Dylan's Update (written by Dylan)

I am liking it in my new school in 2nd grade. My teacher is Mrs. Blackmer, my room number is d4, and my desk is next to the door. We take timed tests and I am great at adding.

Ah, the Holidays! The best part of this week was all of the time we got to spend together. Also, this week we were uber blessed beyond measure. Firstly, thanksgiving was simple and delicious. I'm back to being vegetarian until the images of turkey preparation leaves me. I tend to not like to eat meat to begin with but whenever I have to basically mutilate an animal carcase for consumption, I simply can't eat it. Don't get me wrong, I'm always grateful for the animal who's life is now sustaining my family, but I'd really rather not. I made the best pumpkin pie I've ever made (cooking school is paying off it seems), Dylan took a really great picture of the table (which is in the collage), and Owen, well, he watched football. After dinner, we drove up to Saguaro Lake and enjoyed the pleasant weather and beautiful landscape. When we got home, we decided to head over to the Mesa temple to take in the Christmas lights and international nativity scene display. Dylan and I decided that it felt like we were in an enchanted forest as we walked along. Lovely day. On Friday, some of our petitions to the Lord for mercy were answered by way of grad school transcripts in the mail. Owen can now apply for and presumably get licensure here in the great state of Arizona! Now maybe he can utilize his training by working. YAY! Friday we also decorated the Christmas tree which was fun. Okay, it was messy, frustrating and many 8 year old tears were shed either caused by rage or hurt feelings. We like our tree and I believe we would all agree it was worth the drama in the end. This weekend I also made a wedding cake. It was labor intensive (8 hours worth) and I'm still not sure that the Bride approved (she has severe OCD and can I say that's a stressful person to try and cater to) but I feel good that I put forth my best effort to please her. On the way home from doing laundry, we happened upon a white leather couch that had been thrown onto the side of the road. Owen and I used Dylan's scooter to roll it into our house. HOORAY for free furniture! We've been sitting on folding chairs (and grateful to do so) for 5 months so to have an actual couch was a blessing. It took quite a bit of effort from me to get it to the acceptable level of clean that I would let my baby sit on it (I know he's 8 but he's still my baby and I'm still a mama bear) but it's actually quite a good couch and in good condition despite being initially dirtier than dirt. I shed tears of gratitude while I defunked the thing! The picture this week is a collage of the last weekend sans the tree and couch. Also, no pictures of Dylan in his scouting uniform yet. Hopefully this week.

Y'all take care and enjoy the beginning of the Christmas season.

-Rebecca

Week 2

This past week the highlight for our family was Dylan starting cub scouts. It's crazy really;I never understood it when my brothers were doing it but now I find having Dylan affiliated with the program quite awesome. Dylan is really loving it too even though the first activity we did was to hand out fliers around the neighborhood for an upcoming turkey trot/ turkey collection activity for our stake. Dylan can't wait to get his uniform (which is a B.S.A. equivalent to blue and gold mint! Holy cow, they charge a lot for stuff at the scout store!) and loves his new Den Leader Sister Huston. I have been recruited as assistant Den Leader (and expected as much.) and have begun the training involved. Owen continues to try to maneuver through the quagmire he calls "life" and we all continue to refine our austere lifestyle. It's good. I'm looking forward to all of the cooking and friends that will be happening at our house this week as we celebrate Thanksgiving. This weekend I'm also making my first "for money" wedding cake for someone. I hope it turns out as awesome as I've planned it to be. The picture this week is Dylan sneaking a cookie from the cookie jar right before bed. (I hope to post the little man in his scout uniform next week.)
Happy Gobble Gobble Folks! I hope you are filled with as much gratitude for all that life gives us as I am.
Bon Appetit!
Rebecca

