Finals and Running

Hello all...all two of you who read this lol

 

November came and went in a blur!

 

I can't believe it's already December! My birthday is on Saturday and I feel like I just had one! It will be a pretty low key day, get my nails done, go to lunch with Chip ( and maybe my parents), and then Chip has plans for the night. All I know is to dress nice haha I'm excited and will have to post about what we ended up doing.

21 has been a good year, weird and confusing, but good.

 As I have mentioned before its been a year of trying to figure out who I am and what I want with my life. I started back to school in January of 2013 and with that I think I feel more purpose, when anyone is actively pursuing to enhance their life, or improve upon oneself I don't feel that time is wasted. This sentence is something I have been looking for for the past year. Once I finally decided on that my soul could rest easy that I wasn't wasting my time getting a Bachelor's (even if I will never use it, which I may or may not, this is still undetermined), but deciding that one item "when anyone is actively pursuing to enhance their life, or improve upon oneself I don't feel that time is wasted", is a big accomplishment for me. I am slowly feeling better about the directions I am heading in, making decisions about things I want to do and believe, and am feeling more and more myself every day. Maybe my barrier to advancing in life was that I didn't want to admit that I was at times "lost in my 20's". Anyways I feel good about finishing school and I (and Chip) will graduate with a Bachelors in December 2014. I am very excited for this date!!

 

In November Chip and I signed up for a Half Marathon! We will run it in January in Las Cruces! I am growing in ways that I never knew were possible! I can run 6 miles no big deal now! What?! Friday I will run 7! I am actually looking forward to my long runs, which is new different and exciting. I think one big thing I needed was to get off the treadmill and get outside, and make a big goal to get me going. I haven't lost any more weight but I am stronger, have lost inches and gained muscle and my body is changing and I really like this new person I am becoming through running. I'm not sure if I will keep doing big races after my first half, but what an awesome thing to start my 22nd year of life with!

 

Chip's next eye appointment is next week. He says the spot is getting smaller and color is returning to it, but his vision has to adjust to this and so he sometimes has double vision and has to cover his eye to read things. He gets pretty creative with eye patches haha

 

Finals are next week and I am surprisingly feeling really cool calm collected and on top of things. I decided to give up regular social media ( FB, Instagram, Pinterest etc.) because I was getting super distracted from school and all other facets of life. I just hit this wall of frustration where I felt it was a competition. Who has the best husband, who's kid does the cutest things, who went to the gym three times today, look how good I look etc etc etc

I will admit to sometimes feeling the social media pressure, and probably caving here and there to some of the annoyances I just listed. Maybe that makes me petty and lame, but I felt myself getting sucked in and needed a breath of fresh real life. I am loving it! I feel a little disconnected at times...who's pregnant, who's getting married blah blah blah but I don't miss game requests, the same statuses from A MILLION POEPLE (Happy Thanksgiving x 1,000,000) and so on. Maybe I will go longer than the two weeks I had originally intended! Maybe I will only get on every two weeks or so...again, who is this person I am becoming?! This rocks!

 P.S. I don't really consider this social media because it's really just an internet journal device.

 

We had to cancel our plans to go to Utah to see Chip's sister for Christmas, so we will head up to ABQ for a day or two for a wedding, then come back and do Christmas with my brother, his little family, and my parents. It will be nice and low key. I am really excited about all the fun stuff I got Chip and I can't wait to see his face when he opens it!

 

For Thanksgiving we had a really nice time at Chip's sister Stacey's house in Thatcher. We had some freaking delicious venison wrapped in bacon and then I made green bean casserole, and rolls, and we had lots of Cheesecake and potatoes and watched movies and did a little Black Friday madness. It was a really fun weekend. Her kids are super cute!! That Friday night we went on a double date with our friends Randy and Jared to the hot springs and that was SO nice! It was cold out and the water felt great! We will definitely be going again! It was fun to catch up with them!

