More Good

I’m feeling good and loving how our life is going right now, which is no excuse not to write blog posts. Part of the lack of blog posts might be that I still don’t have our camera (hopefully I remember it get it when we visit the in-laws for Easter).

Why am I so happy? Well, let me tell you what’s on my “happy list” right now:

- I’m getting stronger (I got to a power pump class at the gym on Tues and Thurs, and I can feel the strength and stamina I’m developing. Now I just need to start running again, since the weather is good)

- Russ and I have better gospel discussions and are more unified as parents and spouses. We have Family Home Evening, family prayer, we read scriptures together as a family, and are working on worshipping better on the Sabbath day.

- We are one step away from getting our foster care license! (home study tomorrow!)

- The military (finally!) paid a huge chunk of Russ’ student loans (almost HALF of the loan!!) and will make another payment this fall, and the fall after that.

- The military fixed our address in their system (finally!) and we are now getting paid enough to cover our housing expenses!

- Russ will be coaching Vincente’s T-ball team this spring, which starts next week!

- We’ve been to the eye doctor, I’ve had my first yearly exam (ever!), and the kids are getting caught up on their shots (we’ve been a little lazy about following our alternative schedule – but most of that has to do with moving around so much), and I’m going to the chiropractor regularly again, so my hips are feeling a LOT better.

- We’ve been getting a lot of work done on the yard (I thought that I had posted about how it looked before,  but I can’t find the post – so here are some pics of last fall):

The lawn is getting really green, and we have cleaned up all of the weeds and trees (well, the big ones). My plan for next week is to mow the front lawn, then weed & feed. Then in a month I’ll re-seed the parts of the front lawn that need help. The backyard is being re-seeded, and we expanding the dog run so we don’t feel so bad about keeping them cooped up. Plus, we’ve been taking them out on walks/runs/dog park visits more often so that they can get some much needed exercise. And I’ve also done a few home projects – I replaced the water line to the fridge, so we can finally use the water and ice maker in the fridge. I also replaced a motion sensor light on our back deck. The sensor was defective or something, because it would turn off and on and off and on… sooo annoying. I replaced it with a fixture that didn’t have a motion sensor, since we only want the light to be ON. We’ll hopefully be adding some motion sensor lights to the corners of the house soon. We’re also going to replace the light at the front door (which is completely broken…) and put motion sensor lights on the side of the garage door.

We’re going to replace some light fixtures and fans around the house, and replace the doors and door hardware (these two things will happen in the next few months). And this summer we’ll put in tile in the dining room (which is currently carpeted) and replace the tile in the kitchen.

We have to do things piece by piece because our cash flow is relatively low (some day Russ will be promoted). But we feel blessed because we have very little debt (and we’re paying that off) and some savings (which we’re adding to) and very low expenses, so we’re able to accomplish a lot of the things that we want to, even with our limited income. I’m always astonished with how much we are actually able to do each month with our limited paycheck. It always seems to be more than it really is.

Well, that’s why life is good here. I hope life is good for you, too!

Snakes and Snails

Vincente with my friend Jessica’s red-tailed boa, Houdini

The Year of 2010 was quite the adventure. There was all the moving around... and then there was all the wildlife! Throughout the year we encountered 4 snakes (only one of which was a captive bred snake – and two of which I’m pretty sure were rattlers), 3 lizards (the small one pictured, and then our two bearded dragons – the first one (Lizzy) had a parasite and died, the second (Elvis) is alive and well!) , 1 nest of baby birds, and a turtle. Most of these creatures were found at or around my parents house in Arkansas.

Vincente with a turtle my brother and sis-in-law
found in their garden – eating their cucumbers
A little lizard we found stuck in a spider’s web in my parent’s garage.
We kept him in this jar for a little while so the kids could view him, then we set him free. I was amazed that a lizard could get stuck in a spider’s web!
A little garden snake we saw in the front yard of our new house after we destroyed it’s habitat – the overgrown flowerbeds!
A rat snake my mom found stuck in the netting over her berry bushes. We weren’t sure if he was dangerous, so we called Animal Control and they took him away. Mom wanted to keep him so he would scare away (or eat) the critters that go after her berries.
The nest of baby birdies in my parents garage/carport.
One of the birdies perched on a bike, learning to fly!

