From Summer to Autumn

So its been awhile... I would love to say that my tardiness in updating my blog is due to us just being crazy busy with super fun stuff, but unfortunately that's not the case. It's been a rough couple months in the Tate household. Nathan's depression has been really bad and mine has been as well, it has been difficult, but it finally feels like its easing up a little.

It was hard to see our summer slip by as we dealt with this, but that's ok. Life isn't always perfect and sometimes there are rough patches. Although this blog post covers a rough patch there were still so many blessings and small happy moments I would like to share from our last few months. Here is a couple of them ;)

The biggest rays of sunshine in our lives is of course our two adorable children. They are both growing sooo fast. Wrenn is talking a lot more, Emmy is crawling and eating solids. It is amazing to me that even when time feels like it is crawling because we are in the midst of a trial our children are still growing and learning. They are a constant reminder that life isn't stagnant and that things will always be changing and evolving. 

I am a little sad because I feel like Emmy is growing out of babyhood so quickly and I haven't had time to enjoy it. I just barely started to make an effort to take pictures with a real camera and not my phone. So this blog post will be mostly blurry camera phone photos, but those are precious too.

So the last I posted it was mid July. So I will start this blog post from there. At the end of July we decided to go out to visit my family in Utah. We wanted to introduce Emmy to my siblings who had yet to meet her. I also had been feeling down and overwhelmed dealing with two kids, Nathan's depression, and a little of my own, that I really needed to recharge, and Nathan and I both felt time with my family would help me do that.

The date when we decided to go to Utah was perfect because, sadly, Nathan's grandma who lived in Utah passed away and her funeral was a couple days before we were planning on going out anyway. I think it was hard for everyone because Grandma Tate was very loved, but I think there was a lot of peace as well because she is reunited with her husband now. It was a beautiful service, and it was nice spending time with Nathan's family that weekend as well. Here are some photos from that weekend.

These are the cousins playing at the beautiful place Kristy and Larry rented for us to stay.

Here are some photos I took from Facebook of the actual funeral...

2nd cousins (I think) twinners!

Bethany also took some family photos of the Tate clan and some for us :).

After that weekend we went to visit my family for two weeks. It was a really nice visit, and I definitely feel like it helped elevate my mood. My parents watched the kids a lot, so we slept in a lot. I had time to sew, and to paint, Nathan and I went on a lot of dates. We also hunted a lot of Pokemon (we were still avid Pokemon Go users in July haha).We hung out with my family a lot. It was a nice visit all around. Here are some photos from those two weeks.

We started the trip off with some fireworks around the 24th. Wrenn doesn't really like fireworks they are too loud for him. He liked them more when my parents let him wear some noise cancellation headphones that they use when shooting.

I took Nathan on the Crimson Trail hike. It was beautiful like always.

My parent's took us to the shooting range and we learned to shoot, well at least Nathan did, I was awful with the shotgun. It was a lot of fun though.

Took slept after trying unsuccessfully to get my parents, dogs to play with him. Oh did I mention we renamed our dog Took instead of Spook because we found out it was a pretty common racial slur... yeah its a little embarrassing.

The kids and I went to a splash pad with some of my close friends and their kids. Wrenn hated the splash pad but he liked going back and forth on that wall.

I took everyone to one of my favorite places in Logan. There was a fire burning on the other
side of the mountain.

Wrenn and Emmy got to play with their cousins. Emmy and Brigham met each other.

Wrenn hung out with the Buie boys, at the park...

And at home.

My parents paid a photographer to take some family photos. They turned out super cute.

All in all it was a good trip. When we got home I was feeling better and ready to take on my responsibilities again. We had a clean house and food; it was nice for like a week. Then Nathan's depression got a whole lot worse and became debilitating. Then the truly hard times began. It was a rough patch that seemed to never end, but eventually bit by bit it got better. We are grateful for the prayers and help we received especially from Nathan's family. We love you guys.

During this time we still tried to live our lives and hang out as a family.

 We went to the mall's play areas, and hung out. Emmy thought the Merry-Go-Round was pretty cool.

We took lots of pictures of Emmy. She's just too cute not to.

We went to travel town and checked out old trains.

We took Wrenn bowling for the first time. He loved it.

I won... :D

More pictures of Emmy...

and Wrenn.

 Emmy's first hairdo.

We went to these cool restaurants that have really elaborate play areas for kids to play while you eat. This one had a train and a little Merry-Go-Round.

One of the times I dared sneak into Emmy's room to take a picture. She is such a light sleeper.

 Emmy up to mischief.

Wrenn is totally getting how cool trains are now.

We made lots of smoothies.

Made sure to bring our favorite toys on trips.

 Nathan and I went to see the Hunchback of Notredame. The cast a deaf guy as Quasimodo it was amazing.

More Emmy, love her bunches.

Then it was October and I wanted to make the most of it as it felt like our Summer had slipped by,

I pureed my own pumpkin for pumpkin flavored treats. 

We went to s fancy pumpkin walk with pumpkin sculptures and intricately carved pumpkins.

Nathan and I went to Six Flag's Fright Fest. The scariest thing was definitely Lex Luthor's The Drop.

We went to two different pumpkin patches. We forgot cash at one and weren't able to do anything :(

At the other one we had money and more fun.

Wrenn played in the bouncy house.

And I got my face painted.

We went to the ward Trunk or Treat. We went as farm animals. Wrenn was a cow, Emmy a chicken, I was a sheep, and Nathan was a preppy pig.

Wrenn really likes when I draw little stick figure pictures of the family. Here was my Halloween one.

Then on Halloween we carved our pumpkin.

 Wrenn felt like the skeleton leg needed a picture taken of it.

It was a good October and it's been a good November so far, but before I go into our November and current news here are a few more photos I wasn't sure how to classify.

I tried putting Wrenn and Emmy down for naps at the same time... 

I taught Wrenn to play hopscotch.

Finally got my nice camera out to take a few photos of my kids.

Emmy refused to eat in her high chair for like a week.

 Wrenn loves moving Emmy's crib *sigh*

We got pajama's for our dog because he gets cold at night. We understand this is a little ridiculous.

I took the kids to the park. Emmy likes sand and the swing; both of which Wrenn didn't care for.

It's blurry but we got ourselves a crawler :D.

So I am ending this blog post on a high note. It's been a rough year, and a rough couple months, but they have really taught us a lot. I feel like we have learned so much and now as we move forward from this experience we have healthier thought processes and understanding of ourselves to build on. There are good times ahead. 

One exciting thing is that during this experience we decided that it would be healthy for Nathan to get a job that gets him out of the house, a 9-5 type job. So Nathan began looking, but before he really started the process Google reached out to him and asked if he would be interested in working with them. Now a bunch of interviews and phone calls later Nathan got the job at Google and he starts next month! He will be working in the Google Irvine office, so we find ourselves once again moving. Thankfully Google will pay for movers so that will be a luxury we have never enjoyed.

We are really excited Google looks like an amazing place to work and I think Nathan will really enjoy it there.  We feel so blessed that this opportunity happened for us. I know the Lord is looking out for us, that he loves us, and that he wants us to be happy. I will end with a few photos we took while at the beach. We were in Orange County checking out neighborhoods to move to, and decided to take a break at the dog beach. 

There are good times ahead and while writing this blog post I was reminded there are lots of good times that we have still been able to enjoy. I love my family.