 

We also watched the new Hunger Games movie Catching Fire with our friends Jessica and Leon. It was AMAZEBALLS! We all drove to Cruces to watch the movie and had dinner and we all had a really good time! I love that we have so many great friends here!

 

Other than that life is going really well! Just school till next Wednesday, Chip's eye, Winter Break and then Christmas! Should be a fun couple of week!

 

-Em

 

 



Update Update Update

Hello!

 

So we had Halloween last week, it went really well!

We went to a friend in our ward's party, here are some fun pictures from that:

 

 

 

 

We were Hawkeye and Black Widow from The Avengers. I thought we did pretty good!

 

 

It was a good time and we both love getting all into character. Every year I think " Oh I will just do something easy..." Then I go all out haha It is just so fun to try and make everything yourself!

 

The next night after our friends party, my friend Randi and I threw our own party! We didn't take any pictures! Shame on us! But it was fun, we played Halloween Family Feud, and had a nacho bar and s'mores. I think everyone had fun! I even met some new people which is always awesome!

 

 

 

 

Chip's eye is doing A LOT better. He still isn't seeing super great yet, but he said the spot in his eye isn't grey anymore, it is now the color of whatever he is looking at! I will take that as GREAT news!

We still have a long ways to go with all of that but we are feeling hopeful and really grateful!

 

 

 

 

We have about 4 weeks of school left ( and then finals week). I am getting antsy, and lots to do, but also the end of the year jitters all at the same time. I think we will both come out awesome, but if I am a zombie for the next few weeks I'm sorry haha

 

 

 

 

Since my 2nd Puberty Post ( sounds weird doesn't it haha) I am feeling a lot better. I am amazed at how wonderful of friends I have.  Thank you all so so much for your love and kind words of support.

 

 Not 20 minutes after I wrote that post I got a call from a good friend of mine in PHX who told me to take a deep breath and that she and her roommate (another good friend of mine) went/are going through the same thoughts/feelings. I cried on the phone. I hate crying. It was just such a relief to know I am not the only one who doesn't know what the heck I am doing.

 

One of the hardest parts of all of this was writing it down. Making your "weaknesses" known to others seems like such a bad move to me. I felt so incredibly vulnerable, and I still do, all the time, anytime someone brings it up I literally shrink into a pile of rubble. I have always felt like if others know what your weaknesses are they will use them against you to make you look foolish. And writing that post I did feel foolish. I didn't really hear anyone else talk about what I was going through. I felt like I was the only one. Even after I realized I am not the only one I felt weak because I thought " Well I have never read anything about this, maybe I am the only sissy who needed to "talk" about it. Poop.".

 

The responses I have gotten from everyone range from awesome, inspiring, helpful, loving, to heart wrenching, disappointing, and lame.

 

On the one hand most of them said they have been through similar experiences, that they got through it and they are now great! This is great news! I'm not a freak! Well, not in that way at least.

 

The bad side of it is though that anyone above the age 29 said that these feelings come in cycles and I will have them intermittently for the rest of my existence, but for various reasons. This sucks. But on the other hand it will teach me to become stronger and show me better ways of dealing with these feelings. I am both hopeful that I will feel better and discouraged because apparently this happens for the rest of my life.

I just have never felt more love, and more loneliness at the same time before. Unfortunately I cry more now than I did when I first started birth control. And that was A LOT of crying. Poor Chip. He has been so great through all of this, he really is THE best husband EVER!

 

Not all of the tears are bad, actually since writing the post, most days they are tears of happiness and love and appreciation. I have had so many people show me love and support its hard not to get teary right now. My sister wrote me a letter ( ahem: book) that included some stuff from a talk by Elder Holland that was really helpful. If you have been feeling the things I talked about in my 2nd Puberty Post, read it. It will help. If you feel like it isn't helping, read it again. And then again, and then again after that.

 

A few things that have helped me:

 Getting outside, (Thanks O and A).

Reading a good book ( Thanks B).

Express myself, I am painting/sketching again and it helps immensely.

