The Solomon Family

I know that it's been a little while since I posted anything... okay, a long while!  Since my last post I've finished two shows and been cast in another, Aaralyn has started crawling and cut her first tooth, Jake has a new job, we have a place of our own, and I've had some really exciting work experiences. So let's recap!

Edges went fantastically, I miss the cast a lot.  It was definitely one of those shows that brings everyone involved closer together.  Over the summer I performed as Crystal in Little Shop of Horrors. It was tons of fun too! I got to sing almost every song, and lost around 10 lbs from all of the dancing around, haha!  Last week we had our first rehearsals for the next show, Aida. I will be playing the part of Nebehka. Overall, it looks to be like a good time as well! I also received an invitation to audition for The Phantom of the Opera which is only the show that I've dreamed about being in for almost my whole life, no big deal (it's a HUGE deal!). We'll see what happens ;)

Aaralyn is growing up so fast! She talks gibberish to us all the time, has her own cute way of singing, and her personality just shines like a beacon.  She can crawl now- in fact I imagine that she'll be walking really soon. She's started to stand up without holding onto anything. It's all going by so quickly! I discovered her first tooth today, on the bottom, right side, in the front. I'll have to be careful not to let her chew on my fingers any more!

Jake got a job working at the Carriage House here in Snowflake, on the night shift. I know it isn't his dream job, or even his favorite job, but I also know that he is extremely grateful for it. It's made it possible for us to move out of my parent's house and be our own family, in our own place. It's not glamorous, I'm a terrible housekeeper and am rarely around to cook dinner, but it's ours and I love it.

Jake and I will be starting school tomorrow, eep! That was an excited "eep" by the way. We're going to have such an awesome semester! We both received our grant money on time and were able to go on a three day vacation to Las Vegas to see Phantom for our anniversary. It was tons of fun and very romantic, but now it's time to get back to work!

We are so blessed in so many ways! I don't even know how to thank everyone that has helped us, especially the Lord. I know that we're young and just getting our feet wet in most things, but we have a great life. We have so many things that people only dream of having, our love as a family being one of them. I <3 my little family!

This weekend is Edges, the musical review show that I've been working on in class this semester.  It will run this Thursday through Saturday only.  It's a song cycle about growing up and finding out who you really are and what you want to do.  I've found the meanings of the songs to be very deep at times and quite comical at others.  I'm excited for everyone to get to see how hard we've all been working!

I had originally planned to only take one class with Mom and Belinda this semester, but when that didn't work out I ended up taking three to have the same amount of credits so I could keep my grant money.  It's not a bad thing though;  I'm in two choir classes that meet twice a week and the spring musical that meets on the day in between them.  It's been lots of fun.  It will also help me gain experience for what I've finally decided to do school wise- I will get my associates of arts degree here at NPC and then transfer to U of A to get my bachelor's in musical theatre, if that's still what I want to do when it's time to transfer, haha!

Jake is taking the metal art class that he's been wanting to do for over a year now.  He's very talented!  He likes to make custom knives and he's making armour in his class right now.  One of his teachers is Howard Noble, a world renown and much sought after metal smith mostly known for his armour skills.  He loves Jake too; he recently offered to take Jake on as his apprentice and hand his business down to him when he retires.  He also asked if Jake would like to train with him to enter competitions kind of like they did in the middle ages, sword fighting and such.  He even asked if Jake would be interested in getting a degree in metal art and then teaching at the college.  Needless to say, Jake was very thankful and told him that he would think about all of it. 

Jake's "bucket" helmet

I am officially entering the home stretch of pregnancy, the third trimester!  I've graduated from a doctor's visit every month to one every couple of weeks, I've gotten all of my vaccinations (the flu shot wasn't near as bad as the tdap!), I've started some hard-core cleaning (much to Jake's dismay!), and I've noticed some changes in my body that point towards December becoming ever closer.  And it feels like time is just flying right by me!

At my check-up yesterday I had my sugar tested, but I haven't heard anything back on that yet.  Hopefully I passed and I'm still in the clear!  Wendy said that Aaralyn's heart-rate was about 150 and I'm measuring right in between 27 and 28 weeks, which is good since I'm technically not even a full 27 weeks yet and everything had been measuring a couple days behind.  I'm sort of hoping that I'll have her early; I feel like having your birthday on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day is not fair.  I'd rather she had her own special day to celebrate.  Since I don't want to be induced I just have to hope that she's done cooking early!  I found out that there's a full moon on December 10.... we'll see what happens! 

