Little Walking Echo

I had to smile at my title. It sounds like a little Indian name. Maybe Echo's Indian name would more aptly be something like: Little-One-Who-Must-Be-Carried-ALL-Day, or Little-Busy-One-Who-Makes-Momma-Laugh-And-Cry-At-Once. She really wears me out with all the things I need to get done right now and all she was to do is sit in my lap and play. But I love that little girl to pieces. She is getting so grown up. Here are a few pictures of the latest.

She wanted to ride bikes with the big girls.

Marx, the cat, is a relic from my childhood. Here he is again to enjoy another generation of munching kids' toes.

Cousins riding bikes

Look at all those beautiful girls!

Eating like a big girl

Echo is very independent and will typically eat more food if I let her sit at the little table with the older girls and feed herself. We mop the floor a lot more, but that's probably a good thing.


Anyway, my little Echo is walking, finally. All my girls are slow to walk, but Echo has seemed to make it stretch out even longer. I think she likes me to carry her too much. But since she is so independent and curious, you would think she would've mastered this long ago. But we are off and running now, so that's all that matters.

Such a fun little girl. She's my most cuddly baby and the only one that has a special blankie to sleep with. It's hard to see my baby grow up.

4 more weeks...

The power is supposed to go out in a few minutes--for about 6 hours, so pictures will have to be posted later. But I guess the major update is that Shane is still not home. He was supposed to fly home April 3rd, but it was decided that for all parties involved, it was better* for him to wait until his visa expires before coming home. So instead of 6 weeks, it will be 10 weeks. I was highly disappointed, but I guess it goes with the territory.
I got to thinking about how long we have been apart--by far the longest we have ever been apart since we were married. Including when we got married and I flew back to Kentucky two days later to finish my internship. 10 weeks--that's like 1/5th of a year, or 1/4 of a pregnancy! It's been so long that it's starting to feel normal, as sad as that is. Day in and day out, the girls and I have our routine, and we just keep on chugging along.

*So, I have a little extra time tonight, so I thought I would update why it was better to wait.

First of all, there are two other Americans whose visas expired before Shane's did. That meant while they were all home renewing their visas, the company would be short 3 guys, which at this point in the setup would really cripple the operation. They are still in the hiring process as it is, so having that many workers gone at the same time would leave them severely short-handed. Shane is officially managing 2 full ranches at this point.  

Second, since the rest of our family has all their passports already, they discussed flying Shane home immediately (about 4 days earlier than we had anticipated), having our visas expedited, and then have us all hurry back to Russia (like 2 weeks or less). So the point was to squeak Shane home and back to Russia, before the other two workers had to leave. But, after checking with the Consulate, we learned that they would NOT re-issue Shane another visa while his current one was still active. That meant, he would fly home, we would cram the rest of our packing/leaving into 2 weeks, then fly back to Russia.  Seems harmless, until we found out that after the girls and I were settled in Russia, Shane would STILL have to leave the country again and wait a couple weeks to renew his visa because that one was still active. Not only would this leave me and the girls ALONE in Russia, mind you, but then everytime thereafter, we would likely be on different visa schedules, and possibly always out of sync with traveling with each other. NOT AN OPTION in my book. It would also incur unnecessary travel expenses for the company. 

Thirdly, I'm not getting cold feet, but I am really enjoying this little bit of extra time to visit with family, sort and pack, find a renter, wrap up business stuff, etc. 

So while 4 more weeks is not what I had in mind, I would prefer to spend the extra "apart" time IN America, CLOSE to family, where everyone still speaks ENGLISH, rather than alone in Russia.  Besides, I can always use a little more time getting ready, and we will hopefully all stay on the same VISA schedule this way. I'm discovering that this visa business is not for the faint of heart.

5 Weeks and a Tooth

Today marks Week Number 5! that Shane has been gone. Hopefully he will be headed home in a week and a half. Some days have been more trying than others, but for the most part, the time has been flying by. I suppose that is one blessing of being busy. Being mom 24/7 without dad to help is challenging, with Sundays taking the prize each week. I've tried to simplify the "church stuff" but carrying the diaper bag, the church bag, the scriptures, the baby, and two girls flanking my sides, I still feel like a locomotive trying to weave and chug-a-lug through the halls. Maybe I need to look into hiring a pilot car, complete with sign OVERSIZED LOAD to warn people.

