What the Heck?!

It’s time I caught everyone up on where the heck we are and what the heck we’re doing. To answer the first heck, we now live in Missoula, Montana. Where the heck is that, you ask? Missoula is on the western side of the state, nearer to the Idaho border. If Montana were cut parallel through the middle, Missoula would be just above the line dividing north and south. So basically, we live in Northwestern Montana right in the middle of Lolo National Forest, with the gorgeous Bitterroot Mountains to the West and the Garnet Mountains to the East. This is beautiful country.

Though we’ve been in Missoula since early January, I still ask myself daily what the heck we are doing here. Most of you know we were preparing to move to Michigan in early summer to attend medical. Lo and behold, Divine Intervention. We’ve scrapped medical school for a post-doctoral position in a biochemistry lab at the University of Montana.

Unfortunately, Doug has yet to finish his PhD. At this moment he is frantically writing his dissertation back in Utah. He quite literally dropped me and the kids off at our new home and turned around and drove back to Utah. (Special thanks to my mother-in-law for her amazing ability to unpack boxes and put things away.)

Doug made a brief visit in early February to bring me a computer, fill his canteen’ and upset the fragile understanding I had with the kids. Mainly, if you go to bed and leave me alone by 7:30pm, you never have to pick up your toys, you can eat at McDonald’s or Wendy’s whenever you want and watch movies all day long. Yes, I am in survival mode.

Why the heck do we have this insane arrangement? As luck or Providence would have it, depending on your preference, we connected with a Missoula couple who were leaving on an LDS mission to France in early January. The McMullin's hadn’t sold their home and they were looking for someone to take care of their house happily situated on an acre of land. Surprisingly, housing is quite expensive and hard to come by in Missoula so when this opportunity to live in the McMullin's home presented itself, we felt enormously blessed and simply couldn’t pass it up even if Doug wasn’t quite finished in Provo. We love our new home. I can honestly say not a day passes without me marveling that we live such a beautiful setting and in such a lovely home.
James and Daphne with the neighbor's dog on a bike ride.

This sounds hokey but since moving here there are two random things that fill me with enormous joy. First is the two squirrels living in the pine tree just outside the back of the house. I keep my bedroom curtains open so in the early morning I might catch a glimpse of one or both squirrels bounding limb to limb outside my window. (I’m hoping the early-bird…early-squirrel? thing will rub off on me). While doing dishes at the kitchen sink I’m always delighted when I spot the happy rodents scurrying across the yard or dangling precariously from the fruit trees. The kids have named one squirrel Lightening and the other Alicia (pronounced Al-EE-see-a). Can you guess who named which squirrel? The other random thing that fills me with joy is the three horses in the pasture in front of the house. It’s interesting to observe the hierarchy and social habits of the horses. Sometimes I’ll be watching out the window and all three horses will come galloping at full speed across the pasture. I’ve no idea why they are running but I imagine it is for the simple exhilaration of feeling their legs move and for the shear joy of their life. (These are happily situated horsies.)

Okay, enough already of the sap. I’m in love with this place. I’m a country girl at heart but love the fact that Costco and Gymboree are ten minutes away. I have the best of both worlds...almost. Heck, it would be nice to have a husband to enjoy it with me but that too will come.
This is the pasture in front of our home.