Our Life Right Now: Decemberland

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John and I are in the USA! We are both very grateful to be back in Utah; I'm so thrilled I can hardly stop praising everything I see. We got off our flight to Vegas Thursday, December 9th in the evening and enjoyed a few hours on the strip. John's dad picked us up and we spent a night in St George then headed home Friday evening! What a wonderful country we live in!

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We are living in John's Mom's basement in Emigration Canyon again until we get a new place early next year. That may or may not be John's Dad's rental house in Draper, which would be amazing, but it's not quite for sure so I'll hold that thought.



Next Monday, December 20th, we leave to California for a week to spend Christmas with my brother Jarom and his family in Livermore, near San Fransisco. We are all excited for that, though it does mean we'll miss out on a couple events here in Utah.



We are soaking up the laziness that is the wonder of December and lack of responsibilities, while still making room for friends, family and essential events of the Holidays.

Help but Hinder or Allow Learning and Risk Problems?

A brother and his girlfriend had a baby. He's almost 6 months old now and he's the cutest little stud the family could ask for. He's happy as can be and real funny. But he's a little behind in his development, mostly due to his parents being less than the most responsible parents around. Just having a baby out of wedlock most definitely does not make you a horrible parent, though it certainly rarely helps matters. But being involved in too many drugs too often and being a less than responsible person all around does certainly hinder parental abilities. The poor kid is daily, even hourly, transferred from one caretaker to another, constantly fought over who's not going to take him, and too many times used to manipulate. He is most often left in his carseat, ignored when crying, sitting in a way--too-old diaper, and in a house without enough food for him. Though his parents do care for him, are mostly kind to him, and did want to keep him, they are simply not prepared to be parents. What do you do for a child like that?

MIL says John and I are the perfect candidates to take him. Young married couple just about to start their reliable, sturdy life. Ummmm....sorry Ma. I'm not taking those birth control pills because they taste yummy. We have every intention and have earned every right to decide on our own when we start our family. Even then, if that were the only thing, of course I'd take in a nephew so in need of help. But do you really think his uncle and aunt are going to be the best place for him? That's just begging his parents to intrude on our space and therefore his, and probably cause unknown amounts of mental issues for him -- and probably for us. There's a reason foster care leading to adoption works. Yeah, it's sad for us because then we lose the kid for the next 18 years. But with the right family he'd have SUCH a better life than somewhere his parents can easily track down and try to take him over. We aren't taking responsibility for a child we can't protect. 

He spends a lot of time being babysat at Auntie's house, but she's going crazy with all the drama the parents cause. 

Daddy was doing so great 2 months ago. Stopped drinking, thought about stopping the cigarettes, stopped all other drugs and made an attempt to move forward the fantastic business Grandpa set up for him. A few ugly threats from Momma and that went down the drain :(

Grandpa thought to help force Daddy into responsibility by stopping the flow of money for baby essentials. But Grandma says it's not Baby's fault he was born.

Today I was forced with a similar, though smaller scale, dilemma. 

Baby's crying. Daddy I know is watching him and doing his best, but probably needs some help. Find out doing his best means propping the bottle up on pillows while he's playing video games. Honey, that just doesn't do. But he doesn't take well to advice so I don't even try. But should I take and feed Baby? Daddy will be relieved and go back to his video games, and Baby will get his needs met. But, though propping the bottle is far from ideal, Baby is okay right now. He's fussing which means he'll continue to get Daddy's attempts at taking care of him, which Daddy needs a lot of practice with. 

So what do you do? Daddy does try, even though he really has no idea what he's doing and has a minuscule sense of responsibility. It's not to the point of needing Child Protective Services yet, though it has most definitely crossed several peoples' minds. The kid needs more than he's getting.

Rachel's Book

I volunteered to make Rachel's wedding signing book, one like my own where it's kind of a yearbook of their acquaintanceship through engagement. I have thoroughly enjoyed the task :) I'm finally done, and I'm sending in today so it will miss the Christmas rush and I don't have to worry about it while vacationing next week ;)

J&B Wedding HotPrints PhotoBook

As I wrote that title, I realized that I still haven't put any pictures of the wedding up here. Oh well, this has most of our favorites, so it will do well enough!

John and Brin
3.12.10

John Bryan and Brin Michelle

For Time and Eternity

While looking, for me, for a good site to use for Rachel's wedding signing book I'm making for her, John came across this other site that doesn't do full-out photobooks. It's called HotPrints, and they claim their goal is to provide FREE products to all of their customers. Right now they're at the point of giving every customer four free photobooks a month. No catches! Well, kind of. You do have to pay shipping, their books are only 16 sheets -- including covers -- so it's really more of a booklet, your back cover is doubled as the printing label, and they stick some advertisements in the middle. However, shipping is only $2.99 worldwide (at least for the US and Mexico...I haven't tried anywhere else), and their advertisements are easily removable. Also, you can choose to pay $3.99 for the book and have no advertisements and a separate shipping bag (so your book itself is without a shipping label). I don't know what else paying for the book adds, if anything. I have yet to personally see a copy to know about quality since we're still in Mexico, but we had my MIL check out the one we sent home and she was very impressed. Shipping time was great for home. Even though I'm pretty sure they're based in the UK, it only took 2 or 3 days (Carol wasn't sure which day it arrived) for it to get to Utah. However, here in Mexico it's been about 3 weeks and I still have seen no sign of the one we sent here -- but that could be a separate problem, who knows? We'll call them by the end of the week to be sure everything went well on their end. Two last things: they give you a free digital pdf copy that's easy to download, which I think is pretty swell and should be a necessity for any photobook site. However, their interface for creating the book needs a lot of improvement. Some people really like their auto-fill option, but I like having complete control over what my product looks like. If you like having the site make your book for you and you just make a couple adjustments here and there, then they're great. But for me, I need more options.
Sorry to blab on about some random site. I in no way was compensated for it, I'm just way excited about it. I'll totally pay $3 each to have a plethora of cute little photobooks, especially since they're perfect for gifts!

