I quit my job and started a new one.

So I love Family History. Like, a LOT. It's a really fun obsession. It's interesting because I'm not so much interested in other peoples' Family History, but I LOVE researching my and my husbands' ancestors.

My husband and I are LDS which means that a lot of the research I do into our genealogies goes towards Temple work. I get to prepare names to be taken to the temple so that somebody can do proxy ordinance work for them. Basically, this means that people who died before the LDS church was around and the Priesthood was restored get to be baptized so that they have the option of choosing to accept the gospel. Nobody is forced to do something they don't choose to do; it's just that doing the Temple work gives them more options (and what I believe is a very, very good option - understatement).

My husband's family goes back in the Mormon church about 5 generations on the majority of his family lines. This means that the vast majority of his ancestors have already had their Temple work prepared and done. When I say "vast majority" this of course is referring not to the ancestors throughout time, but ancestors for which we have reliable, concrete sources available. Usually we only have good records until the early 1800's, sadly.

My mom's side of the family is like Danny's...early Mormon converts who joined the church and were pioneers of the west. But my dad is a first generation convert, and so there are tons of ancestors on his side that need their Temple work done. 

My dad's dad was 100% Czech. I love doing family history research on my Grandpa's line, because the research is both easy and fascinating. Easy because the Czech immigrants who came to Texas were Catholic and kept excellent records, plus the LDS church has digitized all the Texas Death records from 1893ish-1979, these people hardly ever left Texas, and there are LOTS of organizations and groups that are interested in preserving Texas Czech Heritage. Fascinating because I am the first generation of my family to live most of my life outside of Texas, and actually my daughter Jane is the first one to be born in another state, so I feel very connected to these people. Plus, my maiden name was a Czech name.

ANYWAY back to the original title of this post...

I quit my job.

Instead of going into all the crap about why, it's just better to leave it at, "I felt undervalued and overstressed, and the opportunity cost was too great." If you want to know more, you could talk to the administration of Renaissance Academy. My guess is that doing so will not satisfy any desire you may have at getting to the truth of the matter, and since at this point nothing can be done to get me to continue working there, I would suggest not going to the trouble of doing that.

Instead of being sad and grumpy about it, I decided to just look on the bright side: I get to start a new phase of life. Tomorrow I turn 23. From the day I turn 23 until a currently unknown time, my full time career is :::drumroll::: FULL-TIME MOM! Yay!

So back to the Czechs...when I look on my female ancestors' death certificates, it lists their occupation as, "housewife" - almost without exception. How cool is that?

I think that the term "housewife" is not politically correct for today's day and age, which is kind of ridiculous because the ACTUAL job hasn't changed, it's just people make a big fuss over how it SOUNDS. I guess it does kind of sound like a "housewife" is somebody whose main job is to stay at home and do wifey things for their husbands (ahem). But obviously the job is actually wayyyy more involved than that, and the basic job description hasn't changed in hundreds of thousands of years: nurture, feed, care for children, care for husband, organize/manage the home, teach, and on and on and on.

I don't really like the term "stay at home mom" at all because that's just as dumb sounding as "house wife". Ummmmm I'm not exactly planning on staying at home. Even if we sell one of our cars and I have no transportation, I can still leave the boundaries of the walls of our house. You know??

Danny just suggested "domestic engineer." I've also heard "Executive Mom". I think these are a bit over the top.

I just like the title of "mom." It's short, simple, and what I am now. Had I lived 100 years ago when "housewife" connoted something different, I would have been fine with that. I don't really like "home-maker" because to me it sounds like I am working in construction. Yeah, yeah - you're going to be all on me about the difference between "house" and "home". Whatever.

It's totally a career. Just ask my mom, my mother in law, my grandma, my other grandma, my other grandma, all of my great-grandmas, and all of my great-great grandmas.

All of my sisters and sister in laws are great examples to me when it comes to motherhood (number of children birthed has nothing to do with ones' ability to be a caring, compassionate example to children and spouses - not to mention skills in all the aforementioned categories - and anybody who thinks otherwise doesn't know anything and has obviously never watched "Jon and Kate plus 8"). They are also very good at keeping their priorities straight: gospel first, family second, everything else after that. Really, I haven't been doing the best job at that these past few months. I've been letting my job overpower every other aspect of my life, and taking the weekend off to go visit family in Colorado and Texas last week was a real wake-up call. 

So I'm glad that now I get to aspire to follow in the footsteps of my own mom, and the majority of my female ancestors. Like my favorite BYU professor/practicum mentor Mary Rice said after I gave birth to Jane, "Now the REAL work begins!"