The Bookends of Birth and Death

Our morning started WAY too early for the birthday boy, with us having to leave the house at 7 so that we could be at our new house in time for the fridge to be delivered. We woke him up singing to him and loving on him, but he really wasn't ready for it.

 He started feeling a little more like himself when he saw that we were having Dinosaur Egg oatmeal for breakfast!

 After eating all the candy dinos, he was his regular smiley self and  was ready to meet the day!

 After hanging out at our house for a couple of hours, and then grocery shopping for a couple more hours, we came home and had birthday sausages, apples with caramel dip, and monkey bread...some of his favorite foods.

Afterwards we sang him happy birthday over a strawberry cheesecake that Daddy picked out for him at Costco.

 He really loved it!

 Then it was on to present unwrapping time! (Don't you love the wrapping paper?!) He got a couple of cool Hotwheels cars - one that glows in the dark, one that changes colors with water, one that was super fast, and one that changed colors with a little laser flashlight (Daddy loved that one best!). He also got a lady bug pillow pal, an electric toothbrush, and a toy measuring tape. All his gifts were a huge hit!

 Duncan broke his pillow pal in while everyone played with Emmy's toys. He says it passes his inspection and really is a great pal to have when you are lounging around.

 Later on, while we were all watching a movie, I found the little birthday sneak in the kitchen munching on more cheesecake...he thought he was so funny. At least he was using a spoon though, right? He could have just gone in fist first!

 Overall, I think he had a great birthday. Owen said that it was the best birthday that Emmett has ever had, and Garrett said it was the best brother birthday he has ever got to participate in. We spent time as a family, we played at our new house, the three-year-old got a new fridge for a present, we watched a couple of movies at the apartment, and we started packing everything up to move into our house tomorrow...it was a full day!

Emmett is such a fun little man - so full of life and so excited to be happy at the slightest provocation. He loves his family to no end, and adores his baby brother intently. His favorite color is "bah-lou". He loves 'bum' (gum), 'popsnickles', lollipops, and cereal. His favorite foods are noodles, sticky rice, pizza, salad, and broccoli. He won't stay in his bed by himself so he usually ends up sleeping with either Teagan or Garrett so he has a cuddle buddy with him; but still comes into our bed around 5 every morning because he says he hears monsters and is scared. He would take 5 baths a day if we let him, and loves playing with bubbles and water. If it ever gets quiet when he is around, it generally means that he is up to some sort of mischief. He is cute, cuddly, smart, ingenious, sneaky, a flirt, super loving, energetic, fearless, and all boy!

It was a happy, happy birthday for my boy!

And on this day when we have been celebrating Emmett's life, I am also mourning the loss of a friend of mine.



I got this lucky bamboo plant almost 11 years ago on an anniversary date Scott and I went on with some friends. It has moved cross country with us from Georgia to Utah. It has cheered up our house with it's greenery twists and turns and now it is dead. Scott let it sleep in the car for one night when I was down in Delta with his parents and the cold was too much for my lucky bamboo friend to tolerate. The middle stalk is still battling to stay alive, but the little ones and the twisty guy all gave up the fight and had to be thrown out tonight.

Yeah, Scott thinks I am crazy for missing a plant so much, too. You're not the only one thinking that!

Goodbye for next week

This weekend marks the end of our being "inbetween homes" stage of life. We are now officially home owners in a rural little town in Washington!

 We were scheduled to have the moving company deliver our things today, but the snow storm we had this week shut Washington down and now they are holding our things hostage until Monday. The last time we saw our things they looked like this:

and this: (I love that all these boxes were books!!)

and were loaded into this: (we only took up half the room, the other half was for a SLC family moving to WA as well)

And once they drove away with all of our things, and headed for Washington, we started our days of homelessness. We stayed with friends. We bombarded family for a few weeks. (That's what it's called when you are a family our size!) We slept in a hotel that more than likely had had some drug issues before we got there because when we woke up our faces were numb and paralized for a little while...it was WAY weird! And now we have stayed in a cute, comfy, but not our home basement apartment for a couple of weeks. We've been homeless in the nicest sense of the word. A bunch of clowns without a big top.

But no longer! We have keys to the doors, we have heating and water and electricity, and we have a lovely house of our own. Just waiting to be filled!