I am more focused on goals lately, I just took all the things I WANT to be and wrote them down, this isn't to say I am a Yogi master or a Picasso or Scriptoriun etc. , but writing them down makes me see my goals as more official.

 

I'm not "fixed" by any means, but I don't feel like I am going to burst into tears of confusion at every turn. As I am going back reading this I feel like a 14 year old kid who just got their heart broken. It sounds so dramatic and ridiculous. 

 

With that being said let me clarify a few things:

1.I am not in any way shape or form looking to be perfect. That isn't the goal here, and if that is what you got from my post you didn't understand what I was saying. I'm not looking for perfection I am just looking for Emilee.

 2. I am not trying to just complain about how hard things are for me right now. This is my blog and I am welcome to say, or share or express myself any way that I like, I am merely sharing what I am experiencing in my 21 year old college attending newlywed life. I know that everyone has things in their life that are difficult, EVERYONE! Even people who are rich, poor, beautiful, not so beautiful, poor, fat, skinny, any color, gender, race, religion, or political background etc. Everyone!!  They may seem like they have perfect lives  but they each have things going on, usually behind closed doors, that they struggle with every single day. I know that I have a beautiful and fantastic life with an AMAZING husband who I love more than anything. We have a great apartment, we get to work and go to school and we have nice vehicles, we get groceries on the table every week and we get to do fun things, we have awesome families and wonderful friends, we also have a knowledge of the gospel which is such a blessing. I know I am immensely blessed in each area of my life. This is not all to say that I don't struggle. We all struggle.

 My 2nd Puberty Post was about how I feel like I don't know what I am doing in life, and how often I feel like other people know exactly what they are doing, who they want to be, and what they want. I know those people struggle, I just feel like they deal with it better, and often people don't know they struggle.

Is this making any sense??? haha

 

Whew! Long post, but that is what is going on in our lives right now.

We hope everyone has a great week!!

 

Love, Em

 

 

 

 



 

 

 



Chip's Eye Debacle

So Chip's left eye is a mess.

About 3 weeks ago he started complaining that he had a funny spot in his vision. At first I thought nothing too big of it, when I get migraine's I get weird things in my eye and when I get some food and sleep they feel better and the spots go away. I thought he was just tired and stressed. Well it started to get worse and I started to worry and told him to go to the eye doctor. Once he was able to get an appointment he went to Dr. Bratcher here in Silver City and the doctor said they're was something definitely wrong with his eye. He said there was fluid, and it may be stress and would eventually soak back into the eye when he calmed down a bit (we had just had midterms, and we're broke, and we go to school AND work, it was a little stressful time yes). The other option Dr. Bratcher said was that there may have been blood in his eye which is bad and that it may or may not require surgery. So Dr. Bratcher referred us to a retina specialist in Tucson and we took the first appointment we could get. We got in on Wednesday.

So we got to Tucson and we get to the specialist ( nicest office ever!), and all of their equipment was super technologically advanced. We filled out their medical history questionnaire on this tablet that is linked to their computers so everything is linked all at once to all the computers in the office. Shmancy! We get in to the doctor and they dilate Chip's eye, and take a bunch of pictures and measurements. 

We waited for a LONG time after all the pictures to speak to the actual doctor and he wanted to take more pictures of the inside of Chip's eye before deciding exactly what was going on. 

They took Chip back, I didn't get to go with him at this point, but while he was back there they injected  the vein in his hand with red dye that went through all of his bloodstream in 20 seconds ( he got to watch it in the pictures go through his body, cool right!). then I got to go back and the doctor came in and showed us all the new pictures that they took with the dye in his system. 

Here is the juicy part, what is going on!

Chip at one point or another in his life acquired a scar on his macula. This is due to one of three things, or a combination of all of them. The doctor asked if Chip had ever lived back East, he lived in Pittsburg Penn. for 2 years. According to the doctor there is a bird that lives only in the Eastern United States whose poop carries a bacteria that if you come into contact (direct or otherwise) it can scar your vision. Stupid bird poop (thanks Tonya!). The second thing it might be is that at one point in time Chip got the flu and the virus scared his vision. The third option is that he was born with the scar. There is no way of knowing which one of these is THE one, but this is how he got the scar.

