Tuff

A few weeks ago my parents got maylie a puppy. We were kind of playing around with the idea.... But they executed it. 

We were nervous and expecting loads of work... But we got Tuff. The sweetest most mellow bear ever. He's a mini austrailian shepard and his favorite member of the family is maylie! They play like siblings. He's such a smart dog. He already is crate trained and sits and stays when asked to stay. He's got the best temperament and isn't too hyper. He's been such an easy transition to have in our family. Almost like he's known us forever! We have grown to love him sooo much! 

It's fun having a puppy! :) and maylie is obsessed! 

Clearly....

Complaints... Haha

1. River Saturday turned into very very sunburnt Sunday 

2. Damn tree branch fell without even a breeze. Literally broke and fell almost on top of my sister in laws car. Husband sawed it off and while doing so it fel on top of him. The latter fell from

Under him with chainsaw in hand. He threw the saw but cracked two ribs from falling :/ we hate this tree. 

3. My baby is teething molars and she has taken me to hell and back. This is by far the worst she's ever been. Nothing can please the girl. NOTHING. At this point.... This mama lives on nap time and very early bedtime 

Things I'm loving

The blogging app from my phone. 

I haven't blogged in forever because I rarely use my computer anymore and there's no space on it ... Too many pics. He he 

I made it through the most uncomfortable meeting today with someone I have strong feelings towards and she towards me as well. I was literally kicked off one of my favorite clients cases because of this scary woman.. And she was in my meeting today. I love this because I felt brave and I asked her about my old clients case. Worried and in fear she would say she couldn't disclose she happily gave me an update and thanked me for asking. I was pretty proud of myself 

My daughter is in the "wats dat" stage... As annoying as it is... It makes mama smile because she's so curious 

I made dinner and cookies tonight. And worked 5 hrs today! It feels good... Except I like free time more :) 

Our new entertainment center and curtains. Slowly but surely my house is becoming less and less tacky. I love the rustic feel in my living room! 

Our new puppy is the sweetest dog ever. He rarely has accidents and is so good with maylie. We have loved having a mellow pup! He's perfect for our family. 

He clearly lets our maylie maul him and he could care less... Although a picture writes 1,000 words. 

I love our neighbors. For this reason.... I have not had to knock on anyone's door to ask or introduce myself. I've literally had neighbors stock us until we are finally outside to say hello! Everyone is stinkin friendly. I've realized I love love love

Meeting new people, if I don't have to make the effort. I'm Actually quite shy in fact. But when someone introduces themselves I am totally open to having them! And it melts my heart... Heavenly Father knew what he was doing when he gave us this beautiful home and neighborhood! We got lucky! 

18 months.

My booger is now 18 months. 18 people....

where is time going????
wasn't this yesterday?

I haven't written a "Maylie" post in a while because I post everyday on Facebook or instagram about her, but ... I have come to realize I want to remember every stage. This is how.

Maylie Kalea

Mimicks everything we do.
Obsessed with Music and dance. She mumbles "Uh- Uh" when a rap song comes on the radio. Its hilarious.
Loves her puppy her grandparents got her.
In general, loves animals.
Sweetest girl ever, gives multiple kisses a day.
Waves Hello to anyone and everyone. She is very social
She loves her friends. Squeals so loud when she realizes a playdate is about to happen.
Is starting to say a lot of words. -Shoes, please, thank you, puppy, No, Yes, More, juice, rice, food, scriptures, jesus, amen, book, pizza, hotdog.
She knows everyone in the family's name. Momo, Jimmy, Austin, Paul, Amanda(Patah), Gammy, Papa Jay, Papa, NeeNee, Jenson, MarMar.
Loves to be outside.
Is a swimming machine
Loves getting any positive attention. If we praise her for something she does it AGAIN AND AGAIN.
We are in the full fledged "Wats dat?" phase. EVERYTHING people. EVERYTHING
doesn't even care that we drop her off in Nursery every sunday. Doesn't even say bye to her mom and dad.
Loves to sing and conduct the choir in church
Is really into playing with "babies"

Obsessed with daddy. They are best friends 

I never knew I could experience so much joy in life through a baby. 

