My amazing, wonderful children

I don't think I usually refer to them that way. It's usually "the crazy one." Or "the one who talks back all the time." Or "the ones who won't stop fighting."
But usually they really are wonderful. Especially the past week. I mentioned in my last post that we are dealing with yet another pregnancy loss.  And to the family members who are saying, "Hey, she didn't tell me? I am reading about it on her blog?" I apologize. Things have been so crazy around here I just did not feel I could deal with getting into it at the moment. I really am sorry. But I am so, so tired.

Anyway, I have worried in the past that Benny was not compassionate. He didn't seem to care if people were sad or hurting. I would look at my niece who was so sensitive and was concerned about the difference I saw. But the other day he asked if we could snuggle in 2 days. I thought that was funny he was scheduling this in advance, but it made sense since it was past his bedtime at the moment, and the next night he wasn't going to be home. So he was scheduling a snuggling session. This of course delighted me since it NEVER happens. But I think in his own way he is sensitive after all, and somehow knew this is what is mommy needed. I didn't make him wait 2 days; I said let's snuggle now. I ended up telling him I was sad because I had a baby in my tummy that wasn't going to make it. The wise little boy told me that we didn't know that for sure, and that maybe the doctor was wrong, and we would just have to wait and see. He also said he was sorry this was happening and that after my next doctor's appt he would make sure to give me a big hug.

After this talk I wondered if I had done the right thing in telling him because he was getting excited and hopeful about having a little brother or sister. I tried to warn him that it actually wasn't going to work out, but he remained positive. Yesterday I was lying down on the couch for a few minutes, and he came and laid down with me. I can't remember the comment I made, but it had something to do with wishing things were going to go differently at my appt tomorrow (today). Then in a sweet, wise voice, he said, "Well, mommy, sometimes things happen in life that we just don't understand."
What? Could this be the same boy that is grounded for the next two weeks?  It reminded me of the time he was around 2 and our friend Norma was having some major health issues. We were at Target and he was playing with my phone. He had a pretend conversation with Norma, who he had met maybe twice, in which he said, "Be patient, Norma. Be patient." And then he moved on to whatever 2 year old babbling he was doing.

And Ellie. She makes going to Sacrament meeting on Sundays nearly impossible. But at least she loves nursery and will yell during sacrament meeting that she wants to go to nursery. So when I picked her up after church yesterday, the nursery leader asked if we had found a babysitter yet because she really wants her family to watch Ellie anytime we need them. The two nursery leaders then proceeded to tell us how much they love having her in class and how cute and fun she is. They love how much she talks and how much personality she has. And they whispered that they know they're not supposed to have favorites, but she is theirs. By then I was laughing pretty hard. Of course we adore Ellie, but we know how her strong personality can get going in bad directions sometimes.  But I guess when it's going in the right direction, she is delightful to be around. And that made me happy that other people could see that, too. I always wanted my daughter to have personality and be a strong person, and it's good to see that is exactly who she is. We just have to make sure we keep that energy of hers on a positive path.

I will never be one of those moms with a great quantity of children, but I definitely know that the quality is.

Story of a house

Last year at this time Ben had just found out he had lost his job. Things were stressful. But I had been on the phone with my sister Kimiko and she closed the conversation by saying, "When Dan (her husband) lost his job, we were able to look back over the year and see all the miracles that happened. I can't wait to hear about yours at this time next year." I was sure she was right, but of course had no idea how things were going to work out.

I had wanted to write this entry with a big finale surprise ending, with the exciting announcement of our 3rd baby. Well the 3rd baby part actually isn't going to work out after all, and while we are pretty bummed to say the least, the thought I had was that it doesn't need to be about the ending. Because is there ever really an "ending?" It's all one continuous journey. And although I was not feeling very grateful the past week--let's face it, I may or may not have had some mini breakdowns (I blame the hormones)--I feel like these things can't wait to be written down any longer. I'm sure none of it is earth shattering for anyone else, but for us it has definitely been a year of growth.

