Dun dun dun. the Phone. first words. and other nonsense.

It happened. the dreaded stage has begun. Neil told Hunter, "go play upstairs." his response,

"WHY?"

plane and simple and so matter of factly. It stopped Neil dead in his tracks. "Did you just ask 'why'?" We looked at each other and sunk about 3 inches. uhhh.



In other news, Mabel has her first and most favorite word ever. She uses it about a million times a day. Picture this, Little Miss M walking all over the house all day long, her cute little arm outstretched, finger pointing to everything she can see, and her chipper 1-year-old voice, "THAT. THAT. THAT." She has learned early that EVERYTHING can be called that. Oh what a girl she is. She does not hesitate to grab our fingers, pulling us around on her safari, pointing and saying "THAT" until we find something that will suffice her for the time being. Such a little clown. We love her.



Going back to scary. Neil finally answered THE PHONE. You know what her heard from the other end? "red rum. red rum." or so he tried to convince me before he started laughing. Then in all seriousness, "*heavy breathing* h e l l o " haha. so funny. He only heard static. He thinks it's just from the internet setting off the phone since it's so old. Ok, whatever. Kind of glad it's not someone really calling us, but I still won't answer it. :) He said he turned the ringer off with the switch on the bottom of the phone, but it just started ringing again. It knows I'm writing about it! I guess it was quieter. I guess I won't be able to hear it from the whole house now. maybe. Not sure if I'm really looking forward to this phone for the next year.



Hunter was sitting on the potty today. I heard him from the other room, "I HAVE THE POWER!" I went to check on him, ... "I am the potty man, and I have ALL THE POWER!" Apparently Neil has been watching too much He-man with them. lol. I can't complain that he now has the power to go potty. :)


A little self loathing. lol. For the past week and a half or so I have been SO tired! Last Thursday we walked around town, taking care of some bills, walked to the post office and the library, played at the park, etc. We got home and I was wiped out! I took a nap just as long as the kids did and easily could have slept longer. It's not like I'm so out of shape that it should have worn me out. We walk downtown all the time (which is really only like 4 blocks away probably. not far). But ever since then I have been struggling. I take an iron pill, so I don't think it's that. I take multi vitamins and stuff too. Today I crashed and slept longer than Hunter did for his nap. He came down on turned on a show while I fell back a sleep for a little bit on the couch. I don't know what is going on, but it just seems like everything has been harder to do lately. weird. I'm getting to the point that, ok, whatever is going on can be done now. I haven't had a fever, so I don't think I'm sick. I don't know. Hopefully things will change soon...


op. there's the phone again. I'll have to post a picture of it so you all can see the "haunted telephone". lol. :)


Alright. time to go spend time with the fam. :) I love them. :)

Catch up

So much has been going on and I've been horrible at writing anything down. So here goes a lot of very random events, info, comments, and whatever else I decide to spit out right now. Lol. :)

To recap on a couple of things. Our phone in the basement still rings. Sometimes 3 times a day, though not every day. Neil still hasn't answered it even though I tell him whenever I hear it ringing. Don't bother asking if I've answered it. :)

The Batman came and set up evacuation tubes a couple weeks ago and got the bats out of the south side of our house. The holes on the north side were larger than he thought so he came back last week and took down the first set up tubes and filled in those holes, and out new tubes on the north side. He said the one spot in the back has a LOT of bats, which he was glad about. I guess it's good to get them all in one spot so he can make sure they are all out? I don't understand it. He asked if we were buying the house, which we aren't. And then told me that we'll need to have someone check the roof every spring and fall! Yikes! I guess the winters are so hard that it causes the wood on the roof to shrink and pull away from the house. I don't know if I really want to deal with that... we'll see what happens. I have been brave and go in the basement again. It's been fine, and it's nice to feel safe in my house again. :)

Hunter has been potty training! He's a pro! at first it was maybe 2 or 3 accidents a day, but quickly went to just one. Mostly he only has accidents if he is really involved in an activity, so we're trying to help him pay attention to that and learn to stop what he's doing. He's doing great! And I love the fact that he's always been good at staying dry at night! So glad I don't have to wash sheets all the time. Yay Hunter! We are so proud of you!!!

We were going to start Jackson today, but we just don't think he's ready yet. I think he wants to, and could do it, but I think we're going to do a little more learning and training before we put him in underwear. Maybe by his 3rd birthday (which is next month).