Last Tuesday I really got the living room cleaned good.  We had to rearrange some stuff though.  Aaralyn's room is currently our kitchen (that we never use) so the table and a couple of other things had to be moved into the living room.  Jake pretty much moved everything, I couldn't have done it without him!  I've been feeling kind of sick lately and I have anxiety attacks when I think about cleaning because I don't know where to start- there's so much to do!  He's been such a great help to me, taking care of everything and helping me to relax.  I'm sort of sad that he was finally able to go back to work this week, I miss having him around all the time!  Anyway, after the living room was finished, we decided to hold off a little on Aaralyn's room.  We don't have anything to put in it yet except for a chair and the room needs to be painted still.  I guess that will become a project for another day.  Yesterday I tackled our bathroom.  It was nasty, that's all I have to say about it.  But now it smells like Pinesol (my favorite!) and it gleams like a bathroom in a magazine, haha!  Today I'm hoping to get our massive amount of laundry done, we'll see how that goes though. 

We have gotten a few presents from the family already, mostly clothes.  Mom got Aaralyn some ladybug themed things, since her nickname was Lacey-bug.  My favorite is the monkey dressed as a ladybug because Aaralyn moves so much that I feel like she's a monkey in the making!

School has been going well for both Jake and I.  Grease is moving right along, as well as my choir classes.  I can't believe that when it's all over I'll be ready to have a baby.  It's a little frightening to me, haha!  As nervous as Jake and I both are, we're also ready to have her here finally so we can love her to death!    

Jake and I don't have much news to share, just that we've been super busy with school and work!  Jake's class is going well, he seems to like it good enough.  However, he has apparently developed dyslexia when it comes to numbers.  His teacher used to test people for things like that for a living and after Jake had some trouble with a test they sat down and discovered that he likes to switch his fractions around, haha!  He's not too worried about though, his teacher has some ideas to help him and I said I could look to make sure everything matches in his homework. 

My classes make me feel very busy.  Online classes involve a lot of reading but I've been doing alright so far!  My actual classes are going smoothly, I love them all :)  I do spend a lot of time at the college now though, something my house is probably not appreciative of. 

Yesterday I realized it was the first of September.  That means I only have 16 weeks left to get ready for Aaralyn's arrival!  I know that might seem like a long time to some of you, but to me it feels right around the corner!  I'm so busy with Grease rehearsals right now, by the time that's all finished I'll be around 36 weeks pregnant!  At the end of the semester I'll be exactly 38 weeks, and probably really ready to be done being pregnant, haha!  I feel like time is flying by so fast!  I haven't had any urge to clean anything though.  I've started noticing things that need to be done, I just have no desire to get up and do them, haha!  Hopefully that changes soon, I don't have much time left for everything!

Till next time :)

Tomorrow Jake and I go back to school for the fall semester. Jake will still be working so he's decided to focus on his Pharmacy Technician class and not take any others until next semester when he has more time. I, however, am taking 15 credit hours worth of classes! It seems like a lot when I think of it that way, haha! Six of my credits will be earned online though so I don't think it will be too bad. I was originally only going to take 12 credits but a couple of things changed that. The theatre department gave me a scholarship and invited me out to audition for Grease as part of it. I got cast as an extra/chorus member (not surprising since I'll be 8 months pregnant when we perform it!) and given an extra job as the stage manager. Because I got cast I have to enroll in another 3 credit theatre class that the rehearsals will take place in. I'm actually quite excited about it; I haven't been in a show for around 2 years and I miss the fun and work of it all. I posted a video of my audition piece on my book blog Midnight Magic for Music Monday, check it out if you want!

This Sunday I decided to take part in the indexing program that the church has. It's pretty much just reading the original document and recording the information for the official church records. Each record is checked by multiple people and boy am I thankful for that! The first couple of records I got were easy enough to read and then, bam! It was like I had forgotten how to read or something! They probably won't want to send me anything anymore after they get my latest attempt at "helping," haha! I guess right now the big project is the 1871 census from England. All I can say is that there are probably some people laughing over my interpretations somewhere. I did get a pretty good laugh out of it though; there was a box for the census taker to write down if the person was an "imbecile or idiot" among other options. I didn't realize they actually labeled people like that back then, haha!