Our Family

Gratitude in writing.

2012-02-04T05:46:00.000-08:00

This week Alisabeth has approached both Jason and I to ask the same question in different ways:
"When am I getting the sister I asked for a long time ago?" and "When will my sister and two brothers be here?" Every time she asks my heart breaks, and then it aches.
No we never shared with her about the fact that we were trying to adopt, but that's not a possibility anymore anyway. We did share with her about the baby in mommy's tummy, and how Heavenly Father took it back for a little while, so I'm sure that's part of where this is coming from, but that doesn't make it any easier to hear.
And then I take a look at my life and I wonder how I can be so ungrateful! We have the most amazing job with a company that cares enough so that they come into my office at least once a week to make sure I don't feel overworked; a company who listened to me say "my family comes first" and never questioned me on it; a company who understands that I won't be working for them more than a few years (until Jason graduates and finds a job) and still treats me like everyone else when it comes to promotions and opportunities.
Really? How can I complain.
My husband is doing amazingly in school, he's putting all of his efforts into his classes even when he feels like they're kicking his butt. At the same time he's being a stay-at-home dad, our mechanic, our house fixer, the keeper of our home, our leader, an adoring husband and an active member at church (which requires quite a bit of time since he's a secretary). He's attentive and willing and patient and amazing and he stretches himself daily.
How can I complain?
I've also been blessed by a daughter who's the spitting image of me, has enough energy to outrun a racehorse, plays amazingly well by herself and with others (and even chooses activities because she thinks we will enjoy them). She's teaching herself to read with very little effort on our part.
The other day she came to Jason with a paper full of words she copied off of the cat litter box. Words like urine and scent and scoopable. She wanted to understand the meanings and sat enthralled at her father's feet while he tried to explain.
She also strives to say her "sh" and her "ch" correctly even though they used to all sound like "s." She is self-motivated, self-possessed, self-confident, and a delight (when I'm not exhausted just watching her spin circles around me).
Last week she even gained the ability to set her own bedtime (not at all normal for a four year old). She wouldn't go to sleep and it had become a game in which she would force herself to stay awake until eleven or later, popping into the room and giggling as we became enraged. So finally I pulled her into the room and said "How would you like to stay up as long as you want to?"
Huge eyes
"Go ahead and pick two toys and a couple of books. You can take them into your room and you can play there for as long as you want. When you're done put it all away and then come get us and we'll tuck you in."
Excitement and she was gone.
The first night she was up about another forty five minutes and then she came in and said she was done.
Sadly I didn't believe her, so I told her to go tuck herself in and we'd come in a minute. By the time we got there she was out. The second night she came and told us she was done at 9:30, the third night at 9. Last night she chose to go to sleep rather than play and then merrily sang to herself for another thirty minutes.
Needless to say, she's amazing. How can I complain?
Our life is nearly perfect. We have everything we need and so much more. We have friends that people would give their right arms for. We have family that would give their right arms for us. We have opportunities (like Jason's recent interview for an internship with the church in Salt Lake in their networking department). We have miracles daily, and the hand of God is so obviously in our life that I would never even try to deny or hide it.
There's no way I can complain.
Thanks everyone for making our lives perfect. I am so grateful for you and your touch in our eternity.

Guilt

2011-12-03T12:24:00.001-08:00

So I started to write a post here, but realized it belonged on my other blog: "Don't be offended." So I transferred it. Of course then I felt guilty about not updating this one, so here I am!
Christmas is coming. . . yep that's about it. . .
Okay not really. Oh my heck; things have changed drastically!
Alisabeth at three and a half became the best helper, the best listener and the best little girl I've ever met in my life. No, not perfect, but dang awesome. Then suddenly she turned four and I think her "best" button ran out of batteries. Suddenly she's angry a lot and pushing all of the boundaries. She's started biting and hitting and especially spitting. It's been a crazy weird adjustment, but thanks to a lot of advice from many wise men and women we are slowly working through it. She now understands that she can make a choice to be angry or not and occasionally she'll stop mid-tantrum and decide she's not going to go that route (throws us for a loop every time).
On top of that we finally got all of our paperwork in for foster care here in Idaho and then got another surprise when we found out that two very special little girls in Arizona need a home. We're on the list for becoming possible adoptive parents. Our background checks are done; all we need to do now is wait on Idaho to come do a home inspection on Arizona's behalf and then we'll see what happens. . . I'm trying not to let myself get over excited in case something falls through, but seriously I've already got GUND bears for both of them and I'm already planning out the next year's finances with them in it. . . okay, gotta calm down.

In other news Jason is nearing the close of yet another semester. His last project in java is to create an ATM program which will allow transactions to however many bank accounts a user has. To get them started the teacher showed them how to create a microwave interface (to practice the interface and buttons and all of that stuff) I'm way excited to see the finished product. Between classes he's also found time to complete the re-drywalling of our basement so that we can move back down there soon. We have to have it done by Christmas :) And he's also working on the Amigo which decided to go out on us last week. That's been fun.

In my news I've added CPA exam prep to my list of activities for the next nine months. I could push it faster, but I'm trying to be realistic considering workload, family, and potential change in family dynamic soon. According to my scheduler I have to study 13 hours a week in order to review all of the material before my first exam mid-January. Can I do it? Hahahahahahahahahahahaa.

Life is good, great in fact. We're going to get a real Christmas tree this year (at my insistence), and we got a dryer handed to us by a lady at church who needed a new washer and decided to get a matching set instead. God has just poured blessings on our heads. No denying it. I hope you have a wonderful winter season too. (And if it's not going so well come on up and visit. We'd love to have you.)

How fun.

2011-10-23T22:23:00.000-07:00

The tiny organism which once tried to kill me turned 4 on Friday. It was awesome. Two was hard, three was much harder, but three and half to four has been amazing. I love to watch her grow and learn and become a real human.
My husband makes fun of me when I say that, but it's true, she's beginning to understand the secondary meaning behind what people say, she's making connections between conversations and she listens to everything and responds. She grasps concepts and she makes mental leaps. She's actually fun to converse with, rather than just fun to listen to, or to watch. She can play games and understand rules. Strategy is still a little beyond her, but she does understand goals and can generally figure out how to achieve them. I love it.
This birthday part was even more special because she finally understands what it means. She knows what presents are, and she was excited for those, but she was even more excited for the chance to have friends come over, and to decorate and to help make the cake and the ice cream. She loved to try to blow up balloons and even got a few. She helped daddy hand the streamers and picked out all the prizes for the games. She picked the cake and the colors and she waited anxiously by the door as the time drew near. She played the little hostess as she introduced her preschool and her church friends to each other and besides one episode of tantrum which only lasted a few minutes she was actively involved in everything we did. It was awesome.
So of course I couldn't help myself and we spent way too much money on presents and decorations and activities and prizes, but hey, 4 only happens once, and it was totally worth every penny.
We ended up with pink, purple, white, and blue for the streamers and pink, purple and white for the balloons. They're still handing haphazardly around the living room and kitchen area and the balloons are still scattered around the room, though most of them were popped when we played "keep off the ground" outside on the grass :)
Her presents included a new dress-up set (including a skirt, a crown, earings, rings, shoes, and a purse) and a new umbrella (strangely her favorite thing in the world, and also a favorite of all of the other kids at the party) from Grandma and Grandpa Liddeke; a four foot long floor puzzle of African Safari type animals from Grandma and Grandpa Flannery (and cousins); snow shoes (which I have yet to purchase) from Nana and Grandpa; a new booster seat, a barbie movie, a Shel Silverstein book of poems, a winter coat, and a bouquet of flowers from mom and dad; a tinkerbell tiny kitchen, a Tangled purse and accessories, a Princess makeup set (fake, thank goodness), a doll with accessories to feed, cloth and care for her, another small doll set of some sort, and a cool pair of socks that had shiny sparklies sewed on to them. I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but that was quite enough. Her favorite part, of course, was the cards, for some reason getting cards with each gift was very precious to her this year. She opened each one lovingly. When she got the first one from Grandma and Grandpa Liddeke she actually cuddled it to her chest and said "Oooh, how precious."
Then today at church she was also part of a primary program, which was another memorable event. Last time the children sang in church she was hesitant until we praised her to the skies. This time she was a proud little peacock as she sat up there and waved at us every few seconds. What I really loved was that they sent each child home with a question and then made the program each child's testimony of God, Jesus, and the power of the scriptures. I'm not sure how all of the other parents did it, but we tried hard to simply ask her the question and not lead her to the answer we wanted to hear. It was quite difficult, but eventually she said that scriptures help her to know Jesus and to help her be happy. She also added that they taught her not to say the word stupid, but we edited that part out. (We've taught her that calling people or things stupid isn't nice). It was very cool to hear each child bear their small testimony. As always some were confident and comfortable, and the older ones spoke without hesitation or prompting, but even some of the smaller ones rattled off their lines with conviction.
Between each age group the whole fifty or so children stood and sand a song. Those too touched my heart. Each spoke of the worth of the children, or the amazing things that God had done for them. I thought to myself that if these children can just remember these words and take the true meaning to heart, they'll be set for life. To know that they are important and vital in God's eyes; to know that Jesus sacrificed himself so that they could live and repent and return to God; to know that the scriptures will lead them to make right choices. I really appreciated the whole program and all of the leaders who made it possible.

The rest of this month has been a blur. Jason is doing great in school, he's enjoying his classes and despite a hiccup last week he's going strong and learning a lot. He really enjoys what he's doing and it's fun to hear all about it when he comes home (although when I'm half asleep I don't always appreciate it like I should).

Work is also going well. We had our annual reviews a few weeks ago and they praised me to the stars. They went over my review (which I had filled out nearly four months ago) and marked me up in a lot of areas where I hadn't felt confident and then basically said "We have nothing to tell you, keep up what you're doing." It was nice to hear.
This last week was also our firm annual tax CPE, which is a firm-wide update and training held in Montana so Wednesday night after work my co-workers picked me up in Duboise (where I was out on an audit) and we drove to Montana and stayed there Thursday and Friday and then drove home Friday night. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot (including the fact that I know almost nothing). The speaker for the two day conference was a Tax Lawyer out of Indiana. He shared a lot of stories about clients and experiences that he and others at his firm have had and brought up a lot of good tax law points and items to consider. The first day was a blast for me because the entire 8 hour session covered estates and trust, which are a favorite topic of mine, but the second day was a little harder for me because it was about S-Corps and Partnerships which I don't deal with enough to know. Despite that I was able to understand everything he was talking about, it was simply over my head as far as complexity was concerned.
In the evenings I wrote (re-wrote) the first 132 pages of my third book. It was fun. This book has been a lot harder to write because I have to continually reference the other two to make sure I'm using my facts and names correctly, and to verify that my timeline is accurate.

All in all we're loving life and thoroughly enjoying ourselves.
We also started the application process for foster care/adoption here in Idaho. Despite my initial desire to wait until Jason graduated I've found myself yearning more and more for a sister or brother for Alisabeth. When we were first married we told ourselves that we would leave all of this up in God's hands and let him decide what was best for our family. In the last few weeks we've had several experiences which have pushed us in this direction. It will be an interesting road. The program here in Idaho is extremely different from what we did in Arizona (for fiscal and governance policy at least) but we'll just have to wait and see. If you want to keep us in your prayers we'd appreciate it.
Winter approaches soon, and we haven't had an accident in nearly a year. . . will we break the pattern? We shall see.

A month in a moment. . .

2011-08-26T18:07:00.000-07:00

Work, vacation, school and play. That's what we've done in the last month.Thanks for visiting!

In reality though the time has flown. Jason isn't in school yet for the next semester so he's been completing projects around the house. His major accomplishment is the riding lawn mower he picked up off craigslist for free. No, we don't need a riding lawnmower, but he's going to fix it up and then try to sell it. The people who gave it away were moving and didn't feel like doing to work themselves. We've got it pretty much diagnosed to the diaphragm in the carburetor. I know what but not where or how so don't ask me any more.
He also built steps for Alisabeth's playhouse (they're a little crooked, but get got all of the wood for free off craigslist and the nails too, so we'll fix it later.)
His latest accomplishment however is finding an old water leak in the basement that spread slowly through the walls. I, being the paranoid person that I am, decided to pull out the 4 bottom feet of the entire wall(s) which was effected just to make sure we've got it all. So he's torn apart our old bedroom and is cleaning it up and getting it ready and prepared for the time that we have the money saved to fix it. Because we're doing it all ourselves it isn't going to cost much at all, and as a bonus we're replacing the current insulation with a higher grade just cuz. Also there was no moisture barrier down there so we're going to put that in and we're still considering making some adjustments to the walls to include a better closet for that bedroom. . . I'll let you know what we decide.

As for me I've been auditting. School districts started and we're hitting them hard. The school district year end here is June 30 and because of requirements by the state they have to have an audit done and finalized with a good opinion before October if they want to get their money for the next year, but it takes at least a month for them to get everything from the previous year finalized and compiled for inspection, so we've got about a month and a half to perform comprehensive audits of 6 school districts with a team of all new people who have never auditted before (with the exception of Nick who went on a few as a helper last year). It's been a blast.
On the up side apparently I've been impressing my boss. Even though I have less experience than Nick I've been given a significantly larger portion of responsibility. . . I feel honored and sort of confused because I don't really think I do a lot more than him but my mom says to get over it so I'm trying to.
I also had some really exciting news in that I found out I was pregnant about two weeks ago. The down side is that I miscarried about four days later. I share this for two reasons, one it saves me from having to tell people in person which I really don't want to do, and because Jason and I both felt that this was God's way of telling us that pregnancy is possible (a fear we have had for more than a year) but that it's in his hands right now. We're okay with that.
As usual when I get stressed: I wrote a book. :)
I don't know if I ever mentioned it, but I did eventually turn in the first part of the other book I wrote to a publishing company. . . we'll see if they ever write back, but at least I did it.

Alisabeth has also been making strides. Because of school schedules she will start in preschool every day starting the second week of September. We're sad about this because I never wanted to put my kids in daycare like this, but it means that Jason will be able to focus and graduate by the summer of 2013 so we're just going to suck it up and do it. She's adjusted well to preschool and has a few good friends there so she no longer screams when we leave her. She also has one more week before she can take out her earrings and be able to wear different ones. She's excited. I adore that little girl.

That's us in a nutshell for the last month.

Getting Settled

2011-07-13T19:46:00.000-07:00

My beautiful princess got her first major haircut this week. . . she hated it.

We were looking at the magazines while we waited and she chose the most outlandish and ugly haircuts as her favorite. One thing they had in common: long hair.
I felt bad, but it will grow out. :)
That being said she's super excited about the prospect of wearing bows and barrettes now, so I think she'll be fine.

We're settling nicely into our home. I realized the other day (thanks to Jason) that I haven't posted anything on here for quite a while, so I figured I'd better make up for my lack with pictures and interesting things :)
So firstly Alisabeth: She's finally situated enough to be okay with pre-school. She still cries on her bad mornings, but on the rest she goes right in and joins the other kids!! They're making a farm this week. Tuesday she came home with a farmer and a pig and they walked around the preschool with goat masks on that they had painted and colored and pretended to be goats.
She's amazing.
She's really into climbing now, thus the picture above. She also climbs to the very top of her playset in the backyard which is at least as tall as our roof. She climbs pretty much anything that holds her weight for a moment. At the mall she wants to climb to the top of the tree, but luckily they designed it so that there's no place to get enough of a grip to do that. . . thankfully.
She's excitedly anticipating our upcoming trip to Colorado and recently enjoyed a visit from her cousins and her best friend Paige from Boise. All in all she's having a marvelous time.

Jason is wrapping up his first semester back in school and doing a great job. He'll be re-taking statistics another semester, but it's not from lack of trying. He's impressed me with his renewed determination to accomplish his goal.
He's also made a few good friends and study partners at school, so that's been nice for him. One more week and then he'll be done with this semester. Oh, and in case you haven't already seen his class project:
http://jatflannery.net/individual/template/indv-home-page.php
In his personal life he's having a blast with his new garage. He's established everything where it belongs and always has some project or other going on. I don't mind at all because the projects are generally housekeeping items.
While the Raybons were here to visit he forced Brian to help him install a nightlight into the livingroom and together they attempted to hook up the water line on the fridge (unfortunately there was a leak and too many broken parts, so that didn't happen).
He's also installed a light at the bottom of the stairs, put in a vent from the heating into Alisabeth's room for when winter comes, torn our a wall where we found mold and replaced the entire thing including mudding and taping all within the same day. Outside he's helped get the lawn into shape and spray for bugs (of which we have millions), get the watering under control and set and drilled through a door lock when the bathroom was accidentally locked with no one inside (there were two doors in our house that had actually key locks on them. The bathroom was one. It now has the door handle from the downstairs pantry on it.)
I'm sure there are a bunch of other things that he's accomplished thus far, but they're too many to count.
Oh! and he also dug up about 1/2 of the weeds which we have ignored since moving in.

I forgot to mention another of Alisabeth's accomplishments: She found a rose! It was in one of those sections of weeds that I had been ignoring. Suddenly there was a beautiful pink flower right in the middle. She plucked it, as usually, and brought it to me and suddenly I realized I have not one but two rose bushes hidden over there. So I spent about two hours digging them out. It probably wouldn't have taken so long if we hadn't had a spider incident earlier in the day and the literally dozens of spiders in that patch didn't make me a little nervous.

Me: Work is going well. Our only other experienced auditor quit and finishes up his two weeks on Friday. That leaves the two partners with Nick and I who don't really have a ton of understanding/experience. It's going to be fun as we move into the heavy part of audit season. Galusha has been attempting to hire one or two experienced auditors, however everyone with experience who applied wasn't actually interested in the job, they were just fishing. Instead we'll have another unexperienced person starting Monday. This is going to be fun. On the plus side I've received an excessive amount of praise at work in the last month or so. :)
Personally I finished my book, waited months for people to get back to me on edits, they never did, so I chose two new friends (well a friend and my mother) and they finally got enough back to me for me to finish up the first 10,000 words which is the required amount to send in a manuscript to a publisher. So off it went yesterday. Now I'll wait six months to see if they even notice it.
I've already got the second book mostly written (just trying to figure out the best spot to end it in) and the third (and final) book started with a pretty good understanding of where it's going. It's way exciting. . . wouldn't it be nice if we got enough money to finally start the college fund for Bitsy?!?!?

And finally our home: It is doing well. It seems to be settling well and has definitely helped us out. The plants are growing and so are the insects.

Seen below are all the cool things that are growing right now.

Butternut Squash - planted by Alisabeth.
There were twice as many starts in this
spot, but I cut them down. . .

Carrots. . . yes they need to be thinned
No I can't bring myself to do it.

Peas. . .only one blossom so far.

Zucchini. . . One little orange blossom
just starting. . . so exciting.

Our apple tree. . . this is after thinning. . . jeeze!

Relaxing

2011-06-04T20:13:00.001-07:00

This week has been crazy! We moved in last week, got everything mostly unpacked. Memorial Day we finished all of the boxes we could (all that's left now are books because we have no shelves to put them on yet :))

We also dropped a heap of money on getting a washing machine (open box model that was nearly $250 off the original price) a new lawn mower (we looked for used, but I guess it was a bad weekend, there wasn't really anything on craigslist), and a new playset for Alisabeth thanks to a grant from the Nana Foundation. (It took Jason and Robyn nearly seven hours to get it all put together, but it's awesome!)

We also used some of the gift card money that the previous owners left for us as part of the closing to purchase the needed supplies for the things the inspector pointed out. So our roof is back in order and all the seams are sealed. Our staircase is fire resistant, out chimney is nearly CO2 proof (complete with an alarm just in case), and our rain gutters now empty a bit farther from the house. I think there were a few other items but that's all I can remember.
Jason also got a key hook for next to the door so I can stop losing mine and I picked up a curtain rod large enough for our nine and a half foot window in the living room. We are not resistant to outside observation at night! (Of course I never go upstairs in the evenings, so that was mostly for Robyn's sake, but it was nice to get the curtains up. We need to get a few more panels for such a large window.
It's amazing how many things there are to do!
We also spent a few hours weeding in back and front and really didn't make a dent, but at least the tulips can breathe again.

We also re-started our garden . . . we had everything ready to go, but it just grew too fast and ended up killing itself before we could get moved into the house so we threw away our beautiful pea and tomato plants and started over. We added carrots, lettuce, and squash. Oh how I love watching food grow.

Jason is also doing amazingly in his classes. He is realizing more and more that we are alike in our nerd-dom. The other day he was creating a webpage and learned a better technique for creating his layout and had a hard time not doing that because he needed to finish his assignments. I'm glad to see him enjoying his classes so much.

Alisabeth is resigning herself, slowly but surely, to preschool. She goes back and forth on whether or not she likes Miss Brittany. The days she comes home with her hair done are generally days where she likes her :)
She is also settling in well to the new house. She loves her swing set and she is enjoying having a room and a separate play area. Yesterday I brought home color samples and she picked out the one she wants for her room. The color is Lantana purple. I'm pretty okay with that.
I also plan on painting a chalk-board wall for her. I priced it out yesterday, one can covers about 45"x60" (double layer) and only costs $10. I think that's pretty do-able. It also says that it can be washed with soap and water, so I'm thinking she's going to love having an entire wall to draw on.

Robyn is doing pretty well too, she had quite a few successes in the last few days with getting quick job interviews and she has a lot of hope that she'll have a job soon. This weekend she went back down to Flagstaff to pick up her car so she'll have everything she needs to get herself up and going soon. We're super excited for her. I know she's been feeling a little homesick so I'm hoping the additional freedom will help her feel like this is really home.
Also this week she was driving around looking for the temple and she stopped to ask for directions from a couple. The man was holding a very young kitten in his arms and said that they had almost run it over, would she like to keep it. Lucky her it was a black cat, so she brought it home to make sure it was okay to keep it, Jason gave it a bath to try to clear up his alergy issues and we now have three cat's living in our home. Robyn's kitten is much more of a hunter than either of our boys. Already (my guess is he's about five weeks) he's pouncing and chasing. He's doing well and eating up a storm. Robyn started him on milk and quickly realized that he had teeth already and therefore could handle soft kitten food. Today (about a week later) we got him kitten solid food and he tackled that with a vengeance.
The first couple of days were touch and go with the bigger boys. Midnight doesn't seem to care much since he's gone through this process before, but Bageera is feeling a bit of strain and often is found either eating the kittens food or pinning the poor thing to the ground. Slowly he's getting better as he realizes that the kitten is not a threat to him.

As for me life is going well. Work is starting to ramp up and I received pretty high commendations for my efforts thus far. On Thursday they fired another girl from our office who had started about six months before I came on. I was a bit nervous about that, but the office manager and one of the other partners commented several times that they are more than pleased with my progress and glad to have me. Now I just have to keep it up :)
Of course this leaves us with two partners (who shouldn't really be doing much of the work anyway), one in-charge (a manager level associate accountant), and two of us grunts. That means I will probably be doing quite a lot within the next several months.
I feel nervous and confident at the same time. I taught myself a little about one of the sampling programs that we use because only one other person in the entire office knows how to use it and he was gone on vacation. I also used that program to pull out a couple of samples and then used that for the preliminary work on our next audit for the school districts.
That was an interesting experience!
The first one was at a middle school. Judy, the partner for the audit, came with me and I did the tests while she did the interview portion. Then the next day we were scheduled to go and do the same thing at an elementary. This time Judy met me at the school, introduced me to the principal and the bookkeeper and then said "I have to go, she'll do everything and if I need more information I'll give you a call" and then she walked out.
It was fascinating! I was there, alone, doing a test I had done once before, unsure of how to deal with issues like the fact that they didn't have receipts and documentation for a lot of it like they should have, and trying to get a feel for their procedures at the same time. All the while they were shaking in their boots worried because they're brand new at their jobs, received no training, and were worried that this was going to reflect badly on them because of their missing information.
In the end I just tried to be confident and positive. I tried to get them to laugh and lighten the situation and I told them a few suggestions for improving their controls (checks and balances) so that in case of something happening their butts would be covered. In the end I think they walked away relieved that I was gone, but hopefully also with a better understanding of how to protect themselves from accusations and mistakes.
I'm learning a ton every day. I'm working hard and so far it seems to be paying off. I just hope they hire at least one other person with experience soon so I don't get dumped into things that are above my head. (Brandon, the in-charge, says I'm doing fine, but that's only because I'm really good at bluffing my way through).

Outside of work I'm also doing well. I've got about ten people editing my first book (none of which have gotten back to me. . . hint hint). And I'm about 3/4 of the way through the second book. I did have a minor setback in that I saved over BOTH copies of what I had started on the third book, but que sera sera. That will teach me to be more careful about saving things when it's three o'clock in the morning.

Life is going well for us all right now. Things are progressing, we're excited. Where's a piece of wood when you need to knock?

Change

2011-05-15T15:19:00.000-07:00

Change 1 - we purchased a home. We close on it this coming weekend (the 20th or 23rd, we're still working on that part). We chose the first house depicted in the last post for several reasons. As we looked at them this was the only one (for me) that hit every nail on the head. Jason hesitated because it only had a single car garage, but that turned out to be a moot point anyway because the springs and door have been completely dismantled. If we want it to work it's going to take a bit of effort.
The second reason was because we received a few calls the week of the decision that let us know there was a possibility of extended visits from friends and family. As I stared at the two three bedroom homes I realized there just wasn't enough room in them in case of such visits. So we crossed those two off the list. Then we met with our realtor for a round of visits to the finalists and we were told that the other house had sold the day before. Thus we were left with one option anyway, which suits me fine because I hate decisions.
We've been back to visit the house several times and stayed for the entire inspection. That was the cinching factor for me. Our inspector was not only knowledgeable but also very funny. He walked us through and over every portion of the home pointing out everything from safety issues, which were all minor and easily fixable, to smart upgrades. He even knew which serial numbers had been recalled on dishwashers, furnaces and in-wall heaters. He recognized from the external characteristics that an in-wall heater was a type which had been recalled many years ago and took the time to open it up to verify that.
I was amazed and delighted by him.
All in all we could probably fix EVERYTHING on his report for less than a grand not including the garage.
We're super excited.
We didn't get any sort of deal off the asking price, but it was already below market for the area, and by adding a $1200 window to one of the basement rooms we could officially move it up to 5 full bedrooms. Can I just say one more time that I'm super excited?
The only hold-up has been the housing class we are taking. It's not required for our loan, but there's a special program out through the IRS that allows a refundable credit for mortgage interest on our taxes and they do require the class so we've put off the closing until after that is over (which is next weekend.)

