I'M BACK!

It's been a little while since I've done a blog post.

It's been a crazy few weeks.

My grandparents own some apartments, and I've been in Idaho since the beginning of August working on them. The college that they're associated with only has a seven week break for the summer, so we have to do all the repairs and cleaning in those seven weeks. One of my younger sisters got married the second week (congratulations!), so we weren't able to start until the third week.

My dad took all of these pictures. I'm borrowing them, because he has my pictures from the wedding.

The wedding was really nice though. I was excited for my younger sister.

During the third week, it was only me and my youngest brother.We patched and painted all the apartments. (My aunt was also around helping, but she had some other responsibilities too, so she worked on the harder repairs when she was able to.)

During the fourth week, my twin sisters joined us. We began cleaning. We were trying to work quickly, because we wanted to tile a couple of bathrooms too, but with only four of us, it was slower going than we wanted.

During the fifth week, my little brother started school, and it was only the three of us. We finished most of the apartments (except the ones that had girls staying in them), but then we had to go back through and redo a couple of things that had gotten missed. I forgot that as part of my job as supervisor, I had to check on their work and make sure they did it right.

My twin sisters haven't worked on apartments with us through the years. They had watched smaller children so that my aunt could help, so they didn't have the same amount of experience as some of my other siblings. However, they worked hard, and it was fun to get to know them better. When I left home for college, they were eleven and my youngest brother was four.

So, by the time we finished cleaning nine apartments, we only had about a week and a half left. We shampooed the carpets and waxed the floors during the sixth week, and in the first half of this, the final week, the girls switched apartments, and we cleaned, shampooed, and waxed the final three apartment in about four days.

We finished everything late Wednesday night. It was sure nice to have the apartments ready for the girls to move in. My younger siblings have been troopers.

My little brother's back hurt, so I was massaging it and Kevin wanted a turn too!

It has been hard to be away from home for so long. Grig had to stay in Utah for his job, and so I would only see him every other weekend or so. Grig is my best friend, and I really love him a lot. I really missed him.

We had a really fun date one weekend though. We went and watch Age of Ultron, and afterward we got ice cream and wandered around the town. When we drove back to my parents' home, there was a lightning storm going on in the sky. It was beautiful, and we parked in front of my parents' home and watched the fireworks.

We were having a great time, until there was a flash so bright directly in front of us that it blinded me, and a split second later, the car shook from thunder. We decided that was too close, and we ran inside the house.

It was a great date though, and we really felt close to each other after that, despite the near-death experience.

Kevin really missed his dad as well. He loved skyping with him and every time he came to visit, he just wanted to latch onto him. My mom also told me that everytime a male figure came into the house, he got super excited and wanted to wrestle with them the way he does his father.

Kevin also missed his dogs. The dogs stayed in Utah with Grig so he would have company. However, the second weekend that I was in Idaho, we had both of Grig's brothers move in with us. I came back briefly that weekend to help them move in and go to my ten-year-college-travel-study reunion.

Now, we have three of Grig's sibling staying with Grig, so he had lots of company!

Kevin did pretty well. He stayed with my mom while I worked, and he was pretty good for her. He was pretty mad at me though. When I came home, he'd follow me everywhere, and if I had to go into a different room, he'd scream at me. He was a little champ though. The last week, especially, I worked long hours.

He played with his cousins quite a bit though, and he became really good friends with them. That was really fun for him.

It was hard to go to Idaho and work for so long, but there were many blessings that have come with it. The first is that we now have more savings. Grig hasn't yet gotten a new job (he's had some interviews, but nothing's panned out yet), and so we now have enough to live on for a couple of months if it takes a little longer.

The second thing is that I got to know my younger siblings better. Recently, I was regretting the fact that I'm far away, and that my siblings have all of these bonding moments that I can't go to. It was really nice to get to know them as the adults they are now and talk to them about their perceptions of the world.

The third blessing I received is that I regained some self-confidence. I've been feeling kind of overweight for a while, and down about how I look. Sometimes it's especially hard when I am around my younger siblings, and they're all so thin and beautiful. However, as we were working on the apartments, I was reminded how strong I really am. Things that my younger siblings could barely budge, I could pick up by myself. I remembered how much I like being strong, and how I wouldn't trade my strength for a smaller frame.

I like how I look, and I feel good about myself. Do I need to lose a few pounds/inches? Definitely. However, it's okay that I'm a little bigger, because I'm also a little stronger.

It was a great experience, and I'm grateful that I was able to help out my grandparents and aunt. It was nice to work again, but I'll enjoy going back to being a full-time mother. I now have a lot of projects that I want to work on at my house as well.

It will be an interesting few weeks as we readjust to life at home with permanent company, but I think it will be good.

I should be blogging more regularly again, and posting more videos.