Rolling Along

We bought Vincente a “big kid bike” with training wheels for his 3rd birthday. We haven’t really lived in one place long enough for him to ride it a lot (until now) but while we were at my parents’ house in Arkansas he did get out a few times.

These pictures are from the first time he REALLY rode. He pedaled himself all the way down the street and back. He had a hard time stopping if he was going downhill, but he was really good at pedaling. He told me, “When you got really strong feet, the rollers will go.” Apparently, he has really strong feet.

We’ve been out a few times since we moved into our new house, but not frequently enough for Vince to really get the hang of the bike thing. We’ll be working on it this year, I assure you.

 

If you’re wondering why he’s only in shorts – it was probably 90-100 degrees that day (even if it was overcast) and around 40-50% humidity.

Graduation

 

Russ became a “real” soldier on September 30, 2010. By real I mean, he finally had all the training necessary to do a job in the military. The picture at the top was at his company’s award ceremony the night before graduation, at which Russ received several awards, including the GAFB (pronounced “gaff-bee” – weird, I know... military... go figure) – the German Armed Forces Badge – basically you qualify by doing really well on the APFT (the physical fitness test) and by shooting a bunch of stuff, and by in general being a good soldier.

These two pictures are at the actual graduation. It was short and sweet, just the way I like it. Vincente played Monkey Preschool Lunchbox most of the time (man I love my iPhone...) and Joseline mostly just sat around. The cutie.  We are so proud of our Papai! He is such a great soldier and has done a lot of good stuff! And we are sooo happy he is done with all of his initial entry training! 

A title-less post... I don’t think this has ever happened. I usually have something concise to name my posts – but not this one. There’s just too much to put into one title.

I feel like we kind of dropped off the grid – and we sort of did. But we’re coming back full force!

I’ve had a lot on my mind lately – we didn’t get to listen to Saturday’s general conference because we were driving during both sessions (AND Priesthood) so I’ve been listening to conference, reading stuff, feeling like I need to be better (no I don’t feel like I’m a failure – in fact, I feel like we are doing pretty well – but that’s exactly when we should probably be doing more).

This sentence from the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet has been on my mind:

Do not attend, view, or participate in entertainment that is vulgar, immoral, violent, or pornographic in any way.

President Boyd K. Packer’s talk, along with the Human Rights Campaign’s response and the Church’s re-response (?) have weighed heavy on my heart and mind. And some family situations don’t make it any lighter.

Getting our house in order again hasn’t taken nearly as long as I thought it might, and working side by side with Russ (this is pretty much the FIRST home we’ve moved in to together – he’s always been training or working when we have moved) has been fabulous. Our marriage is great. Our children are beautiful and fun, as usual. We have two great dogs that love us and are well behaved and give us an added sense of security. Russ has a secure job doing something he loves. I have a job that lets me work whenever I want (or not at all, if I don’t want to – I haven’t logged a single hour of tutoring since Russ got back from FTX in Arizona... going on 1 month! Thankfully we don’t need the income... it just goes toward our snowball).

I haven’t taken many pictures of the kids because our house has been such a disaster, and I haven’t sat down at the computer in weeks because we only got the internet on Tuesday.

I will try to resume our normal posting schedule next week (Monday Musings, Wednesday Wanderings, Friday Goals, and posts of “this life” on the other days).  Monday Musings will probably include my thoughts on President Packer’s talk. Wednesday Wanderings will take us to Gardner Village here in our new “hometown” and Friday Goals will probably revisit the journal writing (I did really well... then life/the move happened).

There will be lots of pictures, too. I promise! And videos like this one:

What Has Been

I was getting all my photos off of my iPhone in preparation for an update (which I still haven’t been able to get to work... darn iTunes...) and I realized that I haven’t been blogging in a while, but life has still been going on.