Other than that life is grand. I attended a CPE training through our firm this Monday through Tuesday and learned a great deal about the overall process which I think will help me a lot. I also convinced the partners to send me to another level 2 training in July which should help me even more.

The other item of interest is that I finished the re-write of my first novel and am hoping to get editing help soon so that I can submit it for publishing through Tor books (one of the only science fiction publishers that will accept author submissions). It will be about six months before I hear anything so don't bother asking, but it's been a dream of mine for most of my life so it's neat to be getting closer.

Jason is amazing me daily. He has excelled in his classes and his excitement remains, despite the large demand on his time from school and family. Once again I'm glad we made the decision for me to work so that he could focus as much as possible on his schooling.
He had a test to take the other day and I told him he wouldn't be allowed home unless he scored a B or better. He called about forty-five minutes later and asked if he was allowed in with an upside down V. :)

Alisabeth is doing a little better too, she is still struggling to grasp the new schedule, which is about to be thrown into chaos again as we move, but she's almost there. Mommy works Monday through Friday, Bitsy goes to preschool Tuesday through Thursday and everyone is home on Saturday and Sunday.

We also have a new addition to our family. Robyn, Jason's older sister, drove up to be with us for as long as we can convince her to stay. With a lot of chaos and trial she made it here and we're glad to have her. Transition is always fun for everyone but we're excited to get into our new place where she will have an entire wing to herself. With two bathrooms and enough bedrooms to house everyone comfortably we're hoping this will be perfect.

There's really not a whole lot more, but I think we have enough excitement. Hope you're enjoying your own ride as much as we are.

Wow, it's been 18 days!

2011-04-27T20:05:00.000-07:00

So wow, life is flying. Tax season ended in a rush, as it always seems to and then I expected a bored lull. Instead one of my co-workers accepted a job offer and so a lot of his workload was shifted to me. It's fun. . . and it's not. I have a general idea of what' necessary, but one of the biggest problems that we accountants have is leaving a trail someone else can follow. I find, as I go through files, that the person before me has often done it for several years in a row and knows exactly what needs to be done, so there aren't as many notes and helpful hints as I would like. It usually takes me several hours to figure out what a specific spreadsheet was for and where the numbers came from. The worst is when I come to a piece of information that wasn't there last year. I have to search back through the past records and hope I can find something similar, (even when I have a pretty strong hunch of how it should be taken care of) because many times my hunches are incorrect and I end up getting reamed by my boss.All in all it's been enjoyable. I'm learning.I also have the joy of giving a "training" session on Monday morning. Yes that's right, it's my turn in the

rotation, but as the most junior member of the office I am daunted by the task. What could apply to an office of half audit, half tax that they don't already know, which I can research enough in three days? This should be interesting.

Jason is doing well too. He's started his classes, and despite being a little overwhelmed with the amount of homework that was immediately and continuously assigned he is staying strong and pushing through. He has already found the value of some of the assignments which, at first, seemed worthless. He's enjoying his networking class the most right now, but his computer fundamentals class is also interesting enough that

he'll spend an hour or so explaining the conversion between Hexidecimal and Binary and Decimal systems. :)

The only other minorly exciting thing is that we're house shopping :) We've been at it since shortly after the last post, which doesn't seem like a lot of time now that I count the days. In that time we have looked at about 250 houses through various websites, have physically driven by or entered over 52 homes, and have revisited 1. We have budgeted, re-budgeted, and stared at it with disbelief. I have sent and received more than 200 emails from various banks and from our real estate agent. We have also spent about 50 hoursAlisabeth is struggling with the changes. She's been a lot more whiny this week and pretty much every 35 minute trip from home to preschool is filled with "I don't wanna go to preschool." Once we get there she screams and cries and won't let go of me and the teacher eventually steps in and pries her off of me and then holds her until I drive away. I am assured that as soon as I am out of sight she is fine and happy. I believe it too, because this is what she used to do when we would leave her with a babysitter, but it doesn't make it any easier. It's amazing how well kids can pull at your heartstrings. The preschool is fully equipped with tons of different rooms, playgrounds, toys and fun. They have a great structure and she seems to be really liking her teacher, but I can tell it's hard on her because as soon as she sees me she runs into my arms. Luckily it's only for the three days a week that Jason has class/study.

reviewing, researching, and filling out random paperwork. It's been an eye opening process.

Finally we have exhausted the possibilities within our comfort zone (payment wise) and we've narrowed the search down to 4 homes.

All of them have their good and their bad, but as many of our readers know, that's what makes this decision so important. :)

If you want to look up the details you can always look them up on www.snakerivermls.com using the MLS numbers below.

15th - 1959

MLS 173352

Bed/Bath: 5/1.75

Price: 115K

Sq Ft: 1914

Good: Totally updated, huge backyard, great location

Bad: Only one car garage

Ronglyn - 1955

MLS 170334

Bed/Bath: 4/2.5

Price: 110K

Sq Ft: 2848

Good: Nice backyard, huge garage, good location, custom created in it's day, so the quality is good.

Bad: Never upgraded again.

Ririe - 1917 (with additions later)

MLS 171344

Bed/Bath: 3/2

Price: 95K

Sq Ft: 1284

Good: HUGE backyard, Everything appeared in good repair.

Bad: no garage, long distance from work. Passthrough bedroom.

Lincoln - 1920

MLS 173033

Bed/Bath: 3/1

Price: 90K

Sq Ft: 1957

Good: Large Yards, HUGE garage, nice feel inside.

Bad: Unattached garage, needs work on outside, small bedrooms, no bath upstairs.

Have a favorite?

We're going to visit all of them the same day and see what we see. We can't decide whether the price difference will make up for the additional work that would need(could be) done to the older two homes. Any way we work it we're in a place that will probably do us well for the next phase of our lives.

That's this week's excitement. What have you been up to?

Fast

2011-04-09T22:10:00.000-07:00

I asked Jason, as I prepared to update this, what we had done this week. . . I really can't remember it went by so fast.
Tax season is coming to an end. I'm not really all that stressed, so that's not as big of a deal to me as it usually is.
Mixed in with that is the beginning of Jason's first semester as a CIT student. He's got statistics, 2 computer classes and something else. He's excited. Alisabeth too will be shifting focus as she starts her first formal pre-school. . . speaking of, I need to get her shot records over there!

Anyway, we're all excited for the upcoming changes.

I do remember one exciting thing this week. I got to spend a total of nearly 3 hours on the phone with the IRS this week and last. I did a friend's taxes and the IRS came back saying they had changed the refund by almost 3K not in my friend's favor. Needless to say I was outraged! As I got to looking at it and trying to figure out what had happened (because of course they didn't send out the response letter until almost 2 weeks later) I just couldn't figure it out. I tried everything from taking off a kid to reducing income. Nothing could even come close to matching the changes.
So I put it aside and we waited to see what their reasons were. When it came I was even more frustrated and irritated. It's no wonder people have such a hard time with taxes. The description of the "possible" reasons for the changes were completely generic and had absolutely nothing to do with my friend's situation (especially due to the fact that they mentioned Social Security received and my friends are in their 20's).
Anyway I got on the phone with them and after almost 2 painful hours and one hang up I was able to figure out exactly what numbers had changed and by how much. Then the lady "accidentally" hung up on me.
A few days later I finally had the time to call again, this time I used the practitioner's hotline just for us tax folks and my wait time went from 45 minutes to 5 minutes. In no time I was talking to a guy and working on the problem. I think it would have taken a lot less than the 1.5 hrs it did had the gentleman in question ever actually done taxes, but after walking him through the same calculation three times we finally got it figured out. (Yes I had to walk him through his own software after he incorrectly calculated the numbers several times in a row).
And finally in the end he could see exactly what I could see and made the corrections on their side so that my friends will get the rest of their refund.
It was a painful process, but also kind of interesting.
I don't exactly know what flagged the return in the first place, but it was strange indeed. All three credits that my friends qualified for were based on "earned" income which is wages and self-employment and military pay and all of those things, yet for two of the three credits the earned income was changed to be greater than I had claimed and for the last credit it was recalculated to be zero.
For those of you who didn't understand a word of that, I'm sorry, but it was the most fascinatingly frustrating event of the week so I had to share it.

Jason on the other hand hasn't dealt with anything super complicated this week. He broke his new RC car for the fiftieth time and this time it won't drive right so he actually has to wait for the replacement parts he ordered. oooooh, poor boy.

Alisabeth has had a great week too. She's started on her numbers in "school" with Jason and they're on 2. She's really slopping on writing her twos and has to constantly be reminded to slow down, however, when she takes the time her penmanship is very nice. She also does really well at tracing. Nana got her a new tracing book to write in (with a magic marker). She's loving it. The book also includes the spelled out version of the number, so she now knows that two is spelled t w o. She loves to learn. I am constantly amazed by her.
She's also developed a fear this week. We're not exactly sure where it came from. There wasn't a new movie or a change of any kind that we know of, but several times this last week she's woken up calling for me and with genuine fear she thinks she's heard a noise. One time at least I'm fairly sure it was the cat jumping down off her bed. The other time it was right after I had moved a box of toys away from the door where I had tripped on them and I think they may have shifted after I left.
Anyway we say a prayer and talk about how Heavenly Father will keep us safe and take away the fear and then we turned on the light and looked around. She doesn't have a problem after that. Although one night she had elected to sleep on the bottom bunk and after hearing the sound she had decided to move up to the top. Whatever it is, at least she doesn't keep freaking out. This house makes a lot of wierd noises, so I'm sure that doesn't help either. :)

Oh, and we started our garden this week. We picked out peas, cilantro, lettuce, tomatoes and chives? I think that's what it was. Anyway, they're growing well. The tomatoes aren't really interseted in being alive, but the peas are hilariously vigorous. Alisabeth dropped one in the water between the starter soil containers and it actually grew roots and stuck them into it's two nearest neighbors.
Another one actually poked it's own seed out of the ground in it's haste to grow and is now VERY stunted as it tries to catch up to brothers and sisters over 8 inches tall.
We haven't planted the lettuce yet, because we ran out of pots, but we'll get there. All of this is currently in window boxes so we move them to whichever window is getting actual sun.

Not that we've had any this week. Last week we started to warm up and even had a day or two where we could comfortably wear shorts (about 45-50 for those of you in AZ) :)
Then BAM! It starts to rain and quickly drops the temperature until it is snowing. Friday I drove home through a white-out. Not cold enough to freeze thank goodness, but enough to be annoyingly slushy. That mixed with the constant cloud cover means we've been back down at an average temperature of 34 for the past week. Grrrrrr. Oh wait, I mean Brrrrrrrr.

It keeps going. . . and going. . .

2011-03-27T11:47:00.000-07:00

Winter is back this morning with an additional inch of snow, just after we cleared the last bit it sent our way. . . ah well, I knew spring was too good to be true.
The following are pictures I think I haven't posted before. If they're re-runs. . . sry.

I wasn't sure if I had included this one, or a similar one before. These are my children's toys. The big one is for the big boy, the little one is for the tiny thing.

Princess dress, the umbrella she purchased for herself, and snow, nothing could make her happy.
The video I'm including is from an email I received at work a few weeks ago . . . at least it was using mattresses and not cardboard boxes.

This is the video from last week: Puzzle Magic. I took two videos, but this one is the cutest. The first one was five minutes before when she still had about 1/2 the sky left to finish.

So one last thing that my little girl did this week: she helped her daddy move some heavy stuff into the basement storage with no complains so she earned enough allowance this week to purchase the next item on her list, a purse. It's brown with a purple/silver design on the sides. It's way cute, but already too small for the many toys she wants to cram inside. :)

As for Jason, he's having a much better week than the last post. He has regained some of the hearing in his ear, though the doctors said it could be a month before it all comes back. We also got the hospital bill. $800!. I was shocked and asked for an itemized bill. Most of the smaller charges were actually more reasonable than I expected for an ER visit, so I didn't fight the room rental charge which was more than 1/2 the cost. I wanted to ask for a copy of their financial statements for last year to calculate the actual cost of a room for 2 hrs, but I stopped myself.
He also talked with his advisor this week, who is a teacher in his new career field. (I love that the guidance comes from people who actually understand the field and goals). Jason was told that he's on track and doing all the right things. The man also knew of the Master's program that Jason is considering and mentioned another within the same school that is also gov't funded. In exchange for 2 years after graduation they pay for all schooling (Master's program) and give a living allowance. So Jason now has a few options to consider. He's excited.
Lastly for him we finally got to an eye doctor now that we're on a vision plan through my work.
He wanted contacts, so now he has to wait for them to order them (because his prescription is right in the middle of the two they stock). I'm excited that we're finally getting his broken glasses replaced. Tape just isn't meant to hold glasses long-term :)

As for me this week was great. Every time I ran out of work I was given a project which required thought and research so I've been enjoying it.
I feel bad for the intern though. He was hired for audit, but they got the audits done in half the normal time this year, so he's been doing tax. Every time he makes a comment to me I can't help but laugh.
"I don't understand check-tapes! I didn't even include this number and it still balances!"
"Um, it should be on there. . . unless there is an overall loss and then it wouldn't be deductible."
"Oh, well there was a loss."
"Well, there ya go, but it should still be on your checktape and then backed off at the bottom as a carry-over to next year."
"oh."
or
"It's so frustrating. The last few returns they've given me I can't finish! I don't understand why they're giving them to me when I can't finish them!"
"Well, actually, that's one of the major reasons for us. As we enter and list what items we're missing it saves the reviewer time and effort and costs the client less in the end. Most clients don't give all their information the first time around."
"Oh"
Listening to him parrot things I said in my first few years I just have to give a shout out to my old boss who patiently explained all of this to me and taught me the process of a normal firm. That's one thing my company doesn't spend very much time doing. They give two days of training and then whatever feedback they deign to mention, but there's so much they don't say or just fix on their own because it's faster. Steve was always very nit-picky and would send things back for minor changes, or would print off the corrections and write notes and put them on my desk. At the time I found it bothersome, but I now understand and am grateful for it.

Amazing

2011-03-08T08:17:00.000-08:00

So first I have to gush over my daughter. This week she's done some amazing things.
1) Fully potty trained at night. There was a bit of a fuss over the fact that she can't have a glass of milk at night anymore, or a cup of water, but she actually woke up yesterday and went potty at 4:30 am and then went back to bed.
2)We couldn't find any "challenging" puzzles in her age group - because every one we bought for her she can do in ten minutes flat, so we went to the next age group up . . . 6+
Well we assumed she wouldn't be able to do them, one they were 100,300,500 pieces and two they were a lot smaller than she is used to. Well we were wrong. The day we brought it home she had already done one of the 100 piece ones, the next day she did another one and the third day she started on a 300 piece. Granted she doesn't like to do these ones alone, but all we have to do is sit there and hand her pieces or just talk to her. The second puzzle she did was 1/2 done before I even started helping. (she found all the unicorn pieces and the sky).

She's amazing. The other thing she did which made me all squishy inside was on Sunday at church Jason was using her doodle board to write out words and she was guessing as usual, but then he wrote Mom and she said "mmmmm . . . mom!"
It was cool.

This last week was also my birthday week and it was fabulous. I worked like normal and then on Saturday I stayed home and Jason and alisabeth gave me my presents early. I got two books in a series I've been reading and an Apple/Peeler/Corer/Slicer which I've wanted for a long time. Jason and Alisabeth had a blast with that one while I read :)

Sunday (the actual day) I was invited to dinner by a co-worker and he made us enchiladas and amazing chips and dip and we had a great time. I also learned how and made my first "real" cake with a fondant top and cut out fondant letters/shapes to decorate it with. It was pretty basic, but I was pleased with the results. So we had that after dinner.
They also have a 3 year old son, so Alisabeth and Aiden had a good time playing until they both got tired.
The night ended with a band as we had to be rocked out of the snow because Jason parked on slush which froze back up around the tires. It was great.

Then Monday at work I got a delivery of flowers from my mother and they sat proudly on my desk where everyone in the office could jealously admire them :)
I also got a package in the mail with a new I-pod from my mother and a few computer games.
All in all it was a great week for me.

Jason the other hand has had a pretty lousy one. Besides finding out that we had missed the last gas bill from the Tucson house, and a medical bill for Alisabeth, and a bunch of other financial issues he was sick most of the week. That culminated in an intense ear ache which was bad enough on Sunday that he had a hard time enjoying himself at my party. This morning at about 4:30 he woke me up and we decided that he should go to the ER. The doctor described it "as if a bomb had gone off in his ear."
He was given a shot in the butt of antibiotics, some oral antibiotics, ear drops and off-brand vicodin for the pain.
On top of that we had to get the cats on antibiotics because whatever Baggera brought with him when we adopted him still hasn't gone away so most of our household is currently on drugs. It's great.

I have a few videos and pictures to post, but I need the camera, so that will come later.

This week in reruns.

2011-02-23T22:20:00.000-08:00

Can I just say I love doing taxes. I was given the opportunity to help a friend and man it gave me such a sugar high that I can't sleep right now, so you benefit!

I love taxes, but I've found something that tops it...
I love audits.

I am in the middle of my first audit ever. . . mind you I didn't take the audit class in college because I heard they didn't teach you anything except how to read audit reports and I wanted an education in how to be an accountant. . . Poor Spencer, my trainer, and the lead on the project, is teaching me the ropes, but I think I'm catching on. (It helps that unlike tax I'm not expected to know anything, so the phrase I recently coined when Spencer comes to talk to me is "start at stupid and go from there.").
We get up every morning in order to drive the 1 hour to Blackfoot where we spend 11 hours pouring over, through, and around the books of a company to make sure they're documenting, billing and recording correctly. It is THE PERFECT job for someone who just really needs to be beyond type A. In life I spend hours creating excel spreadsheets which give me statistical and analytical data which I use in a variety of ways. At work I now play with spreadsheets which were specifically created the same way. I pour through files and data logs, generate "random" samples of work-types and categories and then I put it all together in an understandable and cohesive package so that anyone could read and understand whether or not the company is doing what it should be. How perfect is this job for me??
The down side? I still have to deal with people who don't truly have a clue what they're doing, but this was a great first experience. This company has no clue, but they're generally happy to listen to us explain it and once they understand they most often agree. I did have the controller tell me there was no way we were getting what we wanted in one situation, but it turned out to be a moot point because the million dollars worth of expenses had been put into a different category than usual and really weren't an issue after all.
As for Jason and Alisabeth they are thriving as well. She's happy as a lark every day and Jason has got a routine that keeps them both alive and smiling. He's been amazingly supportive of my 12 hour days and has done everything and more to ease my stress levels while I'm at home. Plus he listens to my insanely long stories about what I did at work.
Lastly, Jason and Alisabeth met me in IF yesterday so that Alisabeth could use her hard-earned allowance to purchase her princess dress.
I was terribly worried because unlike Tucson we don't have a "Disney" store here. I thought about going to Walmart and getting one of their dress up outfits, but I knew what she was looking for and that wasn't it, so we headed to the mall.
Inside we headed straight for the department stores (with a few detours to look at the play areas and toys).
She went straight in and Jason led her over to the toddler section where the dresses were on sale and within her price range. I looked in the children's dresses and gasped in surprise. There was a whole section devoted to "Cinderella" brand dresses and they were also the requested color. So after trying on a size 4T dress which fit snugly I convinced the complaining and not understanding child to come and look at the bigger-bigger dresses. Finally she agreed with a sulk to try on this one:

It was also on sale. . .
I've decided not to comment on parents who spoil their children for a while.
She's happy as a lark, as seen in the fact that she posed for about 20 minutes in it. I think we're going to bring them both to Boise with us this weekend and let the girls dress up and be princesses. I know Alisabeth will love it and I'm pretty sure Paige will too.
So guess what size this dress is. . .
You'll notice the bottom is folded under, but it's only folded about 1.5 inches. . .

Come on, take a guess. . .

Size 7. Yes, my 3 year old daughter fits almost perfectly into a size 7 dress. Yes it's tall, and yes when the bow is tight in the back it gathers slightly, but seriously, this is just wrong. (There were no dresses between the 4T and the 7, so my choice was big or wearable for 6 months or less. . . I chose big.)

I hope your coming week is as awesome as mine was.

So cute it deserved it's own post

2011-02-18T15:11:00.001-08:00

As requested

2011-02-12T21:49:00.000-08:00

I was reminded that I haven't posted a picture of our little angel in a while, so here are a few of the ones Jason has sent me at work.

We had a good week. I'm starting to get back into the swing of life. My co-workers are great and I'm really enjoying it. The other day we went out to lunch and I was in my high heeled boots and worried about the 3 inches of ice. Gallantly, our intern Matt took up a defensive position nearby in case I slipped so that I wouldn't land on my butt. That's just an example of the great people I'm surrounded with. If we're not laughing and joking we're working together perfectly. I love it.
School for Jason is still on hold. Even though they said they would have a decision in 6 weeks it has been 2 months and they still haven't had a chance to even look at his application. He's frustrated, but honestly it's not as though he was going to start any time soon. The earliest is April anyway so we're just trying to be patient. In the meantime he's researching and preparing contacts for several agencies he wants to work for when we get out of school. He's set his sights high and knows he's in for a challenge, but we're confident that he can do it.
We figure if he can start talking to the recruiters when he's done with his first semester that will give him plenty of time to shift class focuses to where the jobs want him to be + it will get his name in the ears of potential employers when the time comes for internships and final employment. We're doing a lot more research this time around and I have a feeling it will pay off in the end.
He's also adjusting well to being a stay-at-home dad. They've gotten in a good routine including an hour of pre-school a day. He makes up a sheet of letters and words and she traces them, then they sound out the words and then go on a treasure hunt around the house for things that start with the day's letter. When she's done she gets a giant star or some other shape on her page to say she's done an excellent job. She loves it.
The other day he made up the sheet while she was eating breakfast then left the room for about 10 minutes. When he came back she had finished breakfast and moved to the other table and was tracing her letters.
We also got to go to a birthday party today. It was at a pizza place with a HUGE play room for the kids. It was the birthday of my co-worker Spencer's newly adopted son. He just turned 3. There were a ton of relatives and friends there to support him and it was great to see. Alisabeth had a blast with the 3 level climbing gym. The arcade was cool too, but she got bored pretty fast with the train that didn't go anywhere. I was glad we were invited to go.
The other thing we got to do this week is Bountiful Baskets again!! We ended up having to drive to Idaho Falls to get one though because all 3 Rexburg sites were filled by the time we signed up Tuesday morning. Guess they go fast. (Don't listen to this next sentence) I wish I were still a stay-at-home mom because I would be totally willing to open up another Rexburg site. If they're filling up that fast I'm sure the demand is high enough for another site.
Anyway, we're excited. Relief Society had a food storage activity and I volunteered to make polk-a-dot soup which is lentils and carrots. It turned out really well and I enjoyed it a lot. They also had a mexican lentil dish that was awesome. It just made me aware again of how much is out there that we're not using. This woman who was teaching worked for a few years to develop a "densely nutritious" meal plan which she calls A Dollar a Day for 30 days. She has literally gone to stores, priced things out and based on nutrition and daily needs has formulated 3 meals a day for under $1. That means our monthly food budget could be $120. The food and recipes have a lot of flavor too, which I was surprised about. She talked about all of the foods on the shopping list and why she chose them and how to store/keep them and life expectancies and all kinds of information. It went so far over time it was laughable, but most of us were ready and willing for me. (I was one of the only ones who brought my child, so for me and the other mothers it was a bit long, but I was still VERY interested to learn what she knew.)
All in all it's been a great start. We're happy in our home, getting used to our roles, preparing for our future and enjoying the present as much as we can.

Tour of the New Townhouse

2011-02-05T21:42:00.000-08:00

We have good neighbors (the one set we've met so far.) They have a 4 year old, so Alisabeth spent about an hour over there today.
We almost lost our cat the first week. He got lost, but the day we got home was the day our neighbor called to let us know he had seen our cat at the front of the complex (about 1/4 mile away).
Come and enjoy the tour.

White

2011-01-19T19:40:00.000-08:00

So, since we won't have a lot of access soon to internet and probably won't get another update opportunity in the next few weeks I figured now would be a good time to put in an update for all who are dying to know.
I survived the trip up to Rexburg!
It was actually wonderful weather. All the prayers made the difference. There was a light dusting of snow on the roads Saturday morning when I left Provo, but beyond that everything was beautiful. I am glad I made the choice to drive during the day. I left Friday morning before the sun was awake. Jason was wonderful and got up with me and made me eggs while I finished the last few details. I drove all the way to some random spot above Phoenix before I realized my GPS was being stupid and hadn't plotted the correct route, but it was impossible to change things at that point, so I drove an extra hour. Then later I sped past a waiting officer and realized that I didn't have proof of insurance. He was kind enough to wave the ticket since I wasn't too far beyond the speed limit, but he did write the $950 ticket for not having insurance. Have no fear, I've already taken care of that :)
Those were the only incidents.
I got to Utah and had Jason call my friend who was going to let me spend the night and about thirty minutes later she called and apologized profusely for forgetting and being out of town, but she had already done all the work to find another mutual friend that I could stay with, so I ended up staying with her and her five roommates for the evening. She even cooked enchiladas for me!
I got up a little later the next day and finished up the four more hours to Rexburg. It was nice. I felt good, like slipping on a cozy sweater (minus the warmth said sweater would have provided). I went to the store first to get the few items I would need for my lunches and then continued to the home of JR and Karen Hayes where I would be staying.
How do I know them? I don't. I know my boss who knows them. Apparently they have provided short-term housing to over 100 people/families in their time. They have built 5 houses over the years and in each one they have almost a full house downstairs where people can stay. I have my own kitchen, bath, bed, living and dining room. There is even a door to the outside, but it faces the back. I don't use anything but the bed and bath, but it's nice to have my own space when I want to escape.
They are extremely nice and so far have fed me 4 of 4 days I've been here. They are retired and serving as missionaries in the area. They host addiction classes through the church for various problems from eating disorders to pornography. Pornography is their main area though and they love to watch the changes in the lives of those who learn to overcome whatever is holding them back. He deals with the men (usually the ones with the problems in this case) and she deals with the wives (also struggling with the effects).
They also serve weekly assignments in the temple, he is a sealer and she works wherever they need her.
On top of that she just had knee surgery and is still recovering. She's walking but it's often painful. I help as much as I can with the household things.

