Mind Blown!

 Okay, I officially protest the passage of time! How can it be that more than one and a half years has passed since I last posted?!

 SOOOOOOO much has happened in that time! And since we're currently in another season of big changes, I'll give a quick breakdown of the major events.

• In December 2023, Nicole and Julia had an awesome time in Mexico. However, that trip really made Julia realize how much she missed her family, so they chose to have her move back home in February of 2024.
• Also in December 2023, I received a promotion at my job with EnglishConnect3. Due to that promotion and the imminent arrival of our baby boy, we decided that I should take a break from school. 
• Becca participated in the Frozen, Jr. play in the winter of 2024, and she did an awesome job playing a villager. 
• James was born in March of 2024, with an extra ureter and a ureterocele, which required a surgery when he was just one month old. Primary Children's Hospital was wonderful during that stressful time!
•  In May 2024, Nicole graduated from high school in the top 10% of her class! Julia surprised her by coming for her graduation, and she stayed with us for the summer before heading to Texas for her Senior year of high school.
• In June 2024, Becca had her first summer camp experience. She really loved 4-H camp with her bestie!
• Ryan tried many additional treatments for his depression, and finally found some benefit with ECT (though it brought about extra side effects to deal with). 
• Nicole submitted her mission application at the end of 2024, and she received a call to serve a service mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints beginning March 31, 2025. We are SOOO happy that she gets to serve while living at home with us!
• Becca participated in The Little Mermaid, Jr. play in the winter of 2025, and she had a great time playing a seagull. 
• James turned 1 and recently got a clean bill of health after his one-year follow-up ultrasound on his kidneys.
• We went to a book launch party in March, and Becca got to meet her favorite author! (If you haven't read all of Brandon Mull's books yet, you need to!!!)
• Nicole took me to Shen Yun as an early birthday gift (right before she started her mission). It was an incredible show, and we had a wonderful mommy-daughter date! 
• We surprised Julia by traveling to Texas to attend her high school graduation in May of this year. It was so wonderful to see her and her family again! The girls were so excited to see their sister graduate, they didn't even suspect the surprise that Julia had planned -- she came to stay with us again for this summer!
• Becca went to 4-H camp again (and my heart handled it a little better this time). Why are my kids growing up so fast?! 
• Julia taught me how to make pozole verde! Y-U-M!!! 
• At the beginning of July, after my boss had just finished helping me update and refine my resume, I had a strong prompting to submit my resume for a job opening on-campus at BYU-Idaho. I didn't expect anything to come of it, but I was immediately called in for an interview, and less than 24 hours after the interview I was offered the job! After much prayer and visiting the temple, we accepted this new path that God was directing us to take. I started this week as the Office Manager for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and we now get to pack up our home, sell it, and move to Rexburg! I'm still going through withdrawals from not collaborating with my beloved EC3 co-workers, but we cannot wait to get back to our hometown! (Prayers on our behalf would be greatly appreciated!)
• For those who are wondering, Nicole will transfer from the Pocatello Idaho Mission to the Idaho Falls Idaho Mission when we move to Rexburg. She will continue to serve the Lord. 

 

 

 

 

Merry Christmas!!!

I actually started a blog post back in October... but I didn't write more than the title and the first sentence before I was needed elsewhere. Needless to say, things have been more than a little crazy around here this fall! And now it's winter, and Christmas is almost here! How did that happen?!

So, a brief re-cap:

