Truly, You Have a Dizzying Intellect

Adam and Audrey have been playing so well together all morning (a rarity!) with stuffed animals. As they were coming up the stairs, I asked what they were doing.

Adam: We were giving the animals breakfast. That's healthy.

Me: Oh, really? What did you feed them?

Adam: Cupcake Pebbles (can you believe this is really a cereal?! We can blame my sugar-cereal addict husband for its presence in our home) and marshmallows.

Me: Hmm...are Cupcake Pebbles healthy?

Adam: No.

Me: Are marshmallows healthy?

Adam: No. But eating breakfast is healthy!

Hallelujah! As long as it's the first meal of the day and I call it breakfast, I can eat whatever I want and call it healthy!

Land of the Sun

We spent the latter half of Audrey's Spring Break, including Easter weekend, in Phoenix visiting my sister Julie's family. Despite the severe lack of sleep, particularly amongst the children, we had a really great time! Julie warned us that the weather might be a bit "cold" - which, to her, means in the 70's, so it was pretty much perfect (except for Saturday, when it rained, but we rolled with it and just took the Easter Egg Hunt inside, kids didn't seem to mind a bit!). The 5-6 hour drive is a piece of cake compared to the 10 hour drive to Utah - especially since we drove at night and the kids slept a lot of the way (Adam climbed in his carseat as we were loading up and fell asleep before we even got on the road - and slept not just the whole way home, but the rest of the night once we arrived home, too!).

We took the kids to a really fun park that had themed areas - there was a farm playground, a dinosaur sand area, and a transportation area that had bike/scooter paths that were painted to look like roads. The kids loved it! The unequivocal favorite was the tire swing:


We got home, got the kids settled in with a movie, and Julie and I hit Last Chance. It's not for the faint of heart (when Julie first told me about it, she compared it to DI. I didn't believe her, after all, it's owned by Nordstrom - but she was right, it's right on par with DI), but this place is rife with bargains - it's where Nordstrom sends all their returned merchandise and they sell it at a steep discount. Julie found tons of great shirts and some shoes, and my highlights were a fantastic pair of black flats and an awesome pair of jeans. It was definitely worth the trip out there and worth the 2 hours of sifting through um, other, not-so-great finds. The plan was to stay up and play Rock Band on the Wii after we got the kids to bed, but I fell asleep myself! I dragged myself out of bed around 9:30 or 10:00, but could not keep my eyes open. I'm getting old and can't do the 5 hours of sleep thing anymore, I guess! I think everyone else played a couple of songs, and then we all headed to bed.

Friday we took the kids to a children's museum in Mesa. They had lots of fun there, too:





Friday night, we welcomed Julie's friend Rebecca, and her family, who came to visit. Rebecca's family lived down the street from us growing up, but I haven't seen her in years. It was so fun to see her again and to meet her family. We had a great time playing The Office trivia game and eating candy from Julie's stash. The kids had a great time too - so much so that they didn't settle down and go to sleep until after 10:00 and were up and at 'em by 5:45 the next morning! Saturday dawned rainy, so we hid the eggs inside the house and let the kids loose. They loved hunting and the resulting spoils.




Saturday night we met up with Lynsie and her fiance Steve for dinner. Yummy food and great company! Sunday was church, followed by a quick photo shoot, then an impromptu hunt for Easter baskets since the bunny came a little late this year:




After baskets, the kids dyed Easter eggs while Julie prepared a delicious dinner. We took quick pics of the kids with their favorites before turning them all into deviled eggs.



I went and picked Jeremy up to join us for dinner. I was able to see his new place - he closed about a month ago and has put a lot of work into having it renovated. It looks great - very classy! We really enjoyed visiting with him over Easter dinner and, consequently, left much later than we should have, which meant driving late into the night. We had a hard time getting up the next morning for work/school, but it was worth it - we had such a great time! Thanks so much, Julie and family, for being such great hosts! Hopefully we'll be back again soon! :)

Breaking the Ice

I've been absent so long, I feel like I need either a marathon post, where I totally catch you up with everything we've been doing the past 4 or 5 months, including pictures from various events, or else I need to post something really big and important, like we're moving (we're not), I'm pregnant (I'm not) or we won the lottery (haha). Since I don't have any big news, and the giant catch-up post seems too overwhelming, I'm just putting up this one little inobtrusive post that doesn't say much at all. That way, next time I want to post, it won't seem so daunting.

We're Here!

And it's hard to believe it's only been a week - Utah feels like a lifetime away! Last week, we were sitting here in a dark, empty house, twiddling our thumbs (ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration - Jared's family took pity on us and invited us over for dinner last week, but we did spend quite a bit of time sitting around an empty house the first few days). Now, all our worldly belongings have arrived (with nary a casualty, that we've found yet, at least!), we're on the way to being unpacked and able to park a car in the garage again, and we're starting to settle in a bit. We went to church today and met a ton of people - I'll be surprised if I remember anyone's name by next week. There were lots and lots of kids there, to my relief. Despite Jared's assurances that, "there are kids in California, too!" I had my doubts. ;) We've spent a lot of time with family enjoying various activities including a delicious Thanksgiving dinner, and now it's time to settle in to reality. I'm going to take Audrey over to school tomorrow to register (the kids had all of last week off, for the Thanksgiving holiday, so this will be the first day, even though we've been here a week). We found out at church today that Kindergarten at this school is full-day, which both Audrey and I are a little nervous about (I'm trying to hide my apprehension from her, not sure if it's working). 9:00 - 3:20 just seems so LONG after going from only 12:00 - 3:00 at her previous school! I'm sure she'll do fine, I'm just a little sad about having my little girl away from me all day. I'm really going to miss her!