As for work, it's a blast. My first two days were a lot of orientation and training remembering how to do everything, however at the midpoint of the first day Jeff walked in and dropped three giant files on my desk. . .
It took me a lot longer than it probably should have to get the first one done, but there was a lot involved including entering and reconciling the last few months of bank statements, so I didn't feel too bad. Today was nice too, although I ran out of things to do about mid-way through the day and ended up begging work from anyone who had any. Eventually I just moved around the desk/office they had set up for me and called it a day. I started facing the wall and in an office that provides a walk-through to other areas and I ended up facing out so now I can comment on anyone walking through :)
There are a LOT of people I don't recognize. Most of the older staff are familiar, but the younger staff seems transient. Everyone they offered a job to when I worked for them last is gone and in their place are strangers.
Everyone is still friendly and it's still an awesome place to work. I am salary now, which is an interesting change, and I'm still struggling to figure out what to sign up for (insurance/other), but it's all starting to settle. I even got my key today so now I don't have to stand outside in the cold for ten minutes every morning.
Today was also the first morning that it snowed. It's been warm and melting the last few days, but last night it dropped about 3 inches and this morning I remembered what it was to scrape my windows :) I even nicked my knuckle on the ice and it stung for most of the day.
The upcoming week will bring a lot more change. next Wednesday I travel down to Salt Lake to catch a plane to Tucson, then catch a plane to Florida where Alisabeth, my mother, and I will spend a week. After that Alisabeth and I will fly back to Salt Lake and drive the rest of the way with Jason who will have moved into our new house while we were gone. It's going to be exciting.
The one great thing is that Alisabeth doesn't miss me at all. Yesterday Jason handed her the phone and she started saying something like "when you get home. . . " Jason stopped her and said "That's mommy."
Alisabeth went, "huh?"
"Ask her who she is Alisabeth."
"Who are you?"
"I'm your mommy."
With a surprised and disappointed voice she said, "Oh." then immediately handed the phone back to Jason.
She thought I was Nana. Ah well.

Relief

2010-12-21T20:33:00.000-08:00

I think I mentioned that we had found a house in Blackfoot. . .well we got a call this week. Oops, they sold the house. Ahh!! So we started scrambling to find a new place. No one was answering/returning my calls. Ever apartment complex I called was booked up with at least a 6 month waiting list and don't even get me started on the costs! Not one of the apartment complexes included utilities, yet they were all charging over 700!
In a state of stress I began my search in earnest employing all of the resources I know of on the internet (google and craigslist).
In the end I found an apartment . . . agreed to rent it and then happened to trip onto a site which included some renter comments. Usually I don't look at these, but for some reason I did this time and noticed it was VERY negative. Then I read the others and found another site with comments. There were about 16 total comments and of those 1 was positive and it was very short. So I backed off of that one and started the search again.
I ended up finding a few homes for rent in Rexburg, all of them higher than we wanted to pay, but still within our abilities. Then I started calling the companies. It took me 3 days, emails, phone calls/messages to get in touch with them but I finally did.
I'm still waiting for a return call about a couple questions.
So I searched again and found a townhome, emailed the owner and received a reply within a few minutes. We exchanged a few more questions and answers and finally I think this is the one. . . It's farther from campus than we were anticipating, so I've still got my ear to the other two companies just in case, but it's the best option so far:
I've included what few pictures we have of it. Don't be jealous.

This week also saw the completion of the last wiring in the house. Everything officially works. We ended up opening up an entire wall (a small one) because there were more studs than drywall and we couldn't figure out where all the wires went, but it's done and we'll worry about repairing it next week after we move everything out.
Also interesting to note that we're staying the night at my mother's house tonight because when we got home this afternoon we no longer had water. . . yes that's right, no water. Why? Well, after about 10 calls to the landlord he finally called back and . . .oh oops. . .forgot to pay the water bill last month because he went on vacation last week when it was due. Seriously? What kind of landlord are you?!?!

Anyway, on to a happier subject: We got our new car :)
My mom got the final okay for the closing on her new house, and since it is out on 2 miles of unpaved road everyone involved felt it would be wise to get a more durable car with higher clearance and 4 wheel drive. So she bought a new subaru. This meant they had an extra car. . . oh what to do with it?
So, we're the proud owners of a new Honda Accord LX. It's pretty.

Also Jason has been sick as a dog for the past week. His latest is the flu. Stay away my love, stay away. He and Alisabeth match each other well. No new work stories because he literally drags himself through the day or comes home early due to sickness.
We did have a nice yard sale this last weekend. We sold about 1/2 of our earthly possessions and a good chunk of my mother's as well. I was actually quite surprised about how few people there were. Most of them didn't speak any English and had license plates from Sonora. They were worried about how much tax they would have to pay crossing back over the border with their loot. One lady actually took our table completely apart so that she could bury it on the bottom of her other items so they wouldn't see it.
I just nodded, tried my best to not let them bargain me to death and looked away as they stashed it away.

In the end we took most of the remaining clothes and books and housewares to Goodwill. I could have tried to sell again next weekend, but no one was interested in the clothes and most of the larger items were gone. I did keep a few of the things I felt had actual worth to try to sell them on E-bay instead of yard selling. We made enough for gas on the moving truck all the way up, now we just have to see if the last few items can get us gas money for the car :)

We also had our first Christmas. It was at the Liddeke's house and it was a blast. All of the little grandkids went first and since they're all girls there were a massive amount of little beautiful dolls. I was a little nervous because Alisabeth was at attention when she realized that all the little girls were getting dolls. After about the third one she kept saying "my turn!"
So when she got a different box I feared for her reaction, but Sonja picked perfectly. When she opened her new trainset she was more than thrilled. She was immediately enthralled.
The adults had a gift exchange once the younger ones were done and I ended up with a really cute candle holder. Jason got coffee mug with some Vanilla flavored coffee. He gave the coffee to the highest bidder and planned his hot chocolate revenge.
After we had enjoyed the gifts and family for a while we had to rush across town for a "Surprise" party for Holly. We had balogna sandwiches and chips for dinner and then a great cake made by Jason's younger sister. The gifts were really nice, my favorite being the little figurines her youngest girls got for her. It was a nice night which culminated in my daughter throwing a coughing fit and making herself sick, so after locking her in her seat I got her back out and bathed her while Jason cleaned the seat and then we headed home. (She was gone before we got half-way there).

It was quite an eventful week! I'm excited for this one which promises just as much fun. Christmas Eve will start at the Liddeke's Mexican Christmas dinner followed by an overnighter at Jason's parent's house. Then gifts in the morning followed by more gifts at Nana's house and Christmas dinner. Whew! See you on the other side.

"We already had those yesterday"

2010-12-12T17:42:00.000-08:00

Our little three year old is speaking up a storm. Luckily most of it still doesn't make any sense. She's at the stage of contradicting everything you say regardless of the truth or how she really feels. She's also into the stage of screaming at us when we don't do what she wants. It's got to be the hardest thing I've faced thus far. Then today, after screaming at me, and hearing my serious threats of having to go to bed at 5:30pm she sat back in her seat, started to eat her "I don't like it" dinner and after a few minutes whimpered out "Sorry I yelled at you mommy."
At church today we sat and played during the whole Christmas program (to keep her quiet, really) and she said "I love you mommy." These moments help me to realize that we really are getting through despite appearances and gives me hope to keep going.
Below is my sweet girl after the street fair. It's not as good as what they did at Sea World, but it cost about 1/3 of the price, so what can I say, it's good enough. She was delighted to be a cute kitty.

This week also marked my immensely amazing success with the bathroom light. I think I mentioned that in the last blog, well, I being the amazing genius that I am (and humble too) figured out that we had already torn open the wall by the light fixture, so I just connected it at that point instead of over by the switch, this way we had the return we needed.
Here's praying that the other lights work similarly (with easily traced returns). . . that's tomorrow's project.

Countdown to the yardsale. We're doing it on Saturday. We are going to underprice everything so that it sells, and sells fast. The goal is no longer to get as much money as possible for the trip. Heavenly Father provided that for us.
Jason's truck died on the way home on Thursday. The clutch burned out. He made it all the way to the exit next to ours, so i came and "bumped" him all the way home.
I hate towing cars, and neither of us wanted to wait hours for the tow truck so I just started nosing him home with my car. After a second we got going fast enough so that he could go up the hill on his own (thank goodness). (Did I mention the car was stuck in 5th gear).
After the hill I bumped him through the two left turns and we were home free. It was nice. After that we went to the mall and Alisabeth decided that she's going to save up for one of the official Disney Princess Cinderella dresses ($60). We told her it would be a long time and that she needed to fill her piggy bank all the way to the top for it. She has a good start after helping me clean out daddy's truck to get it ready to be hauled away. (We were going to give it Jason's parents, but now that it's broken it's more effort than it's worth.). There was a bunch of change in the glove compartment and she got all of it for her efforts.
I'm trying to think of what else we did this week. Oh yeah, Jason bought my Christmas gift and I accidentally found out because I was reconciling the bank account that day and suddenly a large transaction appeared and I went to research what paypal thought they were doing charging my account. . . oops. Luckily for me he doesn't check the bank accounts so he wouldn't have any clue what I got for him. *evil grin*

Jason had a great experience on Saturday. About midway through the day the other adviser was too sick and had to leave. So Jason was alone for the rest of the night, no big deal except that a customer came to get their car at about 4. It was the other adviser's customer, so Jason started to try to find it. He found it, half done in a technician's bay. That technician was gone, for no apparent reason, so Jason began searching for another technician to finish the job. The other tech was gone too. So Jason is alone in the building with a used car technician who didn't want to do anything (including his own job), and a customer. The customer was very understanding, but it was fun for him.
I told him he should just have finished it himself, but he told me it was a wiring job and there were wires everywhere. He didn't want to get involved in the middle.
He was also told this last week that he's not allowed to leave because he'll be too hard to replace. When he told me this over instant messenger I asked if that meant they were going to double his salary and give him benefits. He just laughed.

My other success this week was getting most of the house packed up. I broke down and bought a few boxes from U-haul. Every time I went to find someone with free boxes they were either really small or they canceled on me last minute and I was just getting tired of it, so I figured I'd go with them. I spent $20 and we'll probably be able to return many of them (they have a guaranteed buy-back) so we won't have lost anything.
Our other money success was our landlord granting us a refund of the deposit even though we're breaking our contract early. I had Jason talk to him. He traded us December rent and all of the remaining supplies for our deposit which was weighted on his end, but I'm okay with that. At least we're getting out with enough to pay our first month in the new place in Idaho.
We set the date for the 5th to load the truck. We'll head up to Utah and stay with friends that night and the next and be up in Blackfoot on the 7th to get our keys from our new landlord.
Ah the joys of moving.

Success

2010-12-06T21:26:00.000-08:00

Finally! Finally finally finally.
Today (Jason's day off and the day that I get nothing done around the house. . . ever) we finished the last circuit. . . Do they all work. . .well, sort of.
Why? Ha, it's funny you should ask. See the guy why built this place had never heard of logic or planning. Apparently to him it seemed like a good idea to run single wires to every light switch instead of running a complete set of wires.
The effect of this decision is that we can't find the return wires for any of the lights.
Possible solutions include ripping up all of the ceilings, or running wires along the outside which will look absolutely atrocious, or praying with every ounce of faith that we possess and hoping that some of the exposed wires we found (but didn't know where they went to) turn out to contain return paths for the lights.
Any better ideas would be welcome.
We now have three working lights not including any of the bedrooms or the bathroom. Ah I love life.

Also this week on The Flanneries:
Alisabeth started earning money this week by doing chores and helping mommy around the house. Why? She saw an umbrella and simply had to have it. She already understands the concept of buying things and usually tries to hand things to any uniformed person and then turn to me and say "I wanna buy that." So we took it a step further and told her she would be able to buy it herself if she earned money. We explained how she could do that and then we made a big deal of putting whatever change we could find into a little piggy bank (already 1/3 full) and marking a spot about half an inch above the money already in there. Toward the end I started stuffing bills in there because they take more room.
It took her two weeks to get to the line but as soon as she got there she got such a giddy look of excited anticipation on her face that I could do nothing but smile and love her to pieces.
I didn't get to go with her to pick it out, but Jason said she was quite decisive. She chose a purple parasol. It's very cute and so far it's done everything except sleep with her. . . if only we had some rain. :)

We also took a trip up to Phoenix on Wednesday to see the lights at the temple. Every year they set up a huge light display which contains most of the scenes from Luke about the Savior's birth. There are three giant camels and wise men on the front lawn, sheppards in the fields on one section of grass. An ancient prophet writing about His birth and a bunch of other scenes. It was very cool.
Alisabeth totally understands that we're celebrating Jesus's birthday this month. She's amazing.
Tonight's Family Home Evening lesson was about his second coming (I modified my sunday school lesson to fit since we didn't have time to do anything but circuits today). She was actually engaged the whole time. We talked about how she is sad when daddy is at work, but excited when he comes home. This is what it will be like when Jesus comes back. We will be excited because He will tell us that He loves us. She even parroted it back at the end. "I will be sad because Jesus is at work, but when he comes home we will be happy because he says he loves us!"

In my life there's not much new, I've packed up all the books, and all my sewing stuff. The only thing I have left to do is a ribbon on a gift for a second cousin-in-law, and then that will be packed away too. I even packed my motivator movies by accident. All I have left are Disney. . .
The one cool thing is my story, but even that is sort of pushed into the background by everything else we have going on. I have to really be able to concentrate to write well, otherwise it's disjointed and wrong.
I did, however, somehow manage to get Best Buy employees into a lot of trouble. I guess they've changed store policy since I worked there. Saving boxes for people is not longer allowed. I got two loads from them, but when I called back for more I was informed that district had called to tell them they were no longer allowed to give them out due to liability issues. I felt bad. Hope they didn't get into too much trouble. . .
Now I don't know where to get more from though, so it's a dilemma.

Jason hasn't done anything spectacular either this week. He did complete an entire circuit today though while I finished another one. I came around the corner into the bedroom at one point to see two shoes sticking out of the hole in the wall that leads to the crawl space. He's amazing.

Nothing super exciting happening here. Just waiting for Christmas and New Years. We've set the moving date for the 5th of January, though it may shift forward or backward depending on weather as the time draws near. Hopefully that will be plenty of time to finish this house and get through the holidays. . .
We'll also be throwing a surprise party for Jason before we leave, but don't tell him that.
It'll probably be on the 4th or 3rd before we leave, and it will probably be in an undisclosed location that I haven't set yet.
For more information you'll have to wait because I don't have any. Although brownies instead of cake does sound better.

Why does metal expand?

2010-11-29T21:27:00.000-08:00

We have a lovely heater. It works very well and in such a small place it creates a toasty warm atmosphere despite the leaking doors and windows. Yet I am annoyed at it most mornings. . . There is a trigger switch for the electric lighter on it that ensures that it can not be opened unless the door covering the fan/heater portion is closed. All good and well, yet when the metal door expands and contracts, which it does a lot in this drafty house, it moves just far enough away so that the contact doesn't happen. Thus sometime in the night it stops working and we wake up in the morning freezing and cold. Luckily for me Jason wakes up about an hour before I do . . .so I wake up nice and toasty. :) I love my husband.

Well, my book is coming along nicely. If only I didn't have any responsibilities or cares in the world and could lock myself in a small room for a while it would be a lot better. As it is I've got about 40 pages done. (For a normal sci-fi book this is roughly 1/4 to 1/5 done. The good thing is that I've only been writing on one time-line and I'm a little less than 1/2 way through it. This is the shorter time line too, so I'm assuming that I'll have plenty of material. At first I was trying to write both time lines simultaneously, but I figured out pretty quick that trying to switch my mind back and forth over 200 years of history was pretty difficult. Instead I chose to stay with the first group all the way until I'm done with the important part of history that they have and then I'll drop them like butter on a griddle and pay attention to the meat of the story. I still want to weave the two story lines because they are intended to mirror each other in some ways, but we'll see how that works out.

I also got a call a week or so ago letting me know that Galusha is literally squeezing me in. They made a place for me despite the fact that they are already overloaded. Not only that but I will be learning how to do auditing. This has always been a dream of mine as it is a large part of forensic accounting, but I didn't have time to take the auditing class (and I heard it was a waste of time) so I figured I had lost the opportunity. When Jeff suggested it I was shocked. I told him, "I'm really green in that area, I have never done it at all."
He told me they knew, but if I was willing they would show me the ropes and teach me everything I needed to know. I am thrilled. I'll be working under Fred, one of the partners, and he's a great guy.
As soon as we had that set we started working on the other important details like, where to live, what to take, how to get there. . . All of this meant that we had to cancel our trip to Boise, which nearly devastated us all, but since we'll be nearby for the next few years I'm sure we'll find opportunities to visit.
I started apartment searches the next day and every place I called was completely booked up. I posted a wanted ad on craigslist stating that we needed a place for four months in IF and got a reply that made me cringe. (asking A LOT more than we wanted to pay). We still had time, and most of the apartments said they might have people moving out in December, so we still had options, but I decided not to stress about it any more and just focus on the moving details (and getting the house finished!)
Then a few days later I got an email from a lady who said they had a house in Blackfoot to rent (about 45 minutes away). I called back more to get information rather than because we were really interested. The conversation went something like this:
"Hi, I got your email about your house in Blackfoot, what were you looking to rent it for?"
"Well, um, do you have any cats or dogs or anything?"
"No, it is just my husband, my three year old and myself."
"Oh! I have a three year old!"
"Oh that's cool."
(in the background) "Honey, what are we going to rent it for?" giggling, and then she comes back on, "What do you think is fair?"
"Well, how many bedrooms is it?"
"4"
"Oh, that's definitely out of our price range. We were looking for something small."
"How does $500 sound?"
"Um, you can get a lot more than that for a four bedroom house, some of the 2 bedroom apartments were going for 700!"
"Well, we really would like someone who can make sure our pipes don't freeze and stuff like that, we're trying to sell it, but we're too far away to maintain it until then."
"And what about utilities?"
away from the phone, "honey, what about utilities?" back to me, "we'd pay all of them except garbage, and if you wanted phone or internet or anything you'd have to take care of that."
"Wow, really? We'd love to rent from you!"
And thus I will again be driving 45 minutes on ice . . . every day . . . all winter long. . . curse you Idaho.

Jason was also quick to act on our news. Because I would be starting rather soon in January he gave his last day as Christmas Eve to his boss who was saddened and surprised, but not as distressed as Jason had anticipated. They had a great conversation and Jason walked away with a new respect for the man and gratitude that he hadn't laid on a guilt trip or anything.
We figured the last week in December and the first few in January should give us ample time to complete the repairs to this place and move up to Idaho.

My mom agreed to let us move in for a few weeks so that we can completely empty this place so the work will go faster. I hope it will make life easier for us. However, that gives me just under three weeks to get everything packed and moved to her house, run a large yard sale, and complete the wiring, fixing, patching, painting and cleaning of this place. I'm still hoping to get our deposit back even though we're breaking contract. I figure we moved in when it was dirty and nasty and under construction. If we move out and it's not there's no reason he can give for keeping it. :(

Bitsy has been in rare form recently. Apparently the terrible twos were merely a precursor to the real trials. She's pushing every limit right now. I know that most of it is due to the stress she's feeling from us because of the move and all the fun stuff we've been going through the last month or so, but that doesn't make it any easier to handle in the moment. She's amazingly smart and incredibly aware of everything that's going on. She continually astounds me. I will be interested to see how Jason does as Mr. House Husband for the next few years. (We've committed three years to Galusha).
I think he'll go through the same transition I did and then find a happy medium. Those two have always had more in common than she and I have so I don't doubt they'll buy a go-cart, fix it up, and have many happy days together.

Did I mention that Galusha offered us more than we had anticipated in wages? In all we should be able to leave college with about 1/8th of our current student loans. If we can suck it up even more we might be able to pay them off completely. Pray for our terrible spending habits.

Speaking of spending we boosted the economy this last week as Jason and I took Walmart by storm at 12:00am on Black Friday. I thought they did a great job. The doors were open for anyone to come in and shop, but the registers didn't ring up a single thing until 12:01.
We got everything we went for . . . and much much more. I found clothes for Alisabeth that will last for a few years, jamies and a new beanie. I found a few new nice shirts/sweaters for me for work and we got Jason some new (actually new instead of just new to him) jeans. I think that's the first time in at least two years.
We also go tupperware for everyone and their sister, a cute picture frame collage and toys galore for my little girl. Then I threw in a new electric razor for Jason since he can't find replacement blades for his old one.
All in all we walked away with a huge haul. I am glad to because between this and Toys'R'Us we have actually completed our gift purchases for Alisabeth for the next two years. . . literally.
And that's about all our excitement, sorry no pictures. Alisabeth drained the batteries with one of her photo shoot marathons.

Connections

2010-11-27T10:49:00.000-08:00

For those who want to hear me rave you can join my most recent post on my other blog. It is called Don't be offended, so read only if you can do that:
http://flan-thoughts-dont-be-offended.blogspot.com/2010/11/tool-analogy.html

A normal post will come sometime soon.

Astounded

2010-11-14T14:44:00.000-08:00

This week marked a few cool developments. First: My pride and joy.
Alisabeth was sitting in the back seat in her carseat, I was in the passenger seat and Jason was driving. Robyn was in the back seat too. Suddenly she starts naming the relationships of people. "Robyn in sitting next to me, and Mommy is in front of me and Daddy is in front of Robyn. We're sitting in a square!"
I was shocked. I've seen her name off shapes when she can see them, but for some reason being able to place herself within a large 3-D space and see the spacial relationship seemed a little advanced. I couldn't find anything online for when this normally happens, but I'm dang proud of her either way. When we got home we tested her again and this time she moved into position before telling us that she and we made a triangle. What a girl!!

On a not so happy note, a little over a week ago a woman pulled out and stopped in my lane causing me to T-bone into her. Luckily and thanks be to God, there was no damage or injury for us. The other lady was a little sore because she saw us coming but instead of moving she just braced herself. Her car would be totaled if she tried to turn it in. I hit straight into the side bending the passenger and driver doors to the point where they will not open. Sadly it was a gift from her sister after she lost her house and everything she owned recently so there's not really any option but to crawl in through the passenger side.
She called her insurance and the police before I realized that we had no damage or injury so we had to give lots of statements and denials of claims. It was lots of good fun. I was so mad that it had happened, but grateful that no one was injured, it could have been a lot worse if I hadn't had time to slam on my brakes.

We also got most of the boards up in the house and all of the external wall's outlets finished. Two circuits done, and a third in place when we work on it tomorrow. Hopefully we'll get the bathroom done tomorrow and then we only have to figure out how the heck we're supposed to get to the hallways and the heater and swamp cooler. Those are going to be boogers. We'll probably also get a few more of the patches done. Hopefully we won't have to open any more walls, I'm tired of cleaning up mold.
After that we'll move everything away from the walls invite all of our closest friend in the area over and put up all the drywall and mud and tape them in the same day. We're going to save the painting for after we move out, that way we don't have to worry about messing it up while we're living here :)

Lastly this week marked the start of a prequel to the book I wrote last year. I started it because I realized after finishing the first book and starting the next that it didn't follow well. It lacked an understanding of the planet's history and made it impossible to grasp the significance of what the main character was doing. So I dropped it and stopped writing. Then just the other day I needed something to keep my mind busy so I started thinking about the story again and there it was. I started writing yesterday and I already have 16 pages. I LOVE when inspiration strikes. After this book is done I'll need to go and revise the first book so that the details match more closely and possibly rewrite a bit of it to connect the ideas better and then I'll write the third book. Once they're all done I think I'm going to try to send them to a publisher. I figure they can only say no, but with three books written it's a better bet than a lot of beginning authors. They'll need a lot of editing, but I've heard most books do.

Jason is having a blast with his new position. For those who didn't know he was demoted and his pay was cut by more than $800 a month because of a bad phone call that the general manager happened to overhear and a few not favorable customer satisfaction surveys. His manager was surprised when Jason told him the pay wouldn't be enough, but eventually we had no other choice than to accept it. So we're cutting back significantly and doing what we can to suck it up until January at the earliest. We've also prayed a lot and we're going to fast forward our 5 year plan. We were going to settle for 5 years and then send Jason back to school for Computer Networking, but with all that's happened so far the automotive field just isn't looking great so we're going to head back to school early and complete a bachelors for him.
The part of all of this that I love is the fact that though the demotion upset him, he didn't let it stop him. He's turned it around and basically proven to them that they made a mistake by upselling the heck out of everything and taking every opportunity to improve himself. He is outselling the guy they chose in his place and basically kicking butt. I feel bad for them only because they're going to be hurting when he leaves in January or March.
Of course there is a downside to the new plan too: it entails me going back to work. We prayed about it a lot, and we'll also be moving back to Rexburg, which I am super exited about. Although I hate winters I REALLY miss the atmosphere of a small town. I loved the friends we made there as well, and though most of them have graduated and moved there are a few left, and I have no doubt we'll find more.
We've already contacted my old boss who has assured me that if he doesn't have a position that he knows of several other firms who do that he will refer me to, but he refused to give me any names until they're sure they can't offer me anything. :)
My mom was devastated and Jason's parents (though they didn't tell us directly) didn't like the idea but all three sets of parents are supportive and hoping for the best for us.
If Galusha can offer me a job we'll be moving in late January, if they can't we'll wait until April because Jason won't start school until then at the earliest. It's going to be another interesting roller coaster.
A friend called and we laughed that we were both begging for the day when we'd get a steady paycheck and now that we've got one we realize that all steady paychecks are not the same. Especially with the rental market as it currently stands.

