No, not dead. Not even maimed.

Yes, yes, yes. We're still alive. If this blog is pretty much your only source of Shea news, you're in sorry shape. (That is why I own a phone. Blogs are all about time wasting.)

I hardly know where to begin. Scott began his real-life career more than a little while back -- when Avie was just a few weeks old. That's right, he's a real-life transportation engineer! He loves driving his sporty, brand new work truck around, and gets a special thrill as he throws on his emergency lights and drives "off road" to observe construction progress. I can't say I'm thrilled we worked so hard to get a master's degree just so he can wear a steel-toed boots and a hard hat, but he assures me it's a white hard hat. That means he's a white-collar worker, he says. It's a pretty good life for a man's man, and I know more about transportation engineering than I ever thought I'd care to.

He's actually still working at the Home Depot. This means he's spent the last 8 months usually working at least 60 hours a week, and often tops off a little over 70. It's pretty painful, I won't lie. I always knew I married an optimistic man -- someone's got to balance me out, right? -- but I really don't know how he does it. He spent much of the year leaving at 6 am and not arriving home until 10 pm. We get this little half-hour window to throw food at his face before he takes off for the Depot, and he is positively lively. Energetic beyond reason. So, apparently, when I said it was painful, I meant for me.


I really miss adults. In the absence of real conversations with people my height, I've had time to perfect the art of preparing homemade broth, cultured vegetables, and other forays into healthy cooking. Then there's sugar-free living, cloth diapering, and Book of Mormon storytelling. Not so much decluttering, but I keep trying. At any rate, I've cut down on my bon-bon eating considerably.

Avie is getting big. Well, older. Big might not describe her for quite a while yet. She is our delight, and I just don't know how I'll ever cope with her growing up on me. The first year of a child's life is simultaneously the quickest and the slowest of a parent's life, meaning some days do feel really long; some night do feel endless; every month does feel like a blink. She is a dream. She radiates the sweetest smile and giggle and happily shares it with the world. That little soul is the embodiment of contentment, and considering what a tough time we had with her pregnancy, I consider it a special gift from a loving Father in Heaven. Like a small assurance that he took care of her when, for all my efforts, I couldn't.


Betsy is our singer, our reader, our cook, and our singer. She is thoroughly two-and-a-half; always unexpected. Usually, it's a delightful kind of unexpectedness that creeps from her mouth. Sometimes it's an unexpected misery with considerable volume. Some of our most recent surprises include these:

(Betsy) "N-O, N-O, N-O, N-O..."
(Momma) "What are you spelling, honey?
(Betsy) "Daddy."

(Momma) "King Noah did not go to church. He didn't share. He didn't believe in Heavenly Father."
(Betsy) "Him need a time out."

...Well, I'd love to wait and post once I can find pictures on our old computer's hard drive (buried somewhere in the depths of our new computer) but I'm just not that handy. I really do set a new year's goal to write in here more often, and get back in the habit of reading the blogs of those I love so hopefully you'll see more of me on here in the future. Assuming there's anyone left who reads this. (Let me know you're out there, won't you?)

15 minutes

As I am wont to remind you, this blog really is here for memory. Remembering what this moment in time was like, many trips-round-the-sun later, when it's all hazy with that rosy glow things get after a few years.

Not that things are terribly negative, mind you, but it's the haze that bugs me. I want to remember with clarity, precision. I want to remember so vividly that I feel I could slip back into that old skin and be perfectly at home.

What is there to remember?

• Betsy accidentally locking herself in the bathroom, whining, and declaring, "It's annoying!"
• Same forthright daughter announcing, "It's boring!" half way through every car trip -- and sometimes before she's even buckled in!
• This delicate, sensitive life inside me, gliding and kicking in her own distinct way, preparing all of us for her arrival
• How delightful this spring has been. I thought it would never come.
• The waves of (job-related) hopelessness -- the way they wash in, crash ashore, and then recede. What it feels like to try to put your hope back together afterward, wondering if the actual truth, the truth-of-the-truth lies more in the pessimistic waves or the stories you tell yourself after a good night's rest, and knowing it's best to just not think about it.
• Can't control economy. Can't control Home Depot (current job). Can't control professors. Can control our reactions. That's all.
• Betsy telling us "I'm tiny, too!" when we talk about the upcoming baby sister. This could get interesting.
• Feeling out of place in our student ward, but equally misplaced in our quirky little family ward. Where on earth do I belong? Please, Lord, just let me belong somewhere. In some aspect of my life.
• The way your spouse becomes your total salvation, your total joy and consolation in circumstances like these, how you cling together as never before
• The knowledge that apparently, the world can fall apart. But your marriage won't. Somehow it almost feels worth it, just to know that so assuredly.
• Leaving things on the Lord's plate simply because mine is too full
• Incessant anxiety about if I've done everything I should to grow a healthy baby, and how she already perceives this world to be, and if she forgives me for being the stressball I am, because I know it wreaks havoc on her sometimes
• Knowing answers will come, but not for many more months perhaps. Knowing you and your spouse might not see quite eye-to-eye until the Lord finally gives his input on important decisions that aren't to be made for a while yet
• Wondering what it means when everything lines up perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect... and then the world sends you free-falling. Did we misread the signs? How does 1+1+1+1=0?
  
