Back to Life

Now that we are, ahem, officially moved in (see previous post), it seems time to get back to blogging for real.

We are still settling into life together as a family...and, let's be honest, it's not easy. We have to relearn all over again how to live with more people, figuring out how to balance being a family, getting things done, and having fun. After five months apart, it has been an interesting transition. But! Don't worry, it's not all bad.

The night before we moved, we went to Panda Express with Mark and Jess. The night before I left Logan, left my full-time job, left off being a single parent, getting ready to live with Chris and be a stay at home mom, this is what my fortune said:

You are heading for a land of sunshine and relaxation.

I don't put a lot of stock in those fortune cookies, but this one may be on to something...

We inaugurated our house with our first Family Home Evening. We talked about our favorite things in our new house, then marked each of our heights on the wall. Now it really is our house.


While still having mounds of boxes to unpack, we are establishing some kind of daily routine. After Chris leaves for work around 6:00 in the morning, I have a little time to myself before the girls wake up and we have breakfast together.


I've gotten a little more creative with Jane's hair, now that I have more time to experiment. I thought this one turned out pretty cute.



Not to be left out, Megan has begun developing some fashion sense of her own.


We have done a lot of yardwork lately in addition to getting the house set up nicely. Everyone participates.

Isn't he cute?

Jane wearing her "sleeves"


and Megan just chillin'. She's really good at that.


We spent I think four evenings out trimming the bushes on this one side of the house. In that time, we had no less than a dozen people come up to introduce themselves and welcome us to the neighborhood. It's a much different atmosphere than living in the condos. I think we're going to enjoy it here.

We have only been to our new ward three times since we moved, and we have already spoken in sacrament meeting and received callings. Chris is the new Gospel Doctrine teacher and I am the Activity Days leader in Primary. (Primary--that's a new one. It's been six years since I've been in a ward with any primary beyond nursery.)

In other news, Jane is pretty much potty trained now. She stills takes great pride in wearing panties so she can "be a big girl like Claire!" It's very exciting, don't you know.

Megan is also officially crawling. It was iffy there for quite a while, but she has finally gotten it down.


You may notice that she is less than thrilled at this particular moment. That's because I was actually rather far away and making her crawl to me.


We have added some events to our daily and weekly routines that are a welcome change from what life had been for those five months. For one, we now have a sit-down, homemade family dinner every night.


I had to take a picture of this one because the night before, I had made tostadas that were NaStY. Seriously, it was the most disgusting meal we have tasted probably since we've been married. Not my fault, though. The shells were extremely stale and I just didn't notice until everything we already served up. Yuk. The dinner pictured, however, was delicious. Spicy chili, pineapple and made from scratch cornbread muffins. Tasty stuff.

We have successfully held Family Home Evening for three weeks in a row--a new record for our little family! In all honestly, I think our previous record was, cough cough, one week in a row. Tonight, we talked about temples.


For the activity, we each made our own temple out of playdough.

Brenda stayed with us the first week we were living here, she went back to Idaho for a week, and now she's staying with us again. She is the official painter at our house. She has painted basically every room upstairs, with help from several people along the way. There are three rooms to go, hence why she came back.

Chris gave us an impromtu lesson about the symbolism of the spires on the Salt Lake temple.


Jane didn't really get the idea, but she thought it was grand fun to have Mom, Dad, and Brenda all play with her at the same time!

The girls and I are enjoying the newly-instituted weekly playdate with my sister Lisa and her kids, Dalton and Nicole. Unfortunately, most of the pictures I took are on Lisa's camera, so I only have a few on mine and none of Dalton! No worries, though, we are going every week. We'll try again this week.

It was very windy that day, can you tell?

Jane is getting continously more brave. She makes me nervous sometimes.

Nicole is just over a month old now. And she still has tons of hair. Not fair--my babies always go bald within the first week.


Megan was having a harder time with the slope of the hill we were sitting on, but that didn't really stop her from trying to crawl. It mostly just stopped her from actually crawling.

There was a thunderstorm one night. For just a moment, there were three rainbows visible.

I love living around so many trees.

I know that you all are just a little Jane-deprived. For your reading pleasure, here are some of Jane's newest Jane moments.

Jane isn't the best nap-taker ever. When I leave the room after laying her down, she can cry for quite a while before going to sleep. One day, I walked out of the room and this is what I heard:

In crying, whiny voice:
"Mommy, come back! Wait, Mommy! Wait! Don't ever leave me! Come back!"
and an abrupt switch to her normal voice:
"Oh, never mind. I'll just go to sleep."
I didn't hear another peep.

Jane accidently bit her thumb, hard, while eating dinner. In her grief, she just had to call Grandpa. In her words: "I hurt my finger on my teeth."

Jane came out of the bathroom one day with her shorts on backwards. When I pointed it out to her, she took her pants off, turned herself around, and put them back on.

Jane fell down. The report: "I hurt the floor with myself."
That one is my current favorite.

And a cute Megan too: