Exciting times!

I love that Julia is home again. After 18 months (besides a quick return home for surgery) of being away she is home. I'm so thankful she is safe and now she is ready for the next adventure. Everyday for the next 2 1/2 weeks will be very busy. We have appointments galore and then getting Logan ready to leave for 2 years for his mission. OH MY GOODNESS!!!! I can't even think straight right now.

It was wonderful that family was at the airport to greet Julia. I don't have a picture of everyone that was there. 

YaY! she's here!

First stop was defiantly In and Out

Something very important to me was to get a new family picture while I had all my children under one roof. So for years I wanted to go to the spot Mikey proposed to me. I completely forgot how rocky and dangerous (I didn't think it was at 23 years old) it was but the goal was for a family picture in the very spot. 22 1/2 years ago Mikey said we were going on a date. He wanted to get to this perfect spot by sunset. He was so nervous the entire drive and I had a feeling of why. We hiked to the rocks and he got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife. 

Today we went to the exact same spot and Logan and Lowell immediately hike down to the part your not aloud because  the waves can take you away. The lifeguard even came over to us and told them not to do that. If you know my family and when we take family pictures there is usually one or two that just refuse to cooperate so Ive had to accept this and be happy with whatever I get. There is a couple that I laughed really hard at because of my children being there goofy selves but it was all good in the end and I just so happy we were able to go to this special spot as a family. 

A special thanks to a special person for taking our pictures.

Crazy boys

My favorite picture ever

17, 25, 44, & 44

17 days until Isabelle's 12th birthday

Belle has counted down to this years birthday since her last birthday. She reminds me frequently how awful her birthday was last year and really it was. 

She had to get a lot of emergency dental work done  and she was miserable so I understand that. 

It is my goal to make it better this year and besides its a special year for her. She will go into young women's and I couldn't be more excited for her. I'm not sure what we will do yet to make sure she feels special but I do know all she really wants her own phone. We will see about that.

Its 25 days until our sweet missionary daughter comes home after serving for 18 months. I can't believe the day is almost here. She has grown into a beautiful women and I can't wait to hear all about her adventures. She has blessed our family in so many ways since she left to serve and spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. I miss her so much and I can't wait to give her a big hug and call her on the phone when she isn't home just to hear her voice.

In 44 days our wonderful son Logan will be leaving for two years to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I have purposely not wanted to countdown for his leaving date just because Im trying to not think about him being gone. He is a huge help and a peacemaker in our home and I will miss him so very much. I think he is going to love his mission and put forth all his effort into helping others. I can't wait to see his testimony grow and himself grow as a man. I just love him so much

Today I turned 44 and Im trying to embrace it and just accept Im almost half way thru my forties.  Thats crazy! Im not a fan of getting older and honestly my body is letting me know that I better start taking better care of my health. Mikey brought me home some beautiful flowers and I had some yummy enchiladas. My favorite! Today the kids also had there first day of school and it went well so I must say it was a successful day. Lowell just doesn't like me saying "let me take your picture" in front of everyone

Im going to keep counting down to all of the exciting things happening in the Zeman family 

What a great week

What a week!

We had a lot going on this week and it was great. 

We started off by getting Isabelle ready for her first year of girls camp.

She was excited, nervous, happy, and anxious.

A sweet mom sent me this pic of her. 

Happy Camper

Next we met up with our dear friends at their beach house and it was amazing!

The view was so beautiful and the weather was even better

Gorgeous!

This pool was awesome and it had a jacuzzi at the end of it and it seemed like everyone had so much

 fun. 

I had the opportunity to teach a class at girls camp so I headed up on Friday and I must say I was so happy I was going to be able to see Isabelle. 

I paired up with the sweetest lady named Sue. She is the best and always has a smile.

 Girls camp is just awesome and all the girls were so sweet. 

On Saturday I picked up a tired Belle

She filled me in on all the fun stories she had

I said "hey lets go by the mailbox and check and see if Logan's call came in"

It was there!! Belle and I jumped for joy then gave the news to Logan. He said OK tonight is the night. He wasn't going to wait so texts and calls went out to see who was in town to come over

So I had my sweet nephew take pictures on my camera of Logan opening his call and then one of my sons (I won't say who) was helping me download to my computer and now they are all gone. So I made Logan pose for this picture today with his call in front of his map. He was very happy about it. 

Now he's off to Utah, Salt Lake West Mission

 

 I'm so grateful for my children and husband and all the blessing we've seen lately. We've witnessed tender mercies and we are truly grateful.

What a trip

Summer has started! Whoop Whoop!

Ahhhh, I love summer vacation because we can go as we please and sleep in and have fun. 