Maylie has been so good to us. She has been mellow and easy going since birth. We are terrified to ever have another. Maylie makes Huston and I feel like the best parents in the world. She sure knows how to love and we are grateful for that! So glad she came to us and is ours for eternity. 

that once place, across the ocean.

We often find ourselves daydreaming about this place. Why did we ever leave????
It doesn't seem real to us anymore that we even lived there. Was that a figment of our imaginations? This was our first home together, this is where our love grew, this is where our first child was made, this is where we had our first married fight, and still had to live in the same house together....

Why does it seem so distant?

I hope this place doesn't become a dream. It WAS real. I left a huge piece of my heart there.

i miss the sand in my toes. no make up ever look. cookouts on the beach. friends who become family. people who would give the shirt off their back, humble humble people. roosters, EVERYWHERE. Rain ALL the time. I miss our youth. We were stressed and tired, but a different kind of stress and different kind of tired then. I miss surf competitions. Shaved Ice. Coconut shrimp. Yummy fresh fish. Crab hunts. camping on the beach. snorkeling.

Someday we will go back, but it will be different. Someday I will dig out the time capsule we filled with meaningful trinkets and buried on a beach.

Hawaii is now a Someday.... that i took for serious granted.

Thought dump... Same as a photo dump, without photos.

Lately I've been wanting to blog. Like i have had a legit desire, but I get on here and... I notice I haven't blogged in almost a year. That is overwhelming to me. Ive been having a lot of thoughts. So I am going to dump them on you.

Here goes nothing...

-Being a homeowner is amazing. We bought a home that needed 0 work done. I mean ZERO, yet we still feel like we have TONS to do. Ive got a list of projects a mile long. However they require $$ that we don't have at this point in time, so we are slowly making a dent in our half furnished home that we LOVE.

- just shy of three weeks of owning our first home... my husband was laid off from his job. Yes.... we were able to purchase a home, get a mortgage, move-in, and then BOOM. WTF was the point of that? How could we see that one coming??? Don't worry, luckily my husband was offered another job just three days after losing that one. Its not permanent, but it is just to keep us afloat. Luckily my husband is also smart... and we had 2 months of a mortgage payment saved up in case he didn't get a job that soon. the blessing of paying your tithing is stinking real....we were and ARE very blessed.

- Even though I do not understand why this would happen to us, I know that BLESSINGS are real and the Lord does answer prayers. Although this was shady(message me if you want stupid details) and we were hurt, confused and upset and took it personal, This was a HUGE blessing in disguise. We learned that Huston was not happy at his job anyways. We are slowing waiting to learn our fate. We don't know where his next career move will be since we were planning on three years with the company he got laid off from.

-Please have faith that the Lord has greater blessings in store for you. When one door closes, surely another opens. We got lucky. WAY lucky because the Lord is looking out for us. I could have quit my job when Huston got his salary job, but we decided I shouldn't quit, and the extra money for a while would be a nice buffer. I have wanted to quit every day since, but something kept telling me not to.

-We have wanted to purchase many beautiful tempting furnishing things for our new home and we have stopped ourselves? WHY? I don't know.... the Lord knew though.

-We have HANDS down the BEST family and support system in place. Huston was really down on himself, and we received so many amazing texts of support and love and prayers. I literally felt the power of prayer calm my fear and fill my heart with peace. Once that happened I was able to be strong for my husband. His siblings(2 brothers) rushed to our house to help with the "stay busy" and "cheer up" phase. Everyone has offered groceries, told us to ask for help if we needed it, and managed to express love.

-I guess what keeps running through my mind is all of the series of events leading up to the "lay off" and I realize WOW, Heavenly Father is amazing. He literally saved us from some pretty serious financial problems and even though there will be a few very stressful months ahead of us (yes Huston is working now, but Mortgages are NOT cheap) I know the Lord is looking out for us. I just can't believe it sometimes how blessed we really are even though sometimes in times of trial it can be hard to see.