• Our baby boy is progressively getting bigger and stronger, punching and kicking me often. Ryan thinks he'll be a boxer. ;) We're now almost at 28 weeks! Just 3 months left until his due date. I hope we'll make it that long -- I've been having daily contractions since 17 weeks with no discernible reasons for them. But I'm trying to eat healthy and exercise and keep this baby cooking for as long as possible. Sadly, I failed my 1-hour glucose screening at the beginning of this month, so I had to do the 3-hour glucose test yesterday. I've now got bruises from all the blood draws, and I'm impatiently waiting to get the results... On a brighter note, we think we've settled on James Isaac as this baby's name. <3
• Ryan's health has not been great this year. He's especially been struggling with his mental health, though there have been other issues, too. We've had to adjust the way we do a lot of things around the house to keep him safe. Thankfully, he's made some positive progress this last month with his mental health, and we're hoping that will continue to improve. The girls have also had new things to deal with, so that between the five of us (6, if you count James), we have many appointments each week. Some weeks we have 6-7 appointments, which really adds up when you factor in driving time and waiting room time.
• I made it through another semester of school successfully! Biostatistics was actually a fun class (who knew math could be fun?!), and I was blessed with an awesome group to do assignments and projects with all semester. I've still got a ways to go before I can apply for the PA program. I'm currently searching for a reputable, accredited university through which I can take Chemistry 105, 106, 351 (organic chem), and 481 (biochem) online... The tricky part is, most of those classes have required labs, which are not often available as online or distance-learning models... So, if you're aware of a university that offers these online, please let me know!
• Nicole and Julia were invited by Julia's parents to spend Christmas break in Mexico (at their home) this year! They are both very excited to go, but we will miss them terribly! Nicole is also a little apprehensive about leaving home for so long, and traveling without her parents (even though she is now 18 years old, and technically an adult 😱-- how in the world did that happen?!). Becca is sad that they will be gone, but she's also excited to get Mom and Dad all to herself for two weeks. ;)

And now, for a major miracle we were blessed with (and please know that I feel so awkward posting this, but I also don't want to forget how blessed we truly are):

 https://www.eastidahonews.com/2023/12/she-was-expecting-a-friend-to-visit-when-we-showed-up-with-gifts-from-a-secret-santa/

 I have to say, we're still in complete shock. The friend I was expecting was supposedly going to ask us to help arrange a Christmas surprise for our dear neighbors and friends. I definitely wasn't expecting our own Christmas surprise. Ryan was in the other room, finishing preparing our lunch, and had no idea what was really going on. After Nate and Jordan left, I had Ryan open the gifts and he was also in awe. He felt he didn't deserve something so incredible, but immediately he took my hand and pulled me to our bedroom and offered a heartfelt prayer of gratitude for this incredible blessing. The next thing he did was say that he wanted to use some of the money to help another family in need this Christmas. 💙 Ryan is always thinking of others.

 Over the last couple of months, we had been discussing how we could possibly afford to get a used minivan so that we could fit all of our family in one vehicle once James is born. This money would certainly allow us to buy a used minivan. But we've been doing a lot of praying and pondering, and we feel that the money would be better used to help pay my school tuition, and to help pay down the loan that we had to take out to fix our roof. And, another miracle, some dear family members have offered to fix up their minivan for us. Isn't God wonderful?!

I wanted to point out a correction to the article on EastIdahoNews.com. Ryan didn't actually suffer from a stroke (though that was what the doctors first suspected). He suffered from a global hypoxic ischemic brain injury, which we still don't know the cause of. It could have been from a heart condition, or it could have been related to his then-undiagnosed Celiac's disease or sleep apnea, or some other random syndrome or cause. What we know for sure is that his brain received very little blood (and hence, very little oxygen) for 15+ hours before he was taken to the hospital. When the doctor saw the MRI of Ryan's brain, he told me that it was about as bad as it could be, and to not expect Ryan to recover. He said that even if Ryan did wake up from the coma, he would not have any memories or any abilities to do anything. (For a more detailed account, you can view my earlier blog posts -- this all occurred in June-August of 2019.) It truly is a miracle that Ryan has recovered as much as he has! We are so grateful to all of you who have supported, prayed for, and helped us through these trying years. We know that faith can move mountains, and your combined faith has done incredible things in our lives!

Thank you! And Merry Christmas! 💜💜💜💜💜

Love, The Muench Family

Boy or Girl?!?!

 I'm now 14 weeks along in this pregnancy, entering the 2nd trimester, and things are still feeling very surreal. I haven't gained any weight yet (which is okay based on my starting weight being higher than ideal, and is also what happened when I was pregnant with Becca), but I'm starting to feel the difference in my stomach (even though there is no visible "popping" of my belly yet).

The beginning of this year was pretty miserable for me, which led me to see a rheumatologist last month (the soonest I could get an appointment). I was diagnosed with non-radiographic axial spondyloarthritis (nr-axSpA), which is a type of arthritis that particularly affects my low back, but also flares up in other joints occasionally. It's nice to have a name for the condition, and the doctor recommended a treatment that is supposedly safe while I'm pregnant. But since I've been keeping major flare-ups under control with proper diet and exercise, I have opted to postpone treatment for now. I'll just deal with the general inflammation and my joints are going to be aching due to this pregnancy anyway.