Other than that we're doing well. We made it through another week and our pretty princess is at the top of her game. We got an amazing sale at Toys R Us and walked away with gifts for the next 3 years for an average of $7 a game. I'm most excited about mousetrap and twister, both of which are personal favorites of mine. (of course they're both 6+ but we'll see what we can do to introduce Twister earlier :-)

Sicko

2010-10-31T09:47:00.000-07:00

So, what have we done this week. . . gotten sick.
We had dinner at grandma and grandpas on Sunday, preschool on Monday, little Gym on Tuesday.
Then I got a call from Grandma that her girls were down for the count with something nasty.
They'd gotten it from the other set of cousins. Symptoms: vomiting, stuffy nose, coughing, fever.
Yes, beautiful.
So I started watching for the signs. Thursday night she was warm and whiny so I checked the temp: 102
Since I knew exactly what it was I called grandma instead of heading to the hospital and we started her regiment of children's medicines. We also got some for Jason since he was starting to feel the itchy nasty throat.
I called and canceled our trip to the pumpkin patch on Friday with the rest of the preschool and once again we stayed home.
I took it one day at a time and ended up canceling all of Saturday's activities too and now we're at Sunday and I've already made the calls. It started for me last night with a slight sore throat that progressed toward a raging soreness and clogged sinuses and nose. I know pretty picture right?

Well, there was one good thing that we accomplished this week:
We still got to celebrate Halloween because of an early church trunk-or-treat.
Her friend Bella came too and the two of them were able to be princesses together. Alisabeth also found a little girl who's grandmother had made the same dress. After Bella left for the night Alisabeth frolicked after the older Cinderella until we made her leave with us. So we got a little candy after all :)

We accomplished a few other things last night before I got sick too. Yesterday we got the boards up and the last outlet in for the living room circuit and I marked the places for a few more of them to go. Jason also started the repair plaster on the holes we'd already patched. We're going to wait to paint until we move out since we don't particularly care if the walls are drywall gray or white, but we'll get it in, nice and sanded.
Lastly on our list of accomplishments is this:

I got a couple of requests for pretty skirts similar to the one I made Alisabeth, so this is my next one. It's yellow tulle, even though it looks white. Also I'll be adding an orange ribbon along the bottom. This one is a gift, and I have a few other gifts to make, but I've been told I should sell them so I might make a few more to see how it goes.
They're super easy and cheap to make. The waistband is scrap material that I got in the discount bin (and super cute I might add) and the tulle was $2 a yard with a 50% off coupon which means that the yard you see here cost me $1.00. Gotta love sales.
Let me know if you want to place an order :)

Birthday.

2010-10-24T21:30:00.000-07:00

So Wednesday I think it was we decided to get the second circuit working.We hooked up everything in the living room and plugged it in. It worked like a charm. . . except that when you flipped the switch all of the outlets came on, and the outside porch light never turned off :) Anyway, that was a switch of 2 wires and then we were in business. The whole event took a little longer than we had figured so we went to be a little late, but at least we have 2 circuits completely done. On to the last one in the living room and then we just have to figure out how we're going to get access to the kitchen and the washing machine one. :)

And now, on to the main event:
Alisabeth's birthday. By Friday I was pretty despondent. I hadn't heard anything from anyone we had invited, so I started making phone calls. All of the grandparents verified that they'd be there, and once we hit preschool I was gratified to hear that several moms were planning on coming. All in all it turned out great. We had about 10 kids and twice that in adults :)

I made pumpkin cookies finally and we had A TON left over so those were served up along with weenies, chips, carrots/broccoli and dip and a few other things. I meant to make a batch of the spinach and artichoke dip but I ended up putting together her new kitchen instead.

The games included bobbing for apples, a bean bag toss and musical chairs toddler style. They enjoyed the bobbing a lot, but I wasn't there to make the bean bag thing fun so Jason said they were bored in a minute. *Sigh* The last game included prizes; so suddenly everyone was excited to play again, though a few refused to dance/move. :)

Then we sang over the cake. She waiting patiently for us to finish and then after 3 puffs she got it out to our delight and cheering. By this point she was a little overwhelmed with all the people so she wasn't saying much, but she gladly accepted a cupcake and even wanted more.

Then came the presents. We saved this one for last. She also received princess crown/shoe from Kyt, a princess dress-up game from Em, a new set of bath ducks from Grandma/Grandpa Liddeke (just in time, the old ones had mold growing inside and I have to throw them out), some books and a soft teddy bear along with a lego train from Grandma/Grandpa Flannery, a really cute skirt from Ella, a necklace from the Mehr family, and play fruit/cooking stuff from Nana/Grandpa. And of course the kitchen set from us, G&G Liddeke and Nana. She was enjoying opening them as much as she enjoyed playing with them.

The other kids enjoyed her presents too :)

And once the kitchen came all of the children disappeared down the hallway for a while.

There's my little princess.

Here she is again complete with earings as well as her crown.
The whole party lasted about 1.5 hours and then suddenly everyone left at the same time and all was quiet. Alisabeth really enjoyed herself though, so that was cool.
I can tell she's a lot like me though. I can only be social so long before I just want to close my door and read a book. Although my social attention span has increased as I've matured it was pretty short when I was younger. We'll have to keep that in mind next year. Maybe it will be a kid only party so that she doesn't feel as overwhelmed with all the people. :)
The rest of the week was pretty boring. I have to finish sewing all the costumes today as we have a trunk or treat tomorrow night (Ahhh), and then I'm moving on to Christmas presents (toole skirts for all of the female cousins).

Preschool

2010-10-20T00:43:00.000-07:00

Well, I mentioned in the last entry that we had started pre-school with Alisabeth, it's been nice for us both. She really enjoys showing mommy and daddy the crafts that she makes. Every Monday is a hand puppet featuring something starting with that week's letter. Friday is decided by the mom in charge for that week. Last week we had it here.
The event coincided perfectly with the arrival of my bountiful basket pumpkins which are huge.

The picture isn't the greatest, because it was taken by a 3 year old, but it's decent enough.
So needless to say we had to gut one of them for our activity here. The kids had fun with that. I sat with them and squished the seeds and mush beneath my fingers and made sound effects. I think they enjoyed that the most.

Sorry about the sideways pictures, but blogger does weird things to my imports.

This weeks cooking experiment was to duplicate the squash/artichoke dip we had tasted at the Melting Pot.
Can I just preface with the fact that I know absolutely nothing about artichokes, and the diagrams/images online are less than helpful. I eventually dissected them to the best of my abilities so that I could cut out the heart and chop it up, but I'm sure more trained eyes would have cried at my attempt. Either way what I got tasted fine, so I'm proud of my efforts. (Next time I'm buying the ones in the jar though).
The sauce turned out wonderfully though and we had it for dinner with sliced apples, bread and carrots.

I wanted to include this one to prove that he was still alive. He's actually doing quite well. We allow him outside for most of the day and he usually gets locked out whenever I have an errand to run because he won't come/stay in. The cutest thing to watch is when he scares away the alley cats. He's half their size, but he runs after them and they scatter. It's funny.
His newest trick is climbing in trees. Usually when I come home from my errands that's where I'll find him. He gets down just fine, so I'm not worried.
Featured below are Alisabeth's skirt that I threw together with the scraps from her Halloween costume. I added some shorts from the scraps of another costume I had made in the past :) and then used more of the satin (all of the remaining parts) to sew on a bottom border. So now she has at least one skirt she can play in. I didn't get anything done on her costume yet because my iron was bumped and knocked to the floor one too many times and now sports a cracked/bent bottom which catches on anything and everything when you try to use it.
I'm waiting until we get paid tomorrow so I can get a new one.
Only one week left until Halloween?!?!?!

And last but not least, my masterpiece.

It took me almost 45 minutes to get this thing to go together. I've never wired an outlet before in my life, so that was fun, plus trying to get the stupid ground wire to curl around the grounding screw correctly, and then getting the whole thing to fit nicely into the tiny container was a pain the the putuccus.
Eventually I got it however, so that's what counts. (Jason meanwhile put up 3 pieces of drywall in Alisabeth's room and completed several other tasks, but we won't mention that.)
We also got one circuit completely done (Yeah!!) and the living room is almost completely hooked up. The only thing left in the living room is to drill a few holes to get the wires to the last outlet on the circuit and then the whole thing will be complete. 2 circuits down, 4 to go.
The next exciting thing is Alisabeth's birthday. It will actually arrive on Thursday, but we're waiting until Saturday morning at 9:30/10 am to celebrate it. (I couldn't get her new play kitchen delivered until then.)
We're really excited. I want to make my cheese dip and a few other finger foods and then of course we'll have cake and ice cream. She's been talking about it for a week. She's excited to turn 3.

Well, being that it's a little after 1 in the morning here I'll end this entry, but I'll probably add another one after the birthday party on Saturday.

What fun!

2010-10-03T19:51:00.000-07:00

This week (and last) has been very good. I've been keeping myself busy, plus we started going to Preschool so that's 3 days a week out of the house, if I can add story-time at the library I'll rarely be home!

About 2 weeks ago (for those of you not on facebook) I went and got the material for Alisabeth's Halloween costume. Now I know I could have made it a lot cheaper, but it's dang gorgeous, so it must be worth it :)
I still have the hemming to do, but luckily with toule it doesn't fray, so I just hemmed the satin for now and I'll get to the rest soon . . .
I also completed the crown and necklace to go with it. . . but I let her play with them. . . and now they're gone...
With the scraps I threw together a little skirt today. It's got a waistline in silk and a skirt of the sleeve material. Way cute. . . not at all modest. I'm thinking of adding in a pair of cotton shorts underneath so she won't have to wear a leotard or tights underneath. She loves it though, and it did it's job to distract her from the real dress which she can't wear until Halloween.
These were my main two accomplishments. (in the kiddo department anyway).

I also took the sewing opportunity to finish the pajama pants I started a month ago. They're way cute, and made from a clearance piece of silk that was BARELY large enough to accommodate the pattern. I ended up having to cut the pant legs to get it to fit with the patterned part in the right place, but the cut doesn't look horrible, and they're just for jamies, so I didn't stress too much.
In the cooking department I also had several successes. We have started signing up for Bountiful Baskets which arrive the Saturday after you purchase them. They are filled with fresh fruits and vegetables, the down side is that you never know what you'll get until you get there. We've had some mishaps (cauliflower potatoes that were too soupy) and some good surprises (like a constant source of lettuce which forces me to eat salad almost every day now), but the best part is getting things that we have no idea what to do with. In my last basket we got both okra and butternut squash. Also that week we purchased a case of apples.
I let them all stew for about a week until I was afraid they would start to go bad and then I forced myself to use them:
Okra - yoked, dipped in french bread crumbs and fried for a few minutes until golden brown and soft inside. Very nice.
Apples - nothing interesting yet, but I think I'm going to try an apple pie from scratch wish me luck.
Butternut squash - this was my true dilemma because my husband hears the word squash and automatically doesn't like it. So I used my handy-dandy search engine on Allrecipes.com and ended up with Butternut Squash soup. I figured it I got it cooked before he got home he'd never know. . . plus it had cream cheese in there. :) Turned out to be a huge success. He saw the recipe, so I couldn't slip it past him, but he tried it anyway and found that he liked it. I enjoyed it too and Alisabeth even ate a small bowl. Good times were had by all.
My last cooking success actually came today. I used our pork roasts to make sweet pork and then used that to make tamales for the first time every. I was worried, but they turned out great. I learned a bit and I think they'll be even better next time.

On to the smaller members of our family: Midnight is still alive. . .
Alisabeth started going to a preschool group with a bunch of other moms from the church with kids about the same age. I went with her the first day and it's a good thing I did because the second mom ended up having to take her daughter to the doctors for some stomach thing so she would have been all alone with 7 toddlers.
It was fun. We studied circles and made frog faces from circle shapes. We also studied the letter m and traced it, colored pictures and learned a bunch of words that start with the "m" sound.
In two weeks it'll be at my place. . . we're going to make goop from cornstarch and water and play with it outside, and make ghosts from lollipops and tissues. I'm excited. Our letter is going to be "o" so we'll have to see what we can do.
Little Gym was also really fun this week. We moved up to the next class so that she's in there without me. There are two teachers and they do a really good job or keeping the kids focused. The theme was "under the sea" and we were supposed to bring swim goggles, but I didn't know so instead she pretended. This week's theme is "Slumber Party Sleepover" so we'll be in pajamas and with blankie. Good luck on that one.

We finally finished out training this last week for foster care, now the only thing holding us back is the wiring at our place. That should be done within the month and then we'll be on our way to success!! I'm stoked.

Jason worked a lot this last two weeks, but he's still managed to be a great dad. They had a camp-out two weeks ago in the backyard complete with a fire in a pit.
He also cleaned up all the cactus that had fallen down and got that dumped. He'd done a lot of running around for me, including picking up our new (used) bookcases.
Continuing his car fetish he's fixed a few for friends, but somehow the karma of that never rubs off right because he got two flat tires this week in a row. We now have to replace all of his tires. . . grrrrr. Luckily their sales turned out to be more than we expected so we have the extra cash for the extra expense. (Amazing how that happens when God is in control).
He's also spent every other second reading through the Harry Potter series again. He's obsessed!!

Other than that it's been a quiet day in the neighborhood. Thanks for joining us.

Whoops

2010-09-14T18:28:00.000-07:00

Again my weeks are flying!
We finally got assigned a licensing worker! This is great, it's one step closer to being foster parents.
We had our first couples interview with her on one of Jason's lunch-times. I felt bad because a 1/2 hr interview ended up taking almost 1.5 hrs, but his boss is really supportive so as long as he lets them know they seem fine with all the work missed.
Jason had his individual interview this morning. It took about 2 hrs. Mine is on Thursday. Once we finish the electrical we'll have our final inspection and then she'll have to write a 15 page report on whether or not she feels we're ready and able to be foster parents. Usually if you get that far it's in the bag, but we're not taking anything for granted.
We have a lot of work to do before then, one of which is purchasing "tot locks." If you've ever bought a video game or super expensive software from a store and seen how they open the plastic cases around the game/software you'll know how a tot lock works. Super strong magnets that can only be unlocked with another super strong magnet. We're going to purchase two of them, one for the chemicals cabinet under the sink and the other for the medicines cabinet over the sink. They're super expensive, but then we don't have to worry about keys or weird catches that take two hands to open and are usually frustrating.
The we've finished almost everything else required of us (or will by the time we finish the electrical ;)
In other news Jason is doing well at work. He had a day last week where he sold more than any of the other service writers. This was a fluke, but it was still cool. He's doing well and learning a lot. If nothing else I think this job has shown him that he has a lot of potential in an amazing amount of areas.
Alisabeth is blossoming too. The other day I finally found the new erasable markers that we had purchased and gave them to her, then I showed her the traceable numbers and letters on her writing board. She spent the next hour tracing them all. She got a little frustrated whenever she messed up a little bit, but that's normal for her. She loved being praised for this accomplishment. She even showed daddy when he got home. She's getting used to the kitty, although I can be sure that if the door is closed to her room she's in the process of stuffing him into a box of some sort.
Midnight is doing well too. He's adjusting well, although with all the rough play he's having a hard time learning to be soft. He also really loves to pull the keys off our keyboards if we leave the house for too long. We went and stayed with Jason's parent's little girls overnight and when we got home I was missing the "b" key and Jason was missing two of his.
I'm doing well as well. I'm trying to get everything organized and into a pattern. We've gotten money matters taken care of, now it's just a matter of getting the house organized and in shape (continually, and not just sporadically).
Overall it's been a normal and mellow type of week, I love those kind.

So far it's still alive

2010-08-29T18:44:00.000-07:00

This was a quick week. . .
Honestly I don't know what we accomplished. ;)

Friday was the most eventful night. That day Alisabeth and I drove to with my mom to view her new potential property. The pictures below are turning 180 degrees from the vantage point of the work shed across the driveway from the house:

And this last on is the manicured front of the house. It's well done to prevent erosion since the whole place is on such a large hill.

That night we furred out the living room wall. It would have gone much faster, but Jason had to distract me. Before Jason even got home I had three pieces (of 11) cut and ready to put up. Then I looked up and Jason walked in with this black little spot crawling all over his shoulder. Due to that fact it took us until almost 10:30 to finish the one wall. Our little black critter is names Midnight and is beloved by all of us. He's five weeks old, almost 6 though and was already eating solid foods and pooping without problems.
He's a cuddly kitten and even allows Alisabeth to torture him endlessly, although he doesn't have great coping skills so he tends to get backed into a corner a lot. So far though, he's still alive.

Saturday we went camping after we came home from the temple. We started out later than I had planned. We also had rain in all directions so I was quite nervous, but it went well.
Alisabeth fell asleep on the drive up and woke up with a night terror when we had to stop for directions. After that ended she was about again (about 5 minutes later) until after we had pitched the tent and gotten the fire started and the food cooking. We ended up eating at almost 7:30. She was so excited to be out there. She kept pointing at the fire and dancing around it and in circles. We set up a circle of rocks about 3 feet from the fire in every direction so that she never got close but she was so excited just to watch the huge blaze.
We found out that the rain which had passed straight through us on our way home ended up causing a total of 65 cars to get into accidents yesterday night, so we were pretty lucky on both accounts driving home from Phoenix and driving up to the mountains.
Also this week was the first long-term consequences for Alisabeth. No toys were exciting enough to cause much concern when lost, but her bed certainly is. She did great the first night, but the second night she couldn't stop jumping on it and doing things she knew she wasn't supposed to do, so she lost her new bed for the week. She gets it back today, we'll see how she does. She has been sleeping on her old toddler bed. She doesn't mind that part, but she does mention that she wants to sleep on the bigger bed. Gentle reminders of why she can't and a reminder of when she gets to try again seem to be doing the trick.
As for Jason and his work? He replaced the breaks on his truck this week after trying to kill his wife on Tuesday. There were no breaks as I drove around trying to pick up the mattresses for the new beds. Took me almost 600 feet to stop, but many prayers and VERY cautious driving got me home and safe.
He also found out that half of his spark plugs weren't connected correctly, so now his truck drives like a dream (in comparison).
His great experience with work this week was a nice lady who came in for an oil change. She was on the phone while he waited talking to someone about her finances and finally (since apparently he wouldn't let the conversation go) she said "You are the rudest man ever and I hope you get fired" and then she hung up on him. Jason's immediate thought was "I don't want to help you."
He did anyway and she kept talking about a coupon she had used six months ago. Finally he got the car into the bay and gave her a discount on her oil change, which she complained about. Then she came back a bit later and asked if the car was still in the bay. He checked and it was, then she told him her husband had found a cheaper deal and she wanted to take it elsewhere. Jason went back to check but the oil change was already done. I'm sure she had some fun things to say about that too. Well, at least he mostly has good customers to deal with.

One step at a time. . .

2010-08-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

Looking at my last post I realize a lot has changed and no one knows!

We were thwarted in our attempts to accomplish anything electrical the first week after our trip, so instead I pulled weeds out front. This was my biggest accomplishment. Of course everywhere I pulled up a weed ten more have sprouted in it's place. Stupid never-ending job.

We also had an inundation of flies, and had two mornings of "icky bugs" that were all found and erradicated. This led to my "no fly left standing" policy. I keep my water vacuum filled and at the ready. About three times a day I turn it on and spend five minutes sucking up all the nasty little varmints. The first day I scored about 25, I haven't yet beat my record, but I still have plenty of time.

We also had the blessing of having Robyn come to stay with us for a little while. It's been a wonderful experience so far. She makes little to no trouble, and provides my husband with hours of entertainment because she brought her RC helicopters with her. :)
She has also been amazing in giving us free baby-sitting for a couple of date nights. I try not to abuse the gift, but it's a hard temptation :)

Bitsy keeps growing like a weed. She's now so long that when she's stretched out on her toddler bed she almost touches the edges. . . AHHHHH!

Thus a few changes were required. Rearranging the room was the first part.
We had to get another bed anyway since we needed a real one for Robyn, and we will need it when we are approved to be foster parents, so we broke down and bought a new bunk-bed. It's a twin on twin, but it was sturdy and a good size. I was amazed at how many of the lower bunks were hard to get in and out of. We went with one that had enough space so that we could sit upright on the lower bunk.
We decided to buy new, because the best price we could find on craigslist was 150 and they needed work. This one was 197 and brand new. We also got a new dresser because each child has to have their own. Sam Levitz furniture was great in giving us a discounted price on the dresser. The sale had ended on the fourth of July weekend, but they brought it back just for me.
The only thing we need now are the mattresses :(
(They will have to wait for next paycheck, because even on craigslist the prices are too high for now.)

This weekend also marked the first major "furring out" portion of the electrical project. Seen here are the two foot spaced studs and framing around the windows. Then we will run the wires, put in the new outlet boxes and cover everything with drywall and then paint and it will be as good as new.
This was the easiest option available. The other option was cutting into the walls (plaster and brick) so that we could run the wires through conduit to the outlets. This is amazingly expensive. We ended up using more wood than we thought because I hadn't figured in all the pieces we wound need, but hey, we knew it would be much more than we thought, so all is well. :)

Lastly, our family is still surving and thriving. We're having a blast. Jason started his new job as a service writer and is enjoying the interactions with customers. He's also learning a lot about sales and the managerial perspective.
I'm doing a few sewing projects and just working hard to keep the house half-way decent.
Alisabeth is learning her letter sounds through starfall.com and is enjoying listening as words are sounded out to her.
Robyn is about to start school and has gotten everything she needs, including an amazing deal on a used TI92 from a pawn shop for 1/2 the price of a new 83 model (very old and out of date).
She's the queen of good deals!!

Foster classes are at week 7, we are still waiting to be assigned to a licensing worker so we can start the interview process, but it will come in time.

We also started receiving "Bountiful Baskets." For $15 we get about 25 lbs of fruit and vegetables. Plus I bought an extra 48 ears of corn for $11. We can't choose which fruits and vegis we get, but it's always great quality and it forces me to learn how to use new things. Last night we had taco salad for dinner and the only thing we purchased separately for it was the hamburger.
Life is good.

What a fun trip! (continued)

2010-07-24T22:28:00.001-07:00

To pick up where I left off:
Tuesday: Sea World
This was for Alisabeth and she had a blast:

Excuse the coloring, I think little hands may have gotten a hold of the camera and changed the color settings. It took me a second to notice.

I know, I know, we spoil her, but seriously it was way too cute to pass up. She spent the next 2 days touching her face gently and saying "I'm a kitty"

I love the fact that Sea World had a huge area for kids. Everything from water to sesame street shows and rides. She loved it.

And of course they had animals. I love these little guys!

Wednesday was our sailing excursion. Women only. . . and Fred the hired captain. It was very relaxing and fun.
Thursday was massages and then Jason went to the automotive and air and space museums at Balboa Park. I won't include his pictures, but please note that I am grateful for digital cameras. There are more pictures from the museums than from any other part of the trip.
Friday we went and took Alisabeth to the San Diego temple and walked around and looked at everything. It was nice. We were supposed to leave her home and go do a session with my mom, but when I got up I hadn't slept well and I felt poopy, so we decided to cancel that and just relax. It worked out well though. Then that night my mom had both of the kids, ours and Spencer, my cousin's 5 year old son. So Jason and I watched The Shirley Temple version of "The Little Princess." It is such a good movie!!

Then we got down to business. Everything was packed and ready by 10:30 pm and we left the house at 3 am the next morning headed home.
All in all it was definitely worth the wait and the money spent.
I forgot the mention the starter. . . We drove all the way there, pulled in the alley-way by the house, parked in someone else's spot while we figured out where we were supposed to park and then got in to restart the engine and . . . nothing.
Turned out our starter decided to poop out. . .
Jason was willing to fix it, but he didn't have tools and we already had plans so we found a mechanic near our rental, dropped it off to him and rented a Kia Soul for a few days while it was getting fixed. It all worked out well, but it was an ominous start to the vacation. ; )

What a fun trip!

2010-07-24T21:57:00.000-07:00

This week was a blast!
We drove up to CA at 2:30 am. Arriving at about 9. Their traffic and freeways are INSANE! I will not complain about Tucson for at least another week.
We went immediately to Anna and Mario's house (good friends from our Rexburg days) and they made us an amazing breakfast including strawberries, juice, eggs with lots of mix ins, tortillas and so much food we were overstuffed.
Then we drove to the movie theater and saw Airbender. They were the family that addicted us to the animated cartoon, so it was only fair we see it with them.
The coolest part? The theater provides a daycare center for while you're in the movie. It's the same cost as a ticket, but they get a snack, arts and crafts, computer games, toys, games and there were about 4 adults in there with them to supervise and assist. I thought it was a great idea and wondered what the heck our malls were thinking NOT doing it.
Then that afternoon we drove to San Diego. We should have had plenty of time to get to the airport, but as soon as we hit the outskirts of town we were backed up for about 45 minutes. . . it was insane. Our poor cousins had to take a cab.
The house we stayed at was nice, but the description of it lacked a lot of important details. Not only that but check-in was at 3 and we didn't get into the house until almost 4:30 because the cleaning crew was "behind schedule."
Then we found out that the "4" bedrooms were really only 2 and there was a broken pull-out couch in one living room and a Heida-bed in the kitchenette. All in all it was disappointing when compared with the description, but if I had just walked in the place off the street I think I would have been impressed. We had the bay 200 feet to our left and the ocean 500 feet to our right. There was a boardwalk, an amusement park (unimpressive by my husband's standards because there was no ferris wheel), and lots of fun things to do.
Saturday night: Mystery dinner theater. BOOO!! It was raunchy and boring. Half the party left right after we got the food, the other half left about 30 minutes later.
Sunday: After church we went to Balboa Park:

It just so happened that Target was having a family day, and the museums were free, there were activities and a turtle exhibit. I wish we had gotten there earlier. As it was we watched an African drummer teaching anyone who wanted to try it out, painted persian tiles, and walked around the art museum.