A New Goal

I realized as I spent some time reading through older posts how valuable blogging can be as a family history tool. I have resolved to sit down once a week and share a bit of our lives. This past week was not particularly interesting but good. I started a new session at school, Dylan continues in second grade and Owen said this past week for him was "lame". We continue to search and struggle and live life day in and day out. We enjoyed a really great regional conference this weekend as well as a very long party that our neighbors threw (I'm not kidding, we're talking 12 straight hours of party). We discovered that Crisco shortening is the greatest treatment known to man for severe eczema, Arizona is possibly the best place to live if you hate cold and love sun, and having a "winter lawn" is just plain awesome. The picture in this post is from Owen's 36th birthday (or the departure on the down slope to 40.)
Regards and Best Wishes,
Rebecca

It's not so bad...really

I hate being impetuous. Usually after a couple of hours, I feel awesome ag

Another Lazy Post

I want to share how awesome and sweet my boy's are. Dylan celebrated his 8th birthday. It was a little bitter sweet for me because his friend birthday party was boycotted by all but one of the kids we invited because we are Mormon. Lame for me but Dylan was okay with it. He loved the present that Owen picked out (Owen is really good at picking out toys. Surprised? I bet not.) Then two weeks later, Dylan made his first covenant by being baptized and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost. This was on of the lamest lame mommy moments that I've ever had because I neglected to invite anyone but family (who for various and reasonable reasons were largely unable to come) Again, I realized that the most important people were there (the witnesses, Owen and of course Dylan) so that was cool. The Spirit attended the whole thing very strongly. Dylan has taken his new accountability for himself quite seriously and last Sunday even woke early, got dressed in his church clothes and studied his new scriptures all on his own. Thank you for those new scriptures M&D Spencer. He loves them. It may take me two months to get the thank you cards out (because I'm awesome that way...yes, more sarcasm)so I want to take a moment to put the 'thank you' out there.

It's been a while

This is a lazy post meant to only just give our f&f a quick update. This 6 week block I am REALLY busy with two very long classes that have more that their share of homework and projects. It's good but tiring and leaves me with not much initiative to to much else. Owen continues to be the house husband with great success. He's been struggling more than usual with severe symptoms and has developed a need to sleep.... a lot. He's been really interested in studying the 2012 phenomenon and continues to study the writings of Carl Jung.
Dylan has started school and for the first time is able to augment his behavior somewhat to fit into the boundaries set by his teacher. He still struggles but is making great progress. He seems to be making lots of friends and enjoys recess which is something that they didn't have at all in Texas. He likes to read out loud to me and has begun reading monologues for kids. That kid does have a flair for the dramatic!
While we were at the Scottsdale Library, we checked out a Maurice Sendak exhibit which included certain interactive displays that allowed you to dress up like a wild thing, slide down into a big bowl of chicken soup with rice and other fun things. I got a couple of pictures to work out on my phone. Alas, my phone camera is trickier to use than my SLR is so most of the pictures didn't turn out well. Oh well.
School is going well for me. At the beginning of the month I entered a iron chef style competition called titanium pastry chef. My partner and I won second place despite my dessert being totally messed up. We didn't think we would even place and were surprised when we won second. We will be competing again in two weeks and we're hoping that this time we can win first place and make it to the finals in November.
Right now I'm in a class all about artisan breads and viennoserie. It's really cool that we have an instructor who is an expert in the field and has graciously taken it upon himself to teach us how to formulate original artisan bread recipes. It's tricky work but also super fun, I'm enjoying it immensely. I'm also taking a food safety course that is completely involved with memorizing several illnesses by both their common and medical name, their primary and secondary symptoms, what causes it, what the origin of the illness is and how to treat it. It's boring work for me but also totally necessary.
I continue to look for employment that will work with my schedule giving me enough time to both see my family and study. It's a difficult task. I will soon be looking for an externship site and I've been hoping to find something that I can start as a full time employee that can transform into externship and then transfer back to full time employment but with much better pay after my externship has ended. I have a few options right now and I continue to take every opportunity that comes up to network with the local chefs but I'm going to wait until this block is over to really aggressively start to look. Okay, that's all I'm going to say for now. I hope all is doing well and that maybe sometime I'll have enough initiative to share some of the more beautiful nuances of our lives.