The second part to all of this is that the scar now has fluid and blood accumulating under the scar and causing the macula to bubble and distort (read: completely cover) the vision in his left eye. When the doctor looked at the spot in the fancy pictures he said that usually they would just do a laser surgery to drain the liquid and then photocoagulate it. Chip's spot is WAY too big to do this. If they were to try to do surgery right off the bat, there is a chance the scar from the laser would cover his entire vision and he would never see again.

This sounded scary until he said the next part: there is a medicine that can shrink the blood vessels significantly so that they CAN do surgery! Yay!

The doctor assured us that because Chip is so young that the medicine should work really well, and that if it works really REALLY well he might not need surgery at all!

Of course I was concerned that the scar was connected to some sort of bigger scarier problem and Dr. Schindler also assured us that it was JUST in the eye and not something more serious. Phew!

So they gave Chip his shot in his eyeball, and they had to disinfect it first which is the part that hurts the worst ( they numb his eyeball for the shot). He said it felt like he had a thousand eyelashes in his eye and that it itched and burned really bad :( Awful , and he was shaking and his eyes were dilated and all the stuff they cleaned his eye with was coming out of his nose, it was lovely.

He is doing SO much better today but his eye is still REALLY red and swollen. He will go back for his 2nd shot the 2nd week in December, and his 3rd shot in January. If he needs surgery it will also be in the new year, probably around the first of February (Happy Birthday Chip!). He is a trooper and we are both feeling really optimistic about all this. We are both really grateful for modern medicine and a kind and caring Dr. who gave us a really good deal for paying for everything ( Chip doesn't have medical insurance :( ). We are also really grateful for all of our family and friends love support and prayers. Thank you all so much! We will have an update about everything in about 6 weeks! 

Poor kid. So cute! ...and sad. 

Love,

Em

2nd Puberty: Not the gross kind...but equaly embarrassing.

I'm 21.

I for all intensive purposes am still trying to "figure myself out".

I hear people say all the time, "My poor spouse married a completely different person than who I am right now." This confused me! I thought, that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard, that is ridiculous, of course you're essentially the same person!

I thought that until about a year ago anyways.

I for all intensive purposes am changing.

I am going through this 2nd stupid puberty where you change not from a child to a teenager, but from a teenager into an adult and it's stupid.

I hate it.

It's confusing, and embarrassing and I feel lost ALL of the time.

Last night me and Chip had a long chat about it. He knows I have been feeling this for a long time (about a year now, which is a long time for me to not know the answer to something, I am very impatient). I told him, "I feel lost. Like who am I REALLY? What do I want for life? Who do I want to be? What do I believe?"

Now don't get me wrong, I know the jist.

I am fairly conservative, but with a kick of "Mind your own business, it's not YOUR decision what other people do with their life."

I love the Gospel with everything I have, but I am still learning how to utilize it to become the best person I can.

I struggle everyday with self confidence. When we got married I was on an AWFUL birth control that made me gain A LOT of weight. Now it's not just about body image, but that kind of experience messes with your emotional confidence as well. It's like I am starting from scratch, just like a 13 year old kid with a new body they have to figure out.

 

This whole process of "learning who you are in your 20's" isn't something I knew would happen. This completely 100% blindsided me, and I am just now getting on my feet after a year and beginning to realize that I need to make decisions and explore what I want for my life.

 

I feel like a duck just barely keeping my head above water on a daily basis.

There are a few things that make me feel like I have some assemblance of knowing what's going on.

When my house is clean I think clearer and I feel like I am more in tune with the spirit and I just am at peace, so I try to keep the house clean.

 

When I "get ready" for the day I feel more confident about myself. So I try to get ready for the day.

With that being said though, I also feel like a freaking warrior princess if I can rock jeans, tennis shoes, and no makeup. I got three compliments on my hair the other day, I didn't even brush it that day. I was freaking Xena.

