Leaving LA

Deciding to move and then moving was so quick that we only had time to do a few of our favorite things "one last time."

The California Science Center:


Natural History Museum:

(I told Shea and best friend Connor to hold hands in the parking lot - and then I thought it looked so cute I made them let me take a picture. I think the exact quote from the boys was, "Ugh, Mom! Ugh Jenna!" :-)
The best friends even got a special night out at a kids restaurant! They got matching tattoos and balloon animals. (Were they excited?)

Disneyland, of course:
Belle thought Fionn was adorable and couldn't stop giving him kisses.


The Beach:


4th of July Picnic with Friends and Dean's Birthday:

Shea update

Shea at 6 1/2 is delightful. He's getting so big, he can be reasoned with and talked to like a big kid. It's so fun to have "real" conversations with him. And as much as I hate that my kids just keep getting bigger and bigger - it's nice too, in lots of ways, Shea is such a great helper! He's my trash taker outer (which he loves. yay!) our weed puller (which he does not love. :-) And he's the best baby helper ever!

He's getting to be a really good reader and it makes him feel so accomplished. He's taking piano lessons and loves that he can play a few easy recognizable songs. And his biggest news - he's in French Immersion 1st grade. So he's learning French too. I'm so proud of him and how kind, sweet and loving he is.

For his last birthday he got this snap circuit, electricity set (thanks Heidi for the recommendation. It is awesome!) He and Chris love to sit down together and figure out how to make these awesome little electrical things. A fan, a flashlight, an alarm clock!
Kindergarten Graduation:
Shea and Ms. Peral:
Shea's class danced the Charleston at the end of school Dance Festival. They drew moustaches on the boys and put them in suspenders. Can you tell how excited Shea was about that? (Although he's since decided that he wants a pair of suspenders. Turns out they were fun to play with.)

With friends:

Last day of Kindergarten at Clover:

First Day of French Immersion First Grade:

Clare update

Clare is definitely 3 1/2. She knows what she wants and man will she let you know if she's not getting it! Good thing she can also be a sweet, cuddly little love bug. I love all the time we get together during the week. We have lots of fun reading, having tea parties and playing dress up - her favorite activities. It's pretty much useless to get her dressed in the morning, she's in a princess dress ten minutes later. When I asked her what she wanted Santa to bring her for Christmas this year she said, "A Belle dress. And a Jasmine dress. Oh, and a Tangled dress. And maybe Tinkerbell too." Mommy better get out her sewing machine!

Tea Party time!
Reading to every lovey in the house:
On our last trip to Disneyland, she got to meet some of her princesses! (A highlight of her life! And let's not dwell on Disneyland too long, I might start to cry. We miss it soooo badly!)


She started preschool a few weeks after we moved here. I drive her 15 minutes to Spanish Fork every MWF for 2 1/2 hrs. I love that it's not a co-op and I don't have to be there. (Fionn's nap is during her preschool time, so 3 days a week I get 2 mommy ONLY hours!! WOW!) She's very independent and loves that she gets to go to her own school and do her own thing.

First day of school:
(I know, princess dress AND princess backpack. Agh! Remember that earlier mention of how this girl knows exactly what she wants??)





One day we went to get sparkly pink cupcakes! (In honor of Grandma, who calls her, her little cupcake.)

Fionn update

This little guy is amazing. He is so sweet, so mellow, sooooo loving. I can not imagine our family without him. We adore him. He has three teeth on bottom and two top teeth should pop through any minute now. He's very close to crawling. He loves his siblings. They can make him laugh by just looking at him. He FINALLY sleeps through the night. Hallelujah!! He eats lots of cereal, baby food and baby snacks as you can see - look at this little fat rolly polly - I finally have a fat baby!! Yay. I can't get enough of his soft, little, fat, wonderful, smiling self. I love you sweet angel Fionnster!!

I missed his 7 month photo, moving, vacation and all that. But here's a few catch up pics. He'll be 9 months old next week!!! Where has the time gone??

MOVED!!!

Sorry that it took me so long to update the blog with all the move info - and thanks Lauren, Renning and Em for hounding me to finally get it done! :-) Here's what's up....

We moved! boo hoo hoo. How we miss LA! But we're excited about a real job. That's right, after 8 years of marriage and 11 years of school - Chris has a real job!! He's not finished with his dissertation yet, but BYU hired him ABD (all but dissertation) on a 1 year contract. We really struggled deciding if uprooting the family and paying for a move were worth it for a 1 year contract, but in the end we felt that the experience, how great this would look on his resume when finding a long term position and a year's worth of a living wage would be worth it.

Our move was awesome. BYU had a moving allowance and my parents contributed so we splurged and got a moving company. It was amazing!!! They even packed us!! My favorite part was while they were waiting for the shuttle (the big truck wouldn't fit into the Village) they took everything down to the playground. My entire life on the playground. This is when I learned that 1- I have WAY too much crap. (Really, an entire bin with just balls????!) and 2 - there are certain clothing items that would have been better packed in non-transparent bins. I'm sure the totally visible lingerie was a highlight for all my neighbors walking by that morning.

Me taking pictures while Raoul did a bang up job packing my kitchen! AWESOME!
By the end, our belongings stretched from one end of the playground all the way to the other, wrapped around the corner and for some of the way was in two rows!!!


So, here we are in Springville UTAH! We've been here for 6 weeks and we're getting settled.
The things we miss:

• We really, really, really miss our friends! Really!! Really!! A lot!!
  
• We really miss playground time at the village twice every day.
  