But since all of Washington shut down with the snow that came, we took full advantage of it. At our rental place we got about 7 inches, and at our new house we got about a foot or so! Perfect sledding, snowballing, and picture taking snow all around us!

 Snowball fights spontaneously erupted multiple times a day. The kids wanted to play in the snow even before eating breakfast!

 One day we got Daddy into the snowball fight, too. Owen was on his team, and boy did Daddy make the daddy of all snowballs! Owen was so grateful he was fighting WITH Daddy and not against him!

 Emmy was the Switzerland of the fight and would roam freely between the two sides - neutral to both. But he did take a couple of shots at Daddy! Then he would trot away giggling his head off!

Tomorrow we are having the fridge delivered and celebrating Emmy's 3rd birthday. (Yikes, I can't believe he is already turning 3!!!) And then we are camping in our empty new house on Sunday night so we will be there bright and early Monday morning when the moving company relinqueshes hold of our things and we can start the long haul of unpacking! Monday is also when the dishwasher will be delivered and installed and then on Tuesday we get our washer and dryer uncrated and installed. It isn't until all the way down the week at Friday when we will be getting internet again, so there won't be any posts next week because of that. We will be internet-free and tv free and all boxed up still...the kids are going to feel like we are back at home after this long vacation with computers, tv, and video gaming!

I am hoping to be able to post tomorrow about how Emmett's birthday went, but if not, goodbye until after next week!

It's feeling a little more like home

Today we got the most beautiful snowfall I have ever seen. The snow came down in soft cotton ball clumps; resting softly on your eyelashes and clothes so gently that it didn't even melt, it just rested until it was blown away. Six inches of powdery fun.

It was perfect snow for snowball fights and snowman making. Perfect snow for making forts and eating snowballs.

We played in the snow for about three hours and barely noticed. I didn't even have a jacket on, just a thin long-sleeved shirt.

When we finally came inside, the only proof that we had even been in the snow was our wet pant legs and hair.

Then Scott came home early and we went and signed the papers on the house.

Everything is lined up for us to move in this weekend as long as Scott's company gets his paycheck right for the loan company to see. Right now they still have him listed as an intern instead of a full-time employee, which has the possibility of messing up us getting the loan we want. We will see how it all turns out in the next 24 hours.

Until then, we are going to enjoy this rare artic burst here in Washington! It's supposed to last for two more days before the snow turns back into rain and everything is melted away.

School - a thing of beauty

We've been trying to do school from our lovely little basement apartment even though I didn't have the foresight to keep out the kids' school books. It's been a bit of a challenge, and I've stretched the definition of school a little at times and agreed that playing Big Brain Academy on the Wii could be considered school. It hasn't been as organized an education as we normally have at home, but I think that we have done pretty good for a family living out of suitcases for the past month. We are finding that we can do all sorts of school things even without all our wonderful school supplies...opportunities for learning are all around and so abundant!

This week I decided that for school we would work on family unity, Webelos stuff for Garrett, memorizing the Articles of Faith for Owen's class in church, and Young Women's stuff for Teagan. And we would fill in some gaps with National Geographic movies during lunch time and on-line chess games, math games, and Khan Academy.

For Garrett's Artist badge in Webelos, we did each other's profile portraits today and the kids all had so much fun doing it! It took a little while to get Emmett to stay still and stop looking at the finger lights the kids were holding, but it finally as done! I did Emmett's and Garrett did Owen's.

 Teagan drew Garrett's and I did Teagan's.

 And then Owen did mine. They are now hanging on the mantle in the apartment. Thinking forward about the next time we do this, I want to make sure that we are all sitting the same distance away from the paper and the lights so that everyone's faces are proportionate to each other. And I would like for them to be a little smaller next time, not done on a textured wall that makes the lines all wiggly, and finished all in black instead of multicolored.

I've always wanted to do profile portraits of the kids and was so glad that this suggested as part of Garrett's badge work! Now we are on to having him find out the history of the public school system for his Scholar badge!

First impressions

Okay, so we went to our potential new ward this past Sunday and got our first glimpse of our new circle of church acquaintances. They start at 9 this year; which I enjoyed.