Family of the Famous

Can I just say how cool it is to be related to a semi-famous person?

John's sister is married to Bryce Neubert. So he's my brother-in-law, and his daughter was my flower girl. He's an LDS musician and he's done a few cool things. Right now he's working for the church and doing some more cool things. Pretty much, he's just plain cool. He's not super famous, since the world isn't mad about LDS music, but for those who listened to a lot of LDS music in the 80's and 90's, they know who he is.

Silly fact? I've still never heard him sing. I've heard him in his recordings, but in the year and a half I've known him I've never heard him sing by himself, in person. He was supposed to sing at our wedding, but he had to take the kids home early :( Ah, well. If we're both in the same family for eternity, I'm sure someday I'll get the chance :P

Why am I writing this? Today I was going over family birthdays. For my side, I have half of everyone's information totally memorized, another fourth half memorized, and for anything else I have a handful of resources easily accessible. For John's side? You're lucky if they can even remember what their own information is. Okay, so maybe not quite that bad, but it is definitely true that no one knows everyone's information. It's driving me crazy. I just want some simple birthdays, anniversaries, and middle names!

Anyhow, Bryce is the only one of the siblings and siblings-in-law whose birth year I don't know. So I thought it'd be worth the shot to check facebook. Nope, just his birthday.
But...

I look down his page (not fan page, but real-person page, mind you) just a little, hardly more than a glance, and I see "Kenneth Cope." Well I've certainly heard that name before. But is it on his list of pages? Nope. It's one of his real live friends. So is Kurt Bestor! And...me! All in the same quick pick of 6 people, along with his wife.

Friends in common? Family. (my hubby, Krista's son, and our sister-in-law)

Other Friends: 

Kurt Bestor: amazing pianist whose music I've fallen asleep to more times than I know.

Thurl Bailey: a freaking Jazz basketball player

Krista Neubert: Bryce's wife and my husband's sister.

Brin Nelson Coulter : ME!

Dave Neyman: an LDS Production Manager, Actor , and Assistant Director (according to IMDB)

Kenneth Cope: another awesome LDS musician

Am I the only one who thinks this is cool?

A Family Man

Today I express my gratitude for my wonderful husband.
Today he is wonderful because he loves to support and be a part of my family.

While growing up, I loved spending time with my family. Though I knew we weren't perfect, I still thought we were pretty amazing. How many little girls these days gets to grow up with nieces and nephews, who make being the youngest truly the best because you still get younger kids in the family, but you don't have to deal with most of the bad things about younger siblings! What a life!

Now that I'm older, I still love my family. We don't get to spend as much time together now. Unfortunately,  the older siblings' families have gotten into other obligations and so we only spend a few hours together every few months, if we're lucky.

One thing that I learned about my family while young and still now, is that I want to always be an active part of it. I knew that to do that, I needed my husband to stand by me in that. Too long have I watched my brothers-in-law avoid spending time with my family, making it hard for my sisters to appreciate time with us. Out of my fours sisters, only one got a catch who makes an effort to fit in with the family.

So, when I was young I dreamt of and while dating I searched for a guy who wouldn't be scared of my parents, who could have conversations with my brothers, who could make my sisters laugh, who fit in as well as my in-laws, and who the kids would beg to play with. I could hardly expect him to be void of being critical of my family when I sometimes tend to do so myself, but I wanted at least for it not to keep him from loving them.

I got better and more! John loves my family, and is everything I could have asked for. He makes an effort to include them in our life and looks forward to spending time with them. He supports them and cares for them. He helps me when I am impatient with them. He's excited to do things for and with them.

I love my husband, and I am grateful to have a family man.

Special Girls in My Life: Rachel Hales

I love many people. Too many, I have been told, but love is something that you have more of to give as you give more of it, so what they say is just complete bull. I regret that I cannot give more of my time and effort to everyone I wish to. I live my life as I can and let those I can know that I do love them, or at least I try. For my wedding, it was simply impossible for me to have all the bridesmaids I wanted. The seven I ended up with were plenty. It was hard for me to settle on them because I have so many friends who truly mean a lot to me and who I felt deserved to be in the mix. But, having 20 or so bridesmaids is silly, especially when the Bridal party is already huge due to the nature of John's and my combined very large immediate family. So I settled on five of my closest friends, John's unmarried step-sister, and John's close female friend. Here I would like to give a tribute to my wonderful bridesmaids and the ladies who are, if you will, my unofficial bridesmaids, whether they know it or not.

Rachel Hales, along with Amanda Ryther, is an angel in my life.  I've never had anyone make me feel as at home as these two. Hours of storytelling on which they insisted (mostly Rachel) made them the ultimate authorities on John, as my friends. They've been there for me through almost everything John and I have gone through, and yet not in a way that intrudes on my relationship with John. I got scared of sharing my excitement about John because I didn't want to overtake the show, but with these two it just added to our friendships, and also helped add to my relationship with John. Rachel, in asking for advice on her boy problems, helped me figure out some issues I was dealing with. Rachel is my hero. Rachel is so loving and seemingly completely void of judgmental perspectives. She reaches out to absolutely everyone around her and accepts them for who they are, yet she doesn't do so blindly by giving her total trust to those who don't deserve it. She has overcome hardships in her life, and she truly knows how to smile no matter what. I can't wait to spend more time throughout my life getting to know Rachel. I know these two friendships will last.