We wanted to start summer off right and head to our dear friends in Utah. They mean the world to us and we have the best time when we are together. I love being able to pick up right where we left off after not seeing each other for awhile. It was a wonderful trip with staying up late talking,  smores, movies, goofing off, riding bikes, swimming, laser tag, almost going shooting, and more talking the night away.  Our trip actually started off with some anger and frustration and now I wonder if that was a sign with how it was going to end. It doesn't matter because we had a blast anyway.

Cheese

We played 3 rounds of laser tag and I must say I loved it

My calves hurt the next day after riding bikes but worth it

Mikey by the fire

Catching up

Incredible's  2

 I have rented with Enterprise for years and Ive always had good customer service. Mikey and I went to pick up our rental for our trip ( I did reserve it online a week earlier). I gave the employee my reservation and he looked at me and said "we don't have anything for you" Say what?????  After some arguing and disagreements we had to walk away without a rental. It was so disappointing that they can treat there customers they way they did. Especially a loyal customer who rents from them frequently.  Anyways we had to take  our little Jeep on the trip so that meant the kids were very squished in the back seat, but I think they did great considering the tightness of the car. 

I'm going out of order here but before we left California to head to our friends

We decided at the last minute to leave a day earlier and go to Zions. Oh my goodness its beautiful there. I will go back any day, I loved it so much. 

So fun! The water was so cold but it felt great. I can't wait to go back. Next time with Julia.

Sadly after several days in Utah it was time for us to head back home. After 5 min of leaving I see sirens light up in my mirror.

I got a ticket.

I guess I didn't make a complete stop at a stop sign. UGH!

We got all the way to Las Vegas, we filled the car up stopped to eat at Cracker Barrel (YUM) and headed back on the road. About 20 miles down the road the car started acting funny. I would push the accelerator but the car at different times wouldn't accelerate then it would kick in and keep going. It was weird and I didn't know what to think. Suddenly it stalled out in the middle of the Highway and the big rigs and cars are behind us going at a high rate of speed but nobody hit us. I got the car started again and pulled to the side of the road. It was 115 degrees outside and we were 40 miles to Baker Ca. We were worried. Thankfully we have AAA. They told me it would be 3.5 hours until they could get to us. So we sat in the car in the heat and prayed. We prayed to give thanks that we were watched over and that we weren't hit being stalled out in the middle of the Highway with many many vehicles around us. We gave thanks that we were safe and we had water.  We gave thanks that we had cell service. Then suddenly 10 min after waiting the tow truck guy shows up and puts us in his truck where it is nice and cool. Now I told the kids to recognize what a blessing this is and how we have been watched over and protected. Even though it was miserable and hot and something is wrong with our car we were still watched over. Our prayers were heard and answered. It took us 12 long hours to get home when it should've been 6.5 but we were home safe and we made it. Its a trip we will never forget for many reasons. 

Congrats!

You've graduated Logan!

You worked really hard for this and we are so proud of you. I really can't believe how time flies by, its so crazy to me and I really don't like it. He's so ready to move on and Im sitting over here trying to slow it down. Mike's parents were in town so we had a little family dinner celebration for Logan. 

 Lowell and Belle helped me decorate and Lowell came up with the fun idea of making use of this wall. So we filled balloons and then the G for the word GRAD deflated so it was a RAD 2018. Still great!

I love this picture of Mikey and his brothers and their dad.

I made Logan a shadow box of all the things that were meaningful to him thru his senior year. Well his football helmet wouldn't fit in there so everything else. It was a great end to the school year and now Logan has his mission map up waiting to find out where he will be serving his mission. Im SO not ready for him to leave. 

13 days

Wow, what a crazy 13 days!

I am so grateful, amazed, and humbled. 

Our daughter was able to have her surgery and return to her mission within 2 weeks since she arrived. It all happened the way it was needed and how she hoped it would.

This was not possible without the help from our Savior Jesus Christ. No way was it all our doing. 

I was so happy that I could take care of her and be her nurse and mother while she went thru this surgery. I had a hard time with thinking I wouldn't be able to. I knew if she had this surgery while in her mission area that she would be fine but to be able to care for her myself was wonderful. After 4 days of being home after getting out of the hospital she was ready to get out of the house so we went to surprise Mikey at work. 

 Put on your hard hats before you can enter and hop on. It was so neat to know that we went underground  about 4 to 5 stories to where Mikey works. He gave us the tour and tried to explain all this stuff, we didn't understand but it was awesome.

