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This week we decided to head out to Linder Farms for a fun family activity. It is a working farm but in the fall they have a corn maize and pumpkin patch. We carried Michelle around the whole place and she was such a trooper (it's nice to have a baby that for the most part puts up with being dragged around all over the place, then again we tend not to give her a choice). The corn maize was pretty fun but we did realize that neither of us particularly enjoy getting lost and so we are not really corn maize people. But we did get a couple of cute pictures :)

We also traipsed all over the pumpkin patch finding pumpkins. Apparently Joe and I had different ideas of what we wanted in terms of a pumpkin. He found a 30 lb pumpkin and I wanted little ones as in like 5lbs or under.... So we compromised-ish. We got a big one to carve and a couple little ones to look pretty on the counter. It was fun finding our own pumpkins and they had gourds too, they even had white pumpkins! (confession, I totally thought that people painted their pumpkins white. One of those moments where I felt really smart, kinda like when I finally realized why it is called Idaho Falls.)

Pumpkin carving to come!

Why tribulations in the title? Because it sounded cooler than Trials and Blessings alone....
Just to clarify right off the bat this is a bit of a thinking post and no, we are not experiencing any major trials or anything like that that you need to be aware of, just some stuff I've been thinking about recently. Yes, thinking ohhhhhhhhhhhhh If you want to skip me thinking and get to the interesting stuff skip to the red line below ( i won't blame you, I promise!)
Trials are an interesting thing and I could go on and on about them and get all preachy about it or complain a bunch but that is not my point. I have learned several things in my life about trials (as I'm sure everyone has) but the there are a few big points that have stuck out to me. 1. You can't pick your trials but you can grow from them. 2. Never, ever, ever, ever assume that you know what trials someone else is or isn't going through or has or hasn't experienced. This second one is the one that I have been thinking of the most recently (not really sure why, but sometimes my brain just gets all deep- yes, everyone once in a while I think beyond the fact that Michelle got poop on the carpet- thank you oxi clean, I love you).
Everyone's trials are unique to them in their own situation and therefore how they handle them is going to be different too. Which also means that some people's trials are much more public than others. I don't believe that it is bad for someone to share a trial that they are going through, in fact in many cases it can be healing for themselves and others. Knowing that someone else has been through something similar or has your back can do wonders. Of course there are those people that seem to just want attention however I choose to believe that there are very few people that this is their true purpose in sharing a trial. In the same way that many people choose to talk about their trials or by the nature of a trial it is public there are many people who choose to keep trials private or share them with only a small group of people.
Neither way is always right or always wrong, each trial is unique and so is each situation. I guess my biggest frustration is that in our world of media storm and connectivity, people seem to feel entitled to know everything about everyone and if you choose not to share then it must not be real (and yet those who choose to share are often hurt by the backlash of people). Because I tend to be a more private person I obviously feel more for the side of people who get hurt because people assume that they have a perfect life completely void of trials. (but i feel for everyone!) Just because someone doesn't talk about something doesn't mean that they don't have their own difficulties and haven't had a rough road or that they are a coward. Sometimes people are meant to share things, other times they are meant to be borne in the heart but always they are meant to turn to the Lord. Guess what? Facebook, twitter and texts cannot replace that need.

Blessings: Blessings rock. Duh! But of course we don't get to choose them either, however, if we just remember to look for the blessings in the chaos life looks a lot better.
Here is the stuff that is actually interesting:
Now can a share a blessing that we have gotten? Pretty Pretty Please?! Yeah, well, here I go, spilling the beans finally. We bought a house! Yeah, we are crazy but we made the decision because we felt strongly prompted that it was the right thing to do and we are very excited about it =)
We actually closed on the house a little over a week before we moved to West Yellowstone ( I mentioned that we are crazy right?) It was an incredibly crazy busy time for us (it was also Joe's last week of school) so if you think that we kinda fell off of the face of the earth back in the end of may/ beginning of june, we did. We recieved so many blessings and tender mercies in the process of purchasing this house. (Please understand I am not trying to brag but rather take note for myself of some of those blessings we recieved). We won the bid in a bidding war on a house we love and felt very strongly about, we were able to close when we needed to, we were able to hire movers last minute for a good price since we had a small window of time to move (aka less than a day) and Joe was at work (AND I haven't found anything broken yet!), we were miraculously able to get the keys to the house just in the nick of time (as in they met us at the house with them as we pulled up with the truck because we had to be out of our apartment that night), our apartment allowed us to just put the keys in the drop box so we weren't so rushed to clean, we were able to get a deal on a fridge because they thought that we were going to have to take the floor model but they ended up having one in stock, they were able to deliver our fridge the day we moved in so all our food didn't spoil, the guys that cleaned our carpets were super nice and moved our bed so that I didn't have to he-woman it by myself even though they technically weren't supposed to (they were both family men and so they were pretty much in love with Michelle), our ward is awesome and we are literally surrounded by members! And we had some great people we know who were kind enough to keep an eye on everything for us until we could return and actually live in our home!!! ;)

Is anyone actually still reading? Wow! Good on ya!
The house is in a great sub in Meridian and is a short drive to Joe's work (mileage wise it is pretty similar to our apartment but we bypass all the busy roads so it is much faster). There is a giant awesome park that takes a whole of 3 minutes to walk to (Joe loves it because there are 8 baseball fields, yes, we counted. I love it because the kiddy section is awesome- although it is further away than the baseball fields- and there is even a splash park and music making area. Robyn- Esther would go crazy, I guess you guys just need to come and visit....ya know, for Esther's sake ;) Plus, she would get to see her favorite aunt and uncle)
It is a three bed two bath house and it has a great room set up which I love! The open feeling is so nice to me and it makes it much easier to actually get stuff done for me. All in all, we are happy :) busy, but happy. We got back a week ago and Joe had inservice last week and students started on Monday. We got the plugs in the outlets and Michelle is loving exploring her new environment.

These pictures are from when we bought the house and a couple from when we toured it, I promise the yard looks much better now.... although we do still have weeding to do, the never ending process.