I want to post all of the pictures all at once, but that would be a blog post with too many pictures. So, I’m going to give you some highlights, and then tomorrow after church while the kids are napping (cross your fingers) I’ll try to wade through everything... whoa. It’s a LOT of stuff....

some sewing of aprons 

playing in buckets full of water

this sweet face (and another one just like it)

a lot of free play

  outside free play!

and so much of this

it makes me want to lay down and do nothing right this minute

But you’ll get it all in blogged form with nice layouts and full narratives starting tomorrow. I’ll probably “program” them to post for my Tues/Thurs “this life” posts so you don’t get overwhelmed.

Also, Wednesday Wanderings comes back this week with a review of the Sierra Vista Public Library! (story time on Tuesday mornings! Hooah! And I also found out that the post has a Family Fitness Center – so we’ll be checking that out on Monday – and it will probably make an appearance on the blog next Wednesday).

It’s good to be back in full swing – getting used to another new normal (it feels like my normal changes each day... of course, the only constant thing is change, so that makes sense!)

Speaking Dog

Now that we are in a house with a fenced yard and a open, spacious floor plan, I feel like I’m better able to work with the puppies. Teaching them that I am the alpha figure and they don’t so much as breathe without me saying it’s okay. I think I like having dogs because I can have complete control over them... unlike children who have agency and will do whatever they want to do despite my commands and instruction. I can get the dogs to sit, but can’t get my kids to sit? Maybe I was meant to be a dog... I speak dog a lot better than I speak kid.

 

 

 

 

Lucy and Doc. Lucy wanted desperately to eat the camera.

Today (and probably for the rest of the week) we’ll be working on “lay down” and “don’t eat something off the floor unless I say you can.”

Practicing “sit, stay”

So far both are going reasonably well. Well, you know, as good as can be expected when your puppies are only 13 weeks old and have spent most of the last several weeks of their lives in a small crate or tied to a dog run without much human interaction (due to our lack of fenced yard and my inability to leave my children inside my parents house without supervision).

Practicing “lay down, stay” – I still have to show them what “lay down” means every time, but they will “stay” laying down after I get them there... except Doc who is too giddy to stay doing anything for long... dumb dog. Look at those paws on Lucy! She’s going to be a monster!!

At this house, the kids hang out in the kitchen/living room which are relatively child-proof, and I can see them through the big sliding glass door in the kitchen. The shaded porch in the back is the prime spot for training, and I can stick the puppy not in training inside the crate with a blanket on top so they don’t freak out about not being with their littermate. 

Practicing “don’t eat it until I say you can” – basically I lay a treat down in front of them and make them “sit, stay” until I tell them to get it. If they start sniffing the ground, that’s a no-no “tsch” and they get fingers in the face. They’re doing really well. Except once I tell them they can eat the treat, then they are constantly sniffing the ground to find more treats... so, we’ll be working on this a lot more. I was impressed that they waited at all

As a little bit of a funny story... I dreamt last night that we give the puppies m&ms for a treat. Must have something to do with how we potty trained Vince with m&ms. Sometime in the dream I realized that m&ms were chocolate, and I started freaking out, trying to find the puppies and make sure we hadn’t killed them with m&ms. I promise I will never feed my puppies m&ms. Cross my heart and hope to die.

Monday Musings – Vacation

I need  a vacation.

Badly.

Thankfully we found this house to live in down in Arizona and we’ll be staying close to post. We’ll get to see Russ a little, and have a backyard, and there are some fun things to do in Arizona. I have declared September as the month of perpetual vacation.

We’ll also be closing on our house in September, which will be the crowning glory of this summer (along with Russ’ graduation).

It’s been a long summer and I’m just glad it’s almost over.

Looking back, I’m trying to figure out what good things came out of this summer. A lot of things, I’m sure. I learned a lot. I mean a lot. It has been really good for me. I don’t know that I grew a lot this summer, but I think this summer has planted the seeds for growth for the next several years.

I have met a lot of really neat people, and I have been on the receiving end of some really great service and blessings.

I have become stronger – I can run nearly 6 miles without a problem, and I could probably do more than that, but I’ve put running on the back burner right now.