Then we went to Jason's mission president's house and had dinner with their family. It was a blast and the food was great. Turns out their daughter and son-in-law had adopted two children so we spent a lot of time discussing what we knew of the differences in adoption/foster policies in CA vs AZ.
Monday: Six Flags!!!!
I will mention only one detail: The posted signs every 20 feet read "Do not carry loose articles on this ride." "Because of the nature of this ride it is advised that all loose articles be removed before boarding."
I took my cell phone on and halfway through I actually put my hand down on my pocket to secure it in place. . . My husband was not so lucky. Moving his hand actually caused it to dislodge just enough so that the G-force spiral which pinned us to the back of the seat freed the phone's movement and he watched as it spiraled toward the ground some 50 feet away.
I'm going to post the rest of the week in the following post. . . because of picture issues.

My daughter's first photo shoot . . and other stuff.

2010-07-15T12:08:00.000-07:00

I decided to post a bit early this week because tomorrow is going to be hectic and then I won't be back at my computer for a week. Just imagine, I'll be laying out on the beach in 70 degree weather. I'll be riding roller coasters, listening to free concerts, touching and feeling at the Children's Museum, watching a turtle exhibit, eating out, eating in, going to comedy clubs, messing up a house that isn't mine, and in general having a blast. So sorry you can't make it.

These are the pictures I didn't have with me last week.

She seemed to really enjoy her nightgown and every time she sees it she wants to wear it. I really need to make another one, but all of the scraps I have are too small so I'm basically going to make a patchwork one with that matching scraps. I'll let you know how it turns out :)

As an update to last week's post I figured I'd post these pictures:
Before:

Please note, for those of you with circuit experience that the fuses are in parallel, except for one, which was connected to the return. Therefore though it shows 3 here 1 of them was most assuredly fried the minute they powered this box up.

The wire that you see running from the new box into the house will be replaced eventually. These ones were basically just to get the new power into the house where we hooked it up to the existing circuitry. (wow I can't spell).
Eventually all of this will be in metal piping which will keep it protected from the elements.
The new connection made immediate difference. We solved the grouding issues (there was no return line and therefore the "ground" was really a return line meaning that we had the full amount of electricity needed to complete the circuit flowing through our metal pipes. It was lovely.

And just in case anyone wanted to applaud us I wanted to include this one. Yep, that's in our room. . . Don't worry, everything is wire nutted and taped and completely safe for now, but it just looks crazy having wires sticking out everywhere. The best part? We figured out that the original installers actually used the uninsulated portion of the large wire to run actual current through. Yeah, you can't get much more unsafe than they were unless you actually sliced into a wire with a metal knife and then shoved old dried paper into the cut.

Next: Paintball wounds!! These are Jason's shoulder. He's got three hits in almost exactly the same place. I was much smarter, I got hit all over my body :)
Most of my wounds are in locations that I wasn't able to photograph, but they look about the same as this one, so no biggy there.
I do need to include here, for posterity, and because I promised he'd never live it down, that my first and worst wound was inflicted by my own husband. We were always on the same team, so how, you might ask, did I receive a wound from my very own husband?
The rental guns had hair triggers. That should explain most of it, but why was he aiming at me when he "accidentally" fired? That was also an "accident." He was skidding into the same location as me and fell forward slightly touching the trigger, but it was enough.
I cursed up a storm (without saying any curse words) and yelled at him, vowing that he would never forget it. I was so mad because it was basically point blank range and it hurt like a monkey's uncle. Luckily for him I had other concerns at that moment so I moved on and was fine by the end of the round.

Now on to my amazing daughter:
Alisabeth and her daddy do a lot of fun things together. They've explored the land around our house, they've played at the park, they've worked on the car, but I think this by far was the coolest.

What follows are photos take by Alisabeth with little or no help from daddy. She posed the animals and people as you see them and then aimed and clicked.

This photo was taken earlier in the day while her babies were still awake and happy. :)

We also had fun with cousins coming over for our "We-don't-live-in-cardboard-boxes-anymore" party. They had a blast playing out in the front yard, and after we had secured it the parents relaxed and enjoyed themselves too. :)

It was a fun event, lots of good food, and a generous amount of fun stories and adventures. Only one other couple (besides Jason's parents) were able to make it. Crystal and her husband came and brought their two little girls. I think the small event was perfect for the size of our house. We all fit inside well, and despite the humidity it wasn't terribly hot inside.

Lastly just an update on the foster care classes.
We had our first one and though it terrifies me at times to think of what these children will bring into my home (bad habits, behavior, language, anger, fear, struggles, ingrained behaviors), it terrifies me even more to think of them having to go to a group home, or never being found in the first place, or going back to their parents before their parents have had time and training enough to change. It has re-affirmed my conviction that this is something I want to do. It was so eye opening. I left the first meeting on Monday night with a headache, which is a sure sign that I learned a lot.
The training and program they have is amazing! I never knew how many regulations and rules CPS and other organizations have to follow, but I am grateful for them because as frustrating as it is to watch a young child be in the "system" for over a year while mom and dad have time to work through their issues, it would be even more frustrating if the parents weren't given the chance to have their family back, or if they went back to families who hadn't changed a thing. I'm excited for the ride.

:-(

2010-07-09T21:50:00.000-07:00

This was a good week, and an interesting one. I don't have my camera here at my mom's house, so I can't post the cutest picture, but I decided to take a break from the curtains to make something Alisabeth would love.
While she took her nap I sewed together a fun and quick pattern for a new nightgown. I figured she would enjoy it because she's REALLY into dresses right now. I wasn't disappointed. She loved it. Of course, she overfilled her diaper the first night she wore it, and then I didn't get it clean until yesterday, so tonight is her second night in it, and she's loving it.
I used scraps to make it, so I am excited to do it again with materials that will actually work well together. It's supposed to have a frilly bottom fringe to it, however I used a stretchy material for the main part and a patterned cotton for the bottom, so it didn't end up frilling out, it ended up restraining. It still looks cute though.

So on to the reason it took so long to get her nightgown laundered. My washing machine wasn't able to pull enough power to complete the last spin cycle, so all of the clothes have been taking about ten times as long as they should to dry. Why was it not getting enough power you ask? Well, let me explain: I have no idea.
My mom came over and took a look at it (keep in mind that the landlord told us that he would appreciate any improvements we are willing to make and would deduct time and money spent from our rent. . . )
Apparently, (once she'd told me I could see it too) whoever wired the house was on crack. There were 3 small fuses coming into the house. The gauge wire they used is the kind that should be used for heavy machinery in a large production warehouse, and they hadn't used any ground. So for those of you who don't speak electronics this means that our incoming power is being severly limited (not to mention some of it being wasted).
So basically we started to put together a game plan to change out everything. We eventually traced back the power and found out that not only was the wire coming in huge, but the original wire to the house was even larger. Basically the house must have taken it's power from the same source as the tile factory that is further back on the property. Now that the tile factory isn't being used we are the sole users. So we opened up all of the boxes connected to the house ( a total of 3 where we should have 1) and saw that not only was the wire huge, but where they had brought it down to smaller guage wire they had done it both sloppily and wrongly. We weren't getting even half of the power we should have had. . .
Anyway, so the game plan was set (encouraged by the fact that the shower had a nice current for those using it any time they reach out to adjust the hot/cold. . . )
Then yesterday night I happened to go outside for something after dark, I glance toward the fuse box and see a nice red sparkly-like light coming from our power source. So needless to say I turned off as much of the power as I could and Jason went out and electrical taped everything he could touch (while wearing electricians gloves).
Then I called my mom to ask if we could move up the time-line.
She called back this morning, took off work, we shunted Alisabeth over to her cousin's house (I just need to throw out a big THANK YOU STACI to my amazingly wonderful sister-in-law) and started working on it.
We ended up not finishing, thus we are spending the night at my mom's house. We got everything wired into the new box, and turned it on with no problems, but as soon as we tried to turn on the smaller breakers everything popped. A re-wire and another flip of the switch and POP SIZZLE. This time there were no breakers on, so we haven't figured out what the problem is. We decided that 9.5 hours of working on it was quite enough. We'll try again tomorrow.
Luckily we were already planning a barbeque for our "look-we-don't-live-in-carboard-boxes-anymore" party. It would have been sad if we had had to cancel. I just hope we can get it figured out tomorrow. I was really looking forward to living in our new place :)

That was the excitement. We also got a call from the AzCA foster care program and are scheduled to start our classes on Monday. 1 day, 3 hrs, 10 weeks. I am excited. I have a feeling I will be receiving a lot of information and end up with my eyes wide open.

Up and running again.

2010-07-03T12:41:00.000-07:00

So we moved to our new place and within a couple of days we were realizing the need for a few modifications in the technology department. We got our latest bill from sprint and had inadvertently doubled our normal cost by going over minutes and text messages. . .
I was shocked. I realized that it was mostly due to the being on the phone with all the people we needed to talk to in order to get new services connected and get everything set up, but even then we were close on our minutes. . . so we decided to get a local phone connection. Of course, somewhere between that point and the time that we actually set everything up internet was also
added, but we won't mention that part too much.

Well, it's been so long since the last update that I realized you still haven't seen the new place! Unfortunately the battery on our camera is dead, and I'm not quite sure where the charger is, so we're just going to include what was already taken, so mentally update these pictures for 2 weeks. :)

Alisabeth's room, the two bedrooms are identical in size, even down to the window dimensions. . . So she has a lot of room, but this will be great if and when we are approved for foster care. . . more on that later.

Our room, Yes, it's basically a bed with a few feet to walk around in, but hey, it's not like we need anything more in there ;)

The kitchen and living room. Apparently I forgot to include a picture of my sewing area so just imagine an extra 4-5 feet behind the couch which is dedicated to sewing and crafts. Jason says that he and Alsiabeth aren't allowed back there. It's for mommy only.

Oh, nevermind, there it is. . . :)
We decided to put up our flags, but we're probably going to move them into the bedroom so that we can hang the GORGEOUS print my mom got for me right after we were married. I'm sure you'll see the final version sometime soon. :)

Lastly our struggle to get connected! Yesterday COX finally installed the connection for our phone/internet. That was the end of a 3 week battle to get them out there. It was also their last straw before we went with a competitor. The problem was that our 50 year old house has never had cable, so they sent out a contractor, but there wasn't a close enough connection point, so he put in the work order to get a connection moved by COX closer so that it could be connected. COX sent out a supervisor instead and the guy must have looked at the wrong house because he canceled the move and said it wasn't needed. So they sent out another contractor who spent about 45 minutes trying to figure out a way, but eventually capitulated and set up another connection move through COX. Apparently they listened this time, but the contractor had said it should be about 3 days to get it done. That was over the weekend, so I figured it would be by about Wednesday, well, when I called on Tuesday just to verify that they were coming I found out we had been pushed out until Thursday of next week because of the holiday. I kicked a HUGE fit and was called back about 10 minutes later with a dig/install date and time for yesterday. (Normally the dig and the install don't happen on the same day).
So finally, yesterday they came, dug up our backyard to bury a line, and then the installer came and freaked out because he couldn't find a connection point (the dig wasn't in the system yet), so he thought he couldn't do it, so I kindly walked him to the point his buddies had dug that morning and then waited patiently for 2 hours while the poor man hooked it all up in 115 degree weather. Let's just say if we were making more money all 3 of those installers would have received a tip. I was so delighted.
So we're finally connected again!
The only other neat adventure we're having is the foster care stuff. We got a call back almost 2 weeks ago to come and pick up the paperwork. The only thing we have left to complete is the on-line portion which I will be doing today. After that I just need to get my fingerprinting done and then the paperwork is in. We missed the deadline for the next class (which starts Monday), but we should be able to get started next month and then we'll start the in home licensing and interviews and all the fun stuff. Then we'll have a bunch of costs to get our home up to par with the requirements (double locked medicines/cleaning supplies) and we'll be ready to foster!
We're getting excited.
Well, I can see that I really need to maintain my weekly updates, because there are a lot of more fun stories I could tell, but I don't want to make this too long, so let me know if you want to hear about our shocking shower, or the overloaded electrics. I could also tell about the washer hook-up fun, or Alisabeth's second head injury that she just sustained today, but I won't bore you with details you don't care about :)

Memory Gaps

2010-06-14T08:08:00.000-07:00

I have been so busy with wasting my time that I haven't updated, sorry about that :)
So instead of trying to fill in all the blanks I'll just tell you a few of the highlights.
Last week Alisabeth finished her first swim lessons. Day 1: Get in, loving that fact, flips out when we try to do anything, especially in regards to her face getting near water.
Day 8: She went underwater 3 times, somewhat voluntarily, and absolutely loves to crab-walk around the pool wall. She is also getting to like the idea of swimming, though her attempts at paddling wouldn't get her very far if mommy wasn't helping. All in all, a huge success.
Also on the agenda for the last few weeks is getting our place ready to move into. We are doing so on Tuesday. :)
We went Saturday and finally were able to do some work on the place. We put in new baseboard where the old ones were broken or rotted. Apparently the last tenants were nephews or relatives of some sort and therefore felt that it was unnecessary to take proper care of the place. A lot of the lower drywall had to be replaced and I think we should probably fix the rest of the baseboards, but we didn't have supplies enough for the, so we focused on the important parts. We still need to paint and caulk them, and there are a few more minor things that need doing.
On Wednesday my mom is going to come over and install the new water heater if our landlord hasn't had the time by then. We also need to put the vent grates and the outlet covers back, but all of that is minor. I am glad that our landlord is willing to exchange work for rent on this place, it was one of the major deciding factors, because it helps lower our bills significantly, and it also helps me keep busy. I love projects.
Next, another project, I don't know if I told you I bought the material for the windows, Jason liked the idea of a Roman Shade, so that's what we're doing. Basically it's material that pulls up similar to blinds. It folds in on itself. Pretty neat. I don't know the difficulty level, but I'll let you know. :)
We were also blessed because Jason's aunt Tricia was doing some spring cleaning and was getting ready to donate her drapes. Luckily she posted something about it on Facebook and I caught her. She was more than happy to ship them to us and now I have the finishing parts for the windows so that they will actually look nice. It's a beautiful deep red material and will go nicely with the cream of the Roman Shades. It will also blend well with the red cement floors. I'll send pictures with the final look when it's all finished.
Other than the house and the swimming lessons for the chunky monkey we aren't doing much around here. Today will be a giant cleaning spree to prepare for the move. 4 loads of laundry, clean up and separate Alisabeth's toys from my moms, pack what I can, clear out our freezer so we can load that up tomorrow. . . lots of fun stuff.
Oh, also on the docket is that I decided to start tutoring again. I'm limiting myself to three clients at a time so that I'm not overwhelmed, but hopefully the little bit of extra cash will pay for most of our food bill. It's really nice to be able to help people again. I'm charging a maximum of $12, which seems like a lot for me, but apparently isn't. The first guy I tutored told me that Econ tutors through the college here charge about $50 an hour. I was shocked, by the time you get done with tutoring for a whole semester you've almost doubled your tuition! Anyway, my goal is not to get rich, but to help people understand. I wouldn't charge anything if we didn't need a little extra to survive on. It is sad to me that tutors would charge such a high rate. I know that most people believe it is right to charge as much as the client will pay, but that mentality is so foreign for me, especially in fields like tutoring. Isn't the goal to help people succeed, but when the financial obligation forces them to strain and stress how is that helping them succeed?
Anyway, needless to say I am glad to be back in the tutoring saddle.
The last exciting thing started last week: Jason and I decided to make foster care a reality and signed ourselves up to begin the 4-6 month process. We went to the orientation on Wednesday evening and filled out the follow-up paperwork. I think the only part that could hold us up would be our financial situation, we're making it, but it's a close thing, and one of the major requirements is to be self-sufficient. We'll see how it goes. I am excited though.
Jason also surprised me, because I know he was adamant about not taking anyone older than Alisabeth's age, but the real need they have is for sibling groups of two or more children and usually one is older and one is younger. After the woman who was doing the introductory class finished he told me he wanted to open our home for any age and especially for sibling groups.
We don't have much room, so they'll take that into account I'm sure, but I felt so strongly that we were meant to be there. It was a very cool experience. Not only that but the miracle of the night was that we didn't have a baby-sitter (because we had only received the email about the orientation that morning), so we took Alisabeth with us. Now, for those of you who know her, I'm sure you matched my cringe at that thought, but she was amazing. She sat quietly and colored for the entire hour and a half. the only time she disrupted at all was when I reached over to tickle her just a little bit. She firmly told me, "Don't! mommy, don't tickle me." The teacher stopped for a second and told us a little about her two year old and then went on. It was so neat to watch her concentrate on coloring every square inch of her papers!
I think that's the extent of our cool stuff. I'll try to keep better postings, but we don't have internet in the new place, so this may be the last one for a while.

The good the bad and the ugly.

2010-05-24T09:14:00.001-07:00

What you're about to see is my week in reverse because the stupid picture loader loaded them backwards :)
So to end up this week I had mad gastrointestinal problems. This condition is aggrevated by eating greasy foods and stress. . . So I know what you're asking yourselves, what on earth would cause this problem for me? I eat perfectly healthy foods (like a bowl of ice cream on Wednesday night, and Mac & Cheese with Nuggets and Corn on Saturday)
Plus, what have I got to stress about? (Like the financial worry of whether or not my husband will get enough hours to make our rent payment every month, or where we're going to live . . .)

Well, despite all of those things probably helping to build the mountain, the straw that broke the camel's back was on Thursday evening. My mom needed to work from home so Alisabeth and I decided to meet Jason at the Mall to play in their kid's area. . . and if we happened to pick up a Cinnabon on the way, well that would just make it all better :)

We got almost there when we decided not to go the last 100 feet. :)
This is a Saturn advertisement by the way. . . even though they're going out of business.

This is the other guy

They moved my car so that traffic could get through and put it in a nearby parking lot.
Both airbags deployed, much to my annoyance. It was gone before I even realized I'd been hit :)
Not only that but I got out, got my baby out, and limped away. As always I was worried about explosions, but there wasn't even anything leaking from her!

Poor baby. I have a strong feeling she's not coming back from this one.

For those of you on facebook you've probably had a chance to read my poem, for the many of you that see this but not that I'll repost it:
Ode to my baby:
You have carried my family for a long time,
To see you thus seems such a crime.
In serving: you were the example most fair,
It's hard to see you with such a tear.
You gave us your all, your everything!
Even when in mud you were wreathing.
Over hills, dams, streets, ice, snow and dirt roads,
Always you returned us to our humble abodes.
We can't thank you enough for giving your life,
Your loss will forever cut me as with a knife.

This marks the 4th accident in 4 years of marriage. . . Can we please be done now?
Just as an update - there were no serious injuries. Alisabeth came out with a slight burn from the car seat's straps and I came out with a jammed thumb and some cuts and bruises, but that's it. The other side seemed to fair the same. The little boy's hand was a little sore, but he was tired of the ice by the time the police reports were finally written.

As for the gastrointestinal issues, I'll let you know if it gets any worse. Worse would mean the need for surgery . . . Let's hope not.

Now, backtrack more in time: I feel like I already told you about Lissa's new swim suit, so I'll just post this picture. . . If I didn't say anything then I'll post a comment :)

Previous to this: We made the deal with our new LandLord. We'll be moving in the 3rd week of June. That gives him enough time to do the major repairs and then we'll be finishing up the minor ones. It's a large place. I forgot the camera last time we went to look at it, so maybe next time I go :)

On the up side, if they do end up totaling the car it could be an answer to an unspoken prayer. The money for the car would allow us to pay off some of our student loans and lower our monthly payment a significant amount. Meaning that Jason wouldn't have to stress about getting tons of hours each week. The other benefit would be that the insurance and gas reduction would also help us significantly. Besides that I could take a little bit of the money and get material for curtains, a new shower curtain cover and a couple other minor decoration items for the new place. I'm really excited about the new house. It's pretty big and the yard will give me a project to keep my busy while Alisabeth plays outside. :)
It's been a good week. Sunday topped it all off when we were able to go to the dedication of the newest temple. It is located in the Gila Valley, which is still 2 hours from us, but it is nice to have another temple so close. President Monson was here as well as President Eyring and they spoke, along with a few others.
It was a very cool experience.

Craziness

2010-05-19T07:49:00.000-07:00

This week has been a busy one, but at the same time I don't feel like I accomplished anything!
Alisabeth and I spent two full days looking for houses/apartments. I hated them all. No backyard, and no washer dryer, both things that I can't live without. So we bumped up the price range, thanks to a generous monthly donation from my mom and looked again. . .
Finally on Friday my mom suggested that we "have some fun" and go look at apartments/houses.
At that point I had given up on life, but I scrounged up some potentials and made some phone calls and set up 5 places to go look. Jeeze I should have started by taking her.
Every place we went to had a yard or great amenities. The worst, at the top of our price range was a town-home, all utilities included with a wading pool and covered play area. The only thing lacking from them was an in-unit washer/dryer, but that was easily overcome by everything else they had to offer. The other three potentials included a secluded little red-brick place behind a 1st Chiropractor. My mom and I felt a little nervous about that because there were at least 10 "Private Property" signs and all the makings of an abandoned trash yard behind it, however the yard was amazing, they had naturally growing grass, shade from some huge trees and enough room that my little girl would get exercise.
The next was another small home set FAR back from the street and surrounded by a few quiet neighbors. This one sported an even larger yard which wrapped almost all the way around the house. It also had the largest kitchen/living area, but the rooms were a bit small.
Finally we came to a young woman's house. She appeared to be a graduate student who was going overseas for a research assignment and needed to rent out her place for a year. The best part besides a yard: she had chickens. I was in love, however there was a lot of cactus and the yard wasn't really well maintained so there would be a bit of work involved.
Mixed in with all the house hunting was taking a friend's dog to the pound for their free spaying/neutering clinic and falling in love with the little homeless kittens. I want one so bad! Jason's mean though and says we can't afford a kitten. . . but a puppy would be nice.
Finally on Saturday I took Jason out to see the top three choices and we narrowed it down to 2.
Monday night we went and took Alisabeth to one of the two and met the owner. Apparently the junk area we were nervous about used to be an old tile factory that they were slowly working on, but kind of gave up on. There is no one else on the property and only one entrance, so we don't need to worry about anyone coming from the back side of the property (about 3 acres in total). The other house that they are going to be renting was in need of a few more repairs and we worked out a deal which will get us into the bigger of the two units with the same rent cost overall. Plus he has some other projects he wanted to get done, but hasn't had time to do. He seemed quite willing to negotiate for rent or payment, whichever we preferred.
Yesterday I called the other place to schedule a showing and it was already rented, so it looks like our decision was made for us :)
The best part is that the rent for this place is within our lower bracket, so we don't have to kill ourselves to pay rent. It will be tight, but it's doable, especially if Jason keeps improving in speed and the company can get him enough work to keep him busy!
That was my week. Jason's was a bit different.
He's still getting the ropes down at his new job. He enjoys it a lot, but apparently they don't have a lot of work and he's been struggling to find projects to keep himself busy. Not only that, but because he's on flat-rate he only gets paid for what it SHOULD take regardless of how long it DOES take, so he's lost a little bit of time when things haven't gone smoothly. He also found out yesterday that they have some rules that don't work in his favor.
He inspected a used vehicle and made suggestions for work that needs to be done. The policy he was told is that if you do the inspection the work comes to you, however, there was one part that he couldn't do, so instead of splitting the jobs and letting him have what he could do they shipped the whole thing over to a main-line tech. Then on top of that they don't pay him for the inspection time, so he basically spent an hour of his time and got nothing for it. That frustrates me a little bit. I think it's better that he's the one working there instead of me, because I wouldn't put up with cr** like that.
As for Alisabeth, the world still revolves around her. We are going to be starting swim lessons the first week of June, so we had to get her a new bathing suit (I looked at the tag and hers was a 24month tag, but most of her clothes are already 4T.)
And, I had to get a new suit too, because I don't know where mine is packed and it was 12 years old anyway. So we went SHOPPING!!
Can I just say that I was highly disappointed with the selection? I swear there were 10 racks of two piece things that didn't look big enough to wrap around me much less cover the important parts, and only 2 of real bathing suits! Not only that but the real ones were questionable as well, as if they were trying to save of fabric and weren't sure of the best way, so they just cut as many gaping holes in the suit as possible. Finally I found a couple of cute ones and we headed to the toddler section where I was astonished to find the same predicament. My two year old already had the option of a two-piece bathing suit, or one that had holes everywhere. It really made me shudder.
Jason also grabbed a kiddie pool that has been the delight of our little girl from that day forward.

Last but not least I was able to attend a Pampered Chef party this last week. Let's just say if we cook in Heaven, I know what kind of pans I'm using.

We also set ourselves (my mom and I) up to be hosts for a "Death by Chocolate" party in a few weeks, it's going to be a blast. My mom wants to dip anything we can find in chocolate, and really, how can that go wrong?
That's our week in a nutshell. I'm glad I finally got all this up here, I felt bad that I hadn't done it yet!