Last week we had another check-up for the baby, and we got a quick peek at baby via ultrasound (the doctor had an ultrasound wand that plugged into her iPad -- how crazy is that?!). The point of the ultrasound was to check baby's heart rate, which is still going strong and steady. And baby was moving and jumping around so much that the doctor couldn't even snap a picture! But at one point, we saw the baby distinctly open and close the fingers of one hand, as if baby were waving at us! :) Ryan was pretty upset at himself that he didn't think to pull out his phone and record the ultrasound so the girls could see their new sibling (I told him that I didn't think of it either, and he should be kinder to himself). Hopefully we'll remember to do that next time!

At the check-up, they did a blood draw to check for possible chromosomal abnormalities the baby may have. It kind of blew my mind how much technology has advanced in the last 10 years or so! A simple blood draw from my arm is enough to find out about my baby's DNA! And the checking of chromosomes includes the ability to find out the baby's gender! :) So...the results are in! We are grateful that the testing showed a very low chance that this baby has a major disorder from trisomy or monosomy. And we are grateful to know that this baby is...

.........*drum roll*..........

.........

.........

.........

.........

.........

Needless to say, we are VERY excited! Becca is through-the-roof excited because she has been praying specifically for a "baby brother" for years. Nicole also guessed that we would have a boy, and Julia's mom predicted that we would have a boy. Ryan and I are a little unsure what to do with a boy, after only having girls (even all of our pets have always been girls). I think this adds to the surreal feeling...a boy! Wow!

So now it's time to figure out a name for this child. We have had our two favorites picked out for many years: "Joseph Ryan", and "James Isaac". But we are also taking suggestions and considering other options. I prefer the name James, and Ryan prefers the name Joseph. I wouldn't be opposed to "James Ryan" either, but I really like the sound of "James Isaac Muench"... I have a feeling that deciding this name will be more difficult than deciding Nicole's and Rebecca's names... Things just felt right and fell into place for the girls' names. But this boy's name may be up in the air for while yet... So, any suggestions are welcome! :)

Solo un mes?!

 Has it really only been one month since I posted that little update...?!?! Oh boy!!! A lot has happened in the past month. Are you ready for another update?

Right after my last post, I was asked to serve as 1st Counselor in the Relief Society Presidency in our ward. I accepted that call, but feel incredibly inadequate -- especially since I don't know many of the ward members and I still don't speak Spanish! But I feel comforted in knowing that the new Relief Society President also does not speak Spanish, so we will learn together. :) I haven't served in a Relief Society Presidency since we lived in Klamath Falls, more than a decade ago! ((If you would like to learn more about what "Relief Society" is, please follow this link: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/relief-society?lang=eng ))

The day before I was set apart in my new calling ("set apart" means given a special blessing with guidance for new responsibilities and power from the Lord to do the things He's asking me to do), I received an even bigger surprise!

Yes, that is what you think it is!!! 😲😲😲😲😲😲😲😵  Ryan and I were both in shock! Although we've both wanted more children, we'd come to accept that maybe that just wasn't God's plan for us. But now, 10 years after we found out we were pregnant with Becca, here we go again!!!

Because of my age, there's a higher risk of miscarriage, so we decided to wait a while before revealing our news. I ordered necklaces for our three girls (Nicole, Julia, and Becca) that each said "Big Sis". Then, this week we gave them their "back-to-school gifts" to see what they thought. 😄 Let's see if I can get this video clip of their reactions to upload properly...

I'm sorry if the quality is poor... I hope the sound works right! Becca's reaction was especially priceless. :) It took Julia a little longer to really understand what was going on. She thought we were giving them "Big Sis," "Middle Sis," and "Little Sis" necklaces, and that we'd gotten them mixed up somehow. 😂

Before revealing our news to anyone, we went on an impromptu road trip with Ryan's dad all the way to Michigan to visit Uncle Jim! Nicole and Julia had to stay home to work and attend FSY, so it was just me, Ryan, and Becca accompanying Grandpa. Becca and I had never met Uncle Jim before, and we arrived just in time to celebrate his 72nd birthday! 💜 It was an amazing trip! We're so glad we were able to go! Sadly, I'm having trouble getting pictures off of my Apple phone onto my non-Apple computer (if anyone has any tried and true tips/tricks for that, please let me know...I'm out of space on my phone, but I don't want to lose these photos and videos!). I was able to get a few pictures from our trip to transfer to my computer though, so here they are:

When we got back to Idaho, we picked up Nicole and Julia from FSY and went on a quick road trip through Yellowstone National Park. I hadn't been there in many years, and Julia had never been there. It was a really great day (albeit exhausting and full of road construction and too many tourists)! 😅

The sun was in our eyes...not the greatest picture... ;)

That is Old Faithful in the background, but it blended in with the clouds...