I wish I could say that my testimony has been strengthened, but I think it has been mostly stagnant. I think I will spend the next few days working on that. Throw myself into prayer and the scriptures. Figure out what Heavenly Father wants me to be doing right now (rather than just “waiting” for the summer to end). That kind of thing. I’ll definitely let you know how it goes.

By the way, if you haven’t yet, go here and create your Mormon.org profile – and share the mormon.org website with anyone and everyone!

Change of Plans

Remember this list?

Well, this happened, and that list basically went right out the window.

 

So instead of all those goals, I basically have one for the rest of the summer (and September, in case you don’t still count that as summer):

survive

That’s it. I’ll worry about thriving when I get to Arizona and I’m with my sweet supporter and confidant.

I may try to run a half marathon in Arizona, but it’s more likely that I wait until October and run the Provo Halloween Half Marathon.

For the next two weeks while I’m still here in Arkansas, I will take it easy, run if I can, not run if I can’t, continue my yoga practice, maybe play some more violin, and enjoy spending time with my kids and those sweet puppies (did I mention how sweet and good those puppies are? Well, they are).

Maybe I’ll even get started on Joseline’s quilt. I’ll definitely work out the design for Vincente’s quilt.

I’ve been a little frustrated at the need to change my plans (I am a serious planner... like, probably OCD about having plans. Ask my husband, I wouldn’t even consider marrying him until he had a 10 year plan). I think I married the right guy, though, because Russ is always talking about how you shouldn’t plan stuff because you never know what’s going to happen and life may change. I say you should plan stuff, because otherwise you’re like Alice in Wonderland.

So Russ and I have been great for each other – since we’ve been married, he’s been a better planner, and I’ve been more flexible. Which means although I was a little frustrated, I moved on without too much hesitation.

And now here I am – with new plans for the future.

It’s Official!

Our offer was approved on the house!! We close on September 23!!

We’ll be having a housewarming party in October after we move in. Probably the weekend after we move in (Oct 9). We’re going to be planting stuff, and we want to do it before it gets too cold.

If you’re going to be in Utah that weekend, you should come! Our house will be open all day to visitors, so just make you way over, come as early as you want, stay as late as you want, feel free to leave and come back, whatever! We just want to see everyone! (and show off our new house, of course!)

Pending the military letting Russ leave after graduation, we plan on driving back to Utah on October 1 or 2. We’re doing the POD thing, and we’ll probably have it for the entire month of October, so we’ll be in no rush to unpack – but anyone who feels the urge to come help, you’re completely welcome to come help on Saturday.

We are excited to be back in Utah soon!

Zipcode

We got to spend a wonderful weekend with Russ in Arizona! We also got to spend some great time with his fabulous cousin Aaron, and his family (Anne and four of the rowdiest Navajo boys you’ll ever meet – but boy are they well behaved! And sweethearts! And freaking adorable.)

On Saturday we went to the International Wildlife Museum in Tucson. It was pretty much the most entertaining thing we did. Holy cow – so many “stuffed” animals (not sure what the proper term for that is…)

While purchasing tickets at said museum, the lady at the ticket office asked for my home zipcode.
I hesitated.
Who on earth hesitates when you ask them their zipcode?!
I’ll tell you who – displaced Army wives who don’t live with their husbands, have a home of record halfway across the country and have their household goods stored practically in the Pacific ocean.

My goodness… I think I’ve known my zipcode at every place I’ve lived before I even actually lived there!! But now… er, just a minute… let me think about that… hmm, do you want the zipcode of my household goods? The zipcode of my “home of record”? The place I’m living now? Where our “head of household” lives? For your average human being, these are all the same number. For us? Yeah… we’re pretty messed up.

Aaron also taught us some things about the saguaro cactus. A saguaro cactus won’t grow its first arm until it’s about 100 years old! Holy cow, that’s an old cactus! After that it can sprout new arms every 40-50 years. So the cactus in that picture (not mine, btw) is probably 4-5 hundred years old! Whoa. You think I could have gotten a few of my own shots of these ancient wonders, but, you know, I had something (one) else on my mind.