Shane says he is enjoying the work in Russia. The past two weekends they processed 12,000 more head of cows that were trucked in, doing 6,000 a weekend. The farms he was at processed half each time, so they did about 3,000 cows each week. The first 6,000 were cows shipped in from the US, the following week, the cows were from Australia. After being shipped across the ocean, they are loaded into "cattle trucks" as shown below, which are really shipping containers with squares cut out for air circulation. They were trucked for as long as 40-50 hours from the port, without stopping.

They can fit about 35 head on one truck. Do the math, and they unloaded about 80 trucks at their farm for about 48 hours without stopping to sleep. They sorted the sick, lame, or bad eye cows out and doctored them in the chutes. Then they were all sorted into pens of about 350.

The Australian cattle were hotter than the US cattle, meaning it took less for them to get riled up and chargey. Shane received his fair share of kicks and maulings.

The American Quarter horses finally reached the end of their quarantine period and can now be used on the farms. Shane has been riding them to get a feel for them, and then the gentlest ones are turned over to the Russians because most have never ridden a horse before. This leaves the more challenging ones for Shane to ride and use--not always with the most successful results. Maybe I will get some time in a round pen with some of them once I get there.

I think the company likes him and are confident in his abilities. They said wherever they think they are going to have the most problems, is where they will send Shane. I thought it was a good compliment. So far he has told me two words that he has learned on the job: horse and hay.

Shane said that it is easy to spend over 1000 rubles while doing his grocery shopping, but it is really only about $30 USD with the exchange rate being about 30 rubles to 1 USD. Most times he doesn't know what he is buying because he can't read any labels, but he does eat a lot of eggs, chicken, potatoes, and broccoli.

Things on the homefront are progressing slowly: breakfast, schoolwork, scriptures, lunch, naptime, playtime, dinner, storytime, bedtime, laundry, cleaning, taxes, packing, etc. Rinse and repeat. I don't feel like I have 5 weeks of progress to document, but I feel like I haven't stopped much either.

The hunt still continues for a GOOD renter for our house. I've come to the conclusion that I probably won't be completely satisfied with anyone who wants to rent our house, but I would like to feel like it was in good hands while we were gone, and that we would still have a decent house left once we got back. Is that really too much to ask?

Next item of business. The other morning, Rain started telling me her tooth was broken. Thinking about how horribly she grinds her teeth at night while she is sleeping, I thought that might have made her tooth sore. However, she continued to tell me throughout the day it was broken. After a cursory look at the culprit, front left tooth, I couldn't see much wrong and went on with my day. That night we were brushing, she said it hurt, so I stopped and really got a good look at it. Still nothing. Then I touched it and it wiggled. Ahhh, I thought, mommy milestone--my oldest child is losing her first tooth! But my mom told me it was a little too early for her to be losing a tooth, so the next day I made an appointment with her dentist. Their earliest opening was a week away. They thought it was a good idea to look at it just to be safe. That night when we were brushing again, I noticed a puffed up lump above that front tooth on the gumline. It looked infected. So, early in the morning I called to see if I could get her in for an emergency appointment, and away we went.

Rain loves her dentist. They have the cutest little western set in the waiting room, and a miniature door to the exam chairs. But the highlight is the miniature toilet and sink in the restrooms. The girls always ask to go potty multiple times while we are there so they can use the toilet that "just matches" their size.

After a quick x-ray, we could see the tooth was compromised and infected. It needed to come out. They said the sooner it came out, the sooner the infection could be cleared up and less damage would occur to the permanent tooth behind it. I don't know how it happened. I don't recall her hitting her face or tooth at all, let alone hard enough to kill her tooth. But she had (she says it was her little doodle pad), it bled internally, got infected, and then puffed out because the swelling had nowhere else to go.

Even with some laughing gas, Rain still screamed and struggled during that initial numbing shot. Mesa looked on with a mix of curiosity and horror. I should have taken her out of the exam room to play with some toys during this part as not to taint her thus-far-positive-perception of our "tooth doctor". But then a quick yank, or two in this case, and the tooth was out.

