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First off I’ve been meaning to write and talk about my awesome weekend at our ward’s Relief Society Women’s Retreat. It was in the middle of September and I’ve wanted to say so much about it since then, but well, you know.
Anyways our ward has a tradition once a year for the women to go on a retreat for a night. Well this year we went to the Knight’s (a family in our ward) vacation home on beautiful Lake Wenatchee. Let me tell you something, people say Lake Wenatchee is the best kept secret, and they’re right. It was gorgeous! I’ve always said that Cultas was my lake, but now I’m in love with Lake Wenatchee. And I’m in love with Karen Knight’s Vacation Home.
Anyways a bunch of us women (about 30 of us) gathered together at the Knight’s home…..which I should mention that I’d call it a cabin, but it’s most definitely a home (Huge! 3 floors and sleeps like 24 people)…..and we pretty much just hung out and played games, painted nails, & did our own thing till dinner and then we sat around and mingled some more over a delicious pasta feast (which was awesome for me cause I was TOTALLY craving pasta that week).
Then we had a presentation about Strengthening Our Marriages and Relationships, given by one of my favorite people, Stephanie Allgood. She also gave me the great pleasure of assisting her presentation by giving a “mock infomercial” about being able to change your husband with a big mallet she called a “husband-fixer-upper”. I even got to say, “and wait! There’s more!” It was awesome! I was in my glory! She had no idea what it meant to me to be able to act silly around women that still have no idea what my personality’s like. Well they soon found out.
Anyways it was an awesome, uplifting and motivating lesson on how to be a better spouse and how to treat our spouses better. I needed to hear it. I think we all do. Then the organizers of the event presented all of the women there with “Love Letters” that they secretly got our husbands to write us before we left on the retreat. Well all opened and read them to ourselves.
Props out to my dear, sweet husband, who wrote such beautiful words to me in the letter, that I couldn’t stand to read it in the presence of everyone, cause it brought me to tears of joy, immediately upon reading the first line. I saved it to read it in it’s entirety when I got home, as well as writing a letter back to him like we were supposed to do at the retreat. The whole thing was such a wonderful experience that filled my heart with awe at just how lucky a girl I am to have been blessed with such a great man at my side and will be my partner throughout eternity. I wish all of you could’ve been at that special retreat to have partaken of such a great and glorious “workshop”.
Anyways after all that, we all just hung out and mingled with everyone. I was supposedly sleeping in the “party room” meaning everyone there vowed to stay up and party, but by 11 pm, everyone but me and another girl were asleep. LAME! Even Sarah, my party friend, was in bed by then…..and she swore she’d be up to party. I was so disappointed! So I just wandered around the house trying to find a party, until I went up to the main floor and a bunch of women were watching an old Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie (Swing Time). May I also add that all of these women who stayed up to have fun were all old enough to be my mothers! They were the party crowd and it was AWESOME! Some of my favorite people in the ward, mind you, but they were the last women I expected to be the ones to stay up. We stayed up till 2:30 am watching this movie and then two of them (Stephanie Allgood and Marcia Bean) re-enacted one of the dances from the movie. It was hilarious! They were pretty good too.
Anyways I had an absolute blast! It was fun getting to know people better and also getting to know some that I’d never even talked to before. The pictures that I’ve posted are mostly pictures to show off Karen Knights’ home, but hopefully you’ll be able to see and tell of all of the great women that I have in my ward and the love that radiates through their smiles.
Okay now we’re on to the present. Um okay it’s been more than 6 months, but it’s still time to move AGAIN! For those of you who are unaware of just how often we move refer to the blog I wrote on October 10/05. Anyways this time we’re moving into a 2-bedroom apartment in the same complex, but the next building over. Our lease was up and we know that eventually we’ll have to be in a 2-bedrrom apartment if we’re gonna have a baby, so we decided that we’d move now.
No I’m not pregnant, so don’t get excited.
