I blinked and madelynn is 6

Dear Madelynn, the been 6 years since you made your debut into this strange world. 6 years since I heard your screams and remember seeing tears in your daddy’s eyes at how absolutely perfect you were. We didn’t know in that moment you’d be our only daughter, but we savored it. 

And while you are our only girl, you my daughter are enough. You love so big. We call you little momma because you take care of Clark the way a momma would. You always ask if Spike is kicking yet because you are so excited to feel him move. Even though you (and I) were really sad when we found out he was a boy, you were excited to love him regardless. Your heart can fit so much love in it.  

We are so proud of all you are learning. You are an amazing reader and ask to read us books all the time. You love learning and you love school. Your teacher, Ms Riley, has great things to say about you. You love her and I know she loves you. It makes sending you to school every day so much easier. 

You love dance, soccer, and gymnastics. You were really sad when I said you had to choose only 2 next year. But your #1 love is soccer followed closely by gymnastics. Your gymnastics teacher last night came up to me and told me how good of a job you are doing and said in the pit you were doing some things her older girls are working on! We love your spirit. You try your hardest at all you do. I hope you always stay passionate. I hope you see your dreams and chase them. I guess chase them is the wrong wording. I hope you make a plan and you work as hard as you can to make it happen. 

Madelynn, continue to learn and grow. And remember you won’t always be the best at everything but as long as your being your best, that is perfectly okay. I hope you can find the good in every situation and be kind to everyone you meet. You don’t have to be friends with everyone but you should always make people feel good about themselves. I read a quote “be the kind of woman who fixes another’s crown without telling anyone it was messed up”. Be that lady! 

When life gets tough, you be tougher. And remember you have a mom and dad who will always be there to help you out. We may disagree but we love you and want the best for you. And more importantly, remember you have Heavenly Parents who love you and want all the good for you. That doesn’t mean trials won’t come, it just means you can turn to us and Them in all things. 

We love you our girl, Madelynn Rochelle!

And so we stay

I guess it’s time to write this. The story behind the past few months for us.
In August Brent and I flew to Idaho to check out a job opportunity. Our plan for the past 5-6 years has been to move to Boise. It became even more one of my goals when my sister decided she was moving out there. 

While there we knew the job wasn’t perfect but this is what we really wanted. We prayed hard about it, we fasted about it, and honestly, we never got an answer either way. This frustrated me because this was a big decision for our family. In the end, we decided to take the risk and move. 

We put our house on the market and within a few days we had 2 offers! Things were working out awesome. Brent was planning to leave the end of September. Some dear friends had said the kids and I could stay with them until thanksgiving, when we thought we’d join Brent. 

Then things starting falling apart. The house sale fell through. Brent was having issues with insurance in Idaho so we decided he would wait and move after our cruise which was the 1st week of November. 

We felt good and this decision and had tons of fun on our trip! We got home and the next day Brent packed up and headed to Idaho. I surprised myself with how well I was doing alone with the kids. I missed Brent so much but knew I was doing this for our future. We booked Brent a plane ticket home to visit for Christmas and having an end date, even temporary, in sight made life okay. Plus I have some great friends around here who were willing to help and distract me some too. 

But while Brent was in Idaho, they were not giving him the days of work. They were having scheduling issues. They didn’t have enough staff. It was kind of a mess. He found other places that were hiring but what we thought was what we really wanted, just didn’t seem to be working out. 

We talked a lot about it. We aren’t quitters and wanted this to work out. But all signs pointed us staying in TN. I’ll be honest, there is a lot of pride to swallow when you thought you were doing the right thing, and it doesn’t work. I felt like we failed. And why when we prayed so hard did we not receive the answer to just stay. We lost and spent so much money during this, we were apart for 6 weeks, we had already packed 70% of our house, donated/sold a ton of our stuff. My friend Laura directed me to a talk that I’ve read so many times during the past few weeks, https://www.lds.org/new-era/2005/07/wrong-roads-and-revelation?lang=eng.

Maybe Brent and I had to experience all of this to be okay with us being here for longer. It did make me realize I love where we live. We are really blessed. 

I mourn not living close to my family there, not living close to Brent’s family but the reality is, we have made friends here that are like family. We are surrounded with people we love and that love us. 

I know this is longer than probably necessary, and I know I don’t have to explain myself about us not moving. For a while, I was embarrassed because i thought of it as a failure, but in reality, we were brave enough to try!