Hunter is going to start preschool! Yay! I think he'll do the 3 days a week. It is somehow affiliated with the school district, so they have a really good learning/teaching program. I'm going to go talk to them tomorrow and get all the details. It's funny because we moved to Sumner so we wouldn't have to put Hunter on a bus to go to elementary school, but here we are potty him on a bus to preschool. It's in Fredericksburg which is pretty close, and there are two really great families that live there from our ward, whom i'm sure we could count on if there was an emergency and would help us until I could get there. I don't know what that would be, and I haven't talked to them, so basically i'm just volunteering them. Lol. But we really like them, so i'm sure it's fine. :) i'm debating putting jacks in for two days a week, but I think we'll wait.

We are still adjusting to this one pay check a month thing, so in trying to get used to it we haven't bought anything yet. Lol. We had the missionaries over for dinner tonight (which I LOVE! Something that never happens in Utah, at least the relationships with them are nothing like this, so it is so fun! It reminds me of my mission and the wonderful families we would visit all the time!) Anyway, between all of us we sat on two barstools, two camp chairs, a folding chair, and we were short one chair. Lol. What a great memory this will be. I'm so grateful for the D. Family that gave us their old table. Thanks! Plus all our miss match plates. Lol. It's fun, but we definitely need to get some chairs so we can start inviting families over. Maybe we'll just have BYOC dinners, bring your own chair. ha. I don't care that the missionaries get to ”enjoy” our lack of furniture, but I guess my pride won't let me share this with others (except that everyone in the world can read about it now. Lol.)

Top items on my list to buy:
Chairs,
Bigger table, our some kind of extension for our table so we can fit more people around it,
dryer - we need electric one, ours is gas. I don't mind hanging the clothes on the line, but with all the extra time to hang them, by the time their ready to be put away i've had enough with the laundry that they end up just sitting in the basket forever. Handing and folding is too much for this girl. ;) lol. Yes, I think I will honestly laugh at everything in this post. ;)
A mini van. Yes, I would rather have an SUV, but I really like the idea of being able to spread my kids out, not have to climb over seats to get in the back, and be able to fit more people in the car besides our family. You never know when someone will need a ride somewhere.
A riding lawn mower. We've talked about getting just a push mower. Are you done laughing? I'll wait. But looking out over the vastness of our yard, and then seeing how quickly the neighbor mowed it on his riding mower yesterday (thanks neighbor!) I just want to go right to the best and quickest and easiest. Call me lazy, but we have a big yard. The benefits of not having rain: only a few weeds are tall, otherwise if it were raining like people say it usually does, we'd be living in a jungle! Lol. The poor farmers though! I would much rather deal with a jungle than see so much brown corn. :(

Ok, I think that's the main stuff.

A few weekends ago we had Sumner days. It was fun. We went to the parade and had a blast! We took home so much candy! The boys loved it! And Mabel sat in the stroller and ate whatever she could get her hands on. Lol. We also watched the fireworks that night. And not connected with the Sumner Days at all, the boys and I went to the dollar theater and watched Brave. Such a good movie! And I love that it was only a buck! We have the best movie theater here. New releases for nothing. :)

Last weekend my sister came to town on Sun night. She was on her way through to Utah with her boys. We sure loved having them stay the night! And they better stop by on their way back to NY! She had received some floating lanterns for her birthday so we lit one and watched it sail into the sky. It was really awesome. None of us could remember the song on Tangled, but Jacks sang a song for us anyway. Lol. The boys had fun playing with their cousins, and the whole day on Monday hunter kept asking me, ”my friends aren't back yet?” He still asks and I tell him they'll be here soon. :) we're also going to have more siblings for Thanksgiving since we are in the middle of them all. One in NY, one in TX, and one in NE. that would be fun. My sister also dropped pdf some girl clothes for Mabel. They are just a little bit bigger than Jacks size right now, and not to mention that their girls, but he doesn't care. He found the Hannah Montana flip flops and they now belong to him and are the only shoes he'll wear besides to church. Lol. I'm glad the pink is a faded pink so they are not too obvious. Oh well. :)

Our family reunion starts this week. Every year my family gets together at Bear Lake in Utah, and i'm so sad to be missing it. With just moving and a new job, we just couldn't make it work.  Next year we'll be there though! I think this will be the first time since moving here that I'll be missing my family. We just really love it here and feel so at home! I feel in a way that I've always been here, but not completely. I could stay for a long time though, but I guess we'll see about that too. Who knows.

