A member of my ward bishopric called up a few weeks back and asked if I could sing a song for the Sunday closest to Easter. The program was already decided for Easter itself. I got a hold of Jordy and, lucky me, she was able to sneak down here and play for me. They sounded so natural together. The bishop kept making eye contact with me during the number and his expression said, “You are so lucky!” She is an amazing pianist and I couldn’t help but think that one of the things Heavenly Father has done for me was to have me marry into a family that is just as important to me as Chad is. It was great to have John and Renee come down with Jordy even in the midst of tax season. Jason came as well. We are so happy to be close to family again to be able to do things like this more often.

We did a beautiful arrangement of I Know that My Redeemer Lives by Michael R. Hicks, and it felt so good! I have been really trying to be positive and proactive about enjoying music again in my life. For so long I have let it become a source of stress, guilt and something that just overwhelms me. At any rate changing my thinking will no doubt take time but is already making a difference.

Last week the nursery leader came and told us Eden was welcome to join them in nursery. Eden will be 18 months tomorrow and we didn’t want to take advantage, so we just planned to keep waiting. We are happier to not have to rein Eden in for three hours of church meetings and I am positive she is having a much better time herself. The elders quorum was sad to see me arrive to class alone though. She is such a fun little person! We love her tons. She has begun to say some words and we can’t wait for more to come. Uh-oh, hi, Papi, down, hot, no, and a lot of mimicking. We are loving it.

We have had a long drawn-out aggravating process with the house we are hoping to purchase. We have had a difficult time communicating with the seller, who isn’t being helped by an agent of his own. After the inspection we had to get some potential problems checked out. Our agent was out of town, then the seller was out of town and we were still uncertain that we were getting an okay deal. After deadlines were passed we finally came to the point to get financing in line. That became a nightmare in itself. Living overseas and not having credit card debts and car payments each month along with multiple checks on our credit score since we have moved back to the States, has had a negative effect. Luckily we were still above the cut-off for the financing we were wanting. Or so we thought! Doesn’t it seem a little wrong that being responsible and cautious with our money should hurt us? We had a lender selected and began some processing only to discover that a mistake by our bank had dropped our score just under the cut-off. The bank quickly sent a letter to the credit company to explain their mistake and we waited while we got a rapid re-score, which would make it worth it or NOT worth it to buy. We were hopeful but it turns out the fix actually lowered our score again. By this time we are pretty much done with lenders, and house hunting and trying to work all this nonsense out. On top of all of this we had put in notice with our apartment that we would be vacating at the end of the month. So what do we do? Well, we found a lender who would work with us at the lower credit score and still get us lower rates, our apartment managers were nice enough to extend our lease for an additional month, and Chad and I have officially become addicted to watching TV and movies for the sheer lack of energy and motivation to do anything at the end of the day. We are now crossing our fingers (and our arms, legs, toes and eyes) that the loan will go through without any crazy surprises and we’ll be in our new home at the end of April.