• Betsy getting so big she often insists on "reading" books to herself now, and how it thrills and devastates me all in the same breath
• The continual name hunt, searching for a perfect fit for our tiny "baby sissah"
• Betsy singing so many new, fun songs to herself! She had the first verse of "Five Little Monkeys" down pat after just a night with Aunt Michele!
• Sending Betsy to timeout on an almost-daily basis, but always going in to find her pointing to Jesus. Then she talks with me about him, ending with, "I happy."

On second thought, I'm not sure I'd want to slip back into this little pocket of time, years from now. It kinda bites sometimes. But I'd happily slip back in for select moments -- moments of pure tenderness with my spouse, and thrilling two-year-old bliss with the sweetest wonder-toddler I know.

The Month Called November

Well, the house is decorated for Christmas. This year I even let Scott do it before Thanksgiving -- quite a concession, but it came about so easily and naturally you never would have known it. And it happened so quickly! I went out to run some errand and voila! I returned to the most charming little home. ...We are very lucky to have the home we do; it suits our needs so well and is beyond economical. But it's no use pretending: I do complain about its looks more than I should.

But at Christmastime! Oh, there is something so endearing about how it looks at Christmastime, all glowy and cheery, that I fall in love with the place again. That's no small feat, as we continue to accumulate stuff and it has been feeling increasingly cramped of late. (Redoing the bathrooom did nothing to help the congestion, either. Four tubs -- FOUR TUBS -- of toiletry junk littering my bedroom. Betsy spent hours a day exploring the world of my tampons and Scott's contacts. Oh, am I glad the worst of that job is over!)

Thanksgiving was a quiet affair, low-key but still delicious. We all fit around a single table, and while that table was crowded, Kate was right: quite anticlimactic. (Are you allowed to say that about Thanksgiving? It feels so wrong.) I guess having Marcus away on his mission and Tanner with his dad really made the group even more subdued. I'd easily say those are the two most animated of the clan.

This year cream cheese had gone on sale a few weeks prior to the holiday, so each of my three desserts had cream cheese. And it's the sad truth: this was the first time I used my Cuisinart for a dessert. Oh, what heaven. What ease. What taste. I definitely plan on seeing what kind of semi-healthy concoctions I can devise with the use of it. I think by far its best advantage was the incredible taste the fat-free cream cheese still offered. Quite impressive.

I have maintained contact with Penny, even with their move to California. It's been delightful to spend time talking to someone so uplifting, and the best part about such a person is, they see you in your best, kindest light -- somehow see you for who you'd like to be instead of the crummy version you usually imitate instead.

We are simultaneously pursuing two very different career opportunities. While I am highly inclined to believe a certain one of the two will work out, it's been interesting to feel so divided between the two. Not because I have no preference between the two, but because both mean such different things for our family. One would involve a move; the other would involve several. One would mean a four-day work week; the other, more money initially. One would be working in transportation (one of Scott's earliest and most passionate loves), and the other, he would find to be slightly more mundane, though certainly enjoyable and within his chosen profession of civil engineering. I'll be surprised if we know much about whether we've been able to secure either position before January.

Oh -- and a note to those whose Christmas shopping includes kids: I picked up some amazing, amazing, amazing deals at Babies R Us this year. They had 50% off their clearance, and Betsy didn't have any winter Sunday shoes. (Yes, she'd still been running around in her sandals. Pretty embarrassing, but I just didn't have $10 to spend on them, you know?) Anyway, I got her a black pair and a white pair for under $3 a piece. I also scored some sandals for next summer, several pairs of cheap socks, and cute pants for under $3 a pair, too! How all of it added up to $70 I'll never know. They did, however, mention that this 50% off clearance was rare. So if they don't do it next year it might not be worthwhile after all.