I am the Young Womens president in the branch. I love it, the girls are so fantastic! I'm so glad I was able to serve in Utah, so I could have an idea of what i'm doing, but at the same time I feel so inadequate and lost. not that I know everything, but usually I feel pretty confident about my abilities when it comes to a new task, but I struggle with this. I simply have a blank slate and do not know what to do. I really hope I can find some inspiration soon... and i'm sure I will. But until then, the struggle continues. Besides that, it's a neat experience. There aren't a lot of yw. Maybe 5 or 6, so about half the size of what I had in Utah. And then there are 3 non-members that come regularly. Their enthusiasm blows me away! They don't know what is going on, nor do they know everything about the gospel, but their conviction is so strong and it's neat to see how they face their family or friends that give them a hard time for coming to our church, and that they don't care and still come anyway. They are definitely examples to me. I'm really excited to get to know them better and be able to hang out with them every week. :) the other leaders I work with are also relatively new members. One has been a member for 5 years, and the other for almost 3 months. It's neat to hear their stories, and I love being surrounded by people who have come to accept Christ in their lives, and see the transformation that takes place when that happens. The gospel is a powerful thing. :)

Last week we went and had dinner with another family that lives in Postville. It's north east of us by about an hour, and it is so beautiful up there! There are rolling hills and trees, and I love it! They are such a great family too. She kind of reminds me of my oldest sister, and they even have the same hair cut! Funny. So I feel right at home with her. She has two girls that are the same ages about as the boys, so they all played really well together.  It was a fun night and we could have easily strayed all night! We are going to another families house tomorrow night too and that should be great too. Who needs to go shopping around here, everyone keeps feeding us. Lol. It just amazes me how friendly everyone is, and what a great group of people! We haven't meet anyone yet that we don't like or don't get along with. We just need to get some chairs so we can start inviting people over to our house. Lol.

Ok well, I was going to go to bed over an hour ago, and I think I am officially crazy for writing this all on my phone. So no pictures for now... Maybe I'll plop some in tomorrow because I know I have some. :)

Until then goodnight and I hope you have a great week!

Something random

The bathroom on our main floor is like a restaurant. It's SO cold in there that on the rare occasion that my children don't follow me in there, I still can't have a calm minute to relax. Gotta get out before I freeze! lol.


We just can't seem to get a break with this move. I probably mentioned before that the moving company lost a bunch of our stuff. They send me an email and said they didn't find any of it yet, besides our Wedding picture. That's over $2000 worth of goods that were either lost, or damaged. Crossing my fingers we get them to pay up. (I especially miss our nice blender, waffle maker, Hunter's twin mattress, the rest of Mabel's crib. ok, everything.)

Then I've been "working with" T-mobile trying to get out of our contract since we don't get service here. Ok, we get roaming, which seems to be better service than the people get here on Verison. BUT we don't get any data, which we are paying for and that makes me mad. If they'd just let us get out of the data part I'd be fine to stay with them for the phone service. I need to go write some more emails... I am NOT going to pay $400+ to get out of our contract. so mad.

they still haven't taken care of the bats...

it seems like there is more, but I should stop complaining. We really are so blessed. It just seems that anything in conjunction with money is not working in our favor. :p

Ok, that's all. I want to go play now. :)

The Tornado Dream of ALL Tornado Dreams

I think I've mentioned a couple of times that I have tornado dreams a lot. Well, that's basically a huge understatement. Before we moved to Iowa, for about a year, I'd have tornado dreams in fairly regular intervals. And that was BEFORE we started watching storm chasers. ;) Well, this week alone I've had three that were pretty intense, I was actually in the tornado (that never happened in my other dreams. One of them I was outside and saw the funnel start to drop. I tried to run inside and got caught in the swing set and it lifted me WAY up in the air above all the other houses. I tried again to go inside but the tornado carried me away. In the other dream earlier this week, oh the same night as the first, I saw the funnel start coming down. This time I was in an apartment in a city. I grabbed the few people I was with and we went down into the subways. When we came out it was over and everything seemed to be ok.

Well my dream from this morning was the MONSTER tornado dreams. I don't think anyone can top this one! It was crazy and I have to document it.

