Merry Christmas!

Dr. Laura thinks Christmas cards are a waste of money. I think they are wonderful and beautiful and charming and thoughtful.

However.

I am a working woman and still have my Thank You cards from my wedding sitting in a box. If you know me very well, you will not be surprised that I am doing this blog post JUST IN CASE I don't mail our Christmas cards out. If I were to mail them out, they would have this lovely picture.

 

The little insert would read something like this:

Dear Friends and Family,

What a year 2011 has been for our family. They say the first year of marriage is the toughest, but for us the second year was WAY harder than the first. The marriage part was and still is great but life has been more challenging for us this year than our first year of marriage.

We were living in American Fork last year and loved our ward. Dan was the manager of Coney's Custard. He put his whole heart and soul into this operation and was such an asset to the company. We were grateful for his full-time job and the lessons he learned from opening a second store in A.F. for the owners. Dan was working full-time while trying to get into graduate school. Dan had applied for several Marriage and Family Therapy graduate programs and made it to the waiting lists at BYU and the University of Utah, but was ultimately rejected from both schools. He was scheduled for an interview at a school in Seattle when we both had a sinking feeling that we should not move there. He cancelled his interview in Seattle and also rejected admission to Montana State University the same week. We felt so confused at the time because our plans seemed to be dissinegrating before our eyes. 

About a week later we started investigating another career option and both felt really good about it. He decided to switch gears and become a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner. This would require him to take pre-requisites for nursing school, complete his RN degree, and then go to graduate school. The timing seemed comparable to his original master's degree plans and so a few days later he was enrolled in Salt Lake Community College for nursing school pre-requisites. 

To save money, we moved in with Dan's parents at the beginning of May. It was a huge blessing for us to live there and we really loved being able to spent time with his parents. They are such wonderful and generous people. I enrolled at SLCC as well to complete my teaching certification so I could put Dan through his extremely rigorous schooling. We spent our summer evenings together doing homework, taking tests, writing papers, and studying. We commuted to our classes together each morning and loved all the time we spent together listening to KSL news/radio. Dan also completed a CNA license on top of going to school. What a summer! We did find time to hike quite a bit, ride bikes, and even take a few backpacking trips.

I continued teaching piano lessons during the summer and Dan quit his job at Coney's to devote himself to school. We made plans to move closer to our schools in August and found an apartment we fell in love with that was in between our schools and where I teach my lessons in Utah County. During all these changes we found out I was pregnant in July and we were so excited! We moved to Bluffdale in September and were very excited to start our family there.

I suffered from terrible morning sickness and made the decision to drop out of my classes for the fall semester so I could focus on teaching and putting Dan through school. I took on more students to help pay our bills and started teaching 5 days a week. Teaching was my nausea relief and I felt my best when I was teaching. 

Unfortunately a few weeks after we moved to Bluffdale I miscarried when I was almost 12 weeks along. We were and still are devastated. Going through this trial has been a lot more difficult than I anticipated.  We know that the Lord is aware of our needs and is aware of our heartache and He really has helped us get through such a difficult year. We have had so many changes and so many disappointments but through it all we have grown closer to each other and closer to the Lord. We are doing our best to move forward with faith and do our part to continue progressing in our careers and education.

I am currently at capacity with my music teaching studio and have 43 amazing students. I brag a lot that I have the best job in the world. Each one of my students has a special place in my heart and I feel so blessed to have the job I do. I have decided to continue teaching and expanding my studio rather than finish my school teaching license. Dan is currently employed at LDS hospital and loves his job as a psychiatric technician. This experience is definitely going to help him when he applies for nursing school. 

Dan only has 2 more semesters of pre-requisites and then it's off to nursing school. We are very glad to have our career goals mapped out even if it seems like an eternity before we will be finished with school. Who knows where we will be in 2012, but we really hope 2012 is full of a little less moving, because moving 2 times in 4 months is a little tiring for Dan's arms and legs! 

We wish you a very Merry Christmas and wish that we could spend more time with our wonderful friends who we love so much. God Bless!

Love,

The Andersons