An update...finally!

Okay, I know, it has been way way too long. But now, like I promised, I am finally updating this blog. Wow, were to even start! Let's see, like I said before, in July we moved to Utah. We lived with my parents in West Bountiful until the weekend after Thanksgiving. I am very grateful for my parents letting us stay there with them, but man, it was a little hard at times. They were trying to sale their house, so we were always busy with that, and taking care of my dad. Then you throw taking care of my own family in there, and I really didn't have much time to do anything (i.e. update my blog :) ) Anyway, I decided that I would just go through my pictures and post some and catch up a little on what we have been doing for the past 7 months....

This was our last fishing adventure in our backyard in Ohio. Man I miss that house! Look how big Mike's fish is, of course, kind of an extra kick in the pants for leaving. That was the biggest fish we ever caught there. I think he is a little proud. :)

In June, we sold our house in Ohio. It actually sold a lot faster then we thought that it would, that was nice. During all the packing and everything, Alyssa graduated from her GLAD school. The great ladies that we did that with helped so much with everything. They had a cute little graduation for all the kids. Here are some pictures of that...

These are the great ladies that we did GLAD school with.

Ben, Alyssa, Carter, and Aneisha

We headed to Utah in June. That was a long sad drive. But we were excited to see family and Mike was thrilled to start his own practice in Sugarhouse. In July Zachary and Mike ran a short marathon in Bountiful. I was very proud of them both.

This is after the race. My studs!

On the fourth of July we went to Sugarhouse park with my sister Sarah and her family. There were a ton of people there. Henry loved the firework while eating red vines. Like father like son!

Here is Henry watching the fireworks and his face covered in Red Vines.

August Zachary started second grade. It was hard to decide where to put him for school because my parents were trying to find a new house and we didn't know where we were going to be living. So my parents thought that they had found a house to buy and we were going to live in the huge basement. So I decided to put Zach in the elementary school there, Holbrook Elementary. It was a really nice school and the teachers were good. So everyday I had to take him to and from school about 10 minutes away. Then my parents buying that house fell through, so we started our search for a house in that school district. We found one we really liked, but after a while we found more and more stuff wrong with that house and didn't really feel too great about it. So we decided against that.

Here is Zach on his first day of 2nd grade. Can you see him waving from the front door? He had to make sure that I waved to him every morning from the front doors after I dropped him off. (Now he walks to school, so much easier)

In September, Alyssa turned 5 years old. She missed the deadline for Kindergarten by two weeks. She was very sad about that, not to mention, so was I. :) She has been so ready to start school. And she is so tall that she already seems older then most Kindergartners this year. Oh well. For her birthday she had a prince and princess party, she loved it. It was fun to have some of her cousins come. Everyone dressed up as either a princess, prince, or dragon.

Here Alyssa is all dressed up with her castle cake I made.

Halloween was fun, but for some reason I could only find a picture of  Alyssa.  What a cutie!

During October we were trying to buy a house in Riverton. It was a new house that was being built and was big and nice. Although it had a tiny little yard and would have totally stretched us, money wise. But of course, that didn't work out (I know Heavenly Father knows what is best for us and lets that happen or not). Then we found a little house in Bountiful that we liked. It has a nice yard for the kids to play in, with a little hill at the back for them to sled or roll down. It also came with a fun swing set. It is an older house, but way good taken care of and all updated. So right after Thanksgiving we moved in. Come to find out, the people that we bought the house from are also dentists. They went to VCU and lived in Meadowbrook apartments and graduated the year before we got there. Small world!

This is a picture of our house, but there is so much snow you can hardly see it. And yes, as soon as it is warm enough we are taking that lovely awning down. I will post more pictures and better ones of our house when the weather is a little nicer.

So now we have just been unpacking and getting settled. Zachary started school at his new school, Muir Elementary, and he loves it! He has made friends a lot faster at this school and I can tell that he is happier here. Our new ward is great, we had a lot of help moving in. And there are kids all over the neighborhood for our kids to play with. They love it. And I have a nice big window in the kitchen to the backyard, so I can watch the kids playing. That is one of my favorite things about this house. It was fun having Christmas in our own place again. We had a great Christmas and it was fun to be with family. Of course we miss all out Virginia and Ohio friends. And the warmer winters of Virginia. But we did get to get together with a few of our friends from Virginia the other day for dinner. It was so nice seeing them and catching up. With more of you could have been there! Sorry we didn't get Christmas cards out this year. I blinked and Christmas was over. But next year, I will start early!

Well, now that I have made you read a novel, I will finally stop. Hope that catches everyone up a little. 

The house we left behind in Ohio

I found these pictures on my camera from when were selling our house in Ohio and so I decided to post them. So yeah, this is the house we left behind.  So sad!

Front of house

View from the deck

Deck

Living room/family room that was next to kitchen

My kitchen (with the new floor we did)

Formal dining room

Formal front room

Our bedroom

Master bathroom (again with the new floor we put in)

Garden tub in our batahroom

Henry's room

Kid's bathroom

Alyssa's bedroom

Alyssa's walk-in closet

Tyler and  Zachary's room

Family room downstairs (that we re-did)

Another view from deck

Backyard

Ducks that were always on the lake or in our backyard

Alyssas hair cut

This hair cut I actually did, not her. Although I am not saying that it was much better. It started out as just a trim, but after the first cut I realized that she had her head tilted really bad. So I ended up cutting off at least 4 inches. Oh well, she looks cute no matter what.

Before

After

I think she looks cute with short hair, but getting her to smile normal in a picture is another story. :)

Alyssas 5th birthday (in more detail)

Here are some more pictures from Alyssas birthday. It was a little hard because we were still living with my parents, but she had fun.

