![\"coffee\"](\"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/coffee.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nStay blessed in the mess!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oh hi there. Remember me?\u00a0 Your friend who used to write blogs?\u00a0 I apologize for my absence, or perhaps some of you were getting sick of me.\u00a0 In that case, you are welcome for my absence. There are several reasons I have not written these last few months.\u00a0 The first is that our life has been straight up chaos. STRAIGHT UP. Shain’s travel schedule for work has been nuts and he was barely home for a couple days at a time over the course of three months. Work for me has also been nuts.\u00a0 So fine, work is crazy for everybody, what is the big deal?\u00a0 Well, during the busiest time of the year for both of us we decided on a whim to buy a house.\u00a0 It was not something we were planning on doing for a while, but it was one of those deals we just could not pass up. It was not a move in ready home of course, that would be too easy!\u00a0 It needed lots of work. Which was tricky for Shain with his travel schedule and even trickier that he happened to have two other house rehab projects going on at the same time. Additionally, during this time we were selling our current house.\u00a0 Anybody who has had to put their house on the market and has crazy random showings all the time (and has a dog) knows that this process can be a huge pain and ridiculously stressful.\u00a0 Again, extra tricky with Shain not being home.\u00a0 So all in all, it feels we both have been running around ragged for months. Okay… so one of the OTHER reasons I have not written is because I am terrible at keeping secrets.\u00a0 AWFUL, actually.\u00a0 I feel like I have to avoid talking to people or even writing when I have a secret. I have had a REALLY big one for what seems like an eternity.\u00a0 WE ARE PREGNANT!\u00a0 Never-mind, I don’t like that…it’s weird.\u00a0 I AM PREGNANT!\u00a0 Sorry, Shain. I have known this as early as you CAN know this.\u00a0 So it has felt like I have been living this huge lie for months.\u00a0 When I decided to not go on my trip to Peru (which I was very bummed about) I shrugged it off to people as having too much going on with the houses.\u00a0 But of course, I decided against it as there were some risks in being such high altitude and in the middle of the mountains while pregnant.\u00a0 Luckily, I got my money back and I can hopefully check it off the list in the future.\u00a0 Hiking to Machu Picchu\u00a0 would have been awesome, but having a baby is even MORE awesome:) So, it has been hard for me to think, talk or write about anything else when growing a human is all that is on my mind.\u00a0 Every time I sat down to write a post, I wanted to scream it from the rooftops. Heck, even when the bagger at the grocery store would ask me “How are you today, Mam?” I would want to scream back “STOP ASKING ME QUESTIONS!”.\u00a0 So it is nice to finally have it out in the open. There have been many other blessings these last few months. I was miraculously able to sneak away for a weekend in April to California with a good friend and visit my beloved aunt and celebrate her 60th birthday.\u00a0 I officially completed my Master’s Degree and had my graduation ceremony last month which was an incredible feeling. I was also elected on to the Illinois Association for College Admission Counseling Executive Board, which I had gone back and forth on the decision to run for a while as it is another big responsibility.\u00a0 However, after praying about it and talking it over with a few different people I decided to go for it and was voted in! Oh and the big one other than THE big one, Shain and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary last week.\u00a0 The only anniversary we will ever have with just each other…imagine that \ud83d\ude09\u00a0 So in summary, life has been nuts.\u00a0 Still trying to slow down.\u00a0 Nothing like a baby to help with that…I think. Stay blessed in the mess!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1976"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1994,"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976\/revisions\/1994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blessedinthemess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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