Fun Pictures

2010-05-05T10:57:00.001-07:00

As a follow-up to the last post I figured I'd add in all the fun pictures Jason has been taking these last few weeks: Isn't she gorgeous?

She loves wearing daddy's hats. . . and she looks so grown up in them!

She has just started this recently, they go in color order and all of the holes have to be filled. Silly girl.

Daddy told her to make a frowny face.

She has Jason's smile. Big and all teeth.

Jason's idea

She did this without any prompting! She was just sitting in the bath and got bored with playing I guess.

We painted toes this week. Now when she sees new people she sticks out her feet and says "I have toes!"
Normally she's got socks and or shoes on so they have no idea what she's talking about and simply nod their heads and reply "Yes you do!"

She's almost a pro at her bike now. She's even learned what it means to coast and not have to pedal downhill . . . lazy little slacker.

Gotta love the cute girl with the baseball cap.

10 things I've learned from Snow White

2010-05-05T10:27:00.001-07:00

So my daughter's favorite and only movie is Snow White right now. We watch at least part of it daily. Here's what I've learned by watching it over 50 times:
1) Animals can sense evil, even in disguise . . . but they're also willing to break into people's homes, so can they really be trusted?
2) Raccoons are really good at washing clothes, but squirrels and turtles aren't.
3) Even at a young age a woman will boss around any men she can find.
4) Animals will allow, and even encourage you to ride them as long as there is a young maiden in trouble.
5) Talking mirrors will say whatever it takes to cause contention.
6) It doesn't matter how long your wish is: if it's your time to go, it's your time to go.
7) It's okay for animals to walk all over your food as long as they're making it look prettier.
8) Hard labor will always bring excessive wealth, and a lot of jewelery.
9) If you're the most beautiful one in the land you can break whatever laws you like and no one will mind.
10) When going up against mythical creatures, never go where they excel. The queen would have never died if she had stayed away from rocks. They're DWARFS for heaven's sake!

These last two weeks have been a bit rough for me. We battled hard to find a good job and ended up with one that didn't pay near what I was hoping for. So I scaled back our home search and focused on cheap foreclosures. We finally found one this last week that was 33K. That right, 33K for the whole home. I set up an appointment to go look at it, and I also started contacting a few more loan officers to prepare and ask questions (the one we had been working with was giving a lot of restrictions that I didn't understand and I wanted a different opinion). While asking questions the loan officer happened to ask how Jason was being paid and upon being told that he was paid flat-rate (similar to commissions) she let us know that their company would need 2 years worth of income at flat-rate so that they could average it out and see an average amount of monthly income to verify the loan. I called the other loan officer back and asked if the process would be the same for him. After looking it up he said they might be able to do it on as little as six months, but yes, they also needed to average income.
So in frustration our home search ended. Now, instead of a $350/month payment for mortgage, fees and taxes, we're looking at a rental fee of about $575/month. Needless to say I was quite depressed.
I still am really bothered by it, but we're going to give ourselves another few months and then see where we're at. Jason is also looking for a second job or a better job because the company he's working for has failed to keep him busy for 6 out of the last 7 days, so even if he works as hard as he can he won't be getting enough work to get what we need to pay rent. All in all this graduation thing isn't working as well as I expected it to.

On the other hand Alisabeth is doing great. For some reason she's still really clingy and we spend part of every night convincing her that shadows aren't moving unless you move the light that is causing them. She is learning a lot more phrases and we've stepped it up on the counting side. We still haven't quite figured out letter sounds, but I want to get some flash cards to put up and hopefully that will help. We also went out ans splurged on some clearance dresses at Sears. (All of Alisabeth's are getting too small).
Here they are:

I'm going to put up a few more fun pictures from this week in a seperate post because I hate trying to get the pictures in order on this thing. :)

Back to motherhood.

2010-04-19T09:47:00.000-07:00

Tax season ended on a great note, I finished everything I was assigned and even finished a day early, so I was home before lunch time!
I really had a good time this year, my boss did a lot to help me prepare for the CPA exam, now I just need to do my part :)
This week also marked the one week anniversary of my husband's return and to celebrate my mom took Alisabeth over night and we went and stayed in a huge resort:

I took these two shots because the building in the distance beyond the parking lot is one of the buildings where rooms are. The main complex had ballrooms and restaurants and things like that, but there were about 8 - 2 story buildings that had the actual hotel rooms in them, and beyond that were the pools. They also had about 16 tennis courts and several buildings which made up the health and fitness area. We got lost several times, but I made sure to carry the map with me at all times, so we always found our way back.
I was so excited about this adventure because Jason had absolutely no idea what was going on. I made the reservations here because they had on-site racquetball courts. So we drove up here at check-in time, went and played for about 45 minutes (until we were both too sore to continue) (and both of my knees were turning purple :) ) and then we went back and got ready for dinner. Jason assumed we were staying at the hotel for eating. I hurried him along to the car and then we drove to the foothills mall. At this point I was stuck, I needed to get the martinellis over to the restaurant without him knowing. So I told him to go check the movie times:
"Go find out when the movie starts."
"Which movie"
I didn't even know what was playing. . . "You'll know it when you see it."
"Okay"
and off he runs. He calls me about 5 minutes later, as I was just walking back from the restaurant and says.
"It was how to train your dragon wasn't it?"
"Uh, yeah."
Then he tells me the times. I met up with him at this point and frown. "Hmm, none of those are quite right, we'll just come back later and decide then."
And I casually lead him around buying a few items from bed bath and beyond. Finally he mentions that he's a bit hungry. I ask him if he has any idea what he wants to eat and then casually lead him down the right direction.

Yep, we went to the melting pot. The punk couldn't eat his share so I was forced to eat twice as much chocolate at the end as I should have, it was a sin!
When we got home from our adventure on Saturday afternoon we immediately collected our little girl and went and spent the rest of the day at the Pima County Fair. It was a lot of fun.
It was sort of a test-run for San Diego. They have an amusement park, but I wasn't sure if it was going to be worth the entrance fee (if Alisabeth would enjoy it). Well, now we know. The only thing we're going to have to worry about will be saying "It's time to go."

She had a blast. We went on several rides, which Jason and I both laughed at because as children our families never spent the money for the tickets. We also saw all of the exhibits that existed. Jason even found an extensive section of old style engines that he drooled over for a while. He took lots of pictures too . . . but I'll spare you.
Actually it was quite interesting. They had an original washing machine, it was absolutely huge, it had to be an industrial model because I can't see how anyone could fit it in their house!
They also had some wood burning engines and a model of car for every year up to the 1950's or so. It was nice, but Alisabeth and I weren't interested enough so we left him behind and went to watch the seals.
The only disappointment was that we couldn't find the petting zoo. They have one every year, but for some reason we couldn't find it. We did find a lot of exhibits on solar water heaters and Jason found a company that will hook up the air conditioner to solar power, so we took a lot of business cards home.
All in all it was a great success.

Ahhhhhh. Relaxation.

2010-04-11T21:18:00.000-07:00

Well I gave up on this update after about 3 hours of working on it. For some reason I was having issues with the pictures. They weren't going where they should, so I figured it was time to finish it up now. :)

These first three are from the day Jason got home, on Sunday. . .

Finally, toward evening I just couldn't handle the clutter anymore.

Usually I reserve Sunday for the Lord but this was just too much to be ignored for another day!
It didn't take us long, but we got everything tucked and moved and put to where we could finally relax :)

The second exciting adventure came as I realized the temperatures began to peak in the 80's. I knew I probably needed new short-sleeved clothes for my daughter, so we went out and splurged a little. Then I forced her to take a photo shoot in her new outfits. . . as you can see she hated it.

All in all it was a pretty laid back week, counting down the days. . .
This week marks the end of tax season and the beginning of the hot and heavy hunt for where we're going to be for the rest of our lives :)
Jason has had 3 interviews so far and one offer. It's lower than I expected and lower than I'd like, but that may be our only option. Keep us in your prayers!

Easter Weekend

2010-04-04T10:40:00.000-07:00

I had a good week. We're coming to the end of tax season, so that's a mixed blessing. Good because Alisabeth is getting sadder and sadder as I leave in the mornings. The other day this is what I saw. . .

I was getting ready to leave and she knew it. I ended up going out the front door instead of this one while my mom distracted her with cartoons. I hate it. Of course I know it's not long lived. By the time I come home she could care less about me. She's caught up by that point in whatever she's playing.

We also had fun this week putting Alisabeth's hair into a new style. I thought it was cute, so don't dis.

I wanted to include these two so you can see what a cheesy little girl I have. This is the result of me saying "Smile for daddy.

I got the camera back just recently so of course whenever Alisabeth gets her hands on it strange things happen. We had a lot of fun. She loves to just click the button, so it's usually a million pictures of the floor or ceiling. This time we focused the button-clicking.

I also finally remembered to bring the camera with me to The Little Gym. It was great. I got a couple of videos and pictures, enjoy:

Lastly we had fun spending Easter in the world's way :)

It was a great week all around. I have enjoyed the extra time with her. I didn't work this weekend because it is Conference Weekend when I get to hear a prophet's voice. It's been nice and relaxing for both of us. Today we'll be heading to my dad's house for an Easter Lunch. Ahh the joy of family.

Jason's First Post

2010-04-04T08:20:00.000-07:00

This week has been filled with joy and frustrations. First the small frustrations, a cmopanion and I have been working on a vehicle all semester long (3months) rebuilding the engine! Well we started it last Monday Yeah it ran! So that was exciting. Unfortunately the clutch did not go on just right so it would not engage. So we had to take the transmission out to fix that. (good learning experience though)

Joy because I have one more week till I leave Rexburg, I am so excited. I graduate yeah!!! And I will be back with my Wife and daughter again. It has been very stressful and not fun at all.One more week to go phew glad this is over!!!!! Another great moment was to have our moving truck come this last Thursday, I had 5 elders from my ward come and help me pack. We were done in 2hrs. Funny Rexburg weather, it was bright and warm when we started, then after the heavy appliances were put on it started to snow with a fury (about 40mph winds). Then when we finished loading, the snow stopped. who would have figured. General Conference Saturday and Sunday ( where the Church meets for 5 two seesions and receive instructions from the Prophet and other General Authorities of the Church, ie... Primary, Young women, Young mens, and Relief Society the Church's women organzation. So far it has been very awe inspiring and I have greater desire to be more like Jesus Christ.

Well my wrists hurt so I'm done typing, till next time, if I ever do this again :-).

The little things

2010-03-28T12:22:00.000-07:00

Inspired by my good friend Nikki Weekes I would like to post a few of the little things.

My daughter woke up this morning and stretched one of her big stretches, then she turn to me (she was sleeping in my bed this morning) and with a giant smile said "The Sun is awake!"
Then she followed that outburst with "Hugs? Hugs?" and reached for me.

This is 2 things I am grateful for. The sun shining in my window reminds me that I have a bright future and a day of possibilities and potential.
A little girl with optimism and a cheerful countenance shows me that the future is in wonderful hands. This is a beautiful world we have to live on.

Other little things: My husband last night made a comment while we were typing across 1100 miles. At first, in my defensive and frustrated state of mind (Alisabeth had a hard night) I thought he was chastising me for something I had written. Instead he was consoling and showing that he understood my pain and was right there beside me.

My mom has graciously changed her life around to make our lives easier, taking time out of her work schedule so that we don't have to pay a baby-sitter so much, giving up her Saturdays and Friday nights so that I can work, and always asking to make sure that she isn't stepping on my toes as a mother, while still being willing to step in when it gets to be too much for me.

My mother-in-law who hear a badly worded plea and made time so that I could see how much she loved me. She cleared her whole busy schedule just so we could spend time at her house and enjoy each other.

My boss, who was willing to buy us all steak for lunch, even though we found out that the restaurant wasn't open that early. He is also constantly showering us with praise for our good work and encouraging words to get us to improve. He daily tries to show me the deeper parts of accounting which will help me succeed at a test that I am terrified to face.

My step-mother who, despite the hardships that she is facing in her own life and with her own blood relatives, always treats me like one of the family and has ALWAYS gone out of her way to make sure I was included.

An amazing cousin who constantly shows me she cares about our lives and wants to have a relationship even though we won't have the opportunity to meet face to face for a few years yet.

I am surrounded by astoundingly amazing people who have made my life a joy. There are so many little things that they do and each one makes me feel special and unique. So this post is dedicated to them and to the many others that I didn't mention, but who have been constant and firm in their friendship and love, Autumn, Crystal. . . I mean you too.

Adventure

2010-03-21T15:23:00.000-07:00

"Give it back! Give it back?!"

Imagine the above being said in a little sad 2-year old voice from a tired little girl. You would do almost anything to get 'it' back for her wouldn't you?
Ha!
After almost 2 hours at the zoo we were standing by one of the final scenes, two otters playing and swimming. These are her favorite animals, so we stood there for quite a while. She was tired by this point and it was past lunch-time. I asked if she wanted to get down to better see them. She said yes.
I placed her gently on the ground and continued to watch them play. Suddenly I noticed a little brown head beginning to poke through the gap between the leaning post I was on, and the rope barrier that she had been leaning against. She was actually trying to climb in with them .. .

For those who have been to the Tucson Zoo you may know why this was more of a problem than normal. If it were the monkeys I wouldn't have been so quick to respond. In fact earlier she had almost joined the zebras. For those who don't know the Tucson Zoo, let me explain. The otter exhibit is a very large and deep pool of water with a small land area on the far side. If my daughter had succeeded she would have been swimming in water that was deeper than I am tall. Previously she had also been running headlong toward the duckpond. Not very deep, but deep enough, and with her propensity to trip I swear I had a heart attack right there.
Anyway, back to the otters. As I saw her little head poke through my heart immediately jumped into my throat (not that she was in any danger at that point), and I began holding her down while my other hand reached under and around the leaning post to get a better and lasting hold on her. Then I began to kneel to talk to her. Suddenly I saw a small white and pink object leave her hand and a small splash on the other side of the net. I stopped dead in shock. . . was that . . .? Did I just see . . . ?
Children all around us were suddenly squeeling with laughter and delight as both otters came to investigate a new toy which had been introduced to their habitat. They nuzzled the shoe and bumped it around. I stood and watched helplessly for a second, still trying to fathom how she'd done it. . .
"A shoe! A shoe mommy!"

My dear friend Autumn willingly headed toward the front of the park to get the attention of someone who could help.
Meanwhile Alisabeth and I stood and watched them play. They dunked the shoe, rolled it around in the water (it was floating 1/2 submerged by now) and kept on going. New little children were coming now who hadn't been a party to the excitement and the sound of "Mommy, there's a shoe in there" was heard every few seconds.
Parents were looking around in amusement for the child with one shoe and then grinning that "Oh how embarrassing, I'm glad it was you and not me." smile at me.
After about 5 minutes Alisabeth started reaching toward the exhibit and then looking at me, "want shoe mommy."
"I'm sorry honey, you can't have it, you gave it to the otters and they don't know how to give it back."
More children came and the chorus of "there's a shoe!" started again.
Tear welled up in my over-tired and over-hungry child's eyes. "Give it back! Give it back!"
We walked over to the nearest bench and sat down to wait. Finally Autumn came back and we left her to wait a little longer while we went and got some food in my poor child's belly.
Autumn later told me that after they had fished it out and handed it to her a little girl asked why she had thrown it in. The mother, with great understanding responded "Her little girl probably threw it in like you did when you were 2."

Other than that it's been a pretty boring week. My motivation slipped during the middle of it, but I still managed to get everything essential done, so that's okay. I had my first flop as far as dinners go (I only really cook 1 a week). I tried to make ham-bean soup. I used the white beans my mother has had in her food storage since I was a teenager, but I didn't allow them extra time to soak in water, I just followed the directions, so they were nice and crunchy. The flavor of the soup would have been great except for that little problem. Ah well, can't be perfect all the time right :)

As an update to last week Alisabeth went to bed really well for the first half of this week. Just when I thought the new method was working great she reverted and we had two or three of the worst nights yet, but yesterday and Friday night were wonderful so I think maybe she's just a little crazy and I'm not doing anything wrong. . . anyone want to back me up on that :)

Work is going great. I love taxes.
I don't think I ever told the story of my grandmother's birthday card. Excitedly I ripped open the envelope on my birthday, glad that my loving grandmother had remembered me only to find that it contained her social security statement and her retirement statement with a small note "Here's the stuff for my taxes, can you send me a copy of whatever you send to the government."
Gotta love my family.
My boss is not stressed at all this year (and with three weeks to go, that is saying A LOT), so we had a blast on Saturday reviewing a really complex return together. I did all the work on Friday (about 6.5 hrs) and then Saturday morning I came back and we went over it together. I had missed a lot of minor details, but the whole process was hilarious as we watched his taxes first shoot up when I missed some income amount and then plummet back down when we found three extra deductions. All in all the guy ended up owing $0. That's what I like to see.

Jason got a few calls this week in response to a flurry of resumes that he sent out. Several companies in Tucson seemed excited to interview him. Whether it's because of his experience, or because they're desperate for people I don't know, but I was pleased either way because it relieved my stress about him being able to find a job.
In other exciting news on his front! He is taking two classes this semester which required the rebuild of an entire engine system. The engine performance class and the transmission class. In both classes he has got the completed thing back into the vehicle and will be starting it up on Monday to make sure it's working right. With cross-ed fingers he may be done with the one and only project of the semester. Then the last few weeks will be doing minor leak checks, flushes and inspections. That would mean the major stresses are done. Wish him luck.

I really did a lot!

2010-03-13T14:32:00.001-08:00

I read through last week's post with fondness. I was in a great mood when I wrote it.
I didn't get to the fans like I promised I would, but I did better than that. My mom decided that she wanted to organize her garage so she went online, found some rolling shelves that she liked and I went to the store and bought her 4 of them (because I work right down the street from Costco.)
The next day was my day off so I put together the first one (I didn't do more than that in case she didn't like them.)
I loaded it up with all of the household goods she had. (1 full shelf plus 3 feet in front of it, all stacked and disorganized) then I went through the other shelves that line the walls of her storage shed. . . I mean garage and pulled out all of the other household items that I'm sure she didn't know she had.
She ended up with a total of 2 4-packs of the large iodized salt containers if that tells you anything about her organization skills.
She also had about 18 different packages of various types of lightbulbs. (All indoor and all the same wattage)
I filled the entire 6' by 5' space, but it was nicely organized. This cleared out an area of about 8' by 4' along the back of the garage. It was an amazing change.
Then Thursday I built the second one. With this accomplishment I cleared out almost everything else that was cluttering the right side of the garage and brought a little bit of order to the left side. I emptied one of the left-side shelves completely, but my mom says she wants it arranged differently, so I'm sure that will change.
Then today she and I built the third shelf and completely emptied the right side of the garage, shelves and boxes included. there was a decent amount being sent to the DI, but, sadly, most of the items stayed :)

It looked a lot better. She shelves are imposing, but the idea was that they are on rollers, so when not in use they can be compacted into a space of about 5' deep and only about 5' wide. It leaves a lot more room than she had before. Plus now we can tackle the left side of the garage and see if we can whip it into shape. The last shelf is still nearly 1/3 empty, so there's plenty of space to organize better.

As for work it was a good week. We have on client that is amusing me greatly, but I finished the business part of their work on Friday, so all I have left is their individual returns so it shouldn't be too bad. Sadly they use QuickBooks for their personal finances as well as their business, but they don't really sort the expenses properly so I basically have to go through every transaction and try to see if it's something deductible or some sort of income item that I need to worry about. . .
Everything is going very well this tax season, we're not really stressed at all yet, and my boss says he's getting about the same amount of revenue as last year, so that's a good sign.
I will probably start working a little more after this next week just because it's 1 month until the deadline and it's crunch time.

Alisabeth is doing well too. We enrolled in a mommy-and-me tumbling class on Thursday mornings and it is so fun to watch her learn and love it. She is so eager to try and to do. She has learned how to balance on one foot, how to do a tummy roll around a bar and how to walk the balance beam. The teacher is great. Apparently he has at least two small ones at home and his focus is getting the parents to understand how to exercise their children's muscles correctly. Each week focuses on a different area of the body and he starts by explaining to the parents why that area is key and the excercises that we're going to do. He doesn't expect or demand the kid's full attention and his directions and "focus" time is really limited so this allows them the freedom to be themselves with the structure of a class. Hopefully this will help her learn the skills of focusing on and listening to an instructor when I'm not around. Usually there's at least one child that is all over the gym during the sitting time, but he doesn't get bothered by it, and he encourages the mothers, who are usually embarrassed and scolding, to just keep involved and show them that the fun is happening with the group.
They have a new schedule each week and I REALLY love the program. It's one of the medium-priced ones that I found when I was researching, but it seems worth it so far.
Alisabeth loves it, she has mentioned it several times before and several times after going. She calls it "thumblin" though we really don't do much of that, it's more like structured play.
The other exciting thing we did this week was a play-day at a friend's house. Crystal has been my best friend since she came home from her mission which was shortly before I left for mine. She's been great to me since I got home and organized a day out at her house (which recently emptied out when her parent's moved out to Utah). We had loaded baked potatoes and hotdogs. The kids played really well for several hours inside and out. All in all it was a very fun day. I hope we do it again sometime.
The only battle we've had is bed-time. If anyone has any ideas let me know. She plays hard all day and does great, she drinks a glass of warm milk, lays down and we sing some songs and after about 3 I say "Okay, all done, sleep well."
Then she goes ballistic. Suddenly she is screaming and crying and fussing, she won't stay in bed and there's no way for me to stop her from opening the door besides standing there and holding it. Getting angry or yelling doesn't work. I even tried (in my desperate attempts after 2 hours of this) laying on top of her enough so that she couldn't move around in hopes that she wouldn't enjoy it and therefore would not want to get out of bed. Yeah, that didn't work. She seemed to be content to lay there as long as I was with her, but as soon as I stood up she went insane again.
So seeing this I understood that she was craving more time with me so I instituted the last half hour before bed as a time for us to just be together and I hoped that maybe this would fix the issue, but after another 4 days of this I haven't had any luck yet.
My current answer? I sit outside her door with my book and read while holding the door-knob until she stops crying and I can be fairly certain she's not going to get out of bed again. This takes about 45 minutes but it's a lot faster than the 2-3 hours that I was dealing with before. I have no idea what the issue is, and I have tried everything from soft words to loud and hard ones. I can bet she'd be happy to go to sleep with me laying there beside her every night, but I don't want to be that mom. I want her to be able to put herself to sleep, and she used to do it really well. It's a stage, it's only a stage.

Jason is doing well too. He signed up for a few more of his ASE tests and is studying hard for them. His classes are going well, and he was recently asked to serve in the temple until he leaves in April so his job is to sit at the front entrance and be a greeter and scan everyone's recommends. He says it's really peaceful and that he gets a lot of time to read the scriptures (he's there for the later shift on a Tuesday night, so I guess there aren't a lot of people going.)
He has also been working on his two cars. One is about the size of his hand and the other is full-size. They're both going well. He's going to put something like $100 more into the full-sized toy to get it in better shape for when he moved back down here to me. Then we should be able to sell it. With the money from that he'll buy a new toy. :)

My Birthday week

2010-03-07T21:09:00.000-08:00

So last week a few days before my birthday I must have been having a bad day. People kept congratulating me on my upcoming day and they were obviously more excited about it than I was. I was not looking forward to my mother's plans, and my husband kept asking me if I'd gotten his card yet which annoyed me. All of this led up to the actual day. I still can't figure out why I was in such a mood, but when the actual morning hit I was a different woman :)
It started out with Alisabeth sleeping until 9am. After we got up we made breakfast and relaxed most of the morning. My mom took Alisabeth for most of that time and allowed me to enjoy a nice relaxing shower and smell my bouquet of three colors of my favorite flower from my husband (purchased and put in a vase by my mother still in the cellophane wrapping)
At about two thirty I suddenly realized what time it was and tried to get Alisabeth into bed. As I came out from putting her down my mother had left to pick up the baby sitter and her friend Susan had arrived with her daughter Bella.
Needless to say Alisabeth's sixth sense kicked in and she was having none of that boring nap stuff, but that wasn't my problem today so I just told the baby sitter that if she wanted to try to get her down after Bella left she was welcome to it.
We went to the pedicure place and spent an hour there laughing and talking. After this we rushed across town and were 15 minutes late to being able to see Alice in Wonderland so we bought tickets for the next showing (sadly not in 3D) and called the restaurant to change our reservation to 7.
Then we went shopping and my mom treated me to some new. . . I'll edit here for our male viewers.
Alice in Wonderland turned out to be a lot better than I had anticipated. Tim Burton is sometimes a lot bit wierd to me, so I was nervous, but it turned out to be very well done. After we got home the babysitter mentioned that she had seen it in 3D and hadn't been very impressed, so it was just as well that we didn't.
Then we went to a new restaurant for me. Aparently everyone knows it but me, it's called The MeltingPot.
It is a fondue restaurant, and my first glance at the menu pricing told me I would never be coming back, but after going through the whole experience I am well pleased :)
Our first course was a spinach and artichoke cheese dip. Oh MAN was it good. For those who have tasted this dip you know that sometimes it goes right and other times you don't want to be within a mile of it, but this one was SPOT ON!
We had barely scraped the fondue pot clean when that was whisked away and replaced with an amazing salad. I at the whole thing and would have been delighted for another bowl.
The third course could have been a little better as far as the fondue sauce we chose, I'll definitely try a different one next time, but the meats were well spiced and the side sauces (especially my favorite flavor of teriyaki) were perfect.
After we had finally devoured everything we could hold (did I mention that you can refil the plates on anything you want. We didn't use this option, and I don't see how many people could, but I thought it was a nice feature), our table was again cleared.
When she came back this time she was carrying a plate of all sorts of desert delights. One included a small birthday candle for me to blow out :)
There were 12 types of chocolate to choose from for the final course. We chose the turtle dip. Chocolate, caramel and nuts. The items to dip into it :Strawberries, cheese cake, rice krispie treats, chocolate and regular marshmellows, fudge brownie chunks, bananas, apples, and I think there was something else but I can't remember. It was beyond good.
Then we went home where my daughter was delighted to see me (again, a miracle).