We closed on our home today.  Yippee! I knew this was an exciting time, but with all the stresses we'd been dealing with lately I don't think we remembered to be excited. But today as we sat chatting at the title company office, our realtor/friend expressed how happy he was for us, and I made the comment that a year ago Ben didn't even have a job, and now we're actually closing on a home for our family, the feeling I got was overwhelming. How could I not be grateful after everything that had happened?

So our summer went like so:
I think my last post was in April about Ben loving his new job. At this time it was taking us some time to catch up financially on everything, but we knew it would get there. I was still bummed we had drained our savings of our house down payment and was discouraged about building it back as it took several years to get where it was, and now we had even less money. But things were ok as we both had jobs we liked and the kids were happy. We figured we'd just stay in our townhome rental and figure things out as they came. Well, summer came and one day we got an email from our friends who owned the townhouse we were renting. They felt terrible about it, but they were going to be moving back and we would need to find another place to live. I started browsing listings for rentals and realized it is just not worth it to rent a house, and I was absolutely sick of moving, so what would it hurt to just talk to a lender and see if we even had a slim chance of buying anything right then. The worst they could say was we were crazy since we had pretty much no money and a lot of instability over the past two years. Imagine my surprise when the lender said it should somehow work out.

First we went on vacation to visit my parents and Ben's dad and stepmom, but when we got back we decided to contact one of our neighbors to be our realtor. I had not been interested in using someone we know, but for some reason we felt like we should go with Josh. And Josh worked hard. He also got us in contact with a great lender who also worked really hard. We sold our car that had just been paid off, of course. We sold my beautiful piano. We started pinching every penny we could so we could "hurry and buy a house."

Our realtor took us out many times, and some days were very discouraging as to what was available in our price range. We were running out of time and needed to have an offer accepted in the next few days. For some reason we decided to expand our search and looked at one in Saratoga Springs. My friend coincidentally lived just a few houses down from this one in Saratoga, so we picked her brain about the area and she put in a good word for us with the seller. And after all the great layouts and awesome yards we looked at that day, Ben said he really felt the Saratoga house was the one. I was shocked.  The realtor was shocked. We made our offer and started paperwork when our friend down the street mentioned that we might want to ask about some rural housing loan. The lender did some checking and said we could qualify for that loan for TWO MORE WEEKS and then Saratoga would not be considered rural anymore as it had grown so much. However, this loan would extend our time in escrow even longer and our realtor said that if he were the seller, he would probably say no at this point. Yet again, we were shocked when the seller agreed to push back closing as they really felt we were serious about everything and liked that we had ties to the area through our friend who lived there. They wanted us in the house.

So if anyone is still reading, good for you, I can barely keep my eyes open and I know I'm rambling. But it just amazes me how this has all worked out. I don't know why, but we really feel like this is where we are supposed to be. It's not a convenient location. Sometimes it's smelly. The house isn't the one I would have picked for myself. Yet at the same time there is no doubt we made the right decision, and we know it was not possible on our own. Once again, Someone helped us along the way and sent us to the place we needed to be. And so far we love it. The neighbors are all so friendly, and Benny always has kids to play with. Our door gets knocked on several times a day for various reasons, whether it be kids looking for a playmate, or neighbors introducing themselves.

Yes, the car accidents and packing and unpacking and the hormonal rollercoaster have made the past few months pretty darn stressful. So no, there is no baby, but there is a lot of everything else to be grateful for.

House pics

I need some major catch up, but for now, some have requested pics of the house we are buying. They are just quick snapshots from when we did the home inspection last week.

 Dining area, obviously.

 Kitchen, which one day I will have to figure out how to expand.

 Master bath

 Master bed

 Benny's room which we will paint

 Living room into kitchen

 Backyard

 Play structure will be left behind for us

 Basement "bedroom." You will see from the pic below there is no door

 Basement study looking into "bedroom." The closet we are looking at is also the cold storage, so kind of a weird setup.

The bedroom also has a bathroom.