I am grateful. SO very grateful at this time. I felt the world needed to know. :)

Social Work.

My career has officially begun.

I hate it and love it at the same time. I am learning SO much its ridiculous.

It is not by choice that I am necessarily working, I wish more than anything I could stay home with my baby... But, I am more than grateful for this valuable experience of having this job.  I work for Turn a New Leaf for the PACTT (Parents and Children Teaming Together program) as a "Behavior Coach." I go into my clients homes and assist parents with their troubled children. Not only do I work with my clients, but I work closely with parents to teach them all they can about their child's diagnosis and how to cope with it.

I work part time. Luckily the pay is actually worth my time. I get reimbursed for mileage and for any $$ I have to spend on my clients. I also have a labtop (dont get too excited, its pretty much a dinosaur) and a work cell phone. Pretty legit right? I think so too.

Here's what Ive learned so far. In school they stressed the importance of self care. If your going to work in the mental health field you have to take care of YOURSELF so that your work does not effect you everywhere you go. Mental Health is a tough field to work in. I never truly understood this statement until I got this job.

I have two clients. Both I love very much, both are challenging to work with, and both families have different needs. I never truly understood how much this field would effect my life until I started working in it.

- I have to constantly stop myself and think.. Am I talking too much about my job? (to my husband) I am always telling him this that or the other about my job. Poor guy.
-I have to be assertive with my families. (I am not overly assertive, never have been) I prefer the nice way around things, but sometimes there is just no way around it.
-I have had two meltdowns because seeing my client's behaviors and knowing what they are truly capable of KILLS me. Its hard to get them to understand their own potential. I have positive days, and hard hard days.
-I am grateful I married my husband, who is a professional arguer. Literally, he thrives off of proving people wrong (in a friendly and teasing way). Ive picked up on his skills throughout our marriage, mostly to use against him.. but they have come to be quite useful in my job. I argue literally some days, ALL day long with my client.
-I hate having to coordinate child care. Its stressful, so we finally started to pay a babysitter. Although Im super grateful for all the help we received with Maylie up to this point, it just got too hard to coordinate everyone's schedules.
-I want to do MORE than just my job. Its hard to find that line of balance and when and where have I crossed the line of professionalism? At what point am I unprofessional? I have one family who just has so many other needs than just their child. For instance financial needs, and health needs, and food needs. Its hard because I wish I could take it all away, and my brain always goes back to that family and what more can I do to help? I have given them a list of resources, but if they don't help themselves, thats all I am able to do right???
-I was taught in school the importance of being on TIME and being accountable. My easy going personality hated this, but now I truly see the importance. It is so important to be on time, and to attend sessions and not cancel. I see the importance because my clients NEED me. They NEED their services.  I am grateful this mentality was instilled in me during school, at least in a professional, work related regards.
-It took me a while to realize this, but this is not just a paperwork job. I am DIRECTLY working in the homes with the client. Which is what I LOVE about the field of social work. I am getting some pretty great hands on experience, however I never realized how taxing emotionally direct service would be. A part of me wishes I could do paperwork.
-I have to act CONFIDENT all the time. A lot of times I truly have to pretend I know what I am saying. Its a happy medium for me because I am not really an overly confident person, and most times I question everything (thats just the way my brain works) however, this whole pretending to be confident thing has really actually boosted my confidence. My clients families now trust me and support me in whatever I do with their child even though I don't always know all the answers.
- I WANT TO GIVE THE FAMILIES I WORK WITH THE GOSPEL. Its so hard to see these people struggle, when I have something I know would alleviate a lot of their pain.

Those are just a a few of my thoughts about my job. Im just working out all the kinks of starting a career. You know, the stuff you always have to learn the hard way.

I know that I am being lead in the right direction though. Heavenly Father is helping me do my work. I am his hands in aiding these people's lives and putting it back together piece by piece. There is no doubt that I AM the one who is supposed to be working with the clients that I have, and they are the ones that were supposed to give me these experiences. No coincidence there.