Rain has been very good at reminding me not to let her drink out of a straw because I am always inadvertently handing her drinks that have straws attached. She and Mesa have been fascinated with the process of putting a tooth under a pillow while they sleep and having it turn into money.
 
I'm ashamed to say the Tooth Fairy failed on the very first night of her career. I fell asleep on the couch after a late night of taxes, only to have Rain wake me up in the morning, disappointed that the Tooth Fairy never came. I told her maybe the Tooth Fairy thought she was in Russia with Daddy, so she couldn't find her, and that maybe she would find her again the next night. The next morning Rain woke me up early to tell me that the Tooth Fairy DID find her this time and left her some money. Whew! I hope Mesa doesn't get any ideas about losing a tooth early so hers will turn to money, too.

Raja

My girls ask me lots of questions, some of which need decoding. One such question went about like this: "Mom, are we going to Raja?"

Now my first thought was that Rain was referring to the tiger from Aladdin, which didn't make sense because I didn't think my girls had seen that movie yet. Then it clicked...Russia, pronounced in exotic, childish, parroting of what has been tossed about a lot as of late.

This is our story.

This picture was taken on the spur of the moment, in the last light of the day. It was chilly, but the girls were good sports when I made them take their coats off for the picture. Echo looks a little silly, but I figured we had 4 out of the other 5 looking decent, so it's a winner. I used it for our application and it has since become my favorite family picture of us so far. [Family pictures are a miraculous event for us] 

(The following excerpts may or may not be part of my talk that we were asked to give in anticipation of moving out of our ward. A lot came from my journal, which I felt was blog-worthy as well.)  =)

For the past while, I have been frustrated with the relationship of righteousness and prosperity. I had read in the scriptures many times about it. For example:

2 Ne. 1:20 And he hath said that: ^aInasmuch as ye shall keep my ^bcommandments ye shall ^cprosper in the land; but inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall be cut off from my presence.

The promise was there, many times, so why was it not happening to us? So I pondered it, prayed about it, talked with Shane about it. And I asked him: "Why are we not prospering?" We examined our habits, and looked for ways to improve. I said, “We are reading our scriptures almost daily with our family, we have family prayer twice a day, we attend our meetings weekly, we are trying to fulfill our callings, we fast, and pay our tithing. What are we not doing? What can we do better? Why are we not prospering?"

Now, I know there are also lessons in patience and enduring trials, but to me it seemed like at some point, the law of the harvest would prevail. I also know there are also many definitions of "prospering" and I can't deny that I have been truly blessed in life. Prosperity is not always directly linked with monetary wealth, but I still felt that I wanted to live honorably and be responsible for my financial obligations, which had been pared down to the bare minimums for quite some time, just trying to make the ends meet. I didn't like being in that place, and I was often overwhelmed with feeling powerless to change much of it.  

Now for the past couple months Shane has been looking at different cattle ranches, trying to find something that would suit our family and circumstances better. Moving away from my family and this area was not very enticing to me. But I felt that if it was the right thing for us, I would be able to do it.

One weekend, Shane went to Oregon to look at some ranches, and I stayed to move some cows with my family here. I rode out with my mom to help with my uncle's cattle drive, and while we were driving, we talked about the whole "looking for a ranch situation." I remember telling my mom that "I had had the feeling we were going to move somewhere for a time. I didn't know where or for how long, but I had been having that feeling for awhile."

But along with that feeling was a feeling of disappointment. I didn't want to move away from my family and my home. Shane was in overdrive looking at ranches, figuring numbers, talking on the phone, making these big plans, and yet, my heart was NOT in it. There was no spark in it for me. I kept wondering, "If we are supposed to move, why don't I feel the same energy about it that Shane does?" I started questioning that initial feeling of knowing that we would move. Was I supposed to move just because Shane wanted to? Was the Lord preparing me for that? But I was struck with painful thoughts and questions that I didn't know how to answer. I wondered a lot about my role as a wife and how to best support my husband. But I struggled inwardly. Weren't my feelings just as important as Shane's? What if I didn't want to move? What about my goals and dreams? Shane felt that we were moving in the right direction. I wasn't so sure, and the guilt ate at me daily. Was this one of the times when I was supposed to blindly trust the Lord and it would all turn out in the end? Why wasn't I receiving the same confirmation as Shane? Did the Lord feel that it was necessary to give me one? Did I need one? Yes! I firmly believed that if the Lord wanted me to do something as big as uprooting my family and moving "far" away [read 'far' as in Oregon or Montana], He would not expect me to do it without a confirmation that it was what I was supposed to do. I felt that I was important enough, as an individual, and not just clumped in with my husband, that I could receive my own answer. And so I kept waiting. 