All in all it was a wonderful week. (Did I mention that we got our income tax refund?)

Work is going great for me. I love that my boss is making me do research, not only has this improved my skills in that area, but I am learned an incredible amount of information. We are keeping up with him quite well considering we both only work 3 days a week. (We being his middle son who works for him and myself, him being our boss.)
Alisabeth is doing well too. We missed the tumbling class this week because for some reason I thought it was at 10:15 and when I double checked at 9:00 I found out it was at 9:15 and we were both still in pajamas.
We did, however, go the playground this week and met a few other mothers. Strangely every time I go there is at least one two year old who's birthday is in October, it's kind of creepy, but I just go with it :)
The other exciting thing is that I should be done cleaning all of my mother's fans this week, they were black and now they're white and it's such a pretty sight.

Today has been raining beautifully. I'm quite glad, but it's made the roads quite soggy, especially where I have to go off-roading to see my dad. :) We went today and I got pulled to the left or right quite a bit on the road outside his house. I enjoy it, because I love to feel the power of 4-wheel drive kick in, but at the same time I'm always nervous that we're going to get stuck :p

Jason is doing well too, now, in his last semester, he's finally figured out that studying will improve his quiz scores. :) Love you honey.
He's also being well cared for by everyone back there so that brings me a lot of peace (I know he's not going to waste away from mal-nourishment). thanks for that everyone in Idaho.

Oops

2010-03-02T15:22:00.000-08:00

I forgot why I named the last post like I did.
Alisabeth and I watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang this morning while I was cleaning. There was one song in there that was very poignant and I thought I'd share the lyrics:

Every bursted bubble has a glory!
Each abysmal failure makes a point!
Every glowing path that goes astray,
Shows you how to find a better way.
So every time you stumble never grumble.
Next time you'll bumble even less!
For up from the ashes, up from the ashes, grow the roses of success!

From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success!
(spoken)Yes I know but he wants it to float. It will!
For every big mistake you make be grateful!
Here, here!
That mistake you'll never make again!
No sir!
Every shiny dream that fades and dies,
Generates the steam for two more tries!
(Oh) There's magic in the wake of a fiasco!
Correct!
It gives you that chance to second guess!
Oh yes!
Then up from the ashes, up from the ashes grow the roses of success!

From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success!
Disaster didn't stymie Louis Pasteur!
No sir!
Edison took years to see the light!
Right!
Alexander Graham knew failure well; he took a lot of knocks to ring that
bell!
So when it gets distressing it's a blessing!
Onward and upward you must press!
Yes, Yes!
Till up from the ashes, up from the ashes grow the roses of success.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

2010-03-02T14:57:00.001-08:00

Two cool facts to start:
Did you know cookie monster was born in october of 1969?
Secondly did you know that though he can't remember his name he thinks it might have been Sid?

Also I need to start by sticking my tongue out at Michelle. . . with all the love in my heart.

This week was a good one, it was also quite fast. I didn't work as many hours, but that's no big thing now because we can't get into a house before the deadline for the federal grant so we may as well take our time now :)
This means that I spent a lot more time with my 2 year old who is currently subconsciously blaming me for the upheaval of her life. She is great with everyone else I'm told but with me she is being extra obstinate and even mean at times. Guess that's what I get for being her rock. It's so interesting that when we need to lash out we often choose the ones we know will never turn away from us. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

Also this week I had an eye exam. I go through the phases. I get glasses, spend the crap-load of money that it takes to do that and then use them for a few months before choosing to stop the addiction. A few years later I repeat the cycle. Since I spend most of my work hours reading small print from the IRS website I've started getting headaches so I figured it was time. The glasses I chose are really cute, and the whole experience was amazingly pleasant.
I came prepared with toys and books, but as every mother knows the kids will never actually play with them when you are out in public. We got to the mall a little after 1:30, my appointment was at 2 but I wasn't quite sure where it was so I decided to find it first. It took us about 15 minutes to walk the 50 feet to the elevator and press the button to go down. (Not because she was being a pill but because we had plenty of time so I try not to rush her or me if I don't have to. We're both much happier that way).
I filled out the paperwork while she pointed out the colors of the chairs and counted them (she still skips 5. She knows where it goes if you quiz her, but she won't say it in the line-up).
Then it appeared we would be waiting a few minutes so I decided to deflect the antsi-ness by distracting her with the line-up of kids glasses. She was delighted to try them on and we spent about 10 minutes doing this while we waited. Finally the lady came around the corner and i thought, "Oh good that was fast"
Ha!
Anyway I finished whatever it was she wanted from me and still no doctor appeared. By this time the antsiness had started to kick in and one of the ladies looked like she was going to be one of those people that every young mother fears, the ones that scolds your child while glaring at you as if you can't control your own kid.
So I took her out to look at the dresses for a bit (we were right next to the little girl's area). This was sufficient to cover the time needed but caused a bit of a fuss when it was time to go into the doctor's office.

As we walked into the office and they did the glaucoma tests and all of that fun stuff Alisabeth watched in fascination. She knew we were at the "doctor for mommy's eyes" so she wasn't at all nervous like she tends to get at her own doctor's appointments.
Soon enough her little hands began to creep out, but we were moved to another room before this could really take effect. This room was filled with even more expensive machinery and lots of things she shouldn't touch. (Can you tell I was a bit over-nervous about this trip?)
The doctor was an older man and when we first got in there he made some crack comment about her breaking something so my stress level shot up again thinking, "how am I going to control her and get an eye exam done?"
My fears were all excessive. She was fascinated again to watch the doctor doing all of his tests. At one point she climbed up on my lap trying to see exactly what the big machine on my face was for, and what the doctor had been flipping and turning. He obliged her by putting a picture strip into the reading chart and asking her what pictures she could see. She did a pretty good job. The only one she didn't recognize was a cake with 3 candles on it. She got well beyond the 20/20 line.
He also did a couple of tests where he drew a big E and then turned it in different directions and tried to get her to tell him which way the legs went. She didn't really grasp that one but he said it was a good one for me to do with her.
He also did some visual checks on her making sure her eyes were focusing/unfocusing correctly. He broke up each section of my eye exam by doing these things with her and in this way pretty much covered the whole session so that she didn't get curious enough to get into any of the equipment.
The next part I was dreading. We selected several frames while the lady who was helping me also picked out a few frames for Alisabeth to try and showed her the mirror. That went well, and as soon as we sat down, before I could even reach for the bag of goodies the woman pulled out a small pad of paper and a pen and had Alisabeth drawing. She drew the entire time we were working out the details. The lady even made comments on her "lion-kitty" and her "ocopus"
As we walked out of that store all I could think was "Thank you God for sending me to this store so that all of my fears would be unfounded."
After that we were able to go play at the food court and relax.

The rest of the week is a blur. Somewhere in there I had choir practise, but that's about it. I need to get in touch with the rest of my family, I'm sure they think I'm horrible. I've been here two weeks and haven't left the house once when I didn't have to. Well that's not true, I went up to Mesa to the temple this last weekend and had a great time. A couple from the church watches everyone's children while they go to the temple for the 2 hours. It was a great opportunity for me.
I feel so guilty about leaving alisabeth with other people. I know it has to be done but I don't think I could ever do it full-time. I'm greatful that my husband is willing to be the sole-breadwinner and make whatever sacrifices are needed in that area to make sure we have enough to survive because I want to be home with my kids! I can't stand to be gone for most of the week. (See if I still say that when I've done it for six months :p).
That's about it for this week. Not exciting sorry. Don't have an hobbies of projects, they're all packed and in Rexburg.

Seriously? / Surprise!!

2010-02-20T07:48:00.000-08:00

I kept thinking throughout this week that I needed to get another post up so that my dearest and lovliest cousin wouldn't think I was slacking again :)
Then I realized it hadn't even been a week yet and I tried to relax. Even my boss says it feels like it's been longer.
Tucson is going well.
I was able to return the fan and walls in our room and bathroom to their natural white color, and my next goal is the kitchen area. My mom has a bunch of high nooks that are . . . not their original white color.
Work is also going well. I've been doing a lot of research and it's been really fun and interesting. It's amazing how much they don't have time to teach you in school.
My boss has been great with allowing a flexible schedule and for that I'm really happy. I think I've got the schedule down now though, so hopefully we won't have to change it all up again.
Monday I started at noon, but that was WAY too late to start. I was too anxious that morning. My mom adjusted her work schedule so that on MWF she gets off earlier so that she can come home and take care of Alisabeth for me, so I called the baby sitter and asked if she wouldn't mind moving the time up. Wednesday was a bit of a weird schedule I think I got in by 11:00 but that wasn't right either. Yesterday I got in at 10 and that seemed perfect. I got in 10 hours of work and still got home with enough time to relax a bit before I went to sleep.
As for the small munchkin she seems to be taking everything in style. I've noticed that if I am not home to put her to bed she wakes up a bit earlier than normal calling for me, but she seems to calm down and go back to sleep if she hears my voice. On Thursday she came out and snuggled up next to me and went back to sleep. It was really nice.
She also had a really fun experience this week. I have been wanting to try her out in tumbling classes for a while because she just has so much energy so we went to one this last week. It was a lot of fun. There were 4 other boys in the class, all her age-group. The instructor was really good. He had activities every 5 minutes for the whole 45 minute session. The gym was equipped with a balance beam (extra wide), a mini climbing wall (with a slide attached to the other side) and even/uneven bars. There was also a lot of padded areas and places for them to run and jump. The instructor also showed me how to help her gain confidence on the balance beam. She loved everything. At first she was a bit shy, but after about 5 minutes of watching the 4 boys running in every direction she began to join them.
I really enjoyed the experience and she seemed to love it, so once we get settled a bit more I think we'll definitely invest in that experience for her.
That's about all of the excitement that we had here in Tucson. I was invited over to dinner by one of my best friends and we had a little bit of time to catch up and enjoy each other before I had to drag Alisabeth away screaming in such a loud voice that I saw several curtains pushed aside as I strapped her into the car for the ride home.

And now, the addition:
After writing this on Saturday I went through the normal routine, Alisabeth wouldn't go to sleep until midnight, woke up early to get a pot roast in the crock-pot and give a ride to a friend to church, and then fell asleep exhaustedly during her nap, which she fought for about 1/2 an hour.
After I groggily woke up to make it choir practice I decided to give a shout out to my husband. I knew he was in the car when he answered, but I couldn't imagine where he would need the car to go to on a Sunday evening (all of our friends live within 100 feet of us)
So I asked him where he was . . . the reply?

"About 2 hours outside of Tucson"

So my big surprise this week was getting to see my husband. . . it's at the expense of a day of work and 2 days of classes, but hey. . . I'll take it.

Here are his additions:
"The transmission we're working on is all back together, but one of the shafts sticks up about an inch above the case (it should be flush with it). We took it apart twice and when you move them up and down you can feel it bottom out on the metal washer. We checked it twice and even the teacher checked it and said it feels good, so he finally said "We'll leave it till Monday, when we have fresh minds." "
(Of course my husband won't be there so. . . )

He also sold the Mitsubishi for the original cost plus the parts and time he'd put into it. Then a friend gave him a new car for the cost of registration. This one has a few minor problems that Jason knows how to fix so he should be able to turn this one around for a much better profit :)

"I'm almost done with the model car that I received for Christmas, I've even decided to put the stickers and decals on this time, so it's looking pretty good.
I think that's it, school's been really good. . . life is going well."

Back. . . Home?

2010-02-13T12:50:00.000-08:00

I find myself conflicted as I write this.
We are finally back in Arizona, and as promised the weather is gorgeous. We have blue skies, shorts on and the doors and windows open to let the cool breeze in. Everything I wanted. . . right?
At the same time my mother asked me, excitedly, "Who is the first person you're going to tell that you're back?"
I just looked at her blankly, not understanding her enthusiasm. Who would I tell? I hardly know anyone here anymore?
After 3.5 years away I'm going to have to learn who everyone is again. Besides family there wasn't anyone dying to see us, or waiting with baited breathe for us to come home.
I've got lots of people to catch up with, and lots of old friends to look up, but sadly, with tax season and single parenthood for the next two monthes I doubt I'll be able to do much of that either.
Can you tell I'm depressed?

On the positive end of the spectrum we had a great trip down. Hardly any bad weather and Alisabeth was amazing. She conked out the first day with no issues and slept quite well until we stopped for gas two and a half hours later. Then on Friday she stayed awake for the whole 8 hr trip but was amazing with hardly any complaints.
I got her bed together yesterday (Friday) night and made plans for this morning and then we both crashed. (She was so tired that she fell asleep on the way home from the store, woke up when I got her out but went back to sleep when I put her down to change her diaper and get her in pajamas. When I finished changing her she lugged herself into the closet (which has become her small bedroom) and by the time I got the milk in to her about 10 seconds later she was dead asleep.
Today we woke up at our normal time and started really getting down and dirty. I pulled out the vacuum, rearranged the bedroom and unpacked everything we had brought, then started scrubbing the walls. (After being on a cleaning spree at my apartment I couldn't just sit around looking at my mom's dust bunnies)

Oh, by the way I have to give a shout out to my husband who packed the car for us, he did an amazing job even finding safe places for my four plants. However, after we checked out of the hotel in Hendersen, NV I tried to duplicate his efforts and before we could drive down the road to the gas station two of the plants had already fallen over. You're amazing honey! (I won't mention who the crazy driver was at the time :p)

I wish I had taken a few before/after pictures of the apartment. I never thought of the walls/doors as dirty until I got up close to them, but I was amazed to see that they were in fact still white and pristine once cleaned. Instead I've included a couple of family shots right before we left and one priceless one.

This last one was taken on one of our last gaming nights at our friends house. While we were busy killing monsters and destroying aligator-men the babies were awfully quiet in the back room. On investigation this is what Jason found. All three of the toddlers looked like this. . . She's wearing black pants by the way.
Evidently they found a large container of baby powder and were determined to dress up for halloween. . . I think she did a pretty good job!

Well, I start work on Monday and that begins day 1 of the waiting time to start the home-loan process. They said they needed at least one month's worth of income in order to evaluate our potential. Hopefully they'll approve us because that gives me one more month to find a home and get the process started. I have to be able to put in a hard offer before April 30th so that we can qualify for the federal money, and that would mean a new washing machine and money for potential repairs/new home expenses. Pray for us if you can. There are A LOT of homes in our price range on the market right now, and most of them are move-in ready, so all I need is a bank to believe in us!
Jason is doing well too. I'll have to have him do his own posts for the next couple of months since I don't know all of the cool news in the great white north.

. . . Another Update

2010-01-26T22:08:00.000-08:00

I know I already blogged tonight but after Alisabeth went to sleep Jason and I played one of our favorite games and I had to add a couple of pictures:

This is the right way to shuffle Killer Bunnies :)

Update

2010-01-26T17:23:00.000-08:00

I wanted to include this just to show my mother that her presents weren't wasted :) These are really cute little clips but the main pictures on the package only show them being used for full up-dos. They work well for more than that though.

This week was a good one, in fact, it's been really great. I've worked really hard to get into the whole "mother" role and just focus on being a stay-at-home mom. Alisabeth partnered with me in my efforts and made sure that there was ALWAYS something to clean up. I have vacuumed at least 3 times in the last 7 days :)
I have also done at least 2 loads of dishes a day. . . which is unusual, but I think I've finally caught everything up and we should be back on track. As for the laundry, I've been keeping up on that pretty well, so no change there, but I'm considering taking on the additional challenge of keeping the bed made daily. . . I haven't started yet. . . but I'm considering it :) With our bed it's easy for a while, but after about 4 days the mattress has moved enough that the four corners of the mattress cover come undone and then it's impossible for it to look good anyway. I guess that should be a sign that we need to get a better mattress cover, but we'll have to wait on that one.
I've also been doing really well on my goal to pack 2 boxes a day. I've packed pretty much everything we don't use daily, so now I'm working on the hard cleaning. I did the fridge last week. I finished the stove yesterday. Sometime this week, (maybe tomorrow since I don't need the stove) I'll pull both the stove and the fridge out of their holes so I can deep-clean under them. My last big chore will then be the blinds which get absolutely glued with dust over the course of a few years. I'm thinking I'll wait 2 more weeks on those and make my mother do them when she gets here. . . after all, she claims she's coming to work, so this will just be the ultimate test :)
Jason is doing well in school. He tells me about his classes daily. The one that irritates me the most is the Business management class. They are currently discussion HR issues, especially those regarding discrimination. I am absolutely and utterly disgusted with that issue, so every day he comes home and explains their latest articles and the class discussion that goes with it, and I get all hot under the collar and boil for about an hour and then I calm down and forget about it for two days. Ah the joys of modern living.

We also had a really cool experience yesterday. In every ward there is one or more people asked to be "ward missionaries" Their role is to help missionaries and that work. We don't have missionaries, and being in a church-school setting there aren't any non-Mormons around, so instead they organized an outing to the visitor's center at the temple in Idaho Falls. We went and listened to a message about the Savior and all that He has done for us, and then we watched a fairly recently made movie about the beginnings of our church and the testimony of Joseph Smith about what he saw and learned about Christ's desire for all of us to come unto Him. It was really a great experience. We then had cookies, came home and put Alisabeth to bed.

I am also currently planning a couple of parties for the next couple of weeks, baby-showers, birthday parties and even a Mary Kay party. I don't know how I get roped into these things, but there ya go. They should all be a blast.

We went on a shopping trip to gather the supplies for the baby shower and I ended up getting some nail polish for the little animal. I couldn't choose which one I liked more so I got these 2. Alisabeth actually sat still and blew on her fingers and spent more time than I had expected. . . Congratulations mom, it looks like you've got your Spa mate right here :)

My husband is amazing!

2010-01-18T09:43:00.000-08:00

I was left alone in my room and woke up to the sound of an empty house. When I came to I headed for the shower. Half-way through I heard a little animal squeel in the front room and knew that my husband had brought her home.
I thought nothing of this, but when I came out of the bathroom this was the second thing I saw. . . Isn't he amazing?!
They're absolutely beautiful, and the last ones the florist had in stock. Gotta love fate :)

Coo!!

2010-01-16T13:29:00.000-08:00

We were going to go to the temple today, but the wait to do anything was over an hour, and I had time constraints (a surprise birthday party for Jason), so we decided to postpone.
Instead we came home and used the time we would have been there to do family history at home. . . I got addicted again.

The church put together a new on-line database. Anyone can use it, and I haven't yet because I've been lazy (I hate trying to learn new technology).
Anyway I finally gave in and went on and started playing around with it. At first I was way frustrated because it was missing a lot of information that I already had found. Then I tried uploading my information and got all kinds of errors (I was trying to give it too much information)
Anyway after about 30 minutes everything came together and suddenly I was surrounded by information! I was immediately able to find some things that I hadn't come across yet, and the best discovery yet?
I found the birth parents of my great-grandmother on my father's side. I had her adopted parents and all of the information related to them and their children, but I had continually been frustrated when I tried to find out where she had come from. Luckily for me, someone else in her family had been keeping track and I found her real parents and was able to make the biological link I had been looking for for years! I love technology!

Family history is so cool. I love to learn who I came from. I really wish I had more stories about my family. (Hint, hint, hint!)

If anyone wants to send a few good memories of those who have departed, or wants to tell me about those who are still here I would LOVE to hear about it!
Anyway, on to the surprise party. :)

Don't Panic!

2010-01-08T20:31:00.001-08:00

So there was a little accident today.

I wouldn't worry too much about it though, the candle-warmer and scent wax will be fine.

I was trying my best not to shake it while I unplugged it so that I could empty it out and change it for the company that would be arriving in a matter or minutes. . . That was a bad idea. In my rush it went everywhere and now I have to clean my whole bathroom tomorrow :)
Ah well, at least dinner went really well. We polished off about 6lbs of meat along with rice, lettuce, tomatoes, sauce, 16 tortillas, and about 2 lbs of cheese. It's the first time in our feeding history that we haven't had leftovers to speak of. I was pretty impressed with our guests. They will definitely be receiving a return invitation :)

Wow

2009-12-18T20:14:00.001-08:00

Let's start this week by a look at my teenage daughter :) She's so adorable since she found her pockets. This is an unposed picture. She does it all the time with these particular pants.

Next we'll move to the reason for this week's title:

Jason threw me a "surprise" graduation party from my mom. The cake was from them and the girl posing next to me in the second picture did my hair. I thought it was quite cute :)
That was last week sometime. Today we just got home from the actual Business College graduation Convocation. It was very cool.

The lady was letting us go a little to fast so she made my row wait for about 5 minutes before we could get up and join the line. Once I got up there it was very cool. My name was announced and I shook the hands of people I've never met before and then the head of my department was there and all of my professors were there and then I felt like it was real. They called me by name, shook my hand and gave me warm and real congratulations before I stepped down. Jason broke the rules and was standing by the piano to get the picture of me with my diploma. I posed all pretty like and only realized afterward that I was holding the darn thing upside-down. Luckily he got another shot later and I corrected my error :)

The look on my face in the first picture is because I just took off my cap and my hair was so static-y I didn't know what to do. I spit on my hand and tried to get it back down. . . gotta love spit.

This was a great experience. The speakers talked about our role as we move forward. The need for us to remember that God helped us through and to use what we have learned to help Him in His work. They also reminded us to be humble. The whole thing was fairly quick, but it was long enough to help it sink in. I have actually graduated. I made it! I feel awed and grateful to so many people for this moment. I have had so much support from family and friends. I just wanted to thank you all. Everyone who would be reading this has contributed to my ability to succeed here. So thanks.
School, especially this school, has been an amazing experience. I am changed. I am thrilled and happy, but mostly I am humbled and grateful. Once again, thank you all for helping me.

Graduation Choir

2009-12-18T14:52:00.000-08:00

This is what we look like . . .

Okay, maybe not, but we are singing this song, so it fit. :)

Approaching Christmas

2009-12-06T14:53:00.000-08:00

This week is obviously a feature of Alisabeth :)

Her dad did a really cute job on her hair and she spent quite a while in front of the mirror admiring it :)

She also looked adorable while wearing her sunglasses. Granted it was dark out. . . and there was no reason to, but she was so cute!

She is mostly potty trained, of her own doing. She doesn't like going number 2 but number one is her favorite thing! Now all we have to do is break the connection between "potty" and "candy" and she'll be all set :)

Jason got a couple of pictures of the main window. The other one has 2 stars and then the lights going in every direction :) It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
Plus it's snowing again and the temperature hasn't gotten above 20 this week.

The last thing I wanted to include this week was an accomplishment :) Even though the pictures won't cooperate, I finished the last of our stocking this afternoon. Shown above is Alisabeth holding her own. She's very possessive about it and can definitely tell the difference between hers and "daddys" and "mommys."
They are super simple to do and I really loved the pattern!
The smaller things are Christmas Tree ornaments. One is for an ornament exchange that we're doing on Tuesday. The second is for us and I have one more to make that I'm going to give to another family so that they'll always remember us . . . .ahhhhh.
I might make more since they're so easy and I have plenty of material, but I don't know if anyone else would want one.
If you do. . . let me know :)

I graduate in 12 days!!!!!

The coolest thing I've seen in a long time.

2009-12-03T03:59:00.001-08:00

One of those days

2009-11-22T13:24:00.001-08:00

Today was a day where I wish I had taken a picture of the weather before we entered the church building. 3 hours later when we emerged there was 3 inches of snow on the ground and a heave drift coming down. It honestly looked like someone had just shaken a snow globe :)

This week was a good one. We're almost totally prepared for the concert which is really good because we have this entire week off from school but then we're playing our concert on Tuesday night!!
Classes are going well. I have two more weeks from my book of mormon classes. I'll be done with band after the concert. I have also completed all of my other on-line class except for the final. All in all not a bad haul :)

Jason is gearing up for his finals. He has a project that his group will be putting together over the break and then he's in charge of the in-class presentation portion. . . Good luck honey.
He also just got one of his car projects all put back together. . . but it doesn't work.

We're headed out to Boise on Wednesday afternoon. Hopefully the snow won't be too bad. We're planning on driving for most of the day and we have no time constraints so we shouldn't have any problems. When we get back on Saturday I will be putting up all of my Christmas decorations and I have decided to start my next sewing project now that I'm done with the halloween costumes and the upcoming baby blankets. I'm going to start my festive table clothes. I plan on getting one of those large pieces of plastic to go over it and I'm going to make at least two festive table clothes. Hopefully I can still find a few good deals on Thanksgiving ones :)

Other than that, life is pretty bland. On Friday night we finally had a D&D game. It was a blast. We've been gearing up to this event for almost 2 months. The prince sent us on an errand to bring back a guy who used to be in cahoots (spelling sry) with a bad guy so that the prince could get some information. We tried a couple different ways to get to him but none of them worked and we didn't think that he was a good guy so we devised a plan and captured him and transported him out of an extremely magical city back to the prince without alerting anyone. . . . I shape-shifted to look like his girlfriend and then while I was holding his head in my hands Jason turned him into a snake. I then ran to the nearest tree and being the druid that I am I used a spell to transport myself along with my little snake companion to the princes castle. Meanwhile the rest of the team tried to use the portal which the wizards from the princes city created for them and it ended up taking them into a cave with a bunch of undead stuff and they battled it out for a while. All in all it was nice. They ended up getting 12K experience for their fight and for single-handedly accomplishing the mission I received 18K :) I didn't expect that much so it was a pleasant surprise.

