Cindy, calm down

Sometimes Eric jokingly calls me a control freak. I prefer the term "worrier," but his description is probably more accurate, because the whole reason I worry as much as I do is because there are too many things I don't have control over. That stresses me out.

It seems the Lord is constantly trying to remind me that He's the one in control, and while I may not be able to see the whole picture, I can be assured that everything will work out in the end. If I had a nickle for every time I've witnessed the proof of this...I would have a lot of nickles. But for some reason I forget that huge bank of nickles whenever I run into a wall in my life.

Right now there's so much up in the air and I have really been freaking out. I seem to forget that thousands of people have been in practically identical situations to mine and have found their way through and survived the years of grad school just fine and lived on to tell the tale.

I don't really know the purpose of this post; maybe I just wanted to get it off my chest and for some reason felt like that merited a public forum for some personal issue that would probably be better off written about in a journal...Anyways, a long time ago I saved this quote as a draft in my Gmail account so I would always have it close by. It usually has a good impact on me, but today it hit me in the face like a brick. I know Eric and I will make it through and everything will work out--when and how, I don't know. But I do know I will be a better person because of everything we're experiencing.

"We live in a day when the adversary stresses on every hand the philosophy of instant gratification. We seem to demand instant everything, including instant solutions to our problems. We are indoctrinated that somehow we should always be instantly emotionally comfortable. When that is not so, some become anxious--and all too frequently seek relief from counseling, from analysis, and even from medication. It was meant to be that life would be a challenge. To suffer some anxiety, some depression, some disappointment, even some failure is normal. Teach your members that if they have a good, miserable day once in a while, or several in a row, to stand steady and face them. Things will straighten out. There is a great purpose in our struggle in life."

Boyd K. Packer, “Solving Emotional Problems in the Lord’s Own Way,” Ensign, May 1978, 91

It's a boy!

Oh, by the way, Cindy is pregnant in case you didn't know. Yep, she is. Crazy, huh?

This is Cindy at 18 weeks. You can kinda see a belly.

So we went to the doctor's office today and got an ultrasound done. Our baby is a healthy 1/2 pounder right now...and it's a boy! We have decided on the name Noah Roger Badger. Here are some pictures from the ultrasound. We did not include the "boy" picture, cuz that's my child's personals. The approximate due date is Christmas.

*Note from Cindy
I had Eric write this because I didn't want to give a lot of details and bore people. But we're very excited and glad that everything is going well and we have a healthy baby boy on the way! We love you all.

Home sweet home

Well, the first night we spent in Virginia a guy who is already in Eric's program told us about a house that was available to rent in Mechanicsville, which is about 15 minutes from campus for Eric. We had been interested in looking for a house in that area anyways because...it's not as scary :) We decided we'd keep it as an option as we looked for a place.

After going apartment shopping all day Friday, we were getting discouraged. Neither of us has found a job yet, and everywhere we went requires you to have proof of employment before you can sign a lease. We couldn't get in to look at the house until Saturday, so we decided to see that on Saturday and continue our search on Monday.

We looked at the house and were pretty pleased, and everything was going to work out great. The best part is that it's three bedrooms and is less money than all the two bedroom apartments we looked at. We moved our things in today in time to return the moving truck, and now we're just getting started with some cleaning and fixin' up!

-The front-

-Our lovely old shed. A window pane broke when Eric tried to shut it. It's old-

-The driveway-

-Me in front of the house. We did a long view so you could see how giant the front yard is-

-The back yard. With a hole. The old renters had a dog...or grew marijuana. Or both-

-Eric's favorite feature in the house-

-The bathroom. It's pretty small but it has enormous amounts of cupboard space behind the door-

-One side of the basement. I had another picture of the other side but blogger's being fickle and I'm being lazy. This is where we have a W/D hookup-

-The creepy stairs down to the basement-

-Tiny kitchen that's really not too bad, just needs some good cleaning-

-The dining area between the kitchen and living room. The color's not awful but the paint job is--and they painted over wallpaper. We're going to paint later this month after the owner replaces the windows and siding, and Eric's excited to get rid of any trace of wallpaper in the house-

-The smallest bedroom for the smallest person...-

-Eric's man cave with dark wood paneling that I despise. Eric won't let me paint it because he likes the dark wood more than he would like painted paneling. Good thing I won't be spending too much time in here, because this will be his office where he can do his homework-

-The largest bedroom where we're setting up camp-

-The living room. It's pretty giant compared to our apartment in Wymount. We have a couch and a coffee table to go in there so far...and maybe our lawn chairs, haha-

It's really not bad at all, and Eric's glad to have something to fill his time before he starts school, I think. He likes having a project. We're really excited to have found a good deal, and we're especially excited to be living in a house rather than an apartment!