Elder Quentin L. Cook stated:
Heavenly Father and family are inseparably connected. When we understand the many dimensions of this connection, we can begin to comprehend more completely how personal and individual are Heavenly Father's love for and relationship to each of us. Understanding how He feels about us gives us the power to love Him more purely and fully. Personally feeling the reality, love, and power of that relationship is the source of the deepest and sweetest emotions and desires that can come to a man or woman in mortality. These deep emotions of love can motivate us and give us power in times of difficulty and trial to draw closer to our Father. (Full talk here)

The Lord was truly merciful to my unsettled heart. How could I have ever doubted that my Heavenly Father did not know me individually and knew what was best for me. He had something in mind, something far better than I could have ever imagined!

About 2 weeks before Christmas, Shane and I were sitting down one evening after the whole nightly bedtime routine. Shane was flipping through his livestock newspaper he gets every week, and I was probably picking up toys. We ran across a classified advertising for a job in Russia. We had seen it before, several times, and Shane often teased me that I should have gone on to vet school, because I could have been a vet for a company in Russia. We also laughed about it and then went on with our day. But this time, we said, Why not? They are also offering positions as a Cow/Calf Manager. I had the degree they wanted, and Shane had the experience. So we decided to apply as a team. It took me about a week to pull together our resumes, references and everything. There were several small miracles in that process such as finding my diploma, finding contact information to critical references, getting a family picture, etc. The whole time I worked on our application, I had the feeling we were going to get the job. I sent it off. We got a call from the company in Russia 2 days later, offering the job, and we accepted.

I love this quote from Elder David A. Bednar:
"The Lord's tender mercies are the very personal and individualized blessings, strength, protection, assurances, guidance, loving-kindnesses, consolation, support, and spiritual gifts which we receive from and because of and through the Lord Jesus Christ. Truly, the Lord suits 'his mercies according to the conditions of the children of men' (D&C 46:15).

Faithfulness, obedience, and humility invite tender mercies into our lives, and it is often the Lord's timing that enables us to recognize and treasure these important blessings." (Full text here).

This was really an individualized blessing for me--a tender mercy for my troubled heart--and because I had been so focused on this issue, I could recognize the Lord's timing in our lives, and I have been blessed because of it. 

I know that there will be challenges and trials during our 3 year contract. We haven’t even gotten there and we have hit some bumps in the road. The first major bump is that they want Shane to go first for 1-3 months for a trial period to see if he fits with the company and if he likes it. Then they will fly the rest of the family over. There are so many questions with the house, the van, how are we going to communicate, how do we get three little girls to Russia in one happy piece? If I focus on all the questions, I get doubts and fears creeping in, but if I go back to the feelings we received when we’ve prayed about it, then I know the Lord is taking care of us. He can see more than we can. He can see the big picture, so we can trust Him that He will also take care of the details.

So, a little bit about the job.

We will be working for Miratorg. They are currently the #1 Pork producer in Russia, and are on their way to becoming the #1 producer in Beef as well. By the end of the year they will have approximately 100,000 head of beef cows.

We will be in the Bryansk Oblast, or province, of Russia. To brush up on your my geography, this region is horseshoed by the Ukraine and Belarus, so it is on Russia's western edge, bordering the European block.  

• The Bryansk province has a population of more than 1.3 million. The two closest cities we will be dealing with and their populations are listed below:

Pochep	Почеп	17,064
Trubchevsk	Трубчевск	16,342 (source)

• There are 33 letters in the Russian alphabet, which is Cyrillic based. For your viewing pleasure, I've inserted a lovely chart below,  [via].