 Basement study which has daylight exit to backyard.

 Basement family room looking into study.

 Coming down the stair into the hall toward family room.

Living room again

Unfortunately I didn't get a shot of the front of the house. It's a cute neighborhood all named after fruit trees. There are a couple little parks nearby, and it's always breezy so the heat didn't seem quite as bad.

We look forward to moving in the end of next month if all goes well

The Job

I have been dragging my heels at writing some of this down because there was just so much stuff that happened over the past few months, it was overwhelming. But I guess the important thing is not to write down every single detail, but to remember the important things and how we have been taken care of (even on those days I don't feel very positive). And this will probably be pretty long and boring; it's more for me to have it all written down.

After Ben lost his job, I picked up as much temp work as I could in various offices and especially my old office. I even went to California for a week to work for the dentist I worked for in high school. It was crazy how jobs kept landing in our laps. We didn't get extra work, and we watched our savings continue to dwindle, but we were ok.

Finally when our savings was almost completely gone, and I was so fed up with the office where I was temping, I told Ben he had to have a job by the first of the year or I was taking a job in California and we were moving there and he would just have to be stay at home dad. I was not serious about this, but I was getting pretty frustrated with everything. Ben had also commented that if he didn't find something by January, it wasn't likely he'd have anything until the next school year. I was kind of starting to freak out as my temp job ended Dec 31 and our savings was almost completely gone.

Ben hadn't been able to look hard for a job until then as his teaching license had expired in the meantime, and getting verifications and paperwork from people in California took forever. Of course it would have been better if he had just not let it expire, but looking back I see how all these small details came into play.
So when his renewal arrived, he jumped on the ball and started making phone calls. He called several places, and when he called Alpine School District, he spoke with the director of Special Education (Eric) and told him he was going to drop off a resume. Eric did not sound super excited and told Ben there were a lot of people applying for jobs that were probably more qualified blah blah blah and there weren't any for sure openings anyway. But they continued to chat, and Ben gave great detail about what had happened at his last job. I was in the background cringing. Ben is pretty open, and I felt a little too open about his job history in this particular situation. I figured since he only worked there three weeks, he didn't even really need to count it as employment. Imagine my utter surprise that his honesty actually paid off, and by the time the phone call was done, he had an interview with Eric that Friday.

When I talked to Ben after the interview Friday, I did not know what in the heck was going on. Ben sounded completely euphoric. No, he did not have a job offer, but he said he had never been in an interview like that in his life, and he was pretty sure the interviewers hadn't either. It was completely obvious there was a higher power directing things, from the questions asked and the answers Ben had, to the letters from parents that he last minute grabbed on his way out the door and actually had opportunity to show the interviewers. Ben said he didn't know if he had a job there, but he at least felt completely at ease with whatever was going to happen next and confident in his abilities. I guess after losing his job there were times he didn't feel so confident, and the interview gave him that boost that we all need to know we don't completely stink at what we're doing.

Shortly thereafter the phone call came. Eric said he didn't know where he was going to put Ben, but they wanted him somewhere.  They would make sure there was a place for him if Ben wanted it.
And ever since then he has loved it. He loves his students. He loves the staff he has in his classroom. He comes home every day saying it was a good day.

There will be some changes next year, and I'm not sure exactly how everything is going to turn out, but at least for now there is no doubt in Ben's mind he is where he needs to be.

And since we are talking about jobs, I got one, too. At my old office, where I had hoped to stay since temping there after moving back. I had been very hurt when I was temping that the office had decided to take things in a different direction and not hire me permanently. But I did my best to get over it and eventually realized I wouldn't be able to stay there full-time forever, which is what they needed.
Then at the very end of the position I was dumbfounded when they said they had been evaluating everything and would I be interested in working twice a week, any schedule I wanted. I was so glad I had done my best to do a good job and not hold grudges about everything, because it worked out even better than it would have had I been given the full-time position.