 

The point of all of this is that I am still very much trying to figure myself out. This is super difficult for me because I want so bad to feel like people take me seriously. I hate when people say "Oh your just a kid you don't know anything." This makes me feel like they are saying "You're a fake human. Your opinion doesn't matter."

But in all reality, I am just a kid and I don't know what the hell I am doing.  

So maybe I don't know what I am doing, but please don't tell me I don't know things. That is to say that I cannot learn, or that I haven't retained ANYTHING in the last 21 years. Give me a little credit.

 

Everyone talks about puberty and the changes you go through (thank heavens I don't have to relive the physical changes). But no one talks about the 2nd puberty you go through in your early 20's. And I am praying that I am not the only one who goes through this, cause if I am, that just means I'm broken.

It's goes something like this:

You're awkward.

You're lost.

You're confused.

And no one tells you its coming so you feel alone, despite the fact that you may have the most amazing spouse in the world right by your side.

It's hard.

It sucks.

And it's embarrassing.

Its especially hard when everyone around you seems to have life all figured out.,

The only thing I can do to feel better is know that it won't last forever, and that hopefully everyone else is just as lost as I am haha

 

The problem I face now is how do I "find myself". As cliché as it sounds that's what it is that I need.

 

What kind of a woman do I want to be?

When we have children what kind of a mother do I want to be?

Should I work on the side when we have kids?

How can I be a amazing spouse to my sweet Chip?

If I work, what do I want to be when I "grow up"?

Am I going into the right career in school?

What do I believe in?

What do I want for my life?

 

Super sappy and long, but its been on my mind for a while.

So if you see me and I look like a chicken with it's head cut off, it's normal. I'm just figuring me out.

Give me a pat on the back and tell me you love me, that's probably what I need to hear.

 

-Em

 



Internet...Is it really worth it?

So Chip and I have been out of internet for a whopping 5 weeks. I have been on the phone with 7 different company reps, had two people out to the house, countless hours on the phone, and they wouldn't fix it so we are trying to get a new provider now.

 Normally that would be an minor annoyance but when half of your classes are online, and the other half require online research and what not it has literally taken over our life being at school to do homework every night.

We get there between 5 and 6 each night and leave at 11. 

Every night.

We get everything turned in on time, and its a blessing going to school and having a car to get us to school, but it's difficult!

Those people who make it through school without internet at home are so driven! Some nights you just want to stay home and be with your spouse! But between the two of us we have homework due every night. The only saving grace for us having time alone is that all the labs on campus are closed Friday nights.

With all of that being said it has been a good experience to "disconnect". I have a smart phone but without wifi at the house it's slow so I don't use it super often. It's quieter at the house, I have been reading books more, reading my scriptures more, and we get to bed earlier. There are definitely downsides, but at the same time there are some good upsides. I also feel like now I don't NEED internet at home to feel "entertained".

So with our internet (hopefully) coming in tonight I am hoping this doesn't start a whole new era of staying up late watching Hulu and surfing the internet. Maybe we'll have unplugged Saturday, or unplugged Friday where we can just be us.

Other than the whole internet fiasco lately we are just doing school and work!

Hope you all have a fabulous weekend!

-Em

And so it begins...

Hello! If you are reading this, you love the Goutchers' and you want to read all about all the cool, boring, mundane, school-like, adventurous, food filled, awesomeness that we partake in in our everyday lives. Or you're really bored.

I am not new to blogging per say, in fact I have a blog over at: 

www.pinstrosity.blogspot.com that deals with Pinterest and all its fails awesomeness.

But this one is for Chip and I's (mine and Chip? Chip and my own? Bro? Brother? Brethren?) personal life, what we are up to, any exciting news, fun trips and to document all our adventures!

This is a super easy way to keep up with all our friends and family and so everyone who lives (near and) far away can see what's going on in our lives.

Stay tune for updates and more of my lame sense of humor!

Love, Em