I remember I was in Logan and I was with my sister. She was there visiting, and we lived on the North East end of town, kind of by Yorkshire, but of course nothing was exactly the same as it really is. We were doing some things at church or something. My kids were there and whatever. We came outside and I saw a dark wall cloud and talked about there being a tornado and we should leave. We were by the strip mall on Main Street and 1400 North. There were some restaurants in there and her hubby was grabbing some food. I was going to get some but didn't want Neil to not having anything so I decided to pass on it. I was going to go home and thought my sister was going to come over, but she was going up to my dad's house. I was kind of bummed that she came to Logan but didn't plan on hanging out at all. Then I saw a tornado start to form and told her we should go to my place since I had a storm shelter. But she decided to pass. Then there was a black tornado in the middle of the intersection. Next thing I was in my car trying to miss the tornado. I saw some other ones up by the mountains, (I know. doesn't happen.) and then started driving West. The clouds out there were HUGE!! I think the mountains on the west side of the valley were gone as the clouds were so big! The sun was setting and the sky was that beautiful yellow red under the clouds. Then I just remember that there were SO many tornados! I started driving south, parallel to the storm. The cloud was a big circle with rings where the tornados were coming down. There were hundreds of them all at the same time! There would be a row of them, and then out a little further another row of them. Then there was one in front of me on the road and I drove through it. It kind of pulled me, but I just kept driving. That one was brown, the rest were black for some reason. (I don't know if color signifies anything). Then I ended up somewhere I had no idea where I was. I found some road signs that said I was in Des Moines, IA, so I started driving back east, after taking some wrong turns and going in circles. It was dark by then and I can't remember if there were anymore tornados. But that was close to the end of my dream.

Now you can all analyse my dream. lol. I just can't get over how cool it looked looking up at the cloud and seeing all the tornados coming out of it in a row. Kind of neat. I wasn't really scared at all, just wanted to get away from them I think. Though I did tense up at the one in the road that I drove through.

Anyway, I need to go to the post office because it's only open for an hour on Saturdays. :) Hope you have a great weekend! I will be sewing, cleaning, and napping. (I woke up at about 3 last night and couldn't fall asleep until 5. I read a lot of blogs in the meantime. :)) My tornado dream was after I fell back asleep.

Fireflies or lightning bugs

I love Saturdays! Saturdays = Neil's home ALL day + for now a mega unpacking marathon + grocery shopping (= good food in the house again) + lots of fun and adventure.

Nothing too exciting to report. Ok, I still have lots of stories to document that I want to remember, but for right now I'm going to test out how long it takes to upload a video now that we have super fast internet. :)

Tonight after dinner and baths we went outside and caught fireflies. I'm kind of a workaholic and double timed it with cleaning up the yard/hanging laundry on the line. (it's way too humid for our clothes to dry outside. So much for that I guess. Perhaps if I tried it earlier in the day.) Anyway, Neil showed the boys how to catch the fireflies and they LOVED it. It was kind of funny watching them when you couldn't see the bug they were trying to catch. Jacks is already a pro. He probably caught 20 of them in the time we were out there. Mabel loved trying to catch or touch them too. :)

Here's a little video of the action... it probably turns long and boring but I love it. :)

{video will appear some day}

don't laugh at me either. ;)



Ok, video is having technical difficulties and it is now Sunday. :)

Why is it that the only day that everyone decides to sleep in is the day we have to wake up early? We did actually make it to church early today! Our boys were only loud through part of sacrament meeting, and while they were out I could still hear Jacks screaming. We've now decided to take them out to the car if they are being too crazy. Our church here is a big room for the chapel that has one of those according doors in the middle so they then split it into two classrooms for the rest of church. Then there is one hallway (? can you even call it that) that has the primary room to one side, you go around the corner and there is another hallway with three classrooms, bathrooms, the library and baptismal font on one side and the other side has the Relief Society room, nursery room, kitchen, Branch Presidents office, clerks office and I think a genealogy room. That's it. It is an L shaped church that takes about 1 min to walk from one end to the other. lol. :) And least if the boys run away from us there isn't much room for them to roam. :)

It didn't take long to be asked to serve, or give talks. I'll let you know how that all goes next week, after it's all happened. I don't know how Neil and I are supposed to talk on the same day and not have our boys running around like monkeys. At least everyone is nice and doesn't seem to mind too much. Or at least has been in our shoes. I will survive. I will survive. ;) We sit in the back along with one of the bigger families in the ward (as in the amount of children they have). Their youngest is somewhere around Jackson's age, maybe younger. Anyway, they totally started fighting today during the meeting, slapping hands (you know like girls do), well she did, but Jackson copied. He usually doesn't fight like a girl. lol. (I ONLY mean that as in, I never noticed before that boys and girls really do fight different, not dissing girls at all, it's just different. no offense.) It kind of made me laugh. They are in nursery together so now I wonder how they do in there. ?.

I really should stop putting things off, but I'm off for a nap. So I will call it good with this post and worry about that video later (I am wondering if it's in the wrong format coming from my phone? Maybe YouTube will work better. ?)

IOWA: The Land of Adventure!