Actually our motivation was that our friends in our ward, the Browns, bought a house and were moving out of their apartment at around the same time that our lease was up and we really liked their floor plan. It’s smaller than the 2-bedroom we lived in before, but yet big enough to suit our needs. So it turns out that we’re AGAIN moving into an apartment that belonged to someone in our ward (refer to the blog on November 2/05). I think it’s pretty funny. Hopefully this will be the last time for a while. I know that we always get this itch to move every 6 months, but we’ve proven that we can make it at least a year in one place, so we’re gonna try and beat that next time……but we’ll see. Anyways this apartment is on the 3rd floor so it’ll be a change from always being on the ground floor. Thank goodness for an elevator! But it’ll mean less to no bugs or spiders in our apartment, which for us is great cause we’re really sick of bugs invading our lives and home.
So anyways the Browns are already moved out, as of Saturday, and we just have to wait for management to get our unit ready and painted to move into (which might take a week or more) and then we’ll move in ASAP. It’s really weird too cause I helped Trish clean the apartment and I was like, “It’s kinda weird cleaning my future apartment”, but that, “at least I can do it how I want it!”
Anyways I’m pretty ready to move. I’ve already got almost ½ the house packed in boxes, cause I’ll be pretty much doing this move on my own, since Dan’s still working lots and he never knows his schedule. But thank goodness we have a dolly and I can just stack boxes on it and drag it to the elevator. I know I’ll have some help from our ward to move our furniture and stuff, but since I’ll be moving our boxes during the day on the 2 days I’ll have to move, I’ll be on my own.
And if that wasn’t enough, at the same time we’re doing this move, plus Dan in shipping mode, our renters are moving out of our house in the Tri-Cities! But thank goodness for our prayers being answered, cause it just so happened that our renters new a family that wanted to rent our place and so they’re moving in at the beginning of November. What blessing! But this means we’ve got to take a trip to the Tri-Cities to make sure the house is in order and for the new renters to sign papers and stuff. So we’ve gotta fit that into an already tight schedule for us with our move and Dan being at work 7 days a week and I tell ya, we’re both stressed to the max! What a blessing it is that we don’t have kids right now!
Anyways that’s pretty much our life right now. It’s crazy. We’re going crazy. Poor Dan is absolutely mental with his job. It’s sad when all he sees is this game. He was looking at me last night across the dinner table and he says to me, “You know I’m looking at you, but all I see is the game.” He says when he closes his eyes all he sees is the game. When he dreams at night, he dreams about the game. I cannot wait till all of this is over!
At night when he comes home from a 14 hour day and then he has to “play test” the game at home for 2 more hours, I totally feel like a wife of a gamer. It’s so sad that some women actually have husband’s like this, who will spend the rest of their evening at home playing video games, online with their friends, instead of talking or spending time with their wives and children. I thank God every time he has to play this game at home, that he’s not like that for real. Thank goodness this is only his job and not his life and it will be over soon.
I’m sorry if I’ve offended anyone who has a husband who’s a gamer, but I just hope you realize how destructive it can be to a marriage. It’s an addiction, just like alcoholism, drugs or gambling. Guys don’t realize that it’s like that. They feel it’s a need to “unwind” from their day job or to relax for a couple of hours. But it’s a self-destructive habit that’s part of our technological world today and I just find it so sad that some people have come to accept that. I know it’s sad that Dan works for a company that tries to create all of this as a normal lifestyle, but I for one do not accept that as a norm and neither does Dan. But lately with all of his at home game-testing, I can’t help to feel like one of those people who suffer from their husband’s addiction to video games or even alcohol, drugs or gambling or whatever. And that’s why I thank God that my husband’s just not like that…..anymore.
There is hope people. It all begins with a commitment to change. Dan made that commitment to me and to himself that he was not going to be like that and he’s not. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying that Dan’s perfect and that he doesn’t play video games ever for his own pleasure, but he knows that it’s not something that’s worth it. He would much rather spend the time with me in some way and he realizes that why shouldn’t he? I am in fact his best friend, his love, his eternal companion and why wouldn’t he want to spend his free time and unwind with me? Like I said before we’re not perfect people and we don’t have a perfect relationship, but why not strive to have one? That’s all that I’m trying to say.
Anyways the last thing I wanted to come across as being was haughty or prideful, but sometimes when I come across something good in my life that I can thank God for blessing me with; and know that it is because of Him and His blessings that have that something good, then I want to share my feelings about it and hopefully help someone else be able to reap of that same blessing that I have.
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