I don't know when I will learn to have more faith that everything will work out, because it always does. Things definitely haven't been ideal, but we have been taken care of one way or another--every single day.

So You've Had a Bad Day

I've been a bit of a grumpus this week. The icing on the cake was when I went to Wal-mart to get this pineapple coconut water flavor-er, and THEY WERE SOLD OUT. I wanted to scream. But I also thought it was kind of funny that it was such a dumb thing to be upset about, so I called my sister Janice who introduced me to these so I could vent to her. That was two days ago.

Today I got the mail, and what do you think was in the mailbox? A small package with a couple drink enhancer drops, a bag of cadbury mini eggs, and a sweet note from my sister Janice.

Then I went to this "smile jar" and put a little piece of paper inside about how this all made my day. It's March right now and the jar is slowly getting filled with papers about the good things that happened that day. I think by the end of the year we'll have a lot of fun things to read about and remember, and the bad days won't seem so bad.

Ellie's face

I really need to update Christmas, birthdays, the job situation, etc. But in the meantime enjoy this funny video of our cheeseball. It's not very long. Just click below:

The Face

Randomness

 Mr. Mom has been at it again. It drives me crazy that he is doing such a good job of being home with the kids.  They do projects almost every day.  These are their turkeys.  Now they're working on balloon santa claus.

 

I had a birthday a couple weeks ago.  Ben packed up the kids and surprised me at work with flowers and a handmade card by Benny.  I was such an emotional wreck that day due to some things with work (grateful to have some work for the time being, but the situation isn't exactly ideal and I have really struggled some days). When I saw them I just started crying.  How embarassing.  But they were so sweet and I sure appreciate them. Ben took me to Tucano's that evening and then we went to a movie on Saturday.  It was nice to get two dates that week! And although things at work aren't perfect, a nice coworker took me to lunch, and the boss got me a cake and gift. But yeah I pretty much cried my eyes out that day.  Don't know when's the last time I've been that emotional! I told Ben he had to get a job soon.  But then I see the things he does with the kids and wonder if maybe we don't need him to go back just yet;)

Benny just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

And Ellie is just as crazy as ever.  Yes, her head is stuck and she is not happy about it. 

 

And then we had Thanksgiving, which was a nice day. Ben's mom and brother came over and we had dinner here at the house.  Waaaay too much food. Ben got to watch the Cowboys afterward (and fell asleep during the game! Don't know if that's ever happened). And then we watched "Brave." Benny loves to watch "family movies," and he had been waiting all day:)

 

And Ben and I are trying to lose weight.  I'm trying to lose everything I gained AFTER the baby haha. My older sister has lost 40 lbs (way to go, Helen!) and finally made me feel like I could actually do it, too. It's annoying that Ben has been working on it for less time than me and losing more quickly, but at least it's nice that we both are trying to eat/not eat the same things. The holidays make it hard but hopefully we can be strong.

 

Ellie's 1st birthday is this week.  To be continued...

What a nut

I know I already put these on Facebook, but I don't think the parents have seen them. Our nap refuser got tuckered out at Costco and fell asleep in what looks like an extremely uncomfortable position. She is so silly! She is close to walking, so probably by her 1st birthday.  She still has the cutest tiniest feet and tiny blue eyes.  Her blond hair is always sticking straight up like she got electrocuted.  She has spunk.  She will not eat anything if she cannot do it herself, so baby food is out.  She likes to shake her booty when she hears music, and she especially loves to dance in the tub, which drives us crazy as it's so unsafe.

She still spits up a ton which is soooo annoying.

 

 She adores her brother and continues to pester him, like most younger siblings do. Anyone know how to get her to stop biting? She thinks it's hilarious to bite Benny's toes. She also bites our cheeks, thighs, shoulders, basically whatever she can get her teeth on. But her favorite is Benny's toes because he freaks out every time. And besides the pain, feet biting is gross; so I'd like her to stop.

But she sure is cute



Halloween

Jack o' lantern is perfect for her.  She looks just like one, even without the costume.