You wouldn't think that Iowa is the land of adventure, but don't be fooled! It is! I am almost getting to the point of adventure overload. I have had a lot of things running through my mind the last day or two that I want to blog about, so hopefully I can remember it all. and hopefully it comes out somewhat interesting to anyone who is in the mood to torture themselves by reading about it! lol. ;)

p.s. I was going to make my Our Story blog private, but as I was going to do so I decided to not. I just feel like maybe there is something that I can share that someone else might need to here, or will help them. and honestly, I really love helping others! So even though I might not help anyone, because lets face it, I'm not one of those super motivational inspiring people! (ha!) BUT all the same, I can't seem to close the doors on the slight chance that it COULD happen. So here I am, open for all the world to see! And hey, maybe it will be good for myself to put myself out there a little more, since I do tend to filter what others see. (not that I do it on purpose, but I guess to some degree I like to keep a nice appearance.) :)

ok, now to the good stuff.

I mentioned that we had a bat in our basement. Neil is crazy and went down in the basement for the next few nights to see if he could find the bat again. No luck. He thought maybe it had left. ?. I wasn't so sure on believing it. Everyone we talked to told us about the bat guy, who has "BATMAN" on his license plate. :) So we told Hunter that Batman was going to come over to get the bat out. He was SOOOO excited!!! lol. Though maybe we should have been a little less misleading. We finally talked to someone who told us where to get said Batman's number (Neil thought they didn't have phone books since the town was so small. Either way we didn't have one.) So we called him and he came over. Hunter was majorly disappointed when he got here. lol. He looked at his truck, "Mom look. That's not his car." Then he came to the door. "That's not batman." He was a little upset at this point. lol. The man was very fun and played along with it, showing him the bat on his shirt. When we walked outside Hunter saw a BIG bat on the back of his shirt and got really excited! "MOM! It IS batman! SEE!" lol. so funny.


****Hold that thought: There is a really old rotary phone in our basement. Well, it is ringing! I can hear it coming through the vents. Is that creepy or what?!!! It was ringing this morning too. It's not like we have a phone line. All we have is our internet and our cell phones! Adventure #257, our house is haunted! lol. even if there weren't bats in our basement I don't think I would dare answer it!


Ok, back to the bats. So the guy looked in the basement and around the house. We have batS (with a big "S" in our basement. In the storm shelter no less! Praying for no storms until the bats are GONE! Though awesome that we have a storm shelter! We thought it was a pantry. lol.) and bats in the roof were the breezeway meets the garage. Plus more spots where he's sure they are or could go/be. Anyway, ug. Not so much what I wanted to hear. He said they've been there for a while. So, while we were playing, moving in, walking around, doing laundry, and did I tell you that the only shower is in the basement about 10 feet from the storm shelter (and we didn't have a curtain rod up for a while) = showering in the basement, there had been bats down there the whole time! CREEPY! I'll just say that Neil finally started doing laundry because I wasn't. And I have started taking baths. (Normally I like baths to relax in and then when I'm done I shower. Well, That's not the case anymore.)

Oh man.

Other animals that are ok. The fireflies are awesome! There are a million birds, ok, that makes it sound like  Alfred Hitchcock the Birds. It's not like that. But there are a lot of birds, and a lot of different kinds of birds. We also see 2 bunny rabbits in our yard on occasion. Lots of fat squirrels! The older neighbors like to feed them. Bad bugs: lots of earwigs in our house. Yuck. and some HUGE ants! We had a few yesterday morning and Hunter likes to squish them with his finger. yuck. So the one was really fast and him and Mabel started chasing it! It was kind of funny until Mabel tried to pick it up! It's gross when I pick it up and more gross when someone else tries to! (not that I do. I use a paper towel.)


Adventure from last week: I think this was last Wednesday. We drove out the church (15 miles away) to meet with the Branch President. We was in the meeting the whole time so the boys just played in the nursery while I chatted with another girl in the ward. It was good times. Anyway, it started thundering and lightning, and raining, right as we were getting ready to go. It kind of made me nervous as it was kind of crazy weather. As we were driving I was watching the clouds. In front of us there was a HUGE wall cloud that was coming down, and it was thick and dark! All my watching of Storm Chasers, and I can tell you my heart was pounding. It was pretty long, and pretty wide! I kept looking for any rotation, or the tail clouds that feed into a storm. Anyway, we got past it and I calmed down. I don't even know if it produced any tornados, or even had the potential to, but it made me nervous! We had some really good rain on the other side of it too. The rain and lightning went into the night, but the boys did pretty good with it. It made Hunter the most nervous, but thank goodness he fell asleep. :) I do love the loud thunder though! Reminds me of the storms in Texas when I was younger!


