Blog Party Post

They’re doing a fun thing over at 5 Minutes for Mom – a big ol’ blog party!!  If you visit THIS WEBSITE, you’ll find a ginormous list of participating blogs.  Poke around the list, visit some blogs that are new to you, make some new pals! 

As for me, I could always use some new pals. 

Since I hope to have some of my own visitors from Par-tay Central, I’ll take this chance to introduce myself.

My name is Stacey, and I’ve been married for almost 15 years.  I haven’t ever blogged about how I met and married my husband – it would make a great post, though.  If I were to jot down just words and phrases about the whole experience, it would look like this:  7 weeks (how long we had known each other), Reno (where we went), Cupid’s Chapel of Love (where we were married…by an Elvis impersonator).  We sent some pretty steep waves rocking through my husband’s traditional Latter-day Saint family, but we made it all good by being sealed a year later in the Portland LDS temple.

Yes, my husband and I are Latter-day Saints, and I suppose my conversion is another thing I’ve never blogged about (though I’m not sure why).  I joined the church when I was 19 years old.  My twin sister (who is not a member) once described me as “hard-core.”  That made me laugh!  I suppose it’s true, though – I have a very strong testimony of my Father in Heaven and of Jesus Christ as my Savior.  My faith guides everything I do (and don’t do!) in my life.

My husband and I have 5 children, the youngest born this past September.  Next year we will have children in high school, junior high, elementary school, and still at home.  How’s that for covering all the bases?    People ask us all the time if we are “done.”  Honestly?  I don’t think so.  But don’t ask me when the next one is coming – it took me 6+ years between #4 and #5 to believe I could really do it again.  When I feel my sanity making a slow and steady comeback, then we’ll talk.

We recently packed up our family and moved from our home in the Portland, Oregon area to a suburb of Houston, Texas.  That relocation has been the focus of a lot of my recent posts.  It has been life-changing, to say the very least.  I was born and raised in California (just north of San Francisco) but moved to Oregon in 1991.  It became the home of my heart, and leaving it has left a little hole.  Oregon is a wonderful, beautiful place to live.  Texas has taken some getting used to, and there have been enough positives to carry us through.

Why did I chose to title my blog “Happy Are We”?  For one thing, it comes from a hymn in our church.  Not a particularly chipper hymn, by the way.  The actual title is “We Are All Enlisted,” and many of the lyrics talk about conflict and danger and battle.  Particularly the kind of conflict, danger, and battle that followers of Christ face in a world often unfriendly to the righteous.  The point of the hymn is to stand tall and choose to be happy even as we face obstacles.  That’s another reason I named my blog “Happy are We.”  When I say “happy,” I don’t mean an unblinking, rose-colored-glasses kind of happy.  I mean a deep, abiding joy that can be decided upon, even when life is rough.

I can’t even begin to qualify the “tone” of my blog – sometimes I post when I’m frustrated, sometimes when I’m feeling a bit loopey.  Sometimes I really have something to say, and sometimes I’m not sure I’m making any sense at all.  You’ll often find posts about my kids, and I’ll sometimes sprinkle in something about the hubby, too.  I run another blog at Paper Diet Books, where I maintain a major passion of mine:  READING.

If you came via the Ultimate Blog Party, then thanks for stopping by!  I’d love to have more visitors here, and to share interests and beliefs and perspectives with those of you in the blogosphere.  If you already count yourself among my family and friends, then thanks for suffering through this stuff you already know! 

You might also enjoy these related posts from Tree, Root, and Twig:

1. A Blog Post Four Days in the Making
2. CLOSED: Scholastic’s 39 Clues Blog Tour – Stop #6 – Review, Guest Post, & Giveaway!
3. This Post Brought to You Today by the Number 4

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