 

 Ben took Benny shopping while I was in California and sent me this pic.  I thought it was so cute I couldn't get mad at the money they spent.

 I'd like to crop myself out of this one, but then we'd lose Ellie.  I made Thor's helmet out of tinfoil since the real ones were all sold out everywhere.  Benny didn't care and it only cost $1 to do, so score one for us!

After the trick or treating and candy eating.  Benny got a lot of loot and Ellie's tights are cute.

 

We just went to the townhouses in our neighborhood and that was plenty.  It was way more fun trick or treating here than in Cali.  People got in to it, were home, and were friendly. Benny got so much candy compared to California. My favorite was when we went to the Primary music leader's house. She is a bubbly newlywed and is always gushing about Bnny, and we figured she would enjoy having him stop by. And we were right. Her husband answered the door and called for her to come before we could say anything, and when she saw him she exclaimed, "My favorite!" We of course think Benny's great but it's funny that she likes him so much.

Stay at home dad

 

Ben said he doesn't like the term "house husband," but he's ok with stay at home dad.  As mentioned earlier, Benny loves having his dad at home. Today Benny told me that I should get a job and take Ellie with me so he and his dad can stay at home and hang out ha ha. But it really makes me wonder if I'm the one that should get a job and Ben should stay home.  He's so darn good with the kids, way better than I am.  Maybe it's the teacher in him, but he has things all scheduled out and does projects and everything.  I rarely do projects:(

 

He took the kids to the park and snapped this:

My sister Janice gave Benny a turkey making kit, so they made these:

This week I came home to tombstones.  I will clarify that I did not post pics of all of them as Ben's sense of humor can be a bit much;)

 

So I still have no idea what we're doing in the future.  I'm just picking up as much work as I can, and we're taking things one day at a time. Thankfully Ben is an excellent husband and father and this is a great bonding time for him and the kids.  The little ones are soaking up every second of it.  I think they will be disappointed when Mom is back home again:)

Benny-isms for today

Benny: (watching Jake and the Neverland Pirates, after they had just found a treasure chest with coins and candy)
I sure hope they paid their tithing!


Benny: What are you making?
Me: Pumpkin dessert.
Benny: Are you making it the right way?
(Last time it may not have been the right way)


Today, 10/31

At bedtime prayer Benny seemed to get stumped on what else he wanted to say, so I whispered in his ear: "Help Daddy to find a job."

He whispered back: "No, I like him staying at home.
Fine!!!
 Help Daddy to find a job...."


I love that every week when the ads come in the mail, he snatches the Toys R Us ad and studies it very seriously:

His art is getting better.  Big Ben did the eyes, but I thought Frankenstein turned out pretty good.  He still hasn't caught on that you have to write all the letters next to each other to spell a word, but oh well

What in the world?

I feel like I ask myself that question all the time lately.  I don't know how, but the past 2 months have been crazier than the past several years put together.  After arriving in Utah ( and even before I guess) there has been incident after incident.

The short of it and probably biggest at the moment--Ben lost his job after 4 weeks.
This is the job we were sure about taking and moved from California. So, we figure the job was not as meant to be as we thought but now have no idea what we are doing. We felt we needed to move to Utah and that's as far as we've gotten. We're here.

I say I either have to laugh or cry about it, and mostly I laugh.  But sometimes it's frustrating.  The 3 years we were in the Bay Area I felt like we were wandering around, moving from apartment to apartment, not knowing where to be.  Then he got the job in Utah which we felt really good about.  I thought we could finally get settled, find a house, find a place where the kids could grow up and Benny could start school next year. So now I laugh because I think the wandering and not knowing is even worse now.