To switch gears to a not so intense adventure. We had the missionaries over for dinner this past Sunday. They are really nice. One Elder is from Sandy, Utah, and the other is from Gilbert, Arizona. They are so funny and I'm sure they think our family is wacko! Neil loves trading mission stories with them. and it's fun to experience having the missionaries over. There is just something really neat about it! I think about how much I loved going to people's homes on my mission, and now I get to be that family that has the missionaries over. :) I love it for my boys too. They have fun beating them up. lol. Luckily the Saturday before I had finished unpacking the kitchen and Neil the living room, so the place looked pretty good. Today is a different story. (boxes, empty boxes, clean clothes and hampers, dirty clothes, etc. all over the place. Trying to clean and unpack is a bit difficult to do simultaneously.)


Oh, the greatest thing happened too! After church on Sunday I was talking to a few people about how the movers lost a bunch of our stuff and then asked where we could find a table. One lady started telling me about all the antique and good thrift stores in the area, and while she was thinking of names asked another lady about something and mentioned we needed a table. Well this second lady said she would just give us their old table!! How awesome is that?! They brought it over on Monday and it's nice! :) It will work perfectly for us for a while for sure! Now we just need some chairs. lol. But really, what a blessing, and they didn't want us to pay them or anything!


Next story: Explain this to me: To our house there are three doors, the front, back and kitchen (that goes to the breezeway) doors. They all have locks on them that need keys to open them. Then in the breezeway there is a door to the back, garage, basement and front of the house. After we got here they put a new door on the front of the house in the breezeway. They gave us the keys to the breezeway, but NO keys to any other door in the house. ?. Neil and I talked about needing to replace all the locks so we could have a key to the house. We figured that eventually all the doors would be locked and we wouldn't be able to get in. In the contract is says that we can't change any of the locks... so we didn't take care of it yet. Well, the inevitable happened and we got locked out sooner than expected. Worst thing about it, Mabel was inside the house All. By. Herself! She just turned 1! I was kind of freaking out inside. I called Neil who said he'd come home, except he wouldn't be able to do anything either. I did lock my keys in, but the door that I have a key to wasn't even locked! Finally I called and had a police man come over. He didn't have any answers. The nearest locksmith is 45 min away and probably has a day job. Sorry, I can't wait for hours while my baby is stuck inside the house by herself! There was ONE window that just happened to be open in our house. A kitchen window. I had cleaned it out a few days before, and hadn't noticed that the top of the window can come down as well as the bottom pane coming up. Luckily I didn't figure that out at the time and just left it unlocked. So the policeman worked at the storm window for a while getting the screen off, and then the pane of glass. But it cracked and since it was already busted I told him he could just break it in. So he broke in the window, pulled the remaining glass out and he lifted Hunter through! Yay Hunter! Our Hero! He said it was fun going through the window and seemed to have a feeling of pride when I told him he was our hero and that he saved Mabel. :) Jacks kept asking for it to be his turn to go through the window. lol. What a crazy day... We still need to get new locks and fix that window.

Can I just have a break?! lol. :) Alisha, my sister, asked if I regret moving here yet. It's funny. Despite our stuff getting lost, damaged, bats, getting locked out, etc. Neil and I both LOVE being here. And every day that goes by we are just that much more happy about it here. I am so glad that despite hardships and trials, we can still have peace and be calm and happy.  I think the hardest thing has been waking up and going from 6 am (the boys wake up so early) until 10 and night (and they don't go to bed until so late) and then try to fit in more unpacking and cleaning and whatever else, and not have a break. It's been super exhausting! But then, it's also been a good experience to learn to receive strength from the Lord. We read a scripture the other night, 1 Nephi 15: 5-6, that stuck out to me.

5 And it came to pass that I was overcome because of my afflictions, for I considered that mine ^aafflictions were great above all, because of the ^bdestruction of my people, for I had beheld their fall.

 6 And it came to pass that after I had received ^astrength I spake unto my brethren, desiring to know of them the cause of their disputations.

Nephi had just seen a vision of things to happen in the future (the destruction of his people), and his brothers were fighting like usual, anyway, I really like that he thought his afflictions were great, and yet he received strength and was able to keep going and take the reigns of the situation at hand. I'm pretty good at getting overwhelmed and deciding to sit the storm out as you might say. But being out here on our own, I feel a greater sense of responsibility to rise up and "be the adult". But it's not easy. I don't want to be the parent who lets their children raise themself. That's what I did and I hated it. Thought it gives me greater understanding of what my mom dealt with as a single parent, moving to Texas with three children, going to school and the such. I'm sure that was a lot harder than what I'm going through. So I can kind of better understand why she was the way she was, but that doesn't mean that I don't want to be better.  I hope that is the case with everyone, that we all want to be better than our parents were. Learn from them and not repeat the same mistakes. Even if your parents were perfect. lol. :) LOVE my parents, but love doesn't erase actions. Ok, that's a tangent. My point is, that even though we get down trodden and life can be rough. It is still possible to receive the strength we need to keep going. I think that has been the biggest blessing the last couple days. :) 

And sometimes those blessings come in other ways, like perhaps the fact that I did decide to just put everything aside for a day or two and sew! ;) lol. I finally finished the do.Good Stitches quilt from last September and I love it! I'm so happy with it. :) Now to find someone to give it to.