The castle cake

Alyssas cousin, Bryan, dressed up as a dragon

Opening presents (Cayla, Christopher, Johnny, Marah, and Zach with Alyssa)

After all the fun, here she is with all her presents. Just before bed. It seems like she has been 5 for a long time. So her turning 5 really wasn't that strange to me. She already seemed so grown-up! Can you tell she is an only girl? We love you Lu Lu girl!

Little update

Wow, it has been a lot time since I have written anything on here. We have been so busy! Let's see, what has happened. Well, Henry turned 1! I will write more about him later. And of course we moved to Utah. Right now we are still living with my parents, helping them out. We are still looking for a place for us to live, but appreciate my parents for letting us stay here until we find one. We are still adjusting to life here in Utah. It sure is different, but fun to be back by family.

Mike opened his practice in Sugarhouse, Wasatch Family Dental. It is coming along, a little slow, but it is picking up. I think he really is enjoying himself there, so that is good. I will post pictures of that soon too. We worked pretty hard on fixing it up, it looks pretty good now, if I do say so myself. :)

We are trying to figure out what to do about school for Zach. I don't really want to stick him in here by my parents house and have to move him when we move. But I don't really have any other idea what to do. Poor Alyssa misses the deadline here by 14 days. I am trying to figure out what to do with her and Tyler during the day too. Fun stuff!

Well, that is a short update on what is going on with us. I will post more soon (hopefully). We need to get together with some of our Virginia friends that are in Utah. We sure do miss our Ohio friends!

Valentine's Day

This is a little late, but I was looking through my pictures and thought I would post them.  Every Valentine's Day morning (at least most of the ones that I can remember), my mom started a tradition of having a fun breakfast and everything decorated.  She would wake us up early so we could have a nice breakfast before school.  So now that I am married, I have carried on that tradition and my kids love it.  So here we are this year eating our Valentine's breakfast.  It is usually waffles with strawberries and whip cream.  Yum!

Our garden

Okay, so this year we decided that we were going to try and start our own little ( and I mean little) garden.  So we started to try and till the dirt.  Man is this Ohio clay, I mean dirt hard!  So we did the best we could without any real tools, planted the seeds with the help of the kids, watered it a bit and crossed our fingers.  Right after we planted it we headed to Utah for three weeks, so I was really hoping that it would work.  When we got home from Utah there were little green sprouts sticking up!  I was so proud!  So then for the next week or two I watched as our peas slowly got bigger, our broccoli started pocking it's head out of the dirt, and our lettuce started growing.  Then last week I was thinking to myself, "I swear I thought those pea plants were bigger yesterday, oh well."  So I didn't think much of it.  Then a little while later they were almost 3 inches tall!  I know, but that was great for me.  Then the next day I went out to water them and they were back down to about a half an inch!  I was so sad!  At first I thought that maybe the ducks were eating them.  Dumb ducks!  So I built up a little pile of wood chips around the garden hoping that they couldn't walk over them.  And hey, for the next few days they were growing good.  Nice, I had fixed that problem easy enough.  Nope!  A few days later, down they were again.  So I was determined this time.  I went to Home Depot and bought some netting stuff to keep them out.  And yes, I am cheap so I didn't want to buy the stakes that they said to buy to set it up with.  So I just used some twigs that we had and hooked one side up to the lattice work under the deck.  Come to find out, our neighbors actually said that they had seen some rabbits living under their deck.  So I thought maybe it was them, but it was still weird to me that they hadn't touched the lettuce.  I had even seen about three of them running around in our front yard that night and thought, "Oh how cute!"  And I figured that yeah, it probably was them and hoped that the net would keep them out.  Success!  I went out yesterday and it was all still in place and nothing was eaten (so I thought, but I did have a little doubt with about one or two plants).  So I kind of checked them this morning and it all looked good accept for the few that I had wondered about last night.  I was happy with myself.  So then tonight I go out to water them.  THOSE MEAN RABBITS!  No, they aren't cute anymore.  Look at the picture, they had chewed a perfect little hole through the wooden lattice and eaten some of my plants.  But they were sneaky about it, they only ate a few that were close.  Man, I never would have thought that they would chew through wood.  Those must be some yummy peas!  So now I pulled it off the lattice and put it over some sticks.  Hopefully that will work, but if they were willing to chew through wood, I am kind of doubting that it will.  Maybe we won't have a garden after all.  How sad!

See the lettuce in front, not touched at all, so I guess at least we will have lettuce to eat.

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Look at the perfectly round, custom fit hole.

April Fool's!

Yes, I am finally adding to my blog, I know it has been awhile, but a lot has been happening.  I was in Utah for three weeks so that also didn't help me add anything.  But it did give me stuff to add...anyway.

On April 1st my sister, Sharon, and I decided to make a fun April Fools dinner.  So we made dessert for dinner and dinner for dessert.  

For dinner we had a cake that was made out of hamburger, green beans, cream of mushroom soup, cheese and mashed potatoes.  The blue writing is just blue food coloring in the mashed potatoes.  

Oh yeah, and for the drink we had put jello in their cups and let it set-up then added straws so it looked like just normal punch.  

Then for dessert we had meat loaf made out of brownies with frosting katsup and mustard, green beans made out of chewy jolly ranchers, peas made out of laffy taffy, and mashed potatoes and gravy made out of vanilla ice cream and chocolate fudge.  It was so much fun! 

The kids loved it as you can see.  I also had a lot of fun making it with my sister.  It was a lot of work, mostly the beans and peas, but it was so worth it.  We will have to try something again for next year!