Unless the kids object, I think I'm not going to decorate for Christmas this year. At least, not much. All of the unpacking is starting to get to me, and that combined with the 70 degree temps have me feeling not all that festive. We'll also probably be leaving for Utah mid-month, so I can bask in the decorations everyone up there has put up. We'll see. I'm having mixed feelings about our trip up. Of course, I'll be thrilled to see all the friends and family we miss so much, but I've quickly adapted to the temperate weather here and dread going back to the coat-wearing, ice-scraping, heater-running days of winter. Maybe if I focus on curling up by the fire with a mug of hot chocolate, soft Christmas carols playing in the background after a good old-fashioned snowball fight...

New Digs

This is it! We just signed the rental agreement yesterday, so this will be home sweet home until at least November 30, 2009. From the pictures, the downstairs seems to be set up very similarly to our current home, except there's no den, no mudroom, and the 1/2 bath is just off the front entry, rather than in the back corner. It has 4 bedrooms upstairs - come and visit us!








This will take some getting used to. The kids really roam all over our yard now, so to go from our yard to this will be quite an adjustment, I'm afraid. There is a park a couple of streets over, so I imagine we'll find ourselves there quite a bit. We're also within walking distance of the elementary school, and there is also supposedly open space with walking/jogging trails, so hopefully we'll still spend plenty of time outside, even though the yard is teeny tiny.

Overall, I feel really blessed that we were able to find such a nice place in our price range. When I first started looking, I was dismayed at how much things cost, and pretty much figured we'd be back in something the size of the condo we lived in before we moved to our current home. That would have been adequate for our needs, but it would have been hard to pare down all the stuff we have and get used to living with much less space. As it is, we'll still have to get used to less space, but it's much larger and nicer than what I thought we'd end up with. Things are working out, I guess!

Take a Breath

Well, not really, we close in 9 days (yes, it's still on, though I'm still entertaining hopes - probably fantasies at this point - that the buyers will back out!), and even after we close on the house, I'll have all the unpacking and moving stuff on the other end (not to mention the Thanksgiving holiday). I feel like I'm moving in slow motion. Luckily, I have that luxury, since Jared found a moving company that will pack for peanuts. I'm trying to do some of the packing on my own, so I can sort through and get rid of a bunch of stuff, but every time I do, Jared asks me why I'm bothering to pack, when he's hired someone to do it. So, I mostly wander around, gaping in disbelief at the fact that we're actually MOVING.

We had a really busy weekend. Aside from the obvious getting ready to move, we ran a bunch of errands, watched the football game, celebrated Audrey's birthday on Saturday, Sunday, AND Monday (separate post on that), I taught Relief Society, went to a Scout meeting, Audrey did her part in the primary sacrament meeting program (reluctantly - she seems to have developed a bit of stage fright, which was not an issue at all last year), and went to Sunday Night at Grandma Henrie's. Whew!

Oh, and I'm making a note to myself, and for anyone else who may move at some point - If you want to take a bunch of pictures or video to remember your house, do it while you're still showing the house, not after you've accepted an offer. After you've accepted the offer, you're getting ready to move, and things are no longer in showing condition. I keep trying to get things cleaned up, so I can take a video of the house, and it's impossible to do while trying to pack! Why, oh why didn't I do this when I was keeping the house spotless for showings?!

Tag!

OK, I felt bad every time I looked at my blog and saw my cute little girl with the title "Inconvenience" right over her. Didn't mean it like that, I promise! Anyway, to bury it down a bit, I'll do this one word tag Traci tagged me with a little while ago.

1. Where is your cell phone? purse
2. Where is your significant other? work
3. Your hair color? Brown
4. Your mother? self-sacrificing
5. Your father? hardworking
6. Your favorite thing? kids
7. Your dream last night? short
8. Your dream/goal? goodness
9. The room you're in? dark
10. Your hobby? reading
11. Your fear? vomit
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? happy
13. Where were you last night? home
14. What you're not? high-maintenance
15. One of your wish-list items? travel
16. Where you grew up? Utah
17. The last thing you did? packed
18. What are you wearing? glasses
19. Your TV? on
20. Your pet? imaginary
21. Your computer? shared
22. Your mood? lazy
23. Missing someone? soon
24. Your car? messy
25. Something you're not wearing? makeup
26. Favorite store? target
27. Your summer? last
28. Love someone? always
29. Your favorite color? orange
30. When is the last time you laughed? today
31. Last time you cried? Sunday?