The Next Best Thing....

Here is our most recent Family picture. Okaye its not really formal one but it is the next best thing right? :)

We were at the DMV waiting to get our PA licenses which is in the mall... go figure. Anyhow while we were waiting our turn they had a Polaroid photo booth. We decided it would be fun to cram into it and take some pics.

I'm probably going to get into some trouble for posting the picture of Andrew doing his "monkey face" along with the boys, but I figured I would just ask for forgiveness because I know darn well I'm not going to get permission!! ;) It is a funny pic though!

Oh, and it is a picture of a picture. You can see my thumb while holding it. I suppose I could get a better one but I am not going to take another one hee hee.

It's ALL my Fault!!

This morning I was getting ready when Aussie came in to me and said "Mommy you look so pretty, and its all my fault... AGAIN!!" Um, thanks sweetheart... I have no idea what that was all about but it made me laugh.

Freezing our buns off in PA!

It has been so dang cold here. Yesterday we saw a high of 26!! I felt like wearing shorts and a T-shirt :) For the past week or so it has been around -5 to 5 degrees during the afternoon. Talk about cold! We have to layer up our clothes like crazy! The other day I took the boys beanies off to find this

Doesn't he look like a little punk kid? I love it! And yes. I have succumbed to "mormon motherhood traditions" ;) and purchased a van. The worst part of it all? I actually like having it! Whodathunk?

Here is Camden with his punk hair. Pretty funny eh?

Pennsylvania!

We made it to Pennsylvania finally. I drove out with the boys the Monday before Thanksgiving and Andrew got here 5 days before Christmas. THat is the longest we have gone without seeing eachother. It was hard.

Things are going well now. We are just trying to settle into PA life and our new callings. We love this little branch. We love our callings as well ;)

Austin is doing well. He loves all the tractors out here and loves being close to his Grandma Sue and Grandpa Gary. He also loves living with TJ and Sami again (our dog and cat) He has also grown so much since we have left Utah. He turned 3 on 4 Sept. and is already wearing mostly 4T clothes. That kid is TALL!

Camden is getting taller also. He talks like crazy though. He is only 20 months old and speaks as well as a 3 year old. I am blown away every day at how much more he learns and the words he uses. He is a very smart little boy. He is already wanting to potty train. He uses the toilet when mommy lets him but Im just not ready for him to be potty trained yet... or maybe im not ready to potty train him :) either way he is more ready than I am.

I love being in the mission field again. I love it!! I miss my family like crazy but it is so good to be able to feed the missionaries as much as I want. In Utah we only fed the missionaries 3 times in 3 years. I also have more opportunities to work with the missionaries and help them teach people here. Its a little harder because they have to have another female go with me but the opportunity presents itself much more often. I love love love being in Young Womens. We have a pretty big group for a branch. We have about 9 Young Women! They are a crazy bunch.

Andrew is also adjusting well out here. He is in the Elders Quarum and enjoys his calling. He gets really excited to go and cut wood down in the woods behind the house. He has been taking us sledding out on the property too. The boys love that. They cant seem to go fast enough. He pulls us beind the tractor, 4- wheeler and even the truck. Gotta love the country life.

Overall we are very happy and love spending time together. We had a wonderful Christmas ( which by the way put me in my "late twenties" but whatever. Age ain't nothin but a number. Right?) We have had a lot of family get-togethers and gotten to know family we didn't really know before we moved here.

And ofcourse they wouldn't be my boys if they weren't getting into trouble. Here they are splashing in the tub and the next one is when they got caught. I'm glad they have eachother!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KIRA!!!

Kira is now 26! I can't believe my little sister is 26. Even though I'm older that still seems so old. Today we went shopping and got her a really REALLY cute pair of jeans. Truth be told, I wanted them for myself ;) But I was selfless and got them for her. I love how we are best friends. We can talk about anything. Here are 26 things about my sis