I love how all the church building have somewhat of a similar layout and design, so that no matter where you are, there is at least a smidgen of similarity you can cling on to! This building is new and serves our little city and the one next to it also. Anyway, everything went pretty well. No psycho testimonies of seeing angels (that's what we saw when we went to a fast and testimony meeting with Scott's sister in Cali!), nobody that seemed too weird, nothing too scary. A guy that looked like Weird Al with a beard greeted us at the door, but he was nice enough that the scary, long, wavy hair and facial hair didn't throw me off too much. The ward started out looking like a branch with how few people were there, but after about 15 minutes, there were enough people to open the overflow and fill a couple of those rows. So I think, in total, the ward is about the same size as our old ward in Sunset. It was also a nice mix of old and young people, too.


The bishop and the 1st councilor smiled through most of the meeting; which gave me hope that it is a friendly ward. And Emmy made friends with a little girl across the pew whose mommy had made her an origami crane just like the one Teagan had made for Emmy to play with. We later found out that she belonged to the 2nd councilor's family. Her mom adored Emmett because she always wanted an "Emmett" but she had one boy and 5 girls. So the little crane girl was supposed to be Ryan Emmett, but instead she was Janelle something.

Um, so sacrament went well. It was nice that it was fast and testimony, that way we got to see a lot of different people up there and sort of feel them out a bit. No kids got up to bear their testimonies, which I missed a little, but the people who got up gave nice testimonies all the same.

Then afterward sacrament, the kids went straight to their classes - the new primary room numbers were printed in the ward bulletin, so they already knew where to go without having to ask anyone. They all did great and went without fear. Emmy even went right into nursery and stayed when I took him, even though one little girl was in there screaming her lungs out. The nursery leader seems like she has nursery down to a science - here is a wall with a hanging shoe holder on it where each child has a pocket that holds their drawings from that day and the sippy cup you bring for them for snack time. That way you just check their pocket and get all their things. She also has a snazzy schedule made up and laminated pictures of each of the kids...very Utah-ish :-) All Cricut made and such. But he went, he stayed, and he even asked them to go to the bathroom when he needed, so all was well with him!

Gospel Doctrine was pretty dry. Nothing to report there. In RS it was the Sunday that the YW join for opening, so I got to see Tig and that was nice...I was needing some familiarity right about then. She knew something was up when I linked arms with her and told her to come share a chair with me.Then after they left back to YW, the RS lesson wasn't anything super either. I apparently had sat in the right corner because there were also four other moms there with little baby boys who rolled and crawled around the corner where we were. So I got to see Duncan's future playmates :-)

After church the kids all came back thrilled with their classes, and excited for the upcoming weekday activities that are scheduled. So it looks like we will be trekking back over there this Wednesday evening for Teagan to go to Standards Night with John Bytheway and for Garrett to do his scout things.

I tried to keep an open mind about all the people around me; that someone might be a good friend if I make sure I don't let appearance, or fear , or whatever inhibit me...but, yeah, I'm still me so there wasn't much headway made. I'm still thinking that my kids are good enough friends for me...who needs more, right?! I have a history for taking 5 years of staying in one place before I open up and relax a bit and start making friends and I was thinking of trying to change that, but now I'm rethinking that thought!

 As I looked around the chapel, it was funny, I kept seeing people from our Sunset ward - this lady reminded me of so and so, or this man sounds like Bro. blah blah. Even Scott was doing it, so I didn't feel too badly about comparing them to people in our circle of normality! It only got scary when I was looking at the boys passing sacrament and thought to myself, "You know, some of these boys might be kids who ask Teagan out on a date in 4 or 5 years." All of a sudden, they didn't look so innocent and outstanding; I immediately got really judgemental on all of them! It was a funny little epiphany moment I had all by myself!

After church, we all went out to a lake near our new house and went hiking. It was a fun hike and the weather was great for it - no rain and in the low 50's. At the trail head there was a sign warning to be on the lookout for black bears, cougars, and Sasquatches and then gave rules of what to do if you come across any of them. Just as an FYI, you are not to feed a Sasquatch if you ever did find one!

Not much meat, but a whole lot of sweet stuff

Here are some recent pictures of us from how we are starting 2012. Most of these were taken on January 2 on our last day in Utah except for Duncan's. His was taken on Christmas Eve...it shows how excited he was for Santa to come!

I'm hoping to find some time to make a post soon about our move so far, but for today, this is all I can squeeze in!