The aforementioned museum is located kind of in the middle of a saguaro “forest.” Spending time in Arizona has kind of changed my perspective of the desert. While I would never choose to live in the desert, it does have its own strange beauty. I used to think of the desert of a dead, brown, dirty place, but the cacti, other plants, and even the mountains and rock formations and all the dirt have their beauty. If nothing else, the desert is sure fascinating!

The only tree that is older than the saguaro cacti are the redwoods in California (which, you will be sad to note, we never visited – not our fault – we had even reserved a campsite when the Army decided to change our plans for us).

So yeah cactus = really cool.

We also took the kids to Toy Story 3 in Disney Digital 3D! Basically, for Vincente it’s just an expensive ticket to see a blurry movie, since he refuses to wear the glasses for more than 10 or 15 minutes of the show. But whatever, he enjoyed it (and Russ and I love watching the shows in 3D).

On the way home, Vincente was singing “Hay un amigo en mi.”

Seriously, see Toy Story 3.

It was awesome.

Russ and I stayed at the Westward Look Resort in Tucson on Friday night while the kiddos stayed with his cousin’s family. Joseline didn’t think that was very cool (she wouldn’t look us in the eye for about half an hour after we got home), but we had a great time, even if we never did leave our room ;)

Next time we go to Tucson (I think we just might do it again someday… just because!) we’ll stay there and experience the Sonoran Spa and the horseback riding and all the other cool stuff.

I would like to learn how to
rock climb
and then go climb
Picacho Peak
or something.

P.S. I will post pictures of our 4th of July activities in their own post in the interest of keeping this post readable length.

The House - for real this time

Well, here is the house that we have put an offer on.

This is a site with a few pictures.

Hopefully we'll hear in a few months about the property. Ha ha, I say months because it is a short sale, and there is a lowball offer in the bank right now, so we have to wait for the bank to say no to that offer, and then say yes to our offer. Which is actually perfect for us, because we don't want to close on a house until at the earliest mid-September. We'll probably end up closing at the end of September or the beginning of October. Which is great, since that's when we'll be able to move in anyway. The home is perfectly move-in ready. The yard needs some work since it's been vacant for a while, but that's going to be more fun than work! As you my know from my garden blog, I love to dig in the dirt, and plant stuff. The whole house has new paint and new carpet. The only appliance we'll have to buy is a fridge (KSL, here we come!).

Just in case, we put a few offers on other short sales as well, but we won't even consider those homes until this house gets sold to someone else.

My friend, Trisha, told me that I would just know it when I found "the house" - but after walking into house after house after house (probably 50+ homes in 4 days), and really liking some of them, I kept thinking to myself, "Maybe that's how it works for her, but maybe I won't ever have that feeling."

Then I walked into this house in West Jordan and I just got that feeling - "This house." That was it. Before I even saw anything in the house. Then I started walking around, and I kept feeling it! "This house. Yes, this house." In fact, after I saw this house, we still had three or four homes on our list, and I had absolutely no desire to see any of them. And when we walked in to each of the other homes, we simply walked back out, because my feeling about this house was still so strong!

So, either we're supposed to live in this house, or we're supposed to learn a really hard lesson by not living in this house...

I'm hoping it's the former.

M Day!

Okay, clearly this is not our house (or our POD… lawn/pool furniture? Yeah… no. Bricks on our driveway? No.) but it serves the purpose of showing our preferred method of moving. I’ll take a picture of our POD when it gets here… IN THREE WEEKS!

Our official move date is February 25. It was going to be a little later, but apparently the housing office’s last day is the 25th, so if we didn’t want the 25th, we’d have to stay here into March, and we just want to get our stuff packed up and get back to UT! Plus, the earlier I’m back in UT, the faster I can start finding a job. And I need to get fingerprinted for the ARL program, and if I don’t get it done in UT it will take up to 10 weeks to process. Sorry, folks, I need a job a little earlier than that.

Right now we are in need of moving boxes, since we just decided on Friday that we were going to move out a month earlier than planned 8-o

We’ll be seeing all you UT folks soon!! We can’t wait!! :D

We have a little to-do list for before we leave:

- whale watching cruise (scheduled for President’s Day! the 15th)

- family photo shoot on the beach (gotta find out about that!)