The other cool thing for the week was that Aimee and I went on a girl's night out to the opening show of "New Moon" this week. At 10:00 pm we drove to Idaho Falls and ended up getting home at about the time that Jason's alarm went off for work. It was a blast though. We caught up with a couple other girls from our ward and made fun of all the people who were WAY to excited about Jacob taking off his shirt. I did it again with Jason last night. We went to a 10:00 showing here in Rexburg. Both times I really enjoyed it. The second time I was less critical too so I ended up enjoying it more. :) It's a keeper.

I love you

2009-11-18T16:48:00.000-08:00

She finally said it. The other night we were sitting on the couch watching "aliens" and she turned and gave me a kiss for no reason and then she turned again and said "iwuvu mommy"
I almost died. I love my little girl.
"Can you tell Daddy too?"
"Iwuvu daddy"

Oh man, it is so true. It is the terrible twos. If they're not ripping your hair out, or throwing a tantrum for no apparent reason or hitting the neighbor's kids just because you gasped when she did it the first time, they're giving you giant hugs, kisses and telling you they love you. She also asks me if she can help, or pulls my hand so I'll come and play with her. It is truly a divine time in her life. I love the joy as much as I hate the frustration.
Oh moms everywhere, how great thou art!

Wow, has it really been two weeks?

2009-11-08T15:35:00.000-08:00

Before:

After:

What do you think, did we do it justice? I cut the skirt shorter to show off the boots, and his wings didn't turn out very well, but . . .

The spider queen reigneth.

We had a lot of fun on Haloween. Alisabeth gathered quite a bit of candy. She listened to me tell her to say "trick or treat" watched a few others do it and get candy dropped into their pumpkins and she was off. The trick was to get her to say "Thank you" afterward.
She did really well and had a lot of fun. (Course, now all I hear is "Candy?!")

This week also marked my yearly attempt at chicken noodle soup. I enjoy making it but last year it was just a soppy mess. This year I had to call it stew. The noodles were quick cooking and I didn't realize it so I gave them a whole 15 minutes to cook. They were REALLY tender.

I also have to add a plug for the terrible twos. Alisabeth and I walked into the grocery store this week and she made a b-line for the toddler carts that this store has just for little ones her size. I was trying to make this a quick visit so I forestalled her and dragged her screaming into the store. (She won't sit in the cart).
So we are walking through the produce section and a lady from the bakery comes running over with a chocolate-chip cookie. Pleased as a peach she sits in the cart and eats to her little heart's content. I get about half-way through the list this way and then she's done and wants out again. I let her out and she spends about 10 minutes doing really well at staying close.
Finally she got bored with that and took off in every direction. I quickly wrapped up the end of my list. and headed for the check-out stand. She quickly headed for the balloons by the help desk.
I unloaded the groceries as fast as I could. She tangled herself up in the balloon strings.
I headed around the side and she began to whine so I went to go and get her. I was then informed that they were getting her a balloon they promised.
I told them that was unnecessary as the store manager handed it to her over the counter.
I tried to tie it to her wrist only to have her tell me she wanted to hold it. Instead I tied it to my wrist, swiped my card and walked out of the store trailing a balloon and a daughter.
I guess it worked out better than last week when I forgot to lock her inside the car before I unloaded the groceries into the back and she took off into the parking lot. (The entire lot turned to look at me with big eyes when I yelled and took off after her. It scared the dickens out of me!)
Luckily I had the wits not to yell at her, I just told her she had scared me as I locked her inside her car-seat and then went back to the groceries.)

Jason had an uneventful week. He simply took a few mid-terms, worked on a couple of cars and played around. . . slacker. He also went shooting with a couple in our complex and had a blast. They did clay pigeons as well as targets.
Thursday he also took two more of the ASE certification tests. He felt more confident about the AC one this time around. We'll get the results in about 6 weeks.
That's about it.

Halloween beginneth

2009-10-25T21:37:00.000-07:00

This is birthday fun. She just finished her cupcake. It was a pretty informal party this year. I didn't send out invitations I just invited by word of mouth. It was unfortunate that one of her best friends was sick so she wasn't able to come, but we went over later and brought cupcakes and wished her well.

These next shots are the queen of the spiders. Check out the spider tats and the ones crawling in her hair. I tried to get the hair to stand up on end but she moved too much. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. Once we got in the car she smoshed her head all around and would have destroyed it anyway.

And finally a look at the final versions of all three of us.
Yes my ears really are pointy. I loved that part. They looked great.

You may be wondering why I post this a week before the real halloween. . . we went to a party. By next week I hope to have a few more minor details. I'm going to try to use all of the scraps from J's and my costumes to put together a cloak for me. Alisabeth needs more arms and we definitely need to improve it enough so that she can go outside for several hours after dark (about 30-40 degree weather).
Other than that they're pretty well done. I'm going to shorten the overtunic on mine a bit and add another hook and eye to Jason's cloak because he wants it to close more.

After Halloween is over I'm going to work on my next project. I'm going to make Alisabeth's Christmas gift. She loves the neighbor's oversized beanbag chair, so I'm going to make her a smaller Bitsy version. I'm trying for "large enough to last till she's ten, small enough to fit in her room comfortably with everything else." We'll see how it goes. So far I haven't been able to find a solid pattern and the stuffing beads are impossible to find out here in the boon-docks, but I have found them online. Any suggestions, please let me know.

What she got for #2

2009-10-21T09:20:00.000-07:00

These are the gifts from grandparents. They aren't very good because our camera battery was dead so we had to take them with the computer webcam, but it's the best we could do.

I couldn't resist.

2009-10-15T07:45:00.000-07:00

This is for all of the grandparents. The video won't work through the email though, so make sure you actually go to the website to watch it.
www.jtflannery.blogspot.com

Chagrinned

2009-10-11T14:08:00.000-07:00

So one of our CD's came due this last weekend which means shopping spree right?
Just kidding, but we did need a few things. About a week ago I noticed that I was having a hard time getting Alisabeth's size 6 shoes on her feet, so I needed that, plus with winter coming I needed some long-sleeved shirts (because I have none that still fit her).
So I headed off to Walmart and Payless Shoes.
Walmart went swimmingly.
I got into the kids section and Alisabeth was running happily back and forth between the "giant" mini-mouse dolls and the other stuffed animals so I took the opportunity to call my mom and see if she wanted to get in on the shopping spree and buy some of Alisa's birthday and Christmas presents. As we talked I noticed that Alisabeth wasn't running around anymore so I start walking toward her last known location and hear "Where's your mom?" I hurry my steps and find a woman hurridly trying to untie some baloons. She tells me that my daughter had climbed on top of the clothing rack to reach the baloons and since she didn't know where I was she thought it safer to get them for her. I thanked her politely and tried to show that I wasn't one of "those" moms.
So we head off and continue getting a new coat for daddy and thermals for mommy and chalk, a new learning toy, new clothes, thermals, tights and a halloween basket for Alisabeth. Then we headed to payless.
I looked at the size sevens but I just had this nagging feeling that I should actually measure her feet before buying new shoes. (plus they had a buy one get one half-off sale). So I find a scale, put her foot down and think "No, I must be seeing this wrong"
The sales lady confirmed it. Alisabeth's feet are now officially a toddler size 8!! AHHHH!
I put the new tenni shoes on her feet and stood her up. You should have seen this kid happy as a lark "Bitsy's shoes, Bitsy's shoes" It was cool. I felt horrible and then we went home, trailing our baloons after us.
My other great event this week was again a shopping incident.
I actually printed off coupons, planned my budget and looked at the adds. Albertson's had some great deals so I headed their way. I bought a junk load of stuff.
As the lady was finishing up with me, they usually tell you how much money you saved . . . she said "You saved se. . . " then she stopped and double checked shook her head a little, raised her eyebrows and finished, "You saved $70.17." I was way excited. I'm getting better at shopping so that we're saving money and so that I'm aware of the price fluctuations. . . Hopefully one of these days we'll spend less than $250 a month :)

Jason also had a good week. He's been learning some great stuff in his parenting class and right now they're putting together case studies of "disfunctional families" that another group can analyze and see if they can determine the best way to fix it.
Jason's group is working on a family where the father is working about 60 hours a week so that they can living in a large house. The oldest son is beginning to look toward other sources of male models and so the first thing their group is going to talk about is the need to get the father figure back in the home. Whether that means they need to downsize on house size or on other spending so that he can work less and be available more. It sounds like a pretty interesting project and class.

Alisabeth is doing really well. She counted from 5 to 10 the other day with absolutely no prompting. I was overly proud of her. She is also using possessives and 3-4 word sentances. We're still working on using words instead of whining or grunting, but she's amazing. She recognizes over 100 different animals and objects (based on books and blocks and driving down the road) it's just so cool to watch her go.
Now if only the potty training were going as smoothly.

Winter cometh. . .

2009-10-05T10:14:00.001-07:00

I woke up this morning at 6 so that I could go baby-sit for a friend of mine (the wife was out of town for the weekend and the husband had class this morning). I happily open the door to go and set up Alisabeth's stroller before I wake her up and there's an inch of snow on the ground. . . Ewww!!
Granted I was expecting it sometime soon because it's been strangely cold the last few days, but still. . . it's one thing to know doom is coming and another to see it before your face.

So new things this week? Alisabeth can parrot quite a bit. In fact she's gotten good enough to parrot a prayer over lunch and dinner. It's really neat. We say "Dear" and she says "Heavenly Father" and then repeats the prayer, but when we get to "Jesus Christ" she doesn't say Christ she says Amen. . .we're still working on that part.

Jason got ahead on homework and has been working on the same project all week. I guess no matter what they've tried the water pump is still leaking. (It might not be a water pump) They've replaced all of the seals a couple of times and tried everything he can think of and the problem persists so today the teacher said he was going to work with him to try something different. I hope it works out. . .

As for me, I worked on Halloween costumes all week. Alisabeth's is mostly put together. I still need to figure out the hair part, but everything else is done. It looks pretty cute.
Jason's cloak is done except for the detail work. I have to put edging on and the hood. It looks pretty good. After that I'll need to fit it to his height and then deal with the bottom detailing.
I also finished the inner part of my dress. I just need the elastic for the empire waist. It looks pretty good. I need to get the right material for the top part now.

That's our excitement. We watched General Conference this weekend which is where the prophet and other leaders of our church get up and share messages and important ideas. It happens every six months and gives me a good idea of what I need to work on for the next half of a year. As I listen I feel that little nagging voice telling me how the messages apply to me. It's such a cool experience every six months! This year the focus of all the speakers seemed to be around service, love and not only finding out the Will of God, but also doing it. I appreciated that.

Success

2009-09-27T12:12:00.000-07:00

For those of you who wanted an update, here's my finger as of a few seconds ago. It's much better but you can still see the welling around the nail, and there's a lot of discoloration that the camera just couldn't get. Also you can't really see the gaping hole. :) The nail and the flesh separated because of the swelling and it is still actually two separate pieces although the dried goop usually keeps it closed up :)

Next on the list of cool things is that I was able to kill Jason off this last D&D game. Thus the name of this week's entry. . .
Now, before you judge me too harshly just imagine a dwarf who doesn't care about money. Instead said dwarf has become a sorcerer. Secondly because he's still a dwarf he has a strange desire to run into battle, but because he's a sorcerer he has no ability to take a hit, therefore, the little squishy was near death too many times to count.
Now in Jason's defense he was learning to do quite well at staying out of battle and letting the fighters do it all, but when I tell you how he died you'll understand why death was necessary.
We get to a little town, the miners are all drinking in the pub. . . in the middle of the day. We ask what's up and they say they were happily digging away in the salt mine when suddenly something came out and anyone he touched got very dehydrated and sick.
We go to investigate and find 3 salt mummies trying to dig something out of the rocks. After dispatching them we open up the door that they were trying to uncover and find a burial chamber. There are runes written on all of the statues and junk so I say "We need to read them. Jason you know how to read that go for it."
Without thinking about it he just runs straight in the room, passes by three or four statues and heads straight for the sarcophagus to read what's written on it. Needless to say the magic mummy that was off to the side didn't give him any warning and suddenly he was struck with continuous lightening for a minute or so. Thus he brought his death upon himself. . . with my egging.
But, in my defense I also had a spell ready. I reincarnated him into another body.
this is my hubby now:

Considering the fact that I'm an elf I think it's a good change :) Plus he is now half-dragon which means he'll be able to fight and fly and cast spells all over the place. Go my hubby!!!
That was our D&D fun this week :)

Lastly I have started a new project: Halloween costumes
Here's mine:
Remember I'm going to become my character from D&D
Thus here is the dress but the material will be darker and closer to the brown's of nature.

This is the ribbon I've chosen for the belt.

And here is Jason, who will now be a Niomus instead of a dwarf. . . much easier I might add.

We'll have to bulk up the back just a little bit to make it look like he's hiding wings under there, but that shouldn't be too hard.

Wish me luck. Alisabeth's is mostly done. I just need to get finishing touches. We'll take pictures of the various parts as soon as we get them done. . . you have to pretend you think they look awesome for my confidences sake :)

Updated!!

2009-09-20T16:41:00.001-07:00

I've been trying to load a video for several weeks. . . let's see if we have success this time.

Nope, that means you get pictures instead. See the tomato plant. Poor thing is trying so hard to grow it's tomatoes before it dies.
The corn came out fairly well. We actually ate it mixed with other stuff so I can't tell you if it was awesome, but it didn't taste bad :)
There are still more ears to go. . .I'll let you know.

So our garden was hit with the first frost of the year and then the second. The first didn't seem to have any effect, but the second got the tomatoes and the squash plants. . . We'll have to see what today's frost did when we go visit tomorrow.

On a D&D level our DM has been trying to kill us off with incredibly hard enemies and lots of them. This last group was about 20 zombies of various sizes and two gigantic stone golems which basically trampled through us. I have 69 hit points and he did 36 damage on the first pass, just to give you an idea of their abilities.
Luckily I have leveled up hugely in the last few games (because a side effect of trying to kill us is that he's sending higher level characters and when we beat them we gain a lot of experience and ability). So I was able to summon two gi-hugic earth elementals which suddenly pounded the two things into the ground like they were toy dolls :)
As for the 20 zombies. . . I turned the floor into mud and then once they had sunk down about chest deep I turned it back into stone :) Thus they were completely taken care of with no issues at all. Jason had also greased the stairwell so that they couldn't get at us.
We also went up against a guy who had magical cards that could cause random types of damage, but I was putting Alisabeth to bed during that so apparently I encased him in wood so that he couldn't throw any more cards and Jason levitated the mass and bumped him into the ceiling a couple of times to knock him out.
The other bad-guy for the night, as if all that wasn't enough was a creature under illusion which cast magic to paralyze us. Luckily only one person in our group was not suceptible and was able to free all of us every time. If it hadn't been for his ability to roll high on the save throw we would have all died a couple of times.

School also started a week and a half ago. It's good.

Alisabeth is speaking more clearly now. She's got a couple of sentences and a demanding personality! The one thing we're working on is whining. We can't quite figure out why she does it because we won't respond to it and instead make her tell us in words, but maybe it's just a never ending phase.

I think this is the cutest picture. She sat her little doll down next to her and comenced to have a conversation and play with her. She got very upset when her baby would not "baby sit!"

Jason is doing well. He is enjoying his parenting classes and his automotive classes.
Last summer he tried to fix a car and ended up breaking it beyond repair when he messed up the timing chain. So guess what his first assignment was in his automotive class? (I guess the first five students that came in had timing chain issues) so he'll be perfecting his abilities :)
He learned more about the roles and influence of mother and father this week too. I'm enjoying hearing about what he's learning.

My week was fun, I decided to give myself some sort of blood poisoning or serious infection in my finger so it is currently swollen to about twice the size of a normal index finger. It makes life a bit hard.
I've been taking meds and soaking it in Epsom salt a couple times a day but so far there have been no result. Basically, this means that Tuesday they're going to slice my finger open and get all the "crud" out of there.

I wanted to include this shot. This is my practice time with the french horn. . . they play very well. :)

2009-09-06T13:11:00.000-07:00

It's been a while for some reason, so I'll just post everything I haven't covered yet :)
We had a barbeque and invited everyone we talked to. Some people didn't hear about it, but as usual we cooked way too much food so we invited anyone still outside that afternoon :)

The next one is the self-styled artistry of our daughter. She learned how to use the camera last week and took about 20 shots of the ceiling and about 10 of herself, all similar to this. She got one or two of me or Jason and another couple of the floor. All in all it was a pretty good photo shoot and we're pretty sure the client will find something to their liking.

Alisabeth practiced her artistry in another way this week. She did this, and then after I took it all down she came back through and did it again. . . I love her.

Isn't she cute. We have about three more of similar shots.

She also found my sandals this week and began the process of learning to walk in high heels.

Look mom!! I finished it!!

Completion.

2009-08-25T18:59:00.000-07:00

This is the picture I hadn't taken yet from Tucson:

Then we left Tucson for San Diego. We stopped to unload most of our stuff at the Jimenez house where it would remain for the week so that we wouldn't have to worry about it while we were on the boat.

The ones with the pooh bear are a special shout out for Alena.

Then we headed for the shelter of a great hotel near the beaches to wait out the weekend:

This is the view from the loft area where Jason and I slept. My mom and Al had a private room below us. Alisabeth spent the first night on a makeshift bed and the next one in a crib. She didn't enjoy that part :) The best part about the hotel was that it had a full kitchen, barely visible in the above picture. So Sunday we were able to cook a frozen lasagna and ate a great homemade meal while we were over 1000 miles from home :)

San Diego also boasted quite a few nice beaches. They were Alisabeth's first experience with the ocean. She loved it. She was apprehensive at first, but after about five minutes she was all about the incoming waves. We built a little fort to "protect" us from the water and had a blast. . . Notice I'm wearing a new shirt. . . why? . . . I have no idea.

We decided to enjoy the trip. We spent a little too much, but we just couldn't pass up the cartride across the street from the parking to the ship, or the $15 coconut cup.

I tried to get a complete shot of the ship so you could see it all, but I messed up a bit. You should be able to put it all together at least.

The ship was gorgeous. We had a private balcony, a wonderful woman who would make sure that our room was straightened three times a day, and all of the comforts of a luxury hotel plus a lot more. Everyone loved Alisabeth. We were known as "with Alisabeth" whenever we went anywhere. (Like being seated in the dining room).

The first stop was Catalina Island where Alisabeth again got to play on the beaches and we got to walk around the tourist trap and admire the price tags. We got there by boat. . . from our boat. . .

If you wonder why she's wearing a lifevest it's not because we were near deep water. . . it's because Jason felt we should. . . since we had taken the time to bring it along. . . wierdo.

The next stop was Ensenada. It was a very cute town. We were again led to the tourist trap and were again left to admire the price tags, however thsi time we were caught a few times and walked away with a silver bracelet, a couple of bead necklaces for Alisa and a shirt for Jason.
Jason enjoyed his first authentic Mexican tacos in a little cafe. They were good. I asked for Carne and the man said "Cual tipo de carne?" I looked confused so he opened five different containers each containing a different form of beef and again asked which type I wanted. It was great.
The tourist trap horseback ride was nice too. The owner accompanied our group and told us a little about herself and the area. We basically travelled the highest mountains closest to Ensenada all the way around a circuit which showed off the city and the landscape. It was beautiful. I didn't take many pictures because it was mighty rocky and I was a little worried about my big black's footing. He kept slipping on me. Nothing deadly, just a little unsettling.

After that it was smooth sailing home. Jason and Alisabeth spent a lot of time outdoors and I was able to enjoy myself inside watching way to many movies for a four day trip. I think the total was something around 10. They were all free, and only one was seen completely through from beginning to end the first time. ;)

All in all the vacation was amazing. We had a blast. Unlike last time I didn't feel burned out at all when we got home. I was very glad to be with family and friends. I am excited to go back to Arizona in about 6 months!!!!!!

The first major accident

2009-08-10T09:08:00.000-07:00

So here's a play by play of the trip. We are having a great time. My fear of being ready to go home early has not materialized. I think we've been able to visit and balance with everyone. It's been great so far.

These were from the stop in between Idaho and our first stop. It's someplace in Utah.

Jason saw his future car so we had to snap a few pictures. I tried to get a closer one, but it's kind of hard to do going 80 on a three lane highway. :)

We finally got to Jason's grandparents house and she walked right in and took the place over. It helped a lot that they had a piano and stuffed animals/dolls everywhere.
We didn't stay long, but we enjoyed our time immensely.

When we got to Tucson Jason took Alisabeth and let me crash. Neither of us slept the entire night. We listened to a book on tape for the entire 18 hour trip. (including stops).

She has loved each set of grandparents. And they have enjoyed her a lot.

We went to the zoo with Crystal and her husband Mike and their little girl. Alisabeth had a blast chasing all of the animals she could get to.

We spent a few days at our old landlord's new house. They are amazing people and we enjoyed that too. Of course, that was the site of Alisabeth's second major accident. (The first was the headfirst down the stairs at 9ish months.)
This time we wouldn't get up at 6:30 in the morning with her, so instead of playing with toys and entertaining herself like she normally does she decided to play with the paper slicer. It was just a little one, but it was large enough for her little finger. She got it right through the nail on her pointer finger and then it sliced out from there:

No other strange events. We've spent a few days at Jason's house playing with all the foster babies there and enjoying her cousins. We spent two Sundays with the Liddeke side of the family, but I kept forgetting the camera, so we'll have to get pictures on Thursday when we go out to dinner.

This week is full. We have to spend my mom's money tonight at the LDS bookstore, then tomorrow Jason's fixing the car and we're babysitting for his sister so they can go on a date (she took Alisabeth for us while we watched Harry Potter). Wednesday is a lunch with my old boss who hasn't ever met Alisabeth before. Thursday is dinner with my Dad and Sonja at an "amazing" Mexican place they just found. Friday is paintball with a decent sized crew. Saturday we drive out to San Diego and the rest is history. It's hard being on vacation! So many demands!!

Ah, Arizona

2009-08-03T17:04:00.000-07:00

We arrived safely, thanks for all those who were praying for us. We actually listened to Anne McCaffrey on tape the whole way and it kept us going. There was only one spot where we almost died. I started driving at about 3 in the morning and Jason decided to doze off. Alisabeth had woken up so he had turned on some nice soothing music to put her back to sleep. . . and then left it on . . . I felt like Mac in cars with the 4 hotrods.
Anyway, Jason was only out for 1/2 hour so when he came around I told him he had to talk to me and that woke me back up. Then he turned on the book and I was fine again. It kept my mind awake.
We drove through the night and ended up pulling up to my mom's house at about 8:30 am. We wanted to crash, but Jason didn't. Instead he took Alisabeth to see her cousins at his mom's house while I crashed. When they came home I was barely aware of the world.
It's been fun so far. We've visited family back and forth and let the cousin's play. We went and saw the Harry Potter movie. I have to give it cudos for trying to stay true to the main plot line, even if it failed miserably to make it very clear. My mom's husband came too and was thoroughly confused about the whole thing. He's seen all the movies but never read the books.
We're going to go see the new Star Trek sometime soon too.
I've really enjoyed life so far, but it's been amusing to watch our gas guage. We're back in the big city alright :)
I am so proud of Alsabeth. I expected her to be reticent and hesitant with all the new faces and people. She hasn't balked at all. It almost seems as if she remembers everything. She went stragith to the toy room at my dad's place. At my mom's she walked confidently into the spare room. At Jason's mom's house she moves with purpose too.
Even when we visited Jason's grandparents, who she hasn't met before, she was all willing and smiling. She played the piano and played with the dolls. It's been really cool.
The temperature hasn't been below 105 yet, so it's a bit hotter than Rexburg, but I hesitate to write that because sometimes the heat feels very much the same as what we're used to. Although Jason has noticed one significant change. His alergies are gone. He can breathe and despite a slight cold which he contracted our first day here, he has felt really good.

The week before travel

2009-07-26T16:07:00.000-07:00

Finals are over. I passed all my classes. Jason passed his. Alisabeth survived and we are one semester closer to normality.
Our garden is going crazy. We have squash and zuccini coming from every direction. We were able to harvest a few tomatos this week, and we got quite a bit of lettuce from the Raybon's side of the world.
This week was also a blast because we were able to (finally) make the special pork that Rose had taught us almost a month ago. It turned out okay the first night, but since I had started marinading way too much pork we also had it the next day for dinner and it was REALLY nice the second day.
So what I have learned, leave it marinading overnight, cook it for the full 4 hours. It takes an entire day to make everything, but it's beyond worth it at the end, and finally, the black beans are okay, but they aren't amazing, so that one can be skipped, just not anything else. :)

Jason also have a great opportunity to be part of a church meeting at the local retirement home. It was a great experience he said. The faith of those people, even some who weren't completely there anymore was amazing. They bore their testimonies and read scripture and partook of the sacrament and it was very neat.

Alisabeth has been learning a lot this week too. She's very clear when she sings "Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder. . . ." but then it's all a garbled mess. She can also do "TUV" and "Hello, hello, HELLO, HELLO" from the primary songs. She can say her ABC's up to the letter g pretty clearly and she is about 75% understandable when she's talking to you. (general meaning that is). We're excited for her to meet the family.
We also had the opportunity to learn a new way of working with her this week. She had an amazingly bad rash which had spread beyond control. I took her in and we were prescribed an antibiotic because the doctor thought it might be bacterial. I finally got the perscription filled almost a week later due to Medicaid's restrictions, (but that's another story) and we were able to use it on her.
Diaper changes had become a screaming battle by this point, but as she cried and I tried to sooth her I began to put the cream on and said "Bye Bye ouchie, bye bye." she picked up on this after another minute or two and began to repeat it slowing her tears.
By the next diaper change it was definitely improving. This time I took out the cream and she started saying "Bye bye ouchie, bye bye" and preparing herself for the pain. She didn't cry again.
The same idea works for a lot of other things we've found. Coming inside after playing was a huge battle, but now we say "Bye Bye Grass, bye bye stroller, bye bye ball" and she repeats it and it okay with going inside. It was very interesting and very cool to watch.

We leave on Wednesday!!!