And then I remember to be grateful. There's no doubt Somebody has been watching over us.  The place we're living is really nice, and it's even nicer that the landlord/friends of ours signed us on a month to month basis.  We can stay as long or little as we want. While Ben is out of work, I've been getting calls to work here and there.   It's not as much work as I think we need, but we also have savings because for some reason we held off on using that money for a down payment on a house. I also got an opportunity to go to California for a week to work. It was a great experience in many ways--the work was good, the office was great, the pay was good, and I got to relax at my parents.' I even got to sleep in my old bed, just like when I was growing up.  It kind of felt nice to just worry about myself for a few days and order as much Thai food as I wanted. I missed Ben and the kids, but they were all doing great at home in Orem.  It couldn't have gone more smoothly.

So while I really wish I knew that Ben would get a job soon and we would have benefits, I am doing my best to trust him and trust that God knows what's best for us. I hate not knowing what tomorrow brings--literally tomorrow--but am trying to take it one step at a time instead of planning my entire life. In General Conference last week there was a talk about a pioneer woman who was almost out of food for her family.  But just like Christ feeding the 5000, the woman miraculously had enough food for her family out of 2 hard biscuits.  The speaker said that the woman did not demand to know how she was going to feed her family tomorrow; she was just grateful for the food they had at that moment and had faith that things would work out somehow.

So I try to be less demanding and more trusting, and we will see what tomorrow brings.  I have no idea.

Funeral weekend pics

This is a lot of us, the kids and grandkids in my family, at the cemetery. 

 

Ellie at the funeral luncheon.  I just can't get over how fair skinned she is and how blue her eyes are.  Silly girl. Is she really mine?

 Benny enjoying his strawberry cake.  The story behind it was so cute. His cousin Mayumi had a piece of strawberry cake with strawberry frosting.  Benny was dillydallying eating, and we told him he better hurry and finish his food so he could have dessert.  When he went up to the dessert table all the strawberry cake was gone, and he had to settle for some German chocolate cake.  As soon as took his first bite a lady walked by with a whole tray of cake, many being pieces of strawberry.  Benny stared longingly and exclaimed, "Aw, man!!! I should have waited!"
He looked so disappointed I couldn't tell him no and let him get a piece of strawberry. Doesn't he look like he's enjoying it?

What better way to celebrate death than with new life? It was a great ending to the weekend when we were able to attend Kimiko's baby Lilli's blessing.  She got permission to do it in Grandma's ward since there would be so much family in town. She had dragged her feet on what to do about the blessing as she wanted people to be able to attend, but knew they probably wouldn't be able to make it to California.  It worked out that they were able to do it with all her siblings being present.

 Speaking of the siblings, here we are, left to right, oldest to youngest.

 A bunch of the grandkids and great grandkids (Grandma Doris's great-great grandkids!):

 All of us who attended the blessing.  Dad's brother Keith and sister Karen were also there.

 I think this one is hilarious.  This is at Janice's house after church at dinner.  Spencer is an RN and works weird hours and is always asleep on this couch.  It looks like Mariko just stuck the baby on him.  I was so worried Spencer didn't know he was there and would move and knock him off or something.

Grandma Doris

We drove in to Utah early in the morning Aug 1st.  We were supposed to head to our new place in Orem.  As we were somewhere in the desert on our way to Utah, the landlord texted to say the floor was not done yet, and he was so sorry, but it would be best if we found a place to stay for the night.  He felt really bad as he had promised us we could drive right in and crash for the night. He even offered to get us a hotel.

Well, no big deal, we decided we'd just drive 100 miles out of the way for the night.  Chad, who drove the Uhaul, could go home and we would go visit Grandma in the morning.

You never know how blessings pop up. Grandma passed away the next week, and that unexpected trip was the last time Ben got to visit with her.  The kids and I went up again that weekend for a great visit, not knowing she would be gone two days later.

Grandma had a stroke 2 years ago and her health had not been the same.  She was still witty and able to live at home, but she needed help and did not enjoy being dependent on people. There were many times over those 2 years that she went downhill and we thought it would be the last time we saw her, but she always managed to pop back up. This time we had told Kimiko that if she wanted Grandma to meet the new baby, Lilli, she better hurry and visit, as Grandma once again was not doing well. Kimiko and her family couldn't decide if there really was an urgency or not as this had happened so many times, but finally decided to make the drive.  We felt a little silly when she got here and Grandma looked better than ever. But then we realized what a blessing it was that Grandma was coherent and happy and was able to enjoy the visit. And we realized even more what a treasure that visit was when Grandma was gone 2 days later.

Grandpa and Grandma lived around the block when I was little.  They were always there within walking distance for ice cream or just to visit.  We saw them at church.  They took us places when they could, like a family camping trip one year.  They were great people and it was so hard to say goodbye 9 years ago when Grandpa died.  Grandma missed him terribly and one part of us wanted her to be able to be with him, and another knew how much we'd miss her once she was gone. 
And we do. 

The funeral was very nice, and we got to see a lot of family.  My brother Allan, who lives in St. Louis and doesn't visit often, was able to come, as well as Grandma's relatives in GA, HI, AZ, and CA.

Grandma hoped to be able to make it to the new Brigham City temple before she died. We were excited that tiny Brigham City would have such a beautiful and special place right in the middle of town.  She barely missed it and it opened to the public the day of her funeral.  I was sad as we drove past it and on to the cemetery.  But I can only imagine that she and Grandpa visit there together now.

 

I'm so glad to have known wonderful grandparents in my lifetime, and so grateful for those visits we were able to have over the summer.  As my 4 year old says, "I miss her, but I'm not sad.  I'll see her again."

Crazy little girl

I remember my sister saying something about being afraid to have a boy because of how crazy boys are. 

My boy is not the problem.

I don't know where this little ball of spunk came from.  Guess it serves us right for naming her after not one, but two, lively grandmothers.

 

A couple days ago I had a headache and was sitting down for a few minutes.  A few minutes is all it takes for a 4 year old to get his mom's hidden stash of m&m's and feed them to his sister. So I do blame that incident on him:)

 

She loves the tub.  If Benny gets a bath and she doesn't, she will shriek and yell.  The other day this 8 month old climbed in when the tub was empty and I caught her just before her head hit the porcelain.

She hates cows.  She will make the saddest face ever if she hears "moo."  We experimented with different animals, and she was fine with all of them except the moo.  Being the mean parents we are we kept moo-ing because it was so darn cute to see her make this face.  But then she did get pretty upset so we had to stop.

 

She makes a really interesting face which we call her "sour puss face."  We aren't sure why she does it but she does it everytime we eat dinner, and sometimes just because.  To add to the funnyness of it she pants loudly through her nose while she does the face, and sometimes "things" fly out of her nose.  I know that's gross but it is the most bizarre thing.  The video is worth watching although not super clear.

 

She truly is a joy to have around.  She is one of the happiest and smiliest babies I have ever seen, when she isn't being dramatic.

Summer catch up part 2

We made it to the Oakland zoo one last time.  We hadn't been to the famous Fenton's ice cream parlor yet, so we hit that on the way home.

 

We bought 3 ice creams, one being child size.  We spent $34.

And Ellie would have rather eaten the table.

Benny and Mayumi with their A's hats from Jennifer (the friend that works for the A's)

My awesome brother in law Chad said he would like to go to a baseball game, so why doesn't he fly out and go to a game then drive our Uhaul to Utah for us?  We said ok!
This was the longest game EVER (for the A's anyway) and finally ended after 5 hours in the 15th inning.  And we were supposed to get up early and make the long drive to Utah with our 3 cars in the morning.  At least we got to be part of history, right?

It's blurry but this sign was just for Benny. It says, "Benny, have fun at the game and GO A's! Love, Jenn"

And this one I was not expecting and almost cried, what with it being our last night in Cali and all.  It says, "Dear Middletons, Good luck with your move to Utah.  We will miss you.  Jenn & Eric"

 

Moving day!  Benny got these socks at the Monday night game from Jennifer and didn't take them off until Wednesday.  Silly boy.

 

We all made good time in our cars and with just a couple small hitches pulled into Chad's driveway about 12:30am Aug 1st.