A review of our 1st year in Missouri

We have now approached our one year anniversary of moving to Missouri. I haven't journaled  much this past year. It's been quite the year, and I've been trying to take it all in and make sense of things.

January was a difficult month of adjustment for everyone. The temporary apartment...well, we are just not meant to be apartment people. The kids' favorite part was the free dvr & tv show access and being able to play in the snow. Collin, many times, pretended like his legs stopped working to and from the 2nd floor apartment to the car. The kid is now between 80 & 90 lbs, over half my weight...not easy to pick up and move.

I had assumed before we moved out here that Drew and Brent would be in the same elementary school, but that didn't happen. It's the same district, but has to do with boundaries since it is mostly farmland starting a couple miles north of us. Luckily, the schools are about a 10 minute drive down the road from each other. Next year, they will be at the same school, but more on that later.

For January, since the apartment was outside the school district, I was driving the kids both to and from school. Because the district is so small(1 high school, 1 middle school, and 2 elementary schools--all but Brent's elementary are on the same main campus), there are two main start and stop times, about an hour apart since the buses are used for the elementaries right after the middle and high school kids get dropped off. And of course, Drew and Brent are out at the same time.

Brent had struggled--and that's a mild way to put it, before we moved about being dropped off to kindergarten. Moving gave us more of the same, but slightly worse since I wasn't allowed to walk him to his class like I had always been able to for the kids when we lived in California. There were a few days where it took 2 other adults to get Brent out of the car in the drop-off lane and get him into the building while he was kicking and screaming and once he was in, I went down the parking lot, pulled in an empty spot and just cry.

I literally spent 3 hours of my day, every day, in the car for picking up and dropping off. The apartment was a 20-30 minute drive each way from the furthest school, and I didn't dare pick up Ivy and Collin and leave them at the apartment to pick up Drew and Brent, so I sat in the car for that hour with them waiting for Brent, and high-tail it up the 10 minute drive to go get Drew.

Grocery store trips made me cry, sometimes I still do inside, for prices and lack of choices. I mean, there's still choices, but less than what I've been accustomed to. Some things, I haven't found the Missouri equivalent yet. Like an equivalent of Foster Farms deli meat and Guerrero whole wheat tortillas with more than 8-10 in a package.

February was finally getting to move into the house. Collin, who had been doing good with his new routine, had a very difficult time with the bus, even though he'd been on buses for summer school before. March thru April were very hard on him, and me as well, as he had a modified super short school days because of behavior problems at school.

By the time March came around, and we finally switched over licenses and car registration, Missouri had greeted me with about 20 lbs, with no difference in eating or movement. Just pure stress and being off my anxiety medication from January till about June. Since being back on my medication, at least 15 of that has come off pretty quickly.

So much seemed like it pushed me over the edge before I got back on my medication. I said some things to the kids(especially Brent) that, even though it was the truth of how I felt, it's probably going to take a long time to repair the damage.

I think I had the longest adjustment period out of the family. Because I was in a new place, didn't know anybody, and was doing Pathway classes online & Thursday evenings, it was very isolating. I didn't have the same structure and built in friends/co-workers like everyone else in the family. Relief Society nights always fell on Thursdays while I went to my Pathway meetings, about 25 minute drive from the house. I got called into nursery at church within a month or so of us being in the ward. It hasn't been too bad, but the isolation factor was hard for awhile. Apparently the bishop got a strong impression that I should be in there. Still waiting and trying to figure out the why part about that on my own.

I got to go on a Relief Society trip in March to some church historic sites on the other side of the state, a 3-4 hour drive each way.

Tom has been flying out quarterly to do his Coast Guard drills back in San Pedro. He applied for a transfer to Missouri back in October of 2015, and they never responded back. In January or February he found out that they stopped accepting his rank and position.

The kids finished school in mid-May, and I was still doing classes till July. In late July, we got a fence put up in the backyard. About a week after that was finished, we started basement construction. It's been finished for about a month.

I have started up classes for BYU Idaho online, for finishing up my bachelor's degree in Web Design and Development with a focus on Web design.

Collin has been having issues again at school. I don't know what to do for him, or even pinpoint what the heck is going on. It seems like when we think he'll be calm, he's not. And when we think he's going to freak out or meltdown, he doesn't always. The only consistent thing is his unpredictability. Some of the things he says and does, at school and home and church simultaneously make me feel anger, guilt, shock and disappointment.