After that, Nicole had a good friend come visit for a week. Then we tried to cram in back-to-school shopping and doctor and dentist appointments. We're also planning for Julia's parents to come visit in a couple of weeks, so there's lots to prepare for! A nephew was baptized, and there's just been so much going on that my head is still spinning!

One last photo to help it feel real.............

That little bean is our baby! Head on the left, hands and feet sticking up at the top.

We're Still Here!

 I know I've been a total slacker when it comes to blogging. And it's not that we haven't had things to blog about...it's just that I've allowed other things to take priority, and neglected this form of record-keeping.

Just a brief update (no pictures yet) on the past year:

• I've finished basic chemistry, anatomy and physiology (two semesters worth), microbiology, and genetics! I still need abnormal psychology, statistics, three more chemistry classes and a biochemistry class as pre-reqs, but I'm trying to find the best place to take them online (it's not easy to find decent online chemistry classes...). I will be doing both the abnormal psych and the statistics this fall.
  
• I felt prompted to switch my educational goals from nursing to Physician's Assistant. It has fewer pre-reqs, and I can go straight for a Master's Degree instead of having to get a second Bachelor's Degree first (saving lots of time and money). Now I just have to finish pre-reqs and get accepted into the incredibly competitive program... (Prayers welcome!)
• We have had a big battle with Ryan's disability insurance company. They cancelled his insurance because they felt he should be able to work. Sadly, the only things they considered in their assessment were his physical abilities (he can sit in an office chair for 8 hours a day)... They blatantly ignored his mental and emotional abilities. He had to undergo more testing and his psychologist wrote up a huge report and I wrote up a 6-page letter to submit to the insurance company, and they finally granted our appeal. Thank goodness! But it has taken a huge toll on Ryan's mental state. :(
• We have welcomed a new member into our family! It's a difficult situation to describe, because it's not traditional in any sense -- Julia (pronounced the Spanish way /hoo/lee/uh/) is a dual citizen of Mexico and the United States. She is attending high school here in American Falls, but she is not a foreign exchange student. We have not legally adopted her, nor are we fostering her. But we feel that she is definitely a part of our family, and we are so happy she will be living with us for the next 2+ years. 💜 She was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in February. We had her mother over to visit for a week in June, and we absolutely adore Julia's whole family. Julia has been with us since December, and she really enjoyed her first winter in Idaho with lots of snow! :)
• Nicole will be a Senior this year!!! How did that happen?! She is working really hard on her senior project this summer as a volunteer at the zoo. :)
• Becca finished a year of tumbling and is excited to start the next one -- she's looking forward to being able to do back handsprings.
• Our whole family was called to be in the Spanish Ward in our church community, so we are all working diligently to learn Spanish. :) I've already been asked to substitute teach two lessons (Relief Society and Adult Sunday School), for which I have to pre-write all of my comments and questions in Spanish so that I can read them to the class (I'm not fluent enough yet to just speak what I want to say).
  

Hopefully I'll get a little better at posting updates, but I can't guarantee anything. :) 

Drop a comment if you're interested in our updates. ;) It may motivate me to write more frequently. ;)

Many Thanks!

 Thank you to everyone for your prayers. 💜💜💜 My surgery did go smoothly. I wasn't even in the surgery center for 4 hours, and that includes more than an hour of pre-op waiting! The nurse commented that she'd never seen a patient come out of anesthesia so quickly without confusion and grogginess, and she didn't see any reason to keep me longer when I was responding so favorably. When we got home, the nausea hit (likely a side-effect of the anesthetic), but it only lasted a couple hours and it wasn't too severe. The worst part of recovery was the referred shoulder pain from the excess gas they had pumped into my abdomen during surgery. Any time I was in a vertical position, the pain was pretty awful. But having a few days of mostly bed rest was good for me, and I was able to push through and still get in some walking to help prevent blood clots. By the time my two-week follow-up rolled around, I was back to sleeping on my stomach and doing all normal activities. The doctor said the biopsy of my gallbladder showed chronic inflammation and the beginnings of gallstones forming, but thankfully no signs of cancer! (I'm a little paranoid about cancer, after having thyroid cancer in my early 20's.) I'm so grateful that recovery went as well as it did! I was able to stay on top of my chemistry assignments, and help from kind neighbors made all the difference. 💜💜💜 God is good!

