Oops

     Wow, I knew I hadn't written a blog post in a while, but I figured it was like, a month or something. Hehehe...My mom pointed out on Wednesday that it had actually been longer, like over 2 months. :}. Sorry guys. However, with my mother-in-law dying, I didn't really want to write, and then school started, and I've been crazy busy. So. This post is going to try to be a very basic over-view of January and February, (with some pictures of Jessica that don't really relate, but are dang cute). Then I'll do another post that somewhat shows why I've been so busy with school.
     So lets see here...well, the doctor was pretty much right. He had given Mama until about Wednesday night, she passed away Thursday December 30th at about 9:00 in the morning. That was very hard for all of us (obviously) but I am very glad that Nathaniel and I had our finances in such a position that we could stay that extra week, and were up there when she passed. Unfortunately, while we had been there pretty much every day to visit, no on was with her at the hospital when she left. Monday, January 10th, we had the funeral down here in Utah. It was a beautiful funeral. Papa, Melindae (my sister-in-law), and Flora (Mama's sister) spoke, and the grandkids sang Families Are Forever, and Nathaniel and I sang If You Could Hie to Kolob. It was nice having everyone down here in Utah for the week, but not fun because of the reason behind it.
    School had started right before the funeral, so I did have to miss one class to go to the funeral, but that was okay. I do for the most part love my classes. My 2D Design class (composition of art pieces) is way fun, I love my professor, but it is a lot of work. My Art History (up to the Renaissance) class is kinda cool, and I do like my professor there as well, but the subject matter isn't quite as interesting to me. Then I also have an online Digital Media class (I know, I know, I'm a little crazy for taking 9 credit hours with taking care of Jessica). I like my online class, I'm learning some fun and interesting stuff to do with the Adobe creative programs, but my professor grades really harshly, so that isn't so fun.
     A couple weeks into the semester (Monday January 17th), I started getting some really intense abdominal pains. They started out just as an unhappy digestive tract, and got worse and worse, to the point where I could not do anything but lie flat on my back. It was not cool. It was the worst on Monday, but it still kept me from going to class on Tuesday, and was not good Wednesday or Thursday. Thursday I started talking to my friend Steph. She used to be lactose intolerant, and I thought it might be something like that, so I asked her how her body had reacted if she did have milk. She told me her symptoms (which were exactly what I was having) but then qualified it by saying that it may never have been a lactose intolerance. She has insulin resistance (which she was recently diagnosed with) and so sugar is probably what caused those symptoms in her.Well, I was willing to give it a try. So, Friday I cut out sugar entirely from my diet, and the next day, I felt great. I didn't have any "withdrawal" symptoms, even though I had expected them. So, I am basically on a diabetic friendly diet. I can have milk sugar, or fruit, stuff like that, but if there are any added sugars at all, and there is more than 6g of sugar per serving I don't eat it. Well, okay, after the first 10 days I altered it a little. I can have treats, in very small amounts. Basically, I take the serving size, and divide it until it reaches 6g of sugar, and that is my serving size. It works for me.
     Jessica finally has more than the 2 teeth in her mouth. Her top 4 teeth came in all within the space of about a week (some helped by accidental bonks to her chin). Nathaniel and I have been blessed with a very calm child however, so other than the teeth coming through, we wouldn't have really been able to tell.  
     Last, but not least, Midterms are done!!! Yay!!! I probably currently have an A- average for the 3 classes. I'm hoping I can get that up before the semester ends, but we'll see what happens.  And now for the pictures:

To start off with, this is actually from while we were up in Washington. Oscar and his son Ethan both fell asleep on the couch, and I thought it was a beautiful picture

 Jessica's hair has finally gotten long enough to play with, so she is shown here with her pig-tails

 And here we have her playing with Mama's (my) phone. She certainly knows how to use it already. Its even better when I have Nathaniel call my phone, and she can hear his voice through it. Classic faces.

 She climbs into the laundry basket on her own. I did not put her there. (And I love the cheese.)

 Here, Nathaniel was home for lunch, on one of those bitterly cold days we had in January, and Jessica is trying on his hat.

 Even though she knows she's not supposed to, she still loves to climb under my desk. Here she decided to poke her head out at me. But its cute

 I just had to have the close-up of how cute she is.

 And last but not least, we have another no-no. She likes to climb up the arm of the couch and kneel on the back so she can fully see outside.

   Okay, well, its time to get ready to go to church, so I probably won't be uploading the post about why I'm so busy until either really late tonight or early tomorrow (though Jessica hasn't taken a nap yet today, so I may be coming home early from church, in which case I can post it). Hopefully that doesn't happen. I would like to stay the whole time.