- trip to San Francisco (I think we would be really disappointed if we lived in Monterey for over a year and never went to SFO. So we’ll have to plan that trip in there sometime!)

- sell our CAR!! Ack! 8-o Otherwise we may need someone from UT to fly out and drive it back for us. Any takers? I found flights from SLC to Oakland for under $100. We’d pay half the ticket? If it comes right down to it we’ll probably end up just trying to sell it to a dealer 8-o Yikes.

Long Time

It’s been a while, and I’ve been taking too many pictures (again!) but I’ve decided to start only posting my very favorite pictures or the pictures that go along with a particular story/event I want to share. And then not spend so much time talking about the stuff that went on. I’d like to … but my life is probably not nearly as interesting as the pictures are cute :)

I’m going to work more on scrapbooking and eventually I’m going to start printing pictures to hang in our home (this fall… when we have a “home”)

Anyway, life has been very eventful this month. My parents came to visit, we went to the aquarium with them, the farmers market, and did a bazillion other things.

Now we’re getting ready for yard selling and moving and such.

I can’t believe our time here is almost finished.

 

We’ll be moving back to UT on March 1 (well, me and the babies) – but those plans are kind of tentative… they’ve changed at least 4 times since the beginning of the year…

 

Then it will be job hunting for me, graduation for Russ from DLI on April 1 (which I may or may not attend… he said he doesn’t care as much about his graduation from DLI as he cared about his graduation from BYU – I can’t blame him… bachelor’s degree and 5+ languages vs. associates and 1 language… hmm, it’s easy to see which schooling wins in the “coolness” dept for him)

In other news, Joseline still does not walk, I speak more Portuguese at home (and have committed to speaking Portuguese to the kids this summer while Russ is in AZ), Vince speaks Portuguese in the evenings and on weekends when Russ is home, and Joseline mostly just giggles. Oh yeah, and makes the “car” noise. Like every time she sees anything with wheels. Motorcycles, cars, push toys, etc. It’s pretty much hilarious. Her favorite toys are cars, and dishes. Good thing we have a lot of each.

 
And she loves Lightening McQueen. If Vince’s Cars toys are out and she has a choice, she goes for the Cars toys before the Hotwheels. I can’t blame her – they are pretty fun cars.

Vince goes potty almost all by himself and FINALLY puts his undies back on by himself. I just stopped helping him one day. The first few days he ran around naked because he wouldn’t put them on by himself. Then I started taking away toys/privileges if he wasn’t “underweared” Now he just does it himself.

 

Russ is getting ready to take the Chinese DLPT on March 20 (another recent for our early departure). He’s doing pretty well in class, but still hates doing homework. I totally understand though. We are SO much more entertaining than his homework :)

I am mostly hanging out with the kids, marking off my to-do list every day, and SO enjoying my garden which is blooming all sorts of beautiful flowers (the flowers are totally coming with me to UT).

We try to go to the library more often, and I’ve started doing a run/kid swap with a friend – she runs while I watch her 2 year old, then I run while she watches my kids! It’s working out great, and I’ve been pretty consistently working back up to a 10 min mile for 3 miles. I hit it just about on the head on Wednesday, and I hope to do a 4.1 mile loop next week, probably on Friday. With lots of hideous hills. It’s going to be a great run, though. Half-marathon, here I come! I’m progressing, slowly but surely.

The Post Wide Yard sale is on Saturday (the 6th) and my goal is to make $1000!!! Can I do it!? Better bet your bottom dollar I will!! I’ve got lots to sell, and I have the very best spot on the lot, which is going to be all decorated pretty, and I always have a “free stuff” box, which I’m going to place at the BACK of my spot this time, instead of the front, so people have to walk past all my COOL stuff to get to the free stuff :) You’d think I was in marketing or something.

 

  

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the random update and the pictures. Just a few BAZILLION of my very favorites from the past weeks. (Sorry, I wrote “few” before I actually went through my pictures to see how many favorites I had… )