28

28 was the year of the house.  As Greg put it, the house isn't a trial trial like cancer or loosing a job, it's just annoying.  Which is true.  Whenever I'd stress or whine about the house (the Provo one we were renting), I felt a little silly for whining about my first world problems.  Nevertheless, it was sufficiently annoying that the April of the year I was 28, we put the house on the market to sell it.  And it sat there.  And sat.  And sat some more for nearly a year.  I learned a lot about the Lord's timing on this one.  As usual, He knew exactly what he was doing.  We ended up selling it at just the perfect time, but the waiting and spending loads of money on a house we didn't want anymore was annoying.  Not to mention fearing my phone ringing because 98% of the time it was one tenet or another whining or something or it was the real estate agent with more bad news.  It was stressful.  And cured me of my desire to own another home anytime soon.  Besides, buying a house would mean moving away from Becky and I think I've pretty well established my complete obsession with her.

Most of my 28th year, I was also pregnant.  As a lady I met at the park said, new house, new baby.  True.  Pretty much as soon as we moved onto the Wheatley compound, I got pregnant.  Pregnancy was much less fun this time around.  While this was my first pregnancy where I didn't land myself in the ER for something stupid like falling on ice or running too much, but I'm getting older and being 28 and pregnant is not the same as being 23 and pregnant.  I also had two other kids I had to take care of so I couldn't nap as much as I liked.  I get SUPER tired when I'm pregnant.  The whole nine months I sleep like a newborn.

Then there was the stress of where Henry was going to be born.  Definitely not a hospital but the birth center where Alice was supposed to be born had been shut down by the state.  I spent a lot of time trying to finagle my way out of a hospital birth--if we rented an apartment in South Carolina for a month then we could have a home birth there, but that would be uncomfortable without any furniture.  But then what if we just move some of our furniture to South Carolina and we just lived there for a month until the baby is born.  But then what would we do with Rex and Alice during the birth?  We probably won't have any friends down there to watch them?  Well, what if we got a hotel room instead?  That'd be cheaper, but we'd have to sneak in the back door because they probably don't want the liability on their hands.  Or what if I just don't let Greg I'm in labor and just secretly have the baby at home; I did it once, I can do it again.  In January or so, the birth center re-opened so that solved all those problems.

Rex was in Joy School again but this time with 6 kids instead of 4, which meant I didn't have to teach as often.  We loved it again.  I didn't stress as much about teaching, was a better teacher, and also just enjoyed my mornings with Alice.

Joy School graduation/pool party

This was also the winter where I had the brilliant idea not to run our heater.  Becky said they paid $2000 to run the heater in this house for one winter and I was not about to pay that much.  So Greg and I did some reading and learned that zonal heating is really efficient.  We decided to try it.  We bought two space heaters then used some thermal backed curtains to close off the main part of the house from the bedrooms.  It did not work.  The house was usually about 40 degrees.  I could see my breath in the morning.  My mother-in-law often offered for us to come to her house just to hang out and be warm.  I didn't quite realize how cold I was at the time.  We were all just sort of frozen.  We went out most mornings to some place warm, then came home and read stories under a pile of blankets, watched TV and napped away the afternoons.  It wasn't until spring came and it started warming up outside that I realized how cold I had been all winter.  We did not repeat the experiment.

At the same time, we were paying upward of $500 for our electric bill.  I couldn't figure it out.  We only ran the space heaters when we were actually home, turned them off when we went to bed at night; we stopped watching TV at night to save energy; turned the computer off whenever we weren't using it.  Finally, in August after my 29th birthday and still having huge bill even after being gone for 3 weeks, Greg figured out that we were being billed for our neighbor's huge house and swimming pool.  The energy company eventually reimbursed us.

In the spring, just as I started thawing out, Henry was born.  He birth was even faster than Alice's but because of Alice's, we knew not to doddle and to get straight to the birth center.  He was born an hour after we arrived.  The next few weeks were rough.  I have a hard time nursing.  Just doesn't come naturally to me.  And Henry was (still is) a hungry child.  He would nurse for HOURS every night just to scream for more when I put him down.  I was so tired I started describing sleep as delicious.  After multiple round trips to the birth center for weighing and counseling, my midwife told me to feed him for 15 minutes on each side then pump for another 15 then feed him what I had pumped.  Repeat two hours later.  I did that for about three weeks.  It doesn't sound like much now, but it was very time consuming then and those were long three weeks.

Luckily I had learned from Rex and Alice's baby blues and was prepared for number 3.  I put absolutely nothing on my to do list for about 6 weeks.  I laid in bed most of the 2 weeks my mom was in town.  No baby blues with Henry.  Just house blues, but we already talked about that.

Spring quickly turned to summer.  The kids took swimming lessons and I bought a pool pass.  We spent the rest of the summer swimming.  And no naps!  We stayed at the pool as long as we wanted with Henry tucked away in the shade of his car seat.

Rex played T-ball

Mommy and Me swim lessons with Alice

Mother's Day 2014

Then in July Greg came home and announced he was quitting his job to start his own company.  GULP!  Great!  I said.  Let's do that.  All the while thinking, aren't we supposed to have a year or two of income saved before starting a business, isn't that what Dave Ramsey would say?  But I'd been through enough job changes with Greg to trust him.  He's no Dave Ramsey for sure.  Greg loves risk and thrives when put to the test.  So with one investor on board, Greg quit his job.

A few weeks later, I turned 29.  And we got ready for our epic summer road trip to Utah.

 *I have lost A LOT of pictures...I really need to figure out what happened to that last few years worth of pictures.