Nicole made a flower arrangement for me, and created and printed these cute get-well cards. :) She also made these minuscule paper cranes (though they were unrelated to my surgery, just a fun past time for her). 😊

My first semester of school is now over, and I managed to get my brain back into gear so that I could learn and do well on exams. I don't know how things would have gone if I had taken more than one class, though! 😂 School is hard work! I only have one week until the next semester starts. My next class will be microbiology, and I'm a little more nervous because the lab for this class will be in-person (instead of online like my chemistry lab was). I'll just continue praying and doing my best! Nicole is very jealous that I get to take microbiology (she's a science nerd 😄, and proud of it!). She's been begging me to just take her along to my lab classes. ;)

Becca's toe has now healed, and she received the go-ahead from her doctor to resume all activities with no further restrictions. She was most excited to be able to go to ballet class without the walking boot on her foot. :) She's also continued her passion for cake decorating -- she's obsessed with sprinkles, in case you couldn't tell. 😉

Becca was able to perform a song with her grandpa at a Cowboy Poetry Gathering this past weekend. She was a little nervous, but also very excited. After she was done, she told me, "That was easy!" 😂😂😂 This girl was born to be a performer, I think! Nicole said that she felt more nervous for Becca than Becca felt for herself. 💕 I'm so grateful for her grandpa for giving her this awesome experience! (I haven't had the greatest luck with posting videos in the past, but I'll give it another shot. I had to chop it short in order to make the files small enough to upload...)

Ryan began a new treatment for his depression last month called TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation). You can Google it for more details, but basically he sits in a chair with a big magnet firing magnetic pulses through a specific part of his brain. He has been receiving these treatments for about 20 minutes/day, five days a week, for the last 5 weeks. During these treatments, they monitor his heart rate, and they discovered that his resting heart rate is frequently in the low 40's... That might be good for an athlete, but Ryan is not an athlete, so they're worried about his heart. We added a cardiologist to his team of doctors, and he could tell right away that Ryan's blood volume is low. He encouraged him to drink lots more water, and walk daily for exercise. He also ordered a bunch of tests. Ryan is currently wearing a Zio heart monitor, and after two weeks with that he will get an echo bubble test, along with more blood tests. This could be a big piece of the puzzle to find out what happened almost three years ago to send Ryan into a coma. (I want to point out again that we originally thought he'd had a stroke, but that was ruled out. We still don't know exactly why he had very low oxygen reaching his brain for 15+ hours.)

We've been loving the occasional warm weather we've been having. This morning we woke up to a skiff of snow on the ground, and Becca chose to be very grumpy about it. She's more than ready for school to be over and summer break to begin! (It's going to be a long two months...) ;) 

Keep praying for peace. Our world sorely needs it... 💜💜💜

What the World Needs Now...

 ...is LOVE!!!

I've had a lot on my mind lately, but it all seems to center on kindness. Please be kind to each other. Please choose selfless acts of service to lift up those around you. 

The messages shared in our church services today all revolved around being kind and loving others. You never know what a difference you can make in someone else's life -- just be kind!

My heart hurts to think about the devastation of war being waged in Europe, and all of the lives affected by greed and selfishness... But I can't make choices for other people, I can only make choices for myself. And I choose to see the good in others, and to be as supportive and uplifting as I can be. I choose to remember that we are all children of God, no matter where we live or what beliefs and opinions we hold.

*sigh* Please pray for peace for the people of Ukraine and Russia! They are all suffering so much!

 

 

Also, while you're praying, could you please say a pray for me? I've been dealing with a lot of health issues the past month and a half, and I'll be having surgery to remove my gallbladder this week. Hopefully this surgery will go quickly and smoothly, but of course I'm nervous. I could really use all of the prayers I can get. ;)

Hope you have a wonderful week! Love you all!