We are going to have fun learning this language. Haha. I decided that if I was going to be there, I was going to do all I could to immerse myself in the culture, including learning the language. There is a good chance I will be homeschooling the girls for a variety of reasons, so I hope they get enough proper exposure to the language so I won't mess them up too badly. They will probably be teaching me Russian by the time we are done.

The closest connection to the Church is the Russia Moscow West Mission Branch, which I believe is located out of Pochep. From what we can gather, there isn't even a branch in our area. I know there is at least two other families there that are members, so we are hoping we can open a branch in our area.

The closest temple is the Kyiv, Ukraine Temple. Mapquest apparantly doesn't know how to give me directions from Bryansk, or even Moscow, to Kiev, so I'm not sure of the distance. Roughly 300 miles, if my map measuring is correct.

We are super busy getting ready and ironing out details, but we are excited for this adventure.

So, in response to Rain's question, the answer would be: "Yes, we are moving to Raja!"

Pummeled

About a week before Echo was born, I wrote the following in a post:

 "I feel pretty accomplished when I can get three square meals on the table, [the dishes washed], a load of laundry done, and a path through the toys cleared in one day. But that doesn't get you "ahead" anywhere. I'm barely holding back the tide and I'm afraid once the baby comes, I'm going to get pummeled."

Well, folks, it's true. That about sums up how I feel lately. Pummeled.

The house is a wreck. I haven't done my dishes tonight or picked up any of the toys. I didn't do a single load of laundry today. I slept through breakfast, (we got home at 3AM from a trip, and the baby was up by 7-ish, so I don't hold it against myself too much), I don't remember if the girls really had a lunch, and a last minute trail ride foiled dinner plans, so the girls ate cereal.

In the time I spent tonight "unwinding" from the day, I could've easily done two loads of laundry, washed the dishes, AND picked up the living room. Or balanced my checkbook, written out the bills for next month, entered receipts for the business, mended something from my Mend Pile Mountain, edited the website, exercised, or tackled any one of the projects that have been mentally and emotionally eating me alive. But I didn't. Instead I just mulled over things that I know I need to do, but just don't ever seem to do them. I have so many ideas of how I want to clean, organize, decorate, and yet no idea/motivation of where to begin. I decide on one area to work on, only to find out there are "prerequisites" before I can really do them, so they are left undone altogether.

To make matters worse, I'm addicted to staying up late. I love sleep! I WANT to sleep, NEED to sleep, SHOULD sleep, and yet I still find myself puttering away those nighttime hours, strictly because they are my own. No interruptions (for the most part), silent, bliss when I can just be ME. I know it creates a vicious cycle, because I will be unproductive and irritable tomorrow, longing for a few minutes alone, which I know doesn't come until everyone else is asleep again. But still I do it.

It's a humbling and frightening realization that being responsible/a mom/a wife/etc is harder than you ever imagined. I had great plans and expectations of how I would be an awesome mom, a cherished wife, have a cute home, and still have time to cook, clean, and create like a super hero. And if I didn't finish everything I was supposed to that day, I wouldn't go to bed until I did. Because super heroes don't need sleep, either.  

I don't mean to be a negative, depressed, woe is me, dark cloud of despair kind of person. I know it never solves anything. I really do have so many things to be grateful for. And here are just four of them.

I guess I relieved a little guilt tonight, being late and all, because after 2+ months, I finally wrote a blog post.

Of Mice and Rattlesnake Guts

Last Monday, we returned home from a family trip to Idaho, which I may or may not blog about. I make no promises, therefore I have no guilt. Anyway, upon arriving home, I was greeted by several unpleasant things. One being a very large, still-soaking wet dog piddle-puddle on my carpet. How it got there, and how it was still so wet, remains an unsolved mystery since I beat ALL the dogs into the house. The second unpleasant surprise was a certain dead smell I encountered in my kitchen, around the area of my stove. We've concluded that it is a dead mouse in our wall. There is a vent behind my stove into the garage and it must be somewhere in that vicinity because no amount of poking or prodding under the stove or in the vent has been successful in producing the mouse. The smell has gotten better with time, except when the heat from the stove heats up the wall. Any suggestions on solving my problem are welcome.

