some of it shows promise and I feel like my writing muscles are flexing in a way that they haven't since I graduated. This makes me proud as well.

So basically I am telling you that I am amazing because I am doing hard things that fulfill me.

But also, a little voice inside of me is kind of laughing because I am doing hard things because my life is easy right now. My children are all older than two which makes them lower maintenance; however, they are younger than six so their social lives still revolve around our family and I don't have to ferry them to multiple activities yet. We don't need money so I don't have to work. I have as few social responsibilities as I want, and I have a flexible schedule that I can shape around my wants. My life is easier than it has ever been as a mom! So I can do what I want to do.

I do think, I have matured and acquired  a lot of discipline, but if our finances changed for the worse, if another baby happened, if Chris deployed again, or if illness or any number of unforeseen obstacles fell into my life I am pretty sure I would have to drop my chosen hard things---because I would have real hard things to deal with.

But in the meantime, hooray for achieving goals! Whoop whoop! I am a hero!

Rough around the edges

Chris has an overnight shift tonight so all day has been a little rough around the edges. Knowing that there will not be another adult around somehow gives me all the permission I need to abandon all routine and practical parenting practices.

Hair did not get brushed today. Not everyone got lunch. Many cookies were eaten. Bedtime occurred when Mom got grumpy.

We did a lot of awesome things today too. We made Christmas cards and painted home-made ornaments. We cleaned...a little. But the end of the day was not a real end of the day because there was no Daddy to tell the girls to stop talking and eat their vegetables, no Daddy to tell the traditional weekend story of the adventures of Pink Giraffe and Red Giraffe (You should really ask Chris about those stories.)NO Christ to sit beside me and look at expensive knives on the Ipad while I try to write 2,000 words before bedtime. And now it's almost 10:00 and I should be done with my writing and heading to bed right now, but I wasted my time and I still have 700 more words to write.

It will be nice to have him back tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving

Well, it's been a splendid Thanksgiving. Much better than the last one where someone peed on my head. 

No, this time we had a snuggly family day where I made Chris help put up Christmas decorations with me. Anytime he got grumbly I just casually brought up that last year I did it ALL BY MYSELF, and then he got all all quiet and helpful. Actually he was helpful all day.

I wanted to make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies today, but I didn't have any chocolate chips. Chris very happily chopped up five chocolate bars so we could have chocolate chips. (Is this a normal thing to do? I started doing this on my mission a lot and have done it every so often since.) Anyway, he was excited to chop chocolate because he got to usev a knife. Actually he used two knives.One was doing a poor job and I think I heard him say he was going to sell it because it was bad at chopping chocolate.

Chris had to work tomorrow, so the girls and I are going to go to a local Christmas market and then I hope to write a ton. I am so excited for NaNoWriMo to be over. I have four days to write 8,000 more words. Wish me luck.

Bedtime Song Update

I was writing a post about Latin and Abelard and Heloise but then the computer went all crazy and I lost motivation (Don't tell me you didn't want to hear about that. I KNOW you wanted to hear about that.) So instead, here are the most-requested bedtime songs at our house lately: