Adventures in Utah

This is a picture Anna drew after we got to my parent's house in Utah

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind.  We drove from Illinois to Utah (stopping in Lincoln, Nebraska and Cheyenne, Wyoming).  Then Scott flew back to NorCal for his second week of work.  So far he enjoys the job and the work environment.  He can wear jeans to work.  And no one tells him how long his hair should be.  Of course, those aren't the most pertinent differences, but still noteworthy.  He is currently staying with his sister in San Francisco and commutes down to Silicon Valley.  It takes him about an hour.

I spent a few days in Utah before heading out to CA to house hunt and I got to see my sister and brother and families during that time.

 Here are my kids with my brother (Will)'s kids.

L to R Anna, Emma, John, Rachel, Whitney, Megan, Grant and Matthew.

We got to spend a little time with them before they had to head back home to Oregon.

My parents only moved into this house (from Rhode Island) a few weeks ago.  So they are still getting settled, and I'm sure we are not helping matters.  The kids were very excited to use the fire pit in the backyard.  Here we are making doughboys.

A doughboy is a piece of canned biscuit dough cooked over the fire on a long wooden stick and then filled with pie filling (or jam, but mostly pie filling).  We used to eat them at ward functions in my ward growing up.  One of our home ward friends made and gifted Scott and I with a pair of doughboy stick for our wedding.  Here are Matthew and I eating our doughboys.

 Matthew cooking his doughboy.  See the special stick.  Those sticks belonged to my parents.

We also had hamburgers and hotdogs.

Matthew wanted to wear my sunglasses to protect his eyes from smoke.

Grant and Anna were really excited to use the fire pit and then they both fell asleep in the afternoon...hard.  We tried everything we could to wake them.  Well, reasonable methods at least.  The could not be roused.  They were both upset when they did wake up and found they had missed using the fire pit.  We'll do it another day I'm sure.

 My sister, Ruth, and her family also came through town from Washington.

We went to the Thanksgiving Point Museum of Natural Curiosity (among other places).

The zip line was a favorite!

Here are some of my kids with cousin Magnus (in blue).  He and Grant are the same age and up to a lot of the same tricks.  They had fun playing together.

 Cool climber at the museum.

 Me, Ruth, Gideon and my mom

Yes, Gideon, you are very cute!

And Anna, John, Magnus, Gideon, Matthew, Emma and Grant

It was so fun to have cousin time. 

Goodbye Illinois

After living in temporary lodging for two weeks (the last week and a half without Scott) I was ready to get going.  On the last day of school Scott flew in to St. Louis to drive with us back west.  Poor guy.  He had to drive across twice.  But after evaluating some different options, we thought this was the best one.  This was Scott's drive the first time.
The second time the kids and I will stop in Utah to stay with my parents while we get a house in California.
The last of day of school was a half day - the Friday before Memorial Day weekend.

 After school we said a last goodbye to some of our friends.

I hate saying goodbye to people.

And then we drove away from the school...and started our journey west (after stopping for lunch and to weigh the car).  Last Air Force move.  On to new adventures!  

Climbing Trees

The temporary lodging we are staying in is a little older and there are many mature trees surrounding the units.  Our house here and our house in Colorado were both in newer subdivisions and had no mature trees.  When we moved in and stayed in these TLFs Matthew found a rope swing on one of the big trees and was eager to find it again, and try his hand at climbing a few of the big trees.

We eventually found the swing tree (or so we think), but the swing was gone.  Just a frayed rope hanging from one of the branches.  Matthew wanted to climb this tree right away.  I have so much to teach him about climbing trees.  1.  Find an appropriate tree to climb.  This one was not a good climbing tree.

July 2013

Here is Matthew at that same tree two years ago when we moved to Illinois.

Matthew then tried this youngish tree.  A better choice than the last one cause the branches were lower.  But too small!  He still wanted to try it for a while.  So eager.

We found an interesting tree next.  Pretty good for climbing.

John and Grant wanted to climb too but were a little afraid.

 Matthew got up pretty high in this tree

 Anna gave it a try too

 She wasn't feeling quite as adventurous as Matthew

This was my favorite tree.  A large tree growing kind of sideways.  It looked like it had been partially blown over by a storm once, but just kept on growing.  It was very sturdy and a great climbing tree.  Matthew, Anna and Grant all gave it a try.