Now on to the second half of my title, which no doubt got your attention. The other day, Shane killed a very large rattlesnake at the barn. It had 13 buttons on his tail, but you can tell there were more than that; they had just worn away. I haven't seen a rattler that big in quite a while.

Exhibit A: 13-button rattler

Anyway, that was last Wednesday. This past Sunday, we went to visit Shane's family. Somehow that rattlesnake had gotten hauled down from the barn area to their yard and had ripened horrifically over the next four hot, summer days. We did not notice this little factoid until all the dogs had proceeded to roll all over in it, and smear the most putrid rotten-gut stench all over into their coats. I put my foot down when it came time to load up and go home, since we had all ridden in the van. There was NO WAY I was letting those dogs sit in MY van. I told Shane they could stay at the barn for a few days until the scent wore off. That was all good and fine until Shane opened the back of the van for something and quick as a whistle, Sadie jumped in. Shane hauled her out, but the damage was done. We drove all the way home with the windows down and the AC on full blast, but it was no use. The girls were both sitting in the very back and Rain kept telling me the whole way home, "Oooh yuck! I smell rattlesnake!" 

So there you have it--lessons learned. Febreeze, anyone?

Mesa - Two years old!



Petting the first foal of the season.

Mesa turned 2 on May 1st. Wow! We had a family baby blessing and dinner in Cane Beds that day, so I didn't have a cake ready for Mesa yet. Hopefully, I can remedy that before May is over. But I think she would forgive me if I don't. We went to her Well-Baby Check up last week and thankfully she didn't have to have any shots. (We are good until she's four--yay!). She had woke up with a slight fever that morning so she was a little grumpy at the appointment. When they were trying to test her blood pressure (or something) she sat still for a moment and then kept telling me, "I'm done!" But she was a good sport and she is growing incredibly.

Her Stats:

Height: 3ft 1.5in (37.5")       Percentile: OFF THE CHART!

Weight: 35 lbs                    Percentile: OFF THE CHART!

Just for fun, Dr. Bowman projected her height and weight numbers as a three-year-old. She is in the 75th percentile for height and weight. That means she is bigger than 75% of all other 3yo children! and she just turned 2! The Dr. wasn't too worried because she is consistent for height and weight. She's just a big girl, but she is balanced.

It's been a tradition in my family to do inkprints of our hands and feet on our birthday every year. It was a highlight growing up, so I've continued with my children. We did Mesa's hand and feet prints and of course Rain had to do it too, so here is a snapshot of Mesa and Rain's prints next to each other, done on the same day. Can you tell which print belongs to each girl?

Rain's is on the left, Mesa's on the right



Mesa is tough, caring, and obedient. She is also very strong-willed, loves her daddy, and loves cooking with mom. She always asks to sit on the potty, but as soon as you get her on it, diapered or not, she says she's done. One of these days I'm just going to grit my teeth and potty-train her. I don't think it will take much. She already has a pretty good handle on the concept.

Chillin' with Daddy

She loves singing, Sleeping Beauty, playing Ring-Around the-Rosies, Follow-the-Leader, and Fee-Fi-Fum (Which means riding on mom's back like a cowgirl or dinosaur or something). She likes to say the prayers, read scriptures, and loves her nursery leader, Sis. Chamberlain. She literally will not let Shane leave until she gets there. Mesa loves to eat her food, and when she's done, she'll usually finish Rain's plate as well.

Reading books with Rain

When her feelings are hurt or she just woke up, she wants to be held constantly, which is challenging because I am usually feeding the baby, holding the baby, or cooking/cleaning when those time arise. Also, refer back to her height and weight, and you'll see why I don't hold up very long lugging her around.

Sleeping peacefully.
One of my favorite things to do before I go to bed is look at each girl sleeping.

She just recently decided she doesn't like the door closed at night and insists on "Rock-a-baby" at naptime and bedtime. And she does many things in multiples: she has to have three binkies at bedtime, or hold 2-3 sippies at a time, use a fork and a spoon at the same time etc. We love our little Mesa girl and are so happy she is in our family.