Ok, I think that's about it for now. And even if it's not, I'll have to save some more stories for another day. Like all the interesting ways of life around here... because as a newbie to the area it is exactly that. I want to remember those things so we can look back and laugh at how strange we thought everything was. :)

Sorry for the lack of pictures. I'll post some more soon (Grandma B.) :) You definitely have to see Mabel's hair!! It is SO curly out here in the humidity! And Neil finally believes they get their curls from me because my hair has gone perma wavy out here too (with ringlets like Mabels in my shorter hairs down by my neck. It hasn't been like this since living in Texas!) :)

I'm Back! and faster than ever!

Well, our internet is fast! I can barely keep up with it! lol. ;) 

saying goodbye in Orem! 

My brother let us stay with him over the weekend while we waited for the movers to pick up our boxes. Thanks bro!

We are in our house, and the carpenters are out. There is a bat in the basement with my laundry that is drying on the rack. We have a gas dryer but the house only has an electric hookup. The boys love playing in the yard, and upstairs, and in the basement until the bat moved in. Everything is so big! Our yard is HUGE! All the rooms and bed rooms are HUGE! Twice the size of our last place at least! But the place is still full of boxes, so we aren't totally enjoying it quite yet. 

our first night in a hotel! They were so excited. :)

The people are SO nice! Most of our neighbors have already come over and introduced themselves! I love it!! They are mostly all older people, but so friendly. We know a few families that have smaller children to play with our wee ones. Hopefully once we get moved in we can start inviting people over! 

our backyard to the right from the back porch

it goes to the dirt road to the right (where all that white is) and past the trees to the left another 10 feet about.

our back yard to the left from the back porch. Our yard extends past the bushes on the right about another 10 feet and past the tree another 20 feet

Things are going super awesome.... EXCEPT that the moving company that moved is stressing me out to no end! So far we are missing Hunter's twin mattress, the springs to Mabel's crib, and a number of things are damaged or broken. They are also trying to overcharge the University by a landslide, as well as charge them storage fees (because they stored our stuff for a few days before putting it on the truck that was bringing our stuff out. We did not ask them to store anything, we just wanted them to deliver it asap. so annoying!) Anyway, I need to finish going through EVERYTHING, take inventory and see what else is damaged or missing! What a headache!

the patio. The garage to the left. that door goes into a mud room? section. In that area there is a door to the garage, a door to the front of the house, a door to the basement, and a door into the kitchen. :)

 I also am giving up my sewing desk to put the computer on out in the dining room... so now I need to figure something out. I am getting anxious to sew something! lol. I think maybe it would help me not be so stressed as well. They did put an old door up in the attic, and I think I remember seeing someone make a table out of one of those. Maybe I could come up with something. ;)

this will be my sewing room plus some. It's on the main floor, just off the dining room.

our computer area in the dining room. I know there are a lot of boxes. I'll take better photos once we're all moved in and everything looks nice. :) The window to the left looks out to the backyard, the windows on the right look out to the patio and garage.

lots of good windows to keep my eye on the boys while they play outside! :) We/I would love to get them a sandbox and a swing set. :) There are too many things to buy/make, but we're trying to save! oh what to do?! ;)

the kitchen. I'm taking this from the dining room, looking over a raised bar, with a long counter and lots of cupboards. There is also a long counter to the left of this picture with more drawers and cupboards. LOTS of counter space!

the living room from the kitchen area. Look how small Jacks is in that big room! :)

The living room from the corner.

To give you a little bit of an idea of what it's like out here... we went to Walmart the first weekend we got here. It ended up being a 4 hour round trip. and we didn't spend that long at the store. We went grocery shopping last night and it is a 24 mile drive to a decent sized grocery store with overpriced cheese. lol. A lot of the things are overpriced, so we're thinking we'll make a monthly trip to Walmart/sam's club and stalk up on the essentials like cereal and cheese and whatever else we can find there. :) 

Front yard to the left. You can kind of see where the dirt road is on the far side of the grass on the far side of the driveway.