1.Kira is very humble
2. She is my best friend (next to my superman hubby of course) and we can talk about anything
3. She is such a beautiful person inside and out.
4. Kira is so self concious of her birthmark it is crazy. She thinks its ugly. She is BEAUTIFUL!!
5. She works in the presidents office at UVU and gets hooked up with all kinds of stuff.
6. Some of her nicknames are kabiisa, gogo, goge, lynners, kirsther and Tommy calls her keed.
7. If you tickle her under her neck she will laugh so hard she drools. **ya gotta try it sometime!
8. Kira is a straight A student in college. She has gotten a 4.0 nearly her whole college carreer!
9. She served a mission to the Louisville Kentucky Mission and was an AWESOME missionary!
10. When she was 13 she pierced her own belly button with a safety pin and ice!
11. When we were in college toghether people would always ask us if we were twins. We got so sick of people asking and then not believing us that we just said we were to save time.
12. Kira knows American Sign Language fluently.
13. Kira is one smart cookie!
14. She has never really cooked much until she got married. Now she makes dinner most every night and it is some dang good food! She's a natural.
15. She can wiggle her eyes really really fast! Its freaky
16. She has only had 3 jobs really. First at Shoneys Restaurant as a salad bar attendant. Second at a telemarketing place, which she worked at for 2 years! and now the one she is currently at. She has been there for a long time before and after her mission.
17. Kira is a really good listener and good at communication.
18. She has been trying to grow her hair out for her husband and its getting so long!
19. She can get soooooooooooooo competitive.
20. She is one awesome Auntie. My boys absolutely adore her.
21. Kira reads her scriptures every single day!
22. She is a very organized person.
23. Kira is one of those people that are good at everything they do
24. She is full of love for other people.
25. She is happy all of the time. She is so positive!
26. She now has a really cute pair of jeans :)

Hope you had a great day kira!

What We's been up to...

Since my last post we have been homeless... in a sense. I'll back up a bit... The boys and I flew out to Utah to visit Andrew while he was closing up shop (literally, he is moving everything out of the shop) We figured we were only going to be here for a week and then all drive back to PA. WRONG! We got an offer on our house. Fabulous! So we stayed in Utah so we could be there to sign at the closing. Well the city we live in had a certificate of non-compliance on our house, so we couldn't sell it until we satisfied it. They said our back deck wasn't in compliance with city ordinance. So we started fixing up stupid things like put stain on the bottom of the deck, dig the footers from 16 inches deep to 31 inches deep (which actually isn't very smart because it made the ground unsettled again so the deck is going to move with the frost and heat) and a ton of other random stuff that honestly didn't make any sense and cost us way more money than we wanted to put into it. Oh, and did I mention that we already had the city inspect it a year and a half ago? The guy that came didn't fill out the paper properly so it "didn't count" or something like that. We were so annoyed. I think the guy that did all the inspections was just on a power trip because he had us do the most insignificant things. Its fine I'm over it now. We passed.

We had a date set up to close on the house once we got the city out of our hair. We got a call the morning of from the realtor informing us that the bank they were going to borrow from ran out of money. GREAT! The buyers really wanted to get the house but needed a special program for down payment assistance which is no longer offered. We thought it was over but they came back to us and told us that they talked to some family members and borrowed enough for a down payment. Now we are patiently waiting for their papers to go through a new lender. We think we'll close on Tuesday but I'm not crossing my fingers. I will be happy if it happens though :)

In the mean time, we are still in Utah we were staying in a hotel which was very expensive. We knew we had to put an end to that and checked out our options. My husband being the major deal maker that he is found us a cheap yet nice motor home on KSL so that is what we are staying in for the time being. It gets crazy but the boys love all the dirt and rocks they get to throw. We have the motor home parked at the shop so we can be with Andrew all day!

What Andrew has been up to in short... very short.... He has this thing for fixing up wrecked semi's you know the big diesel semi trucks. Well anyhow a year ago he bought them to work on over the winter while the construction industry is slow. His plan was to rebuild them and sell them. So he has a guy that wants to buy two of them but only has time to build one before we need to be back in PA. So he is rushing to get that finished before we head back. He will have to make one more trip out after this next one to get the rest of the shop stuff and then he can get it all set up in the shop back in PA.

Aus and Cam have been having fun seeing family and playing with friends. Camden got his first stitched too. When we were at the hotel he was on the bed and rolled off next to the night stand and landed on the bottom corner of the night stand (it was a funky design the bottom of it stuck out more than the top and had a very sharp corner) that slit his head open and he was bleeding like crazy. We took him to the hospital where he had to get 6 stitches in his head. He cried when they were numbing him up but slept through all the "sewing" He just laid on Daddy's chest and slept it was cute.
Since I don't have my camera with me I have very few photos of the last month (along with very little of everything. I flew out here for one week! For the love!!! Good thing I can get creative lol) I do however, have some of Cam's stitches and a few others.