I love seeing Mikey in his environment and being able to see what he deals with on a daily basis, it  lets me see my hubby  in a new way. He works his butt off for us and we are so grateful for that. After a little while Julia said ok I'm done 

 Then in the middle of everything going on Jordyn celebrated his 24th birthday and we celebrated Mothers day so that was fun to have all my children here with me. Mikey did a great job with flowers this year. I love them!!!!

Time to say goodbye but for only 4 months

See you soon

Miracles do happen

This week is one I need to talk about

My words on here will not be able to convey what my heart felt

Our sweet daughter Julia being the strong women she is had been feeling awful lately while trying to serve in her mission, she came home for a quick visit

 and she had

pains in her side and was just sick to her stomach

You know around this same time I was feeling that something was off but I couldn't figure it out

She wasn't saying anything to me until a week ago in a email

She would say "mom I am  in a lot of pain when I eat and lately its really all the time that I am in pain but I'm fine don't worry

In fact this is the picture she sent me and she looks happy and not in pain

So I would ask her questions on Pday to try and help her

Thankfully her companion convinced her to go see a Dr.

She finally went one day and he said it sounded like it could be her gallbladder giving her trouble

So she saw a specialist

Yep... for sure gallbladder

she had to do some tests that included MRI, and ultrasound

The hydascan showed that her gallbladder wasn't working and that it needed to come out

By this time she was in constant pain so the surgeon scheduled her surgery and everything was a go

THEN......

I found out that our insurance wouldn't cover the surgery out of state at all, not a penny.

So I hurry and call to let her Mission President know and he said well she will need to come home and get the surgery and since it is a minor operation with a quick recovery time she could come back within 2 weeks. 

Wow!

OK!

So by the end of the day she was waking towards us at the airport

Hugs, lots and lots of hugs

It was almost exactly 13 months since being able to physically see her so this was a blessing 

After things settled down she let us know that she is constantly in pain and has no appetite so first thing the next day was a Dr appointment to get started to get her surgery scheduled

We didn't realize the trial that she was about to start

Doctor appointment #1

we all know you need to see your Dr to get a referral to see the specialist blah blah blah

Doctor appointment #2

Happy because she is seeing the surgeon and it feels like progress

while talking with the surgeon he agreed that she needs surgery and he said scheduling will be calling to set it up.

She let him know that she is on a two week time frame and she really wants to return to her mission and she doesn't want to be released. She really wanted him to understand her desire to finish her mission and she wasn't ready to say she was done

He seemed he had no idea what she was talking about and he said sorry but surgery is scheduled 6 weeks out

I saw her  body show that she was so discouraged and upset

I felt very strongly that we shouldn't give up and to keep going because something is going to work out, we couldn't see it or even think that something would work out but.....

I asked as many people as I could to please fast and pray for Julia that something will work out for her to get surgery in the next few days. I don't know how but something needed to work out and I knew that our Savior Jesus Christ knew exactly at that moment how Julia was feeling, what she needed and what her desire was

He knew and we had to keep our faith strong that it will all be OK and something would work out

Monday morning she woke up sick and very pale, it was different and I knew at that moment we were going to the ER and we weren't leaving until we got someone to understand she needed surgery

We weren't waiting 6 weeks for her to get beyond worse

We spent 6 hours in the ER before she was seen but the whole time I was praying and trying to stay patient and praying some more

Thankfully the Dr that saw Julia in the ER wanted to admit her and keep her in the hospital until they could do surgery

That is a miracle right there

We didn't give up, we stayed faithful in knowing that something would work out

Now this is a simple surgery and its outpatient and recovery I heard goes very well

So for something to be so simple had turned in a very difficult process when it didn't need to be

I do know that those who don't understand Mormon missions don't understand the needs of a missionary and the doctors and nurses didn't understand Julia's desire to want to hurry with a surgery so she could recover so she could go back out and serve

It just doesn't work that way

But Heavenly Father did, he knew exactly what was needed, what Julia hoped for and what she desired to do

Because of her faithfulness and many others that prayed, fasted and hoped for this process to go quickly we witnessed a miracle and prayers were answered

My heart was so full at the realization that things were going to work out and 

Miracles are real and for Julia and our family 

this was a miracle

1 year ago

Just like that and it's 1 year

Yes I'm going to say it

I can't believe it's been a year since she left for her mission

She says she's loving it and learning a lot. She's a trainer now and I'm sure she's doing wonderful at that. So 6 months to go until I can hug her.

For Lowell's birthday Julia sent him this cute tie that was made with fabric from a skirt. 

For 2 years Lowell wore the same pink tie to church every single Sunday in memory of his sweet cousin that passed away. He didn't want to stop wearing it then after Julia sent him this one he decided to wear it. I love that he shows his love for his cousin and his sister this way.

We love you Sister Zeman and we are so proud of you

keep it up