Future Father

I want to find a husband that will be involved in my children lives. I want my husband to be there for our children when they come into this world. I will help my husband be involved in the birth so he can bond with our children from the beginning. I hope my husband will want to help when our children are ill. It meant a lot to me when my father stayed with me in the hospital, and I hope that if given a similar situation that my husband would do the same for his children. I will let my husband have one on one time with each of our children. I will encourage my children to be excited when he returns home from work or a business trip.  I want my children to know that they can always go to their father. I will allow and want my children to talk and to listen to their father’s advice. I will want my husband to take time out of his busy life to find activities that he can share with them. 

I am dating and considering someone to share my life with, I can pay attention to see if he is comfortable with children. Something that I can do to find out how he will react to children is to spend time with him around young children. I have a lot of younger cousins and it would be fun to babysit them with my future spouse. Before we are married I would ask and discuss with him his anticipated involvement with our children. I hope that by doing some of these things before we are married we will better understand each other’s feelings about children and the relationship we want to have with them.

Communicating

In class this week we discussed communication. When you are not talking you are still using words you are still communicating with your body.

When you are in a relationship you need to have deep conversations with your partner. You need to be able to talk about things that are going on within your home. You need to communicating about starting a family and about the children you are parenting. Dealing and communicating about problems early on, is best. If you do not deal with them problems right away, you might just make the problem worse.

At school you have to learn to communicate with roommates. College student bring different aspect to the apartment. When college students find out who their roommates are going to be, it is good to start communicating right away to find out about each other. It is a good idea to talk about what everyone is going to bring to the apartment such as kitchen and bathroom supplies. Communicating before hand helps for a smoother transition on move in day. I have had roommates where we did not really communicate with each other until move in day, we started having problems right after moving in with each other. I have had to learn to keep communicating with my roommates throughout the semester about things that are bothering me. When my roommates explain things that are bothering them, I have to listen and have had to learn to make adjustments to help keep peace in the apartment. 

Type 1

With permission from my brother Greg, I'd like to share his story. Greg was 10 years old when his life changed forever. Greg was having mood swings, drinking a lot of water, and was constantly having to urinate. No one knew for sure what was going on with him. My mom called the doctor one day and told them about Greg’s symptoms. The doctor told my mom that he needed to be seen right away. My dad was with Greg on a field trip, and as soon as the field trip was over my dad took Greg to see the doctor. When they got to the doctor’s office they started running tests. At home we didn't know what was going to happen to Greg. My dad finally called and told my mom that Greg was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. I remember thinking that only old people had diabetes. My family’s thoughts were how this could have happened. We now know that it was no one’s fault because Type 1 Diabetes is an autoimmune disease.

We all had to learn to help Greg. We learned what we needed to watch out for when his blood sugar was too high or too low. My family started packing snacks to take with us wherever we went, and made sure we always had his insulin on-hand to help adjust his blood sugar. My parents would set alarms to wake in the middle of the night to check on him and to make sure that his blood sugar wasn’t getting too low. 

Greg went to clinical studies to help find a cure for Type 1 Diabetes. My parents thought it would be good to help with finding a cure. He went to the Humphrey’s Diabetic Center in Boise, Idaho for two weeks. He was administered a drug through his veins in his arm and he would give blood sample every day for the two weeks. While under the study he would take movies and video games to the center to help pass the time. I remember that he would come home very sick!  Because the medicine made Greg so sick he had to be taken off the study.

Greg had a hard time coming to grips with why he was the one in five hundred to get this disease. I remember that he would say that he was done dealing with his diabetes and get mad and would not want to take anymore shots. It was not only hard on him but all of us, seeing him go through this. My other brothers and I had to get tested for diabetes as well. Every year we went in the doctor's office to be screened for diabetes. My younger brothers hated going and being tested.

Several years after Greg was diagnosed with diabetes he went to a diabetic camp. While at this camp Greg came to realize that there are many other kids dealing with this same disease. He also realized that several of them had other auto-immune health problems at the same time. After he attended several of these camps Greg started to become more accepting of his disease and he realized that it could be a lot worse. These camps were also great at teaching him ways that he could care for his diabetes by himself. 

I wish that I could say that it has gotten easier for Greg.  Greg does have a better attitude about his disease but most days he still wishes this hadn’t happened. Greg and my family are still looking forward to the day when a cure for this awful disease is found. In the meantime, I am so proud of Greg’s courage through this difficult challenge. 

Marrying the Right Person!

When I think about marrying Mr. Right, I imagine how happy I will be in that moment, and, without sounding too cliché, what joy will fill my heart. I wonder how I will truly know that it’s him. Will it seem as though a spotlight is shining down on him? Have I met him already and just didn’t know it?

Let's be honest, we have all wondered about that special someone we will want to enjoy our life with. Once you have reached that point where you have dated someone long enough that you feel there is a good chance you are headed toward marriage, what are the right questions to ask?

Sometimes I think as young women we can get caught up in the glamour of the wedding and be so focused on the pictures that we want to put on social media that we overlook what to others may seem like obvious red-flags. 

I recognize that once you are married you have to become as one with your spouse. Each has to think as much or more about the other than they do for themselves. Our spouse’s needs should be a primary consideration. I believe that the first year of marriage is likely going to be one of the hardest because of the adjustments needed to live for the first time with a new companion. Problems will need to be worked out without waiting until it is too late.

BOYS AND GIRLS!!

At a young age I knew that boys were different. I just didn't want to be around them. They had their friends and I had mine. When it came to toys they had cars and I had dolls. They played sports and I took dance lessons. I didn't think that girls could do the same things has boys...that was just weird. Boys were gross to me. I could never see myself playing with them or with their toys.

Then I got to age where I started to play with them, their cars and doing sports. Part of me still thought boys were gross but they were also okay. I started thinking we could be friends but still thought they had cooties. I couldn't bring myself to think how I could ever like them more than a friend. They were way different then girls.

I guess that one day I woke up and thought to myself, I guess I have crush on a boy. That they weren't that gross. I wanted to be around them. I decided it was okay to like them, even though I still wanted to be around girls more. My group of girlfriends started wanting to hang around boys. We started wanting to do thing with them on the weekends. They were actually fun.

Now being in college most of the time I would rather be around boys rather than girls. I believe that it because they are different. They don't think the same way as me. I can do things that they can't. I don’t think that it is weird to have boys in the same major as me, even if I am a Child Development major. I just know that Heavenly Father made boys and girls...different and I’m cool with that.

Tradition in Families

What are your traditions that you have in your family? How long have they been in your family?

For my family some of the tradition that we have are at the being of the school year we get a father blessing. It's to help us through out the school year and to know how to deal with stress and problems that we may have. We try to do them the night before we go back to school. I have seen so many blessing in my own life from the blessing that I get at the being of the school year.

Another tradition we have is on Christmas Eve I help make sugar cookies for Santa with my little brothers help. We go out to eat for dinner, most of the time we go to a Mexican restaurant. After dinner we go look at Christmas lights. We some how end up looking at the same houses every year. When we get home we get to open one present that is under the tree. It always turns out to be pajamas! We all get into our pajamas and watch Mr. Krueger's Christmas and It's a wonderful life with James Stewart. We all go to bed and a wait for Santa to come!

Tradition can be a lot of things, What are you tradition in your family?