Camden's cute face before...

and this is while we were waiting in the ER
.
sleeping with daddy

And the finished product. It didn't leave too bad of a scar. I even took out the stitches myself. Wasn't hard at all. He is doing fine now and has even managed to have a few close call repeat trips. Boys will be boys!

...Roughin' it...

We have finally made it to PA... Actually we have been here nearly two weeks now. We took our time driving out. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the trip back. The kids did really really well. It has been quite an adjustment going from a 3000 sq ft home to an 800 sq ft trailer and form the city to the middle of nowhere.

So far we have found snake skins under our trailer and all kinds of spiders. I even found a BIG pile of bear poop!!!!!!!! I almost passed out, the boys however have found great interest in bear poop and spiders and all the other bugs you get to live with when your backyard is part of the woods! Of course there are tons of tractor rides with daddy and they both follow him around everywhere with tools in hand so they can fix whatever it is he is fixing.

We have had TONS of good old fashioned home cooked meals made from scratch. We have picked beans and corn. Andrew's dad canned some beans and applesauce for us and I froze some corn so we are building up our food storage pretty quickly! I've learned a lot about gardening and have been helping in their HUGE garden. It has been pretty fun and a great learning experience so far.

Luckily our stay in this trailer is only temporary. We found a really nice new house. It's just a bit smaller than our house back in Utah but at least we will fit in it with all of our belongings. Also, it has a nice big wrap around covered porch. Property out here is so stinkin' cheap! Its a house on 4 acres with a shop, barn, shed and its all fenced in. It's only 100 thousand!! I couldn't believe it! Back home it would be more like one million dollars!

Oh yeah, there is one little catch... its an Amish house. which means it has no bathrooms or electricity and only running water to the kitchen sink!!!! Luckily it will all be really easy to install because they didn't finish the basement or upstairs so all the walls are easily accessible. We will slowly finish the basement and top floor. We are really lucky to have found such a great house for so cheap it will only take a week or so for Andrew to put in the electric and plumbing and then we can move in.

Well this had turned into a book. I haven't taken many pictures but I do have one of the bear poop. ;) I tried to show how big it is by putting my hand next to it so you can compare, but the angle still makes it look smaller than it is. EW!!

My Tractor Boys!!

The boys love to ride this tractor. Its so funny to watch because Aus puts it in fast mode and they cruise around the back yard like crazy. Somehow Camden manages to hold on the entire time. You'd be surprised to see how fast this little toy goes!

Aussie Sauce

So yesterday we went to Arby's to get some dinner. We went through the drive through because we were on our way down to drop the kids off at Kira and Tommy's for the night. I placed our order and pulled through to pay when the guy asked me if I wanted horsey or arby's sauce. I was about to say no thanks when Aussie yelled from the back seat "Hey! I want AUSSIE SAUCE please!!!"

It was pretty funny. The guy could hear him and just laughed at him. He is always saying crazy stuff like that.

So since we took the kids down there I got to sleep in (well for the most part) until 10:10 this morning!!! It has been years since I have been able to sleep in that late. The only problem was that we were up til 1am so I really only got the same amount of sleep, maybe a little more, than usual. Either way it was really nice and I am one happy camper today!

A new first for me

I guess there is a first for everything right? Well I had my first car accident yesterday! I have never been in a car accident before and to make it worse it was MY FAULT!!! We were in the interstate in rush hour traffic. It was stop and go and at this particular point in time everyone hit the gas and went faster than they had before and then all of a sudden slammed on the breaks. I didn't have time to stop before I hit the car in front of me, which hit the car in front of him. Since I was the one in the back I got cited for it. BUT the guy behind me was seriously an inch away from hitting me! DANG IT!! lol...
Anyhow, there wasn't much damage done to anyones car. My car had the least amount of damage. You could hardly tell it was even in an accident. The other guys had minor bumper damage. So it really wasn't a big deal at all.
Andrew came down and met me there and told the guys we would just pay to fix their bumpers rather than let it go through our insurance and pay the deductable and then a higher premium on top of that. They were cool with doing it that way.
Luckily it was just me in the car. I had someone watching the kids. I think that is what I was thankful for the most.
I think I did pretty good going 27 years without having an accident. Lets just hope my luck continues and I dont have any for at least another 27 years!