I was lamenting that I never see kids climbing trees anymore (possibly because I have lived in neighborhoods with no big trees) and wondering if someone would come get us in trouble for such an innocuous thing as tree climbing, when Grant fell part way off the large branch he was on and scraped his forehead on the bark.  He wanted to go home after that.

We will miss you big climbing trees!

Goodbye Eckert's

We love Eckert's Farm in Belleville (not too far from our house).  My favorite was the peaches.  Hopefully they have a good peach crop this year (last year they didn't because of a late freeze or something) but we won't be here for peach season.  Pick Your Own Strawberries came into season just in time for us to pick some - a week before we leave.  Scott was already gone and it was raining but I decided we could still try for one last Eckert's trip.  Here are some pictures of our adventures.  Grant shows us his empty basket while Anna feeds John berries.  It was raining a little, so it wasn't very crowded.  Most people there came prepared with rain boots and rain coats.  We didn't have any of that, just an umbrella.  We got a little wet.

 Making our way down the muddy rows

 Emma and I stayed driest

 There were lots of strawberries to be had...

 ...if you didn't mind a little rain.

Everyone is grimacing a little in these pictures.

Raindrops in the faces

We tried to pick only as many berries as we could eat in a week.  No jam this time.  Insufficient canning supplies in the TLF.  Goodbye Eckert's and Illinois strawberries.  I happen to know there are plenty of strawberries in California.  :)

Out of the House

The time has come for us to move!  Scott is starting his new job - he is at his first day at the new job as I type this!!  And the kids and I are finishing up the last week of school.  We decided it would work out best if we moved out of our house two weeks before school ended (for various other reasons).  So last week was our move out week.  The movers came on Monday (day one of the move) and started packing. Here are Grant and I by some of the boxes.  Walls of boxes!!  

On that first day we moved into temporary lodging (the TLF) because too much of the house was going to be packed.  Here are the kids with some activity books in our TLF room.  There is less to entertain them at the TLF.

 Day two - more packing of boxes

And kids eat free day at Chevy's

We eat out more while we are displaced

So many boxes

Day three is truck loading day.

Aww, goodbye house!  While we were loading up a couple drove by to check out the house.  Presumably to see if they want to move in after we leave.  Scott and I agree, it's the best house on base (or one of them).  Largest, newest house, best floor plan, best of the on base housing developments, nice location right by the bus stop. 

Day four was cleaning day.  We paid to have the house cleaned rather than clean it ourselves.  This meant Scott could leave and start work sooner, we could check out of the house sooner (saving us money there) and save some sanity.  Totally worth it.  And because someone else was cleaning, day four was also when Scott left to drive west to start the new job.  Here he is just before heading out.   He drove to Nebraska, then Utah, then California.

And day five was check out day.  I went and did the walk around and check out.  The cleaners did a tremendous job and the check out ladies kept raving about how great our house looked and how amazing  it was that we had five children yet it was still so clean.  Hooray!

 And now we are just counting down the days.  Five more days of school!!

There are playgrounds near the TLF and I drive the kids to other ones a lot just for something to do.

Here are John and Emma in the swing.

John and Emma have been the hardest to manage in the TLF.  John won't stay in bed.  He normally sleeps in a crib.

And Emma just wants to be held all the time.  I don't have any of her baby gear.  I thought I could get along without it for a few weeks, but its been a little rough.  Especially since Scott left and I have no one else to hold her.  Matthew and Anna have both stepped up and helped me hold her a lot.  But there has been a lot of this (see picture) going on.  Poor Emma!

My friend let me borrow her bumbo seat.  I never had one of these, but Emma likes it a lot. Somewhere for her to sit at least other than her car seat.  I miss our house.  I miss the bus stop too since I now have to go pick up and drop off the kids at school.  But its only a week.  Well, now its only four more days.  Almost there!

Emma's First Solid Food

Emma just turned six months old and she's ready for solid foods.  She's been eyeing our big people food for some time now, enviously.  All the kids came over to watch her and help her eat her first solid foods.

Anna really wanted to feed her.  Emma thought it was weird and spit out most of what we fed her.  Pretty standard. 

 She kept trying though.

Hooray Emma!  It's just rice cereal for now, but other things soon enough.

I've got a video too that I'll add here sometime.