• It's starting to cool down here a bit, but we miss our gorgeous, gorgeous LA weather. Utah is so hot in the summer. Ugh.
  
• A couple days ago in the car Clare said, "Mommy, is there a Disneyland in Utah?" I said, no honey, sorry! She thought for a minute and then said, "Well there's a beach right?" Nope, sorry babe. I could see the wheels turning in her mind and she goes, "What are we going to do here???" :-) So yeah, we also miss Disneyland and the beach!

What we love:

• Our house!!! I've promised pictures to several people so I attached them below. So. much. room. And it's clean and new and there's no mold! (Gotta love those Village showers!)
  
• I love that I can do laundry whenever I want, without carrying it down the stairs, across the playground and fighting everyone to pay for moldy washers.
  
• I love my kitchen, my new appliances and my under mount sink.
  
• I love that I can take trash to my own trash can right outside my door and that I can drive groceries right to my house and walk them through the garage and into the kitchen instead of carting them halfway across the village.
• I love my mountain views - gorgeous, gorgeous mountains out the front and back windows!
  
• I like that we're totally in the country. Between us and the Walmart across the street there's a protected wetland area, horses, cows, sheep and somewhere there's a rooster (that Chris swears he's going to shoot very very soon.) There's very little traffic, no freeway noise and no police helicopters at night. :-)
  

But... we have tons of mosquitoes and the spiders - ugh. Chris caught a 2 1/2 inch wolf spider in our garage yesterday. She was seriously a giant. I'm so glad Chris caught her - otherwise I would have had 100 wolf spiders in my garage - she was carrying her egg sack!! The kids named her Charlotte and kept her in a jar for the day so their aunts and uncle who were coming to dinner that night could see her.
They wanted to keep her for a pet. Oh my NO! I draw the line and giant sized wolf spiders!!!!! Chris let her go in the wetlands behind the house, I wanted to let her go into the toilet but I was outvoted. (By the way, I had a nightmare that she climbed back over the fence and into Fionn's crib and her eggs hatched - ugh, I've had the heebie geebies all day!!) Sorry, I got distracted by the excitement of the spider, anyway -

Shea does not go to the local elementary (whose roof I can see from my kitchen - of course, I like to make things difficult) instead, we got him into a French Immersion program 25 minutes away. Chris takes him on the way to school in the mornings and me and the little kids pick him up every day. It's a. lot. of driving. But he really likes it. We have a few concerns, but we'll wait and see how it goes because we really want him to speak French and he's finally on board and totally excited about it. Shea starts swimming lessons next week and had his first piano lesson on Friday. We're excited about both those for him.

Clare goes to a preschool 15 minutes away in the other direction 3 days a week for 2 1/2 hrs. She loves it, I love it. Fionn doesn't necessarily love it (more time in the car for him) but Clare is really, really happy there. We both hope that we meet some little girls in our neighborhood soon - she's really missing playing with other kids! Tuesday was her first Fairy Tale Ballet class. (pictures to come later.) I don't know who came up with this, but it's genius! In each class they do some basic ballet moves, then all the little girls get into the princess costume of the day. Last week it was Aurora. Then they sit in a big circle and the teacher reads them the princess story, then she helps them dance out the story in their princess dresses. I have never in my life seen 13 little girls that happy. Clarey thought she'd died and gone to heaven! Tomorrow is Ariel day! :-)

Fionn is ADORABLE! He's 8 months today and the light of our lives. He is so mellow, so sweet, so cute. He eats real food, bananas mostly, had two adorable little teeth and learned to clap! I've been sleep training him the past 4 days and I've finally had 6+ stretches of sleep for the first time in 8 months. We're both happier. If only the poor kid didn't have to be in the car as much - I'm grateful he's so good natured, he doesn't seem bothered most of the time.

Chris is teaching 3 classes at BYU. He's gone a lot. Well a lot for us. He's teaching, preparing to deliver a paper at a conference in Oct and trying to crank out his dissertation so he can apply for long term positions in Dec. The man is busy. Which neither of us are used to because he's been home so much for the past 4 years. We're getting used to it. As far as grown up jobs go - this is a great one. He can leave (aside from when he's teaching obviously) whenever he wants and work from wherever - it'll be nice to have him at all parent teacher conferences, ballet recitals and swim meets! He even gets to volunteer in Shea's class a couple times a month.

I'm home. Working. And driving. And really missing my friends, but I'm not going to feel sorry for myself (as of yesterday!) :-) To all those I've complained to lately - the talks in stake conference were for me! Quit having a pity party and serve! - So that's my new goal. I'm not going to whine and complain about how lonely I am, how nobody in this ward has befriended us, how I haven't met anyone - yada yada yada. I'm going to start taking dinners to random houses on my street until I meet friends. (Ok, maybe not, but I'm going to start doing something!! ;-) Today's been a much better day and I'm taking brownies to our next door neighbors tonight to start.

So, that's it. Sorry this was so long. It's been a while. More catch up posts to come. Anyone who comes to Utah - please call us!! We LOVE visitors. Love you. Miss you!!!!

Here are the house pics.
Downstairs:
Living room

Kitchen

Dining

Family room
(My dad asked if the red thing was a sheet! No dad, it's a cool sliding three panel fabric window cover - geez. :-)
Upstairs:
Our bedroom
(I know, I really, really need new bed linens! And I'm still on the fence about hanging anything upstairs on the walls, what a pain for only a year right?



Kids' room

Fionn's room

Out my kitchen and living room windows:

Out back