A few improvements on our house

This is the extra bedroom in our house that we just finished. I will do my studying in here as well as concoct ingeniously creative masterpieces for the random projects I am working on! My amazing mom helped me to finish it while she was out here.

April, Tiffany and I in Columbia. It was exciting to go to Olive Garden, there really aren't very many options in Kirksville and definitely not an Olive Garden. These girls are wonderful!

Tiffany Hillam and I in Columbia, Mo visiting April Henderson and her new little boy at the hospital. He is precious!

Life's Challenges

I always hear about how difficult life can get, yet somehow it never seems those things will actually happen to me. But when they do make it around my way, I find myself stunned to pieces. That seems to sum up the last few weeks of mine and Ben's life together. A week from this last Monday, after about 11 1/2 weeks of pregnancy, Ben and I found out that we had lost our little baby. Our overflowing joy over being pregnant ended in a not-so-happy moment. It amazes me how much we truly have to learn in this life. It has been a rough couple of weeks with all of this news coming just a week before Ben's finals for his third quarter of medical school.

Despite the blow our hearts have taken, we have been blessed with an incredible support group of friends and family. Our friends out here in Kirksville came to our aid just hours after we received the news and my sweet mother flew out from California the very next day. The phone calls, meals, and flowers were nearly endless over the next few days. We feel lucky to have that kind of support in such trying times. We have pushed through the last couple of weeks and are taking life day by day. Thank you to everyone who has been so loving, compassionate, and supportive at this time of life for us. We are hoping and praying that this blogspot will contain joyful information someday about the child we hope to get in the not too distant future, and then lots more after that.

Ben is almost done with school for a nice long summer break of six weeks. We both cannot wait until this Monday at 4:00pm, and then freedom!! I feel as if I say this over and over, but I mean it more than ever this time--we are both so excited for some much needed time together!! Our plans for the next little portion of our lives have changed a great deal, but we are trying to look forward to the little things like working on our house together, Ben's parents visiting us this June (which is right around the corner!), vacationing in Utah and California for July with family, and moving on to second-year medical school student status this fall. Ben will be glad that he is no longer a freshman; that title never seems to disappear when your schooling goes well beyond High School.

When I stop being lazy we will have some pictures of friends, improvements on our house, and Ben and I up for a visual of our lives in the last little while.

Updates on life in Missouri

It has been a while since I have updated this, so I figured that I should probably do that! Ben is just about done with his second quarter of medical school. It sure has been a tough quarter. He has had a ton of studying to do and has stayed extremely busy. We cherish the minimal time that we get together. I am working at a law firm here in Kirksville and am about to wrap up working at Ruby Tuesday so that I can work on independent study classes while away from BYU. I recently went home for a week because one of my fiends got married. I loved being in California and miss my family so much now. But, the trip was a blast. Tomorrow is Ben's last day of finals, so hopefully we will get to spend some much needed time together. We are hoping to take a trip to St. Louis next weekend for a change of scenery and a little time to relax! We still love our house here in Missouri and we have made some great friends. Ben has a group of guys that he studies with that are wonderful. We have a lot to be grateful for.

Church History

Carthage Jail, Illinois. We went to Nauvoo and Carthage in one day. It was a long but wonderful day.

By the well outside that Joseph Smith fell next to.

Bautiful Nauvoo

Sorry, couldn't figure out how to get this picture turned! This is the beautiful Nauvoo temple! We are actually in the Nauvoo Temple district and in the Nauvoo Stake! How exciting! We did a lot of church history with Ben's parents while they were here with us. Nauvoo was one of our favorite places to visit. We went to the temple for the first time last weekend and it was wonderful, what a beautiful temple it is!