Front yard to the right. It goes to the right as far as that car behind the tree.

 We had our first storm the other night. The thunder was LOUD and made the boys pretty nervous. We were actually coming home from church, a 15 mile drive, when the storm started. We drove under a HUGE wall cloud, or at least a HUGE band of low lying clouds (I don't know if I'm in the "in" yet to use all that tornado terminology. ;) Anyway, my heart was pounding! But we made it home safe.

the stairs to the upstairs. This is off the dining room. They are STEEP! I had Hunter help me the other day with unpacking. I gave him all the paper from the boxes in our room and had him throw it downstairs. It was lining the stairs all the way up. When we were done he jumped on his bum and raced down! I thought he was going to topple over forward, he was bouncing so much! lol. He wanted to do it again, but wanted me to put the paper back upstairs. When I told him he'd have to take it up he told me, "but that's work. I don't want to do work." lol. How did he ever learn about that already?! 

This will be Mabel's room. We are missing the springs to the crib so she is still sleeping in the pack and play. Poor girl. I guess it works out though because we are missing Hunter's mattress, so now he can sleep on hers. :)

A peek into the boys room. That's Hunter napping. There is a "closet" around the corner to the right, but it doesn't have a front on it. The walls and flooring are all new! Though I wish they had put carpet in there! We'll be buying some area rugs soon. 

Our bedroom. We still need to rearange. They put the bed in the wrong spot, as well as the dressers. But at least we have a bed. Actually, the box springs didn't fit upstairs, nor does it fit in the basement, so we have a lot of cardboard boxes under the mattress until we can find something that will work/buy a board to put there, or new box springs? I don't know. :)

So there is a basic run down/preview of our house. I've been journaling some of our adventures, so hopefully I'll be able to blog more about them and share more pictures. There is a lot I want to remember! :)

It's fun, we love it. We're happy we're here. I don't know where the post office is yet. But I will find out soon. :) Now I'm off to continue moving in and hopefully put an end to all this chaos!! I'm happy to be at least a bit reconnected with the outside world again! :)

The Sunday Post {04/22/2012}: Easter Recap

Easter was this month right?! lol. I really need to do better at posting pictures or I will be a year behind! Oh wait, I already am. ;)

Easter was a little low key around here. We had our little egg hunt. Went to church. Played. Ate too much candy. ;) and I don't know what else. Anyway, we did a little photo shoot of the little ones. They are cute, so here are 100 pictures to share with you! :) (you may think this is picture overload, but I think there personalities really shine through the numerous photos. And the only person that can influence me to not post so many is Grandma B. maybe.) ;)

waiting for Hunter to show up.

They are a cute so cute to each other. Just to throw in a cute story, today they were laying on our bed and all of a sudden Jackson basically wrestles Mabel with hugs. It was so cute! Then he just laid there for a long time with her on top of him with his arms wrapped around her, giving her big hugs. It was so cute! Then he started getting kind of wild and crazy. But it was fun while it lasted. Mabel sure loves all the attention and love from him!

testing. testing.

1.2.3.

"how's my hair?"
"looks great! heehee. missed a spot!"

one good looking bunch!
wish that girl would leave her bow in her hair! ;)

and they adore their sister!!

Are we almost done? my face is starting to hurt. ;)

smile?! good one mom.

haha. Daddy's funny!

Bow out again! Mom - 1, Mabel - 25.

Can anyone guess what Neil is doing to try and get them to smile???

*love that H put his arm around them!*

Now can you guess what Neil is doing?! lol. They are not sucking their thumbs. lol.

trying to make the popping sound when you flick your finger out of your mouth.



a little help from dad. ;)

oh my goodness this girl is gorgeous!! I secretly hope she gets cute freckles across her nose.



Love this guy!!


and then he blinked on the next one.
So I of course I said, "Oops. You're eyes closed. Keep your eyes open!"


and of course this is what I got...


lol.






uh oh. don't smile!!

there we go! ;)



take a picture of my finger mom! :)



do it! ;)



you can take a picture of me if I'm this close to you!
otherwise...

no.

and this is how it all ended. lol. :)
(I chased him around the house trying to get one more picture of him. lol.)

Starting their Easter egg hunt:

I have the whole easter egg hunt on video. They are so funny! It went much better this year than last. lol.

and that evening Uncle Shaun came over and the boys rode on the motorcycle! :)

look at the camera

off on a ride around the parking lot

waiting for Jacks to finish his turn



and we can't miss one with Mabel. :)

All in all we had a wonderful Easter! Hope you did too! :)